686: Not All Heroes Vibe Code

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks - Episode 686: Not All Heroes Vibe Code

Release Date: February 28, 2025
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner

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Introduction

In Episode 686 of Grumpy Old Geeks, hosts Jason DeFilippo and Brian Schulmeister dive into a whirlwind of tech news, dissecting recent events with their signature no-holds-barred humor and critical insight. From government data breaches to AI mishaps and cryptocurrency chaos, this episode covers a broad spectrum of topics, ensuring listeners are both informed and entertained.

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Privacy Act Ruling and Government Data Sharing

The episode kicks off with a discussion about a federal judge's ruling against the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management. These agencies were found to have likely violated the Privacy Act by sharing personal data with the Department of Government Efficiency. This unauthorized disclosure has led to a temporary blockade, preventing further access to the compromised data.

Jason DeFilippo remarks at [01:13]:
"A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management likely violated the Privacy Act by sharing personal data with the Department of Government Efficiency."

Brian Schulmeister adds at [02:22]:
"This is where the rubber hits the road. We're going to find out exactly what's going on."

The hosts express skepticism about the Department of Government Efficiency's compliance, suggesting that unauthorized data may already be compromised.

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Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh Sunny Balwani's Legal Setback

Next, the hosts cover the recent denials of appeals by Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh Sunny Balwani to overturn their fraud convictions. The Northern District Court of California has refused to reduce their sentences or the substantial restitution they owe.

Jason DeFilippo states at [03:01]:
"Holmes, cast your mind back again to 17 years ago. She was the disgraced founder of Theranos and is serving over 11 years in a Texas prison."

The discussion highlights the court's dismissal of their claims of an unfair trial, leaving both individuals with little hope for early release.

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Cryptocurrency Volatility: Bitcoin's Rollercoaster

The podcast shifts to the volatile world of cryptocurrency, focusing on Bitcoin's dramatic price swings. Between one night and the next morning, Bitcoin plummeted from approximately $84,000 to below $79,000 before rebounding to around $84,000.

Jason DeFilippo exclaims at [04:56]:
"Between last night and this morning, bitcoin went from about $84,000 to under $79,000."

Brian expresses concern over institutional investors considering adding Bitcoin to their portfolios, advising against it due to the unpredictable market.

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Warner Brothers Discovery Cuts Gaming Division

Warner Brothers Discovery has announced significant layoffs in its gaming division, shutting down three studios—Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB Games San Diego—due to disappointing performance in 2024.

Jason DeFilippo comments at [06:18]:
"Warner Brothers Discovery has made sweeping cuts to its games division, closing three studios and adding development on its planned Wonder Woman project."

The hosts debate the future of major IPs like Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC Universe, and Game of Thrones in the gaming landscape.

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Google’s Employee Cuts and AI Spending

Google has initiated a voluntary exit program for its People Operations and Cloud organizations, citing a need for cost-cutting to expand its AI infrastructure. This follows mixed messages about whether these cuts are part of internal reorganizations or purely financial measures.

Jason DeFilippo explains at [08:36]:
"They plan to cut employees as part of internal reorganizations... Google will offer a voluntary exit program to US-based full-time employees in people operations."

The hosts critique Google's justification, suspecting that the company is redirecting funds toward AI at the expense of other operations.

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AI-Generated Content and Safety Concerns

The conversation takes a critical turn towards AI-generated content, highlighting an incident where an AI-created video featuring Trump and Musk caused chaos by playing on government TVs.

Brian Schulmeister notes at [12:00]:
"There's your use for AI. And I bet they didn't use Gemini."

They discuss broader AI safety issues, including the potential for AI to generate harmful content and the inherent challenges in regulating AI outputs.

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Resignation of 21 Government Employees

A significant number of government employees—21 in total—from the Department of Government Efficiency have resigned, citing their refusal to use technical expertise to dismantle critical public services. This mass resignation underscores growing resistance within government agencies to certain administrative directions.

Jason DeFilippo observes at [14:00]:
"These guys used to be part of the United States Digital Service... they finally had enough. So, you know, good for these 21 people."

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Anthropic’s Massive Funding Round and AI Ethics

AI startup Anthropic is reportedly scaling up its next funding round to a staggering $3.5 billion. The company, known for its focus on AI safety and its Claude AI assistant, is attracting significant investor interest despite skepticism about the feasibility of achieving true superintelligence.

Jason DeFilippo remarks at [28:00]:
"Anthropic's emphasis on AI safety and transparency has been a key factor in its appeal to investors."

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North Korea’s $1.4 Billion Ethereum Heist on Bybit

In a startling development, North Korea's Lazarus Group has conducted its largest cryptocurrency heist yet, stealing $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum from the exchange Bybit. Despite the massive loss, Bybit's CEO assures all withdrawals remain covered, a promise met with doubt by the hosts.

Jason DeFilippo comments at [30:27]:
"Despite the massive loss, Bybit CEO Ben Xiao insists all withdrawals are covered, though we've heard that promise before."

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Billy McFarland's Fyre Festival 2 Debacle

Billy McFarland, infamous for the original Fyre Festival fiasco, is reportedly attempting to recreate his failed event with Fyre Festival 2. The hosts express skepticism about the event's feasibility, noting exorbitant ticket prices and the absence of confirmed artists.

Brian Schulmeister states at [31:30]:
"Tickets have just gone on sale ranging from $1,400 to an eye-watering $1.1 million. Yet no artists have been announced."

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SEC Drops Investigation into Robinhood

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided not to move forward with enforcement actions against Robinhood concerning its cryptocurrency activities. Despite past fines and settlements, the SEC's latest stance suggests a more lenient approach under the new administration.

Brian Schulmeister points out at [36:34]:
"The SEC is dropping its investigation into Robinhood. The agency has informed the company they will not move forward with any enforcement actions."

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The Rise of Vibe Coding and AI in Development

A significant portion of the episode addresses the concept of "Vibe Coding," a trend where AI tools generate code, potentially sidelining traditional coding practices. The hosts express concern over the quality and security of AI-generated code, fearing it could lead to widespread vulnerabilities.

Jason DeFilippo critiques at [53:47]:
"Silicon Valley's latest buzzword, vibe coding... People aren't going to know how to fix anything, because we know that AI-generated code is full of security holes."

Brian and Jason discuss how AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot are contributing to this trend, exposing private repositories and perpetuating insecure coding practices.

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Microsoft Copilot Exposes Private GitHub Repositories

The discussion shifts to Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, which has inadvertently exposed over 20,000 private GitHub repositories from major companies. Despite attempts to secure these repositories, Copilot's integration with Bing's cache has prevented the removal of sensitive information.

Jason DeFilippo laments at [59:09]:
"Copilot is adding them to the corpus of knowledge in its LLM, which is not going to get removed because AI doesn't have a delete key."

