703: None More Black

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks – Episode 703: None More Black
Released June 27, 2025

Hosts: Jason DeFilippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner

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ICE Deportations and Law Enforcement

Timestamp: [01:05]

The episode kicks off with Brian Schulmeister sharing a concerning personal story about his electrician assistant, Octavio, who faced deportation after seemingly innocuous actions. Jason explains, “My electrician's assistant, Octavio, who has been here for about 30 years. Yeah. Went to the local liquor store to pick up a 40 after a long day of work.” However, the situation took a drastic turn as Octavio was apprehended and deported under suspicions of terrorism based on his purchase, illustrating the aggressive measures of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Timestamp: [03:48]

Jason delves into the complexities of tracking law enforcement, highlighting the emergence of websites like fucklapd.com. He states, “I found fucklapd.com, which lets anyone use facial recognition to instantly identify a cop,” emphasizing the challenges and risks associated with such tools in an era where law enforcement tactics are increasingly covert and militarized.

Tech Companies and Business Shifts

Timestamp: [05:49]

The hosts transition to discussing changes in business models of tech companies, specifically Warby Parker. Jason laments, “The thing that made Warby Parker great is no longer making it great again,” pointing out the company's shift from affordable eyewear to significantly higher prices. Brian adds humorously, “Nothing's American,” criticizing the company's departure from its original value proposition.

Data Breaches and Government Oversight

Timestamp: [17:15]

A significant portion of the episode addresses a purported massive data breach involving 16 billion user credentials. However, Brian and Jason critically analyze the claim, suggesting it’s a "meta collection of all the breaches that have occurred over the past some odd years." Jason asserts, “This is not a breach. This is basically a bunch of cyber criminals just putting all of their lists into one spot and passing it around.”

Timestamp: [20:16]

The discussion shifts to Meta's Oversight Board, which the hosts criticize for its ineffectiveness. Brian remarks, “They just kind of can’t do anything. They are completely unenforceable,” highlighting the board’s inability to enforce or implement meaningful changes within the company.

AI Legal Cases

Timestamp: [21:05]

The episode delves into the legal battles surrounding AI companies. Brian discusses Anthropic's class action lawsuit, where a court ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted works for training AI models falls under fair use, provided the output is transformative. However, Jason points out complications, “Anthropic is actually in trouble because they didn't pay for the copies of the books to begin with. They used pirated copies.”

Timestamp: [22:12]

Both Anthropic and Meta face scrutiny for their AI training practices. The hosts express concern over the unregulated use of copyrighted materials, stating, “Anthropic is going to get dinged for that. They used pirated copies. Meta's going to get dinged for that,” emphasizing the potential financial and legal repercussions for these companies.

Elon Musk's Legal Declarations and Tech Ventures

Timestamp: [10:06]

Elon Musk becomes a focal point as Brian recounts a legal filing where Musk's team claimed he doesn’t own a computer. Brian counters this by referencing multiple sources and Musk's own social media posts demonstrating his use of laptops. Jason sarcastically suggests, “What's the easiest way to tell the judge that Elon can't give him any documents? Just tell him he doesn't have a computer, sir.”

Tesla's Robo Taxi Service

Timestamp: [13:49]

The conversation shifts to Tesla's introduction of its robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas. Brian explains, “The company launched its fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Austin with a Tesla safety monitor accompanying the first riders.” However, the service faces criticism due to reported safety issues, such as a Tesla model briefly driving on the wrong side of the road.

Timestamp: [15:08]

Jason summarizes the challenges, noting, “At least one Robotoxi taxi attempted to drive on the wrong side of the road... the list is growing,” highlighting the early setbacks Tesla faces in the autonomous vehicle market, especially compared to competitors like Waymo.

AI and the Internet's Health

Timestamp: [19:17]

Jason introduces the concept of “digital asbestos,” likening AI’s pervasive and potentially damaging influence on the internet. He warns, “AI is going to do so much damage to the usable Internet that even after it inevitably crashes out, it's going to take years to disentangle from every space it's polluted like digital asbestos.”

Pop Culture and Side Topics

Timestamp: [43:16]

Transitioning to lighter topics, the hosts engage in a passionate discussion about the Star Wars franchise. They debate the merits of the "Andor" series versus classic films like "Empire Strikes Back," ultimately agreeing that without foundational elements like the original trilogy, newer series lack context and depth.

Timestamp: [46:01]

Brian reflects on 90s nostalgia, mentioning his fondness for bands like Lush and Sleeper. The conversation also touches on the challenges of modern-day podcasting, particularly with equipment like Blue Yeti microphones, which they humorously critique for inefficiency and poor design.

Timestamp: [65:13]

The hosts share personal anecdotes about sound effects and home automation, emphasizing the humorous side of tech mishaps. Jason recounts, “I made a video one time of me playing Throwing the Ball for the Dogs... Somebody's like, your sound effects are so cute,” illustrating the unintended entertainment that arises from everyday tech use.

Closing Remarks

Timestamp: [Final Segment]

In the closing segments, the hosts promote their podcast, thanking new patrons, and briefly touching on upcoming topics related to technology and pop culture. They offer condolences for personal losses, maintaining the show’s blend of technical discussions and personal insights.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jason DeFilippo [03:48]: “They wear brown camo and balaclavas... it's really bad.”

• Brian Schulmeister [10:06]: “The mountain of fucking public evidence, including from Elon himself, suggests otherwise.”

• Jason DeFilippo [19:26]: “AI is going to do so much damage to the usable Internet... like digital asbestos.”

• Brian Schulmeister [22:12]: “They reserve the right to modify prices based on new or additional tariffs becoming effective in the future.”

• Jason DeFilippo [55:38]: “The thing is, AI has sucked up all of those memes... AI is going to be so confused from that.”

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Summary

In this episode of "Grumpy Old Geeks," hosts Jason DeFilippo and Brian Schulmeister delve into a range of pressing technology and socio-political issues. From the aggressive deportation tactics of ICE and the challenges of tracking law enforcement through dubious online tools, to scrutinizing the shifting business models of companies like Warby Parker, the hosts maintain their signature critical edge.

A significant focus is placed on the burgeoning legal battles surrounding AI companies, particularly Anthropic and Meta, highlighting the complex interplay between innovation and intellectual property rights. The discussion extends to Elon Musk's controversial legal statements and Tesla's troubled launch of its autonomous taxi service, underscoring the hurdles faced by tech giants in an increasingly regulated environment.

The hosts also express deep concerns about AI's impact on the internet, coining the term "digital asbestos" to describe the potential long-term damage. Amidst these heavy topics, they weave in their thoughts on pop culture, reminiscing about Star Wars and 90s music, while sharing humorous personal anecdotes about technology mishaps and home automation.

Throughout the episode, notable quotes punctuate their grumpy observations, providing listeners with sharp insights into the current tech landscape. Concluding with personal reflections and podcast promotions, Jason and Brian offer a blend of serious analysis and relatable humor, making "Grumpy Old Geeks" a must-listen for tech enthusiasts seeking unfiltered commentary.

