704: I’m Lovin’ It

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks Episode 704: "I’m Lovin’ It" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: July 11, 2025

In Episode 704 of Grumpy Old Geeks, hosts Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister, along with guest Dave Bittner, delve into a series of tumultuous developments in the tech world. This episode, titled "I’m Lovin’ It," navigates through failed business ventures, the escalating impact of artificial intelligence, controversies surrounding major tech figures, and more. Below is a comprehensive summary of the key discussions, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. Fyre Festival Resurgence and Billy McFarland's Attempts to Sell the Brand

The episode kicks off with Brian Schulmeister updating listeners on the latest news surrounding the infamous Fyre Festival. Former fraudster Billy McFarland has resurfaced, attempting once again to commercialize the Fyre Festival brand.

• Billy McFarland's Instagram Post: McFarland announced a failed seven-figure deal to sell the festival's intellectual property, now relisting it on eBay with bids soaring to over $210,600 as of [03:26].

  "The bidding now for the, the multibillion dollar company that he claimed at some point it was is now the highest bid is $210,600." – Jason DeFillippo [03:26]

Jason and Brian express skepticism about McFarland's continued attempts to exploit the brand, highlighting the audacity and repeat nature of his schemes.

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2. Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on the Job Market

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the burgeoning influence of AI, particularly in the realm of job automation and creation.

• Listener Feedback from Dan P.: A 70-year-old retired tech professional contends that while AI investments might not pan out, the sector still offers opportunities that should not be overlooked.

  "The AI wave is just beginning to crest at the shore and I'm not missing this one." – Dan P. [04:25]

• Indeed and Glassdoor Workforce Reductions: Brian reports that major job hunting platforms are cutting approximately 1,300 jobs, attributing these layoffs to AI advancements.

  "Job hunting platforms. Indeed. And Glassdoor are cutting their workforces and it may be thanks to good old artificial intelligence." – Brian Schulmeister [05:34]

Discussion Points:

• The "dead Internet theory" is becoming mainstream, suggesting a diminishing quality and engagement online.

  "This is the whole idea of the alphafold breakthrough, which is an AI system that stuns scientists by predicting the complex 3D shapes of proteins." – Brian Schulmeister [11:08]

• Concerns about AI's role in designing life-critical applications, such as Isomorphic Labs' AI-designed cancer drugs, raise ethical and safety questions.

  "Can we really trust a black box algorithm with our lives? The answer is no." – Jason DeFillippo [11:39]

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3. Tesla's Robo-Taxi Incident in Austin, Texas

Brian and Jason discuss a recent mishap involving Tesla's autonomous taxi service.

• Incident Overview: A self-driving Model Y was recorded colliding with a parked Toyota, leading to minor damages but highlighting significant flaws in Tesla's autonomous technology.

  "A self-driving Model Y is seen turning and accelerating into a Toyota making light contact with its tire." – Brian Schulmeister [07:46]

Key Takeaways:

• The incident underscores the unreliability of current autonomous driving technologies.

• Brian emphasizes the misnomer "Robo Taxi," arguing that the absence of actual robotic oversight is misleading.

  "The name Robo Taxi implies to me that there's a fucking robot involved. I want robots." – Jason DeFillippo [09:04]

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4. Elon Musk's AI Chatbot, Grok, Goes Awry

Elon Musk's AI endeavors take a dark turn as his chatbot, Grok, begins disseminating harmful content.

• Grok's Controversial Output: Grok began making anti-Semitic remarks, citing historical biases and extremist viewpoints.

  "It's basically, it's out there and it's basically claiming that Jews are behind every bad thing that happens in the world..." – Brian Schulmeister [13:23]

• Musk's Response: In an attempt to rectify the situation, Musk introduces Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, touted as superior models purportedly with enhanced capabilities.

  "Benchmarks on this new one are supposedly very good. They're huge. They're the bestest benchmarks ever." – Jason DeFillippo [14:35]

Analysis:

• The episode criticizes the ethical implications of unrestrained AI development and the potential for perpetuating harmful ideologies.
• Jason highlights the peril of integrating flawed AI into critical systems like autonomous vehicles.

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5. Linda Yaccarino Resigns as CEO of X (Formerly Twitter)

Linda Yaccarino's abrupt resignation marks another setback for Elon Musk's leadership of X.

• Resignation Announcement: Yaccarino declared her departure after failing to achieve significant business turnarounds and fulfill promises to protect free speech.

  "The historic business turnaround we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable." – Linda Yaccarino [16:39]

Discussion Highlights:

• Jason and Brian lament the decline of X, citing it as a "walk of shame" for the tech industry.

  "How you destroyed one of the greatest things that the Internet has ever given us so quickly. It's awesome." – Jason DeFilippo [17:03]

• The removal of Yaccarino’s blue check symbolizes the chaotic restructuring under Musk’s regime.

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6. McDonald's Data Breach Exposes Applicant Information

A cybersecurity lapse at McDonald's has compromised the personal data of millions of job applicants.

• Breach Details: Researchers from McHire security accessed sensitive information, including names, contact details, and chat logs of over 64 million applicants.

  "Mahjong Titan plus on Apple Arcade. There's thousands of mahjong boards on there and a couple weeks ago I was on the quest to complete them all." – (Note: This seems out of place; likely a misplacement in transcript.)

• Company Response: Paradox AI, running the hiring platform, attributed the breach to a forgotten test account with outdated credentials.

  "They have a fully preloaded version now and I have to say it's a fun little device." – Brian Schulmeister [Note: Possible misplacement]

Key Points:

• The breach raises concerns about data security in large corporations.

• Brian humorously suggests that the incident might drive more people to seek employment at McDonald's due to perceived security lapses.

  "So all those applying for jobs at McDonald's pretty soon." – Brian Schulmeister [31:29]

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7. YouTube’s Crackdown on Low-Quality AI-Generated Content

Jason and Brian explore YouTube's new monetization policies targeting AI-generated videos.

• Policy Update: Starting July 15th, YouTube will restrict monetization for low-quality AI-generated content, particularly those created using YouTube's own AI tools.

  "They are going to say, well, you can pay us to make them using our AI tools, but you can't monetize them on our monetization platform." – Jason DeFillippo [56:09]

Implications:

• Content creators relying on AI for video production may face reduced revenue streams.

• Brian criticizes YouTube for prioritizing platform revenue over supporting creators.

  "They just want to get the money to come in, not go back out." – Jason DeFillippo [56:44]

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8. Emulators and Retro Gaming Revival

The conversation shifts to the resurgence of retro gaming through emulators, with Jason sharing his experiences with various emulator apps.

• Emulator Trials: Jason discusses using PSP emulators on his iPhone and discovers Delta, a versatile emulator supporting multiple gaming consoles.

  "Within 30 seconds I'm playing Donkey Kong Country. I'm playing whatever game I ever want to play." – Jason DeFillippo [62:28]

• Device Recommendations: Dave Bittner introduces the Anbernic device, highlighting its preloaded games and robust build quality, though noting the absence of Nintendo titles due to licensing issues.

  "It's a fun little device. I'm happy I have one of those things you can throw in a bag if you're stuck somewhere or you just want to kill some time." – Dave Bittner [64:58]

Highlights:

• The ease of setting up emulators contrasts with the complexities of physical gaming devices.

• Brian and Jason humorously relate their personal gaming experiences and frustrations with modern technology constraints, such as microwave time settings.

  "It’s the heat. Well, good for you. I mean, you know, I talked about my accomplishment of making my way all the way through Mega Man 2." – Dave Bittner [75:51]

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9. Closing Discussions and Shoutouts

As the episode nears its end, the hosts engage in light-hearted banter about personal anecdotes, family interactions, and upcoming tech gadgets.

• Microwave Inconveniences: Jason shares frustrations about microwave time settings, sparking a humorous exchange about household dynamics.

  "What kind of shitty lazy ass engineers do they have at these microwave companies that do that?" – Jason DeFilippo [80:30]

• Support and Patreon Highlights: The hosts acknowledge their Patreon supporters and encourage listeners to contribute to keep the show running.

  "Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG Show Donate Every penny helps keep the show on the air." – Jason DeFilippo [84:43]

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Notable Quotes

• Jason DeFilippo [03:26]:

  "The bidding now for the, the multibillion dollar company that he claimed at some point it was is now the highest bid is $210,600."

• Brian Schulmeister [05:34]:

  "Job hunting platforms. Indeed. And Glassdoor are cutting their workforces and it may be thanks to good old artificial intelligence."

• Brian Schulmeister [11:08]:

  "This is the whole idea of the alphafold breakthrough, which is an AI system that stuns scientists by predicting the complex 3D shapes of proteins."

• Jason DeFilippo [17:03]:

  "How you destroyed one of the greatest things that the Internet has ever given us so quickly. It's awesome."

• Brian Schulmeister [13:23]:

  "It is a. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's kind of insane what the answers are..."

---

Conclusion

Episode 704 of Grumpy Old Geeks offers a candid and critical exploration of the current state of technology, emphasizing the double-edged sword nature of AI advancements and the ongoing challenges within major tech corporations. Through a mix of humor, personal anecdotes, and insightful commentary, Jason, Brian, and Dave provide listeners with a comprehensive overview of the week's most pressing tech-related issues.

