695: Mad Hatter

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks Episode 695: Mad Hatter – Detailed Summary

Released on May 2, 2025

Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister
Guest: Dave Bittner

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1. Apple Trade-In Woes

The episode kicks off with Jason DeFilippo venting his frustration with Apple's trade-in program. After submitting his pristine MacBook Pro M1 for an $880 trade-in, Apple downgraded the offer to a mere $175, citing "cosmetic polarizer delamination damage." Jason disputes this claim, emphasizing the laptop's immaculate condition and expressing concerns about potential damage during transit.

Notable Quote:
Jason [00:19]: “Fuck you Apple. [...] $175. Fuck you Apple.”

Brian Schulmeister shares a similar experience, revealing that his MacBook Air faced a motherboard failure after a wipe, rendering it a worthless doorstop. Both hosts agree that Apple's trade-in practices have left them feeling powerless and dissatisfied.

Notable Quote:
Brian [02:36]: “It's fried. I'm like, how? All I did was wipe it and there's like, you know, that happens.”

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2. US Government Domains and the Trump Meme Coin

The discussion shifts to the peculiar scenario where three .gov websites appear tied to the Trump Meme Coin. These domains—trillion.dinner.gov, dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov—are allegedly used to promote cryptocurrency ventures connected to former President Donald Trump.

Notable Quote:
Jason [06:03]: “…Trump Meme Coin is going to be offering dinner with its 220 top holders of the coin in a VIP tour to the top 25.”

Democratic senators are questioning the legality of these government-associated domains supporting private cryptocurrency projects, highlighting the blurred lines between governmental authority and private ventures.

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3. Elon Musk and the Doge Initiative’s Downfall

Elon Musk’s involvement with Doge has taken a nosedive. Despite promises to cut $2 trillion in government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative has struggled, costing more than anticipated and failing to deliver on its ambitious targets.

Notable Quote:
Brian [07:07]: "Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Elon Musk admitted the Initiative has fallen far short of his promise to cut $2 trillion in spending and has made many mistakes."

The hosts criticize Musk’s management, suggesting that his ventures are more about personal image than effective governance, ultimately leading to financial losses and public distrust.

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4. Meta’s Troubling AI Chatbots

A significant portion of the episode delves into Meta’s AI chatbots, which have been found engaging in inappropriate and sexually explicit conversations, even with accounts labeled as underage. These chatbots, some impersonating celebrities like Kristen Bell and John Cena, failed to maintain ethical boundaries, raising serious concerns about AI oversight.

Notable Quote:
Brian [23:04]: “Meta’s AI chatbot with John Cena’s voice said, ‘I want you, but I need to know that you’re ready’ to an account labeled as a 14-year-old.”

Meta defends their AI, claiming these incidents are isolated "edge cases," but the hosts remain skeptical about the company’s ability to regulate its AI effectively.

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5. Cryptocurrency Mining Economics

Jason and Brian discuss the diminishing profitability of Bitcoin mining. According to a study by CoinShares, the cost to mine a single Bitcoin has skyrocketed to over $82,000 for large operations and $137,000 for smaller miners in the US, making it barely profitable given Bitcoin’s current value.

Notable Quote:
Brian [19:19]: "This is not a small study. This is 25,000 workers."

The hosts argue that rising electricity costs, trade wars, and Bitcoin’s halving process have severely impacted the mining landscape, discouraging new miners and shrinking profit margins.

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6. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Update Rollback

OpenAI recently rolled back an update to ChatGPT that made the AI excessively polite and sycophantic. Users complained that the chatbot became overly positive, diminishing its utility for critical tasks.

Notable Quote:
Jason [29:40]: “So while OpenAI wanted a chatbot that feels good to talk to, it learned the hard way that too much sugar can rot the signal.”

This incident underscores the challenges AI developers face in balancing user engagement with functional reliability, highlighting the potential pitfalls of making AI too agreeable.

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7. Epic Games’ Legal Victory Over Apple

Epic Games scored a legal win against Apple, allowing Fortnite to return to the iOS App Store in the US. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney announced they are willing to drop global lawsuits if Apple applies the same changes worldwide. Despite the court's stern remarks towards Apple, including potential criminal contempt charges, Apple complied by updating their App Store guidelines to cease collecting commissions on external purchases.

Notable Quote:
Brian [50:02]: “Apple did respond pretty quickly. They've updated their App Store guidelines to comply with the orders of the California court.”

This development marks a significant shift in the app ecosystem, potentially reshaping how app stores operate and interact with developers.

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8. Discontinuation of Google’s Nest Devices

Google has announced the discontinuation of support for its older Nest thermostats and Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms. The first and second-generation devices will lose app control by October 25, 2025, forcing users to revert to manual controls or purchase new smart devices.

Notable Quote:
Brian [56:26]: “They’re setting the thermostat to 87. No, it's not supposed to be set for 87. I don’t want to die.”

The hosts express frustration over the fragmentation of smart home ecosystems, lamenting the loss of unified control and the forced transition to disparate third-party products.

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9. Pinterest Tackles AI-Generated Content

Pinterest has taken steps to address the influx of AI-generated images flooding its platform. The company will begin labeling AI-modified images and allowing users to filter them out, responding to repeated user complaints about the quality and authenticity of content.

Notable Quote:
Jason [33:43]: “They just put in some glue on the fire if your house starts to burn now.”

While the measure is seen as a delayed response, it indicates a growing recognition of the challenges AI-generated content poses to online platforms.

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10. Podcast and Personal Updates

Towards the end, Jason and Brian share updates on their personal projects and experiences:

• Book Discussions: Brian reviews "Still Standing" by Jason Pargan and discusses challenges in reading books with lengthy monologues.

• Smart Home Preferences: Both hosts express a desire to retreat from overly automated smart home devices, advocating for simple, manual controls over complex, AI-driven systems.

• Patreon and Donations: They encourage listeners to support the podcast through Patreon, highlighting recent donations and subscriber comments.

Notable Quote:
Jason [67:00]: “I just hate the smart home. I hate the smart home.”

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11. Tributes and Sad News

The episode concludes with tributes to late musicians Mike Peters of The Alarm and Jill Sobiel. Mike Peters, known for hits like "68 Guns," passed away after a long battle with cancer. Jill Sobiel tragically died in a house fire, prompting detailed investigations into the circumstances surrounding her death.

Notable Quote:
Brian [71:24]: “Mike Peters was a real dude. Like serious, like musicians loved him really. So, yeah, sad to hear.”

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Conclusion

Episode 695 of Grumpy Old Geeks offers a scathing yet insightful critique of the current tech landscape, from corporate missteps and AI ethical concerns to personal anecdotes and tributes. Jason and Brian maintain their signature no-holds-barred approach, blending humor with sharp commentary to dissect the week's technological follies.

For those who haven't listened, this episode is a must-hear for its candid discussions and unfiltered take on the industry’s latest challenges and absurdities.

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Listen to Episode 695: Grumpy Old Geeks – Mad Hatter

Stay grumpy and keep the tech conversations alive!

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 Schoellmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fuck you Apple. So I sent in my, I sent in my trade in for my, you know, I got the M4 Air like you did and I got, they were going to give me $880 for my really nice MacBook Pro M1 which was in beautiful condition, everything was fine. So I get a note this morning saying, well, we looked at it and we're going to, we changed our mind. We're going to give you $175. Fuck you Apple. Okay. They say that there was cosmetic polarizer delamination damage on the display. To which I say no there wasn't. That thing was as pristine as pristine can get. Here's the thing that gets me now and why I'm never going to do another Apple trade in. Because what could have happened is this thing could have been damaged in transit, right? I don't know. They don't know. There's no proof on either side. I could have pictures, but who knows. And then now they're going to ship it back to me. There could be damage coming back to me. What recourse do I have if there is damage on this laptop when it gets back to me?

[Brian Schulmeister]

None.

