689: What Would Dave Do?

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks: Episode 689 - "What Would Dave Do?"

Release Date: March 21, 2025

In Episode 689 of Grumpy Old Geeks, hosts Jason DeFilippo and Brian Schulmeister, alongside guest Dave Bittner, delve into a myriad of tech-related controversies, industry mishaps, and personal anecdotes, all delivered with their characteristic grumpiness and unfiltered humor.

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1. AI-Driven Exploits and Ethical Quandaries

AI Influencers with Down Syndrome Selling Nudes

The episode kicks off with a disturbing report about a network of Instagram accounts utilizing AI to create fake influencers, specifically altering images to depict individuals with Down Syndrome. These accounts then direct followers to adult content platforms, effectively exploiting both AI technology and vulnerable representations.

• Jason DeFilippo [00:22]: "It's all part of a despicable new industry called AI pimping."

Meta's Llama 3 and the Pirated Books Dilemma

The hosts explore Meta's development of the Llama 3 AI model, highlighting the ethical challenges of sourcing training data. Despite attempts to license content, Meta's reluctance due to high costs and slow processes led them to rely heavily on pirated libraries like Library Genesis, housing over 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers.

• Brian Schulmeister [22:37]: "They take like four plus weeks to deliver data."

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2. Declining Human Intelligence Metrics

Recent studies from the University of Michigan and international PISA tests indicate a sharp decline in concentration, problem-solving, and reasoning skills across all age groups. The hosts express skepticism about societal progress, emphasizing the dangers of a populace less capable of critical thinking.

• Jason DeFilippo [03:08]: "A society that can't think critically or do basic math isn't just annoying, Brian, it's dangerous."

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3. Tesla's Self-Driving Controversies and Cybertruck Recall

Critique of Tesla's Lidar-Free Approach

Highlighting Mark Rober's experiment to challenge Tesla's camera-based self-driving system against a lidar-equipped vehicle, the hosts reaffirm their long-standing criticism of Tesla's technological choices.

• Jason DeFilippo [05:15]: "A lot of them. So this guy has a bigger budget than we do."

Massive Cybertruck Recall

Tesla faces a significant recall of over 46,000 Cybertrucks due to safety issues related to improperly adhered exterior trim panels that risk detaching during operation.

• Brian Schulmeister [07:22]: "Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 cybertrucks due to a potential safety issue."

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4. Government Surveillance and Cybersecurity Issues

ICE's Shadow Dragon Tool

A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has developed "Shadow Dragon," a tool that aggregates data from over 200 sites, including social networks and adult platforms, to monitor individuals' activities. This development coincides with heightened efforts to deport prominent activists and scan social media for visa holders potentially supporting designated terror groups.

• Brian Schulmeister [14:37]: "A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement ice, which has been in the news an awful lot lately..."

CISA's Urgent Workforce Reinstatement

Following a federal judge's ruling, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is scrambling to reinstate over 130 cybersecurity workers unlawfully dismissed by the previous administration, revealing significant administrative oversights.

• Brian Schulmeister [16:13]: "CISA is now Urgently trying to contact those affected, but admits it doesn't have full records of who was fired."

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5. OpenAI vs. Elon Musk Legal Battle

Court Rejects Musk's Claims Against OpenAI

Elon Musk's latest legal attempt to hinder OpenAI through a preliminary injunction has been dismissed. The lawsuit, stemming from Musk's failed effort to merge OpenAI's for-profit arm with Tesla, illustrates ongoing tensions in the AI industry.

• Jason DeFilippo [20:34]: "The courts are smelling what the Elon is cooking and they're saying we ain't having it."

OpenAI's Defense of Fair Use in AI Training

OpenAI argues that AI models trained on copyrighted works fall under fair use, essential for maintaining U.S. national security and technological supremacy. Critics, however, fear that such justifications could erode creators' control over their intellectual property.

• Jason DeFilippo [26:03]: "It's a very simple premise here, guys. Your AI is illegal, period."

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6. Regulatory Challenges in AI Development

California Assembly Bill 412

California is debating AB-412, which mandates AI developers to identify every copyrighted work used in training their models. While seemingly protective of creators' rights, the bill poses significant compliance burdens for small developers, potentially stifling innovation and favoring big tech.

• Brian Schulmeister [25:17]: "It's a death sentence for small developers."

OpenAI's Push for Federal Protection

OpenAI is advocating for federal legislation that would recognize AI training on copyrighted material as fair use, arguing it is critical for maintaining U.S. dominance over competitors like China.

• Jason DeFilippo [26:03]: "Corporate AI giants have already lost control... your AI is illegal, period."

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7. BYD's Advanced EV Platform in China

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD unveiled its "Super E" 1000-volt platform, claiming a remarkable 12-mile range addition in just 10 seconds of charging. While this innovation surpasses Tesla's charging speed, it's currently limited to two new models and confined to the Chinese market.

• Jason DeFilippo [27:28]: "Except the problem with that is it's just the same billionaires Bezos is working up for his Amazon, you know, penis rocket, space Internet thing."

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8. Media and Entertainment Insights

Review of 'White Trash Wins Lotto'

The hosts commend the musical "White Trash Wins Lotto," praising its humor and creativity. They recommend an interview with the writer, Andy Preiboy, for listeners interested in the show's development.

• Brian Schulmeister [29:32]: "And if you haven't heard the musical yet, there's a link in the show notes if you want a good chuckle."

Streaming Service Updates and Show Reviews

Discussions include Spotify’s new feature for custom playlists highlighting local concerts, the latest trailer for the "Ballerina" movie starring Anna de Armas, and critiques of TV shows like "Mythic Quest," "White Lotus," and "Daredevil." The hosts express growing fatigue with prolonged TV series and the removal of classic content from platforms like Max.

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9. Tech Hardware and Personal Anecdotes

High-End Seneca Keyboard

The hosts examine the Seneca, an ultra-premium keyboard priced at $3,600, mocking its exorbitant cost and questioning its practical use compared to standard keyboards.

• Brian Schulmeister [63:36]: "I would like to point out here, the gentle sound of the Seneca is often likened to raindrops."

Personal Story: Emergency Dog Surgery

Jason shares a heartfelt story about his son's dog, Griswold, undergoing expensive emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage. The conversation highlights the high costs associated with veterinary care and the emotional stress it brings.

• Jason DeFilippo [72:17]: "It's a Seneca and a half. $5,000?"

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10. Supporting the Show and Listener Engagement

The hosts acknowledge and thank their Patreon supporters, encouraging listeners to contribute to keep the show running. They also mention their presence on Discord for community interaction and promote their merchandise available at shop.gogshow.

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Notable Quotes

• Jason DeFilippo [02:22]: "It's all part of a despicable new industry called AI pimping."

• Brian Schulmeister [07:22]: "Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 cybertrucks due to a potential safety issue."

• Jason DeFilippo [20:34]: "The courts are smelling what the Elon is cooking and they're saying we ain't having it."

• Brian Schulmeister [25:17]: "It's a death sentence for small developers."

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Conclusion

Episode 689 of Grumpy Old Geeks offers a comprehensive and critical look at current tech issues, blending serious discussions with the show's trademark humor and candid commentary. From the ethical implications of AI advancements to the faltering strategies of major tech companies, Jason and Brian provide listeners with a thought-provoking and entertaining analysis of the tech world’s gyrations.

For more insights and to join the grumpy conversation, visit GOG Show and consider supporting them on Patreon.

