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- [00:03]
A
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 De Filippo.
- [00:20]
B
Bonjour. I'm Brian Schulmeister. Going to go get some croissant.
- [00:27]
A
Unbirc vous play the only thing I remember from my trips to Paris. So are you ready to rock?
- [00:34]
B
Mostly it's funny. I'm a procrastinator in absolutely no area of my life whatsoever. Except for two specific occasions, Jason. One is if somebody is giving me a hard time about doing something, then I will procrastinate the fuck out of it.
- [00:47]
A
Yes.
- [00:47]
B
And the. The other is packing, so almost ready.
- [00:51]
A
Okay. Five minutes before the Uber gets there, then.
- [00:54]
B
Yeah. Throwing a few T shirts and off we go.
- [00:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of with you on that one. On the. Just wait to the last second, throw it in a bag. I do that with moving, too. Like, most of my move is meticulous in the beautiful boxes, but at the very end, it's every grocery store plastic bag that I could find. I'm just shoving crap in.
- [01:13]
B
It's like rabid raccoons running around. Yeah.
- [01:15]
A
Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Well, I am glad you're going to go take a break in gay Paris and have a nice time. You're just going to Paris, right?
- [01:24]
B
London, Paris.
- [01:25]
A
London, Paris. Oh, okay.
- [01:27]
B
Never miss the opportunity to go to London. Yes, we all love it as a family. I've loved London my entire life. I lived there for two years. Yeah, I love London.
- [01:35]
A
I haven't been there in, like, 30 years. Sad.
- [01:38]
B
You can do it, Jason.
- [01:40]
A
No, I can't. No, I can't. I don't know if you've noticed, but, yeah, you're not here anymore, so you wouldn't have noticed. Do you know how much my DWP bill was this week?
- [01:50]
B
No idea, but I heard everything is really bad right now.
- [01:54]
A
Take a guess.
- [01:55]
B
A couple hundred bucks.
- [01:57]
A
$2,000.
- [01:58]
B
What?
- [01:59]
A
$2,000 was our DWP bill, so, no, I'm not going to London. No, I'm probably not going to pay for my health insurance this week either, so.
- [02:06]
B
Yes, well, I also heard health insurance premiums have at least doubled. Thanks, Trump.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah, no, everything is. Everything is. Yeah, well and truly fucked, as they say. And sorry, if you hear some noise in the background, it is garbage day, because we were recording this on Thursday because you.
- [02:21]
B
How much do you pay for your garbage pickup?
- [02:24]
A
Yeah, a lot. A lot. So I was looking at the job numbers this morning because since we don't have a real government right now, the job numbers have been coming in from external sources like B of A and other consultancies and things like that. And yeah, it's not pretty out there. It's not pretty. It's not, no. But, but next week we are going to have a special guest host, Brian, because we can't afford to take a week off, which is what that whole setup was for.
- [02:51]
B
Okay, who's interesting around the elbow to get to the asshole who'd you strong arm into this?
- [02:58]
A
Donovan Atkinson is going to be coming with us next week. You can find him as Southern Geek on our Discord channel. So, okay, so yeah, Donovan has graciously accepted my offer to step in. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll welcome in a grumpy old geeks fashion.
- [03:14]
B
I look forward to listening to it on my flight back.
- [03:17]
A
Yes, yes. No. Donovan's an IT pro from the southern eastern coast of the United States, so it should be a fun discussion. Okay, I'm looking forward to it.
- [03:28]
B
Awesome. Well, we got a bit of follow up and maybe you'll, you'll be chiming in on this if anything else comes out about this, but. According to the Netherlands ordered matter to change Facebook and Instagram's timelines after finding the element ran afoul of the European Union's Digital Services Act. As reported by Reuters, the Dutch court said the company needs to provide users with simpler options, namely ones that don't rely on an algorithm. So this is on the heels of the UK basically getting the pay for a straight up non algorithmic timeline, if you want. Now the Netherlands is basically saying you got to do it for free.
- [04:02]
A
Okay.
- [04:04]
B
And this is all any of us want. So anyways, the case was brought by the Bits of Freedom, a Dutch digital rights group. Good name, actually.
- [04:12]
A
Yeah.
- [04:12]
B
And they point out something. It is unacceptable that a few American tech billionaires can determine how we view the world, said the group spokesperson. And I kind of agree with that. I think it's unacceptable even in America.
- [04:24]
A
Here's the thing, you don't have to use it. That's their point.
- [04:28]
B
So that's true. I guess you don't.
- [04:30]
A
But no, you don't with that. Yeah, see, we keep saying that, you know, that's all we ever wanted was a non algorithmic timeline. That's what we wanted a decade ago.
- [04:41]
B
I know. It's too late.
- [04:43]
A
Yeah. The horse is burned up inside the Barn and has collapsed on the farmhand that was trying to put it out with a thimble full of water. It's a.
- [04:50]
B
Now we now have to add. We want a non algorithmically driven timeline that is also free of bots.
- [04:56]
A
Yeah, and Mark Zuckerberg and surveillance capitalism and everything that goes along with it.
- [05:03]
B
Exactly.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah. Well, Sora too, we talked about it last week and the, the fu. To copyright that they, that they just were. They were going to die on that hill. Well, turns out they, they did. And they, they turned around and said, okay, we'll turn on some copyright protection. But the thing is, the thing is they kind of turned the knob all the way in the other direction, so it was almost impossible to get anything made. So I got an invite from Morgan. Thank you very much, Morgan. And I dove in and was like, oh, let's see what I can make. And I got there probably about three minutes, I think after they turned off the. Or turned on the copyright knob because I couldn't do a damn thing. I mean, I did finally get it to do a video of Bruce Lee fighting Mother Teresa. That was horrible. I did one with Bruce Lee fighting a beluga whale. Also horrible. And then I looked at the, you know, the scrolling timeline of what people were making and posting up there. For every one of those videos, there's probably 20 of them that did not work. And those things take a long time to make it a lot of compute. We are burning down the earth at a phenomenal rate, phenomenal, just to make these horrible videos. And here's the deal. Sora too kind of sucks. It's not that great. It's like, oh, this is the new. Those demos are so cherry picked from the luckiest of. The luckiest of generations. It's not good, Brian. It's not good.