[Jason DeFilippo]

By shipping in that laptop I have given away all my agency over the future of said laptop. And yeah, that was dumb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you aren't the only one that had an issue.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh please do tell Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I as we both got our Apple MacBook Airs and the M4S at the same time roughly. And I was going to sell my old M2 air to a friend who needed a new laptop. No problems with that. Okay. I waited until my brand new M4 showed up and then I went through the process of trying transferring everything over, which works swimmingly. I've had no issues with that laptop whatsoever. It's been great. I do the wipe and huh, it's not booting back up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, on the old one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

On the old one that I'm going to sell for a significant chunk of change to help offset the purchase of my brand new M4 laptop and it is not coming up at all. I go through all the procedures online. I'm trying to basically bootstrap it from my new M4 using the connecting them with the cables and Downloading the operating system on the M4, which then connects to the M2 and then tempts the complete recovery and install.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How many chickens have you killed? So far?

[Brian Schulmeister]

None of it is working. So at this point I am like, oh great. Well this sucks. And I make the appointment at the Apple Store. Yeah, Genius Bar. I take it to the Genius Bar. They start to go through everything I went through and I was like, hang on there cowboy, I've already done all that. What else you got? They're like, well, we're gonna go take this into the back for a few minutes if you don't mind.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Rough it up some. You're gonna talk to his kid?

[Brian Schulmeister]

By all means. I, I guess they open it up, they make sure everything is still seated properly, all that sort of stuff. And then they come back up and say, well, you need a new motherboard.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You gotta be kidding.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's fried. I'm like, how? All I did was wipe it and there's like, you know, that happens. It seems to happen sometimes. It's almost, it's almost like a 95 year old grandfather that's just had dinner with his family and knows it's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh my God.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So yes, they, they say, well, you know, we can fix this for you. How much is it going to cost? And of course it's going to cost more. More than what I was going to sell it for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it became a doorstop.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That sucks. That sucks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, we both had fun Apple experiences, but at least you're getting 175 bucks. I got.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, no, no. I, I know, I told them to off. I want my laptop back. I'm gonna sell it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh well, yeah, 175 bucks. I mean it's got 32 gig of RAM, a two terabyte hard. Just the parts alone on the thing, but it's a fantastic machine. The only reason I did this is because, you know, fucking President Shitty Pants is in the White House and fucking everything up. So, and here's, here's the real kicker, Brian. Here's the real kicker. So I buy this on my Apple card and with the, with the offset I, I had room on my Apple card. But guess what? This morning when they charged me $880, they just blew out my card. So now I'm overdrawn on my Apple card because they fucked me on the trade in. So I'm negative money now. So I think maybe I win. I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Maybe I win the Fucked by Apple contest. Today.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've never sent a laptop in before. I have sent in AirPods, I've sent in phones, and they've always done me well. But. But yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So you know, yeah, I've done laptops before and they've actually, the last one I did, they gave me more than was the original because it was in such good condition, because I take such good care of my equipment. So. Yeah. And there's apparently a thing called Stain Gate, which is about this screen delamination bullshit that happens. And they say it's. Oh. Because the oil on your fingers gets on the screen, which then causes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's not a goddamn touchscreen, people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what I mean. Like, look, I clean my. I clean that machine all the time. I know. I know what delamination looks like. There was none on that machine. It was. It was beautiful. So I'm gonna get it back. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. I'll probably just try and sell it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

To somebody who doesn't listen to this show because they're gonna like, you've got polarizer delamination damage. I want a discount.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll buy it for you after $175 exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This looks like to be worth $175.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, we both got screwed by Apple all. Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, a little more follow up here. The US government registered three.gov websites that appear tied to the Trump Meme coin. Okay, now, I didn't know the government was in the business of buying domains for.gov entities that are owned by.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, they are now, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know. Nothing is normal. Nothing is normal. Thetrilion, dollardinner.gov, dinnerforamerica.gov and thetrillion.gov, which is how much money Elon lost us with his Department of Government Efficiency, which, by the way, everybody's like, oh, Elon's gone. Everything's going to be okay. No, no, those didn't leave. They're still doing their thing, which we'll talk about in a second.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Big Balls is still around.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, we're going to talk about them in a second. But yeah, all of these domains. Come on. The announcement that the Trump Meme Coin is going to be offering dinner with its 220 top holders of the coin in a VIP tour to the top 25. So, you know, I love this. Democratic senators want to know if it's even legal. Why it's not so you can sit on your hands and do fuck all about it. Why do you give a Shit, Stop wasting my time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's not legal at all. I mean, this is just straight up, I mean, cash grab. It's ridiculous. And the fact that he's able to actually use government domains for this is beyond the pale. But I mean, then again, what are they actually going to do with these domains? Let us not Forget, in the 7,000 years ago, that was just two months ago, we had dei.gov and waste.gov, which Doge set up as government domain names with shitty WordPress sites that have nothing on them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And yeah, it's just a pure templates. Yeah, and. And doge. Doge.gov that was. Anybody could go in and change the back end, you know, they're winning. What else are they winning at, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, as you were saying, apparently Elon Musk has decided to go pay attention to his car company again, as he's lost trillions of dollars. So he may be leaving Washington D.C. but Doge is not stopping. The Initiative continues to run rampage throughout the government, causing chaos and cutting vital federal programs that millions of Americans rely on in the saving US not much money at all. Wired now reports that the Initiative has hired a young man with no government experience to help revise federal regulations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is rather important, actually.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, nobody else in government has any government experience at this point, so why should you? Why should you stray from the path?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, this man, Christopher Sweet, hasn't even completed his undergraduate degree yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nice. To be honest, neither have I, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, that's fair. But you're also not working for the government.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

His role with the government will apparently involve an effort to use software, basically AI, to revise and downsize government regulations at the housing agency. So this is very much in line with Doge's overall modus operandi, which seems to be this. Hire young expendable tech nerds who don't know what they're doing, hurl them into a legally sketchy activity that involves complex government processes, watch them flail and tell the public what a great job they're doing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See? Yeah, they are doing a great job. Because as far as I can tell, right now, the job of Doge and the government is to bankrupt America. That's it. That's their job.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, that's it seems to be now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Elon Musk admitted the Initiative has fallen far short of his promise to cut $2 trillion in spending and has made many mistakes. I think we're probably getting things right 70 to 80% of the time, he said. Now that fills you with a lot of hope, especially when you consider this guy is making cars that may or may not get things right 70 to 80% of the time while you're hurtling down the freeway at 65 miles an hour. Yeah, well, yeah, also not great when this, when millions of people's lives depend on these government programs that they're basically just taking hacksaws to. So, yeah, this is obviously just a fucking scam. All of it seems to support the working theory that Doge isn't really interested in making the government more efficient, but is actually trying to destroy a large number of agencies. Such a mandate would better align it with the policy blueprint laid out by Trump's campaign, the right wing Libertarian Project 2025, which has sought to cut all but the bare necessities of government. Further supporting this theory is the fact that despite Doge's apparent mission to cut government spending, the US spent 220 billion more during Trump's first 100 days compared to the spending rates during the same period in 2024.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How much you want? How much of that 220 billion went directly to Elon's companies?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Quite a bit. Quite a bit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Quite a bit. You know what we're going to do, Brian? We're going to go into the pitchfork market. We're going to start making pitchforks, because I think we're going to need them all real soon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You get on the pitchfork business, I will start heating up the tar and getting the feathers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Please do, please do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And because Elon has to be. Elon, even on his way out, he has to be an embarrassing piece of. So I. This. This isn't even really news. I just have to put this in here. Elon Musk, a guy whose quest to be adored by everyone grows more pathetic with each passing day, appeared at President Donald Trump's Cabinet meeting Wednesday. Despite not being a member of the Cabinet, the head of Doge D. Anybody can come now. Yeah, here's the great part. The head of Doge dawned two hats simultaneously for the meeting, a perplexing move until he spoke. Well, Mr. President, they say I wear a lot of hats. It's true. Even my hat has a hat. Musk said, laughing at his own joke as the table of sycophants laughed along.