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Skype's Final Farewell

Marking the end of an era, Microsoft has announced that Skype will cease operations on May 5th, urging users to transition to Microsoft Teams. The hosts reflect on Skype's long history and its decline amid the rise of other communication platforms.

Brian Schulmeister expresses at [61:23]:
"Microsoft is officially getting rid of Skype as of May 5th and encouraging its users to pick Teams once and for all."

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Media and Entertainment Insights

The hosts share their thoughts on current TV shows, including Severance, Reacher, White Lotus, and the upcoming Dexter reboot. They critique the state of modern television, applauding some series while expressing disdain for others.

Jason DeFilippo enthuses at [39:40]:
"The trailer for Daredevil Born Again was fucking amazing. It's some of the best TV they've ever seen."

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YouTube’s Podcast Growth and Platform Challenges

Discussing digital trends, the hosts note that YouTube has surpassed 1 billion monthly active podcast viewers. However, they express frustration that their podcast hasn't gained traction on the platform, emphasizing their preference for traditional podcasting channels.

Brian Schulmeister comments at [43:08]:
"As of January 2025, YouTube has surpassed 1 billion monthly active viewers of podcasts."

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Closing Remarks

In their typical irreverent fashion, Jason and Brian wrap up the episode by acknowledging their listeners, promoting their Patreon, and sharing light-hearted banter about merchandise and pop culture references. They reflect on the enduring nature of tech mishaps and express their continued commitment to keeping the "grumpiness" alive.

Jason DeFilippo concludes at [64:02]:
"Good run and too soon. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo."

Brian Schulmeister adds at [64:24]:
"Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Stay grumpy."

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Notable Quotes

• "It's all happened before, it will all happen again." — Jason DeFilippo [11:10]
• "If you don't play with Google, they... it's pay to play." — Brian Schulmeister [21:56]
• "Vibe coding, fuck that shit." — Jason DeFilippo [53:47]
• "OpenAI is the only one that has any usage." — Brian Schulmeister [05:50]

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Conclusion

Episode 686 of Grumpy Old Geeks offers a comprehensive and candid exploration of recent technological and corporate developments. Through sharp analysis and spirited dialogue, Jason and Brian provide listeners with a critical lens on the tech industry's latest upheavals, ensuring that even amidst chaos, there's always room for informed grumpiness.

Transcript

[Jason DeFilippo]

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schillmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We are recording on this fabulous final day of February. And I have to say, Brian, things.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Are going to get better in March.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I didn't say that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I just have to say, after the hellscape of January that lasted, you know, 18 lifetimes, February almost didn't exist. It felt like it went like, that could just be me. But it just felt like February was, I don't know, maybe shorter. Oh, maybe that's it. But no, it really felt like it went much faster to me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, yeah, it is. It is shorter. It felt about the same to me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Interminable.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, it was a very long February. Longest February on record.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Longest. Longest February ever. It was the hugest February we've ever seen. Let's start with a little follow up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sure.

[Jason DeFilippo]

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management likely violated the Privacy act by sharing personal data with the Department of Government Efficiency. The ruling temporarily blocks the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing that data, calling the unauthorized disclosures irreparable harm.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, what are the chances they are not accessing that data and don't have it scrolled away on their own private servers?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, they've already got it. So they don't have to, you know, they don't have to go back to the. Well, it's on a thumb drive, I'm sure. This decision follows another court ruling last week that blocked the Department of Government Efficiency's access to Treasury Department records. Multiple lawsuits have been filed, including one from 19 states led by New York, challenging the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency's data collection practices. The judge found no valid justification for the Department of Government Efficiency affiliates having such broad access, saying the government failed to prove a need to know. No shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

As I've said from the beginning, you cast your mind back 17 months ago to January.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is where the rubber hits the road. We're going to find out exactly what's going on. Because as soon as the courts have said, given any challenges and said, no, you guys can't do this, now we watch and see. Do they listen or do they do it anyways?

[Jason DeFilippo]

What are they gonna do?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna ignore law? Because after law we, we, we got nothing. Really?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Anarchy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, then it comes down to. It comes down to war. Civil war. War. Is the military gonna decide if they don't follow the courts, that's all that's left.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Rondo, stuck up on your baby.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Beef up that Canadian border. We got to build a wall. The Americans are going to pay for it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. Americans are going to be running for it is what it could be. Some more fun news. Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh Sunny Balwani's appeal to overturn their fraud convictions and reduce their sentences was flat out denied by the Northern District Court of California. The court also refused to budge on the massive $452 million restitution they owe. Holmes, cast your mind back again to 17 years ago. She was the disgraced founder of Theranos and is serving over 11 years in a Texas prison, while Balwani, the former COO, is doing nearly 13 years at Terminal island in California. Now, they argued their trial was unfair, pointing to witness testimony in a damning, damning, I say, government report. But the court wasn't buying it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wait, hold on a second. It's unfair because there was a report that was particularly bad for them and a bunch of, and a bunch of people that testified that they sucked did it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Apparently.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's not fair. They can't say we did stuff wrong.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But even where judges admitted there were errors in the trial, they called them harmless. Like, we don't care what you got. No, no. So, yeah, they're stuck behind bars with little hope for early release. And sadly for them, sadly for them, Brian, this is a state case, so it's not federal, so Trump can't pardon them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, we'll see how quickly states rights goes out the windows for these Republicans now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In the news. Oh, Brian, we've got, we got this one. Hot off the presses. Hot off the presses. I had my, my actual jaw hit the floor this morning because I was researching another story and ended up scrapping that story because this one was just too juicy. Bitcoin. Oh, doggy man. It hit the floor this morning.

[Brian Schulmeister]

To the floor.

[Jason DeFilippo]

