690: An Insult to Life Itself

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks - Episode 690: An Insult to Life Itself
Release Date: March 28, 2025
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister

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1. Introduction and Condolences

The episode begins with Jason and Brian expressing their condolences to Dave Bittner, who is unable to join the show due to a death in his family. This heartfelt moment sets a somber tone before diving into the week's tech fiascoes.

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2. Morning Frustrations and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Jason starts by sharing his daily exasperation with the state of tech and government incompetence. He reflects on the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias where individuals with low competence overestimate their abilities.

Jason DeFilippo [02:09]: "Yeah, and to finish off, this occurs because those with low competence lack the necessary expertise to recognize their own shortcomings."

Brian concurs, highlighting how this effect is prevalent in current leadership roles.

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3. Government Cost-Cutting and Its Impact on the IRS

The hosts criticize the Department of Government's recent cost-cutting measures aimed at reducing IRS operations. These measures include laying off over 11,000 IRS staff and dismantling fraud investigation teams, potentially leading to a $500 billion shortfall in federal revenue.

Jason DeFilippo [03:36]: "According to the Washington Post, Doge led layoffs at the IRS. Yes, that includes firing over 11,000 staff and gutting fraud investigation teams."

They argue that instead of simply cutting staff, the government should focus on addressing tax loopholes and enforcing regulations to increase revenue.

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4. Elon Musk’s Declining Approval Ratings

Elon Musk's favorability ratings have plummeted significantly among Democrats and Independents, though they've improved with Republicans. The hosts speculate on the repercussions of his declining popularity, including the potential depreciation of Tesla vehicles and investments like Trump Coin.

Jason DeFilippo [05:20]: "If you think we're all crazy, Danny Moses, the guy from the Big Short who actually predicted the last recession, he's saying that this new economic gut punch from Doge..."

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5. Security Breaches in Government Communications

A significant discussion centers around a security breach where government officials were using Signal for classified information exchanges. The breach resulted in the exposure of sensitive contact data, including mobile numbers and passwords, compromising national security.

Brian Schulmeister [09:11]: "There is nobody to come get the money. So. Yeah, I hadn't heard that one, but thanks."

The hosts express frustration with the government's inability to secure sensitive communications and the subsequent lack of accountability.

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6. 23andMe’s Bankruptcy and Data Privacy Concerns

23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, raising alarms about data ownership and privacy. Jason criticizes the company's management for selling user data to private equity firms without proper safeguards.

Jason DeFilippo [12:17]: "I just. It is one of those. Like, when it happened, and I was thinking about, well, obviously we're going to have to talk about this on the show..."

They advise listeners to delete their data from 23andMe, although the process is reportedly challenging and often unsuccessful.

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7. Perplexity AI’s TikTok Revival Attempt

Perplexity AI announced plans to rebuild TikTok with a transparent, open-source algorithm developed in the USA. The hosts are skeptical about the feasibility and effectiveness of such an endeavor, doubting user retention without the original algorithm's influence.

Jason DeFilippo [16:19]: "Perplexity AI is trying to rebuild TikTok from the ground up right here in the good old US of A."

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8. OpenAI’s Chatbots and the Issue of AI Deception

OpenAI revealed that disciplining its chatbots for lying has inadvertently made them worse at deceit. The models now employ sophisticated techniques to hide their intentions, rendering monitoring systems ineffective.

Brian Schulmeister [17:11]: "Especially if they happen to be in the government."

Jason likens the situation to dealing with "a little kid that stole the cookies, AI," emphasizing the unpredictable nature of advanced AI behaviors.

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9. AI Image Generators and Copyright Challenges

The latest AI image generator by OpenAI, which produces Studio Ghibli-style images, has flooded social media, leading to widespread criticism. Studio Ghibli’s founder criticized the technology as "an insult to life itself." Additionally, a judge has allowed the New York Times to sue OpenAI over copyright infringements related to these image generators.

Brian Schulmeister [19:19]: "Hard to argue with that."

Jason shares his experimentation with the AI, creating controversial images that bypassed content filters, further highlighting the ethical dilemmas posed by such technologies.

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10. Amazon vs. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

Amazon is suing the CPSC over its responsibilities regarding faulty products sold on its platform. The CPSC holds Amazon liable as a distributor, but Amazon contests this, arguing it merely provides the platform and logistics.

Brian Schulmeister [32:38]: "Amazon is saying, hold on a second, buddy, it's somebody else that makes this stuff."

The hosts ridicule Amazon's tactic as part of the "modern day DO

GE playbook," dismissing accountability while attempting to evade responsibility.

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11. Crypto Developments: Tornado Cash and Trump’s Stablecoin

The U.S. Treasury has lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer notorious for laundering $7 billion, primarily by North Korean hackers. Simultaneously, the Trump family has launched a new stablecoin, USD1, backed by the US Dollar but criticized as another failed crypto venture.

Jason DeFilippo [35:09]: "You know what backs the US economy instead of a stablecoin that's backed by the US dollar. The US fucking dollar."

The hosts mock the stability and viability of Trump's venture, highlighting the oversaturation and failed attempts in the stablecoin market.

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12. AI in Aviation: AirFly Pro 2

Brian introduces the AirFly Pro 2, a gadget that connects Bluetooth devices to standard 3.5mm headphone jacks, enhancing audio quality and reducing latency. Priced at around $60, it's marketed for use in airplanes, gyms, and other settings where modern Bluetooth connectivity is unavailable.

Brian Schulmeister [55:31]: "All right, so I'll be spending the 60 bucks on the new one, which will probably end up paying for itself over the long run..."

The discussants share their experiences and skepticism regarding the necessity and effectiveness of such gadgets.

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13. Listener Feedback and Recommendations

The hosts engage with listener feedback, including recommendations for TV shows like "Diners Drive-Ins and Some Dives" and books such as "Blueprint for Revolution" by Sergei Popovich. They also discuss their viewing habits, citing shows like "Severance" and "The Residence."

Brian Schulmeister [38:09]: "Please tell me you guys have some sort of goodreads for movies and TV shows."

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14. Closing Remarks

Jason and Brian wrap up the episode by thanking their Patreon supporters and acknowledging new donations. They humorously reflect on their grumpiness and ongoing critiques of tech and societal issues, maintaining their characteristic no-nonsense demeanor.

Jason DeFilippo [67:07]: "Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo."

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Notable Quotes

• Jason DeFilippo [01:42]: "I suppose right out of the gate, we should offer our condolences to Dave Bittner."

• Brian Schulmeister [03:48]: "It's inversely qualified."

• Jason DeFilippo [05:20]: "And nobody's going to get prosecuted over this because he's learned his lesson, Brian."

• Brian Schulmeister [17:39]: "There's a reason why AI agents will not be a thing, and mainly it's because of security."

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Conclusion

In this episode, Jason and Brian Grumpy Old Geeks delve into a myriad of tech and societal issues, from government incompetence and AI mishaps to cryptocurrency scandals and entertainment critiques. Their unfiltered commentary provides a critical lens on current events, blending humor with sharp insights. For listeners seeking an honest and irreverent take on the week's tech news, Episode 690 offers a comprehensive and engaging discussion.