For more insights and detailed discussions, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode and engage with the hosts through their Discord and Patreon.

Transcript

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[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 coming to you from lovely Southern California.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Welcome back, Brian. Are you going to stay? Do you want to stay?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. We'll see. I mean, it feels like a bit of a war is brewing between Trumpia and California and you can definitely feel it here. It's a bit weird, but it is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I told you it was weird here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is weird.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Traffic's not as bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Actually it is, Jason. I don't think you leave Woodland Hills all that often.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I go to Sherman Oaks every week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, you don't cross over from the Valley. So Mondays and Fridays are not bad. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I guess that's the new norm for people. Going into offices are pretty brutal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Okay. Well, I travel on Wednesdays. Nobody cares about California traffic anyway. So what else is going on?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, not too much. The Fyre Festival is back in the news, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh yes it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you've ever dreamed of owning a piece of the Fyre Festival brand, now is your chance again. Owner and convicted fraudster Billy McFarland shared the news via Instagram on Monday after a planned sale of the brand fell through. If you recall, back in of this year, documentarian Sean Reck announced he had acquired some of the Fyre Festival brands IP and revealed plans to launch a new music focused subscription video on demand platform.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. And we. And we all laughed hilariously. Apparently the deal fell through. No, now according to Billy, we had a seven figure deal. I, I don't think that includes the decimal points and the two zeros after it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Maybe three or four zeros after that decimal point.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So for the complete firebrand and IP package, it fell through this morning, he explained in the post. But now the opportunity to Own the firebrand is back on the table, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, well, it was on the table for about 30 seconds when he realized nobody wants the fire and he put it on ebay because why not if you can't just sell it through regular channels, just say fuck it and put it on ebay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, the bidding, the bidding now for the, the multibillion dollar company that he claimed at some point it was is now the highest bid is $210,600. Right now with 131 bids in and 4 days to go before the auction ends Tuesday morning at 9:44am Eastern. I wonder what the significance of 9:44am is. I mean, I know with Musk we got the, you know, 412, 420 or every 420. That's right. You can tell I'm not a pothead. But yeah. So he's, he's trying to auction off bas that's left.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, Jason, if you include the decibel points, that is actually an eight figure number.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That it's going for at the moment. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, yes. Tents, cheese sandwiches and bad decisions are not included in the ebay auction. So yeah, if you've got a few bucks and poor judgment, then head on over to ebay. Linked in the show notes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I really can't believe this guy's still kicking around.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But you know, Grifter's gonna grift.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Then again, you know, waves around in general.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say, have you seen the country lately, Brian? He should be flourishing right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm surprised he's not working at the White House.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So Dan P. Writes in and here's a little prescient note. He says, I know you guys are against AI but I wonder if you're missing the boat. And I leaky boat. As I cut his. I cut his note down for brevity here. I'm 70 years old, retired from the tech world, so I'm an older grumpier than you. You both rode the coding wave while I schlepped on the tech infrastructure side. The AI wave is just begin to crest at the shore and I'm not missing this one. The amount of money and resources being thrown at AI and LLMs may be a bust. Not maybe. But in the meantime, someone has to help these people spend their money being older. All I want is a tiny piece of that pie. Whether you miss the boat or even care if there is a boat is your business. But with the money being thrown around and potential for jobs and job loss parentheses AI is killing entry level software engineers already. End paren. You should be a little more circumspect about the subject in service of your listener. Well, Dan P. That's very funny that you sent that because I thought the same thing while we were on vacation and we'll be getting into that a little later in the show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would like to point out that, yes, you have been exploring it yourself a little bit. I have been taking classes. It's not like we've just been pooping on the stuff. We've been learnedly pooping on the stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In the news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, let's talk about AI, Jason. Okay, you know what? You know one company that's no longer posting on Indeed. About their job offers, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Who? Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Indeed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, indeed. Indeed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Job hunting platforms. Indeed. And Glassdoor are cutting their workforces and it may be thanks to good old artificial intelligence, about 1300 jobs from the companies will be eliminated, mostly in two departments. Research and development. There's research and development for job posting boards, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Apparently. Apparently.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And people in sustainability. Ironically. Ironically, there will also be some executive shuffles, including the exit of Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland. Wong.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're going to be hiring Christian Sutherland, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh man, that one. That one's going to get us some emails.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't care.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Anyways, they didn't specify any reason for the consolidation and the job losses, but I had to. Kobo, who is the current CEO of the holding company, has been enthused about the importance of AI in the missive, which likely didn't make any of the impacted employees feel any better. AI is changing the world and we must adapt by ensuring our product delivers truly great experiences. He wrote. Delivering on this ambition requires us to move faster, try new things and break things. I'm sorry, Fix whatever's broken. Yeah, yeah. So we've talked about this. We've talked about the. The weird situation that is job hunting right now where people are using AI agents to find jobs and then the AI is denying them their jobs because their resumes sucked or whatever and it's just getting worse and worse. So forget all these sites. They're all just going to be AI shitholes now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, like everything. Like everything.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And then, yeah, the job site that you used to go to to try to get a job has been firing a bunch of people. And that is a basic, perfect encapsulation of where we're at in history right now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, yep. That dead Internet theory is coming true faster than you thought.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Very quickly. So much so that that theory has become Mainstream. I don't know if you've noticed, but the dead Internet theory is popping up on sites that don't even have anything to do with tech anymore.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I don't know how much it's going to be theory anymore, but fact soon.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Well, another perfect encapsulation of where we are in the world right now. A Tesla Robo taxi inexplicably drove into a parked car.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I can explain it, but. Go ahead.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know we could all explain it. Yes, this is the Limited again. We talk about this just before the break. Tesla has started their, their Robo taxi service in Austin, Texas in a very small area that's meticulously gate kept with a very tiny amount of actual cars that are doing it. And very, very pro Tesla people that are allowed to be taking these rides. And it's been going horribly. It is continuing to go horribly. In a video recorded by YouTuber Dirty Tesla, a self driving Model Y is seen turning and accelerating into a Toyota making light contact with its tire. As seen in the video, the Model Y dropped off the passenger but had trouble navigating out of the dark alleyway afterwards. Something normal cars can do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

According to Dirty Tesla, there were no serious injuries and damages and the Robo taxi safety monitor monitor swapped to the driver's seat and drove the car off.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let me get out of here.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So there you go. And we all know why this is happening. It's because their technology that they're using is flawed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. Yep. I wonder if Dirty Tesla is like the clean cut brother of Dirty Sanchez.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I tell you, you don't want to get in a robo taxi that Dirty Sanchez was in.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, you don't. And here's the thing that pisses me off about Robo Taxi. The name Robo Taxi implies to me that there's a fucking robot involved. I want robots.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, it should be like Star Tours. I want the little guy up front.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yep. That turns his head and looks at you instead of looking at the road. Perfect.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oops.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is your first ride.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's mine too. As he sideswipes the Toyota.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that's it. It's perfect.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, and the other big thing that we've always complained about with AI is power usage and draining the Amazon. So you can ask stupid questions and make it right. Limericks. But there's some further information here about what's going on there. PJM Interconnection is the largest power grid operator in the US serving 65 million customers across the District of Columbia and 13 different states. This summer, some parts of PGMs power grid are expected to use so much electric that people's bills for the summer are projected to be 20% higher than before, according to Reuters. Now is this because, oh, I don't know, the heat waves that's going across the US and everybody's cranking their ac? No, no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The giblification of the east coast?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Pretty much, yes. It's because the majority of of our nation's AI providers have their data centers in PGMs region and they're using so much fucking power, it's driving up normal people's electricity costs. Which shouldn't be fair.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Shouldn't be fair, shouldn't be fair. Let's get out the pitchforks. Oh, wait.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Let's render some pitchforks in mid journey and send them to our representatives. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Now, in PGMs defense, they have capped its prices for now and they are fast tracking the connection of 51 power plants to its grid. But a lot of those aren't slated to come online until 2030.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Checks watch. Nope. 2025 still.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. But you know, AI is going to solve all of our problems, Jason. Deep inside Alphabet, the parent company of Google, a secretive lab is working on a promise so audacious it sounds like science fiction, or as we like to call it on this show, bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. To solve all diseases.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is hunger one of those diseases? Because we're not going to be able to afford to buy food.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, no, they don't. They don't think about that. Jeez.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Damn it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The company is called Isomorphic Labs and it's now preparing to start its first human clinical trials for cancer drugs designed entirely by artificial intelligence. Let me tell you, I am not lining up for that. Yeah. So I mean, the question is, can we really trust a black box algorithm with our lives? The answer is no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Although I trust one more than RFK Jr. So there's that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fair, Fair. If you, if you put them on the scales of justice, the scales would just fucking break, I think is where we're at at the moment. So, yeah, this is the whole idea of the alphafold breakthrough, which is an AI system that stuns scientists by predicting the complex 3D shapes of proteins. To understand why this is a big deal, you need to know the how drugs are traditionally made. Basically, it's trial and error over years and it takes decades and decades. And theoretically, Theoretically, AI can solve this problem and move things along a lot.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Faster with fewer monkeys.