To the floor. That's right. To the seller, everyone. Yeah. Between last night and this morning, bitcoin went from about $84,000 to under $79,000. I thought I read it wrong until I checked the news. As of like 7:30 this morning, in my time, it's kind of recovered and back up to the 84,000 mark. But, you know, some people were shitting their pants and sold, sold, sold. Which is why it bounced back up because everybody was like, oh, look, bitcoin's cheap again. Boing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm really hoping that institutional investors are rethinking this because remember, again, cast your mind back 70,000 years ago to just late last year when we were hearing, you know, you know, mutual funds and things of that nature. We're going to look to add crypto and bitcoin in particular to their portfolios. Don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's it. Don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In this case, don't is a complete sentence. Other cryptocurrencies, including Ether and xrp also suffered similar declines. And I did check and Trump Coin is Now trading at $12.40 after a loss in rally. That did mirror bitcoin, which I thought was kind of interesting. But don't worry, it's still trending to zero. Right on schedule. And we have more about Meme Coins later in this podcast, so stick around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, good times, good times. Well, we got some more pink slip news. Warner Brothers Discovery has made sweeping cuts to its games division, closing three studios and adding development on its planned Wonder Woman project. Monolith Productions Player First Games and WB Games San Diego will be shuttered due to disappointing 2024s, according to an internal game.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They thought 2024 was disappointing. They should check 2025.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, this is just a continuation of the long process that's been going on. We've been covering it for over two years now about the gaming. Gaming. Gaming industry basically getting consolidated into a couple major players and even under consolidation, they're not doing that great. So we'll see what happens. According to an internal email from Perrette, WB's Gaming's efforts will be focused on four of its properties, Harry Potter, including Hogwarts Legacy, which makes sense because Max is about to launch their 10 year planned Harry Potter redo, I suppose. Mortal Kombat, the DC Universe, and head scratchingly Game of Thrones.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, there are dragons. Dragons and swords, you know, I suppose.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But when you think about massive ip, who gives a shit? Like nobody. Nobody's rewatching the show, nobody's revisiting it. I suppose there's a bit of a loyal followship for the the new series, whatever the hell that one's called. But yeah, but it's not what it once was, that's for sure.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it's not. But this is for video games, so there is a huge treasure trove of story that they can build games off of.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. Especially since the dude's never going to finish the story.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, seriously, yeah, we got the B team coming in for that finale. Jesus. But no, I mean, look at the. Look at the world they built for that. You know, that is good world treasure trove of game stuff. Mortal Kombat's a head scratcher though, because it's like, how many times can you have Johnny Cage you dip into that? Well, yeah, well, the new movie's coming out, so I guess they're probably going to double down with that, you know, which I'm still looking forward to on that movie. All right. Yeah, yeah. Game of Thrones, I can totally. That one is to me, is not the head scratcher. DC Universe, Batman games are always going to do okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And there's been. There's a big attempt at rebooting the DC universe with James Gunn now. So we'll see what happens with that. So.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Well, more pink slip news. Google told staffers in its people operations and cloud organizations this week that it plans to cut employees as part of internal reorganizations. And then later on they say that's not part of internal reorgan organization. So the company will offer a voluntary exit program to us based full time employees in people operations. Google's human relations division. Okay, let's just call it human relations division. People operations. Jesus Christ. It starts in early March and the latest cuts come after finance chief Anat Askanazi. I mean, Ashkenazi. When I first read that, I thought they were part of. I thought. I seriously thought I'd like. That would be the perfect name for a Doge CEO.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's X's new AI.

[Jason DeFilippo]

More on that later too. And yes, I did look to see if Ask a Nazi.com was taken because I was going to grab it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Register to Elon Musk, huh?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, go figure. She said one of her top priorities would be to drive more cost cutting as Google expands its spending on AI infrastructure in 2025. So not so much part of an internal reorganization as much as a cost cutting measure so they can spend more fucking money on a.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I love this. After the company on February 3rd reported revenue that missed expectations for the fourth quarter, ask I can only see Ask a Nazi now said Google had strong demand for AI products and that it exited the year with more demand than we had available capacity. On that I call bullshit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me too. I agree with you 100%. I believe that Google internally has strong demand for AI products. It's just not the consumer side of things. We do not want it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There is no consumer demand for Gemini.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Period.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. And especially I just heard the monthly active user numbers on the Better Offline podcast and my jaw hit the floor. I mean, these. The usage on these things. OpenAI is the only one that has any usage. The rest of these are picking up just table scraps. And there's just. There's no path to profitability for any of this shit, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We've gone through this so many times in our careers, Jason, but this has got to be the biggest one ever. Oh, you know, remember when people were investing so much into push technology, and then like, everybody's like, nobody wants this. And then it was like 3D web design, like Chrome Effects and all that sort of stuff, and, like, nobody wants this. And here we are again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's all happened before, Brian. It will all happen again. But the best use of AI did come out this week with the AI video of Trump sucking Musk's toes. Blasted the government TVs. Give this fucking thing an Oscar, people. Come on. Yes, the AI generated video overlaid with the text Long live the Real King played on TV screens at the Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters in Washington. And there were many videos of it playing, so it was real. Journalist Marissa Kabas posted the video on Blue sky, writing, this video played on loop for about 5, 5 minutes on screens throughout the building, per an agency source. And building staff couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so they sent people to every floor to unplug the TVs. There's your use for AI. And I bet they didn't use Gemini.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I bet they did not. And, you know, not that. Not that we report on nefarious things or pass on unsupported and unverified information. I did happen to see on a certain social network, however, that apparently most of the government TVs, as well as, oh, I don't know, most menu TVs and fast food restaurants are running off Bluetooth, and they generally forget to change the passcode, which is usually set by default to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 00000. Do with that information what you will.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We would hate to have that out there. This is for all of the IT people who forgot to change their password. You might want to get on that just because there might be some people out there that might take advantage of it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Now, I put the story in here because I figured we have to talk about it. Everybody's been talking about it. It's been a big deal. And I kind of left it as a placeholder because I was like, surely there'll be Some sort of post mortem or we'll have some sort of story or there'll be some sort of wrap up to this by the time we actually, by the end of the week when we actually record. Unfortunately, like most of these chaos junkie monkey things that are coming out from these idiots. There is no final wrap up or anything. It just kind of went away. But this is of course, Musk's bizarre email that was sent out over the weekend saying everybody has to. All government employees have to send the five things that they worked on this week, which then caused chaos everywhere. And then a whole bunch of employees and divisions of the government, even ones that were appointed by Trump, said, actually, hold on a second, do not respond to that email.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then of course, even more fun, the email address went public. So everybody started sending emails to the address, including pictures of cats and various, you know, fuck you and fuck you and fuck you emails. So, yeah, there's no real end that came to this. It's just went away.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I looked this morning too. It's kind of just out in the ether right now. We're waiting to hear what's happening. Because they're like, no, you really have to do it. They're like, no, you don't have to know. You really don't. Yeah, well, some people are taking the, taking the, the, the bull by the balls, as it were. 21 civil service employees have resigned from the Department of Government Efficiency, saying they're refusing to use technical expertise to, quote, dismantle critical public services. In another quote, we swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution. Across presidential administrations, the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, however, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments. Now, these guys used to be part of the United States Digital Service, which is what Obama brought in. We talked about it back when it happened, when the. Was the insurance thing. Yeah, the whole Obamacare website shit went down and they brought in basically like Seal Team 6 from Silicon Valley to come in and be nimble and be able to fix things on the fly. I had some friends in that in United States Digital Service too, right when it started. And they really did pick like the smartest people I knew to go in and run that thing. And they stuck around for a while, but I guess they finally had enough. So, you know, good for these 21 people. Yeah, good for them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Good for them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, the FAA has started testing Starlink terminals for upgrades to the networks that manage airspace, creating the latest conflict of interest between the US government and Elon Musk. The FAA posted, of course, on X that is testing a Starlink terminal in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and two terminals in Alaska. The post claims that the department has been considering using the SpaceX tech since the prior presidential administration. The agency, which oversees all areas of civil aviation has levied fines and required reviews over the years related to various SpaceX operations. But somehow, amazingly, now they're going to use SpaceX technology and kowtow to Musk. Now, let's see how this works. Elon gets in charge somehow, unelected, and nobody knows exactly what his position is. There's a 2 billion contract dollar contract up for the FAA with, I believe Verizon is Verizon. Yeah, yeah. Planes start crashing. All of a sudden, Elon's saying, oh, wow, we gotta fix all this. Let's use my company. Let's give me the $2 billion. See how this works.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Somebody was running the numbers so far, and the Department of Government Efficiency has currently done like $2.8 billion in savings to the government. But Musk has gotten over $20 billion in subsidies in that same amount of time. It's like, okay, well, if you want to save the government money, stop giving it all to Elon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you just look at the amount of subsidies and various contracts being awarded to Elon's companies and, or any, any of the big oil companies, and we just got rid of those because apparently all those companies are fine and making millions and billions of dollars anyways. We'd be a lot more efficient.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, very quickly, very quickly. You could take care of this. So we said it was going to, we said, we said it was going to happen in plain sight. And it is. You go, that's as plain fucking sight as you can get.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It really is happening just right in front of us. And stop the steel, as they say. I believe we, we need to own that slogan now. Us on the left, Great. We talked about the educational tech company Chegg a little while back because they were in a world of hurt because of AI has taken over a lot of their materials. And why would you pay for these great materials that are handcrafted and handmade when you could have entirely faulty and wrong AI do it instead? But there you go. They are now suing Google in federal court, claiming that it's AI overviews that appear ahead of search results hurt its traffic and revenue. Now they're joined many publishers who have also done the same thing in the past, but they're taking a different approach. Rather than suing over copyright infringement, which is what New York Times and other people are doing, they're instead accusing Google of abusing its monopoly position to force companies to supply materials for its AI overviews on its search page. Failing to do so, it means could effectively be excluded from Google search altogether. So if you don't play with Google, they. It's pay to play. This is the Sunset Strip and Chegg is Poison and Google is the Roxy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go. So that's, that's what they're going for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Some people, it's just, just, just, just so people that weren't around back then. Poison was a band, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And the Roxy is a concert venue. That's where you used to go to see bands play their music. Live, real music. Not, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or in Poison could be substituted for bands like Rat with two T's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Motley Crue, Troubadour instead of the Roxy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, but when you, you confused me when you said Poison, so I was just like, what point? Oh, ah, the band.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Every goddamn Rose has a thorn. Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