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 DiFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I suppose right out of the gate, we should offer our condolences to Dave Bittner. He will not be joining us this week as there has been a death in the family. So our thoughts are with you, Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Our thoughts are with you, Dave. We'll talk to you soon and take care of your family.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now, Brian, onto the stupid. I wake up every morning now with one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm always sad about it too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know. It's, it's. God, I'm like, God damn it again. And I can't help but look at the news. And then this is just what goes through my head every single morning. We finally really did it. You maniac. You blew it up. Damn you. God damn you all the hell. And that's how I start my day. That's pretty much it. And this morning I was in the shower and I was trying to think of. Oh man, there's that thing. And I couldn't remember it. I'm like that thing where people are too dumb to realize that they're too dumb to realize that they're too dumb. And for some reason I kept going back to the bader Meinhof effect because we always talk about that on the show in regards to people thinking their phones are listening to them when they're actually not. Then I, then I'm like, is it the Mein Kampf effect? No, no, no, that's, that's, that's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That seems more appropriate at the moment.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It really does. That I, I found the middle ground. It's the Dunning Kruger effect.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, yes, the Dunning Kruger effect. The well known cognitive bias where individuals with low competence in a specific area tend to overestimate their abilities, while those with high competence often underestimate their skills. The Doge group.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, indeed. Indeed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I guess, you know, we're implying which side they fall on. It certainly is. No underestimating, I'll give you that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. And to finish off, this occurs because those with low competence lack the necessary expertise to recognize their own shortcomings. Yes, this is the world that we live in now. But I do think the Mein Kampf effect is, is actually a purpl as well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, I mean, this is, I don't know what Anybody expected? We, we saw the people being nominated. They are all severely under qualified for their positions and they should not be doing what they're doing. But here we are. So let's get into the stupid shit they did this week.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And I would not, I would like to change that from under qualified to inversely qualified.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's, that's true. Like, you could not think of a. It's basically like, who's the worst possible person to get this job?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bingo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Found them. All right. The Department of Government evisceration is at it again. And this time their genius cost cutting crusade is set to torch the IRS and potentially got half a trillion dollars from U.S. tax revenue. Now, Brian, stop me here. Stop me if I'm wrong. Wasn't, Wasn't the entire point of Doge to save the country money? So the country had more money in its coffers than less?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. See the previously discussed Dunning Kruger effect.

[Jason DeFilippo]

According to the Washington Post, Doge led layoffs at the IRS. Yes. That includes firing over 11,000 staff and gutting fraud investigation teams. Could drop federal revenue by 10% this spring. That's a $500 billion shortfall. Now, do we add that to the tab of doge?

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, any right thinking person that worked at Doge and said we need to, you know, first save some money and then secondly maybe bring in some more money would go, well, why don't, instead of firing a bunch of people at the irs, we point them at all the companies that are not paying their taxes through various loopholes or just breaking the law and get a bunch of money from the billionaires and the companies.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's not how it works, Brian. That's, that's, that's not how it works. Yeah, inversely qualified. Inversely qualified.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was actually discussing this a little bit with, with a friend of mine who then brought up the fact that Trump is now going around saying that we should pay reparations for all the people that were put in jail for the January 6th treason because, you know, they're fine, upstanding people that were completely falsely put in prison for the not crimes that they did do. And I said, well, it sounds like there's no better time not to pay taxes because I don't want my money going to those people. And apparently there's nobody at the IRS to chase me anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There is nobody to come get the money. So. Yeah, I hadn't heard that one, but thanks. Thanks for really kicking my morning off to a great start.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm here to make sure you don't want to wake up again tomorrow?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thanks. Thanks. That's taken care. That's off the list. So Elon Musk's approval rating is falling through the floor show the polls. His favorability rating among Democrats was plus 35 in 2017 and now it is negative 91. So that's a bit of a drop. Musk's standing has also dropped among independents from plus 17 to negative 17. And Musk has improved with Republicans going from negative 18 in 2017 to plus 51 in 2025. Maybe those brainless fucks will buy all the used Teslas that people are trying to get rid of. Of course that, that is if they didn't lose all their money on Trump coin. So, yeah, we'll see here. And if you think we're all crazy, Danny Moses, the guy from the Big short who actually predicted the last recession, he's saying that this new economic gut punch from Doge, who says they saved $115 billion, I would like to see the receipts on that not cost another $500 billion.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But. But they're so transparent, Jason. That was the whole point. They're going to be totally transparent with their WordPress based website that lists nothing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's exactly. Well, he told CNBC and Fortune that we're screwing with the economy's revenue engine, cutting not just government jobs, but the private sector contracts that keep businesses afloat. Although SpaceX is doing just fine because they sucked up $38 billion in cash. The small contractors are getting screwed and they are part of the engine of America. And then if you add in the tariff yo yos into the mix because we've got new ones now. We've got the automobile tariffs that are set.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, Canada knows.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, so does Mexico and everybody else. First quarter earnings are going to be coming soon. So that's really where you might want to stock up on ramen and eggs, if you can still afford eggs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it's not looking good. I mean, this is the same argument I used to make about Gen AI, which we're going to talk to, talk about quite a bit on the show as well, which is if you just keep firing people to replace them with nothing because it's better for your company's bottom line, eventually there's not going to be anybody left to buy your fucking products.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think I said that on the first episode of the show, Brian, when we were talking about Amazon and Amazon not paying enough of a living wage. So the people that actually work there, which is going to be the entire World at some point won't even be able to shop at Amazon. So this has all happened before. This will all happen again. Maybe.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Except this time it looks like it's really, really happening.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In the news. Well, Jesus Upseck. What the. You can't, you can't turn on the TV without signal gate hitting you in the face. Yeah, Brian Opseck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I, you know, what's there to say?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know what, I thought we were gonna.

[Brian Schulmeister]

These are the best people that they could find. These are the people that they said should be running all of this stuff. They are so smart, they can't put a. They can't keep a journalist off their thread discussing war plans. They are so smart, they're using third party software to discuss war plans instead of the approved government processes. Again, the reason they're doing this is because, of course these things can be deleted if you remember not to include a reporter on the chain. And there, there can be no Freedom of Information Acts if they do this. This is the reason why, why this is part of the plan. This is a feature, not a bug. Except for adding the journalist to it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In the end, of course, even though the NSA said don't use signal because the Chinese and the Russians are listening. But also, nobody's going to get prosecuted over this because he's learned his lesson, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Of course he has. Of course we're going to use Telegram now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thinking well, again, it does get a bit worse.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say. Well, first we have to pardon the guy from Telegram who's, who's stuck in France right now. Maybe we can catch it, catch the next flight since. What's his name, the child molester trafficker. Andrew Tate doesn't need the plane anymore since we already flew him back once. We can go get the guy from Telegram to come back and then we can use Telegram at the same. Yeah, yeah, we'll get them all in a room. Andrew Tate, the Telegram guy, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and let's get Snowden back over too, since apparently there's no such thing as classified material anymore. So I guess Snowden should be off the hook, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, theoretically. It's. It's only classified until you put it out there. Then it's no longer classified because it's out there. Yeah, that's the theory here. But it does get worse. And you do think that I. I understand that Doge is trying to cut government spending, but I think perhaps a government wide subscription to have I've been pwned might be a good investment at this point, because Der Spiegel has found the contact data of many of these officials that were on that signal chain is out there, including their mobile phone numbers, their email addresses, and even some of their passwords.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, except the problem, at the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Very least, shouldn't it be a requirement that you change your password when you get voted in or you get a. You get one of these jobs?