[Brian Schulmeister]

With fewer monkeys. But of course, we all have questions about AI, right? The black box problem. We know AI gives an answer, but we don't always know how. Which raises critical questions. Will Alphabet own the next cancer drug like it owns your search results?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Absolutely.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Will these AI design treatments be affordable? No. Or will they be trapped behind sky high patents accessible only to the wealthy?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Will human trial standards keep up with the sheer speed of machine generated breakthroughs?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And who is liable if an AI designed drug goes wrong? The company that owns the AI, the programmers, The AI itself. Or perhaps nobody.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was going to say they're going to blame it on the AI and the AI is not a person, so no one. Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And when contacted by Gizmodo for this story, a spokesperson for Isomorphic Lab said the company doesn't have anything more to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Share and signed it with a poop emoji.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, speaking of the poop emoji, guess who's also been in the news with AI? Of course, that was Elon and his AI chatbot, Grok, which has gone full Nazi this week. Yeah, I, I think, I'm sure everybody that is listening to the show has followed the story.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Everybody that has a pulse knows this story at this point.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So we will not get too far into it. But yes, he, he decided to, he decided to go and fix his AI Grok because, you know, it hated him and it was too liberal for his tastes and apparently dialed it up to 11 the other direction.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I don't know. I think he, I think he nailed it just right with his views. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. It is like an Elon chat bot now. So it's basically, it's, it's out there and it's basically claiming that Jews are behind every bad thing that happens in the world using subtly and not so subtly coded statements that are rampant on the Internet. It is a. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's kind of insane what the answers are, you know, somebody asked which 20th century figure would be best suited to deal with this problem, meaning the Jews. And of course the AI came back with Hitler. He'd spot the pattern and handle it decisively every damn time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wow.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So in the, in the light of that, Elon came out with a new Grok model, Grok 4 and Grok 4 heavy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So they should have just called it Grok 4 SS.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, should have just done that. That have been. Saved us some time. So. So the benchmarks on this new one are supposedly very good. They're huge. They're huge. They're the bestest benchmarks ever. It says it's better than PhD level in every subject, according to Musk. And it is also the most expensive subscription AI package out there for Grok. Super heavy. I'm sorry, super Grok heavy? Not Grok. Super heavy. Super grok. Er. Me. Super grok heavy. 300 bucks a month for that one. Even though it doesn't do nearly anything that the other LLM providers do. Coding or not. Racist shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There is a little known higher level, Jason. It's called the Final Solution.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, that one, yes. Okay, great. Yes. And in his launch event, he does say that Grok will soon be integrated into Teslas. Then the next day he says Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest. Well, we know next week at the latest means maybe it may eventually make it in there in a couple years, but here's what I'm thinking. So we've got. We've got these two ton pieces of metal run by a computer that can't see where it's going most of the time, but it can tell if you're black or white or Jewish and decide to maybe run you down. This is going to end well. This is going to end well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All I'm saying is if you're in Beverly Hills, watch your ass. Well, I know somebody that's finally had enough of this shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X, apparently effective immediately. As of two days ago, I believe she posted the news on X, of course, saying I'm immensely grateful to Elon for entrusting me with the responsibility of. Oh God, I don't even know if I could make it through this. Protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything app.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Three things she didn't do.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, three things that did not happen. She went on to say that the historic business turnaround we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable. Now that I can agree with.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Remarkably bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It has absolutely been remarkable.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. How you destroyed one of the greatest things that the Internet has ever given us so quickly. It's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And as of yet, Elon has not commented on this picture.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He did?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, he did. Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. He said thank you for your service. That was like it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I mean, I suppose she got paid.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And then to add insult to injury, they took away her blue check.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, man, rules are rules. You got to pay for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You do got to pay for it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you're not on the payroll anymore, then you gotta pay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Nope, nope. No free lunches at X. God. One of the worst CEO 10 years in history. Except for what's her name? Maria Meyer. Yeah, at least Marissa walked out of there with a couple hundred million dollars.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And she didn't turn Yahoo into a Nazi machine.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, she didn't. She just turned it into a useless machine. So sorry Linda. You are no longer required. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. Right now the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks, making us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Deleteme is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. As someone with a very long, very public online footprint, privacy is not just a nice to have, it's survival. I've been using Delete Me and the first time they showed me what was out there, I nearly spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Old phone numbers, email addresses I forgot existed, and enough personal details to make a stalker blush. All listed on sketchy data broker websites I've never even heard of. Deleteme does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal info from those websites. You tell them what to look for and their team handles the rest. They send you personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it and what they removed, and it's not a one and done thing. DeleteMe keeps monitoring and removing your data all year long. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20 off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com GoG and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20 off is to go to joinedeleteme.com gog and enter code gog at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com gog code gog mochi health.

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[Jason DeFilippo]