- [06:37]
B
Well, I have to say I did not really get into it. I didn't look around at it. I certainly didn't try it. But I have a very narrow view of sort of Sora too, which came almost entirely from friend of the show Tara Tiger Brown's feed. She got into it, okay, but what she did is she didn't try to use anything copyrighted at all. She did it probably in the way that Sora actually wishes people would use it. She did a bunch of stuff for herself, her family, her brother. You know, she just put herself and, and her family in different situations like skiing and surfing and all that sort of stuff. And I mean, I couldn't, I'm friends with her on social, so I couldn't get away from this. I just kept seeing because she was posting tons and tons of them, and they all looked really pretty good. There's a bit of uncanny valley in there. Just a bit. And it's mostly in the motion. You can tell that, like, there's some. There's your. Your mind goes. There's something wrong with this camera. Yeah, the camera's not quite right. It's weird. It's getting weird angles. It's a little bit off. So it's a little uncanny valley. But, God, it's really. This stuff without guard rails is frightening.
- [07:46]
A
Like, yeah.
- [07:48]
B
I mean, I was watching these videos that she did, and I was like, whoa. Well, this could be really bad for an awful lot of people. But, yeah, so, I mean, look, I'm not surprised that they. If these companies actually turn the dial to full, like, we're going to pay attention to all copyright, and this is entirely forgetting about the fact that they broke all copyrights to train the models.
- [08:09]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [08:10]
B
Let's leave that out completely.
- [08:12]
A
Just. Just shoot that elephant.
- [08:14]
B
We'll just pretend that part doesn't exist, just like they do if you just dial it. So you can't break copyright to make videos. Of course, it's practically unusable because that's all people want to do is, Is make stuff using copyrighted material in general. And I think even Tara got a little bored with making these videos after a while. It's like, fun for a day or two, and you show your friends and then everybody kind of goes, yeah, okay, yeah.
- [08:40]
A
Now what the hundreds of millions of dollars of compute that was just spent to do all that? And what do we have at the end of it?
- [08:47]
B
A couple shrugs. And that was cute.
- [08:49]
A
At least with bitcoin, there's at least criminal money for all of the baby seals we're killing, but Jesus. And I also don't know if you've noticed, Brian, but for all of the different models that I'm using across the board, from Claude to Gemini to OpenAI and ChatGPT, they're slowing down considerably.
- [09:10]
B
I did notice it yesterday because all I really use any of these models for anymore is to write promos for our podcast. That's it. And so I. And I was trying to get a little bit ahead of the game, obviously, because I'm traveling. So I went through our notes, and that's what I normally do is I kind of chunk all the stories into. Into chatgpt and say, you know, write me a snappy and kind of witty and snarky Update. Less than 24, you know, 240 characters I can use across social media, and I've been doing that for quite a few months. And obviously I edit it because it's not always that great. And it's. This is some stuff that I know I. You know, we said it's funny, but. But it was always pretty quick. And yesterday it was glacial.
- [09:52]
A
Yeah.
- [09:53]
B
Just like the glaciers they removed to make it.
- [09:55]
A
Seriously, have you played with the personalization settings in ChatGPT yet? Are you. Are you. Are you a paid member? That's the first question.
- [10:04]
B
Here's the thing. No, I'm not a paid member and I refuse to sign in.
- [10:10]
A
Okay. Yeah, no, in the personalization settings, you can do some pretty interesting things where you give it your occupation, more about you, how it manages stuff. And there's also personalities that you can select. Now. You have default, which is cheerful and adaptive. You have Cynic, which is critical and sarcastic. Robot, efficient and blunt. Listener, thoughtful and supportive, or nerd, exploratory and enthusiastic. I've been using the nerd for a while and it's just boring as fuck. So I went to. Yeah. Then I flipped it to Cynic, and I haven't really seen much of a difference, but what I have seen is the slowdown is insane.
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, it is a lot slower. It is a lot slower. You know, I just don't want to sign in because I don't want it. I don't want to track to me. I don't want this history because we don't know what they're doing with it. And I just.
- [11:00]
A
We absolutely do absolutely do know what.
- [11:02]
B
We'Re doing with it. And that's the thing. I don't want to feed the beast. I mean, I am doing it anyways, semi anonymously. I just don't want it tracked. And also, like, I, I've, I guess have written a really good prompt to basically get the voice pretty close to our snark anyways, so I don't need their personality.
- [11:18]
A
Yeah, I see. I like it. I like the history because it, it. It starts to realize who I am and what I'm actually trying to do when I post it, when I put in something, it's like, oh, it's you again. We're going to. Yeah, exactly. The one thing I will say with Gemini, because I'm a paid member of Gemini too, because I get the 2 terabytes of Google Drive storage, which I need for my backups and moving files around. Anyway, so I was paying for that no matter what, but it comes with The Gemini plan, they've got a million token input thing now. So I can literally drag in a full audio of any podcast and it'll use about 150,000 tokens on that podcast to just, just rip the audio and pull out the context of it and then work directly on that. I don't have to put anything else in. It's really handy and it's, it's not great. So you take that output, then you pop it over to your other AI and you say, punch it up over here and then you take it into BB Edit and then you punch it up yourself. By the end of it, you probably could have done the same thing yourself.
- [12:31]
B
Yeah, I was about to say you probably could just do it yourself at about the same amount of time without destroying the environment.
- [12:37]
A
Yeah, but what fun is that?