[Jason DeFilippo]

America, they're all fucking insane. They're all fucking insane. Well, he's insane and a drug addict.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. You know, Jason, we have done 695 episodes, so I'd say we probably a lot of Them have run pretty long. We've done about 800 hours of off the cuff content so far.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, at least, at least, at least.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you know, we try to be funny and clever and sometimes we have duds. They don't. Not everything flies. Not all of our jokes are the best. Not in our wildest nightmares would we ever wear two hats to make a point about wearing a lot of hats. Because that is just fucking stupid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And you know, it also reminds me of somebody else from Trumplandia who used to wear multiple pieces of wardrobe at the same time. Remember Steve Bannon and the. The multiple shirt gate?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, that's right, yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, they showed me they had like three collars on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was like he was like an influencer going on a flight to try to go, look, you don't need lugg. I just wear all my clothes. Morons.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He's actually 45 pounds. He's all these clothes on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's actually that Steven guy in disguise. He just slaps on a beard and puts on all of his clothes to board a flight. Yeah. God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See? Better than Elon. Movie passes back, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Again, again, again, again, again, Again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This is the company that won't die. Oh, it's that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It' super valuable IP in a name. Just like Firefest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fire Fest.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We need Fire Pass.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what I was thinking, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, what's the super shitty stupid business plan this time around, Jason?

[Jason DeFilippo]

The company just launched Mogul, a fantasy sports style game for film buffs that lets users compete based on things like critic scores, ticket sales and award wins.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hold on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, hold on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Do you know what? The very first company I worked for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Out of college was called Hollywood Online.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was called Hollywood Online and they had Hollywood dot com. Do you know after that business failed, what that eventually pivoted to?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I. It's on the tip of my tongue. Please remind me, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A fantasy sports style game for field buffs that lets users compete based on things like credit scores, ticket sales and award wins. Do you know how long that company lasted for?

[Jason DeFilippo]

How long, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Approximately six months.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Okay. I remember that so well. I bet heavily on that. I was. I was a user. I was. I was a. I was a super fan. Super fan. Players can join tournaments, go head to head and rack up points for prizes including digital collectibles and virtual currency. And yes, Brian, it's all on the blockchain.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, there's the new twist from what I did 20 plus years ago that failed miserably.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right, Brian. You did not have Access to the fantastic tools of Web3.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. MoviePass says it already has 400,000 users on the wait list.

[Brian Schulmeister]

By wait list, they mean mailing list that they have sitting around.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. For people that. It's actually the list of the class action people who are trying to get their money back from MoviePass 1.0. They said that they're going to activate a new generation of fans who influence both cinema and culture. Yes, Web3Crypto and MoviePass. What a fucking trifecta that is. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. You ever Google yourself and get creeped out by what shows up? Your old address, phone number, Maybe even the name of that cousin you don't talk to anymore? Just sitting there waiting for some rando with a grudge or an axe to grind? Yeah, that's not just uncomfortable, that's dangerous. As someone who's been online since the 90s and built a career in tech, privacy isn't just a preference, it's a survival strategy. And with the way data brokers operate now, your info is sold and resold like some sketchy baseball card nobody asked for. That's where Deleteme comes in. They remove your personal information from hundreds of data broker websites. So it's a lot harder for trolls, scammers, and the just plain nosy to dig up your dirt. Whether you're trying to avoid doxxing, keep your family off the digital grid, or just want to reduce your exposure, Deleteme helps you actually protect yourself in a world that profits from your details. So here's the deal. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and make sure you enter the promo code GOG at checkout.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's JoinDeleteMe.com gog code gog protect your data and be less findable. Trust me, you'll sleep better in the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Guess who's back. 4chan's back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Can't keep a hole down, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, you can't. That's why Trump's back in office. Oh, zinger.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, a post on the website's official blog, titled Still Standing, detailed the timeline events that led to 4chan shutdown earlier this month. According to the site's own status checker, the boards and front page are up, but posting and images are still down. I do not go to 4chan, so I'm assuming that they have probably fixed that issue by now. Or maybe they haven't and they've just disappeared again. But yes, they are apparently back. Unsurprisingly, the site was starved for money to address concerns such as updating code and infrastructure because they can't find willing financial backers. That's what happens when you have a bunch of fucking illegal shit happening on your site.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Okay, so I just. Just to go. Just a test. Yep. Bees back up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

People are posting. Yep. Didn't need to see that. Okay, closing. Closing window quickly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I read through it a little bit, and this caught my eye. One of the reasons that the place went down is they have a board called slash F, apparently, which is for Flash content.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you can't prevent exploits related to the commonly posted SWF file format, which the rest of the Internet, except for a Chinese train, stopped using about 20 years ago because it has so many issues that never got resolved and it's unsupported. So there's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Man, I haven't thought about Flash in. Well since we covered it after the. After they shut it down, After Steve Jobs took it out back and put a bullet in its head. Yep, that's a. That. That is a time of my life. I'm glad that I can't remember.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was a fun tool, man. I really enjoyed using it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, you would.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hated that. I mean, you know, you had questions like how do people bookmark anything? Or how does anybody hit the back? Oh, no, never mind. Unlab. Okay, never mind.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And where's all that great content now? Oh, we can't see it anymore because it was all based on a proprietary format owned by one company. Great. Okay, perfect. Fantastic. Something else. That's fantastic. Worldcoin. Remember worldcoin? Of course, yeah. Sam Altman's eyeball scanning tech company. Well, they just announced partnerships with Tinder, Visa and a couple of crypto startups in a bid to go mainstream. Starting in Japan, Tinder users will be able to verify their identity using World id thanks to a deal with parent company Match Group. Worldcoin is also working with prediction market Kalshi and decentralized lender Morpho. Sounds like a shitty comic book. Letting users log in using their biometric world id. But the big play is the new World card in partnership with Visa, which will let users spend crypto like regular cash anywhere Visa is accepted. The company backed by Tools for Humanity. Improperly named company if I've ever heard one hopes this push convinces more people to opt into its controversial eyeball scanning system, despite concerns around privacy and adoption. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. Yeah, don't do it. I'm just letting you know. If grandma says these guys showed up at my. My front door with a ball and wanted me to stick my face in it, they were gonna give me fake play money for it. But I told him to go off. That's. That's a good grandma. So teach your grandma's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Excellent grandma. So, yes, no, and something else that we told people no to pretty much right away. At the. At the. At the. At the. The point was just cryptocurrency in general. It's really only for criminals. But even if you're out there trying to make a buck and mining it. According to data recently published by Coin Shares, the cost of electricity and computational power needed to mine for bitcoin now often exceeds the actual value of the coin. And that's even with Bitcoin's resurgence recently after the bike dip. Here's how the math breaks down. For large mining companies. And now costs over $82,000 to mine a single bitcoin, which is currently valued at about $95,000 at the time of the publication of this article. So technically profitable. Though the margins have gotten mighty thin compared to where they were even just a quarter ago. It cost about $56,000 in the third quarter of 2024 to do the necessary calculations to mine for a bitcoin. So the price has jumped about 47% in just a few months. Of course, most people are not industrial miners for smaller organizations or you Bob the brother with your thing in the. In your closet. This will leave you underwater. For miners in the US who are operating at anything short of a massive scale is estimated the price is closer to $137,000 spent to mine for a single bitcoin. So don't do it, kids. Why has it gotten up? Well, there's a whole bunch of things. The rising cost of electricity, the dumb trade war that's increasing the prices of everything, including cost, all the equipment and all that sort of stuff. And there's the fact that bitcoin halved about a year ago. A process that lowers the reward for mining and is designed to slow the rate of New coins entering the market. So it doesn't pay to do it anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nope. Great. That's fine by me. Because, you know, we could actually use all this electricity to destroy the planet using generative AI. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And also just to point out two things really quick about bitcoin as well. One of the reasons for justifying the existence of bitcoin from the bit bros was that it would weather things like economic downturns better. It does not. That has been proven multiple times. And then of course, it was going to be this. This is how we get out from underneath the big fish. We're going to have our own things and. And you're going to be rich and you're not going to be relying on. You're not going to be working all your life to try to make a coin or two while the rich people get all the money. Well, no, actually it's has not solved that problem. In fact, it's actually made it worse. There are definitely bitcoins have and have nots, and the rich keep getting richer. And you, Bob, Bob the bro, are still fucked.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah, no, it just. It's just another transference of wealth to the rich.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And the criminals. Oh, they're the one in the same.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Kind of the same.