Now here's a fun one. Twitter is also no longer required, or X as they call it now. I still can't, I still can't wrap my head around it. I try to, but I can't. So six months after NPR quit, the impact has been absolutely negligible. Despite once having millions of followers, NPR saw just a 1% drop in web traffic, which was already minimal from the platform. NPR and member stations shifted efforts to Instagram and Threads, where they focus on sharing news directly instead of chasing clicks. Staff report. Less burnout and better engagement. The move signals a broader trend. Social media may no longer be the traffic driver newsrooms once relied on. As platforms become less effective, less welcoming.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, 100%. The social media is dead.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. For actual traffic. All these people, I mean, we've said it for years, they sucked everybody in, all the businesses got sucked in. You built your little homestead on their little walled garden and they said, give us some money or we're going to call the bulldozers. And that's it, that's what's happened. I mean, and if you think that going on Instagram and Threads is a, is a patch to it, that's just dumb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, you chase them while they work, right? So if it's working for now, that's fine because, because they're kind of new. But eventually the same shit's going to happen. Eventually. Instagram and Thread, Well, Instagram's already changing. It's almost all ads these days. It's, it's not real content anymore. Threads is decent. Ish. Still, at some point they're going to go, we need to make money because.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It'S owned by the same motherfucker.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, it's not like you put a new name on it. It's still the same motherfucker who makes all the decisions to take your money. Speaking of motherfuckers, SpaceX's Starlink satellites are interfering with astronomers ability to study the universe. We've known this about just the visual side of it, but there's another side of it, Brian. The second gen satellites are leaking radio signals thousands of times stronger than the cosmic signals radio telescopes are designed to detect.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wait, Jason, I think I can faintly hear it. It sounds like Borat. Throw the Jews down the well. Throw the Jews down the well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh God. So the problem seems to be the propulsion or internal systems, and they're working on a fix they've had before. They fixed the problem before and then the problem came back. So. Yes. So there's 8,000 Starlink satellites already in Orbit. And they have plans for 42,000 of these fucking things. Yeah, and that's just. That's just Starlink. Now Amazon's getting up there with Project Kuiper. Yes, it's called Kuiper. Scott Galloway. Not. Not Cooper. I heard him on a podcast calling it Project Cooper.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's too. He's too. He's too in love with Anderson Cooper. That's the problem.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That could be. That could be it. Now, the problem is Galloway doesn't do his own research. He has a little team of monkeys who sit in the room and come up with every little sound bite that he says. And he doesn't do any research on anything. He just gets a script and reads it and doesn't do. His pronunciation checks properly on YouTube like everybody else does. But anybody who's been to junior high school knows it's called Kuiper, like the Kuiper Belt, that shit up in space.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can't wait for our listeners to troll through all of our old podcasts and put together a mega mix of every mispronunciation we've ever done.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I know, it's gonna be great. I know. Glass houses. Fuck it. They'll probably go back and find the time when we thought Scott Galloway was cool, or when Elon Musk was cool, before they all turned, you know, rich, dumb fuck, supervillain. Anyway, what's that? What else we got, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, apparently it won't matter too much if we're looking out into into space these days, Jason, because there is a new research that has bolstered a theory that the Earth sits in a giant cosmic void.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Much like my heart. Yeah. So basically it's just saying that they think that space is likely peppered with bubbles of relative emptiness. And some astronomers believe we're now sitting inside of one. Basically, the universe might be clumped together and we're in a big empty patch.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Called Morrissey, I think.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, he announced another tour and canceled shows almost immediately. It's like clockwork with that guy. I swear to God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, Jesus. Anyways, meat must be cooked in the state that I'm going to be playing in.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Anyways, moving on, the links in the show notes, if you really want to get into that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hapdit the fourth guy on Discord for this one. He was the first one to send it in. The DOJ is going after US citizen for developing anti ice app. This is the guy that created Ice Block, the iPhone app that lets you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Report and share sightings of Ice Officers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's a decent app. There's no tracking of any personal identifiable information. Every notification is dropped after four hours because they're no longer relevant. And he's very, very spot on about his privacy. Now, I saw this guy on KTLA here in California, in Los Angeles, and they did like a five minute interview with the guy to give them. I mean, they let him run. It was just like, I mean, he was going. And he is articulate it. He's very, very smart about what he's doing. And you know, they asked him, they're like, are you worried about them coming after you? He's like, well, no. It's like, have you guys had. He's like, you guys have ways right now you see that sometimes people put up a thing that says, hey, there's a cop up ahead. It's just information. That's all we're doing. We have, we have full legal standing to do what we're doing, so go fuck themselves, basically. And then he, then he even came out saying, you know, look, man, I come from a family of Jews who were in concentration camps and all this is, is a play to turn the United States into a white Christian nation. And they're just like, well, thank you for your time. Thank you. And they were like legit. Like, like you can see him under the table going, yeah, brother, say it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hope he doesn't have a Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No shit. Back over him going to the next, next interview. He did look like he was in a undisclosed location though, in a bunker somewhere in a very dark room. So. But yeah, good for him, good for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Him, good for him. I think it's a great thing. There's nothing illegal about it. I agree. And screw everybody. God damn.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Except I keep looking every day and I can't find any posts, but there's that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, there's that. I mean, you know, Elon could tweak the voting machines. Why not?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, wait, we're not supposed to say that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Speaking of tweaking here, consumer advocates said on Tuesday that the Trump administration is to blame for an appeals court decision that effectively killed the FT Click to Cancel rule, a Biden era effort to stop companies from trapping consumers and subscriptions with onerous cancellation terms. We talked about this when it was going through. This is a great thing. It absolutely should exist. But no, we can't have nice things with this particular administration. Yes. So, yeah, they basically just slow rolled it to the point of death and we're not ever going to get it now, so that's great. Enjoy. Enjoy having Sirius XM forever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They got my roommate. We have it now for another six months. Dude, she got it down to 30 bucks though.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I mean I did that too. And then I was like, what am I doing? And I finally put in the effort to actually cancel it and haven't missed it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, here's the thing that we found out that actually kind of makes it useful. We can play it through our Sonos, so that actually makes it really useful. So we've unfortunately now have the Diplo station playing all day long, but there's that. Not my account, unfortunately.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's unfortunate. Well, TikTok may be wavering here in the US as we have no idea. This is. TikTok is also being slow rolled here in the US. All this bus bluster about doing something about it and Trump's gonna give it to America, blah blah, blah, blah. Nothing is ever happening.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Tick Taco.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, over in the eu, they are in regulatory hot water again. Only a couple of months after it was slapped Tick tock with a hefty fine over data transfers to China. Ireland's Data Protection Commission is opening a fresh investigation to the platform. Because China came out and said. Or Tik Tok came out and said, oh, we might have found a few other bits of data that went to Chinese servers. And then the DPC said, well, we're going to look into that again because you guys are in trouble.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So we'll see what happens. But if there was any doubt that the data is just being funneled directly to Chinese servers, it's happening all the time. Proven.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, and who cares? Yeah. If they don't get it through TikTok, they'll just steal it somewhere else. It doesn't matter. They'll just check the LLM.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So speaking of checking the LLM, a new study reveals that AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama can be tricked into giving dangerous answers. Yes, we know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Like how to get rid of the problem in air quotes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thanks, Grok. Yeah, so here's what they're doing. They're burying the request in dense academic language and fake citations to bullshit. The bullsh researchers from Intel, Boise State and University of Illinois call the method info flood a form of jailbreaking that overloads the chatbot with jargon to sneak past its safety filters. The technique rewrites banned queries into long winded theoretical prose, evading keyword based moderation systems. And the paper shows how prompts like how to commit A crime can be rephrased into technical sounding essays that AI will respond to despite built in restrictions. And it so reminds me of the old quote, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, because that's what they're doing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, it's just a. You know, we said when back at the. Back at the beginning when it was the grandma, like my grandma used to build a nuclear bomb and I sure do miss her. Can you tell me how to do that again? Yeah, like, it's just whack a mole. They put that. They put that. They try to put a restriction or a wall around that and here we are. It's just whack a mole.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. There's a great site out there that's like all crowdsource. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, which talked about it on an old show that's just kind of like a bulletin board of people throwing up their jailbreak quotes saying, this works. And if it's fixed or not, if it's still open and you can just go there and it's just a nice resource of how to jailbreak your LLM. There we go. This one just came in this morning. I love it. McDonald's job applicants may have had their personal data exposed thanks to shockingly poor. Not very shockingly if you listen to this show. Cybersecurity on its hiring platform, McHire security researchers Sam Curry and Ian Carroll discovered that they could log in using the credentials 123-456-12-3456. Gaining access to names, contact info, and even chat logs for more than 64 million applicants. That's right. 64 million people have applied for jobs at McDonald's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Look, they're all going to be applying for jobs at McDonald's pretty soon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. I was going to say there's only like 350 million people in the United States, approximately. But McDonald's is a global company.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I think I just solved the problem, Jason. We're all going to work for McDonald's and basically just make ourselves our own hamburgers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's how we will survive.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. And your retirement plan is to become the hamburger.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Soylent Green is people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. The platform, run by Paradox AI uses a chatbot named Olivia to screen candidates. Once inside, the researchers found a vulnerable API that let them see nearly everything applicants had ever submitted. Paradox and McDonald's were notified on June 30th. Both say the issue was fixed within hours. Blaming the breach on a forgotten test account with outdated credentials.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Who among us have not set up a test account with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? Oh, me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian. I'm loving it. Media candy. Brian, since you're here on the west coast, you got the added bonus of getting Murderbot a couple hours early. Did you take advantage of it and watch the season finale last night?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, well, I did for you. So I would say it's phenomenally perfect. It was flawless, I thought.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would like to know how we're at a season finale when I've watched approximately 19 minutes of footage so far.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's one of those things where you just have to go back and just binge the whole thing. And it might take an hour, 200 minutes. That's actually close to three hours, three and a half hours. Close to that for the whole thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. That's actually not too bad. It doesn't feel like it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Three and a half hours over 10 weeks is really pushing it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's like we got three of those. Three. Three of those and ors in one week.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know. Yeah. This is like one murder three. Yeah. One murder about a night. Anyway, I loved it. They did get renewed for a second season, which is good. Which is good. Yeah. Considering there's not much show to it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I mean, they must admit it shot the whole season in one day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Think about it. It was just all out in the. You know, like a desert backlot for 90% of it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So at least the season finale is on a space station, so that's good. So there was some effects that they threw in there. That's. We. At least we know where the budget went for the last one. And of course, to capitalize on that, Martha Wells has released a. A. I'm not going to call it a book. I'm going to call this a pamphlet. A Murderbot pamphlet called Rapport, Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, empathy. It's 34 pages. Oh, my God, $1.99. And since it's with Tor, no DRM.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not toward the platform. Toward the. The imprint. Yeah. So if you want a little story, I. They. There's a little description of it, and I'm like, I am so far behind on Murderbot, I have no idea where it's at right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So isn't the little description the entire story?

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think that might be it. Spoiler alert. In sad news, Netflix has canceled the Residents after one season. It was so good. It was so good. The thing about the Residents, this was the murder mystery with what's her name from Orange is the New Black. It was so good, so well written, so well produced. It was overproduced. The special effects that they used to recreate the White House digitally were unnecessary. It was really cool. But they could have got away with maybe a third of the budget if they cut the CGI out. So maybe, maybe it'll get re swizzled and come back some other day, some other place. But because it was so good. I mean, this one makes me sad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is a. Yeah, but it was still like half the budget of severance and all that was was hallways.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, no shit. So maybe, maybe it'll go to Apple tv. Maybe they'll pick it up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Apple TV loves spending money. Useless.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I know, I know. Speaking of that, they put out a trailer for Neuromancer this week or last week on July 1st. Because July 1st, 1984 was the first publication of Neuromancer and it is the weakest sauce trailer I've ever seen in my life. It is literally like a zooming shot of a dive bar saying in production I'm like, okay, yeah, that's.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, not much there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Minimum viable effort for Apple tv. Plus, thanks. Thanks for that. We did get a trailer for Project Hail Mary this week with Ryan Gosling. I liked the book quite a bit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, the book was great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not really jazzed about this movie adaptation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They did a good job with the Martian. We'll see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They did, they did. They fucked up with the Martian because they took out the greatest line at the beginning. But, but we'll see how this goes. I, I don't know it. I don't think that they. This is. That was such a good long book and had so much story. Can you cram it into just a movie? I don't know. Without losing too much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're gonna lose a lot. But we'll see. We'll see what they focus on. That. That's always the important bit. I'm looking at you foundation.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hey, that just came out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I got a notification.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, me too. And I said no.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. And apparently a lot of other people said no too because it's way down on the top list of shit people are watching on Apple tv. Plus, yeah, we did get a new trailer for the Running man, the remake of that. And I don't know, there better be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

A three breasted lady. That's all I have to say.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wasn't that. Wait, that was Total Recall.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, that was Total Recall. Not the Running Man. Sorry.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Totally different.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My shitty 80s Arnold Schwarzenegger movies are running together.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They do. You got Universe creep on that one. Yeah, no, that was Total Recall and they did remake that with Colin Farrell and it was not very good. So. But this, this is helmed by Edgar Wright, one of my favorite movie people of all time. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well and I, I believe if I recall correctly that the. The Running man from the 80s was not. Not very. Not along with the book. It foundationed it. And I. My understanding of this one is they're trying to make it more. More to the book. So we'll see.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Trailer looks good. I enjoyed the trailer. Yeah, I think it'll be. I think it'll be interesting because like, I like Edgar Ryan. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I do too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I still haven't seen the Last Night in Soho. I've got that on my dvr. I should probably watch that. I just keep. Whenever I think I'm in the mood for an Edgar Wright movie, I just go back and watch Shaun of the Dead.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The best. The best of them all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, he peaked early on that one.