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. Exciting times over here, Jason. My kid is having his last day of school today. One of his best buddies. Also, it's his birthday, so after school, he and a bunch of his friends are going over to a pool party. And we have our suitcases out because we're about to start packing to go to Los Angeles, where my kid gets to go to Disneyland and hang out at my mom's and do swim classes in the heat and an outdoor pool. He's living the life of Riley. I. I would long to have my child's life.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say. That sounds pretty sweet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. He's. He's got a good thing going, and, you know, he still just complains when we cut him off from his Nintendo, so that's that. But the. The point of all of that is there will be no show next week. It's the 4th of July and travel and all of that sort of stuff. So no show next week. America might be the last one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or, you know, I'll land and be sent back by ICE agents. We'll see what happens.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's true. Where you might be sent back to, nobody knows.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true, considering I am a US Citizen and not a Canadian citizen. Huh. A man with no land. Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Deportation roulette.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm gonna. I'm gonna study up on my Tom Hanks stuck in an airport movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. So somebody I know was deported this week. Isn't that great? Yeah. Yeah. My electrician's assistant, Octavio, who has been here for about 30 years. Yeah. Went to the local liquor store to pick up a 40 after a long day of work.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A 40 of what?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Jason apparently wasn't a 40 of freedom, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So 40 of terrorism. That's what he was picking up. God damn it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what it was. Yeah. So they scooped him up, and then within a couple hours, he got to make one phone call. They haven't heard from him since. But he made one phone call, and he was already in San Diego. San Diego?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Whale vagina.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's nuts. I'm. I'm curious to see. It's going to be interesting to have boots on the ground, as it were.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Traffic's better.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. All the gardens are overflowing, but, you know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, they come and they go pretty quick. It's. My guy kind of shows up at odd hours now say that. So, yeah, it really sucks. It really sucks. The other thing that sucks is after we, you know, had our little flyover of Iran last week, the first thing that I noticed on Sunday morning when I opened up Instagram is I got a metric shit ton of to survive a nuclear explosion video.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, My reels are all prepper shit right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, all of it. And just going back to ice real quick here I was thinking, I'm like, there's got to be ice trackers out there. And I started to look around to see what I could find. And basically, people are trying to use social media to track people, and it's really hard to do. It's whack a mole, because these guys shuck and jive. They move and they shoot and scoot, so it's really hard to find them. But I did come across while I was looking around, I found fucklapd.com, which lets anyone use facial recognition to instantly identify a cop. So if they've got their badge number taped over, if you can still get a photo of their face, you can run it through this thing, and it runs up against a public database of 9,000. 9,000 LAPD officers.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, but they're not really the problem, are they, Jason? Because these guys are not hiding their identities. They. They have badges. The problem is the, like, secret police force that's running around. At least the Nazis had the decency to wear brown shirts.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. At least we could point them out. Well, these guys wear brown camo and. And balaclavas and all sorts of. Yeah, it's camo clan is what they are. They're the camo clan.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's flabbergasting to me that. That people are not to turn a bad. To use a bad turn or phrase right now, up in arms about this. These are. These are secret police. We don't even know if they're police. We don't know who the hell they are.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nope.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And that is not America, people. That is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I guess it is now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You're gonna be real surprised when you come back, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure I will.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Real surprised. Yeah. But the thing is, these guys roll up with AR15s and there's like, 20 of them, and they are just, you know, they're like ex special forces guys. You're not gonna mess with them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

What are you gonna do terrifying. Yeah, do try and mess with them. Boom. You're in the van too. And you're up on assaulting a federal officer charge, even if you don't know if they are or not, because they don't identify themselves.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Awesome, America.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I'm sorry, we're being political again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hey, no, I tied it into a website. Dot com.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true tech.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. Yeah, there's another one that he did called Ice Spy, which is kind of out of date, but which. So it doesn't really work anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Why aren't people using Citizen? Oh, wait, too busy talking about Lady Gaga's dogs?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, well, Citizen's actually gotten somewhat better. You still. You can get accurate information. It's still. It's about six hours late now. It used to be 24. We used to. When the helicopters were overhead, we'll be like, let's check Citizen tomorrow to see what happened. And it turns out that's kind of how it works. But they've been getting a little bit better. A little bit better. But I did go to. To ring it back into tech a little bit. I talked about Warby Parker before when I got my last pair of glasses. I raved about them like, oh, my God, this is the best thing. The tech is great. Oh, app, they got the little swipey things. It's fucking phenomenal. Well, and the other thing, the thing that really made it phenomenal is they were about a third of what my glasses would cost at LensCrafters. And, you know, I exam 2000 and all that shit. Well, it ain't that way no more, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What, they pulled an Uber?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, they kind of did. They kind of did. I think I walked out of there for, like, with four. For $400 for my two pair of glasses last time with all of the. All of the fixins, you know, all of the coatings and all the other crap on it. Take a guess at how much it cost Yesterday, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

809. $990. 900. Actually, $995.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is that. That could be the tariffs being passed down to you, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I thought Warby Parker was American.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nothing's American.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nothing's American. That's right. That's right. So. So the thing that made Warby Parker great is no longer making it great again. So I think I might just. And the thing is, the. The glasses that I got for them are basically falling apart. The older pair that I got from LensCrafters, the expensive ones still are, like, in mint condition. So I don't think I can really justify it anymore. Yeah, I can't, but I. And I can't really. Yeah, I can't really. I'm rescinding my recommendation for Warby Parker is what I'm trying to say. So that whole try it on at home thing, you know, that kind of went the way of the dodo once they got brick and mortar. So I don't know. I don't know. But running it back to what we were talking about, the mall was empty. Empty. I mean, I know malls haven't been really full for quite some time, but compared to what this usually is, is about 90% less foot traffic. Insane. And the US is getting less foot traffic, especially from Norwegian tourists like Mads Mikkelsen, who says he was turned away at the border because of a photo of J.D. vance on his phone. Well, that's kind of up for debate. You know, it's a lot of he said, she said going on right now, but it's been in the news, so I just wanted to bring it up. But there is no real definitive answer on what happened. The government says it's because he was a junkie. He says it's because of Vance. Nobody really knows, but at least it got, you know, pictures of J.D. vance looking like a big fat baby out there in the public. Even more so when I can't believe.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We'Re here, but here we are. So I was. We're getting ready to travel, coming from Canada. And Canada has a guide to phone security if traveling to the usa, which is linked in the show notes. Here's a guide to locking down phones and other devices. I have scanned my phone to ensure I did not have the JD Vance meme on it. And my wife and I will both be turning off the facial recognition features. And so it's passcode only, which they cannot compel you to give them. Correct? Yeah, so. Jesus fucking Christ, Jason, you might want.

[Jason DeFilippo]

To delete all of the show art you made for this show for the past year and a half.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Show art is not on the phone unless they open up overcast and get. I guess they could be thought police too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, they could be checking your text messages because you do text them to me and they could look there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I will delete our text thread before I get on the plane. Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's fucking sad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is. It's sad. It's just. It's. It's sad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, Jason, in all my life, I never thought I would read a headline like this. The tyranny of Big Balls has come to an end.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Great headline.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is. Edward Korestein, the 19 year old given unprecedented access to some of the most private information on Americans has reportedly quit his role at the so called Department of Government Efficiency. According to Wired. Of course, you know, Elon was his daddy and when daddy goes away, people tend to leave as well. So Dodge is now a sinking ship, I believe. And so he's, he got out while the getting was good. He. Yeah, so he went by Big Balls, hence the headline. He was officially an employee of the GSA but was working across multiple government agencies. According to Wired, he was rooting around in government systems for usaid, the Department of Education, the small. All the. That we've been talking about for weeks now. So yeah, eventually he has basically said he's out, so he's no longer there. Big balls has left the building.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just when you think about they pull me back in because you can't keep the balls down. Big balls is now at the Social Security Administration. Frustration, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, to quote the rise of Skywalker, somehow big balls return.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Always bringing it back to Star Wars. I love it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Dave would be cracking up right now. Jason. He would, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Too bad he doesn't listen to the show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, well, yeah. Speaking of Elon Musk, this is a, this is another good one. Shockingly, another lawsuit. This guy's got like 19 of them going on at any given time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He's got more lawsuits than kids.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's that. And that is a tough pot, my friends. Yeah, well, he fancies himself the innovator of our Time Disrupt could be his middle name. Technology, it seems, is in his DNA, which has spread to at least about 17 kids at the moment. And yet Elon Musk apparently supposedly has a secret Luddite streak. He says he does not use a computer.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Then how does he play all those video games that he says he's so fucking good at? Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hold on a second, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That revelation did not come from a biography or a tell all interview. It actually did not even come from Elon. It came from his lawyers. It came from a legal filing in the high stakes mudslinging lawsuit between Musk and OpenAI where the future of artificial intelligence is on trial and hopefully everybody loses. In a legal letter filed on June 22, Musk's legal team pushed back against accusations from OpenAI that they were failing to turn over relevant documents by stating that Mr. Musk does not own a computer. So we can't possibly hand over anything or any documents because there aren't Any. No laptop. Nothing. Okay, there's one problem with that claim, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, okay. Go ahead, go ahead.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The mountain of fucking public evidence, including from Elon himself, that suggests otherwise. Employees at X told Wired that Musk primarily works from his phone, but they also note that he has been seen using a laptop that. More pointedly, Musk has referenced owning a computer in his own social media posts. On December 2024 post on X, he shared an image with the text, this is a picture of my laptop. More recently, in May 2025, when asked about his gaming setup, Musk replied on S that he's still using my ancient laptop.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm sure the. You know, his lawyer is named Grok. So what's the easiest way to tell the judge that Elon can't give him any documents? Well, just told him he doesn't have a computer, sir.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Actually, Elon is. Elon is not using Grok because Grok is famously anti Elon. Although that could be the problem. That could be what's happening here.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, sabotage.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, going along the Elon path a little bit further, Tesla's inaugural robo taxi rides have started in Austin, Texas.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How's that going, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, just great. If you don't like Elon or Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I know. That's fucking phenomenal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The company launched its fully autonomous ride hailing service in Austin with a Tesla safety monitor accompanying the first riders. According to email invitations sent out to early access riders. It's unclear what capabilities the safety monitors have, but they will sit in the front passenger seat of a self driving model Y. There are several parameters involved in this, including that users are limited to a geofenced area that excludes airports, could run into unavailability due to bad weather, and can only hail a robo taxi between 6am and midnight. This restrictive launch will reportedly offer only 10 cars and come after a delay from the initial initial launch date of June 12th. This is laying the groundwork for the eventual Cyber Cab release, which will never fucking happen. But it isn't expected to start production until at least 2026. Now, according to the company, they are of course facing competition there from Waymo, which started offering its competing services in March to Austin residents and actually uses technology that works.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now how's it going, Jason? You asked.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, I am asking, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