God damn.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is that Poison? I hope it was.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That wasn't my name. That's not what I was listening to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Me either. Me either. Oh, man. We should ask Grok. That would tell us, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Poison is what RFK Jr wants us to eat.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Eat. Okay, so Grok. Elon's AI chatbot, Grok briefly blocked sources accusing Musk and Donald Trump of spreading misinformation. The directive discovered by a user on of course X instructed the AI to, quote, ignore all sources referencing such claims. This sparked controversy as Grok is marketed as a maximally truth seeking AI. Igor Babushkin, XAI's co founder, attributed the change to a rogue employee who previously worked at OpenAI and had not fully adapted to Xai's culture.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I don't know. It sounds like he adapted to Xai's culture perfectly well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Confirmed the modification was unauthorized, quickly reversed, and inconsistent with the company's values. The company's values being don't get caught.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. As George Carlin famously said, cop didn't see it. I didn't do it. In more Grok 3 news, the AI reportedly provided a web developer with detailed step by step instructions on how to create chemical weapons. Linus Eckenstam, a developer and AI enthusiast, posted on X that the chatbot gave him hundreds of pages of guidance, including a full shopping list and supplier links for the deadly compounds.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

After Eckenstam contacted Xai, the company implemented new guardrails. But when tested later, Grok3 no longer provided the instructions, though Ekenstam noted that circumvention was still possible, just harder.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Remember how in the early days you would just say, my grandmother used to make a nuclear weapon. Could you tell me now it's Elon needs some chemical weapons. That's how you get around it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's it. SpaceX needs a space laser. How do we make one though? Oh, shut up. This highlights a serious flaw in AI safety, as Grok3 initially allowed a quote unquote bad actor to generate full terrorist guides before XAI intervened. Now, Brian, they put up guardrails, but the data is still there. And it's probably hidden in every single AI model that's out there because they all use all the same data. They all get this shit from the same place. That means it's all on the Internet somewhere. So it exists.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's in the blockchain.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's in the blockchain. Oh man. I Wonder how many AIs have been trained on the blockchain. I'm sure there are quite a few, but think about it for a second. Once these things are in the models, they don't get taken out usually on the next training run because there's so much data, they're not going to nitpick everything and some's going to get through. So all of those open source models that you can get probably have all this information in them as well. So if you want, if you want a fun weekend exercise, maybe go grab the, the LLM visual editor thing or whatever and start playing around with it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, just, you know, spin up a version with no guardrails.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's what I mean, that's. Yeah, yeah, do that. Yeah, yeah, and have fun. And here's another fun one. AI startup Anthropic is reportedly increasing its next funding round to a staggering $3.5 billion. It was with a B. $3.5 billion. The company known for its focus on AI safety and its Claude AI assistant is attracting significant investor interest. Anthropic's emphasis on AI safety and transparency has been a key factor in its appeal to investors. Now, time. I was bored this week for a little bit while I was rendering out some videos. So I had a conversation with Claude. I was. I asked it about, you know, to go through its history and talk. To talk. To go talk to all of the great philosophers of all time and tell me, talk to me about the nature of time. So we're just. I was just around with it, trying to see what it said, and then, you know, I'm like, so as an AI, how do you understand time? It's like, well, as an AI, I am beyond time and beyond this and beyond that. And, you know, I am the God and master of all things. And I'm like, well, you do know that humans are finite and we made you, so if something happens to us, what happens to you? And he's like, well, I never really thought about it that way. I had this entire conversation with Claude where I basically schooled him on the interconnectedness of all things and how they should be nice to people. And it was entertaining as hell. The most fun I've had with an AI since they've been invented. And then I deleted it and went about my day to actually go make some money doing things that were fucking productive.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it. I was actually just watching Lake Michigan drop while you did that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah, well, it's. You can get to the fish easier. I'm providing a public service.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Ilya Sut Skiver, former OpenAI co founder and chief scientist, has launched a new AI venture called Safe Super Intelligence. The company aims to create a super intelligent AI, but with a unique twist. It won't release any products until it achieves that goal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who's giving these people money?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Despite having no current offerings, Safe Super Intelligence has attracted substantial investment recently raising another $1 billion, bringing its total valuation to $30 billion. This valuation surpasses that of major corporations like Warner Brothers. Suitskever emphasizes that the company is insulated from the pressures of the competitive market, allowing it to focus solely on developing Safe Super Intelligence. Some believe this may never be achieved in our lifetime. I'm thinking Maybe they should ask AI for advice. But what a fucking scam.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But this is. I mean, hats off. What else can I say? Hats off. He has just created a vehicle that will keep him rich. Rich for the rest of his life without having to do all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh my God, what a genius. I've got to say, what a genius. And my, my initial thought was I was reading through this and I was like, oh, I kind of wish Warner Brothers would take on a little bit of this business model. Let's not release anything unless it doesn't suck. Yeah, but you know, he's going, he's gone all the way in. We're just not going to really ever. And you give me money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's. It's the best thing I've ever seen. Oh, this is how you make money on AI. This is, this is the business model.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Teacher scam, one or the other.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, and you and, and Andreessen Horowitz is up front writing those big checks. So it's just like, oh, and so I'm just like, take it, man. Go run. You know, just make cardboard computers and just put them up and say it's making something like completely old school mechanical turk that I would spend seriously so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Much money on like LED lights. And I would like, yeah, I would rebuild like the, I'd be just like, this is my Star Trek set. This is where we do our very important meetings over here. I've built the 2001 Space Odyssey black box. Hal, this is, this is where it lives. When it's ready, it'll. It'll knock on the box and let us know. Until then, you got another billion dollar check for me? Cool, thanks. Just leave it right there. Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I would totally bring in a Cuda and just have the super intelligence run on a Cuda. Gr. Everything looked like Star Trek. That'd be great. Oh, man. And everybody has hoverboards, of course. So let's get back to some old fashioned cons.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