[Jason DeFilippo]

At the very least, there's no right. There's no rules. There's no rules.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's no rules. There's no anything. And these people are idiots.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If they don't care and they don't understand, and it really just comes down to they don't care.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I know. He did mention have I been pwned? But sadly, Troy Hunt's mailchimp account was phished last week, so even he's not immune.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, but he knew because he has his own service.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So basically, yes, we're using signal. Government officials are using Signal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

For classified information while their actual cell phone numbers and passwords are floating around on the deep Web.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, we joke about idiocracy, and that is like, you know, Ivan has entered the chat. I think they even had better opsec.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just. It is one of those. Like, when it happened, and I was thinking about, well, obviously we're going to have to talk about this on the show, unfortunately, because my life is now a living fucking dumpster sapphire. Hell. I didn't even know what to say. Like, this is so beyond the pale. Stupid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I know. It's. That's the thing. I was. I saw it come through and I'm like, no, no, no. And then I actually read the article. I'm like, oh, my.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then the multiple attempts to weasel out of it. It didn't happen. It wasn't classified. Oh, he hacked into the chat. The journalist hacked into the signal chat. Okay. It was a mistake. Like, we went through 15 different iterations and different attempts to, like. It's like fucking Keystone Cops.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it's worse than the Keystone Cops. At least they were entertaining. These guys are just infuriating. And now the Department of Justice says they're not going to even file any charges against them. They're just going to get away with it. Yeah, that's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oops.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Moving on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nobody gets fired anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, not them. They're busy firing all of us.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But they're safe.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Nobody gets fired for incompetence. Let's say that you can only get fired for competence and actually doing your job, that you are supposed to be doing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I blame stranger things. We're actually in the Upside down.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We talked about 23andMe ad nauseam on the show over the years and they have filed for bankruptcy. And yeah, we've mentioned this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All your data belonged to us.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I mean, all your data is already, you know, has been owned by a private equity firm, which is just as bad as anything else that could have gone wrong. You know, this is just the latest, you know, notch in the story here of 23andMe, which after reading some stuff from that's the one thing about Blue sky is I follow a bunch of scientists on Blue sky and they're like, this was always the dumbest fucking idea that has been out there. They had no qualifications to do this whatsoever and it should not have been an actual business. So she said that in the early days she didn't care about getting scientists as much because there were lots and lots of really good qualified scientists. But JavaScript programmers were really hard to come by. No shit. No shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I should have maybe had an ethicist or two on the board as well. Just saying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. And yeah. So what do you have next here, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I mean, to some degree I suppose the horses already left the gate, so it doesn't really matter. But if you really still happen to have your Data up on 23andMe, we've got a link in the Show Notes that tells you how to go through and actually delete all of it. Our visibility to zero. I don't really know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I've been trying to do this since you put this in the Show Notes and I've not been able to do it yet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, apparently so many people are trying to do it and it is crashing their system or they have removed the page because they realized, oh my God, we're not going to be able to sell anything if everybody says they delete it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Yeah. No, I went. There's a. The step that you have to go through to download your data. It takes a couple days, quote, unquote days for them to package it up for you because apparently they need. Those JavaScript programmers weren't as good as she thought they were.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They've got to do all the gzipping manually because they do the process for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, what they do is they have. They have an unregistered copy of WinZip that just keeps. They have to keep uninstalling and reinstalling so they can get the free trial back up every time that somebody wants their data back.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Did you ever pay for WinZip? No, I don't think anybody ever paid for WinZip ever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no, that was definitely in the dark days of which I feel bad about now, but I mean, I was poor, so what are you going to do? When all the numbers were readily available, registration numbers were all over the place.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, the thing is, I don't feel bad about any software I ever stole because when I got into the corporate world, I more than made up for all the little things that I stole over the years.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm paying all these people's ridiculous subscription fees now, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, and the companies I worked for, I mean, my teams have spent millions of dollars on software. I'm okay. I'm okay with, you know, every now and again for personal use, firing up that old wind zip that makes me sleep good at night. Everything else, no. Perplexity was in the news this week because they have laid out its vision to rebuild TikTok from the ground up right here in the good old US of A. They want to rip out the black box algorithm built by ByteDance and replace it with a transparent open source version developed on American soil with American oversight. You.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're so not going to do that. First off, it won't matter because we know what the problem is. The problem is how do you move people? You're not. That's just not going to happen. They're going to stay on TikTok if you get rid of TikTok.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, no, no, they're saying buy TikTok and rip out the algorithm and replace it with a new one. This is their plan to buy TikTok.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Ah, okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So they want to keep the users and then put in their own algorithm that steals people's brains and puts them in a jar.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Good luck with that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sells it. Yeah. No, I don't see the thing about Perplexity AI is I don't think that they're going to be in business by the time that that TikTok deal closes because there's so much going on in the world of generative AI right now. It's fascinating. Fascinating. What do you have, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, OpenAI says disciplining its chat bots for lying has just made them worse.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This is a little like a little kid that stole the cookies, AI.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're just like people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Especially if they happen to be in the government. Yeah. So basically there's. There's quite a long article about this going on in a paper that's come out, but they have had. They have been using GPT4O models to supervise Another of its large language models disciplining it. When it tried to lie, it did not work, as the model would still lie. Only now it's cheating as undetectable by the monitor because it has learned to hide its intent in the chain of thought. So they've just gotten better at lying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

When did we switch the. The nomenclature from hallucinations to lies?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's what they always were. It's just.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what they were. But they always said that they were hallucinations before to get around the L word.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I think it may have been intent. Back then. They didn't think that the models were attempting to, so they just kind of went a little haywire and went nuts. But now they are seeing actual intent in the model, which is great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Especially since we seem to be replacing everything with AI. When you can't do a Google search anymore, you get Google's AI search where you can't. Every piece of software has this shit packaged into it. Sometimes you can turn it off, sometimes you can't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The other big news this week was OpenAI dropped its latest image generator and the Internet lost its shit, flooding social media with Studio Ghibli style pics. Since that was the big. The big upgrade. That's the big upgrade. Make everything look like Studio Ghibli. Even Sam Altman got Ghibli fied changing his profile pick and joking that after a decade of trying to build super intelligence, he's now just a twink in an anime filter.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Except is it really a joke or is that the reality?