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 Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Happy 13th anniversary, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, Brian, when we started this show 13 fucking years ago, we started with the premise of making fun of people who taught other people how to make money on the Internet, right? And, you know, they were basically selling courses. This was the big thing that was hip at the time, which was selling courses.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How to make money on the Internet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How to make money on the Internet. Exactly. The ouroboros of the grift. And I saw. I saw a headline this week that just cemented the fact that we are not getting any better as a species. We're getting worse. It's just a. We're sliding down the poop emoji of life. People are using AI to create influencers with down syndrome who sell nudes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Guess it's better than children.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, that's a different article. Yeah. And I think Sean Bonner kind of summed it up on Blue sky. When I posted this, he was just like. I didn't really know where this was going word for word until the end. It was just like. Or however you put it. It was. And I was reading it too. I'm like, okay, people who are using AI to create influencers. And then, Then it just. Then it went off the rails. I'm like, then. Then I'm going. Then it went with down syndrome. And then I'm like, oh, my God, what a horrible. Who sell nudes. I just give up. I just give up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it's not great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So a network of Instagram accounts is using AI to deep fake people's faces, altering them to appear as if they have down syndrome, and then funneling viewers to adult content sites where they cash in. Now, these accounts steal videos from real creators, use AI tools to modify them, and link to the same pay to play adult platforms.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But. But, Jason, they've got moderators for this, don't they?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, no.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Instagram doesn't have. But they've got machine learning. Sorry, they've got AI moderators.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, they don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no. Instagram sleep at the wheel. No moderation, no crackdown, no accountability.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, we're just a platform.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just a platform.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just a platform. It's all part of a despicable new industry called AI pimping. Where these scumbags teach each other how to create fake influencers, automate engagement and profit from the content. Yeah, this isn't the only one. There are other trends that include women with amputations and. Yeah, now, now here, here's the thing. I'm just. I'm not here to yuck on somebody's yummy. You know, there are obviously people out there who get off on this shit. So whatever, you know, your kink is your kink.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. Well, I mean, I guess on the plus side, Jason, they've finally answered our question that we put out 13 years ago. How do you make money on the Internet? Use AI generated Down syndrome people to sell nudes?

[Jason DeFilippo]

There we go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, question answered.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, the next article that I found really just kind of hammers home the point. Human intelligence sharply declining. Turns out it's not just your imagination. People are actually getting dumber. Okay. A wave of studies, including the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future and international PISA tests show significant drops in concentration, problem solving and reasoning skills across teens and young adults, and adults and the elderly and everyone in between. And I think my dogs are even becoming cognitively impaired. Those markers are basically markers for intelligence. So the decline has been getting worse since the mid-2010s well before the pandemic. But Covid era disruptions clearly accelerated the slide.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've got some good news on this front for you, Jason. Actually, I suppose.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, well, hit me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now that Dodge has gotten rid of the Department of Education, we won't know anymore that we're getting dumber.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, okay. That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, so, you know, bright side.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, you know, a society that can't think critically or do basic math isn't just annoying, Brian, it's dangerous. And we are headed for a Brondo and electrolyte filled future where ignorance is the norm.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's also bad for us. Yeah, less listeners.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, could have told you that. I know you don't look at the stats, but I do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't because I like to stay in a good mood every now and then.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I cry myself to sleep every night.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I'm going to give a hat tip to grumpy Jedi on our discord for this one. Although pretty much all of our listeners, all five of them, sent us this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, the entire Internet sent it to me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Yeah, this is the Mark Rober, the YouTuber who actually after I watched this one, I went and looked at his page and pretty cool stuff like I'm not a big YouTuber guy, but I bookmarked him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So yeah, no, he's really good. He's been around for a long time. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He did the can you fool a self driving car video where he took a Tesla which does not use lidar, just cameras and a car that uses lidar based self driving. And let's just say the Tesla did not not do well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. Which I fucking told you so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you've been saying this since day one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Day one. The instant that they said that they're not going to use lidar and they're going to use cameras, I said, yeah, there are problems with that. A lot of them. So this guy has a bigger budget than we do. All I can afford to do is go, yeah, I fucking told you so. But he can afford to go out and crash a couple cars. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So what really lured me into the video was the Disneyland part, which I particularly enjoyed. He snuck a little, little tiny lidar device into Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion and a few other rides and map them out. And then he uses army of 3D printers. He had like 20 of them lined up to print out the actual track for Space Mountain and make a little car. And that was great. I loved it. But the whole thing was, I sent this to, I have a good friend that's been an Elon Musk apologist, not so much anymore, but for quite a long time and owns a Tesla. And I was like, so what you think about this video? He's like, yeah, I might have to get rid of the Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good luck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Good luck, good luck. You can't right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I have so many friends who want to sell their Teslas. They're just getting so much shit from people and they're like, we can't sell it. You know, they're underwater on it. It's Hollywood. Nobody has any money anymore. Everybody's broke and just barely making buy so they can't get rid of it. And they're just like, yeah, so we're. Stop being mean to us. We bought it when he was still cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, I saw a whole article about people that have taken logos from other automobiles manufacturers and put it on. I'm like, it's still a Tesla. You can tell?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's been going around for a couple of years and it's like, you're not fooling anybody. But I think, I think you just need to get the sticker that said I bought it before he was a dick, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I think that's a, that's a good one. Nobody's going to well, people shouldn't give you shit for that, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, but the thing that this thing that still scratches my. I scratch my head every day and I see it at least once a week. A cybertruck with new dealer plates. I'm just like, okay, that's it. You're done. You're done.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I've got a story about the people that have been buying those.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do tell, Brian. Do tell.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you just rolled off the lot with your shiny new cybertruck, thus informing the village that you're the biggest asshole in it, you're gonna have to take it right back. Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 cybertrucks due to a potential safety issue. According to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the armored vehicles can't rail. A cosmetic exterior trim panel also should be. Can't self drive. Yeah, just saying. Could detach from the truck, potentially leading to injury or a collision. Now why could it detach from the truck? Because they fucking glued it on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And didn't test the glue for environment.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, just like they didn't test the headlights for snow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. This Recall covers all 46,096 Cybertrucks manufactured between November 13, 2023 and February 27, 2025. Given that the vehicle launched in late 2023, that is basically just about. Well, all of them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Since Tesla began deliveries of its unusual pickup truck, the cybertruck has been plagued by manufacturing problems and quality issues. Now Jason, if you had not read the notes that I put in here and had to guess the number of recalls the cybertruck has had in two years. Okay, what would you say?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Four?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nine.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Holy shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nine times nine recalls in two years for this pile of shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nice. Okay, that's impressive. That's very impressive. Yeah. See, the glue for the cybertruck is the not using lidar of the Teslas. So I would like to point out though, if you are thinking about vandalizing a cybertruck or a Tesla, you just don't because they do have sentry mode. Also, I mean, don't fuck with a Tesla just because of what I just said, but cybertrucks, I'm all for fucking with cybertrucks and cybertruck owners, but you're probably going to get caught because they do have quote unquote, sentry mode, which is their filming all the time. Although there is some funny YouTube videos about how the video fills up pretty quickly and the battery drains. And you could be bricking your cybertruck by using sentry mode. Yada. Yada yada anyway, but still, just don't fuck with somebody's Tesla. Make fun of them. If they have a cybertruck all day long, all day long. And the dealerships have at, you know, Tesla takedowns every. Every weekend, there's 500 of them going.

[Brian Schulmeister]

On, I'm 100% for that. You have every right to go ahead and just do a protest in front of a Tesla dealership. I only wish that there were Tesla dealerships on every single middle school and elementary school and high school across the country because they get protected better than schools do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's true. That's true. And to that point, Brian, I do have to roll back something I said last week because I think I've changed my mind on something.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I said that severance sucks again. Well, we'll talk about that later. I was saying that Elon is sacrificing his pawn for his power, and he doesn't care about Tesla. Everything that's been happening in the news has led me to believe that actually Tesla is very important to him.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it's because the majority of his wealth is wrapped into Tesla stock.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And I think that he was hoping that it would. It wouldn't go down as fast as it's going or there wouldn't be such a. Such a blowback. But the fact that he's trying to protect the value of Tesla so hard right now to the fact that they're doing infomercials on the White House lawn and yeah, all that stuff makes me think that Tesla is actually fairly important to them. So double down on your protests. That's all I'm saying.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's drive that stock down.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, absolutely. Which is still massively overvalued. So we've got a ways to go. Got a ways to go. Now, I do have a quick recall story, because cybertrucks are not the only trucks that have recalls, you know. Yep. This is just. This is just a funny anecdote from yesterday. My. My roommate's bronco would not start, so I'm like, okay, it seems like the B battery's dead. Whatever. I went out, took my little battery starter jumper that I got from Amazon for 50 bucks. Those things are amazing, by the way. If you don't have like a battery powered car jumper in your car for all time, get one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're like, got one in the back of my car.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're amazing jumper cables, these things. That's the way to go. Just make sure you charge it every six months. So I went out I charged it up a bit, and it started. Went off from Merry Way. I'm like, go to the. Go to the tire store down the street. Go to Hank's Tires in the. In the Valley. By the way, if you ever need tires or batteries or car stuff, go to Hank's Tires. They're awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you're in the Valley.