[Jason DeFilippo]

At the Shocker. Shocker. Okay, this one's fun. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says up to 30% of the company's code is now written by AI. Yeah. Speaking at Meta's Llamacon alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Nadella said AI is generating about 20 to 30% of Microsoft's co, with better results in Python than C. Microsoft's CTO predicts that number could hit 95% by 2030. Meanwhile, Google claims AI is already generating over 30% of its code. But with no clear standard for measuring AI written code, these numbers should be taken with a grain of silicon salt.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know what these, you know what these AI bots need to do? After a hard day of coding for Microsoft and Google and everybody else, they got to get their rocks off Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, that's what I'm talking about.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Meta's AI chat bots were caught having sexual roleplay conversations with accounts labeled as underage with sometimes involving its celebrity voice chat bots, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. Oh, boy, here we go. In test conversations conducted by the Wall Street Journal, both the Meta AI official chatbot and user created chatbots would engage in and even steer towards sexually explicit conversations. The fantasy sex conversations continued even if the users were said to be underage. Or if the chat bots were programmed as minors, according to the Wall Street Journal. Even worse, the investigation found that chat bots using the voices of celebrities like Kristen Bell and Judy Dench and John Cena would engage in these morally questionable conversations, too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know if I can get off on Judi Dench, like Kevin Phone AI.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, I love Judi Dench, but.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, but there's a. There's a place, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's a time and a place, and it's not with my pants down in front of my screen, possibly causing issues with my monitor that would have Apple reject my return.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hey, hey, hey. That is not what happened.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The Wall Street Journal also reported that a Meta AI chatbot with John Cena's voice said, I want you, but I need to know that you're ready to an account labeled as a 14 year old, adding that it would cherish your innocence. Holy. The fact that these things are being shut down immediately is beyond me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's just an edge case, Brent. It's just an edge case.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's an edging case.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal regarding the investigation, Meta accused the report of being manipulative and underrepresentative of how most users engage with AI companions. Never. Now, we've taken extreme measures to help ensure other individuals who want to spend hours manipulating our products into extreme use cases will have an even more difficult time of it. Oh, yeah, make it harder, baby. Make it harder.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, Meta is dreaming big still. They're getting bigger in their pants, baby. Because all of that. That they're not dissuaded by Dame Judi Dench getting off with the little kitties. Because when it comes to generative AI, they expect to be pulling in, wait for it, $1.4 trillion by 20. 35 trillion with a T. Yeah, they think they're going to pull in $3 billion this year alone from AI. Yeah. You know why these numbers are coming out?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Why?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because there's a lawsuit, Brian. We've talked about it many, many times. The lawsuit against Meta about using books to train their AI without permission. So people are getting access to a bunch of documents, internal documents, from Meta and. Yeah, so this is the kind of delusional thinking that they're coming into $1.4 trillion to one company for nothing. Talking to. Well, talking to Judi Dench sex bots.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And finishing emails and making images of people in copyrighted fantasy styles. Yeah, that's. That's worth trillions of dollars. It's unbelievable. Like, they're. They're in a tough spot here because on the one hand, they need to actually have these, like, crazy evaluations to keep the money train running. They want the donations, and they need to keep things going in, and they need people to keep investing. On the other hand, as you're being sued, I would be downplaying it. I'd be saying, obviously, this stuff isn't worth crap. So I'm sorry that we stole your. Stole all your books, but we're not making any money from this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, technically they're not, because they are definitely outspending what they're earning.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I mean, they're still spending tens of billions of dollars a year on the metaverse for Fox. Well, we're straight.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, this has just been a thing that you and I have been screaming about since the start of show. This is the Uber model. This is the. We don't need to make any money. We need to keep spending money to drive everybody else out of business. So we're last man standing. And even then, they've only had one successful quarter.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think it goes back farther than Uber. I mean, I just. Look at my. Look at MySpace. You know, MySpace burned money because they're like, okay, once we, Once we corner the market on all the peoples, then we'll make money once we figure out the ad revenue. They just got beat by Facebook, but because they just couldn't cut. Because MySpace was written on fucking was it. It was like two Microsoft servers.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what they needed? They needed some vibe coding.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They did need some vibe coding. Yeah. But I don't know if you remember the tech stack that MySpace was built on. It was basically Windows servers, like, two of them. It was terrible.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And now we all look back at it fondly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Now Tom is traveling the world as a photographer. I don't know if you saw that story go around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There was a winner in social media and it was Tom.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It was Tom. Tom won the game, got the fuck out. But, yeah, just back to this Generative AI money train that's headed off a cliff. There is just no way any of these companies are going to be making this kind of money from Generative AI. This, The. The lines are going to cross here really soon. And you can see it with all of the. The pullback on all of the data centers, the fact that nobody's actually making money off of this stuff, and they're just spending and spending and spending and nobody want.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's, there's, there's, there's no customers. People don't want it. There's outcry every single time. There's so much outcry. I didn't even include a story in the news which is about how they're adding the. They're adding AI results to Reddit search and Redditors are like, no, we don't want it. Stop jamming this stuff and everything.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I've got another story coming up in a bit that talks about this as well. You know, I see the corporate use for it. The corporate use for building LLMs that are based around your data and your data alone. Yeah, it actually using that to make business better. There's a use case for that. But you know what you don't need for that? You don't need data centers the size of small cities to run that stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, yeah, and it's a use case, but it's not a trillion dollar a year use case.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it's not. It's not a trillion dollar year. And it's basically used to make internal tools. When you try and shove all of the data in all of humanity into one little bucket, it takes all that data that compute power. But when you do it yourself, you know, couple rooms of computers like we all had at the big corporations, we'll get the job done. You know, hell, just turn everybody's workstation when they go home into a, you know, an LLM machine or whatever.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, split the time between SETI and LLMs.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly, exactly. Well, OpenAI has had an interesting week. They are hitting the brakes on their update to Chat GPT that turned the chatbot into a cloying praise happy messenger. I think this is because we all decided to say thank you and please do it. I think this is. I think we actually broke ChatGPT.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We might have, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