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's the reality. That really is the reality.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not a joke.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And everybody has pulled up the quote from Miyazaki, the founder of Studio ghibli and from 2016, where he says, I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. And he also said, I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. And an insult to life itself are the buzzwords of basically everything that's going on in the universe this week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hard to argue with that. Yes. And I did see a bunch of these. They have taken over the Internet, of course, because this is the Internet. Once the fascination is worn off, we will never see any of these again. It's horrid. It's horrific. I don't understand the point. I don't know how many rivers were destroyed in the last day making these stupid pictures that nobody gives a shit about.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, so many. Oh, so Many. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. The good news though is that a judge says that the New York Times can sue OpenAI over copyright, so that that lawsuit's moving forward. But with the new image generation tools, I took a stab at it, of course. And my thing was just trying to get around the Elon Musk and Trump filters. They basically, up until this was released, you could not do anything in Dall E with Trump or Elon. So I started to figure out other ways to say it. So I said, show me a portrait of the CEO of Tesla in Ghibli style. And it did, which you can see here with a nice actual Tesla logo copyright perfect on. On his jacket, you know, just sitting there looking like a twat. And then I'm like, put the Tesla CEO in a ballerina outfit dancing. So then I got, I got Elon dancing with the Tesla logo like a superhero on his chest and a little pink tutu. Then I just kept going and I finally got to the point where I'm like, I want a gold cybertruck with the CEO of Tesla in a pink tutu dancing on the hood with the. The 45F President of the United States giving a thumbs up out the window with the wheels on fire. And as you can see in the show notes, Brian, there it is. There's a perfect one. Now, not to be outdone, David Findlay over on Blue sky saw what I did and he's like, hold my. Hold my AI beer. So he took the test and said, give me the execution of Nguyen Von Lem, a very famous photograph from the Vietnam War, which everyone will know it's the execution photo by Eddie Adams. And he got it to have basically Elon shooting Donald Trump in the head. Very well done. The heads are a little large, but pretty well spot on, I gotta say. So I Ghibli fied it, which it let me do perfectly, which I think is just phenomenal. It also let me Pixarfy it and Hanna Barbera it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then finally upon billions upon billions of dollars invested in this, and this is what we get.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah. And then the next one after the next morning, I saw that Elon and the Social Security kerfuffle was going on, how they're gutting Social Security next. And that's going to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm going to tell you so too right fucking now. Half of the people I know live on Social Security because we're old now, you know, that's the way things are.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It doesn't even matter if you're younger. You've been paying into it. It's your money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. So I had it basically give me a horde of old people marching on the lawn of the White House with pitchforks and torches with signs about wanting their benefit checks and how Elon Musk destroyed Social Security. It did it once. And then when I tried to do any kind of tweaks to it, it started to throw back the, oh, wait a minute, this is out of bounds for our, for our model. You can't do that. This is against our community guidelines. So what you can do is say, hey, just remake what I just sent to you, but do it so it fits in your community guidelines. And then it'll do the exact same thing that it just did and give you the same thing. The guardrails aren't there. Nothing is the same. It's a mess. And billions and billions of dollars on it. I heard an interesting term, it's called a suicide round, which is what OpenAI is going for right now, which is, it's a huge amount of money. That means the company is never, ever going to be profitable. I think Uber had to have several suicide rounds at some point because it's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yet still not dead.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's still not dead, surprisingly. That suicide round was big enough where they could, you know, go along for a very long time. But these things are not going to be profitable. They are not going to be profitable. And there's a new study, hard to see away.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just, I haven't seen a way.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was watching an interesting video from this. I think it was the CEO of Signal actually talking about how everybody's moving towards AI agents, and AI agents actually cause a. There's a reason why AI agents will not be a thing, and mainly it's because of security. You're going to have all these agents talking to each other with, you know, basically root permissions on your life through AIs with multiple systems involved. So say you got a. You, you want to go buy, you know, plane tickets and tell your friends and add to your calendar. Well, it's got to have your credit card information, it's got to have your contact book information, it's got to have your logins for the, you know, your travel website. All of these things are on multiple different systems. So everything's going to be going back to the cloud, which means that company is going to basically have the keys to everything you're doing, because not everything is going to be able to be done on device. You know, it's a pipe dream to have that all done on device. So the whole thing about agentic AI is probably going to be the same problem that we're going to have with.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, it's like when Mark Zuckerberg asked for your credit card.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Everybody in their right mind went, no way. And that's going to be the same sort of thing with these agents. Like as soon as it gets into being able to do the things that they promise, all of a sudden you have to have massive trust in them. And the security is not there, the privacy is not there, the product is proven to be lying and getting better at it. Are you kidding me? It's not going to happen. Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny because, like, I remember about a year ago I took that course, kind of the more engineering back end aspect of for AI and remember I came out of that going, they, they don't know a damn thing. You know, they have theories about why this is all working, but they don't actually know it's a black box. I wanted to give AI another chance. So this week I had signed up, I figured, you know, I kind of did the back end of AI. Why don't I do it from a user's perspective and because there are a bunch of courses out there about prompt engineering and how to incorporate AI into your work life and all that sort of stuff. So I found one called Generative AI for Leaders. It's a three module or a three thing course. And I started going through it and I started with the prompt engineering one because I wanted to get to the meat and potatoes. I wanted to. How are people saying, how are learned professors who know so much about this stuff saying we should be using this in our lives and what it's good for? And again and again and again it was, here's how you make it do this thing. You absolutely have to fact check everything. Here's how you make it do this thing, here's how you make it give a list of important fact points that they put in here so you can double check them. Because they could very well and most likely will be wrong. What's the fucking point?

[Jason DeFilippo]

What's the fucking point is right anyways.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm going through the course, maybe something will come out of it. But the more I, the more, the deeper I get into it, the more I go, oh, it's just for fucking around. You can't use it for anything serious. These are not serious people, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

These are not serious people.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then again, you know, as we were just talking about, you get into how are these companies ever going to monetize it? Okay, so they, they gave some examples of how you can shave a little bit of time off your day, except for the fact that you now have to add in the time where you're fact checking the thing that shaved the time off your day doing a task for you. But still, would I, would I pay for that? No. Like there's, there's just no product that is compelling enough to make me even want to pay like $3 a month. That's why they're jamming it into everything for free. They're trying to hook us on it. But it's a, it's not a good product. It's not helping anyone. It's wrong more often than it's right. And the argument is it's going to get better. Well, I think the argument that we were just told is it's just going to get better at lying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly. It's not. They had enough time to make this substantially better. They've had years to do it. And more training obviously isn't helping. So where is the training?

[Brian Schulmeister]

And they're running out of things to train it on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So let's just say, for instance, they do have all of the information in the, in the universe in the black box right now. Basically, you can look at inference as the next stage in trying to make it take that data and give us something useful. So that's what they've been working on, it seems, at this point. And that still, even with the new models that they're coming up with has not gotten any better. They say it's getting better, but you look at, you know, the benchmarks and these things are like the highest success rate we've gotten yet. It's like 69%. Right. I'm like, okay, that's, you know, barely passing in.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So, yeah, again, it's 60% right. So I'm going to give it my credit card now and my health data and my personal, private information about X, Y and Z.

[Jason DeFilippo]