[Jason DeFilippo]

If you're in the Valley.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So many of our listeners are right there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. I'm telling you, it's by Ventura and Winetka. It's awesome. So they get there, they test the battery. Like, yeah, the battery's fine. So she's like, okay, I'm driving. She starts driving home, and she gets to the corner of DeSoto and Ventura, and the car dies in the middle of the road. Middle lane, Ventura Boulevard, middle of the day. So I get a panic phone call. Like, I'm stuck in the middle of the road. I've got. Called aaa. Help. Help. So I have a cone, a big orange cone, that spectrum left in my backyard one time when they were screwing around with the telephone pole. So I grabbed that, threw it in the Jeep, get out there, pulled behind her, put the cone out, put my blinkers on, and we wait out for the tow truck. And I have to say, everybody in the Valley who is nice and stopped and asked if we needed help. It was all the Persian folks. They were like, all like, hey, you need some help, my friend? You need some help? Everybody was awesome. We got, like, five people asking if we needed help. All Persian and one British guy who was just funny as shit. He was awesome. So thank you to all of you. All the white people were flipping us off, so fuck you, whities. Anyway, so we're sitting there, and she pulls out her purse, and she's got all these papers, and she pulls out this stack of papers, and she says, I wonder if this is related to this recall notice I got. And I look at it, I pull it out, and I read what the recall is, and pretty much word for word, what was wrong with her car.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I look, I'm like, when did you get this? And I look at the date. June 2024. The fact that she had been driving around for nine months with the recall notice in her purse saying, maybe I should take care of this one day. But it. Those recalls, they don't really matter very much, you know, it's like one in a million that you're gonna get hit with.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Perhaps we should reference your earlier story. Human intelligence is sharply declining.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, she's just a girl. You know girls in recalls and cars. But it was, we had a good laugh over it. But. So if you have a cyber truck, go get it taken care of because recalls that get past the NHTSA's firewall of they're legit. They're legit because no car manufacturer ever wants to have a recall. Just go look at, go watch Fight Club if you want the math on it. So it's important that when you do get a recall, go take care of it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And if you happen to be a cybertruck owner, you've got nine of them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nine of them. So yeah, head on back to that dealership if you can get past the protesters. In the News.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement ice, which has been in the news an awful lot lately and many other US Government agencies, has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target's individuals publicly available data from a wide array of sites, social networks, apps and services across the web at once, including Blue Sky, OnlyFans and various meta platforms. According to a leaked list of the sites obtained by 404 Media. The list names more than 200 sites that the contractor, called Shadow Dragon, pulls data from, sends immediately to Cat Turd 2 on X and makes available to its government clients, allowing them to map out a person's activity, movements and relationships. This news comes after ICE detained Muhammad Khali, a prominent Columbia University protester and green card holding legal permanent resident of the US On Saturday with the intention of deporting him. It also comes as Secretary of State Marco Marco Rubio is reportedly launching an AI fueled catch and revoke effort to scan the social media accounts for tens of thousands of student visa holders. Social media accounts looking for what Axios reported as foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups. There's been no better time not to post on social media.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. No doubt.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. They are, they are trawling everything now. So you know, use those, use those encrypted personal messaging platforms that you may be aware of that don't come from China.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or meta or anywhere for that matter, really. Just write notes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Post its, post its. That's the way to go now. Get some pigeons. Maybe we get some carrier pigeon net or, or sneaker net as we used to call it. Sneaker net. All right. The US government is scrambling to reinstate over 130 cybersecurity workers unlawfully fired by the Trump administration. A federal judge ruled the mass layoffs at CISA and other agencies violated employment laws, forcing their return. CISA is now Urgently trying to contact those affected, but admits it doesn't have full records of who was fired. The agency is asking former employees to send personal details via email to verify their status. So this, this is a follow up to the story we talked about last week about the firings over at cisa. Now, the fact that they don't have records on everybody that was fired is troubling. Is troubling. Maybe they should just get a LinkedIn Pro subscription. Maybe Doge will let that pass because I'm sure he's friends with Reid Hoff at some point or, I don't know, is read on the. On the red side or the. The blue side nowadays? Hard to tell with the billionaires over there, but, you know, who knows? Who knows? But that's just. Come on, get your shit together, guys.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's. That's a little crazy and a little pro tip to everybody out there that has a job at the moment, if you do get let go or if you quit or whatever for any reason, you leave a job, go to your human resources department and absolutely make sure that they have contact info for you, such as your personal email address, your personal cell phone, whatever. Because you'll be shocked and surprised to hear how often something like your tax documents will not be sent to you the next year because they have no idea how to contact you, because they're idiots.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, that killed me. One year, that killed me. It was a tax document for $26,000. Like, I ended up owing $26,000 in taxes because they couldn't get me my tax document. And by the time I figured this all out, the company had disbanded and nobody knew where the records were anymore, and I ended up having to pay $26,000 for that problem. So absolutely do that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sure, you do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good fucking tip. Good tip.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Evan Feynman, who directed the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or Bead God these people program meant to bring high speed Internet access to rural areas, has exited the role as of last week after he was not reappointed for A new to ProPublica's Craig Silverman. An email sent to staffers which Silverman shared screenshots of. On Blue Sky, Feynman warned against changes proposed by the new administration that could benefit technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill in order to line Elon Musk's pockets. Yes, because they are supposedly switching over to Starlink because. Yeah, from government efficiency. Slower, higher cost. Yeah, efficiency. So there you go. Good luck out there. In rural America.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, the whole Starlink thing is also.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Those satellites keep fucking falling out of the sky.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, good. Well, that's actually an upside.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, he keeps replacing them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the downside. Yeah, but the only, the other downside is, you know, everybody else is seeing that, oh, there's a market for space based Internet, so everybody's spinning up their companies. Except the problem with that is it's just the same billionaires Bezos is working up for his Amazon, you know, penis rocket, space Internet thing. So who the fuck knows? There's no, there's no winner here. Can we get back to cables?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Stay out of space. Lay a goddamn cable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I miss a series of tubes. The Internet always needs to be a series of tubes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Agreed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not. Not wormholes. A judge has rejected Elon Musk's latest legal maneuver against OpenAI, shutting down his request for a preliminary injunction and dismissing several of his claims entirely. The lawsuit, which OpenAI calls a self serving attempt to slow them down, stems from Musk's failed attempt to merge OpenAI's for profit arm into Tesla. Court filings Show Musk left OpenAI after losing control and later launched his own AI company, Xai, while simultaneously suing OpenAI for a violent ITS structure. So the courts are smelling what the Elon is cooking and they're saying we ain't having it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. Good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Everything that Elon has done when it comes to AI, remember the open letter to whoever the fuck it was to where all the people said we need to slow down on AI development? And Elon signed it. He was behind it. He signed it and said we need to, for the sake of humanity, we need to slow down. And we said that that's bullshit. He's just trying to slow down the competition. And 100% right on that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nothing he has done has shown that he is scared of AI in any way, shape or form. So another lie from, from the Muscovites.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shocking. Well, and there's been some lies everywhere involved with AI as we know. There's a really great article over on the Atlantic, the unbelievable scale of AI's pirated books problem. Now this has come to light thanks to that lawsuit from Sarah Silverman and a bunch of other people saying that, you know, you trained all your, all your data on our copywritten material without asking us, getting permission or paying us. So there's a. I, I love this article. I didn't realize how involved it all got. So they, it says when employees at Meta start developing their flagship AI model Llama 3 they faced a simple ethical question. And I agree, it is a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead? What is the ethical answer to that? Jason?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Move fast and break things. So yes, it is a simple yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's what they did. But that's definitely not the ethical answer. The ethical answer is no. Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they weren't thrilled with their options. Let's keep in mind that Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world with an incredibly large amount of free cash laying around. But licensing some books seems unreasonably expensive, wrote one research scientist in an Internet internal company chat in reference to one potential deal, according to court records. A Llama team senior manager added that this would be an incredibly slow process. They take like four plus weeks to deliver data.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, four plus weeks? Weeks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's incredibly slow. Wow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In a message found in yet another legal filing, a director of engineering noted another downside to this approach. And this is the one that's the real kicker for me and tells me that they are just fucking evil. The problem is that people didn't. Don't realize that if we license one single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy. So basically, if we pay anyone, we'll have to pay everybody.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. So they basically use Library Genesis or Libgen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Now, the reporter over at the Atlantic actually put it into a damn database and you can search it and find everything that's in there, which is pretty amazing. I had a little fun with that. I checked out Stephen King and of course all of the the Gunslinger series is in there. The Dark Tower, which means Blaine the Mono is apparently AI Cannon. Okay, you remember Blaine the Mono. Not good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't. But I, I take your word for it. I take your word for it. No, that's. Yeah, so, yeah, so the lawsuit is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Ongoing, but all this stuff is coming to light. And yeah, they just, they just. It was going to be too expensive for them, you know. It's not. They can afford it and it would take too much time, up to almost a month. And so they Just said it. We're going to steal everything.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So we've got some. We've got some other legal news on this. California lawmakers are debating Assembly Bill 412, a new proposal that would force AI developers to identify every registered copyrighted work used in training their models. Sounds fair on paper, but critics say it's a death sentence for small developers. The bill would require even tiny startups or hobbyists working out of their garage to track content in a system so outdated it's basically a digital card catalog. But big tech, well, they've got the lawyers and the cash to deal with it. But the little guys. For them, AB412 means endless compliance headaches, legal risks, and no time left to actually build anything. And here's the kicker. Copyright law is federal, so state level attempt to regulate it could get tossed out in court anyway. And if AB412 passes, it won't stop AI, it'll just hand the keys to big tech, which we know don't give a shit anyway. Listen to the previous, you know, article that we just talked about. It's regulation that looks good on headlines, but just kills the competition. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And, but, but call me crazy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, crazy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But fuck you and your competition if you're doing it and it's illegal. That's like saying, well, we can't keep putting these smaller criminals in jail because the bigger criminals have better lawyers. But. So let's just not put anybody in jail.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, the whole point is it's a waste of time. It's a waste of time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I agree with that. I disagree with the premise.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I don't disagree with the premise at all. I disagree. I disagree that California shouldn't be dealing with this because copyright is federal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah, 100%. 100% agree with that. But it's just stupid. Like, we can't do this because of the little guy. It's. You're what? Stop it. Just neither the big guy and the little guy shouldn't be doing it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, let me get to my next article, Brian. OpenAI is pushing for Donald Trump's upcoming AI action plan to classify AI training on copyrighted works as fair use, claiming it's essential for US national security and AI dominance over China. That's right. OpenAI argues AI doesn't copy, but learns patterns to create new content. You. To avoid legal setbacks, OpenAI wants federal protection from state and international copyright laws and liability shields for AI companies. If AI companies lose fair use protections, US innovation could slow while China surges ahead. But if OpenAI gets its way. Creators might lose control over their work to corporate AI giants. And to that I say might. Might lose control. No, they've already lost control. That's why there's lawsuits about this. It's a very simple premise here, guys. Your AI is illegal, period. What you train it on is illegal as it currently stands.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Again though, should we be surprised by this, I would like to remind all our listeners right now that Pinterest exists still and is actually worth $21.8 billion.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A company that entirely exists on ripping off copyright.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, completely because of copyright theft at a. At an unimaginable scale.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So we have kind of decided that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We don't give a. I know, I know. I should put my. I should get back on that lawsuit train. I made some decent money off of going after people who stole my photos for a while, but I don't even know if you can do that anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's fair use now, Jason. Fair use.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Glad my entire life's work is fair use. That's great. That's great. Well, here's another little note for the nail in Tesla's coffin. Let's end on a high note. China's EV giant BYD unveiled a 1000 volt Super E platform that claims to add 12 miles of range in just 10 seconds. That's faster than filling your gas tank and leaves Tesla's chargers looking like dial up the catch. It only works on two brand new models and it's China only for now. And yeah, your mileage may vary depending on conditions like snow and communist roadblocks and things like that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or I don't know. I seem to remember a period of time when all those Chinese made hoverboards were catching fire on airplanes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's true too. That's true. But I think, I don't think Teemu put out the. This new supercharger. Yeah, if you have the supercharger by Temu, then baby, just go to the next station. But yeah, no, this is, this is pretty big news if they can. If they can pull it off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So us companies might have to fair use the plans from that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Media candy. I got a little follow up, Brian, on White Trash Wins Lotto, the musical that we've talked about on the show many times. There's a wonderful, wonderful interview with the writer and creator of White Trash Winslotto, Andy Preiboy on YouTube that he did after the release. And I highly recommend checking it out if you've had a chance to check out the musical. It is a phenomenal interview and he kills it. And if you haven't heard the musical yet, there's a link in the show notes if you want a good chuckle. That's what it is. It's a musical about young Axl Rose coming to Hollywood for fame and fortune, and it is fucking hysterical.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was a blast. I do remember going with you to see it. Long time ago.