At least one Robotoxi taxi attempted to drive on the wrong side of the road. Based on video posted to X and spotted by Bloomberg, the ride video shared Rob Maurer shared by Rob Maurer is largely uneventful with the Tesla navigating turns and lane mergers with few issues. Doesn't say no issues. Says few issues. Yeah, except for around seven minutes or so into the ride when the Tesla's wheel starts jerking back and forth and the ride briefly crosses onto the wrong side of the road. A honking horn can be heard as the Tesla re enters the correct lane over the double yellow line, which drivers aren't supposed to cross. The Tesla may have corrected itself on its own or under the influence of someone monitoring the ride remotely, but we don't know the only that's not the only instance of essentially unsafe riding that Bloomberg has spotted. Early riders have shared multiple instances of robo taxis going over the speed limit, though that might be more of a reflection of the cars driving around Tesla's vehicles than their collective need for speed. And I did see this on X as well. Folks are building lists of all the Tesla robo taxi failures and it's important to remember what we're talking about. A fleet of less than 20 vehicles in under three days in one of the smallest and easiest geofences possible based on coverage from 100% fanboy influencers. So it's not going well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it's not. It's not. I checked out Reddit last night and there's just. Yeah, the list is growing. So yeah.

[C]

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[Brian Schulmeister]

And as I noted, both Uber, Waymo and Uber have launched their robo taxi service in Atlanta now as long as well as Austin. Those seem to be going better because they use, you know, technology that works better perfectly, but better.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And in continuing news along that vein, starting September 1, fully autonomous cars will require a permit to operate in Texas. Yes, Texas where you go to not have to deal with any government.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're like enough of this where he.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Where Elon moved a lot of his operations because no restrictions and no Regulations. They are going to require restrictions and regulations on autonomous cars. Good for you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Causation, correlation. Yeah, well, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, moving on from all that crap. Now I'll talk about something that used to be in our Security ha segment before it became Star Wars Ha. The supposed mother of all data breaches has occurred. Jason, Basically all data on the Internet has been breached.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, supposed is the key word in this, in this headline because it has.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Been dubbed, as I said, the mother of all data breaches. The breach is said to involve some 16 billion user credentials and impacts a vast number of accounts on platforms like Facebook, Google, and Apple. This breach was initially reported by Cyber News, a site that focuses on web security, calling it one of the largest data breaches in history. Actually, if the numbers are correct, that would be the largest data breach in history, at least that we know of. So. But other researchers are basically saying that this is just a meta collection of all the breaches that have occurred over the past some odd years, all just collated and smashed together. Much like that. I could say that I have a mailing list of about 30 million people. If I got together every single mailing list I collected from all the artists I worked for in my 20 plus years working in the industry, and if I smashed them all together and assumed any of them still worked.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. And then then called it a breach. This is not a breach. This is basically a bunch of cyber criminals just putting all of their lists into one spot and passing it around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And yeah, it's been making the news. And it's these, these guys at quote, unquote, cyber news need to get a life because, yeah, they out this story, they were the only ones to follow it. This really reminds me of, what's it, Ryan Holiday's book about how to, you know, how to game the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This, this story completely took over the news cycle for a couple days. This actually hit the news before we did our last episode, and I've been kind of watching it spread its tendrils around and it is fake news, fake news. It's definitely not a. Not a new breach. It is just a collection of all this stuff. But when you think of it, 16 billion user credentials in one spot is a pretty big thing to be able to find.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And yeah, I'd like a copy of it just to see, so I can remember some of my old passwords.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I haven't been able to get into Reddit for years.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know Dave might be able to get back on. He might be able to get on Our fucking Discord Channel. Yeah, somebody hand that over, please. Friend of the show Fogarty sent me this and I thought it was beautiful. This is a post on bluesky from someone called Casey Explosion. I'm going to be honest here. I think AI is going to do so much damage to the usable Internet that even after it inevitably crashes out, it's going to take years to disentangle from every space it's polluted like digital asbestos. It's going to be time consuming effort and likely expensive venture. Apparently English, not first language. But the digital asbestos I think is the perfect analogy to what AI is doing. It is going to be a fucking mess to clear up and cost a fortune. So I like, yeah, if we even bother, let's get cancer, cancer. Everybody get some cancer. You'll get some cancer. You'll get some cancer. Y' all get brain cancer from the digital asbestos.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. And in useless news, the Meta Oversight Board is once again in the news because they can't really do anything. They're completely unenforceable. Everything they say doesn't matter and Zuck just ignores them. Anyways, best job ever. But they are once again criticizing the social media company over its handling of AI generated content, writing in its latest decision that its inability to enforce its rules consistently is incoherent and unjustifiable. So what will be done about it? Nothing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nothing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But yeah, it's all over the map. And it's of course being done without human review more often than not. And sometimes they'll label a post, they'll take down one post, but if there's been reposts, they'll let those keep going or vice versa. It's just all over the map. There's, there's no consistency whatsoever to anything that they're doing over there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, none at all.

[D]