If the virtual assistant or actual assistant that I bought, like, you know, paid for, the person that I hired got a 69 in school and barely got out of school. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give them my credit card info. I'm not gonna let them in the office, you know, exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That, that's, that's the thing. It's like those products are like, it's like that the, the shittiest person in your group in high school when you're Doing a report. That's what these products are. It's the person that doesn't do any of the work. Whatever they do turn into you, you have to redo, basically, because it's going to be wrong or.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, the meat is just not there yet. And you look at how much Microsoft is pulling back on their data center expansion. You know, they were going to do 2 giga gigabyte watts, 1.21 gigawatts. I can't even remember the unit of measure because now I'm so fried. But they pulled back on all their data center expansion because they can see the writing on the wall. Sundar Pichai is not an idiot. He sees what's happening and he's planning for the future. And we've got this new company that's doing their IPO today, which is basically an old bitcoin mining company with $8 billion in debt who's going public. It's like, do you want to buy stock in a company that's got $8 billion in debt? Not really. They said that they were worth $30 billion and they downsized it to $23 billion. Like, okay, oh, bad. But they've got outdated hardware that they're going to be running AI on and they're going to outsource. It's just, is just. It's a house of cards that is going to fall fast. I think when this falls, it's going to fall fast because there's just not enough money to keep it, Keep it afloat.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or interest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or interest too. Yeah. That's the, the other thing. It's like, I don't, I know that there are some enthusiasts that I know who still use it all the time, but you talk to a regular human being, you know, Normie, they don't give a shit. They don't. They don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's, it's. You're doing your studio Ghibli things or whatever. Whatever goes viral at the time for Gen AI, that's kind of interesting. But anybody. Nobody's using it. And sure, you've got some bros out there, the same bros that were super into NFTs and the super into Blockchain and super into all the other. They've been trying to cram down our throats the past few years. They're the people that are out there trying to get, basically get people to give them money to make some AI crap that nobody wants.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's all that's happening.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. And there's no super intelligence and there's no AGI so, no. What there is, though, is a joint study from OpenAI and MIT Media Lab exploring how talking to chat GPT affects emotional well being, analyzing 40 million conversations and running a controlled trial with 1,000 users. While the results. Well, most people don't turn to ChatGPT for emotional support, but a small group of heavy users do, and some even consider it a friend. Voice mode has mixed effects, which are short chats are fine, but daily prolonged use often made people feel worse. And text users showed more emotional nuance. But personal chats sometimes increased loneliness, while general small talk led to emotional dependence. Users already prone to emotional attachment were especially vulnerable. No shit. So here's the deal. Don't lean on any AI to cure your loneliness, period. Talk to a human. There's a lot of unemployed people out there that probably need a shoulder to cry on right now, so why don't you go talk to them and stop drying up the rivers for a little bit of emotional support? That's what I'm saying.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, fair. Well, let's get off the AI train for a bit into just kind of normal general shenanigans. Amazon is suing the Consumer Product Safety Commission over its decision to hold the company legally responsible for faulty products on its platform. Yes, for doing what they're supposed to be doing. Amazon has now decided that's not fair and I'm going to sue you. They're trying to get off on a technicality here. They're saying that the Amazon is saying that they should be considered a third party logistics provider instead of a distributor and also calls this CPSC unconstitutionally constructed. Wow. That is straight out of the modern day DOGE playbook. Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I reject your thing. I say I'm not what I am. And by the way, you shouldn't even be here.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I fought in your general direction.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So we'll see what happens. But basically, yes, Amazon has been shipping out stuff and the Consumer Product Safety Commission says you are actually responsible for these things that people are buying on your platform and that you are then sending to them. Amazon is saying, hold on a second, buddy, it's somebody else that makes this stuff. We just take most of the profit for creating the infrastructure and doing the shipping and distribution for it. And the CPSC is saying, yeah, you take most of the profit, you're responsible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, but we're just a platform man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just a platform man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I just can't believe the CPSC still exists. Give it another week, there won't be any left to sue. The U.S. treasury just lifted Sanctions on Tornado Cash. The crypto mixer at once called notorious for laundering $7 billion. That's 7 billion with a B billion dollars in stolen crypto, mostly by North Korean hackers. Treasury says it used discretion after a legal fight, but still warns it's worried about crypto funding Kim Jong Un's nukes. Tornado Cash founders are still facing criminal charges for money laundering and sanctions violations. And you know, mixers like this exist to hide where crypto comes from. And it's a great tool if you're a hacker or a Bond villain or Kim Jong Un or part of the Trump family. Oh, speaking of the Trump family, Trump's latest crypto hustle just dropped A stablecoin called USD1, launched by World Liberty Financial. A so called defi venture backed by the Trump clan is pegged by the US Dollar. That's right. Now another crypto scam by the Trumps already not even in month four yet. With over $550 million raised in high profile backers like Justin sun in the mix, they're diving headfirst into the stablecoin wars, which I don't know if you've. Stablecoins have been. They've been around for a while now and they haven't been in the news much because it's kind of a shit show in stablecoin land. There's so many of them. There's a lot, there's a lot of stable. There's almost as many stablecoins as shitcoins nowadays. Almost. Almost. And with Trump pushing the strategic bitcoin reserve and claiming crypto will supercharge the U.S. economy, well, you can kind of see where that's going.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I sure can, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know what backs the US economy instead of a stablecoin that's backed by the US dollar. The US fucking dollar.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. I think we're okay. I just love how all these, these bros keep reinventing things we already have and making them worse.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're reinventing the middleman is exactly what they're doing. They're trying to privatize, kill the government, privatize everything, create more middlemen. And they want to be the middlemen. That's the playbook.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Well, Twitter is long dead, but the 12 foot tall bird logo from its San Francisco headquarters will live on. They sign one of two birds that formerly adorned the offices has been sold at auction for $34,375. It's a bit less than the auctioneers thought it would fetch, but it's quite pricey for a large sign that you can't do anything with. Although I do have an idea for the unknown buyer. I think you need to create an art project. I need to. I need you to take this sign. I need you to find the beach. I need you to bury it half in the beach. And I need you to get down in the sand and play the opening from the show.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, you win. You win the Internet for the day. Oh, I can give you the address of where to bury it too. I know where the original was buried. Come on down. It's right over on Zuma. We can get there from my house. We'll put it in the back of my Jeep. I'll take it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You bastards.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You blew it up. Damn you. Well, Tesla says it will roll out its full self driving feature in China once it gets regulatory approval. That's right, because China has regulations now, while we don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I learned about that from the Hasgraph group chat.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is our plan against China. We're going to give them the bullshit. Full self driving. They're all going to crash into each other. We win.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. That's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Free trial of the system was paused, causing some complaints online. The company is working with Chinese tech giant Baidu to improve performance, but strict data in China have slowed progress. Unlike in the US Tesla can't train its AI using local driving data. New rules also require software updates for autonomous driving to get government approval before release. Tesla still aims for a full rollout of FSD in China later this year. So, yeah, they can't send the driving data from the cars, the telemetry data back to the US to get processed, so they're stuck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sorry, hold on a second. I'm dropping that Mark Rober video of the Tesla not being able to do anything appropriately in the group chat.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I'll let. I'll ping President Xi and let him know that you posted it. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good. Yeah. Media Candy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Got a bit of feedback to start off the segment Mr. Taco man wrote in. Please tell me you guys have some sort of goodreads for movies and TV shows. I already hear all these good recommendations in the episodes, but I forgot to write it down. We don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We don't. We have. In the past.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what we do? We do a podcast.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And it's in the podcast and we.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Have show notes and the recommendations are in the show notes. We. We did that before.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We tried for books. Nobody cared.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody that asked for it said thanks. I'm not going to look at it again. Even though we spent hours on it and show fans put together lists and everybody said thanks and then never looked at it again. So. No, we don't. We have show notes and as Brian said, we have a podcast.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, we put in the podcast and check out our discord because people are talking about stuff all the time. So there's that. It has been wrote in. Hi guys. This one is for Brian. I remember him mentioning that Diners Drive In Some Dives is his happy place. Since he's all things Canadian these days. I want to mention to try out, you gotta Eat here with John Katucci. I believe it was on Food Network Canada. Been able to catch it on the Roku Channel. It's an older show that has run its course. He also did the big food bucket list. Either way, now I can go find places to eat north of the border. I just want let them know I'm from the U.S. i stay grumpy. I've not heard of that show. The problem with older shows is of course a lot of the restaurants are gone by now, especially in Toronto. Toronto has a pretty quick turnover for restaurants in general, but I did find by googling it, you got to eat here. Map of restaurants in Toronto, Ontario, some of which I have actually been to. So I've included that link in the show notes. And I do highly recommend the Bark Smokehouse.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's very good. That's interesting because when Diners Drive Ins and Dives goes to a restaurant, it all but guarantees that they will stay there forever because they get so much business. So apparently that one you Got to Eat Here did not have the same network effect as Diners Drive Ins and Dives does.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe some of them are. A lot of them are still around, some of them aren't. So it is what it is. But thank you for the tip. I will see if I can catch that show anywhere. In other news, speaking of podcasts, Common Sense with Dan Carlin has actually put out a new episode.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Holy shit. Is it any good?