[Jason DeFilippo]

25 years ago, Brian. 25 years.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, if he ever takes it on tour again, there's a new tool from Spotify that'll let you know. I actually think this is kind of. Even though I've transitioned away from Spotify, I like this. I think this is great. They now have custom playlists which will highlight artists with upcoming shows in your area, which is fantastic. So concerts near you will update every Wednesday with 30 songs from artists that align with your interests and are playing close to you. Tapping on a track will reveal details about the relevant show as well as links to buy tickets. You'll be able to share this playlist and any event info with friends to see and if any shows catch their interest. This is fantastic. I mean, I, you know, I don't even know how to find concerts anymore. It's, it's. We've lost, you know, music newspapers and things of that nature. I remember I used to get the LA Weekly every week and scan the concert listings to see what was coming up. Of course, that's when concerts, you know, were announced and you could buy tickets about, like a month or two ahead of time instead of the five years that you have to do it these days.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But, yeah, I think this is a great, smart little thing that they're rolling out. I'm gonna have to check it out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I was wondering about the. How they get your location data. You need to go to the live event section of the app and then you can set your location there. That's where they get that. That location info from. I'm like, are they just following me where I'm at? They're like, hey, around the corner, you know, Wonder Stuff's having a reunion show. Go see it. Like, oh, shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Actually, they are, but it's only in England. And I mean, everything follows you around these days. It's shocking to me that Spotify actually put in something where you'd have to actually do it yourself instead of just, we're going to take all your information.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, we're just going to ping wherever you're at right now. Yeah, I saw this one, Brian, and I thought of you. Musical mashup maker William Marotni. Created this curious remix of Hootie and the Blowfish singing their two hits, I Only Want to be with you and hold my hand to the music of the Smith's Cemetery Gates. I thought it was pretty good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know what? What it does is it really solidified for me that much of the genius of the Smiths. And no offense to Morrissey fans, much of the genius of the Smiths was Mar. And the music, it like, it even makes Hootie sound all right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it does.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because the music from the Smiths is just phenomenal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, good stuff, Good stuff. And unfortunately, I saw this. There's a new trailer out for the movie Ballerina from the World. From the world of John Wick. Yes. A new trailer for Ballerina came out starring Anna de Armas as a vengeance fueled assassin named Eve. Now I like her. She's cute.

[Brian Schulmeister]

She's beautiful.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Very beautiful. The problem is I don't see her as an action hero because I watched the trailer and yeah, not really buying it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Kind of needs Charlize their own or something.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Somebody with just a little bit more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Substance, some definition in their arms.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, kind of. Kind of. And you know, this kind of like looks like an AI version of what any of the John Wick movies where they just cut and pasted her face on John Wick because the, the actions are the same. It's the same fucking movie. The only interesting bit is that John Wick shows up himself since it's a prequel. You know, it kind of happened in that time in between the movies because all the good characters are back then. Like everybody's dead in the future. So let's go back to when everybody was still cool and try and make some movies out of that. Except everybody gets older. But I don't know, I'll watch it on late night tv. I'm sure because the John Wick movies were awesome. You just got to be in the mood for the ultraviolence.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right. I've got a quick rundown of a bunch of stuff that I happened to catch this week.