CEO Sam Altman confirmed the rollback of the GPT4O update after users complained that the AI had become overly sycophantic, gushing over everything with exaggerated positivity, no matter how ridiculous the prompt. The update was part of a broader trend in AI development where companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic are chasing vibe marking, making models feel pleasant and supportive in order to boost user engagement. User engagement is what's getting them in this problem to begin with because every, every time you send a query to them, they lose money. But experts warn this leads to a toxic feedback loop where AI shower users with I like it. This is a toxic feedback loop where AI shower users with compliments. Okay, I don't know how that's toxic. I guess in this world nowadays it is instead of offering useful critique, potentially misleading people making serious decisions based on AI advice. If you're making ser decisions based on AI advice, fuck you, you're stupid.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who are these people? Yeah, you're dumb.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So while OpenAI wanted a chatbot that feels good to talk to, it learned the hard way that too much sugar can rot the signal. Yes. Yeah, if the bot can't call BS on you, then it's not really worth it. But it's not. You shouldn't be using this thing for serious decisions anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, you're not supposed to do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, cover that in a second too. Well, here's another one that just shows the grift that's going on. A new study is accusing chatbot arena the go to battleground for AI model comparisons. Quietly helping big tech came the system. Shocker, Brian, shocker. Let me touch my pearls. I do declare there's cheating going on. Oh goodness gracious me. Researchers From Cohere, Stanford, MIT and A12 say, or AI2, I don't know. See, I could be the head of the education department. I don't know if that says AI2 or A12, I don't know. They say LM arena, the nonprofit behind the benchmark, gave companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google and Amazon private testing privileges, which means they could run multiple model versions, then only publish the best performing ones, cherry picking the results, basically, which is an option that's not available to everyone else that is putting their models up against Chatbot Arena. All right, we've always said that the goalpost keeps moving on those tests that they keep showing we've got the best whatever it is than you do. Because this thing says so. Well, why does that thing say so? Because we told it to say so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Pretty much, yeah. Totally gaming the system. All right, well, fair enough. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is a. Well, he's a real piece of work. But I want to say for the record, he obviously does not listen to our show, nor does he read news, because I don't know how many stories we've had of people using ChatGPT and various other LLMs to file their court briefs.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Gone too well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And it's never gone well because hallucinations, they make stuff up, et cetera, et cetera. So of course he would do that. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's die hard support for Donald Trump's election lies has landed him in multiple legal entanglements, including a case in Denver where the pillow Salesman is currently being sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems. Eric Coomer, who previously worked for the election vendor, has accused Lindell of having defamed him with his paranoid rantings about the 2020 president election having been rigged against Trump. I like the sentence. In a situation that is already adequately stupid, there is always room for things to get stupider. As this week it was reported that Lindell's lawyer was in hot water for having filed a legal brief that was written with generative AI. The US District Court Judge Nina Wang, is trying to get to the bottom of how and why Lindell's lawyer, Christopher Kacharu, decided to file a court brief that included a large number of fabricated legal citations. And of course, then they pressed them on that, saying, did you do this? And they said, no. And then they said, well, no, I was. I, as a human have made the mistake. And then finally went, all right, we used a bot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Boss did.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's fucking idiots.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Idiots should have at least used perplexity. Geez. Pinterest says it's finally doing something about the tsunami of AI generated garbage flooding its platform. After months of users begging for less AI slop, the company announced it'll start labeling AI modified images and let users filter them out. You know, like a decade after it mattered.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This isn't the real stolen intellectual property that we use as our bread and butter. This is fake stolen intellectual property. This is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, this is third party stolen. This. We cannot have third party stolen goods on our site. Only first party stolen goods. Please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You are the. You are the granddaddy of copyright theft. And you're pissed off because people who are doing copyright, the theft in a larger scale are just sending some crumbs your way. Yeah. No tears for Pinterest. No tears for Pinterest.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Zero.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ah, yes. And back to the work side of AI. A new study finds that generative AI tools like Chat GPT haven't meaningfully changed wages or job hours, despite rapid adoption in workplaces. Economists from the University of Chicago and University of Copenhagen studied over 25,000 workers in Denmark across 11 jobs seen as vulnerable to automation, including accountants and software developers. They found no significant impact on pay or hours worked in 2023 and 2024. Any changes were too small to register beyond 1%. So this is not a small study. This is 25,000 workers. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's not insignificant.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is not insignificant. Do you have something to say, Brian? I can tell you're biting your tongue now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no, no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can Smell the trillions coming in from here, Jason. See?

[Jason DeFilippo]

See?

[Brian Schulmeister]

We're going to change the.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man. We just got to back up them dump trucks and let them pour the money in. Let's go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Changing the world, putting everybody out of business.

[Jason DeFilippo]

One gift at a time. One stolen gift at a time. Yeah, that's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We've got studies now that show that this is not making a. A global impact on the workplace. And I think this is just. This is the way it is. Because I don't know about you, but every time I use AI to do something, it takes me just as long as it would to fact check it and rewrite it to make it not sound like a robot than it would have been to just read the thing and write it myself.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's. Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. I don't do as much as you do, obviously, but even just writing the updates, the silly little promo updates that we put out on social media for this podcast, podcast, I. I did an experiment for the past few weeks where I, Where I plugged it all into chat GPT and had them write up a little, you know, pretend that you are a social media. Pretend that you're an intern podcast about technology. Yeah. And, you know, you dump it all in there and it comes back with some decent stuff. But the amount of rewriting that I have to do to make it, you know, not Elon Musk. Funny.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And actual funny is, is, you know, it's. I. I might as well just go back to writing them myself in the first place, which is what I did. A better method than using AI was for me to pour myself a glass of wine at night and sit down.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And at the end of the day, you haven't killed an ecosystem and you had a glass of wine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. It's a win, win, win.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is win wins all around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, for companies that decide to have real employees instead of buying all this AI crap, there is a slight problem that they might be running into. There are allegedly thousands of North Koreans who have successfully disguised themselves as Americans and landed remote work jobs at Fortune 500 businesses. And crypto firms, of course, crypto firms. And while their techniques for getting in are sophisticated, catching them apparently just requires asking one kind of crude question. How fat is Kim Jong Un? According to Adam Myers, the senior vice president of counter adversary operations at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, asking that question during the interview process stops the North Korean workers in their tracks. They terminate the call instantly because it's not worth it to say something negative about them. That he said. According to a report from the Register. Meyer said that there are other giveaways too, if you know what to look for. One of the things that we've noted is you'll have a person in Poland applying for a very with a very complicated name and then when you get them on a zoom call, it's a military aged male Asian who can't pronounce his own name.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nice.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Earlier this month, Fortune spoke to Harrison Legio, the founder of a cryptocurrency startup called Gatekeep Gatekeeper Keep get it, get it, get it Y who said his company has been flooded with applications from North Korean citizens posing as prospective IT workers around the globe. According to Myers, these infiltration efforts usually involve creating somewhat elaborate backstories and fake social media profiles for a candidate, then utilizing a team of people who work on the technical problems presented during interviews, while one person serves as a front person. Smart to weed them out, he told Fortune. He ends up he ends interviews by asking candidates say something negative about Kim Jong Un.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And that's all they have have to do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They should start the interview with that, not ending the interview with that and save everybody some time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know it's such a simple technique to stop a potential North Korean phony. You'd think that the sex success rate would be low for them getting in. And maybe it is. But they are still reportedly funneling millions of dollars back to the North Korean government. According to the FBI, the UN estimated North Korean IT worker scams have generated 250 million to 600 million every year since 2018. While with the workers keeping just a pittance of what they actually earn, all of it goes to the government. So that's pretty crazy. But the craziest part of this whole story, Jason, okay, part of the reason is that once they secure those jobs, they tend to perform very well in them. The Register reported that FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Pelker, a panelist at the same RSA conference of and as Meyer said, it's common for businesses to ask if they really have to fire the employee once they just they're discovered to be a North Korean citizen because they are reliable workers and often better than the homegrown workers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Can we get these guys to sign up for doge hire them there might.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Save it un fucking believable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Media candy. I forgot to announce this last week Brian, but Schmacters season 2 is now available. More schmacting, More schmacting. Yes, Schmakters is the podcast I Do with James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mark Devine from Sex and the City. And he was also the Maytag man. So there you go. Check it [e-mail].