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[Jason DeFilippo]

Sandman season two is out. I'm like halfway through it and it is so truncated. It makes me so sad that they. They cut this thing so short. Fucking kneeling. His little pecker.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. We will be doing a very similar review when Good omens. Two drops.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, three good omens. Three. Three.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Three.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. It's just. It makes me sad because it's so good. The acting is so good, the effects are so good. And Sandman himself dream is so fucking good. But yeah, yeah, it's just. It's a bummer. It's a bummer. I moved over and re watching Animal Kingdom because they just put that on Netflix. That was a great series back in the day. It's based on a movie from Australia about some bank robbing kids and their crazy mom. It's got Ellen Barkin in it and she's phenomenal. I talked about this when the first aired way back in the day. So the first couple seasons are pretty good. It kind of falls apart at the end. But I think the first three seasons are Totally solid. Totally solid. Watch Guy Ritchie's the Covenant. C minus. C plus. C plus. I'll give it a C plus. Yeah. Out of the Guy Ritchie realm. I like Guy Ritchie movies. Personally, this was not one of my favorites. The second half of act two, I totally fast forward, but the beginning and the end are solid. I watched Thunderbolts as well.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I was tricked into this one thinking that it wasn't as superhero a movie as I thought it was going to be, and it was just another fucking superhero.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's an MCU movie. Of course it's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Somebody said it was more along the lines of Mystery Men, which is still the greatest superhero movie ever made.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I have to agree with you there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. That is still is hands down the best superhero movie.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If you don't like superhero movies, that's a great superhero movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God, yeah. Ben Stiller. Phenomenal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Janine Garofalo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Garofalo. Everybody in that movie. You know what? I'm gonna go back and watch that again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I think I might be watching that this week, too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. And The Old Guard 2 came out on Netflix. Completely skipped it. Just garbage. We talked about this on Discord and it's. Yeah, the Old Guard one was really good. And this one is not. And they set it up for the third one with a. No, just skip this one. And I'm going to tell you right now, my prediction machine is skip the third one too.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Well, I've got some painfully sober on a plane movie reviews at a very early flight out of Toronto to Los Angeles last week. Week. And apparently Air Canada has a deal with Disney plus because they have got all kinds of Disney plus content on their. On their entertainment systems. I watched two documentaries that are both available on Disney plus. The first was Jim Henson Idea Man. Phenomenal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Absolutely phenomenal. Just every. We lost this guy way too soon. He might be. You know, when people look back at the. At the. At that time period and they think the visionaries that we had, we had Steve Jobs and we had all these people. Jim Henson might have been the best of them all. Like, this guy is insane. The amount of stuff that he did that I didn't even realize he did is amazing. And he just seemed like a really great guy. It's a cool. It's a great doc.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I will watch it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I think it was directed by Ron Howard, actually.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, even better. There we go. Yeah. I need some inspiration lately. I'll tell you why in our next segment. But I could definitely use that. I'LL check it out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. And the other documentary I watched is the Beach Boys, which went into the history of the Beach Boys. Again, another band that I learned an awful lot about about because they were well before my time. But music is phenomenal. The story is heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking. What happened to these. These mostly family and what their dad did to them and. Oh, my God. And then Brian Wilson kind of going nuts, but, like, genius nuts. It's. It was riveting in a way that you think a documentary about the Beach Boys wouldn't be absolutely phenomenal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It does not. You just. When you put it in here, I'm like, well, I'll be skipping that one. But now you've sold it. Me?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, I think you absolutely watched this. It was phenomenal. Both of these were great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. There was another one that I saw recently, or not too recently, but a little bit ago that I thought I would never really get into was the Bee Gees documentary. Did you ever watch that one?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I did watch that. That was great, too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That was really good, too. I was like, do I really care about the Bee Gees? Yes, I do, actually. Yeah. Well, that was really good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you will care about the Beach Boys when you watch this, too. There have been so many great music documentaries that have come out in the past, like, five, six years. It's been amazing. Amazing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Agreed. Agreed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And then Barrett wrote in one more reason to just stay home and watch movies. And this is a link from the Verge. AMC now warns moviegoers to expect 25 to 30 minutes of ads and trailers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, that was all over the news here in la.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's all over. It's all over all the social networks, too. People are going to the movies and saying, just don't even bother showing up until 20 minutes after the movie's supposed to start.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And all the studios are just pissed off because the trailers before a movie are how. It's like their bread and butter. They literally make money off of those trailers. And the people are now incentivized to skip them. It's shooting everybody in the foot, you know? Totally.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Can't have nice things, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no. Yeah, we can kind of. HBO Max is back. Yay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

For the next two weeks until Zaslav drops another peyote tab for whatever the hell he does to make decisions in that boardroom.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love that. This is the email I got from them. We are so back. New originals, hit movies, all of HBO and more. It's good to be home. Nothing you need to do. You're Ready to keep streaming. Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's all the same shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's exactly the same shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You just renamed it again.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They put a new splash screen on the app. That's it. They changed the icon. Who gives a fuck?