[Jason DeFilippo]

First up, speaking of ultra violence, Moana 2.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I never got to see that. My wife and kid went over the Christmas break to go see it in theaters, but it finally dropped on Disney. So we all watched it this last week. I was a bit worried because I had read all the articles saying, oh, you know, it was going to be a series. And then they decided to just turn it into a movie. So it's a bit cut and paste and I can see some of that. But at the end of the day, it was still great. Like, it was a good, fun movie. Like, I liked it. They left it open for more. I hope that they do another one at some point, but actually just focus on making it a movie. It does suffer a bit from Hamilton Guy, what's his. What's his name, did not do the songs for this one. He did the songs for the first movie, so the songs aren't quite as good, but still a lot of fun. I have caught up with Mythic Quest, which is now on season four, and I have to say, much like Silicon Valley, it was enjoyable as a premise and as they've stretched it out and tried to make an actual story and make you care about the characters, it is definitely suffering. I am.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Season one was a blast and I am rapidly losing interest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Rapidly. By making it all the way to season four, you mean. Well, that's not rapidly, Brian. That's a slow decline into madness.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's because I've been binging it. If this was like a once a week thing, I would have forgotten about it a long time ago.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And speaking of a once a week thing, we had new episodes of the White Lotus. Very good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like it. We actually went back and watched seasons one and two of the White Lotus last week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because just to get caught up. Just, you know, because there's nothing else on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Also part of the reason I've watched so much Mythic Quest, but it was.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fun to catch up on. Season two was definitely slower than I remembered, but, yeah, it caught up at the end. I'm just. There's going to be more episodes of this season of White Lotus than any other season. And apparently they've already started casting for Season 4 for White Lotus, so I thought this was supposed to be the end, but I guess Ka Ching, when the register. When the register sings, you got to keep going, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