- [12:39]
B
I guess. None.
- [12:45]
A
This episode is brought to you by CleanMyMac. If you're anything like me, you've been collecting digital stuff for decades. Your cloud storage is likely a chaotic museum of old projects, forgotten photos and who knows what else. And let's be real, all that clutter, it's not just files, it's emotional weight. Ain't that the truth. That's why I want to tell you about our sponsor, CleanMyMac, and their fantastic new feature, Cloud Cleanup. This isn't just another utility. CleanMyMac's Cloud Cleanup connects directly to your iCloud, OneDrive and Google Drive accounts to find the huge space wasters you've been storing for years, both in the cloud and synced to your device. It helps you finally see what's taking up all that space so you can decide what stays and what goes. Because not everything deserves eternal storage. And the best, best part for us security conscious geeks, all the scanning happens locally on your Mac, ensuring your data remains private and secure. It's time to let go of that digital baggage. Paying attention to your cloud storage is beneficial for your Mac and frankly, for your own mental well being. So get tidy. Today, CleanMyMac is offering our listeners a seven day free trial and 20% off when you use the code. Oldgeeks. What are they trying to say? Old geeks? Or you can just go to clnmy.com grumpy old geeks. The link will be in the show notes on your player or on the website. Just click that. It is going to make life easy. Go get it. Get that seven day free trial and 20% off. And again, that's clnmy.com grumpy old geeks use code old geeks for 20% off. Your Mac will thank you. And again, just click the link in the show notes. It's going to make your life easier. You're going to clean up your cloud and everybody's going to be happy in the news.
- [14:32]
B
Well, Apple has removed Ice Block, the app which allowed users to put a pin on a map to show where ICE agents have recently been spotted from the App Store. It has also pulled other apps that served a similar purpose. According to Fox Business Attorney General Pam Bondi, she had a week.
- [14:45]
A
Oh, did she?
- [14:46]
B
Did she ever demanded their takedown? Telling Apple that the apps were designed to put ICE agents at risk for just doing their jobs. Apparently if you just say where they are, that puts them at risk.
- [14:58]
A
Yeah, I went on a tear last night on Instagram and just every video that was fed to me through my algorithmic timeline of people harassing ice, I'm just like, ah, fuck it. Add to the story, add to the story, add the story. Why not? There's enough of them now. It's just fun. Here's the thing about ICE Block. Yeah, it can be an app, but just make it a web app, then you don't have to deal with these assholes and it can just stay up forever.
- [15:25]
B
Yeah, the problem is the kids these days don't use the web. All they do is use apps. So I agree with you, but I think the usage will go down tremendously.
- [15:33]
A
Instead of just going to iceblock app or whatever, instead of going in, going to the App Store, I mean, dude, they're lazy, one half dozen at the other.
- [15:43]
B
I'm just saying.
- [15:44]
A
I know, whatever. By the way, I used ICE Block a lot. I never once saw ICE in my neighborhood and I know they were doing raids in my neighborhood. So yeah, I don't think it actually worked that well.
- [15:57]
B
It's user generated content. It just meant nobody in your neighborhood was on the app reporting it.
- [16:01]
A
Everybody was running. That's the problem.
- [16:04]
B
That's why they needed to be an app. They don't have time to pull up a web page.
- [16:07]
A
Time to pull up a web.
- [16:08]
B
Jesus.
- [16:09]
A
Yeah. Underlay.
- [16:11]
B
Yeah. So Joshua Aaron, the apps developer, told Fox Business he was incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move, he said. Apple has claimed that they received information from law enforcement that ICE blocks served to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false. It had climbed to the top of the App Store charts in July after administration officials slammed it. The Barbara Streisand effect.
- [16:34]
A
Yep.
- [16:35]
B
Making more people aware of its existence at the Time officials warned Aaron that they were looking at him and he better watch out because that's what regular governments do.
- [16:43]
A
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. He's just like, bring it on, bitch.
- [16:47]
B
Yeah, well, one of the reasons that, one of the reasons that we probably need these sorts of apps and it's what's good for you is a. Not necessarily good for us. ICE is planning to create their own surveillance team that hunts for leads on social media now.
- [17:02]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [17:03]
B
They have plans to build out a 24 7, 365 day a week surveillance team that focuses on scouring social media for case leads as revealed in documents first discovered by Wired. According to public records, they have put out a request for information which allows the agency to detail its preliminary scope of work. The details uses social media platforms like Facebook X Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and YouTube to develop leads on wanted individuals for urgent cases. The team is expected to work on leads with ISIS top 10 most wanted within a 30 minute time frame. But the breadth of work ranges all the way to low priority cases. Like everyone.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah.
- [17:40]
B
Like those involving someone convicted of a non violent misdemeanor or has no convictions but has a significant arrest history with a more generous eight hour window to generate leads. According to the documents, ICE want at least 12 full time staff to work at the National Criminal Analysis Targeting center in Vermont and which will require three staffers on duty at all times.
- [17:59]
A
You're gonna, you're gonna, you're going to, you're going to monitor the entirety of the Internet with three people?
- [18:05]
B
Well, we finally got the Internet police, Jason.
- [18:08]
A
That's the Internet police that we deserve.
- [18:10]
B
I guess now on the other side of the country. So Jason, you might want to fire up that jeep and if you need some work, ICE is looking for a minimum staff of 16 full time contractors for its Pacific Enforcement Response Center. It's down in Santa Ana, so, you know, a bit of a drive, but yeah. So they need a duty rotation of at least two staffers on for after hour requirements and emergency situations. There you go. You wouldn't be in traffic, Jason, you'd work after hours. So oh great, you can just go monitor the Internet for ice.
- [18:38]
A
I am kind of broke, so I'm.
- [18:40]
B
Just saying you can be the enemy within that they keep talking about, Jason. Sabotage.