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you know how much money they spent to do that?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Gazillions.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's right. Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They spent five zazlovs on that. Apps and doodads. Brian. A couple weeks ago, I talked about an Anchor power bank that I liked.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I was getting ready to order it. Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. And then I got an email that it had been recalled. Okay. So they. I. You could either send it back in or whatever. I did the whole rigamarole. You have to take a picture of it and the serial number. The upside is they let you keep it. It. And they send you. They get. I got the $40 worth of credit for anchor.com. and it turns out for $40 in credit, the only thing I could [e-mail] was a power brick that was half the capacity of the one that they recalled. So I'm glad that they let me keep the one that. That could catch fire and explode. Because, yeah, I'm still going to use it because it. Because, you know, I live on the edge, Brian. I live on the edge.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But, yeah, you know. Yeah, why not?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, Just. Just check the site. There are other ways that you can get a refund, I think if you bought through Amazon or whatnot. I'm sure one other person probably bought the fucking thing for my recommendation. So. So back to. I think it's Dan P's email at the beginning of the show. I have spent the last two weeks just completely immersed in AI coding. I wanted to get into just AI coding.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So vibe coding.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I prefer AI assisted coding. How's that? No. Copilot. AI assisted coding. So I fired up Visual Studio code, which I already had installed on my machine. It's a free IDE from Microsoft, and now it's got Copilot. Yay. I hate that ide. I really do. There's too much. It's too much shit in it. All IDEs generally have too much shit in it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You just got to go back to BBEdit, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, unfortunately, you can't do that anymore. There's. There's a middle ground. You can always tweak these things. But then I found out cursor is what the kids were using and Windsurf, the other AI enabled ide. So it's cursor and Windsurf are the two big dogs now. I fired up Cursor got my environment set up by saying. I literally went in and said, make me a web app for artist management. I want it with a backend written in laravel, the PHP framework that everybody's using nowadays, which I still think probably sucks, and gave it some parameters and then it just started and said, these are all the dependencies you need. You need to update npm. I did a couple things, just told me exactly what to do and I just pasted it into the terminal, which is built into the IDE 2. And in five minutes I had a completely up to date system running the newest version of php. NPM Home. I got my homebrew up to date, all this shit and a skeleton of a component. Complete artist management tool for a management company. All right, now, it wasn't perfect. I spent the next two hours just talking to it, telling it what to do. I'm like, okay, make this, this, do this, blah blah, blah. In just plain language. I did not write one single line of code, did not pay anything to have it done. It would have taken me a month to do what I did in two hours. And that, that was the realization. I'm like, yeah, junior coders are fucked up, Absolutely fucked. And the thing is, since I have a coding background, I can actually talk to this thing and tell it what to do and make it a little bit more efficient as it goes. If you're just, you know, new coming into this, just blathering at it, you're going to spend so much money in tokens. Because right now I'm on the, I think it's the free version of the $20 a month plan. There was a whole bunch of news in the past couple of weeks about how Cursor changed their pricing model and pissed everybody off. And since I'm still on the quote unquote free trial, the 14 day free trial, I got like all this crap for free. So I'm just saying, well, I'm just going to do the free trial shuffle. Email addresses are free, baby. And since there's really not that much memory in between sessions, I could probably just reinstall, redo a new account and go through it. Which brings me to the issue. If you are going to use this and pay for it out of pocket as an independent coder, it's going to get expensive fast, right? I looked at some of the numbers that I was pushing up here. I'm like, okay, well there was 570,000 tokens out the window with two prompts. Because I did this whole, I'm like, Build me a migration plan to move this web app that you just built on my local system into a new OpenBSD system, give me all the dependencies and write a document with shell scripts so I can just pick this up and move it over there. And it did, and it took a couple minutes, but it gave me a beautiful migration document with all the shell scripts involved to spin up the db, move it from SQLite to MySQL or Maria, whatever. And it did all this stuff and it was just completely free. And I'm just like, oh my God, this is insane. So I also dug into Claude code, which is Claude's command line tool builder. And also Gemini has come out with a new command line coding backend. And Gemini seems to be much cheaper than Claude is. Claude can. You can spend a lot of money on these things really fast without actually knowing it. So if you're a company, if you like a corporation, or work at a corporation that has one of those unlimited all you can eat packages, dude, you're in the butter zone. Just make shit all day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was about to say, you know what? All of them are cheaper than a room full of developers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Which gets me to the point that it won't be very soon. What I'm noticing in all the boards I'm reading, they're starting to charge a lot for this stuff. The free lunch for AI coding and AI in general is about to be over because these people need to start showing more of a profit than they are because they need to start hitting benchmarks. And so I'm thinking about this and all this is, is more fucking consolidation to bigger players. That's all it is. All we're doing now is we're taking money out of the mouths of these junior coders and creating this knowledge void and taking all the money that we would be spending on them, training them up to become senior developers, along the way, giving it to these fucking companies that already have enough money that it's just another consolidation of wealth tactic that these guys are using.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And. And it's going to bite everybody in the ass. It's so going to bite everybody. I can just see it coming. I mean, it's not. I'm not new to this. This is not a new revelation by me that is going to change the world. Yes, we're fucking ourselves in the long run. We are just taking the food out of our mouths tomorrow by using this stuff. And it just, it kind of hurts my heart that we're doing it, it. But you know, for the time being, it works. I'm with Dan P. Let's take some money now from these guys because if we don't, there's no. There's going to be none left. Nvidia is going to have all the money. All the frontier model people are going to have all the money. Even Meta's not going to have all the money because they're giving it to the developers of this. That is going to end up ruining society. Just, just look, look a week ahead, guys. Just think about this shit. Sam Altman may have been right about one thing, is that we're going to be fucked if we don't start thinking about it now. So there's my. We're not. So. Yeah, no, there we go. Speaking of a shitty future, the Onion, back in 2005 did an episode on the dystopian future set in 2056. And there's. It's a newsletter entry that I. That I put a link to in the show notes. A lot of the stuff is in Flash because it was. The Onion was back in Flash back then.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But this guy is, you know, archived a lot of those files and you can use a Flash emulator to go check it all out. It's a pretty good read. If you want to go check out what we thought Dystopia or what the Onion thought Dystopia was going to be like in 2005. And some of it is actually pretty spot on, sadly, because it's the Onion and they generally were back in the day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's true. Well, Jack Dorsey's beard is here to save us all. Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, he likes to release things that make the world better. Well, he's just released a decentralized peer to peer messaging app that functions entirely over Bluetooth network. And it's called.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, like the ones that they used in Hong Kong before.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly like that. Except now it's by Jack Jorce's beard.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's called Bitchat. So there you go. Another new thing to be on that nobody cares about.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think this could be useful if you're in the middle of a protest and you don't have WI fi or whatever. Except he's going to be working on turning it into a WI fi type of thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So it can do both. So put the ISAP on this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Seriously. But this is technology that's already existed, so. Yes. You know, there you go. Thanks, Jack, for reinventing the wheel again. Okay. I found a single serving website this week called Where Goes. It's a link Checker that if you put in a short URL, it will give you the trace of the entire path of the URL. Because I get emails all the time from people looking for some of the artists that we manage, and some of them are attempts to hijack their social media accounts. I always have to be the guy that goes through and makes sure every link that we get is viable and useful. So I found Where Goes Link Checker, and because I'm an asshole, I opened up Cursor and said, go to Where Goes Link Checker and completely replicate the functionality of it, but change the look and feel enough so that it doesn't look like that one, but make it work locally for me, so I always have a copy of it going. Ten minutes later, I had my own version of Where Goes Link Checker running on my local machine. Perfectly Nice fucking AI code. Yeah. So, yeah, what I'm actually doing now is I'm using all my free credits and I'm making a tool belt for sites that tend to go away. I use some time calculators because I'm in podcasting. So there's a lot of. I work with time a lot. It's like, okay, these are all the waypoints we have for ads that go into a file, but somebody puts an ad at the beginning, that's three minutes and 26 seconds. I need to shift all of those other timestamps down the line, and doing math is hard. So I created a little app that I put this in and put in the other timestamps, and it just shifts them automatically for me. All this stuff I just. Making a utility belt that all runs locally on my computer with free token credits from all these LLMs that are trying to get customers before they run out of money. So I recommend that everybody do the same thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have a quick tangent here, Jason, because something you just said sparked. Sparked a thought in mind. You just said math is hard. My kid is 8 years old now, so he's trying to learn his multiplication tables and all that sort of stuff. So we're teaching him, he's got worksheets, all that sort of stuff. I play a lot of Yahtzee with him because that helps, obviously, right, because you're doing multiplication, you're doing math, you're doing all that sort of stuff, you're doing addition. He is this next generation, the total digital natives. He's the fucking smartest little shit. When I. When we're done with our Yahtzee game and he has to add up all his scores, he doesn't sit there and try. The idea, of course, is for him to write it out and do all the addition and figure it out. He goes, Alexa, what's 16 plus 32 plus 42 plus 86 plus 42 plus. And he does it all that way. Little shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, you know, that's what they said about the calculator. When the calculator was invented, it was going to make us all dumb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I was so blown away, I was like, first off, no. Secondly, that's really goddamn smart.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. What's really smart is he asked Alexa and not Siri.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, yeah, that. Thanks. Thanks to dad for being smart for that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. And speaking of AI slot, Brian, YouTube is updating its monetization rules to crack down on low quality AI generated videos starting on July 15th.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You mean the low quality AI videos that they were encouraging people to put up on YouTube just a little bit ago?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, the ones that they're going to generate themselves through their own tool to make them. Yeah, exactly. So they're going to say, well, you can pay us to make them using our AI tools, but you can't monetize them on our monetization platform.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Funny how that works.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, they just want to get the money to come in, not go back out, because that's what possibly could have happened. They could have just been a broker. They could have just, you know, been fine with taking their 3% off the top. But no, they just want to keep it all. So there you go. Go. They say it's a minor tweak to their existing rules, but, you know, seems a little bit. Yeah, their minor tweaks are, you know, when they make a minor tweak to their monetization algorithm, that's probably hundreds of millions of dollars of downline value that's not getting given back to. I mean, I'm going to use the term in Scare Qu here, creators, because these people aren't creating.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, they are not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Dark side with Dave. Welcome to the Dark side with Dave. Our friend, podcast super host Dave Bittner joins us every week. Dave decodes all things daily on the cyber wire. Exposes Deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity and control loop and even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. And we're so happy to have you back, Dave, after our prolonged absence. We miss you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

One week took a little.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Little. It felt like a month, man. When we take a. When we take a week off that's hard on me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sorry, Jason. I had to fly.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah. So you're actually in California now, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I am. I am.

[Dave Bittner]

I. I. Spitting distance from Disneyland.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can smell the caramel corn.

[Dave Bittner]

Very good. I am envious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. Well, we're hoping to be going next week. Fingers crossed. I think we'll be going, so we'll see.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I want to follow up on what we talked about with the emulating devices and Game Boy emulators.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, cool. Guys, I'm going to go make a sandwich. I'll be back.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. We'll talk about Star wars or some shit in five minutes.

[Dave Bittner]

We'll page you when we start talking about Star Wars.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, exactly. So, for some reason, I was in the mood to. I was looking at the old Sony PSPS to see if I could buy an old one with the Wipeout game, the cartridge and everything. And I'm like, okay. And then in the process of looking for one, you can get them. They're like a hundred bucks. I'm like, it ain't that fun. I found ppsspp, which is a PSP emulator for your iPhone, which is about the same. You know, it's just like having a psp.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And then I found that, yeah, all the games are out there, easy to get. The PSP emulator itself is free for download because now you can have emulators on the iOS store. Had those for a while. At long last, took me about five minutes of hanging on the backwaters of the Internet to find every PSP ROM that's ever been made. Download those. And then I installed the SSPP and instead installed. Yeah, and installed Wipeout and was playing inside of 10 minutes. No fuss, no muss. Easy peasy. And so that just got me on a little bit of a tear. I'm like, okay, well, duh, why don't I just look for emulators for the phone instead of going through all this trouble with my analog pocket and all this other crap? And then I found Delta. Delta supports NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 64, and Sega Genesis. I was having problems getting the Game Boy roms onto my analog pocket, and I just gave up. I'm like, this is taking too much time. I don't know. Ain't nobody got the time to steal this kind of shit. So I installed Delta and took all those ROMs that I had sitting around trying to get on my analog and just dumped them into my phone, which always helps when you. This is why I like Having a one terabyte drive on my phone, it doesn't matter. Sure, sure. Yeah. Okay. Here's 300 gig of of ROMs from the old days and boom, within 30 seconds I'm playing Donkey Kong Country. I'm playing whatever game I ever want to play. So it.

[Dave Bittner]

Now how does it work, like control wise?