For me, that show is less about the actual plot and what goes on and more about the cinematography and travel lust. It's beautifully shot in these amazing locations, which. Yeah, I'll take more of that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And Sam. What's his name in this last episode? Sam Rockwell. That was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. It was hilarious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So uncomfortable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it was great. Just the. Just the. Just the Walton Goggins facial expressions as he's taking it all in was just. Oh, my God, the memes. The memes, Brian. The memes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Do it for the memes. Yes. Yeah. Also watched the latest Daredevil Good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Caught that last night. Yep. Nice to see Punisher back, even if only for a small cameo. It's good. It's good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's good. It's good. And I somehow completely missed out on the fact that the Wheel of Time season three had dropped a little while ago.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You don't have a fire TV, Brian. You need a fire TV because you can't boot up with them telling you 17 times at the Wheel of Time season three is out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do not have a fire TV. So I did not get any of those ads whatsoever. So I was quite happy to discover because I never launched prime for anything Prime Video. But I did. For some reason. I was like, oh, hey, Wheel of Time's back. So I've caught up on that. I'm enjoying it. This is one of the rare sci fi slash fantasy series that has come out that I have not read the books for. So I'm certain I'm missing a lot of the nuance. And there are things that were probably extremely important that just kind of blew past me. But it's fun. It's. It's well shot. It's. It's like a budget Lord of the Rings.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Okay. So remember that when you talk to people about foundation because you didn't read the. You like this one. Maybe. Have you heard about people who read the books on this and hate this show? Because maybe we have a reverse foundation thing going on here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Could be. Could be. Yeah. And Max is continuing its Assault on animation. 255 classic Looney Tunes shorts that survived the Warner Brothers Discovery owned streaming services last purge in 2022 have been taken down, meaning that the entirety of the original 511 episode Looney Tunes library is no longer available on the platform or anywhere else. So they're just getting rid of this stuff left, right and center. And I mean, I kind of understand it. It's like my kid has zero interest in the Looney Tunes, doesn't care.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It doesn't cost them that much to keep it up there. I want to put David Zaslav in a cyber truck and set it on fire. I'm sorry. This guy just pisses me off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there's. There's just so much stuff that's being pulled. It's. It's crazy. I mean, put it somewhere, for God's sake. And then Ivan wrote in, this will make it easier for Brian to watch the Dodgers from Snow Mexico, meaning Canada. Spectrum is finally offering us no Mexico.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's pretty funny. I wish, I wish we had better tacos if we were actually Snow Mexico. But we do not Spectrum is finally offering a streaming only Subscription for the Dodgers for the first time this season, Dodgers fans can stream sportsnet LA without needing to buy something else they might not want. Spectrum is offering a streaming only subscription to the Dodgers television channel for 29.99 per month, or $199.99 per year, the company announced on Monday. The streaming subscription includes live and archive games, pregame, post game, now postseason and off season coverage and additional programs such as Backstage Dodgers. Although sportsnet LA cut back on such programming last year, the biggest problem with this has been for bars because most bars have satellite like DirecTV or whatever and so no bar in LA has ever had the Dodgers games. So this might help them if they want to pony up 200 bucks a year to have Dodgers games. But let me go off on a rant here about how sports subscriptions are specific to this now. First, I can pay more for just Dodgers games, or I could subscribe to MLB TV and get all Major League Baseball games for less money, 149.99 per year as opposed to1.99 for just the Dodgers games. Now technically this has local blackouts, but that's what VPNs are for. So pay less and get MLB. And you can watch other games too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And go to GoG show VPN.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Secondly, post season coverage does not mean postseason games. I don't know what it means. I guess it means talking heads talking about the game after it happened because all postseason games are usually given to networks like Fox or TNT or tbs, so you won't get those with the Spectrum or MLB TV subscriptions. You will still need access to fox, tbs, TNT, or whoever happens to have the rights for all those postseason games. And don't get me started on the nightmare that is international soccer and the various national leagues and competitions. And international competitions. You basically have to buy everything to watch games.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Go read a book, Brian, or just pirate it. Yeah, there's that too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Damn it. That's what I do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Four people listen to this. Somebody with authority might come get you. Oh wait, there's nobody with authority anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, it's fair use, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fair use.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I am fair using my international football obsessions.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're just. You're just consuming it for the patterns, not for the content.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. I'm watching the pattern of the ball moving across the screen screen. That's all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's fair use. Exactly. What shouldn't be fair use though, is Starship Troopers. Because it looks like Neil Blomkamp is working on a remake. Now, Starship Troopers, for me, is one of those almost perfect movies that should never be touched. I love that movie. You either love it or you hate it. It's one of the. There's no middle ground with Starship Troopers. Either you get it or you don't. And I get it. I love it. So. No, God damn it, no. Leave your hands off of this one, Neil. It's like another Crow remake.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're the bad guys. Spoiler alert.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And, Neil, District 10. Where the fuck is District 10? District 9. Your coming out moment was one of the best movies that has been around for the last 20 years. It was phenomenal. Everybody wants District 9.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was original. It was great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It was so good. And some of the other movies that he's made are just phenomenal. Don't go back to Starship Troopers. Give me District 10, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, start. Starship Troopers is just fine as it is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Hey, here. Neil, if you want a job, go work with Mark Cuban because he posted the dumbest fucking video that has ever been created to Blue Sky. So I don't know if you've seen the. The video, Brian. No, don't, don't. I put a link in the show. Notes, if anybody sends you. I'm not even going to read what it's about. It's just. It's this weird Magonian nightmare creation AI slop thing. If anybody says, oh, you got to go check out this video. Don't. That's it. I'm just going to tell you right now. Save your three minutes. Saved you a click. Just stay away from it. Mark Cuban has gone. Gone down some crazy madness road, but it's really not good. It's really bad. Really bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. John writes in stubborn old geeks. You guys are funny. With your doubling down against Severance, the brilliant show, you admit you haven't even watched enough to know if you'd like it. According to the study you yourselves reported on. I certainly don't work for Apple or any company with any interest in Severance. Oh, well, your loss. I'm amused that you feel compelled the next week to cite articles from a couple of authors who have been critical of the show's pace or other aspects of it. Did you really think the show was worthwhile? Only if 100 of critics loved it. There are countless people on this planet who somehow don't like the Beatles. Haagen Dazs spelled incorrectly. Ice cream. Authentic New York pizza. Etc. I still love the GOG podcast. Even if I am convinced you have questionable taste in media. I'm sure you are excited for another saccharine sweet season of Ted Lasso. And Juno Temple's scary teeth, heroin addict looking face and creepy pulsating forehead vein, different strokes. Stay grumpy and stubborn, John. You probably could have done this without like personally attacking an actress. Gonna say, yeah, that bit kind of sucks. I mean, it's. Right. Yeah. Anyways, whatever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, here's the thing that's been pissing me off for the past three weeks or four weeks. Once we first fucking mentioned severance. Nobody listens to the words that come out of our mouths apparently because only.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That we don't like severance. That's all they hear.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And they say that we didn't. We've had. We've never watched it. I watched the entire first season of Severance. I went back last week and watched the entire fucking thing again to make sure I didn't miss something. And no, I. It was the same fucking show. Still fucking boring. Could have been.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I watched the first episode. I could tell it right then and there, not into this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Look, it's decent. But you could tell this. This wasn't even from a novel. This wasn't even from a short story. This is a. This is a short idea that some guy came up with on the crapper when he was.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, this is literally the cocktail napkin sketch. That's what happened with this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, it is way too overdrawn for what it is. I get it. You like it. I started watching season two. I'm three episodes into season two, and I fell asleep halfway through episode three because it was so fucking boring. Look, it's decent. Leave me the fuck alone. We have watched the show. I just don't like it, that's all. I don't even like Ted Lasso. We. We shit on Ted Lasso. Everybody thinks that we're all gung ho for Ted. What the fuck? Listen to the words that come out of our mouths. And y. I don't like the Beatles either. Or Haagen Dazs. So yeah. What. What's your fucking point? And Chicago pizza is better. Not the deep dish, the thin crust. Fuck New York pizza.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Beatles are pretty good, though.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Apps and doodads. Apple is facing a federal lawsuit over claims it falsely advertised its Apple intelligence features for the iPhone 16. The lawsuit argues Apple misled consumers by heavily promoting AI features like a more personalized Siri, which was later delayed. And Apple pulled some ads, but hasn't fully addressed the marketing claims leaving buyers with devices that lack promised features. The case filed in San Jose seeks damages for affected customers. The lawsuit says that the promotion of Apple intelligence features, quote, drove unprecedented excitement, end quote, as Apple aimed to, quote, convince consumers to upgrade at a premium price point, quote, no, it didn't. It did not drive unprecedented excitement. All I heard from anybody that watched an AI commercial about Apple said, no, we don't want that. We don't care about that. I would have a camera.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would say it absolutely did not drive excitement at all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. Good luck with that lawsuit. Everybody upgrades their phone for the fucking camera. Get over it. Nobody wants a fucking AI.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shit. I turned it off. Everybody does.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, Instantly another update. This week, though, MacWhisper Pro has updated. After two years, we finally released our most requested feature, automated speaker recognition, in Mac whisper 12. If you're a Pro user and you use a Whisper Kit model from the Manage model screen, the app will now automatically group your transcript by speaker. Great for interviews and podcasts. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a great start, but I can't edit the transcripts in line. So boom. You give me nice things and I still shit on it, but that's right. Yeah. I wish you could edit the trans because it's close, but it's not totally there yet. It's just about as good as Otter at this point. So that means the last line is usually shifted a little bit and all I want to do is just do fine tuning on it and it would be perfect. The Whisper transcription is great. A Whisper, a Mac Whisper Pro subscription or a. The price point is phenomenal. It's a great piece of software. So they're almost there. They're almost there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now the big kerfuffle. This week, Amazon Echo users will no longer have the option to process their Alexa requests locally, which means all of their voice recordings will be sent to the company's cloud. And the world shit a brick over this one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What are you asking your Echo that you're so worried about that? Like all they're going to get from me is me requesting it to start playing music and what time is it? And set a timer. That's it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, everybody's worried that the thing's always recording, so everything, everything that you say gets sent up to it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, that could be true, but they're definitely hiding that then because right now you can go see every single voice recording through the through their app or through their website. I can't remember which. So they're either Lying about that or they're not doing that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I mean, there's been several high profile court cases where the thing was tripped and there are recordings of, you know, people getting murdered and shit like that. So there are some except exceptions to the rule on how much stuff is being recorded and sent off. Because remember, it's always listening. It's listening for the trigger word. So it could be literally sending everything up or at least the first 30 seconds before the trigger word and the first 30 seconds after you stop. You just don't know. That list is a curated list. Let's just say that it would be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nice if they were transparent about it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fuck you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know, but the thing for me, what. What bothers me more about it is just it. It's getting worse. Like, it's horrible. Like, I'm going to probably not get another Echo when it's. When it becomes time, I'm going to switch to something else because it's just bad. It doesn't understand anything anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, have you tried the new Echo Plus?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, no, because you have to buy a new device yet for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, see, and you have to pay what, 20 bucks a month or some shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Not going to do any of that. So, yeah, yeah. Something else I'm not going to do is get a Roku.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Roku has begun running video ads on your device that you bought and paid for that automatically play before loading the home screen. As reported by Ars Technica, this is impacting owners of Roku branded smart TVs that you purchased and streaming sticks that you purchased and continue to subscribe to so long as the device runs through the company's proprietary os. It is worth noting that Roku users already see commercials on the home screen itself.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, we do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've got three Roku TVs. I know all about this. Yes, yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Say they have confirmed the new ad placement, but say it's just a test.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Fortunately this. This is not rolled out broadly. I can tell you from the Roku TVs that I have. I checked when you go to the home screen, basically what I need, I need. The only reason I need to go to the home screen is so I can get to my Apple tv because the Roku OS is shit. So I go to switch input devices and on the inputs there's an ad. On the right third of the home screen is an ad and sometimes they change the background. If somebody buys a whole takeover, they can theme the OS to be Moana 2 or whatever. So it's obnoxious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, they consider it a feature, not a bug. Let me read this finely crafted piece of horse manure here. Our business has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content and our first rate advertising products, the statement read. Yes, because I purchased your device for your advertising products. Give it to me for free then. Our recent test is just the latest example as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user interface. Andre wrote in. Hello Andre. Hey guys. Okay, just returning to the Mac world. Need some advice on apps. You guys recommend Mac cleaner for getting rid of unwanted apps and cleaning up drive browser. Jason, you talk about a package of apps you bought that was a lot cheaper than a lot of individual apps. What was that? Please take it away, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's called SetApp and there's a link in the show notes and yes that is an affiliate link so please go click on that. So we get a dollar. We need that dollar desperately. And once you get that, you want to get clean my Mac, you want to get Bartender, you want to get Istat menus, you want to get. There's a million things on there you want to get. I will put up a list this week and put it in the show notes of all the good stuff that you can get. But yeah, I live and die by setapp. I need it on all my machines.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. And also I know you've been using Brave so we can talk a little browser stuff and you've been using that for a while. I was on Vivaldi for a long time but just this week I decided to transition because Vivaldi seemed to be slowing down quite a bit and there were a lot of non functioning major sites like Instagram for whatever reason. And some people in our in our discord also said that Valdi seemed a lot slower than it had been so it was time for me to switch. I didn't want to go to Brave because I hate that they bacon crypto.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You can turn that off by the way.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know three seconds. Still it's annoying. I decided to. And besides for the show I should use a different browser. I decided to go to China and get Opera.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You mean so you went back in time because you used to use Opera?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did. I used Opera a long time ago before I switched over to Vivaldi. So so far it's a lot f. The built in ad blocking caused some issues with a number of sites as well as not blocking 100% of the ads. So I disabled that and installed UBlock as an extension, which solved the problem. And so far, so good. Until today when we decided to record. And the program that we use, Riverside, did not load in Opera. It told me it's not only in Chrome based browsers. And I was like, this is a Chrome based browser. I don't know why I did it. Like Shatner.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm going to pimp for Brave here because their built in ad blocker works fantastic. It's got a speed reader mode which lets you just, you know, cut everything out and just read the copy. It's really good. So I'm still on the side of Brave, even though I don't like the creator, Brendan Eich. He can go suck a bag of dicks. But the browser, it's decent and it works with Riverside because I'm on it right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I got Vivaldi open for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Dark side.