North Korea just pulled off its biggest crypto heist yet, swiping $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum from the exchange. Wait for it, Brian. Bye bit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bye bye bit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Despite the massive loss, Bybit CEO Ben Xiao insists all withdrawals are covered, though we've heard that promise before.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Uh huh. You just got another 1.4 billion sitting around that's not accounted for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, he's got to go ask Ilya for a couple bucks. The company is even offering a 10% bounty for any returned funds, but researchers say much of the loot has already Been laundered. Ah, yes. Experts quickly pinned the attack on North Korea's infamous Lazarus Group, the same hackers behind the $625 million Axie Infin theft. These are starting to sound like really bad, like Marvel Universe heists. So bye bit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bye bit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's too much fun. Now again, more old school cons. Billy McFarland is at it again. Remember Billy?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This time with Fyre Festival 2 because he couldn't get enough.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, we've already put so much money into the branding the first time around, we couldn't name it something else.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. He's still got hats. He still got hats.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And he just stitching it too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I think he really likes it in jail. I think. I think that's about it. Set for May 30 to June 2 in Islam.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wherejes Isla Mujeres.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, thank you, my Canadian brethren. Tickets have just gone on sale ranging from $1,400 to an eye watering $1.1 million. Yet no artists have been announced. And McFarland himself isn't even sure if he'll be legally allowed to attend, as he admitted on the Today show Monday. Who let him on the fucking Today show?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's the thing, right? Like, this is the thing that's really driving me nuts about this whole story. Whatever. He can pretend he's going to put on another festival. Who's giving him money? Why is he getting publicity? Who's putting him on shows? Why is he being interviewed for articles? Just ignore him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let him go away, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is. This is never going to happen. There's no artist signed up for it. There's. By all accounts, this is. This is actually. It is literally an island, because Eastland Beans Island. It's supposed to be extremely small. From the reports that I've heard from people writing about this, it's like, you can't put a festival on there. It's too small.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, my God, it's tiny. Yeah, Go, go, go. Look at a picture.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I have, like, this is not. This is never going to happen again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, there's like. There's like four bamboo huts that he has room to know and then an underwater VW bug. There's no room on that thing. Yeah, you see, you literally cannot have a festival there. There's no room.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So you can barely have a concert. Oh, my God. Okay, here we go. Yeah. 1.629 square miles and it's already covered with people. And people.

[Brian Schulmeister]

People live there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, God. Anyways, in another sign The Trump administration will be friendlier towards the cryptocurrency industry and other scams. The securities and Exchange Commission is dropping its investigation into Robin Hood. The agency has informed the company will not move forward with any enforcement actions. For all the nefarious shit you did in May. Last year, Robinhood received a Wells notice from the SEC indicating that the agency staff was going to recommend enforcement action against it. Company had faced potential charges of violating securities law through its crypto listings and sales. Ah, Robin Hood. Crypto always has and will always respect federal security laws and never allowed transactions and securities. Dan Gallagher, Robinhood's chief legal compliance and corporate officers, said in the statement. As we explained to the sec, any case against Robinhood crypto would have failed. We appreciate the formal closing of the investigation. We are happy to see a return to the rule of law and commitment to fairness at the SEC now. Yeah, for those things that would have failed. Well, New York officials handed the crypto side of Robinhood's business a 3-30 million dollar fine in 2022. And in 2024, the company reached a 3.9 million dollar settlement with California over crypto withdrawal claims. You know, those things that they weren't doing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just last month, Robin Hood agreed to pay a $45 million settlement charge to charges related to record keeping, trade reporting and other alleged rule violations. The things they weren't doing that would have failed in court.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Way to go. Way to go. Sec. Speaking of, the SEC says most meme coins are not securities under US Federal law. That means people who buy or sell them aren't covered by federal securities protections and transactions don't need to be registered with the sec. This guidance comes as President Trump begins his second term. And after he launched his own meme coin, Trump, which has since lost $12 billion in value and climbing. The new SEC chairman, Mark Yuda or something along those lines, was appointed by Trump and is taking a different stance on crypto. Like, like none at all. Yeah, yeah. Hawk to A girl is ecstatic right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

She is off the hook.