- [18:45]
A
I can be saboteur. Yes. Bring me back a beret, Brian.
- [18:50]
B
Speaking of sabotage, OpenAI has disrupted more Chinese accounts using chat GPT to create social media surveillance tools. The very tools that ICE would like to have. Yeah, that would be worth pointing out. So OpenAI's disclosed that a now banned account originating in China was using ChatGPT to help design promotional material and project plans for a social media listening tool. This work was purportedly done for a government client. It was a probe that could crawl social media sites like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube. Huh, that seems very similar to that ROI from ICE.
- [19:24]
A
Wait, wait, wait. Nobody mentioned Truth Social in any of these.
- [19:28]
B
Well, you know, because only, only, only, only truthers.
- [19:33]
A
Yeah.
- [19:35]
B
So they also disrupted similar efforts earlier this year. So China has long been accused of alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the country and they were developing tools using Chat GPT to track them. The company also caught Russian, Korean and Chinese speaking developers using ChatGPT to refine malware as well as entire networks in Cambodia. I always have problems saying that one. Yes, that using the Chapi cheap to help create scams and attempt to defraud people. Interestingly enough, our current administration is not listed in here, but we know they're doing it too.
- [20:08]
A
Yeah, you know what's funny? Speaking of Truth Social, yesterday I got a notice, I got like a text message notice, you know, like a, an alert type of thing, a notification, notification as it were, from Truth Social saying that, oh, they arrested somebody for the Pacific Palisades fire.
- [20:25]
B
Oh, I heard that too.
- [20:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's the point. I uninstalled the Truth social app about 10 seconds after I installed it and I never gave him my phone number and they're still pinging me with shit, so fuck you.
- [20:39]
B
Interesting.
- [20:40]
A
Yeah, that's very interesting. I thought, I'm like, if we were in Europe, I would be suing you right now.
- [20:46]
B
That's true. But you're not.
- [20:47]
A
I'm not, Sadly. Sadly, Sadly.
- [20:50]
B
Well, you are in California. And California regulators are threatening Tesla yet again. I didn't even know that Tesla had launched its own auto insurance options for California customers back in 2019. And if I did know that, I would have told everybody far and wide to never ever sign up for that, because that would be stupid.
- [21:08]
A
Turn it off right before you have a crash.
- [21:10]
B
But some people, apparently they do. Yeah, some people apparently did do that. The California Department of Insurance has issued enforcement actions against Tesla Insurance, which acts as an agent for State National Insurance Company. They claim that Tesla Insurance and State national saw repeated failures to comply with long standing claims handling laws. That's not the Tesla I know. They also accused Tesla Insurance of egregious delays when responding to its customers claims. Again, not The Tesla.
- [21:42]
A
I know.
- [21:43]
B
Poop emoji responses and not conducting thorough, fair and objective investigations of claims. Again, not the Tesla.
- [21:51]
A
Yeah.
- [21:54]
B
So they're probably going to be run out of the insurance business. As well they should be.
- [21:58]
A
Yep. Yep. If we can get him out of the diner business now too, that'd be great.
- [22:03]
B
That would be awesome. I've heard that place has turned into a dump.
- [22:06]
A
Well, it's a dump because it's always packed with, with Elon stands and baseball behatted, you know. Cybertruck driver. I saw another cybertruck yesterday with new dealer plates and I'm just scratching my head, I'm like, I guess. And there's one in the neighborhood. I mentioned it before, but it sounds like the Sanford and Son truck when it's driving down the street. It's like, like actually more it's like Hong Kong food. And my roommate heard it yesterday and I'm just like, do you hear it? Do you hear it? She's like, oh my God, what a piece of shit.
- [22:38]
B
Yep.
- [22:40]
A
Well, OpenAI just struck another massive deal, this time with AMD. The chat GPT maker is buying 6 gigawatts worth of AMD's latest Instinct AI chips in a multi billion dollar agreement to power its next generation infrastructure.
- [22:56]
B
How many gigawatts did Doc Brown need to send us back to the future?
- [22:59]
A
1.21 gigawatts.
- [23:01]
B
Wow. Wow. Right?
- [23:03]
A
Gigawatt. The rollout starts in 2026. And as part of the deal, OpenAI could end up with a 10% stake in AMD through $160 million shares priced at just $0.01 each. Now there's a lot of caveats to this thing going through AMD stock I think has to hit $600 a share or some shit like that. And then if you remember, Nvidia just got some of OpenAI. This is all just this massively creative accounting. Like it's, it's, it's this kite. Remember kiting check kiting back in the 80s that finally became a felony where you could write a check and then pay the other check with the other check and keep your balance up by writing checks. And it's all just floating in the air until like, you know, gravity hits and everybody lands. That's what's going on here with OpenAI. Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, all of these fucking.
- [23:53]
B
People, Microsoft, I mean, they're all starting to own parts of each other. It's a, it's a big fucking octopus of hell.
- [23:58]
A
And they're selling, they're lending or Leasing chips to like, Nvidia is going to be leasing the chips to OpenAI for hundreds of billions of dollars and all this other shit. It's all fucking Monopoly money and accounting tricks to keep this fucking ball in the air. And if somebody blinks and this ball hits the ground, bye, bye economy. Yeah, it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. So, I mean, but there are so many people that are like under the balloon blowing to keep it in the air right now that I think this is going to go for a. And because, I mean, nobody wants this thing to crash at this point because it's, it's, it's not just this stupid AI shit that's too big to fail. It will take down the United States economy at this point and it's like, we're fucked. We're fucked. So everybody go on Sora, make some stupid home videos, keep this thing going, because we're fucked if we don't again.
- [24:52]
B
You know, fuck the planet. We got to keep the economy up.
- [24:55]
A
Oh, yeah. Seriously.
- [24:56]
B
Yeah.