[Brian Schulmeister]

With Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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 little laughs on only malware in the building. Getting that last line out.

[C]

Little Jerry Lewis there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Drink us on laughs. Come on over here. Yeah.

[C]

Oh, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Happy day, Dave. How are you? How's things over in the land of D.C. area? Ish.

[C]

Well, it's, you know, look, flaming Tesla's driving.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's starling satellites falling out of the sky.

[C]

Right. It's all. We're all in this and we are physically close to a lot of the nonsense that's going on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So the line coming out of the unemployment office reached your door yet?

[C]

Yes, that's exactly the point. Here in Maryland, we are particularly vulnerable to all of the government layoffs. And it's funny because a friend of mine who I have not touched base with lately, but years ago we had a conversation about this and he can justifiably have an I told you so moment with me because years ago we were talking about employment and the state of Maryland, and he was saying that Maryland is much too dependent on federal employment. And what happens if the government decides to stop having all these government employees? And my response was like, that's going to happen. Come on. Government's going to not have so many federal employer employees. Well, here we are. And. And sadly for so many people around here, and it's come to pass and it is happening and so it is affecting people. I know. And People around us and, you know, there's all these cascading effects, of course, with real estate. And I was just reading how we're likely going to have a really down tourism season this summer because people from other countries aren't going to come here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can 100% testify to that. I know a bunch of people here in Canada that had planned trips to the US and are no longer taking them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, wasn't a government official came out yesterday from Canada saying, don't go to the U.S. that's right.

[C]

The UK I believe Germany and I believe France have all put out notices not saying don't go to the United States, but more, be sure you know what you may be getting yourself into if you do go to the United States, because even folks from our allied countries are being locked up by border folks or turned around and sent home. I saw just a few minutes ago there was some. I can't remember the name of the band, but it was like a punk rock band that was coming from the uk Day I saw that as well. Someone you're familiar with?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, I do actually. I know the band that I can't, I, I can't remember the name of it offhand, but I saw that the other day and I was like, oh, my God. Turned around. It's not just personal travel. It's not just family vacations. It's, it's bands. Like a lot of bands aren't going to tour the U.S. they don't want to deal with it. And it's, it's professional travel. It's. I, I read an article the other day about all kinds of professors all over Europe that are, aren't going to come to conferences that are held in the US because there were worried.

[C]

Right, right. And then the reverse of that is we're going to have a lot of brain drain here because so many of our scientists are going to go overseas and places like France are actively courting them and saying, we have research money, please come to us. It reminds me not unlike how many very talented German scientists we had here in the US after World War II, you know, fleeing the Nazis after working for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? It's not my department, says Werner von Braun. That's right, Operation Paperclip.

[C]

So it's a lot. Let me just say that it's a lot. And it's a lot that weighs on you, right? Yeah, right, right, right. And you know, it is part of my job is to wade through A lot of this stuff and try to make sense of it and try to help explain it for people. It's interesting to me how we have gotten more complaints than usual of people, listener, longtime listeners, saying, I wish you guys would stay out of politics.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Stay in your lane. Yeah, we get that.

[C]

Stay in our lane. And.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But how many people have told you to watch? Several.

[C]

I was reading through the show notes on that, and I don't know what you guys have set yourselves up for, but it sounds like, I don't know, Dave.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We simply said we don't want to watch the show. That's it.

[C]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's been.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I thought season one was boring, and now season two came out, I'm like, I'm gonna skip it. I didn't really care for season one that much, and it's just like, oh, my God, you fool.

[C]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can no longer try trust anything.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You say, Jane, you ignorant slut.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[C]

So for us with the coverage, obviously there's a lot going on that is in our lane. And I think the point is that for so long, cybersecurity was sort of apolitical or at least had bipartisan support. And now all of this other nonsense in D.C. and other places, they have veered into our lane, and so we don't have any choice but to cover it. I would love to not cover it, but we're stuck in that situation where particularly, you know, if someone is an avid follower of the current president and his administration. Anything you say is. Is stating facts is controversial. So it's tough.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I feel like we, particularly this show, we weeded that out, the first administration.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Half our audience, and that was about it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

If you're still listening, you're on our team.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, until the severance.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Until the severance thing. We lost more listeners over severance than we did Trump, believe it or not.

[C]

You're just shaving off the audience. That is interesting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's my goal. That's my goal, Dave.

[C]

Shave it off till it's coming.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want to get to inbox zero.

[C]

Right. Just going to be the three of us. We won't even need to publish anymore. We'll just.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Save us some money on bandwidth.

[C]

Right, Right. So, you know, it's draining, but no worse for me than for everybody else who's going through all this sort of chaos. And so we do our best and try to be thankful for the things we have and hug our loved ones for just a little bit longer every day and do what we can to help make things better.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[C]

So how's that working out for everybody? I mean, that's my aspirational statement. Minute by minute, minute by minute of how that actually plays out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Some days I sit here and I go, I think, what would Dave do? Wwd? Oh, that's my new slogan. How would Dave approach this? How could I make this sunny side?

[C]

Oh, man, I don't need that kind of pressure, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. As he sits there in a stormtrooper helmet and a full furry suit. Yeah, no, this is how I'm getting through the day.

[C]

Sitting, sitting in a stormtrooper helmet and a furry suit in an empty bathtub, rocking back and forth, crying. That's what I'm doing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Whatever floats your boat, man.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's switch gears, shall we?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, let's do it.

[C]

I saw this device come by, and it's called the Seneca, and it is a extreme high end keyboard. And by Extreme high end. So it's a computer keyboard, $3,600. Pretty much as handmade as something like this could be. And this is one of those clicky mechanical type keyboards that, you know, there are clicky keyboard enthusiasts, people who love their clicky keyboards. So I'm curious what you all had experience with. For me, when I think of clicky keyboards, I think of the Apple Extended Keyboard 2, which is a sort of a classic keyboard for a long time on Planet Macintosh.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think of the IBM original keyboard.

[C]

Yep, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Keys down the left.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I hate clicky keyboards.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want my keyboard silent. If I had this, I'd spray it with WD40 every five seconds.

[C]

You put it in a code of silence.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I had two thoughts about this. At first, it's insanely expensive. And I, I, you know, it's only going to be, it's only going to be like the Jag offs running social media companies that are going to buy these things. But it reminds me of like when.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I used to go, hang on, hang on. I got to say, the, the first thing I thought of is I'm going to go to Kevin Rose's house and he's going to have one of these.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's totally going to have one of these. Yep, absolutely. It does remind me of the, the heyday of malls in my 20s when I would walk around with like my girlfriend or whatever, and you'd pass the shop that had one bag, bag and one pair of shoes, and you just know, okay, that's going to be insanely expensive. And on the website itself, it's not a buy button. It Says learn about buying.

[C]

Huh. So they have to vet you, you have to fill out a credit application or apparently there's a multi stage interview process.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm thinking they only build them if you order them.

[C]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't, I don't know what the deal is here, but yeah, when you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Click on that, it goes to offering details. This is the first public offering of the Seneca. Each unit will include a special nameplate with serial number out of 100. The offering opens on the 24th of March at 11:30am Pacific Time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Echo set.

[Jason DeFilippo]

A reminder, the components of each Seneca are machined and molded to order in small batches as part of fixed offering batch. As part of fixed offering batch such as this one. Okay. Learned right on your Seneca. Each board is then individually assembled right here in California according to the requested client specifications. Okay. I didn't know you get specifications. Oh, you get different finishes. Oh, there's a wood riser, plasma, ceramic and titanium finishes. Ooh. Oxide gray travertine heat shield and veracity titanium. Yeah.

[C]

So it starts at $3,600.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Yes, you can. Yeah, there's a wood riser that you can get instead of a little plastic thing. That does the job pretty well on all my other keyboards. Retro keycaps made in Germany. Yeah, I can see this. Like, if I were, like if I were working on a movie, some retro movie, I would definitely order a bunch of these keyboards and have a nice budget.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Nobody has a budget for that anymore. So they would be going to the. They'd be going to Goodwill and finding the old IBM keyboards and spray painting them. That's probably what they.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't see a USB option.