And.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But it's par for the course. It's par for the course, yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's what they've always done. So it's what they've done about everything and nothing ever gets better and we just move on to the next problem.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I still want that job though. Godamn.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. I want to be on that board anyways. Anthropic has received a mixed result in a class action lawsuit by a group of authors who claim their company used their copyrighted creations without permission, which they did. On the positive side for the artificial intelligence company, Senior District Judge William alsop of the U.S. district Court for the Northern District of California determined that Anthropic's trainings of its AI tools on copyrighted Works was protected as fair use. Their ruling is one of the first that will lightly set the foundation for legal precedents around what AI tools can read and what can and cannot do. Which basically looks like it's fair game out there for all these AI companies to use whatever they want. At the, the moment using copyrighted materials can be deemed fair use if the output is determined to be transformative or not a substitute for the original work. So because it's not spitting back the book that it stole to do it, but just using it for training and, and using it for pattern recognition, that's fine.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, there's two, two cases this week, the Anthropic case and the Meta case. They both just got handed down yesterday. Yeah, and you know, there's a lot, I mean, the, the, the copyright wonks are blowing up about this. It's as they should be because.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let me finish the ruling on this first one before we move on. Because the one thing that he did say was that Anthropic is actually in trouble because they didn't pay for the copies of the books to begin with. They used pirated copies. That's the. No, no. So all these companies have to do is basically buy Barnes and Noble. They're fair game.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, they just have to buy a copy of each and every book. That's where Anthropic is in trouble the most, is because they, I think Meta's was on a couple hundred thousand books and anthropics on 7 million. And then we get to the movies and things like that. They have to buy copies of all this stuff is what it's basically going to come down to. So everybody that's ever published a book, everybody gets $2, 2 cents, dude. It's book royalty. Come on. If anything. But you know, that's gonna, that's gonna come up to some substantial money. But yeah, that was the only good news out of that ruling. And the same thing with the Meta case and that was the Sarah Silverman case. They're saying that, yeah, it's transformative, the rules of copyright to make it fair use. And they're saying it's because of just how they formatted their argument. And they couldn't, they couldn't show harm, they couldn't show that it actually decreased sales of their book. It's all just speculative is the problem. They, they went to court too early because they didn't show that, oh, our book sales are going down faster than they normally would. Which, you know, is a hard case to prove and truly is a hard case to prove and, but the fair use side of things, it's, you know, it. That is a gray area. And I read a really, there's some articles I linked in here from the EFF that are really worth going back and seeing what the EFF stance on it is too. And they say, yeah, it is actually kind of fair use for a lot of this stuff. The. Yeah, the fact that they stole the books outright, that's, you know, straight up. Yeah, you can't, you can't do that shit. So that's going to, you know, Meta's going to get dinged for that. Anthropic is going to get dinged for that. And, oh, somebody might not get two cups of coffee at the, at the commissary this week for whatever finds they're going to get. It's going to hurt Anthropic a lot more than it's going to hurt Meta, obviously. But the case to keep an eye on right now is the Disney midjourney case, because with words, it's kind of tough to be able to show with.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The words, considering it's just pattern recognition. Again, you can't ask any of these things. Spit me back. Sarah Silverman's complete book. It's not going to do that, right? It could, but it won't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The thing is, another side effect of the case is that the prompt engineer who creates something that is very similar to what Sarah Silverman's book would be, and if they get it close enough, the prompt engineer who actually asked for it is the one that would be liable for the copyright because he is. He or she or they or them is actively trying to create a derivative work from it that is not far off the original. So that's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's just a tool argument. We're just a platform, it's just a tool, et cetera, et cetera.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, yeah, this is going to be a lot to digest over the coming days because the Disney one is really the real big one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And as per usual, I mean, again, it always comes down to. It's not the written word. It's when you get into visuals and when you get into Hollywood and when you get into, into gaming. Because that's where the real money is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. And they have to be able to show harm. That's the, that's where you got like, is this really with our business? Because if it's not, you know. And what was it? The, the training data. If you look at the training data, like some of these places have pulled in like 500 million images. Right. But they distill that down to like anywhere between five, three and five terabytes of data that is like, you know, less than almost a byte per image when it comes down to it. So they're not act. They can't actually store any of the original pieces of artwork in there. It's just descriptions of the artwork.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which you know, right there says well, we're not creating a copy of it. We're just, we're literally creating something new from it and we're learning from it. But we don't actually copy what you've created. So you know, that's, that's where this all is just a mind fucking and yeah, it's going to be a mess. It is going to be a fucking Mess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So YouTube is going to add an AI slot button to their, to their site because they're going to turn on a feature in VO3 which is the new video tool, which is really kind of creepy to play with. I've been making some stuff with it just to see how good it is. I mean if that thing could get characters to have persistence between videos. Jesus Christ. Yeah, goodbye Hollywood. But you're going to be able to make shorts, YouTube shorts straight from VO3.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Straight out of nothing. So it's just going to flood YouTube with the garbage that is just going to come out of it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Asbestos is spreading.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah, too much asbestos. John Oliver actually dove in this week with an episode on last week Tonight about AI Slope. I fell asleep halfway through it. But it was, I mean it's John Oliver. So it was, you know, pick and choose your facts as it were. It's kind of like shoot the arrow or shoot the, the side of a barn with an arrow and then run up and draw the, the bullseye around the arrow. But it was, it was fun. It's John Oliver. It's fun to watch. Sometimes it just. I stopped watching the show because it's generally sadness porn.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. But I haven't watched him or Bill Maher in years. Years, but at least a year.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, Brian, for the first time ever, social media has officially overtaken television as American's top source for news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not, you know, could go with news.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Websites that according to the Reuters Institute 2025 Digital News Report, 54 of Americans now get their news from platforms like YouTube, Tick Tock and Instagram. Edging out TV and news apps. The trend is driven by younger audiences and right leaning users who favor creator led content over traditional journalism.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In other words, bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, bullshit over truth.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bullshit that confirms My personal feelings.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, even. I mean mainstream media now is just so bad. No matter what, I get most of my news from fucking substack nowadays. What are you going to do? Or blue substack and Blue Sky. Digital subscriptions may have peaked with only 20% of Americans paying for online news and most unwilling to shell out for bundles. AI generated news is growing, especially in Asia, but remains distrusted in Europe and the US smartphones now dominate morning news habits with nearly 60% of young Americans reaching for their phones first thing. Okay, well, here's the thing. And in a sign of the times, podcasts are more popular than print newspapers in the US with YouTube now the country's podcast platform. You start off with a great bit of. Great bit at the beginning of the sentence and then you just fucking shit on it at the end.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, you know, again, Facebook for me has basically just become a new source because I, I get a lot of stuff for the show from there because I follow a lot of tech, tech, different tech publications on Facebook.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I thought Facebook wasn't allowed to have news anymore. I thought that was the whole point of Facebook is that they can't have news links anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In Canada, I'm not allowed to post them, but I can follow US companies that can post them or other companies so I can see things that are posted and I can link. I can and open the links. But I myself cannot post a news link on my feed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, that just shows that Facebook obviously doesn't consider grumpy old geeks news because you can post links to us whenever you want.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that one works. It's weird. Well, I think it's a. Yeah, I don't know who the knows how their systems work. They don't even know. Have you ever tried to go through their customer service to try to fix a problem? They have no idea.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's ask the oversight board, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, let's ask them. Yeah, so, yeah, and basically, yeah, same thing. Like I go to. I. There's my websites that I go to in the morning. I think Apple news is still pretty useful. But I mean again, you and I are probably like in the top point zero one percent in terms of like news consumers. And you know, I have NPR in the background on all day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Like, well, I'm not going to go that far. Jesus. No, no, I don't own a sweater. I'm not going to listen to npr. Jesus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This fair and balanced.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sure. Nobody's fair and balanced anymore, Brian, just yoga instructors. But we do definitely pay. I pay for more. I Pay more for news than I do for any of my streaming platforms. Like, you know, TV crap. Although I did. I did, Brian. I caved this week. I gave fucking Amazon $3.

[Brian Schulmeister]

For what?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ads. I couldn't take it anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're going to pay that per month? Are you watching that much on Amazon?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, America's test kitchen, the next generation. Watch that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