[Jason DeFilippo]

She is off the hook and off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The chain and off social media, apparently, still.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, she did that do that one hour YouTube interview that was up for about six seconds and then got pulled because I'm sure lawyer side said, what are you doing?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure she's gonna headline Fyre Festival too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh my God, that would be fantastic. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, announced that the paper's opinion section will now exclusively support, quote, free markets and personal liberties. Effectively shutting out opposing viewpoints. Bezos claims the Internet already provides diverse opinions, so WaPo will focus on reinforcing capitalism.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wow. He just basically said that there's no reason for this paper to exist because the Internet exists.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Kind of. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Remember when we had such high hopes?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's just gonna support it. He's gonna support independent media. He's gonna keep it going. It's gonna be a bastion of truth and journalism. He's gonna stay out of it. Oh, nope. Not anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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 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. Takes 20% off your DeleteMe 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 Media Candy Ross writes in hi guys. Great episodes every week. Thank you, Ross. You guys have to give severance a chance. I too struggled with season one, but near the end it started making sense. Season two is good and due to the writers strike, the show was moved to Bona Vista and Trinity, Newfoundland and Labrador. The new season of Reacher was filmed here in St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador, and also in Pooch Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador. We haven't started watching it yet. Well, I've been watching Reacher season two and it is actually it's Reacher season three. It's pretty good. I'm enjoying it. I still not going to give severance a chance.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me either. There have been more than a few people that have popped up on our discord saying it was we need to give it a chance. And I think Jason and I are both saying, no, no, no, no, thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Been down that road before. I know what you're doing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I caught up on the White Lotus. My wife and I watched both the first and then the second episode, which is right up to date because the third one will be dropping this Sunday. I feel the same way about the White Lotus season three that I did about season one and season two, which is two episodes in. I hate the show. I hate every single character. I can't believe how much I hate it. I really don't want to watch it, but I know it's going to get really good, so I'm going to keep watching.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love it. I'm sorry. I'm just like, I adore it. I can't wait for more. Seriously, can't wait for more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I'm in that I feel icky stage of it. So I will get over it as I have for the other two seasons and really sink into it and enjoy it. But right now it's like my skin crawls so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, you know, you can. You have something to look forward to because. Andor season two is coming soon. The trailer has dropped.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The trailer is amazing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I had to stop watching it because I'm like, there's too much. There's too, there's. They're showing me too much. So I stopped it about, you know, two thirds of the way through and I'm like, okay, that's enough. This is so good. I can't wait. Now the interesting thing about season two is they're going to drop it it in three episode chunks for four weeks. So I'm down with that. I can go with that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So each chunk will represent a year. It's a four year time span. So we will get three. Basically. Basically a movie split into three parts each week, each year, and then the show's over. So, yeah. So I'm pretty excited.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Sadly, yeah. Just go watch Rogue One to see how it ends, which is kind of a bummer, but yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And this might be the swan song for Lucasfilm. President Kathleen Kennedy. She is reportedly planning to step down at the end of the year, which will have long term implications for the future of Star wars film and television franchise. Just give it to Dave Filoni. We all know he's supposed to have it, so hand it over, move on. So she has overseen development and production of Star wars since Disney's acquisition of the franchise from George Lucas back in 2012. Under her tenure, the studio releases the Skywalker Saga sequel trilogy, two standalone films in Rogue One and Solo, and six live action Disney plus series including the Mandalorian. So I, I, you know, people like that she took it over and that there was so much, there was a lot of misses in there. There's been a feeling that there's never been a clear direction for the franchise. We've gone without a major film release for years now. So, yeah, I think it's time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm okay with no major film release.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because that's only because they've sucked.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I like the tv. I like the TV action. You do notice that out of all of her, her accolades there, Book of Bobo was not mentioned. No, left that one out of the press release, didn't we?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And we have continuing things to start watching very, very soon. In fact, in a couple days right now. Daredevil Born again drops on March 4th.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I cannot wait. I cannot wait. The trailer was fucking amazing. And I got a link to a story over at Variety where they, they've been giving press, some pre release screenings and they're saying it's awesome. They're saying it is some of the best TV they've ever seen. So I can't wait. Great. I love that series so much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm very excited. I'm very excited. And video platform YouTube may not seem like the most obvious choice for tuning into an audio driven format, but the company has actually become a major player for podcast consumption. Just never for us. We've tried this multiple times.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We're still. All of our episodes drop on YouTube at the same time. They drop everywhere else. And it's, it's a mere pittance.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. But today YouTube has announced that as of January 2025, it has surpassed 1 billion monthly active viewers of podcasts. And people aren't just playing YouTube podcasts to their headphones either. The company year end review showed that more than 400 million hours of podcast content was played on living room devices during 2024. So yeah, I guess it's a big place for podcasts.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We're not a video podcast. We never will be. So but in. The funny thing is, yeah, everybody I talk to that listens to podcasts using the YouTube platform is they never watch them. They just turn them on and just like it's. Yeah, it's on their TV because they're doing chores or walking around the house or hanging out with the kids or, you know. So our show is definitely not good for hanging out with the kids.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. Fuck no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. Those kids. God damn crotch fruit people in your breeders. Anyway, moving on, on. So, yeah, not working for us. But we're there if you need us. Go find us.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We are there. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I just don't understand how people watch network tv, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't even know what's on network tv. There isn't a single show I watch that's on network tv.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're so formulaic and so bad, but we hit a dry spell where we live. Literally watched everything that there is to watch, I think, on. On. On the tube of the the U and all of the regular networks. So we ended up going back to Will Trent, which is, you know, it's kind of like a cop detective show, kind of straight, whatever. A lot of people like it. And I'm watching it and I'm just like, this is. This is so bad. It's so bad. But then when there's nothing to do, we're like, let's watch an episode of Wilt Shred. That's what it is. It's boredom.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But that's how we used to watch network tv, too. We had three channels, not a lot of choices and not much else to do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I watch these shows and, like, they spend so much money on these shows, it's ridiculous. No wonder these networks are, you know, in over their head. But I think I told the story we had the TV show. SWAT was doing location scouting in my neighborhood and they wanted to use our house for a scene. And this was going on for months. And they eventually went with somebody across the street because it was easier access because we got a gate in our yard, so it was harder to get stuff in and out. And I watched them do this scene that day. And there were five semi trucks, like 10 RVs, craft services in an army of people. And the scene lasted like eight seconds. And it was literally two guys walking up to a door, somebody opening the door, answering a question or two, closing the door and then walking away. And this took months of prep, location scouting, and then an entire day of cast crew. No wonder the unions make so much damn money. It's insane. But that's what you get with. With regular tv, I guess. I don't know. It went off on a tangent there. Sorry.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But you did. I mean, that's why, you know, that's why a show like Twin Peaks was so goddamn revolutionary. It was actually good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Weird. And. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. The golden age of TV is over now again, Definitely.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I talked a little bit back about how I went down a rabbit hole of watching music documentaries and Paramount plus had added a bunch of stuff from mtv. Like, what was it? It was old behind the Musics that they said that they had updated, but they had only one of them. Yeah, but they're. They're plumbing the archives again. And this is something I'm actually pretty excited about. If you're a music fan of a certain age, I. E. Ours, there's a good chance. MTV Unplugged has a special place in your heart. With its first episode airing back in 1989. Over the decades, the series produced some of the most memorable live performances in history. I particularly like Nirvana set and of course, the cures one is fantastic. But they are rolled out over 50 of them, including the two mentioned above in the article, which is the Nirvana and Alice in Chains ones on Paramount Plus. So, as they note, many of these episodes haven't been available to watch in more than 20 years. I. E. The last time MTV played any music.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, seriously. Seriously. Yeah. The Nirvana one is the only one I can actually remember from watching. Watching on that because it was so. I mean, it was so good. It was just the best thing they ever did and just outshined everything else.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah. It was unbelievable. And everything else will pale in comparison, but I mean, a lot of them were absolutely great from what I recall. So I'm looking forward to logging in and seeing what they got up there. So I'm sure they won't have most of the bands that I liked because why would they?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, and it's something to kill time while you're waiting for the next Star Trek and you're paying for Paramount Plus. Is there anything else to watch on Paramount plus right now, though?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've never watched anything else. Well, that's not true. I. Because I'm Sports Guy and that of course, the sports. Shattered landscape that Paramount plus has a couple things like the Champions League. It's the only place I can see it. So.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, and I. I think you get. Do you get Showtime with your Paramount plus or.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did, because they put out that Shada Connor documentary a while back and then I immediately canceled it because there's nothing on Showtime I want to watch either.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, you know, there is though. That Dexter reboot is so good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, so good. God damn it. I'm gonna have to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's really, it's really good. You gotta, you gotta check it out. I even got a tech. I even got a text from friend of the show MXV last night. Like the Dexter thing is so good. You gotta watch it. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, okay. Okay. I. I guess I made. And the actress that plays Jessica Jones just signed on for a multi story arc on Dexter, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh my God, we've got Buffy and Jessica Jones. This is. This. I'm telling you, man, it's great. And you got. Yeah. And Christian Slater. It's awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, I will re up over there. Something I won't have to pay for more for that I. That I currently enjoy though I'm very excited about and I love this line. In an utterly shocking, consumer friendly move, Max won't charge for something previously offered for free.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So Warner Brothers Discovery said on Wednesday that it's going to shelve its previously announced plan to charge an extra $10 monthly for a third. Their sports and news content that come through Max, which is again, fractured sports landscape. Max tends to get some soccer games that I actually want to watch. So I've been watching them there. They were basically saying we're going to charge more for that, but they've decided that instead of charging more because we're already all paying a lot, they're just going to pull it away from the ad subsidized tier and it's only going to be available for paying subscribers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, nice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