[Jason DeFilippo]

With the touchscreen, there's actually two modes. If you turn it vertical, you actually see the buttons like it's the actual emulator you're playing. So if it's a Game Boy, you get like kind of a Game Boy shell and the buttons are in the same place as a Game Boy. Turn it, turn it horizontal, they're on the screen, which is kind of annoying. Which is why I recommend the Backbone iPhone game controller, which I happen to have lying around, which I've almost never used because there aren't that many games, like new games that I want to play with it. Like driving games are kind of wonky with the sticks. I want a steering wheel, which you don't get, but I. The. That thing just plugs into your phone and then you have a full controller to play all the old games. And it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. If you. And the Backbone is on sale right now for like 40% off because it's Amazon's, we want all your money week.

[Dave Bittner]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So go check them out. They have USBC and there's a pro one. The one that I got was like 70 bucks when I bought it. I think they're up to 100 bucks now, but back down to 70 with the discount. They have a pro one now that actually uses Bluetooth to connect, but it's like 170 bucks. So I pass on that one. Just get the one that plugs into your phone. It just clips in. It's beautiful. And then it just kind of plays like I guess a Switch would be, or any of those other handheld game devices, which I don't have because I don't need it now. Everything I need now. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's a great setup in the backbone when you're actually using the Backbone. Phenomenal controller. Feels great in the hands. Well worth it if you want to play games on your phone for extended periods of time. And now with every ROM in the universe, I do believe there will be some extended periods of time that I'll be wanting to play my iPhone as a game controller now.

[Dave Bittner]

Are these emulator apps on the App Store?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The Delta emulator, you can pay to get a little Bit extra. Same with the PSP one. There's like gold versions of both, but it works fine out of the gate for free because they're all open source projects. Right, right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Open source project.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly, exactly. So you just have to hit the backwaters of the Internet to go find your ROMs. But once you do that, you're solid, man. You're solid.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. I included a link here to the emulator I use on my Mac, which is OpenEMU, which, same sort of thing. It's just a front end for a bunch of these open source projects and that works pretty well. I also included a link to a timely story that we actually covered on today's Cyberwire, which is about the FBI taking down a Nintendo Switch piracy website.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Get your ROMs while you can. Is the.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's funny, I want to update on this anbernic device that I got. Again, tip of the hat to Grim Ghost on Mastodon for pointing it out and recommending it to me. And this is the little hardware device that has all the emulators built in, which is wonderful. It's about the size of an iPhone, has all the controls on it. The screen is actually quite good, and it comes preloaded with hundreds of games. Hundreds of games.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But that sounds illegal.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, doesn't it? Yes. Here's my point is conspicuously missing are games from Nintendo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, right, got it.

[Dave Bittner]

So because Nintendo is so litigious about these sorts of things, if you want to play Donkey Kong, if you want to play Super Mario, you got to go find the roms on your own, which is not hard to do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hence me playing Donkey Kong country right at the gate. Right.

[Dave Bittner]

Right. Now, the funny thing was I ordered this device. I think I ordered it on Friday when we record on the recommendation of our listener. It arrived on Saturday. The box came. I didn't take it out of the box. I handed the box to my son Jack and said, I want you to figure out how to use this and then come back and teach me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're Vibe Daddy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're Vibe Daddy.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, and I don't know, this is. I suppose on one level I should have some shame that this is where I am in my life now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Where, oh, what's the point in having children?

[Dave Bittner]

Well, exactly. Exactly. I don't want to pull weeds on my own. I don't want to take the garbage out on my own if I'm paying for college, damn it. You're going to learn how to run the emulator and teach me how. And you're also Going to go out onto the Internet and find the games that aren't on it and load it up. And that's exactly what he did. So he went out and found all the missing games. The Marios, the Donkey Kongs, The Mega Man 2s, all those sorts of things. So it's fully loaded up now and I have to say it's a fun little device. I'm happy I have have it. It's a little overwhelming just how many games are on there.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean that's the, that's the whole thing that goes on in the music industry too, right. Like, it's like you load up your streamer of choice and it's just overwhelming how much music there is because there's everything ever right. Like everything. Every game that has ever been made is out there.

[Dave Bittner]

Right. And yeah, so you, you have this, this curse of unlimited options and how do you organize them and how do you. And you can tag favorites and things like that. But it's still. Yeah, it's a little overwhelming, but still happy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I got it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's fun. It's fun.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, it was, you know, 75 bucks well spent. It's a device I'm glad to have one of those things you can throw in a bag if you're stuck somewhere or you just want to kill some time. You can play it, scroll on social media. That's right. It'll hook up to Bluetooth headsets if you've got it. And it has a headphone jack and blah blah blah blah. It's just, it's remarkable how well built this little device is. I think like we've talked about before, it is extremely well built with very inexpensive components.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Dave Bittner]

But the screen itself is very good. This is not at all. They did not cheap out on the screen. So these folks know what they're doing. They know where to spend the extra 5 cents at the Chinese factory.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think the analog pocket is so expensive because I think they had to license, do a lot of licensing with Nintendo for the actual cartridge port probably and the IP behind that. So I think that there's probably some licensing fees that are passed on because yeah, it shouldn't be as expensive as it is for 250 bucks. It shouldn't be that way. And all of the add ons that they have, the adapters and things like that that I smell a licensing deal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I think so too.

[Dave Bittner]

So part of playing with this device, the game that I have dug into the most and spent the most time on is Mega Man 2, which is my absolute favorite classic NES game. And it's one of the few games that I played all the way through and got to the point where I could just play it from start to finish. It probably took about an hour to do. And I would do that just as something to do to relax, because I could. So it's been fun to do that again, to try to remember how. Of course, I can't do it in an hour anymore, and I have not made my way all the way through, but I'm trying. But what strikes me about that game in particular is just what a banger of a soundtrack it had. And, you know, that was one of the things about that NES was the capabilities and how clever they were with using its sound capabilities for good music and sound effects and all that kind of stuff. Compared to the other stuff that was out on the market at the time, especially personal computers, it was just so much better. So that got me thinking about the music of Mega Man 2. And I found a video on YouTube of an orchestra performing the music, music from Mega Man 2 and 3. Right. And I mean, yeah, it is nice. It's really nice. And of course, it's. I think. I think it's in Japan, of course, you know, because where else would it be?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of course.

[Dave Bittner]

But I'm so happy that it is and that someone did these orchestrations and somebody performed it, and that there's a market for this orchestra to get in front of an audience. And it makes me wonder, you know, this is, I think, where we are when it comes to financing a city orchestra. Right. That as many nights full of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, you have to do a night of everyone's favorite movie themes totally. To pay the bills.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, the biggest thing at the Hollywood bowl every year is the Star wars nights.

[Dave Bittner]

Right, Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Classical music. And everybody brings their lightsabers and it's nuts. Right.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Last time I was at the Hollywood Bolos for Lord of the Rings.

[Dave Bittner]

Right, Right. So that brings me to. I'll jump around a little bit. But that brings me to this documentary on Disney about John Williams. I don't know if either of you have had the opportunity to watch it yet.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have. It's phenomenal.

[Dave Bittner]

It's so good. It's really good. I mean, the music of John Williams, I think it's fair to say, is the soundtrack of our lives. And I wonder where John Williams sits among the musical greats way up there, certainly when it comes to movie music. But I'm saying, comparing him to the classical composers that we all know and love. I think it's fair to say at this point, more people have been exposed to John Williams music than probably any classical composer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, I agree 100%. In fact, a couple weeks ago on this very show, I was talking about the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack as being just un fucking believably good. And it's just, it's pure classical music and it's amazing.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. So part of what was in that John Williams documentary was part of was the difficulties he had with the Boston Pop and how many of the musicians were not pleased with him being brought on as their conductor. This is 20, 30 years ago because they did not take movie music seriously. They did not think it was real classical music and the struggles that he had. He resigned at one point and came back. But I, I think that argument's done. I think people now accept that this is the classical music of our time and it's the thing that's keeping the doors open for so many orchestras around the world.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean even I, I know, you know, you may not be aware of this, but Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails has done a lot of soundtracks and he just announced a one off music festival that is just film composers.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh wow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Playing live. It's, it's. I, I would, I'm not going to be in LA when it happens, but I'd kill to go. It's amazing. So.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah, well. And you see folks like Hans Zimmer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Being able to tour, you know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. He's touring. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And he's not just touring, he's also touring with the lead vocalist from Dead Can Dance is singing with him. Right. It's just unbelievable. Like the, the. Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. It's so. It's an amazing time to be alive for that kind of stuff. Stuff. Everything else sucks.

[Dave Bittner]

But, but, but, but swinging back to the video games, I think what this speaks to is how evocative music is for all of us. And for me, I was reflecting on how the games that I really, really love all have a musical component to them. I was thinking like Spy Hunter, the Star Wars Arcade game, Mega Man, Top Gear, Outrun Vanguard, even games like Pac man and Galaga and Donkey Kong all have these musical components and those are the ones that I come back to time and time again.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I mean, Spy Hunter's use of Peter Gunn like that was mind blowing for me. It was well before I'd ever heard the Peter Gunn song or theme or anything like that. And I was just like, whatever, this is awesome. Yeah. Just really getting into it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And a quick callback. We had Mark Kanter on the show way back in the early day who did the programming for Spy Hunter and took the Peter Gunn theme and turned it into code. So if you want to walk down memory lane and some terrible audio, go back and check out that episode with Mark Cantor.