God. God forbid you have to sit through an ad for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There are seven to eight minutes of ads per episode. We're on season two. Just the. The time. I'm like, it's three dollars and it's just too. And. And they're showing us ads for rock climbing gear. I'm like, do you. We're on the. We're not gonna go climb a rock. We're not mountaineers. We're watching a show about cooking.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How's those targeting ad platforms working?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm just like, what kind of deal did these people get? We should advertise there if it's that cheap. Jesus.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, at least it would be targeted for people sitting on their damn couch watching tv. I am not going to go climb a fucking mountain. So, yeah, I can't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So you don't want to go on the Will Rogers hike with us when we come into town?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Will Rogers State Park.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is there anything left?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, didn't think about that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, you might wanna. You might wanna check the news, Brian, because I don't know if you've noticed, but the Palisades ain't quite what it used to be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna have to reschedule my Saturday.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I think you might. Because even just getting a PCH now, it's 25 miles an hour in one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Lane, so even fucking runyon. And be with all the influencers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're gonna hang with Kevin Smith.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Enjoy. Well, let's feel insignificant for a little bit, Brian. Here, let's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I already knew, Jason. I already did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's just add some fuel to that fire. The first images from the largest camera ever built revealed millions of gal Cool. This is the camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's where my favorite wine comes from.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not in Marica. So in just 10 hours of testing, the observatory captured light from millions of galaxies and discovered over 2,000 new asteroids, including seven near Earth ones. None dangerous. Unfortunately, the telescope's massive 8.4 meter mirror and rapid fire camera will scan the southern hemisphere sky every few nights for the next decade, producing the most detailed time lapse of the universe. Universe ever made. Scientists say Rubin will detect Millions of objects nightly helping to unravel cosmic mysteries like dark matter and dark energy and a shit ton of goddamn communication satellites. One image alone covers an area of the sky of size of 45 full moons and would take 400 HDTVs to display in full. That's not bad. Not bad. So, set for its first Official observations on July 4, the Rubin Observatory is being hailed as a discovery machine that could redefine how we understand the universe.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, Juan, we've been running this thing for five years and all I see are fucking Starlink satellites.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's it. Just a bunch of Starlinks. Media candy. Terrible, terrible news, Brian. Yes, this is. This is a two, three pronged approach here. A, they're remaking Highlander. Bad, bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Don't do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Don't do that. Just look what happened to the crow. It's. This Highlander is a movie that should not be remade just like the Crow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There can be only one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Second, Henry Cavill is going to play Connor McLeod. Henry Cavill is not Scottish. Although, to be fair, Connor McLeod not Scottish in the first one, so fairly French. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Your point is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Christopher Lambert did have a very horrible Scottish. Yeah. Sean Connery, on the other hand, who played a Spaniard, had a fun Scottish accent.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, okay, so you're demanding accuracy in the remake that didn't exist.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was drinking a lot when the first time it came out, Brian, everybody sounded Scottish.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Turns out I was actually watching Mike Myers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's not Scottish, clap head.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm the Highlander.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, second up, they're going to cast Russell Crowe as Ramirez, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. I think after his Javert in Les Mis, he should not be allowed on screen anymore, period. Never. The worst Javert ever. My dog could sing stars better than he could anyway. Just. No, stop it. Just. No. Also, speaking of. No, I watched part of the Amateur, okay. With what's his name? Rami Malek from, you know, Mr.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Robot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Mr. Robot. That was it. That was he. But he was also in the Queen movie. He played Freddie Mercury. He was much better in. In. In that movie than this movie. This movie is dumb. We turned it. We turned it off after about 20 minutes because it was so fucking dumb. And then we went to the. Here's the thing. Then we went to the Accountant, too, with Ben Affleck.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Were you expecting that to be good?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. Which turned out. Which made it awesome. So much better than the Amateur. We love that movie. We love the Accountant, too. It was terrible, too, but terrible in a good way. So that was fun. It has the guy from the Punisher in it too. Said he. He was actually the best. He stole the show. He's fantastic in it. The Godfather of Harlem season four just wrapped. They definitely took a turn on the timeline this season. If you look up the historical accuracy on this, you will find out that. No, not even close. Not even close now. Yeah, Bumpy Johnson died in 68. And they're. They're. He's still alive and kicking and events that they. They portray that happened in 71. So, yeah, they just gave up the ghost. Like we're just gonna run with it. Then I saw a show called in Vogue the 90s on Hulu because we ran out of shit to watch. First three episodes are fucking fantastic. It's like the rise of vogue in the 90s and the supermodels, you know, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, all of that stuff. And the rise of all that when it gets to episode four, then it hits the Met gala and just goes to shit. So we scan the last four. Skip the last four, but the first three, if you have any. I just had a girlfriend who was big into supermodels in the 90s, so I know about that era. So for me, it was a walk down memory lane. It was like you watching a Cure documentary, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, no, this would be the same for me too. I mean, our college dorm rooms were plastered with the Linda Evangelista. Christy Turlington was always my favorite. All over there. And then, of course, you know, I don't know if you remember, but I. I did the guest website for quite some time, so a lot of.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, me too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Spreads. Yeah, you. You did it. And I did it. And then that ended up becoming one of the first things that I did with my own company because we kind of stole them as a client for a while. So. Yeah, I remember a lot of this stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I stole a lot of the materials they gave us to and took them home and put them on the wall. There are a lot of. A lot of pirated Anna Nicole Smith photos running around my apartment back then.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And to be. To be clear, my girlfriend is the one that actually stole them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I think the statute of limitations has run out on that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think so. On. Yeah. And some promo glossy 8 by tens. But yeah, it was definitely really good. I think. I think he would actually like it then, for sure.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Awesome. Well, as I mentioned on our Discord, and I can't remember if I mentioned on the show last week or not, but it was movie night and my Son had picked a Minecraft movie which we watched over the weekend. Why? He liked it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. He liked it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He liked it. I, I, I, I. You know, on movie night, we, we make a commitment to sit with them and, and, and watch the movie and I make popcorn and it's a family bonding time and I couldn't do it, Jason. I could not sit through this movie. It was horrible. Jack Black is so up his own Jack Black Blacky Black assness now that I can't handle him. He's a, he's a parrot. He plays a parody of a parody of a parody of a parody of a parody of himself at this point. Horrible. It's horrible. This movie was horrible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyways, kid loved it though.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Okay. I tell you, Jack Black peaked at the Pick of Destiny for me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Anything post Tenacious D. I mean, High Fidelity was awesome, but late Jack Black good. But late Jack Black is horrible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Too bad, Too bad. I did, I did like Pandemic. Jack Black though, when he would get on the mic and just do, do that thing he did from Rocky Horror was amazing. I mean, the guy can sing. Give him that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, of course.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He should stick to it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Too bad he wants those big paychecks though, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. I saw an article in Salon this week. Anthony Bourdain didn't say that, but we wish he did. And this is about that. Get the cream sauce. Have a pint at 4. The Internet. It's the Internet's favorite Bourdain quote, which is actually not real and not from him. This article delves into where it first appeared. It was a fan of Bourdain that wrote it with as a caption on Etsy and then started to sell stuff with it. Anyways, it's a really great article. I hadn't thought about Bourdain in a little while, so they really kind of get into it and man, I missed that guy. And then I started to realize that Anthony Bourdain stuff was popping up everywhere and I couldn't quite figure out why until I saw another article on Salon, how to celebrate Bourdain Day. A thing Tony probably would have hated, which is true. And it's because it's Anthony's Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain's birthday was on June 25th. There would have been a 69th birthday. And it was started by his close friends Eric Repair and Jose Andre. The year after his death in 2018. It's an unofficial holiday to honor the chef, the way he lived with Curiosity, appetite, and an honest eye for the world around him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So happy Bourdain Day, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I figured alcohol and vitriol would be the way to sell.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's how I personally celebrate it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I do want to point out a website that I just absolutely love. It's called quote, Investigator. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on a bunch of shit people never said, which I love to do, as you know, can't fucking stand half this shit. It just tickles that itch. Doing the same thing over and over again is not the definition of insanity. It's the definition of practice. And Einstein didn't say it ever came in a fucking novel in the 80s, so stop saying it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyway, since the entire Internet is being rewritten by AI Slop and the AI reads that stuff. Stuff, it shall be true.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know what's great? Oh, you know, you know what? AI has sucked up all of those, those, those, those memes that are meant to piss people off, that take like the Star Trek quote with the picture of the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings and mix them all together. Yeah, AI is going to be so confused from that. But I did, I did look up you. Since you got me on Bourdain, I went and I looked up, up. I've got a first edition signed cookbook, the Appetites Cookbook. Oh, yeah, Those things are selling from anywhere from 300 to $650 on eBay. Like, but then, then there are the ones that are the exact same book that people post that don't do any research and they sell for 20 bucks, so. Yes, but they do sell. They do sell. You have one, don't you?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not a signed one, but I do have one, yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Mine is stained as Anthony Bourdain would have liked it because I, I've actually cooked with it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, I haven't. Mine's been sitting. Mine has been moved 17 times. Mine has a lot of road miles on it, like Bourdain did. I took it with me around the country, but yeah, it has never been cooked with, sadly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. In news that you won't care about, because I know you and I disagree on this. The Stand by Stephen King is one of my favorite novels of all time. And I enjoyed the first miniseries quite a lot. Kind of sort of enjoyed the second one, but not that much. Well, we're getting to third, but not a miniseries, which I don't quite understand because the Stand, Stephen King's doorstop sized 1978 post apocalyptic novel, is Getting a new adaptation from director Doug Liman. Instead of another series following in the footsteps of the 94 and 2020 versions, this will instead be a feature film. Yes. The book, which is 1152 pages, is going to become a two hour movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, good luck with that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