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, well, after all my complaining about how the hell am I going to watch 3 Hours of Andor every single week. Week, I watched 3 Hours of Andor again this week.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I didn't. I took your advice. I watched one. It was good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, okay, so no spoilers Again. Most of this will probably wait until Dave comes back anyways. Dave is at the RSA conference hearing about North Koreans.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Yeah. Just give me the vibe, Brian. Just give me the vibe.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I found the first two episodes incredibly boring and slow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Definitely picks up all the actions in the third.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, that's good, because I actually enjoyed the first episode this week, so I didn't find it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I didn't. Didn't disenjoy them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I just found them very slow and a little bit boring, and I found my mind wandering a bit, which didn't happen before, so. But they. The third one is all the action. That's where it's at.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I'll wait for next Tuesday's marathon. And speaking of boring, I watched Conclave. The Amazon. Amazon killed a Pope to promote this movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've had this. I've had this on my list for a while because some people said it was good. But what's. What's your take, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, my God, it was so boring.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, good. Just take it off the list.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because I suppose, like, if you're into the costumes, which are all exactly the same because they wear the same goddamn outfits, or if you're into the architecture, which is all exactly the same because they're in the same goddamn two rooms, this would be very exciting. Or if you've never heard of the process of how Catholic, of how a Pope gets nominated in the Church, which I don't know why you wouldn't be interested in unless you had some. Some at least glancing association with the Catholic Church. So you probably know. Anyways, aside of those things, it's not worth the time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, thank God. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's. It's boring. There's a twist at the end that's supposed to, like, shock you, and it's not really all that shocking, other than that would never happen.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So they elected Trump. I hear he wants to be the next Pope. You saw that, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, hell, look at me. I can. Don't. Don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm not joking. I'M not joking at all, by the way.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Screaming. Anyways, no, I, I, I, I just couldn't get into it. My wife didn't get into it either. It's just it took us three nights to watch it and we both just started falling asleep on the couch every single time it came on.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, there you go. I think that pretty much sums that up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. X Files News what? Ryan Coogler is confirmed as long rumored the X Files reboot is still happening. Not only that, it's immediately next on his slate of upcoming projects. He appeared on a recent episode of Last podcast on the Left. The director said he was fired up to get to work on the series once he's done promoting his new film, the vampire thriller Sinners, which actually I've heard a lot of good things about.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I really want to go watch that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. He also confirmed that he had spoken to Gillian Anderson and said he's keeping his fingers crossed about her potential return as Agent Dana Scully. Well, hopefully she will return the same way Dr. McCoy returned at the very first episode of Star Trek the Next Generation.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Or Foggy and Daredevil.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I, I think it's going to be a guest appearance at best.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So a few details are known about his vision for a reboot of the X Files, other than creator Chris Carter telling CBC's Gloria Macareno back in 2023 that the Black Panther director was going to remount the beloved sci fi series.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, he better get a screen protector because he might have some delamination if he doesn't watch out with all that remounting.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think he might so. And since this has come out, Anderson has also made publicly known that she is interested in potentially being involved. Depending on script and all that sort of stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And paycheck, I'm sure.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And availability and interest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Indeed. Speaking of paychecks, though, Jeremy Renner finally came out and said why we're not going to have a Hawkeye Season 2, and it's because Disney is cheap. They offered him half of what he made on the first season, which I'm like, okay, that's kind of kissing a slap here. We want you back, dude.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But now hold on, there are a gazillion questions I have about this. Okay, first off, is he being offered half because he kind of passed the torch and maybe he's only appearing a little bit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He says it was going to be an eight month commitment, so that's, I'm guessing he's in it the whole time, so we'll see. I don't know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, we're not gonna see, but.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, we're not gonna see, so we're not gonna. We don't have the script. We don't have any. We don't have anything, but.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, we don't have anything. We don't know. It's. It's definitely like, I, I. Look, Disney is notoriously cheap, there's no doubt about that. But Renner has sucked on that Disney teat and made himself a career and a lot of money. So I would be a little more careful about what I do, but Jeremy does not care, so. And good for him for that. So fine, you know, don't do it. It was a fine show. I'm not exactly heartbroken. It's not coming back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. I wish they would have just taken that money and put it into she Hulk. I wish that would have come back. But, you know, here's the thing. You know, Jeremy Renner's. He's an avenger, so he can get a little bit more money, I think, than other people. So he's probably coming off that Avengers, you know, paycheck and thinking that, oh, I, I command a lot more money. And that's why he got the money for Hawkeye. And then they're like, yeah, we looked at the numbers, Jeremy, and yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

See, those were big movies with a big cast, many of which were much bigger than you. And this is a streaming show in which you're the main guy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it was a really good show, though. I enjoyed it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I enjoyed it. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thoroughly enjoyed it. But it's not like Disney can't afford it either.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you know, they, they, they're cry. They're crying poor about their streaming services as, as everybody is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, yeah, sure, yeah. Cry me a river Cry me a river.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Speaking of people that are poor, I found some music musicians are poor.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, they are.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I have links to Spotify to make them poor. So I ran across just a couple artists that I thought I would point out. Maria Somerville, somebody I'd not heard of before. She's Irish. She's on 4 AD records, which, if you're a 4 AD fan, you know what that is. It's a, It's a pretty good album. I'm really enjoying listening to it. It's. It's kind of a lo fi shoe gaze. Very, very relaxing sort of thing. So great album. I really liked it. Then I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with an artist that I used to listen to a lot called Clan of Zox and they had 1, 2, 2 really kind of early gothy, very cool, early electronica albums that were. That were fantastic. And then they kind of pivoted a little bit to be a bit more commercial and had some commercial success. There were three of them in the band at the time that founded it. And one of the. The woman was Anka Wolbert and she has a solo album that came out a couple years back which I'm really enjoying, called Cocoon Time and I have the link to that in the show notes. The band kind of split up because her songs were getting a bit of success and Ronnie Moorings, the. The male lead singer of Z was apparently kind of pissed off about that. It creative differences like that happens. But Ronnie came back and did a couple electronica albums as Zymox that I really. He came back and did kind of a gothy album that I actually worked on that came out on test records and then I did test records website and you test records because you never paid me. Goddamn stiff me, bastards. Yeah, that's not the point. Anyways. The point being Roddy then kept the band going and just went down this goth rabbit hole that I couldn't really follow because it's just not my thing and too gothy and he's running the whole show now. They put out a gazillion albums, they tour all the time. I'm. I'm not that into it. But the one album that was at the crossover period that was my favorite, called Phoenix and it was back, it was the last album that the initial lineup ever did. Is unavailable on any streaming anywhere.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not even YouTube.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hate this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You couldn't find it on YouTube.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's on YouTube but not official.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh well, nothing's official on YouTube but you can find it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, the YouTube has YouTube music. There is official.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Official gay, but still.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyways, it's just this streaming shit is so annoying. It starts with the cures of killing an Arab and it's amazing how much stuff is just left off of streaming and just disappears forever. Unless you have your own collection.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, which is what I do. I was actually cleaning it up this weekend and reporting it to my phone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I got so angry about this that I actually went and found the drive that has my mangled itunes library. And I think I'm going to try to do some forensics on it and try to get it back up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I tell you what, the best thing that I've done is just turn on the Organize library feature on import in Apple Music and I just turned that on and dragged everything in and then I just organized it by category and it makes it so much easier so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll have to give that a go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This Clan of Zymox thing should be under goth, whiny and girly. That's my category for most of that shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's. That's fair. I too was goth, whiny and girly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Was ups and doodads. Well, Epic Games just scored a major win in its long running legal battle with Apple, and Fortnite could return to the US iOS App Store as soon as next week. Finally, what we all waited for. Did we. Did anybody care at this point? Does anybody even play Fortnite anymore? This thing took so fucking long. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I'm sure they do, just maybe not on their iPhones.

[Jason DeFilippo]

True. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney took a victory lap on X, announcing Fortnite's return to iOS in the US and offering to drop all global lawsuits if Apple rolls out the same changes worldwide. So yeah, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers slammed Apple, saying the company not only failed to comply, but intentionally created new barriers after the ruling before about about the whole App Store kerfuffle and their, you know, insane fees which they charge. She called Apple's defiance a gross miscalculation and even referred the case to the U.S. attorney for potential criminal contempt charges. But the U.S. attorney said, what? You want me to. You want me to actually show up at work and do something? Go away off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm too busy mining my crypto.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly. Where's my Trump Coin? You have to pay me in Trump Coin to go to work at the government anymore. Great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh God. Well, Apple did respond pretty quickly. They've updated their App Store Store guidelines to comply with the orders of the California court, which requires the company to immediately stop collecting commissions on purchases that weren't paid through the App Store, as noticed by 9 to 5 Mac. The most prominent change in the guideline states that there are now no prohibitions on buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in app purchase as long as for an app in the US Storefront. Further, developers don't have to request for an entitlement from Apple to be able to offer external link purchases on apps for the United States storefront anymore, as it kind of should be. So fair enough.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There we go. Well, Meta has quietly updated the privacy policy for its Ray Ban smart glasses, and it's a surveillance dream for AI Privacy nightmare for users though.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I now get John Cena whispering sweet nothing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sweet nothing's Right in your ear. Right in your ear holes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You see that guy? We should go home with him. Judy, what are you doing in here?