- [24:59]
A
What a world. Oh, this is all in like the last four years.
- [25:02]
B
I know, it's insane. We thought it was bad when we started this podcast.
- [25:06]
A
It's just so much worse. It's so much worse. Well, Deloitte is paying back $291,000 to Australia's federal government after its, quote, Independent Assurance Review was found to include AI generated errors.
- [25:20]
B
That's because Antouche wasn't involved.
- [25:23]
A
The Department of Employment Workplace Relations says the repayment covers the final installment of a contract to review a system that automates penalties for welfare recipients who miss mutual obligations. The report contained multiple mistakes, including references to non existent citations, which are classic AI hallucinations. A University of Sydney lecturer who flagged the issue says Deloitte's updated version swapped fake citations for clusters of new ones, suggesting the original claims lacked a solid evidentiary basis. Now, Deloitte says that they did use chat GPT4 or GPT4O via Azure to produce the results, but they insist their findings and recommendations stand. Well, Australia says, o mate, give us some money. And so that's, that's what's going on in Australia. And then so we know that they used OpenAI's GPT4O. So Deloitte says, hold my beer. Anthropic just landed its biggest enterprise deal yet, and it's a massive one. Deloitte announced it's rolling out Anthropic's AI assistant, Claude, to more than 470,000 employees across 150 countries. Let's double down. Look, we changed the model. We capitulated, we apologize. We'll give you a few hundred thousand dollars back. It's nothing. We're Deloitte. We are huge.
- [26:44]
B
We're huge. This version will be different.
- [26:47]
A
This will be different. Claude is nicer and better. So we're going to give you Claude instead of Sam Altman. So.
- [26:55]
B
Yeah. All right.
- [26:59]
A
God damn it. Well, a 13 year old and Dellen, Florida has been arrested after asking Chat GPT how to kill his friend during class. The disturbing query triggered an alert from Gaggle, a surveillance company that monitors school issued computers for violent or self harm language. Police were noted, notified immediately and questioned the student who claimed he was just trolling a friend who annoyed him. The Volusia County Sheriff's office wasn't amused, calling it another joke that created an emergency on campus. Well, the teen was booked into juvenile detention, though charges haven't been disclosed. Well, Gaggle markets itself as A K through 12 safety service that monitors emails, documents, and now even AI chats for troubling behavior. But critics say it's turning classrooms into miniature surveillance states. Well, this is okay with that? I'm fine. This is school. They should be. That's a. Okay.
- [27:50]
B
Not their computers. It's not. This is the same thing as being in a workplace. And if you're using a workplace computer, the workplace can do whatever the they want.
- [27:57]
A
Exactly. Now, what I would like to point out about this article here is Gaggle is is reporting them to the police. Chat GPT did all. Probably gave a really up answer about sticking a pencil in his ear or some like that.
- [28:11]
B
That so Just a platform, Jason.
- [28:14]
A
Just the platform. Taylor Swift is under fire from fans for allegedly using what they call AI slop to promote her new album Life of a Showgirl. As part of a global scavenger hunt, Swift invited fans to scan QR codes linked to short promotional videos. But viewers quickly noticed telltale AI errors. One clip featured warped backgrounds and a bartender whose hand blended into a napkin. Another showed gym equipment with misaligned weights. Well, the backlash also reignited debate over AI's role in replacing human creativity. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Online reaction summed it up bluntly. She's too rich to be this cheap. Well, she's cheap and that's why she's rich.
- [28:54]
B
Yeah, they usually go hand in hand. And I actually don't think it was a monetary issue. I think it was a time issue. She just ended her tour, she got engaged and she tried to push out an album and get all this video stuff done. So you want to do it quick, you can have it. You can have it good. Or you can have it quick.
- [29:12]
A
Yeah, so. And I'm sure she hired his firm to do that. She didn't. She wasn't sitting there on a computer herself.
- [29:17]
B
She's not editing it. Yes.
- [29:18]
A
Yeah, she's not doing the thing. I mean. I mean, the. The funny part is, like, yeah, they're bitching about the AI, but they're bitching more about the album being shitty, which is even funnier.
- [29:28]
B
They're, like, also written really quickly, I'm sure.
- [29:31]
A
So. Yeah, yeah, you could. You could let this one bake a little longer, too. There. Too.
- [29:35]
B
Get your last bit of money before you pop out some kids. That's what she's gonna do anyways.
- [29:39]
A
Last hurrah.
- [29:40]
B
Yep. Well, Apple's Find My feature is immensely useful. If you've ever been out for a wild night of drinking and wake up the next morning without your phone, find mine is there. If you're in a hurry and dash out of your Uber, only to later feel a suspicious absence in your pocket, fine. Buy is there. And if your British law enforcement team conducting a probe into a massive iPhone smuggling ring in the heart of London, Find my. Is also there. The BBC reports the UK Cops recently broke up a phone smuggling ring involving tens of thousands of devices. It was actually on Christmas Eve, and a victim electronically tracked their stolen iPhone to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. The security there was eager to help out, and they found the phone was in a box along with another 894 phones, which then they started tracking. And. Yes, and they started watching the warehouse, and they ended up busting another 2, 000 stolen phones. And a number of arrests came out of that.
- [30:31]
A
Cool.
- [30:32]
B
So there you go. And this is all going to China, where the phones sell for quite a price. Crooks in Britain may have even begun to pivot away from selling drugs to selling stolen phones. We're hearing that some criminals are stopping dealing drugs and moving on to the phone business because it's more lucrative.
- [30:49]
A
Yeah, yeah, makes sense.
- [30:50]
B
Yeah, it makes total sense. And it's got my wife in a tizzy because she's been on all these travel groups, like she likes to do, and everybody's saying, you got to be careful with your phone. There's plenty of people stealing your phones.
- [31:00]
A
Don't.
- [31:00]
B
Don't hold your phone. I'm like, okay, just.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, stop. Stop that.