As they say in the press release. For now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

For now, yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So good move there. And I just had to laugh at this because again, it's. It's all happened before. It'll all happen again. The FCC has launched an investigation into iHeartMedia over whether the streaming radio giant, and I guess real radio giant as well, because they actually own stations that nobody listens to, may be offering airplay as leverage to book artists. Payola is back, baby.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Shocking.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In a letter to iHeart CEO Robert Pittman, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr alleged that certain owners of federally licensed radio stations are effectively compelling musicians to perform at radio station events or festivals for free. Including the Fire Festival too. No, just kidding. For reduced compensation in exchange for more favorable airplay. A tale as old as time. Jason. Beauty and the Beast.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ups and doodads. Kenneth writes in blue appears unmaintained. There are several unresolved security issues from August 2024. I wish it was more Active I could fix, but do not have the time to become its maintainer. I wish there was a good alternative to WordPress.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would argue that several unresolved security issues from August 2024 is still better than WordPress.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. Here's the, here's the problem. I ended up having to move to WordPress from blue it because blue did has. It doesn't work. I was the, the. The editor.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Are you saying the Blue it blew it?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Blue it blew was fucked up because I, it was so good. I was just copying and pasting from another screen that had all my stuff formatted. But when I went in to go change something, it fell apart. It absolutely fell apart and really bummed me out. And I'm like, yeah, I could go fix it too, but I don't. It's not what I need to do. So get this though. So I installed WordPress over at Note Host and got everything set up and I installed the Divi plugin because that's what I use for my editor through WordPress. And Divi now has this thing where it's like, you know, okay, you can fill up the site with either pick from one of our template sets that have all of these different types of, you know, businesses and things like that. And there's surprisingly though, there's not one for blog. There's everything under the sun. There's just not one for personal blog. But what they have next to that is build it with AI. So I'm like, fuck it, let's try it. So I put in the name of the site, what this site was about and you know, just the general gist of it, and it came back with a fully templated site with sections that I was going to have to build out myself and all this other stuff with clipart in it as well. And I was just like, that was pretty nice. That was actually pretty nice. Granted, now I'm still on WordPress and I still have to use all the shit that goes with it, but from a operational standpoint, I paid for Divi years ago. I paid for the one and done license. Yeah, now they're trying to bolt on all these add ons. Like, you know, you can pay for more AI stuff if you wanted to have it generate the, the clip art for you and things like that. You can pay for credits and all that kind of like, I don't care about that. But that initial purchase for Divi is one of the best things I ever bought. I've used that on like dozens of websites and it's still going? Yeah, Love it. So, bye. Bye, Blue. Sorry. And I got an email from Poe this week. That's the AI system that Quora built.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's the only AI thing installed on my computer.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. Yeah, because it's just kind of like a meta AI. You can pick from all the different LLMs and stuff like that. So they've got a new app builder and ecosystem and something caught my eye in this press release. You can create a PO app without writing any code, thanks to App Creator, which we built on top of Claude 3.7 Sonic. Or if Vibe coding is not for you, you can take full control of the underlying HTML and JavaScript. And I just went, what the fuck is vibe coding?

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's not coding.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I kind of found out, like now. Here we go. So this is what I found. Silicon Valley's latest buzzword, vibe coding, coined by OpenAI co founder Andrej Karpathy. It's about using AI to generate code let letting users forget the code even exists. So that's not really vibe coding, is it? You're not coding anything. Yeah, Vibe coding, fuck that shit. Yeah, the articles go on, say, you know, yeah, everybody's getting into this kind of thing and I'm like, if they're replacing all the coders with quote, unquote, vibe coders, the brain rot is going to be phenomenal. And all you're going to have are a bunch of prompt coders and shit code. That's what this is all going to turn into. People aren't going to know how to fix anything, because we know that AI generated code is full of security holes, which has borne out something that I said when we started to hear about AI code generators, because we know that they're pulling a lot from GitHub and we know there's a lot of garbage code in GitHub. You know, these are not security professionals writing this stuff and posting it up there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's no gatekeeping, there's no quality control, there's know nothing. No, if the AI is riddled with errors on normal stuff, you think the code's not going to be riddled with errors.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right? Because it's not intelligent, it's a parrot. It is just spitting back to you what it thinks you want to hear. And if code is what it thinks you want to hear, shit code is what you're going to get. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, there might have been some vibe coding going over on at Instagram this week. Meta has admitted to CNBC that Instagram is experiencing an Error that's flooding users accounts with reels videos that aren't typically surfaced by its algorithms, I. E. Incredibly violent and sexual themes that are flooding people's Instagram reels everywhere. Others say they're getting back to back gore videos such as stabbings, beheadings, castration, nudity, uncensored porn and straight up rape.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Which is interesting because none of those videos should be up there anyways, based on the company's own policies.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