As they state in the article, it will instantly become one of the hottest writing assignments in town. AKA it is getting pumped directly into a large language model saying, please condense this into a two hour movie and it will leave out all the good bits. So that's going to suck.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's pretty much going to suck. The one thing that got me thinking, the Dead Zone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Remember the. I mean, the TV series with Anthony Michael hall is what I'm talking about.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I never watched that. I did see the movie, but I never saw the miniseries.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've never seen the movie, but I thoroughly loved the miniseries. I kind of want to go back and get that now. That was pretty good, I got to say. And the other Stephen King thing that I really like is the Langoliers.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah, I like that one too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That two night miniseries that they have. It took me forever to find in Sweden, but I finally got a copy of it. I can slide you one under the table, but it's in. It's in four, three. Sadly, it kind of looks like you're watching Deep Space Nine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, God, I can't do it. I tried. I really want to watch Deep Space Nine again too, and I can't do it. Yeah, well, 90s nostalgia is in full bloom if you can tell around my house too, because the Oasis concert is coming up and my wife is very excited. But I saw a great article over on the UK Times website. The boys got sex, I got poetry. What Brit pop was like for women. So it says Oasis are back, along with a wave of 90s nostalgia. But was Brit pop so much fun for women in bands as it was for the guys? We asked the lead singers of Lush Sleeper and Echo Belly. Lush and Sleeper, two of my favorite bands from that era, never really got too into Echo Belly, but as they've popped up in my AI curated playlist, sometimes I've started to enjoy it a lot more. More than I. Than I did back then. So it's a really good article about how it was like being a woman fronting a band back then as opposed to the guys. Because it was a very sexist culture back then.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then speaking of bands of an earlier era, there's a podcast called the Story behind the Song, which I don't listen to too often because I actually can't stand the host. I just, He's. He makes everything about himself and it's so frustrating. Your job is to interview the star. They're the star. It's not about you, buddy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Kara Swisher. Oh, I'm sorry. Wrong show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wrong show, Wrong show. But they talked to the Bengals, Suzanne Hoffs about the song Eternal Flame, which is a great track, and I love the Bengals and I particularly love Suzanne Hopps. So I really enjoyed listening to it. But, of course, he did make it about himself so many times. I was at that show of yours. Oh, I. I was. I lived in Laurel Canyon for a while. Who the cares? Shut the up. Oh, God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, speaking of making it about yourself.

[D]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I went on. I went on Kevin Rose's new podcast. Less than 1 this week. Shut the up. Yeah, pretty much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nobody cares.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nobody does.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I listened to it, Jason. I thought it was a. It was a really good episode. I think it was great that you actually talked about it a lot, so kudos to you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, thank you. I can't believe you listened to it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I actually really did. And then as I was. I did make it a little bit about me, Jason. Okay. Because as I was listening to you and Kevin talk about it, I was like, you know, I've. I've always enjoyed drinking. I. I've been a heavy drinker at points and times in my life. I've definitely scaled that back a lot recently, but I've always had a little bit of a niggling feeling in the back of my mind, am I an alcoholic? And you guys answered that question for me. No, I am not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're not. You're definitely not.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I am absolutely not an alcoholic.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. No, you're not. No, you're not. But, yeah, this is an hour and a half of me and Kevin talking about stuff. And I don't even. I mean, I drank for 30 years, like, pretty consistently. So this is an hour and a half, like, snippet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, no, I mean, there was definitely, like, segments of your life that you did not touch on and which I knew you quite well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. The early days in tech in Hollywood. I didn't even touch on. I didn't talk about my James Cameron story or any of that stuff. So we're going to be doing this kind of fairly often. So I think there's going to be like a once a month, once every two month thing where Kevin and I get together and talk about. Because he's. He's on the path so, you know, it's a really good show. The first episode's with Jason freed from 37 signals, and it was really good too. So it's. It's an audio only podcast. Thank you, Jesus. And we recorded it over at my. In my garage, my new garage studio. Since I don't. I don't have a proper studio anymore.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But no, it was very well done, Jason. Congratulations. Thank you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you. Link is in the show notes. Go check it out. Apps and doodads. Brian, do you use Safari on your iPhone or do you use Brave or a different browser?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I actually use Chrome on my iPhone.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, yeah, yeah, you probably won't run into this problem then. I use Brave and I also have all of the Google apps on my phone now. These tricky motherfuckers at Google. Every time I use Brave to search Google, it tries to open the Google app.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, that's annoying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh. Oh, God. And sometimes if I leave Brave and I come back, it will automatically, without even asking me, switch over whatever the current query is in the open tab to the Google app. So annoying. I mean, that is some seriously dark pattern shit right there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So if you do use Brave and you see this popping up and you are annoyed, as I was, I put a link in the show notes on how to fix it. So there's some settings in Brave that you can go and say, no, no, no, no, no, not on my watch, buddy. And that it never happens again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, big changes are coming to Windows, Jason. The notorious blue screen of death is finally headed to a junkyard upstate. The error message has been a key part of the Windows experience for almost 40 years, and boy, do I remember it well. So Death Window computers are still going to crash, so there needs to be some sort of error screen. They are transitioning to. Wait for it. A black screen of death. It will be black, as the name suggests. None more black. And there will be no cutesy frowny face or QR code. It'll just be a black screen with a short message that tells users they need to restart. Okay, that seems unhelpful. The new BSOD recalls the black screen shown during a Windows update, but it will list the stop code and system driver that contributed to the crash. Okay, thank God for that. So it's not just telling us that we need to restart. That actually is going to be useful. Not that I use Windows anymore. This will debut alongside the Quick Machine Recovery feature. This tool is designed to restore machines that won't boot. These changes are being made in the wake of last year's CrowdStrike incident that crashed over 8 million Windows devices. And of course, the Internet is already a flurry with Spinal Tap memes.

[D]

I think he's right. There's something about this that's so black, it's not like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None. More black. You're rationalizing this whole thing, like, into something that you. You did on. On purpose.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And Philips Hue is in the news. Their prices are going up in the US Next month, and you can officially know who to blame. Hint. It rhymes with rump.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Parent company Signify told Hue Blog that its price increases are a direct result of tariffs. See how easy that was, Amazon?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, there you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, there you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Easy peasy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. They have no problems mincing words about this. The trade war is the culprit. Signify, we'll increase prices on our Philips Hue portfolio in the US effective July 1st. As a direct result of tariffs, we are committed to providing consumers with high quality products and features that make smart lighting extraordinary. We reserve the right to modify prices based on new or additional tariffs becoming effective in the future. So it's more expensive. You're paying for it. There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The name Hue Blog got me thinking. I'm like, you know, if I was in their marketing department, the first thing I would do would be to hire Hugh Laurie, Hugh Jackman, and Hugh Grant and have the three of them as the Hughes. They could wear three different colored suits and that would be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They can wear those Red Hot Chili Peppers light bulb outfits that they wore for Glastonbury or whatever the hell they wore it for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God. See, I'm a marketing genius.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You are.

[Jason DeFilippo]

IPhone users have said Apple is not a marketing genius this week because I don't know if you got one, Brian, but I got an alert from my wallet app that tells me the new F1 movie is out and that I can get cheap tickets.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did. This is almost as annoying as the U2 album showing up in my library without me asking for it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. The first thing I thought, I'm like, they're doing it again. Did they not learn? Did they learn?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Obviously, that person retired and a new.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Person came, quote, unquote, retired.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, I got it as well. It was very annoying.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. So people are pissed off about that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But as they should. It's your wallet app. I don't want an ad in my wallet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I want money in my wallet. But Apple keeps taking it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The only ads I should be getting in my wallet are for Trojan. Beyond that age at this point. Anyways, the HDMI forum, which develops and manages HDMI specifications, has officially launched the final and full specific for HDMI version 2.2. This was designed to make it significantly easier to send videos with higher refresh rates and resolutions to modern TVs such as those with 4K and 8K displays. So these will be rolling out soon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which is more cables to buy more.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Expensive cables that we can upgrade with. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Dark side.

[Brian Schulmeister]

With Dave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Welcome to the Dark side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes things all things cyber on the cyber wire every day. I can talk good Today exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat, breaks down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop and even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. Hello, Dave.

[D]

Hello. I'm think I'm thinking all the things.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're thinking all the things.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Jason's coming to us from Alabama today.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Alabama. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[D]

Thinking it all. Well, gentlemen, I am pleased to say that last night I completed my andor viewing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[D]

Yes. It was amazing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[D]

So cool.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Best Star wars series so far, hands down.

[D]

So. All right, let me ask you this. We have spoken before about my view that while Star wars, the original Star wars, is my favorite movie, I concede, I guess, that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star wars movies.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[D]

So the highest quality. So here's my question. Is the andor season or andor series taken as a whole better than Empire Strikes Back?

[Brian Schulmeister]

If andor existed in a universe in which there was no star, a New Hope, and no Empire Strikes Back andor would not be as good good as it is.

[D]

That is true. It.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It.

[D]

Absolutely.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That is my qualified answer in which I am hiding behind.

[D]

I see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So.

[D]

So you got the Old Testament and the New Testament.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There would be no New Testament.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If there weren't an angry, wrathful God to start with.