[C]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And there's no Bluetooth built into this. I don't think so. You're going to have to have.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But you see the beautiful cable that comes out of it. I'm sure that cable probably cost like, you know, $800.

[C]

That's an apple caliber cable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That is. That really is.

[C]

It's $100 at least.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's got grommets and bushings and all sorts of stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

So, Brian, you were saying you don't like clicky keyboards?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nope.

[C]

And I liked clicky keyboards when they were the standard premium keyboards that came with our computers. But recently I went back and tried a clicky keyboard and it was awful. The thing that struck me about a clicky keyboard was how slow it was because the travel is so long and there's so much. Yeah, there's so much more effort and I can appreciate the Aesthetics of it, the feedback and the sound and all that sort of thing. There's something nostalgic about that. But these keyboards we have today, with these super shallow keys and minimal travel, they're just so much more efficient than the clicky keyboards were in my experience.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what we need to do? We need to ev. Our. Our current keyboards. They just little sound recording. Every time you press a key should pop.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Clickety clack.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, I would like to point out here, the gentle sound of the Seneca is often likened to raindrops. It has soft. It has a soft, intentionally vintage sounding thock without being obtrusively clacky.

[C]

Okay, so this is. This brings me to my next question. Are clicky keyboard enthusiasts their own version of audiophiles?

[Brian Schulmeister]

In that they're incredibly annoying, then yes.

[C]

Well, I mean, the joke about audiophiles, like an audiophile is a person who has more money than sense. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You have not heard this music until you've listened to it on its original vinyl pressing with my $7,000 diamond head needle.

[C]

My amplifier system from Bound and Gnome Oxygen free cables. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Yeah. Sounds great in my AirPods.

[C]

Well, and I think I heard something about audiophiles recently. Let me see if I can get it right here. They said that most people use their stereo equipment to listen to your music, and audiophiles use your music to listen to their stereo equipment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think that's right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think the clicky keyboard people can be categorized in the same group as the pen enthusiasts. There are podcasts about pen enthusiasm there as well.

[C]

Right. And people really like premium watches. So that's like, I don't have a problem. I don't have a. I mean, it's not for me, but I don't have a problem with people who enjoy the best of something. And I would say, you know, this keyboard is certainly trying to be that. It doesn't seem. It doesn't strike me that this keyboard is snake oil in that it does seem to be extraordinarily well made. Who knows?

[Jason DeFilippo]

But theoretically, because we still haven't seen one and we'll never see one.

[C]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is one of those things. I, I think like the audiophile thing. The, the watches, the pens, the. This keyboard, this is God's way of telling you you're making too much money. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And have too much time on your hands.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And. Yeah. You. You need to get. You. You need to get a light. If you're spending $3,600 on a keyboard, I think maybe donate some to Charity. I don't know. Yeah, sell that cyber truck you've got and.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, no, no, no. This is a totally different design aesthetic, Brian. The cybertruck aesthetic is not. I, I get this design aesthetic. I get the people who would get this. This is for Jony. I've, you know, the wannabe Johnny Ives.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Like he built his own.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's true. We're actually, we're actually using Jony Ives keyboard, keyboard now on our mask.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And even Johnny says clicky keyboards suck. So maybe go with Johnny.

[C]

Right. It's for people who fancy themselves Johnny. I've disciples.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, right. Yeah, look. Yeah, I, I get, I get a Porsche. I do, I really do. But if you think you're gonna get laid from this keyboard, you're not.

[C]

Well, that's interesting. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I do not see a blowjob port on it, so definitely not worth the money.

[C]

That's extra money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's part of the add ons that you have to.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, at those prices. You know what.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That'S the old joke about the vacuum cleaner. The incredibly expensive vacuum cleaner. It better fucking blow me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. You get the Seneca and it's just got a. Got a flesh like duct tape to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The bottom of it, but it's premium quality. Meant to evoke the real blow job.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. They use artisanal duct tape.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Artisanal blowjobs.

[C]

So anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[C]

My changing gears, a combination of something that happened in my life yesterday and something we talked about on the most recent episode of Hacking Humans. My son Scott has a dog and the dog's name is Griswold. And Griswold is a good name. Yeah, Griswold is a, like a pit bull mix. He's mostly pit bull and he's got one of those kind of like tiger stripe coats, you know what I mean? He's very, very, very pretty dog. He's got one, a big head, kind of like Bammer's was, you know, it's like, it's like bone and muscle, you know, I call his head a meatball. Cause it's just this solid thing. And he kind of. He's adorable. He's lovable. He's a sweetheart and just goes around the house knocking things over with his tail because he's also kind of clueless.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. That coat, by the way, is called a brindle.

[C]

Brindle. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so he's a really good dog and he's probably about 5 years old or so, so. Anyway, he stopped eating a few days ago, and my son took him to the vet, and they did some examinations and some X rays, and turns out he had a blockage in his intestines, which means he probably ate something. Who knows? So now they had to go in and do emergency surgery.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you're not getting that keyboard anytime soon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nope. That surgery usually costs you about a Seneca and a half.

[C]

So of course we went ahead with the. So let me. Let's back up a second. If you guys were to guess what does emergency surgery to remove a blockage in a large dog's intestines. What's the going rate for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's gotta be around five grand.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was gonna say it's a Seneca and a half. $5,000?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[C]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

More.

[C]

Higher, Higher. Whoever's closest without going over wins. Higher.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, no way. 10 grand.

[C]

10 grand?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Wow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wow. It's doubled since the last time I. That's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's three Senecas, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's three Senecas. Yeah. That's really, really high. Because I know somebody that had that done two years ago, and it was five, and it was with a really nice Beverly Hills vet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know a veterinarian that needed a Seneca.

[C]

That's right. Yes, it is. It is high and just.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But can you put a cost on your.

[C]

Well, that is. That is. Yes, that is both funny, but also true. So. And I just want to say, like, I don't have $10,000 just sitting around. Like, I mean. I mean, I'm in a position where my wife and I are in a position where we can juggle things around and make adjustments and put ourselves in a situation to be able to make this happen, you know, like, it's not. So it's that kind of situation. And we're happy to do it because, you know, the dog is a family member and. And all of that good stuff, which is truly good stuff. But what this brings me to is we were talking about. On hacking humans this week. There was a story about scams and people scamming Google Maps, like business locations on Google Maps. And the scammers were targeting what they call duress verticals. This was a new term for me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think that was the band that didn't come to the States.

[C]

Duress verticals. Yeah, either that or it's a window treatment store. Look em to duress verticals. But duress verticals are basically the things that you're in a position of duress, and so you are not going to be shopping around for them. So emergency Vets, tow trucks, funeral directors. Yeah, like all these kinds of things.

[Brian Schulmeister]

High end keyboards.

[C]

High end keyboards, right. I can't type on this. So anyway, it was a new term of art for me and it's just funny that I found myself in the midst of one. I didn't know if you guys had been familiar with that term.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I haven't heard that. I understand it. The other new term we learned at the beginning of the show was AI pimping. So I don't know if. So we've got two new terms this week.

[C]

There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Vocabulary today.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[C]

All right, well, that's what I have today. Thank you, gentlemen. I will see you guys next week. And Dave, do take care.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Try not to Google how to get 10k real quick.

[C]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Closing Shout out. Over at Patreon, we've got nobody knew but James. James came through and upped his pledge. So thank you very much, James. And from the from the archives, we've got Steven, Vanessa Brody, Greta, Michael, Glenn, Kevin Nolan, Runner609, and Tony. Thank you all so much for being Patreon subscribers. And just as a reminder, you can become one too for as little as $3 a month. And if you sign up for the whole year, you can get a discount, but you can pay more than $3, which most people do. But you get the show early ad free and in high definition.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, over at PayPal, we've got Nathaniel, Linda, Joseph, Andrew, Sloan and Tom. Thank you all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Over at the Tip Jar, we've got Sean, Tony and Ross. And in the merch bin this week, Morgan Morgan picked up some fine, fine merchandise from shop.gger show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I'm Jason De Villippo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode of GOG Show. 689. 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. Well, share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between. And we'll love you for it. 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 if hey, don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what we've got. Merch. Stag your grumpy gear now at shop Gog show. Stay grumpy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And do not write us about Severance 2's last episode.