- [31:05]
B
It will be all right.
- [31:17]
A
Media candy. Brian. I was. I was shocked. I was shook. I Tell you when I was scrolling through Netflix trying to figure out what to. What to add to the queue, and I saw The Diplomat season three is coming October 16th.
- [31:32]
B
I'm like, but it hasn't been four years.
- [31:34]
A
I know. I'm just like, wait a minute. I still kind of remember what happened in the last season of the Diplomat. That shouldn't happen. I should completely forget the show even existed by the time season three comes out. What the fuck?
- [31:46]
B
So this is shocking. I'm very excited. I love the show. It's Great.
- [31:49]
A
I am. C.J. craig took over as president and we're ready to. We're ready to kick shit off.
- [31:54]
B
You know why we have this show so quickly?
- [31:56]
A
Why?
- [31:57]
B
These are older actors and actresses that have been around forever and understand doing a 74 episode season, turning around and doing another one the next fucking year with a goddamn Christmas special. Just saying.
- [32:10]
A
So I'm looking forward to it.
- [32:11]
B
Me too.
- [32:12]
A
I'm looking forward to it. And you know, you know, my, my love. Hate relationship with Stephen King. I like mostly, mostly hate. Mostly hate. I love his non, you know, horror stuff for the most part. So the Long Walk was a movie that I was intrigued by. I'm going to watch the Long Walk. And I did, and it's kind of like Stand By Me, but with a lot more murder. So, you know, it's a bunch of guys who are getting to know each other and it's, you know, social dynamics and things like that. And then every, you know, three minutes, somebody gets shot in the head. It's kind of like. Yeah, it's kind of like Stand By Me meets Squid Game. That's about what it's like. It's fun. Can I say it's a fun romp.
- [32:55]
B
You're the only person that has used fun to describe this movie.
- [33:00]
A
Mark Hamill is great in it. I just thought it was. I thought it was a fine movie.
- [33:04]
B
I think children being shot in the head every three minutes is fun.
- [33:07]
A
They're not children. They're. They're young adults. They're young adults. They're at least 18.
- [33:13]
B
Okay.
- [33:15]
A
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. You know, so plus plus on the Stephen King non horror checklist.
- [33:22]
B
Okay, fair enough. Well, good news for you in California. California has passed a new law to ban loud commercials on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu. This is great news for people who don't want to wake up the neighborhood when a streaming show suddenly turns into an aggressively loud ad for migraine medication. Newsom signed the law. The ban goes into effect 07-01-2026. On that day, streaming services won't be allowed to transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany. Okay, so this is good because apparently I thought we had these kind of legislations, but it was only for broadcast tv, not for streaming. We had to make a separate fucking law for it.
- [34:01]
A
Oh yeah, completely. The thing is, I don't think that there's any audio police either because regular TV does this shit all the fucking time. They're still blasting out my speakers in between episode, like in the commercial breaks. It's ridiculous. It's gotten actually really bad on regular tv and I don't actually pay for. Or I pay. So I don't have commercials on streaming platforms anymore. So except for Amazon, I've refused to give that motherfucker a goddamn dime.
- [34:34]
B
No, but we're already paying a ton of money for that.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah, but for Hulu I pop out the three or four bucks, but all right, actually no, I take that back. I don't even do that anymore because I canceled Hulu thanks to Jimmy Kimmel. So thanks Jimmy Kimmel.
- [34:50]
B
Well, speaking of Amazon, now that Amazon owns James Bond outright after its deal with producers, the Broccoli's and all those people, people have been bracing for just what they might have planned for the character beyond Dennis Villeneuve. New movie, endless spin offs for Prime Video. Or movie posters where the gun toting spy has had his license to kill revoked by Photoshop. That's exactly what happened. Yeah, at least if for Prime Video in the uk. I don't know if I tried to check here and I didn't see any of that. So they may have pulled them already.
- [35:16]
A
I think they flipped him back already.
- [35:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, but they, they began updating all their assets for the films with new posters, each depicting the relevant Bond posed on a generic colored background with the 007 logo behind it and their respective titles. Which is all fine, well and fine until you look closer and realize that they had also altered some of them to remove Bond's gun. Yeah, and it didn't look good.
- [35:38]
A
No, it looked really bad.
- [35:40]
B
Roger Moore's arms were lengthened on the poster for A View to Kill, so his weapon holding hand was erased from sight. In others, guns were simply airbrushed out of Bond's hands, leaving the awkward imagery of Bond seemingly gripping something that wasn't there anymore. Or in the case of Pierce Brosnan on goldeneye poster, looking like he's in the middle of making a rude gesture at you. This is of course ridiculous, given that Bond is a character known for using a gun and has a license to kill. So here we go. I don't know what we're trying to do now. Of course they've tried to downplay aspects of the character over the years, like drinking, smoking, womanizing, all that sort of stuff.
- [36:14]
A
But at the end of the day, feature, not a bug Bond.
- [36:18]
B
Yes. And they're not the only people that has done this. Disney brought thunderbolts to Disney plus over the summer. It advertised the movie's arrival with a poster that edited the team's guns and the character of Taskmaster entirely out of their hands, leaving them all weirdly pointing trigger fingers at each other.
- [36:36]
A
Okay, so next they're going to be, they're going to be airbrushing out like wands from Harry Potter movies.
- [36:45]
B
I know.
- [36:46]
A
No ones in the posters anymore.
- [36:48]
B
Ridiculous.
- [36:49]
A
Stupid.
- [36:50]
B
Speaking of ridiculous bleeding verse, an AI band with nearly a million monthly listeners has a new creative deal with a company called Halwood Media, the product of Neil Jacobson, who used to be an executive at Geffen Records. We talked a little bit about this last week because I was talking about the Zania Monet AI generated person that has a real person behind them that actually theoretically wrote the lyrics but then used AI for music and, and, and the singing. But they're, they're all getting deals this the same company. And then there's another artist in quotes called I'm Oliver.