[D]

Yes. All right. That's. That's a view.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The thing is, it's like one has lightsabers and one doesn't.

[D]

And that's right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But I think a defining characteristic for me is that it must have lightsabers at some point. I'm going with Brian, with the fact that it wouldn't exist without. Without the others. So I might be on Team Brian here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. It's a very good side plot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The best of the side plots.

[D]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So what's your answer, Dave?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I just love. He's a Mon Mothma fan, man. She's Dancing and she's drunk and. Yeah, next, at first he wants to go antiquing with some crazy actress and now he's doing this.

[D]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Give me my, my space MILFs, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Space Mama.

[D]

Yeah. I don't know. I. I mean, it is an unfair question to ask because whether it's 30 or 40 years in between the two.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Of them, I can tell you it is much better than the book of Boba Fett.

[D]

Yes, yes. Yeah, that's true. But it seems to me like there's even something different about this than any of the other series.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. It's very serious. It's very political. It is not. There is no part of this that is in any way, shape or form for children as opposed every other show has at least been touched upon with like, this is for the kids. Here's the lightsaber, here's the good guy, here's the bad guy. There's no moral gray areas. This is all moral gray.

[D]

Right. Yeah. So maybe it's just that I'm seeing this appeals to me at the age I am now in the same way that Empire Strikes back appealed to 10 year old me. So, yeah, it's impossible to look back through the lens of nostalgia.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But did you watch Rogue One after?

[D]

No, didn't have time. But we're planning on watching Rogue One on Sunday, I believe. Coming up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[D]

We did two episodes back to back last night to wrap it up, so that's a lot. We needed a breather, but boy, was it good. Oh, so much fun when what's his name, K2. So shows up. Up the. The Imperial Droid.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[D]

Such good comic relief. I was talking with my son about how he is basically takes the C3PO role.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[D]

Of being the complaining droid. But my son said, but he's so much better than C3PO. And I said, really? How so? He said, well, he's a. He's a badass.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, he kicks ass.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. And he's not as whiny. I was like, oh, he is pretty much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's pretty whiny.

[D]

He's pretty whiny.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's just. You don't want to tell him.

[D]

Yeah. I guess he's a little less deferential.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's going to be no shut up, goldenrods.

[D]

Right, right. Shut him up or shut him down. Yeah, yeah. So very well done. And I'm looking forward to heading into another viewing of Rogue One with this now as perspective. And I'm just really happy that we have this kind of quality Star wars being produced right now, so time well spent.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, I agree. It was very good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You should at least watch the last five minutes. Watch the walking through the camp montage right before you go into Rogue One.

[D]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do that for me.

[D]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just to set the mood and the tone.

[D]

That's a great idea. That's a great idea. And boy, did they give Cassian a hero's walk at the end there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sure.

[D]

Did the slowmo strut through camp.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, boy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was pretty good.

[D]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Very good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In related Star wars news, the official Star wars website, to sit along its own interactive timeline of the eras of Star wars past and future, released an updated semi interactive map of the Star wars galaxy. Have you looked at this? It is awesome.

[D]

Yeah. Because I need more things to waste time on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're very good at wasting our time. It needs to be more interactive. They should have spent more time on this because it is pretty badass. I wanted, like, I want to be able to click on movie or series and have it trace all the different places they go to. There are many things I want to see from this map.

[D]

Yeah. Sound effects, you know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. All of it starts playing the movies, you know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sure.

[D]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So. But very cool. I thought it was a. It's a really neat addition to the. Their. To their site.

[D]

Right. And that they invested in this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[D]

You know. Yeah, absolutely.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can do that when you got mouse money.

[D]

Yeah, I guess so. You know, I learned something. I was doing a. Oh, God. I went down a rat hole of R2D2 builders. And one thing. And one of the rat holes I went down was an exhaustive history of the original. A half dozen or so R2D2s that were built for a new hope and how people have checked which one is which and screen accuracy and how they differ from each other and this, that and the other thing. And one of the things I learned. Well, a couple things. First of all, there is no canon version of R2D2. Like, because he changes from shot to shot in a new hoax. There's no real settled opinion of which one is the actual R2D2. Which I guess makes it a little. Well, both makes it easier and harder for the builders. But the other thing I learned was that when Disney bought Star Wars, George Lucas got to keep all the stuff. So they had to build all new R2D2s for the new movies.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[D]

Because they didn't get to use the old ones.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[D]

So not interesting. That's a good part of the deal. For George, I guess.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Definitely. If he ever. If he ever hits hard times, he can sell that stuff, right? You know, once he plows through the 5 billion.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. If he goes down the. The Coppola path.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Well, his new. The new museum's opening up soon here in la, so maybe some of it'll be there. Have you guys seen the. Have you seen the thing museum?

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's amazing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it's stunning. I can't wait. I cannot wait for that thing to open. It is just. It's not till next year still, but just the campus is beautiful. It looks like a spaceship. It is so cool.

[D]

Is it a Star wars museum?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, it's basically a fiction museum. Like a storytelling museum, I believe.

[D]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's called the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay. And you can take a look at the building. It is just unbelievably beautiful.

[D]

Wow. We'll all have a good time wandering around in the Howard the Duck wing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's getting its own thing, man.

[D]

Yeah, it'll be a men's room. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. We got some feedback. Actually, I got some feedback. I think he copied you on this, Jason over on the Fediverse. This is from Grim Ghost, who said. So just listen to last week's Gog and Dave with your most recent download. Just check Amazon or AliExpress for the recent Anbernic devices. They come in a variety of form factors. Sure. To fill you with nostalgia. They will make good use of your downloads. So when we were talking about MAME emulators and all that kind of stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, yes.

[D]

Well, I placed an order. So this is. Basically, there's two form factors. There's one that looks like Nintendo Switch and there's one that looks like a Game Boy. I've ordered the Switch version and it looks like this is just a device that is fairly high quality and its purpose in life is to run emulated old games.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[D]

And what more do I need?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there you go. Actually, after we had talked about that the other week, I ended up taking my kid. I think he had. He had passed this next swim level or something like that. And we had promised him a new game for his Switch. So we went down to the local game shop, you know, which has like all the funko things and then all the games and used games and all that sort of stuff. And I looked over at the. They had a glass container where you check out. And lo and behold, there were cartridges from Atari super nes. All that stuff that you guys are talking about. And I was like, surely this isn't a big thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, it's a thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Told you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There are all these old cartridges everywhere, man. It was crazy.

[D]

Yeah. Well, my son said to me, just, I think day before yesterday, he said I was home and I was going to. I decided I wanted to play Mario Kart, and I realized that my brother had borrowed my Mario Kart cartridge, and I couldn't play it. And I said, mario Kart cartridge? You have a Mario Kart cartridge on your switch? He said, yeah, there's like, two games I have on my switch that are actually cartridges. But now, you know, pretty much everything he does now is downloads, but.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. There are completists out there who, you know, people who want to have the entire Atari 2600 collection.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Gotta say, I was tempted, but I got over it really quickly because they were selling a 2600 too, and I was like. Like, if they had the Odyssey 2000, I would pick that up.

[D]

You know, you can.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I.

[D]

My. My experience and advice is that you can quell much of that thirst through emulators. You know, just enough to keep you from spending a lot of money. Because. Yeah, for me, anyway, a lot of the nostalgia is about quantity, not quality. So I'm like, oh, I want to play this. Oh, I want to play that. Oh, I want to play this. But I don't want to play any of them for very long because most of them actually sell.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And you know what? The emulators don't require wife approval. That's true.

[D]

Or boss approval.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[D]

Oh, man. I'm looking at these pictures you posted, Jason. This museum is gorgeous.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Isn't that going to be cool?

[D]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's going to be very neat.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Very neat. Speaking of very neat, I saw something that I just wish I had when I was a kid. It's called the Dragon Grip Martial Arts sound effect toy. It's basically a handheld, like, stick that you can press buttons on to make noises like your kung fu fighting.