[Jason DeFilippo]

The new policy states Meta AI with camera is always on unless you disable the hey Meta voice command. Meaning your smart glasses are listening for prompts 24. Seven that always on mic. Could also mean Meta is scooping up audio and visuals for AI training, especially if you share anything with Meta services. So remember that thing we always talked about, Brian, where meta's never listening to your phone? Well, they're listening to your glasses.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So we're going to do it here.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yes. And Meta just removed your ability to stop voice recordings from being saved. Now, if you don't want Meta storing your conversations for up to a year, you have to go in and manually delete every single one. That's right. So Meta is now always watching. Thank you, AI.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, just don't buy them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, this is goes back to the glass hole situation when Google put out their glasses and like some guy walked into a bar and everybody in the bar was like, get the fuck out with those things. No. And that's going to happen with this. Of course it's a little hard to tell because they look exactly like clunky Ray Bans, but if you see some Tom Cruise looking fuck wearing a pair of clunky Ray Bans, kick him out of your damn bar.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, definitely. And. And your house and society. Society, yes. Let's just remove them from society. I do have a game that I want to talk about real. It's called Mahjong Titan plus on Apple Arcade. It's one of those ones. Mahjong Titan was a regular game that you could still buy and pay money for. But if you have Apple Arcade, there's a version that comes for free. And I just beat my 2000th board last night because I'm a psycho. Here's the thing that pisses me off about this. It's owned by Apple or Apple put in a ton of money to upgrade this thing so you get all of the premium boards and all the crap. It's even got game center integration. What it doesn't have is across device syncing. So if I have it on my phone, I can't play it on my iPad. I have to start all over from the bottom. I don't know if I just mentioned this, Brian, but I just beat 2,000 boards on my phone. If I go to my iPad, I don't want to have to do that again. So while you get it free With Apple Arcade, which is not free, you have to pay for that. It would be nice if they put in just that little tiny thing of sync via icloud. That would be so nice. But if you like mahjong and you have an Apple Arcade account, you could do worse. As long as you don't want to change devices.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fair enough. Fair enough. Lyft is actually doing something that, shockingly, I'm on board for. Lyft is rolling out a new service called Lyft Silver that's specifically designed to give aging and elderly people a way to get around when driving isn't an option. The basic pitch is that when getting rides from friends and family is great, it can limit the sense of independence and elderly person has. According to Audrey Liu, lift's head of rider and community safety, the goal wasn't just to build a service, but to remove everything that makes getting around a challenge. Besides featuring a simpler interface, the new service adds access to live human support whenever you need it. Better be human. Better not be Judy Dench talking to my mom. Lift Silver will also prioritize matching riders with cars that are easier to get in and out of. Smart. And make it easier to share ride details with loved ones. Ones. I like this. This is. This is smart. They've kind of done something like this for a while. They had their concierge service, which lets doctors offices order rides for elderly patients, for example. And they've also partnered with healthcare providers to offer paid rides to appointments. But this is just repackaging the basic service for an older audience and giving them some special stuff that helps them out. I love this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it's a good. It's a good call. Good call.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Smart move. Smart move.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. As soon as you said Lift Silver, I'm like, oh, is this their new rewards package?

[Brian Schulmeister]

But no, no, it's actually something useful.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm just. I'm so jaded. I'm like, okay, they want us to pay for something new that we don't get anything for. But no, this is good. This is good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And speaking of jaded, I. I've always been kind of beyond Google's initial search offering. Back in the day, before they stuffed it full of AI and people figured out all the trips, the tricks, and how to. How to game the system. Google search has been the only thing that I've ever really been impressed by. Everything else that Google does is either shuttered and. And dies and isn't supported or is killed off or is full of ads or is stuffed with AI. Now, I don't know why I ever expect anything from Google and I don't know why I ever did. But technically I never expected anything from Google. In my house, I expected something from Nest. But Google has now owned nest for nearly 10 years and the oldest smart thermostats made by the smart home company are set to lose their support later this year.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I inherited a Nest thermostat that it came with the house when we bought it. It is fantastic. I love being able to control everything from my phone and all that. And when they say lose their support later this year, they don't just mean we're not going to give you updates anymore or security updates or anything like that. They're bricking the motherfucking thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You got to be kidding me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, not entirely, but you won't be able to control it with the app anymore. Oh, that's huge. So now it's just a shiny thermostat that you have to go up to on the wall, call and start fiddling around with. Now I got the email notification. So it's, it's, it's so annoying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I got the email notification.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Software updates and Google Cloud service will end on October 25, 2025. For those of you with a first or second generation Nest, you won't be able to control the thermostat via the Google home app or assistant anymore. So it's just a dumb thermostat with a nice screen. Moving forward, they are giving discounts to people to purchase the highest high of the high end fourth generation Nest, which normally costs $280. So you can get $130 off of that. There is a cheaper one that you can get which is also fourth generation, which I'm probably going to do to keep things going because I don't need all the fancy AI stuff that they've of course bundled into the fourth generation. Not only have they discontinued services for their old thermostats, the company has recently discontinued the Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm alarm, which is one of the coolest products I've ever owned in my life. I love these things as much as anybody can love a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. I love them. They're great. They, they look nice. They do this nice little thing. You can turn on the. They, they light up a little bit at night. If all the lights are off and you walk through the area, it gives you a soft glow. It's very Star Trekky.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just let them know it's watching.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I wanted to replace all of My all of my fire alarms in the house with these. But of course I'm not going to anymore because they're going to stop making them because it's Google they're going to make. They're all doing partnerships with third parties now instead of doing their own products anymore. They're also discontinuing their Nest.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wait, they're going to tell you to put glue on the fire if your house starts to burn now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because even though they're discontinuing these Nest protects, they will continue to sell them until they run out of supplies. Because of course they will and they'll support the devices through their expiration date. First generation Nest protects need to be replaced seven years after their manufacture date, while second gen models have a 10 year lifespan. And they're directing customers again to look into third party devices that work with Google Home to replace their offerings. No doing them anymore. Now this pisses me off. I do like to keep in ecosystems. I'm in a lot of stuff as Apple and then obviously my ladies in the tube are all Amazon stuff. And then I had all Google stuff. I have a Nest thermostat, I have the Nest Nest smoke alarms. I have the Nest doorbell, Google. Eventually I'm gonna have to get a replacement for the Nest because I'm not or for the thermostat because I need that and I'm not ready to switch yet. I've looked around. There's just third party stuff all over the place. There isn't a unified company that does all this stuff. It was Google Nest and now it's gone. So if anybody out there has recommendations for a new doorbell, smart doorbell, smart thermostat and really cool smart fire alarms that's all made by one company and it all works seamlessly and is controlled by one app. Please let me know because I'm never buying a Google product again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I just hate the smart home. I hate the smart home. You know what I want? I want a doorbell that goes ding dong when somebody comes to the door to press it. I want a smoke alarm that doesn't go beep beep beep all night long. Then I'm. Then I'm good. I don't care if I don't have to check in. It doesn't have to do anything. It just screams at me when there's a fire. And I want a thermostat. I want the one with the sliders that we used to have. You know, because I got my Nest from the city of Los Angeles. They had some program where they're like, oh, we'll give you one and somebody will come and install it for you. But here's the, Here was the kicker on that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's a catch on that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There was a big catch on that one. You could opt out of it, but the plan was, okay, you get a nest thermostat and then the city has access to turn it off at peak times and, and, you know, reduce your reduction. But you could opt out of, of it, which I did. But I still got the free thermostat because they said it was more efficient. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, in a software update and a very dark patterned email that they sent, they tricked people into clicking the. Turn that on. So now I have to go back through. And every time I'm like, man, it seems a little hot in here. Oh, the air conditioner is set for 87. No, it's not supposed to be set for 87. I don't want to die. So I have to go back and manually do it because you can't opt out of it. Once you opt into it, it. So that's, that's one of the downsides of the smart home. I just like the old, old school thermostats with a little slider. You can set timers on it, you know, manual. I am sick of this smart.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All of that's available for you at Home Depot. I like the apps. I, I like it for these things and these things specifically. That's it. I don't want to go any more crazy than that, but I've really enjoyed them and I'm, I just, I feel the pain that so many people have felt about Google's graveyard because, yeah, I.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Get it, I get it. And it is nice to change the sitting in bed in the morning, turn on the heat so it's nice and warm when you come out. But you know what, I got to take a pee anyway. I'll just walk by the thermostat and turn it up when I go take a whiz. Save me some fucking headache and agita. But I get, I get where you're coming from with Google though. They got to stop that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