- [37:22]
A
I read that I'm, I'm a liver. That's what I heard. That is I'm a liver.
- [37:28]
B
There's a pre save campaign for an upcoming song entitled Bury Me with My Phone. I'm sure that's going to be awesome. He it is also a product of generative AI program Suno, which lest we forget is being pseudo by the major labels, so we'll see what happens. But there's definitely one guy in a company out there willing to start signing up all these things and push this crap out there.
- [37:51]
A
Yeah. You know, get ahead of it while you can. Well, some AI shit that nobody wants. Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Robin Williams, is asking people to stop sending her AI generated videos of her father. In a blunt Instagram post, she said, please just stop sending me AI videos of dad. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and it's not what he'd want. Well, she's now a filmmaker and has long criticized attempts to digitally recreate her father's voice or likeness. She says these AI quote resurrections turn real human legacies into over processed hot dogs. Of recycled content comparing the phenomenon to grotesque Human Centipede films. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not cool. Stop it. Leave her alone.
- [38:33]
B
Maybe sake dial up those copyright infringements dials and then we wouldn't be getting those, would we? Because I'm sure he didn't that the the state is obviously not given the right to use Robin Williams in these things.
- [38:47]
A
Apps and doodads.
- [38:50]
B
OpenAI and Jony I've could still have some serious loose ends to tie up before releasing their not very highly anticipated AI device. I'm not sure why the article says highly anticipated. Who's anticipating this?
- [39:02]
A
They are.
- [39:02]
B
They are.
- [39:03]
A
Yeah.
- [39:04]
B
According to the Financial Times report, the partnership is still struggling with some technical issues that could ultimately end up pushing back the device's release date, which is expected to be sometime in 2026. One of those lingering dilemmas involves figuring out the AI's assistant's voice and mannerisms. The AI device is meant to be a friend who's a computer and who isn't your weird AI girlfriend. Okay? So beyond landing on a personality and having to probably pay for it, it OpenAI and I've are still figuring out potential privacy concerns stemming from a device that's always listening. Yeah, that's a pickle, isn't it guys?
- [39:38]
A
Yeah. No.
- [39:41]
B
On top of that, the budget could reportedly be a challenge due to increased computing power necessary to run these mass produced AI devices. Outside of these latest struggles, we still know very little about the upcoming product, probably because they keep running into all.
- [39:53]
A
Those roadblocks like what are we going to make? Dude, I don't know.
- [39:56]
B
Does anybody want it? Not really. What about privacy?
- [39:59]
A
Home? Yeah, copyright.
- [40:03]
B
There are still plenty of questions about what OpenAI's first hardware project will amount to, but the company could be exercising more caution since similar devices like the Humane AI pin crash and burned.
- [40:14]
A
Yep, there's a couple other ones out there that are just having the same exact problems. Like, nobody wants.
- [40:19]
B
Nobody wants this.
- [40:21]
A
Nope. But something that people do want is CarPlay. Rivian CEO RJ Scoringe is doubling down on the company's controversial decision not to support Apple CarPlay. In a new interview on the Decoder podcast, Scoringe said Rivian's goal is to create, quote, a seamless digital experience, end quote. Without forcing drivers to switch between Apple's interface and Rivian's own.
- [40:44]
B
You know what's a seamless digital experience in my car?
- [40:47]
A
Jason carplay.
- [40:48]
B
When carplay turns on automatically and just.
- [40:51]
A
Goes, yeah, pretty much, yeah. He argued that the decision is all about the future of AI. Scaring said Rivian's in car software already supporting services like YouTube, Apple Music and Google Maps will soon use artificial intelligence to connect apps, predict driver preferences, and make real time decisions based on the vehicle's state and conditions. Like, oh, there's an in and out and it's open, let's pull in. No, thank you. In his words, understanding everything from driving history to weather outside will allow Rivian to deliver a richer, better experience.
- [41:23]
B
No, it won't.
- [41:24]
A
And CarPlay already does that. He insists that in time, customers will come to appreciate the choice to skip CarPlay. No, they won't. Well, unless they have an Android phone. But Scarringe added that Rivian still has a great relationship with Apple, teasing upcoming integrations like digital car key support and messaging features. Just turn on the fucking carplay. You can still have your. You can still have your little Rivian shit that nobody wants. Because, you know, car companies are so well known for great user interfaces, but.
- [41:56]
B
They'Re going to be different because AI, Jason.
- [41:59]
A
Because of AI. Yeah, that's what I want. I want you, like, following every bit of my driving. No, thank you.
- [42:06]
B
Yet more AI going into places we don't actually want it. Spotify is partnering with OpenAI's large language model ChatGPT to suggest even more personalized music and podcast recommendations.
- [42:17]
A
Recommend us, please.
- [42:18]
B
Yes, please. Although we're doing a on you. As of October 6, Spotify Premium and free users will be able to link their accounts to Chat GPT, allowing the AI chatbot to assist in finding new artists, songs, playlists, albums or podcast episodes. Some of the prompt examples that Spotify highlighted in its press release include make a playlist with some Latin artists that are on my heavy rotation. And are there any podcasts you'd recommend? If I want to go deeper into science and innovation.
- [42:44]
A
Okay.
- [42:45]
B
Addressing potential concerns from artists and creators, Spotify has clarified that no audio or video content will be shared with OpenAI for training purposes.
- [42:52]
A
That's bullshit.
- [42:53]
B
They have it already. The feature is also entirely optional. So good on you there. Requiring users to opt in and allowing them to disconnect at any time. It's a miracle.