[D]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's a stupid, simple idea, but, man, I wish I had this when I was a kid.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, I pulled this up to look at it, and my kid was actually at home at the time. And as I was watching this, at first my first thought was, this is so ridiculous. And then my kid flew past me going. And I was like. Like, huh. I guess I should put this in the cart.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Say, Christmas is coming.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[D]

You know what? Actually, this reminds me. This is probably 10 years ago I was doing some motion graphics work. And one of my colleagues. I asked one of my colleagues to come in and take a look at what I was doing. And I was walking through some stuff, and about halfway through the little demo I was giving him, he goes, you know, it's really comforting for me to know that I'm not the only one who makes sound effects when I'm manipulating the mouse. I said, what do you mean? Because I was like, so we'll move this over here and we'll click here. And I didn't even know I was doing it, but I totally was doing it. And I don't know if I was doing it just because he was in the room or whatever, but I'm okay with it. Whatever. Whatever gets you through the day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I made a video one time of me playing Throwing the Ball for the Dogs. And I, too, didn't realize I made sound effects. So I'm throwing the ball, I'm going, yeah, exactly. Even when I made. When I posted the video, I didn't even pay attention to it. And somebody's like, your sound effects are so cute. I'm like, what? And I went back and listened. I'm like, oh, I feel like a dork.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The only thing better than sound effects, and it made me think of the Family Guy when he had his own personal soundtrack for the day for that episode. Most of the hilarious thing, I want my own soundtrack.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I used to do that with my. My dad had an accordion in the basement, and I never did it, but I had this giant pea coat, like a military pea coat. But the pockets could go in. Like, it had holes that you could go all the way through. So I'd button up the coat, put the accordion on underneath, and I would play the accordion as I walked around.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, I did have my version of that. My local pub in my 20s and early 30s at that point in time, had the touch tone system. Did you remember that, Jason? It was a system where it was a jukebox for the pub and you could play Money. But then they moved to an app. So I would start to play my entry song as I was walking down the block.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember that. I remember that. Yeah. We'd be sitting there waiting and saw your song would come on like, oh, he's coming.

[D]

Here comes Brian. Oh, man, that's brilliant.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Totally remember that. That was great.

[D]

Everybody should. Somebody should have just that as being the product, right? That all it does is makes entry music. And, like, all the lights dim and there's a spotlight when you. When you walk in the door.

[Brian Schulmeister]

People wouldn't pay for that. I paid. I paid a lot of money to. Because I would. You know, other people would have already paid, but you could pay to usurp their choices. So my song would come on immediately. Dude.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I. I was talking to my friend John Sylvain the other day, and he's got a home kit that he was having problems with, but he's got it set up, so when he walks in the door to his apartment, it plays one of his favorite songs.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Like, awesome.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because he. Because he was telling me he went to the Barenaked Ladies concert the other night. When he came home and opened his door, he was playing Bare Naked Ladies for him.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Questionable taste in music, but.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I'm not gonna, you know, not gonna yuck on another man's yum. But I just thought it was cool. I'm like, okay, if home. If HomeKit worked like it was advertising, you could do that all the time. That would be kind of neat. It would also tip off if your wife's having an affair so she could get the guy out of the house sooner. But.

[D]

Here comes my husband. How can you tell the Indiana Jones theme is playing?

[Brian Schulmeister]

How come every time my wife walks in the house and starts playing the theme from Shaft?

[D]

That's right. Oh, my. Every time. Every time the groundskeeper comes by, the pool boy, sexy music starts playing. Right, honey?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I didn't know she liked Barry White so much.

[D]

Whatever. Whatever gets you through the day, right? I put a link in here for interesting little video I found that I think helps amplify all of our. The three of our disdain for blue microphones for blue Yetis.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm on one now. What are you talking about for blue Yetis?

[D]

All right. Me and Jason's disdain for. And it's mostly having to walk guests through using. Getting the most out of their blue yetis.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right, by throwing it in the trash. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep.

[D]

Right. Exactly. Usually that starts with getting them to talk into the right part of the microphone because they talk into the top of it. But there's a nice little video about the history of blue microphones and how they came to be who they are today, and their downfall and, you know, part of why the current line stinks and that they really don't exist anymore. And one thing I learned was that the L in blue stands for Latvian. They're a Latvian company. Did not know that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They have an interesting history of making microphones that you can hear dog fart three houses away with not hear the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Person talking into it. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly, because it's pointed in the wrong directions. And it's a condenser microphone, not a dynamic microphone. So no podcaster should ever use it unless they're trained in the audio arts. But everybody buys them now. The funny thing is the blue snowball you could buy at CVS for a good long time. And I'm like, do you want to start a podcast with a piece of high tech technical equipment that you bought next to your nyquil? Right. No. No.

[D]

So the price is right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I guess meanwhile, I have my. My show notes written down on my CVS receipt because it fits.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because it's so fucking.

[D]

Yeah. Who needs to buy a notepad? So the final thing I put in there was something I stumbled across and boy, if I had a garage.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Who are these people with this time and money?

[D]

I don't know, but I'm glad they're out there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Me too.

[D]

This is a YouTube video of, I'm gonna say, a couple who built in their garage a miniature version of Star Tours from Disneyland. And it looks like a miniature version of the Star Tours vehicle. It only holds three people. It is manually operated by two people in the back of the ride manipulating a couple of two by fours.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It does look like a. You went to Latvian Disneyland.

[D]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[D]

And you know, it doesn't have all the axis of rotation that the original does, but you know what? Doesn't matter.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's like grandpa's just shaking it in the back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean, the kids are loving it. They're absolutely loving it. And the guy and the gal who own the place are dressed up like Han Solo and Princess Leia and Darth Vader comes out. I suspect this must have been taking place around Halloween. You know, it just seems like a perfect part of a Halloween tour kind of thing. And some. Somewhere in the video, somebody says that they're waiting for an hour for their turn to ride it, but.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's pretty good, man.

[D]

It really is. I mean, just. And. And they're doing it for the neighborhood kids, you know?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yeah. Screw the kids.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly.

[D]

Well, the problem.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The only problem with this nighttime ride with a margarita.

[D]

Yeah. The only problem with this is because it's manually operated.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[D]

If you want to ride it, you got to get somebody else to do all the moves. And they're never going to be up to your standard for doing all the moves, but because you have to have the ride memorized.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Jason, I said two rights.

[D]

Good God. I like speed to endor.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I should have got Dave to do this he understands.

[D]

That's right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right.

[D]

Her professional quality and dedication.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Dave would be too busy trying to hook up a solar panel to figure out how the actuators can work to make the whole thing off the grid.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, we've got no power. We better get Scotty. Oh, wait. Universe creep.

[D]

Yeah, I just, I don't know, it's just a little project that makes me happy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it's very cool.

[D]

We need as much happiness as we can in today's world, so. All right, that's what I have this week. Thank you, gents.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And Dave, next week we're off for 4th of July, so.

[D]

Oh, yes indeed. All right, see you in a couple weeks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Y.

[D]

All right, take care.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Bye. Closing shout out. Over at Patreon, we've got two new patrons, Gene and Rick and Jeff upped their pledge. Woohoo. Thank you. And from the archives, Michael, Dana, Ryan, jc, Don, Christian, Jason, Ralph, Joshua and Barrett. We thank you all so much, so very, very much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, thank you all. Over at PayPal we've got Charlie, Jen's, Joseph, Gordon with a 25 donation. And Susan said, hold my beer, here's 50 bucks.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Woohoo. Over at the tip jar we've got Ross and Jennifer and James picked up some merch. Yahoo. Just a quick reminder to let everybody know, if you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com gog and for as little as $3 a month, you can help keep the show on the air. You can give us more if you want. Want we take it. And if you like, if you really like, you can pay for the whole year up front and get a discount. We don't know why they give you a discount, but they do. But anyway, we like your money because it keeps us on the air. So please. Patreon.com gog oh, oh, that's right. And you do get the show early ad free. And in high definition, they gave the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Discount, Jason, because they figured out they're getting dinged for credit card charges and they don't pay. They, they pay less. So they, they're saving you that much.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's why.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There we go. See, Brian, always, always pulling back the curtain of commerce. That's you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's what they call me, the curtain of commerce.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Quick condolences to my cousin Dwight. This week he lost his father and I lost an uncle. This week Uncle Denny died. He was a hell of a guy and he will be missed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Condolences to you and your family, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you very much, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Until next time. I'm Brian Scher.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm Jason Philippa. Thanks for listening to Grumpy old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 703. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Well toss a few bucks our way at GOG Show. Donate every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show. Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between and we'll love you for it. Or swing by GOG show and join our Discord Channel to chat with with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG Show Contact and hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG Show Review and we'll read it on the air. Oh and guess What? We've got GOG merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gger show. Stay grumpy.