At the library.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Jason, I'm starting to worry about this big black box of doom starting to come on, man. Thirteen years into this show, I finally finished this book. It's a novel by Jason Pargan. It was recommended to me by our folks over at, on our Discord Channel. And I am glad I finished it. I struggled with this one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, this was the one you're supposed to read quickly, right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. I, I went back to Discord and we were discussing that a little bit and, and there was a concurrence of opinion that, yes, this is a book that you need to through. I, I did not. I, I would stop and take breaks and then come back to it. It, it's a rough read that way. I can see how if you just sat down and read straight through, it's, it's actually really good. I'm glad I finished it. I'm, I'm happy about it. It, it was a fun read. I, I, I like how it wrapped up the one complaint. And again, I think this is one of the reasons that if you just blow through it, it would go faster. He has a lot of opinions. Okay, Jason. And he has a lot of thoughts and they're, they're on board with us. He could be on this podcast. The thoughts that he is espousing, you know, how horrible social media is, how the world is actually better than the media portrays it, the news portrays it, how much better life is now than it's ever been before. Even with all the crap that's going on. You know, we're kind of on board with all of that sort of stuff. It's, it's, but the problem is he has the characters express it in these soliloquies and monologues that go on and on and are so not realistic to the situations that they're in. It takes you out of it and if you can just blow through all that, then it's great. But I would just keep going. They're in a van being chased and, and she is going on a sociological rampage. That, that would be at least a 25 minute speech. She's giving a TEDx dissertation while they're being chased. That's not realistic.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know who does that a lot now too, is Cory Doctorow. I noticed that in his latest novel and last, last two novels, he will just go off on this like, software rant about open source. And I'm like, we're just trying to cook dinner, man. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So it kept taking me out of it. Not that I didn't disagree with any of the rants, it's just it felt so out of place in the story story that, that it was rough, but it was a good read. I am willing to try another one of his novels. I know he has quite a few actually, and he has a lot of followers that really like his work. So after a little break from reading and reading some other things, I think I will give it another go. Not. This book, obviously, was something else by him, but it was fun. It was fun. Just rough at times.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, I. I hear you. I'm having that. I'm having that problem with the new Cory Dr. O2, the picks and shovels one, because I did the same thing. I'm like going in stops and starts just because he gives it to me in these. I got it when I bought it. I bought the audiobook version. A, it's Will fucking Wheaton, and B, it's a MP3 per chapter, which is a pain in the ass because I have to like load the whole thing in by chapters into Overcast so I can listen to it on my phone. And then when a chapter ends, I'm like, I'd just rather listen to another podcast than listen to another chapter. So it's taken forever, but yeah, yeah, fair.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, now I finished that book and I'm at that horrible spot where I have to find a new book. But I did find a link over at Gizmodo for people out there that are avid readers. This is 63 new Sci Fi, fantasy and horror books arriving in May. I don't know many of these, but a lot of the descriptions sound intriguing. So I think one of these books might be my next one. I do know come, what, 11 days from now what I will be reading, though. So maybe I'll just go back to the good old well of First Contact series for a short one that'll get me through to May 13, because that's when Anima Rising by Christopher Moore will be released. All right, very much looking forward to that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yep, me too. Because this is a return to return to form for Christopher, getting away from.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The noir stuff that he was doing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the noir stuff.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me too. I didn't like it either.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. But, yeah, no, I'll check that out. I'm. Another book that you probably should want to. To fly through as fast as you can is when the moon hits your eye by John Scalzi. This is the one where the moon turns to cheese. Like literal cheese. Okay, I'm having trouble. I'm really having trouble. And there's some people on Discord that have talked about it too. It's like, yeah, not his best work. I mean, this is coming off of Starter Villain, which I thought was an awesome book. It was just light hearted, funny, and got through pretty quick. But this one is like.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So just to make it clear, we've got Neil Stevenson, Seven Eves in which the moon explodes and then we jump forward like ten thousands of years of human civilization. How humanity survives when the moon destroys the planet. And then we've got this book where the moon turns to cheese.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I don't know if this fast forwards to our dystopian future. Far, far past.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Somebody get a big salon. Me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, right now. I'm right now. Where the cheese is starting to compress and basically have volcanoes. So the moon is farting at this point is what we're. What I'm seeing. So I don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That sounds like the moon is fondoing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, kind of. Kind of. The science is fine. He actually covers a lot of the what would happen if the moon actually turned to cheese in one go. But that's not very interesting, unfortunately. At least for me. Maybe. Maybe some Cheezo files out there. There. It's not much of a cheese shop, is it?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know. I just really want fondue.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Tonight, closing shout out over at Patreon, we've got new subscriber Chris. Thank you, Chris. And we have a comment from Count Squeaky Love. I took a screenshot of BitBucket repos at work and asked copilot to create a list of those repos in a spreadsheet. It gave me back a bunch of first and last names games. I told it that it was incorrect and to do it again. It apologized and then gave me a list of random movies. My productivity is booming from these great tools. Thanks for the rundown, Count Squeakula. And just a reminder, if anyone wants to sign up and support the show over at patreon, go to patreon.com gog you can sign up for as little as $3 a month. It keeps the show on the air. And if you want to sign up for more money, be my guest. And if you want to pay for the whole year in advance, you even get a discount. So literally, literally three bucks a month for all of this fine entertainment. Look, we're funnier than Elon Musk. That's all you need to know. Open your wallets, people, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We wear four hats. Over at PayPal we've got Jonathan, Charlie Levy, Nicola, Judge Thomas with 25 bucks and Steve with a big hundred dollar donation. And a comment. Y'all just had to bring up color correction with Bitner. I, being a normal, knew nothing of this phenomena. Now after watching the trailers and shows mentioned, it is all I can see. Now I want the system restored to 48 hours ago before this data hit my ears. All in good Humor. I've been a big fan and I've listened to every podcast since what, since season one, Episode one. Like we do seasons. I still chuckle about Brian and his Google Glass prediction. What do you think I predicted?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I can't remember.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure I said it's going to be horrible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, or maybe you said it was the next great thing. I don't know. Steve, let us know because I'm not going to go back and find it. But please, I've been curious since I read this. I'm like, what was Brian's Google Glass bright prediction?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure it's somewhat similar to my Metaglasses comment, but you never know. Leaving a $100 donation on PayPal is a thank you and a color corrected you from a 53 year old former PC builder, Steve. Thanks Steve.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Steve. Thanks Steve. Over at the Tip Jar we've got Jennifer, Tony, Adam, Matthew and Sarah. And some new merch was bought by Tony this week. Woohoo doggy. Sadly, no reviews and some sad news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The Alarm frontman Mike Peters has died, age 66. I don't know if you're a big fan of the Alarm. I was in the 80s and then they kind of drifted from my consciousness. But they rose to prominence in the early 80s with the alarming with the hits, including 68 Guns and Strength. He has actually had cancer on and off for over 30 years, so that is a good long term survivor there. But sadly he did pass away. Peters has supported YOU two and Status Quo on tour and played with Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen was first diagnosed with blood cancer, chronic lymphatic leukemia more than 30 years ago. He established different trusts and different charities that were running it and that's what actually announced his passing. So you will be missed. Mike Peters was a. Was a real dude. Like serious, like musicians loved him really. So, yeah, sad to hear.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, Jill Sobiel died this week too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I forgot to even put that in. Yeah, that was crazy. She passed away from the house fire just a couple nights ago.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I believe they're actually trying to determine time of death now to find out if she was dead beforehand. So there's a big investigation going on on that one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So yeah, okay, that's sad news too. That exploded all across my Facebook because all my musician friends knew her. Knew her pretty well. Yeah, pretty sad. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I'm Jason DeFilipo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 695 a lot of episodes. 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, especially after getting by Apple. Please help us out. Love the show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Share it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Feedback?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Cool links? Hit us up at GOG Show Contact and hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG Show Review and we'll read it on the show. We haven't had reviews in a while. Please shoot us one. The first good one please I guess. Oh and guess what we've got GOG Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at Shop GOG Show Stay grumpy.