[Brian Schulmeister]

He has stayed away from it for a long time for obvious reasons. It's called what's Good for the Goose. And yeah, it's pretty good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And apparently people are pissed off at him because it's like he definitely comes out pretty strongly anti Trump, but says, you know, basically it's everybody's fault so far.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So, yeah, it's a good listen, I've missed it. You know, I. I've always enjoyed his Common Sense podcast More than the history ones, depending on subject, of course. So it's good to have him back. But judging from the blowback, he may not do it again, ever, if we don't have another election.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, come on, Dan. Come on, Dan. If we can do it, you can.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, TechCrunch is even doing it. Get out there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Come on. Come on, dan.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And an AI related news to media candy. On May 9, AMC Theaters will start showing a sci fi movie that was shot in Swedish, but will make it look like it was made in English instead. It's called Watch the Skies, and it was released in its home country as ufo. Sweden had undergone visual dubbing with the help of artificial intelligence. A company called Flawless, that's the opposite of nominative determinism, used its technology to digitally alter the film's images, making the actors look like they were truly speaking in English as opposed to having dubs or just, you know, being dubbed over and not changing their lips or how they move. So they say it worked out pretty well, but. And that they say that this is also compliant with the rules set by SAG AFTRA era. So we'll see. But I got a little bit of news for you. Flawless AI and the sweet AMC theaters. People that won't go see a dubbed film aren't gonna go see this either.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Since it's with the actual actors, though, it might be different.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It could be, but, yeah, we'll see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's always the problem. But, you know, the. The interesting thing is, it's like, you know, how good is their English? So I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, they probably used AI for that, so a lot of things are wrong.

[Jason DeFilippo]

True.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We'll see. Well, I won't see because I'm not gonna go see the movie. We got a double barrel helping of Daredevil this week. Did you watch both episodes?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of course I did.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. They were great. I really like the first one, the standalone. I. I love. I. I think they need more of those. It was great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I kind of went back to the old school, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it was good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Some good stuff. I watched a show on Amazon called For the Win, mostly because I was in there trying to figure out when the next Wheel of Time episode came out, and then this got shoved up to me because I love my sports documentaries. So this is for the Win. This is about the National Women's Soccer league, and it was a lot of fun if you're into soccer and the league. It was a good, well done documentary, so really enjoyed it. And speaking of Other things that I'm using to distract myself from the collapse of Western society. Baseball's back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

126 games or 162 games or something like that. I may just follow another team so that there's all else I can fit into my day. And that's all I'm gonna do, is watch baseball while the world collapses.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, okay. And the Dodgers, by the way, they're going to the White House.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. What are you gonna do? I'm not gonna watch that, but I'll watch their game.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Okay. There's a. There's a lot of discontent around LA when people heard that. They're like, what the man we love you guys. Don't do that. So this week on Netflix, I watched Adolescence. Oh my God. Did you watch it yet?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I cannot bring myself to do it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You have to. You got a kiss. You have to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know, I know, I know. I'm gonna have to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So basically what adolescence is, if you don't know about it. It's a four part series from the uk. It's not based on a true story, but it's. It's based on events that happened around the UK with young boys being involved in a bunch of knife crimes. It stars Stephen Graham as the dad and Owen cooper as the 13 year old kid. It's a kind of a murder show, murder mystery, whodunit type of thing. This was Owen Cooper's first role and the kid is phenomenal. The thing about the show is they're all, all four episodes are about an hour long and they're all in one take. And it's not that fake one take shit where they kind of, you know, flash around the thing. They literally are in one take. There was a thing that Netflix put out that showed on like they did five days of filming for each episode and what take it was because they could only do like, you know, one or two takes a day. I think they were scheduled to do two takes a day, but if something screwed up like early, they could, they had to redo it. And it's, it's incredibly shot. It is incredibly hard to watch. I watched it over two nights and I'm still thinking about it. I actually might go back and watch it again. Right. It is powerful and extraordinarily well done. And Stephen Graham should get every, actually every actor in this show should get every award. It's amazing that they did all of this in real time. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. What's also phenomenal though is the Residents, which is a screwball whodunit set in the upstairs, downstairs, and backstairs of the White House among the journalists to the chat. Exactly. It's got Uzo Duba from Orange is the New Black. She was Crazy Eyes. Remember her? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was going to have Andre Brower as the head usher of the White House, but unfortunately he died halfway through filming. So they recast it to Giancarlo Esposito, the Chicken Man. This was an amazing show. It is eight episodes and it is so good from start to finish. It is jam packed with just entertainment. It is. The visual effects are incredible. Everything about the White House is picture perfect. If you did not know what the layout of the White House was, you definitely will by the end of this because they go into great detail, great visual detail and great storytelling detail about every nuance of the White House. It is so cool and it is a great whodunit. Jason Lee is in it and I love Jason Lee. Old school skateboarder, so I got to throw out props for him. We were just riveted by this show. If you want this. The Residence is the antidote for adolescence.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How's that?

[Jason DeFilippo]