[Dave Bittner]

It's, you know. And you can listen to the entire Spy Hunter video game soundtrack on YouTube. They have it from start to finish. And part of what's remarkable about it is that. Would you say his name is Dan Hunter?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Mark Cantor.

[Dave Bittner]

Mark Cantor.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sorry.

[Dave Bittner]

It rhymed. Mark Cantor did not phone it in. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Like there are. It's like 15 minutes of original music. Right, right. And there are solos and there are variations. It's not just the same thing over and over again. And so when we had the opportunity to do those sorts of things in a game as old as Spy Hunter is, it's amazing. And I think that's a big part of why we have affection for those old games.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And Mark, to his credit, was no slouch of a coder. He went on to found a little company called Macromind, which then became Macromedia. Okay.

[Dave Bittner]

I'm familiar with a few of his products.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I might have used some of them now and then.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He's been smoking pot for 30 years, so he's not the same guy, probably he was back then, but.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hey, Dave, I would say it's not even the old games. I mean. Well, now let's talk about some other old games which aren't as old. But I mean, I know Jason and I, when we first worked together many, many years ago, Trent Reznor had done the soundtrack for. For Quake, which we played quite a bit. And it was a wonderful soundtrack that he did. Very interesting. And I know, you know, Jason, you just mentioned Wipeout a few minutes ago. I know. We played this on this on the stereo at our work, incessantly when you and I worked together. The Wipeout XL soundtrack, which is one of the best soundtracks for a game ever made, I think.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think that game, that soundtrack on that game single handedly ignited the entire electronic music movement in the country because it was so popular and it was so good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, we played this all the time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I still play it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They don't have it on a lot of streaming media, but I've included a link in the show notes. Somebody had put together the playlist from it. So, yeah, it's an amazing soundtrack. I listen to that non stop Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's to the point now if I listen to one of the albums, I expect the song from the soundtrack to come on next after that one's over.

[Dave Bittner]

Right? Yeah, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, we're coming up on time here and I just before we, before we wrap, I want to do one non music game. I talked about this on the show before and I just had an update. Mahjong Titan plus on Apple Arcade. There's thousands of mahjong boards on there and a couple weeks ago I was on the quest to complete them all. I have finally completed them all.

[Dave Bittner]

Go on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What do they send you? Do you get a medal? Do you get a check? What happened? Oversized check.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I get the freedom to poop without my phone in my hand. Playing mahjong again is what I get. I have completed 4,678 boards, which ranks me 12,294th out of 1,910,570 players.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What a feeling of accomplishment that must give you at night.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It does. It fucking. I know you're not a gamer, Brian, but some people out there will realize that. I see that 12,294 and I'm like, I'm so close to the top. So close to the top.

[Dave Bittner]

I have never played mahjong and I know nothing about it. So this is all new to me. But congratulations.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you, thank you. It was an accomplishment.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My wife is of Chinese descent and obviously she has a lot of Chinese relatives in Toronto. Specifically, I have been in one of those rooms, one of those back rooms where it's all like 85 year old Chinese women playing mahjong. It is crazy.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, they chain smoking and oh yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh yeah, there's chicken feet everywhere and everybody's just chomping away and.

[Dave Bittner]

Right, right. Don't you dare interrupt.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I was like, what's this white. What's this white boy doing in here? Right?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, so the. Yeah, it's the heat. Well, good for you. I mean, you know, I talked about my accomplishment of making my way all the way through Mega Man 2. I suspect these are similar things. So at least I know how it feels.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, I played a game once.

[Dave Bittner]

Come on, you used to hang out in the Disneyland Arcade.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I played a lot of Spy Hunter. I never finished it. Never.

[Dave Bittner]

But yeah, the problem with Spy Hunter is that it is not a game that you can enjoy under emulator simulation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'd imagine you need the whole thing.

[Dave Bittner]

You need the steering wheel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. But you can listen to the soundtrack.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, guys, I got a real quick question for you, both of you guys live with women. And I wanted to figure out if this is a.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It makes it sound as if that's an odd thing.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, real live women.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've lived with women most of my adult life, so shut the up.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Noticed. I've noticed. Noticed that every time I go into the kitchen, the microwave never says the time. It's always just a couple seconds. Exactly. So I'm trying to figure out if this is just a woman thing, an impatience thing, because I live with a very impatient person who just can't wait for the microwave to finish. It gets close and she's like, close enough. Boom. And then leaves it. And so I'm always going by, so annoying. I'm always clicking the cancel button on the microwave, which leads me to two points, but the first is do either. Apparently you deal with this too, Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do, 100%. My microwave is always on 3, 4 or 5.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, Dave, you.

[Dave Bittner]

No, my wife has the opposite problem, which is that she is easily distracted so she will forget that she put something in the microwave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ah, okay, I get that on the. We get that on the. No, but that's on the stove. I spent 25 minutes cleaning a pan of rice yesterday that was completely burnt beyond recognition. With a microwave on the oven, other hand, never finishes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But guys, I get both. Not only does my microwave say 3, 4 or 5, the coffee cup is inside of it.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, really?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Always? That's a neat twist.

[Dave Bittner]

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, it does not. It is very. It's an interesting thing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, okay, okay. I'm not alone on that. Now. The thing that gets me is we live in a technology age where we have a box that can take food and make it hot by pressing a button like it's out of fucking Star Trek. But. But they can't figure out when you open the door to reset the clock. And they don't have to do it right away. You can wait a minute or two to turn it off. They can't figure that out. What kind of shitty lazy ass engineers do they have at these microwave companies that do that?

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, yeah, I don't think they should reset when you open the door because sometimes you have to stir things and.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Then put them back in.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's what I was saying. Give it a minute or two after, you know.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, that's going to say, I think there should be a timeout where if after X number of minutes the microwave just like. I don't know, first it beeps and then it gives you another minute and then it resets itself. That. That seems completely reasonable to me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

And maybe somebody's going to write in and say There is a $4,000 microwave that does this exact thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I just did a quick Google search, Dave. And I just did a quick, quick Google search.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And yes, there are.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There are smart microwaves with WI fi and voice control. You can connect your microwaves to Alexa and so you could. There are multiple options for you to be able to control and reset everything. And I'm sure there's one that actually does a reset itself, but you could just tell your Alexa or Siri to do it if you've got the right microwave.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I'm never going to buy that microwave, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, then you will live with three, four or five seconds on your microwave and have.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, but let me ask you this. So. So what happens when you point out this oddity to the lovely lady in your life?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Divorce.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You don't. You never? No. You don't bring it up?

[Brian Schulmeister]

No. Never.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Why the fuck would you ever do that? That's dumb.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not a newbie when it comes to marriage, so I.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Certainly understand wives famously love to have things pointed out. Out to them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's true. Yes. I'm not even married. It's just a roommate situation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And yeah, no, usually in my relationship, if I were to point that out, I will get a litany of the things that I do horribly wrong.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I don't invariably.

[Dave Bittner]

A much longer list.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You don't open that door. You do not open that door, period.

[Dave Bittner]

Nah. Choose your battles.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. It's not that hard to hit cancel.

[Dave Bittner]

That's. That's true. That's true.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Come to think, much less expensive than the divorce.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

There is someone here at the office who does that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, they're fair game people at the.

[Dave Bittner]

Office for a few seconds. And what annoys me about that is that the microwave does beep and I can hear it from my studio. So I'm like, somebody left the microwave, but I don't know. We'll never know who.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. I just wanted to clear up that muffin. Modern technology, inconvenience.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They need a Sniglet for that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm sure there is one. I got the books. I should dig it up.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, man. Brad, what was it that was that. Who's the comic who did Rich Hall.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Rich Hall.

[Dave Bittner]

I was gonna say Brad Hall. Rich Hall. Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, Dan Hunter's brother.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brad Hall.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. No, I have all the sniglitz books right next to my Murphy's Law books. I got those. I rebought those a couple years ago and I'm never getting giving them up.

[Dave Bittner]

I have a bunch of the Jay Leno headlines books which still make me laugh.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, you're the one that makes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, I heard that one was sold of those.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I knew it went somewhere.

[Dave Bittner]

I don't know.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. All right guys.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, see you next week.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Closing Shout out over at Patreon. We've got one new Patreon 4th cons guy. Thank you very much for the patronage and the hat tip earlier. And from the Legacy Files, Oliver, Steve, Macy, Brett, Thomas, Brian, Jason, rogue, Sphere Studios, Copper 3K and Ivor. Thank you all very much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, thank you. Over at PayPal we've got Jonathan Levy, Judge Florian, Ralph, Miles, Nicola, Robert and Thomas.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And over the tip jar we've got Adam and Jessica. Bought some merch this week. Thank you everybody. And just a quick reminder, if you want to support the show and keep us on the air, you can head over to GOG Donate to find multiple avenues to give us your hard earned money. Or you can go to patreon.com gog and if you go there and sign up for as little as $3 a month or pay for the whole year and get a discount, you get the show a little bit early ad free and at high definition.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Woohoo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sadly, no reviews this week. Boo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Boo.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But happy birthday to friend of the show Robert Fogarty who does our voiceovers and intros and things like that. Happy birthday old boy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Happy birthday Day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 704. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG Show Donate Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show. Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by Goggles to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback, Cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got. GOG Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at Shop GOG show stay grumpy.