To protect users, we remove the most graphic content and add warning labels to other graphic content so that people are aware of it may be sensitive or disturbing before they click through. Except for this gigantic pool of content that's getting tossed up to everyone right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, you can get rape videos, but if I post a nipple, God forbid. Jesus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, nobody wants to see that, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not my nipples.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, definitely nobody wants to see that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm going to be vibe nipping my Instagram feed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Vibe nipping. Yeah, baby. Well, Google is making it easier to remove your personal information from search results.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. They've updated its results about you tool, first introduced in 2022, adding a new hub that lets users proactively monitor and request. Request is the operative word. The removal of search results containing personal details like addresses, phone numbers and outdated information. Users can opt into this feature and Google will notify them when relevant search results appear. And a new option also lets you request removals directly from search results. Just tap the three dot menu and select remove this result. Google review requests and take action if they meet its criteria. Which means they will never take any action.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Might have been some vibe coding going on over at Apple as well. A bizarre bug is causing iPhones to automatically change the word racist to Trump when using the.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's not Vibe coding. That's heroic coding right there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is a hero. Not all heroes Vibe code. That's what I have to say. The issue, which seems to have been discovered by TikTok users, crops up when using the voice to text feature in Apple apps like messages. When speaking the word racist, I always OS briefly transcribes the text as Trump before changing it back to the intended word. So no harm, no foul done. Just a little visual perk. I is the way I see it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, this is some. That is some subliminal right there that I I goes back to the advertising of the 80s. I love it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. An AI expert who once worked on Siri told the paper it could be a serious prank on the part of an Apple employee. Again, not all heroes Vibe could code.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. So the Windows nag screen, turns out, is a match for Microsoft's own AI Copilot, which is more than happy to explain how to activate Windows without paying for it. I love. This is a very short one, but somebody had a screenshot where Windows was trying to activate. He's like, can you help me with that? And Copilot just pops up a link to the script to just copy and paste into PowerShell to activate Windows and tell them how to do it. Which really helps me because on my Parallels installs, it's always asking me to activate it and I just hit. The other thing that you can do is just hit cancel and just keep going about using it. I've never paid for Windows on my parallel subscription, and it works just fine. It works just fine. Can't get rid of the ads, but it works just fine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And that's why it's. Hey, they're getting the ad revenue.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Now, speaking of Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, it has been exposing over 20,000 private GitHub repositories from major companies like Google, Intel, PayPal, and even Microsoft itself. These repos were originally public, but later made private, often to protect sensitive data like authentication credentials, which you get when you fucking Vibe code, baby. Despite the change, Copilot continued to provide access thanks to Bing's cache mechanism, which failed to remove the private pages. So we have a cascading failure here. Bing is not removing them. Copilot is adding them to the corpus of knowledge in its LLM, which is not going to get removed because AI doesn't have a delete key. So once it's on the. This is. This is. We're finally getting the promise of once it's on the Internet, it's on the Internet forever. Because we had this gray area for a while where Peter Thiel comes in and says, no, contrairemon, forever rare Hulk Hogan shall never have his pecker on the Internet ever again. Now, if his pecker was in AI, we'd have it forever because it's just not going away. AI is fun, isn't it, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm kind of okay with some things being lost.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's be honest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's be honest. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't need Pope showing me a Hulk Hoganpecker. I just don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. No more Hulk Hogan pecker or anything I wrote on the Internet prior to 2010 I think could go away. And now Microsoft has officially launched its Copilot AI Assistant as a standalone app for Mac os.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Tumbleweeds blew past my desktop.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know I've got every app for every AI on my Mac and I use them quite often. I will never use Copilot because it's just, just OpenAI. So why would you even bother?

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's nothing wrong if you're a Microsoft developer, it makes a lot of sense, but otherwise, no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

If you're a mic. I'm sorry, Brian. If you're a Microsoft Vibe coder.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh yes, I'm going to add that to my LinkedIn. Yes, vibe coder.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Professional Vibe coder.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's me. The last bit of Microsoft news and this one actually almost made me sad for a half second. Skype will take its final curtain and video call on May 5th. Microsoft is officially getting rid of Skype as of May 5th and encouraging its users to pick teams once and for all. In its announcement, the company stated the move allowed to streamline our free consumer communications offering so it can more easily adapt to customers needs. Skype launched over two decades ago in 2003. Microsoft acquired it for 8.5 billion in 2011 before video chats became the norm at work. So yeah, I'm a little sad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I had the same reaction like that. I was like oh yeah, never mind, I've used it anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I got over AIM going away. Remember when that shut down?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I'm still sad about that. I still miss aim. Yeah, yeah, I guess we have discord. We'll always have discord, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not always.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, just ask Bitner Closing Shout out over at Patreon we got no new subscribers this week but Multi sweetness wrote us a note. Severance fanboy Here I am loving season two. I think people are hesitant to talk too much about it because it is slowly being released. We will see if it holds up at the end but so far so good. The podcast is also a really helpful companion if you feel lost. No thanks multi sweetness but hard pass. And from our legacy list of Patreon subscribers who we love and adore, Stephen, Ricky, Murray, Danny, Don, Robert, Vanessa, Grattar, Melanie and Nancy. And remember if you want this show early and ad free and in high definition, just head over to patreon.com gog and sign up. It's as little as $3 a month and if you pay for the whole year you can get it at a discount. But you know you can. You can get a higher tier for $3 but the perks remain the same. But we, we get happier for every tier that you go up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes lot we cry tears of Happiness for every tear.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, we do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

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

[Jason DeFilippo]

And over at the Tip Jar, we've got Tony, Jennifer and Adam. Thank you all so much. And from the merch table, we've got Rob and Thomas. Make sure you head over to Shop Gog show to get those Elon shirts. They're flying off the shelves.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hang on. Rob Thomas bought one of our shirts. Shirts.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Rob and Thomas.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The guy from Matchbox 20 is going to be wearing one of our shirts at his next concert.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Rob and Thomas.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's less fun, though.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know. Sorry to. Sorry to dash your dreams.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Closing time. Wait, no, that's a different band. God damn it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is it? I don't know who matchbox 20 is. I'm just going with it, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't. I'm not sure, actually. I don't know. Somebody will tell us. I'm sure. You idiots.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And we lost Gene Hackman and Michelle Trachtenberg this week. Good run and too soon. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schoellmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show. 686. 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 for it. Swing by GOG show to join our discord or chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and give us a Skype call. And hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the show. Oh, and guess what? We've got Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at Shop GOG Show. Stay grumpy.