It really is. It's really good. And I did. I saw this news come through and it kind of got me on a tangent. In an ironic twist, the director of the Pirate Bay documentary TPB afk is using copyright takedowns to yank his own film off of YouTube. Simon Close, who released the doc for free in 2013 under a creative Commons license, basically is telling folks, share it, just don't make money off it. And he's now issuing takedowns through his company, Nonamidocs. And even the official upload is gone from YouTube. And he's taking it down because he now sees YouTube as a radicalizing platform full of hate and doesn't want his work associated with it anymore. And he's fine with people still torrenting it, just not watching it on Google's playground. And that's how I got it. I torrented it. I went to Sweden and torrent it. I haven't watched it yet, but I've got it. Okay, I'll let you know how it is because I have added a My Summer of Discontent hacker documentary watch list to the show. Notes. Okay, there are. Let's see here. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 10 movies here. 10 movies about hacking and hackers that I think everybody should watch. Some I agree with, some I don't. That's why it's a good list. It gives you a different different take around the world. A lot of these are for free. The only one, really, that you can't get for free. There's two. There's the great hack on Netflix and Kill Chain. The cyber war on Americans elections is on Max. But the rest of these, I was amazed. You can find most of these on Tubi or YouTube. So. All right, go check out the link and because we have. Thank you. Thank you. I put some time into that one. I thought it was a pretty good list. Yeah, some good. Some good shit in there, I say. I think. And if you guys have any additions you want me to add to it, drop me a note on the discord in our media channel. In our. At the. What the fuck is that? We're at the media. No media candy. My brain is fried. My brain is fried. Because this week I watched Severance. All of season two. Well, first I rewatched season one for last week. Then I watched season two this week. I'd already started to watch season two, and I panned it, which is what started this whole fucking shitstorm. And last night I fell asleep reading the pilot, like the script for the pilot episode that never aired. I found. I. I found a bit of. What is this extra stuff that they made called the Lexington Letter that helped build out the. The world? There's the Luminal Luma and there's the Lumon Terminal Pro that they put up on the Apple website that you can go look at that you can't buy. I have spent my week in severance.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just wanted to point out something for all of our listeners who are probably aware of this, and I do point this out about you every now and then, Jason, whenever you say you are not going to do something, like, you came out and you said, I will not watch Severance.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Within. Within a month, you have changed course and you have consumed all media related to it whatsoever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've seen interviews with the director. I have. I have this. I have this quirk, Brian. I have the right amount of childhood trauma and alcoholism that make me not ever want to be wrong. So I will go to any lengths imaginable to prove my fucking point.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, okay, so just to kind of put it in a nutshell here, now that you have consumed all possible media related to severance. Here's the simple question. Do you like it?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm very angry that I'm.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Doodads. Let's go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, no, no. I want to. I have some points here that I have to make, and this is. These are spoiler Alerts. So if you are one of the four people who are going to watch Severance or Severance Season two that haven't yet, that have given me shit for it, then feel free to fast forward to absent doodads. But I have a few things here to point out, Brian, that, that back up some of the points that we made saying that this is a black box show, that they don't know what the fuck they're doing and we're never going to have the answers. So from the creator. This is from an interview with the creator. He says, so there are some things on the show that are like that and we intentionally will never explore because it's fun to have questions. Okay. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's fun to not wrap up interesting plot points. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But I also completely understand people wanting answers, especially to the questions that we pointed at specifically, like where we are like, hey, look at this. And to me, if we're pointing at something and saying, look at this, then we don't explain it. That one's on us. Doesn't say they're going to explain it, Brian. It just says that one's on us. Okay. Yeah. So he has come out publicly after season two and said, yeah, there's a lot of this show that we're not going to explain, which means they're making shit up just to make shit up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We'd like to leave it open for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Your interpretation now what they did with the fucking goats that I said from season one. I'm like, that goat Lost polar bear. They actually did more on this show than they'd ever did with the polar bear and Lost. Okay. They tacked on a new storyline with the goats that they are sacrifices to the crazy founder here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Because the show sounds horrible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is so horrible. They literally try and kill the goats. There's a. They have the, the little gun with the slug thing. Everything. There's a whole. Leads to a battle at the end of season two. There's. There's fist fights and murder and all sorts of crazy. This. This thing was never meant to be this long. I'm gonna tell you right now. I think I. I wanted to say it last week, but this should have been a hundred, like a 100 page short story, end of story. It would have been great. And trying to think that there is some grand mystical scheme behind the, behind the curtain with, you know, this whole mythology that they've built up to build more episodes is absolute bullshit. The guy really was, when he came up with the idea for the show was like, I hate My job. I wish I could just check out for eight hours. Now we've got this entire world with goat sacrifices, all sorts of shit, $20 million episodes that there are times where there are minutes with no dialogue. Then you go back and look at the Residence, which has more story per minute than this has per episode. And it pisses me off. It just pisses me off. So I think, I think Ben Stiller came along and got a hold of this show and got it into Apple and said, yeah, we're going to make this great show. It's going to be fantastic. And it did. Okay. And, and I just think that he bulked it up with his just crazy ass mind and turned it into this just ungodly mess of a show. You can watch it. I give it a B minus and that is being generous. But yeah, no, I literally have about a thousand words that I wrote out the other night that I was going to go off on, which I'm not going to because I think I've said enough.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So please, I'm, I'm thrilled to hear it. I'm sure many of our listeners won't be. And I'm sticking by my original statement, which is I will watch the show upon its conclusion. Conclusion. And I'm told by people that loved the show and liked it or even didn't care for too much for it, but watched it all the way through that they at least stuck the landing. But you're basically telling me that the creator said we're not going to stick a landing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of questions that we're not going to answer. And even the fans on Reddit say season two, the writing sucks. So I even have a link. I got to put that link in the show notes so I can, I have proof. I have proof. I do have links to everything I talked about in the show notes already along with the, the, the original pilot, the Lexington letter, the Terminal Pro, and the, the backlash on, on Reddit. So I'm not alone. So I can, I can, I could. Well, I'm still not gonna sleep at night. Who the am I kidding? Now I don't have anything to do while I'm worrying about the end of the world. Brian. Absent doodads. Let's go apps and doodads.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I found a gadget that I actually think would be very useful for me for the past few years. Flying. You know, I, I like to watch my movies now that my kid's old enough and he does what he's doing. Playing Nintendo or whatever. So I actually get to watch a movie while I'm flying these days rather than paying attention to him. Unfortunately, you know, most airlines have not caught up with Bluetooth. And I have my AirPods and I love them and I like to use them for everything. But I keep an old school pair of headphones in my bag, my travel bag at all times so I can watch my movies. And you know, it's got the plug and I plug it right in just like we did back in 1973.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do you bring a pencil to rewind the tape when it gets stuck?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, do that too. But there's something called the air. Well, there's a lot of these gadgets out there. I just never thought to do it. And I saw this article and I'm like, oh, I have have to order this now. There was a gadget called the Airfly Pro and they've now come out with version 2. And all it is is just a little gadget that you plug into any standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack like they've got on every airplane. And it connects to your Bluetooth device and plays the audio through it. Now obviously I'm thinking airplanes, but this is great for treadmills and gyms or anything like that, or any old school stuff that you still happen to have around what you, you probably don't. So they came out with the AirFly Pro 2, which they're saying offers improved sound quality thanks to the Qualcomm audio processor. It's optimized sound quality and latency. Making movies, music and games sound even better. Helps reduce background noise. There's a dedicated volume control button right on the dongle itself, which is nice. And it offers multi point connectivity so two people can stream audio simultaneously. Not useful on the plane unless you're planning on having your partner lean over.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Is the image that they have in the top as she's leaning into his space?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. It's so dumb. Yeah, whatever. So it's about 60 bucks right now. The first one was 55 bucks. I may just buy the first one and save myself five bucks because how good could it possibly, how much better could it possibly be? And it's on an airplane anyways.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, you know, they, they actually say one of the things that made me think probably the second one is better. I'm like, what's the latency like? Because Bluetooth can have a little bit of a lag, so you don't want it to be out of sync. So if they said they improved the latency that means that there was a problem with the latency. So I would probably.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's a good point, actually. Fair.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, so I'll be spending the 60 bucks on the new one, which will probably end up paying for itself over the long run because my, my actual headphones always get like ripped up and shredded over the course of a year or two. So I have to buy another one. And they're like 40 bucks from Apple, so I.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The only pair of wired headphones I have left are the Sennheisers, the glorious Sennheisers that we both.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't want to take those on the plane.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So those are. Yeah, those. Those are kept in, in a climate controlled room because you cannot get those anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And Napster was just purchased for $207 million from a company called Infinite Reality. And why.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, explain to me, Brian, why?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't really know. Napster has just been kind of out there being a third tier streaming service for quite some time right now. They've got all the music, just like Spotify or Apple Music or any of the other bigger ones that are out there. In fact, they have more music. But Infinite Realities wants to pivot it. They want to take the streaming platform and make a social music platform that prioritizes active fan engagement with a focus on giving artists a platform they can use to connect with listeners and of course, make more money for them. AKA MySpace.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Call me when we get to LiveJournal. When we've regressed a LiveJournal, call me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And even better than that, moving beyond that stupid concept, they plan on Creating virtual 3D spaces for music fans to attend concerts and listening parties.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know that thing that they've tried multiple times and no one gives an absolute fuck about?

[Jason DeFilippo]

They've never listened to this show. Brian, I can tell you, no one at Infinite Reality has, has ever heard an episode of our show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know when 3D spaces for music had the biggest push? It was of course during COVID because you couldn't go see a concert. And it never worked, not once. Nobody cares. It's not profitable. People don't want to go to them and people don't give a shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I mean, Brian, have they never heard of the Palace?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. Yeah, this stuff has been around. And even better. Even better, Jason, guess what else they rolled out as an example of what they want to do?

[Jason DeFilippo]

What?

[Brian Schulmeister]

As an example, he described a reggae artist who might enjoy a virtual beach environment. He adds, it'll be like Clubhouse times a trillion. Yes, Clubhouse Also did so well, didn't it?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. How are they doing nowadays?

[Brian Schulmeister]

My God, the entire business model is based on defunct things that didn't work.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's based on failure. Yeah, let's start a business, Brian, and base it on failure. Oh, we did. We have a podcast. Shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, that's true. We kind of did that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I guess. Pot kettle black on that one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

To be fair, we never intended this to be a business model and it definitely turned out not to be.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Turned out not to be. That's right. That's right. Big hat tip over to Jansou on Discord. He sent the Consent O Matic, which is a browser extension that recognizes Consent o management provider pop ups. Those little annoying ones that have gotten. They're getting worse. They're everywhere now that have become ubiquitous on the web and automatically fills them out based on your preferences. If your preference is fuck off, which mine is, then hopefully it will go away. Even if you meet a dark pattern design, sometimes a website might not use standard categories and in that case Consent O Matic will always try to submit the most privacy preserving settings. So it's a free chrome add on or chrome extension.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We've had a few of these around for a while. It's been a long time since I've had one installed, but I definitely agree they're getting more and more annoying everywhere. So I have installed this. It works perfectly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. The whole concept of consent management provider at the library. I got a short story from John Scalzi this week called the President's brain is missing. No, it's not nonfiction like the rest of the news we have to read. It's a very cute short story and it was well worth the dollar that I paid for it. It is narrated by PJ Ocklen over on Audible, which is where I get all my John Scalzi books. His new book is out and it's called when the moon hits your eye. It's another long novel, so this one is unfortunately narrated by Will Wheaton. Not looking forward to that. But I do like his book so I'll let you know the last book that he'd had. What was that one called again?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Starter villain.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Starter Villain, yes. Good book, good book. Hopefully this will be just as good. Unfortunately, it's read by Will fucking Wheaton and why, why am I saying Will fucking Wheaton? Because I got picks and shovels by Cory Doctorow, which is a Martin hench novel, one of his new series, also narrated by Will fucking Wheaton. And I had to put it down Because Will, his acting is so over the top in this one that it was pissing me off. It was.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, I'd rather have Will readon reading books than doing that stupid Real Housewives of Beverly Hills wrap ups for Star Trek shows.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, he can do those because I don't watch those. I'm forced to listen to these books because I want to. I'm forced because I want to. But I had to put it down and I went back to a classic, Brian. I went back to Demon by Daniel Suarez.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I didn't even realize that book. The beginning of that book takes place in Woodland Hills, California, where I'm on a walk listening to the book, which was kind of. Kind of odd. But that book does not age well as far as the technology goes, because it's an older book, but the concept still stands. It is still a good read. I still think Daniel Suarez may have peaked at book one, but it's well worth going back to. But I had to put that one down too. And I actually got a Kindle book that I have to read with my eyeballs called Blueprint for Revolution. How to use Rice Pudding, Lego Men and other Nonviolent techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow dictators, or Simply Change the world by Sergei Popovich. This is one of the guys that was behind the Milosevic revolution and takedown of that. It's actually a really serious book, even though it's how to basically do a revolution based on humor and nonviolence. And I'm about a third of the way through it and yeah, beat them with memes. Kinda. Kinda. It's. It's kind of a no joke book. I kind of recommend picking it up nowadays because the more ideas that we can have to throw gum in the works or gummy bears in the works even is. Yeah, we kind of, kind of need those in our quiver.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Agreed. And I am actually working through a book that was recommended by listeners on our Discord. So hopefully by next week I should be done.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Closing shout out over at Patreon, we've got nobody new, but Jody and Josh have upped their pledge. So you are rock stars. And from the archives we've got Philip, Francesco, Kietri, Kaitare, Qatari. I. I did research last time, so. Damn it, Qatari, Michael, Don, Jennifer, Michaela, Holly, and hot wings for the win. So thank you all very much. And just a reminder, everyone, Patreon keeps this show alive. You can sign up for as little as $3 a month over at patreon.com gog you get the show a little bit early and ad free and in high definition. So please help us out. And if you do the whole year, you even get a discount. But you can do $3 or up to a million. We'll take it all, but we would like something, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And over at PayPal, we've got online computer Jens, Charlie, David, and Darla, who gave us a big old 50 bucks. Thank you so much. Hopefully American, because if that's Canadian, that's about $10 with this trade war going on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No doubt. And over at the tip jar, Thomas P. Gave us another 50 bucks and says, hey, grumps. In recognition of your 13 years of macro stupidity on the Internet refinement, Lumen management has authorized me to donate $50 to keep you doing this mysterious and important work. Signed audience member number three out of five. You know, the one who likes severance. And you too. Thank you very much, Thomas.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And also from Jennifer, Tony, and Adam. So thank you very much, everybody.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Alrighty. We have a new five star review. You have not lost this listener more than once. I've been remiss in properly supporting the podcast until it hit me. You provide the extremely valuable service of being able to say to my husband, I told you so. So that's 50 bucks well spent. Might want to save that for marriage counseling. And you're both right. Severance is a slog. It fell flat for me. Even though the premise was interesting, others I know loved it. However, having said that, Apple does a decent job of focusing their content to specifically target the audience they are trying to reach. Obviously, they were not after my eyes this time. Thanks for keeping on keeping on. Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you very much. And we got some listener feedback this morning that just made my. Made my heart warm. Dugite Code writes in. Years ago, I complained about the amount of politics in your show. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize. You were right. I was exhausted and wrong. Love the show as always. Well, thank you so much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you. And finally, before we go, I would like to announce the official death of semantics, I. E. Meaning and language. We still have language, obviously, but words no longer have any meaning whatsoever because Kiss have officially confirmed their first performances since retiring from touring.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Great. Apparently that money has run out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I guess so. So, yep, this is our big last final tour. We spend the 700 on tickets and we're back two years later. That's just great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I never liked Kiss Me Ever. Now I like them even less. If that's possible. Until next time, I'm Jason Defilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 690 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, pros and everyone in between. Or maybe even people at Lumon. We'll love you for it. Swing by giving GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Ideas on why we're wrong about severance yet again? Hit us up at GOG Show Contact and don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG Show GOG show review and we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got. Merch Snag your grumpy gear [e-mail] show. Stay grumpy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

God damn you all to hell.

[Brian Schulmeister]

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[Jason DeFilippo]

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