- [43:04]
A
Well, this is one of those things where you actually have to go into chat GPT. There's a new panel. Yeah, there's a new panel for apps and connections and you can go there and they've got a bunch of different connections right now. And oh, there's Spotify. Yep, I can connect to Spotify. Maybe I'll just fuck around with that later because I really don't care because I barely use Spotify. We'll see what it does.
- [43:23]
B
Okay?
- [43:24]
A
Yeah.
- [43:25]
B
Review Coming this week, Amazon has announced two new Echo show devices during its fall hardware event. Now, as listeners know, I have a bunch of echoes around the house. I basically just use them as a music player and video call for my mom long and kitchen timer.
- [43:41]
A
Oh, you don't need a kitchen timer anymore because you have the Apple watch.
- [43:44]
B
Yeah, sometimes I do it just because it's easy. So a timer. That's about it really. But from the stage Amazon execs repeatedly use the phrase blend into the background, Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay told a personal story recounting how Alexa plus was able to shift the balance at his dinner table, supplying his family with facts to settle their mealtime debates. No phones required. He praised the fact that Alexa plus can help without distracting you or taking away from what's most important. Okay, then I read this fantastic article. You probably should have reached out to Amy Scoreheim who wrote it, because she would make a good guest host on our show and she shits all over it. Okay, because what happens now is ads, ads and ads. So if the folks at Amazon really believe Alexa enabled tech should fade into the background, they may agree that while I'm in my kitchen slicing an apple for my kid and I glance up at my Echo show cycling through family photos, it's really fucking distracting when the shot of the forested field just outside my old house is replaced by a full blown advertisement for DeWalt drill bits. My Echo show does not fade into the background. It sticks ads in my face. I don't remember it always being this way. I can recall a time maybe a year or so ago when my Echo Show 15 happily cycled through photos with no billboard pop ups, an Amazon rep I spoke with assured me that we've always been fucking with you. Yeah, but apparently you get them.
- [45:05]
A
Do you get ads on yours?
- [45:06]
B
I don't. But I don't use photo carousels. I I meticulously go in and turn off all the stuff on the main screen and again, all I really do is play music or make video calls or set timers. But apparently people on Reddit and Amazon's help pages are flooding it as of one or two years ago saying that there's just ads constantly and that's not what you pay for and that's not what you want sitting there for your entire family when you're there. And if I find that this is starting to happen, these things are going to go away and I'll figure out something else.
- [45:36]
A
Yeah, I, I tell you, it's, it's gotten really bad. When I turn on. I told you, you know, I've got the fire tv when I turn it on. It's just ads. Yeah, it's like. It's just a giant screen of ads.
- [45:47]
B
This whole thing. I mean, we're just, they just, they, they, they start small and it just starts to spiral and it's ridiculous. If you're paying for a fucking product, you shouldn't be getting ads with it. If you're paying for a streaming service, you shouldn't be getting fucking ads with it. Offer free. Fine. You want to give me an echo show at half price like they do with the Kindle? Okay, I'll take it and then I'll take the ads. But if I'm paying full freight for your fucking device, you better not be shoving me. Ads.
- [46:16]
A
Yep, more about that in the next segment at the library. Well, Apple is in hot water again over Siri in France. Prosecutors in Paris have opened a cybercrime investigation into how Apple captured and reviewed users voice recordings to improve series accuracy. The probe stems from a complaint by Lugeles, a French human rights group, over revelations dating back to 2019. That's when a Guardian report exposed that Apple had hired third party contractors to listen to snippets of Siri interactions without users knowledge. Those recordings sometimes included sensitive moments from confidential medical discussions to, well, private encounters. That's what we call filching. After the backlash, Apple suspended the program, then relaunched it as an explicit opt in, meaning Siri recordings aren't analyzed unless users consent. So the company also settled a class action lawsuit over the practice. Still, France's Office for Combating Cybercrime. Easier to say than Levons. Much easier. Is now reviewing whether the earlier data collection violated privacy or surveillance laws. Apple hasn't commented, of course.
- [47:29]
B
So they had to throw out like this massive data set because it was just a bunch of mimes. I don't know why I always associate mimes with France. I just do.
- [47:41]
A
Yeah, well. Marcel. Marcel.
- [47:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, I found we got from that whole set. Man.
- [47:50]
A
All I hear is some wind.
- [47:53]
B
He's in a box.
- [47:56]
A
Oh, last night I was, I was looking around for. I got on some old kick about Quake 3 Arena because I was talking to a friend about it.
- [48:03]
B
Oh man. And I love playing that with you guys.
- [48:06]
A
That was fun. Yeah. There's a port out called iOquake3 which is a free and open source software first person shooter. Engine based on the Quake 3 Arena and Quake 3 Team arena source code. So what they did was ID a long time ago, open sourced the engine. So these guys went and said, okay, well, we can make the app just fine. The problem is you still have to own the game to play it. So you take our app and you drop it in the folder with all the maps and all of the configs and stuff like that and it works. Problem right now is it's hard for me to find a copy of I.O. or of Quake 3 Arena that I can buy while I'm on a Mac. Everything is fucking PC based and it's 15 bucks. The actual gog, gog.com people. You can buy it there, you can buy it at Steam, but it's PC based and I'm having a problem.
- [48:57]
B
I'm sorry. We're the actual GOG people.
- [48:59]
A
Yeah, I know. Fuck those guys. Those guys. So hopefully I'll be able to get a copy of it. I found an old torrent, but it wasn't. It wasn't new enough. They're like, well, you need the Latest and greatest 1.3.2 or some shit like that, so.
- [49:15]
B
Well, I'm sure it'll pop up on our discord after people hear this episode.
- [49:18]
A
Yeah, man. Our fans are the master Torrenters. I bow down. I thought I was good.
- [49:26]
B
No podcast has better criminal friends.
- [49:28]
A
Oh my God, we are the bestest. We are the fucking bestest. I do have like five PCs. I got those little like, puck PCs. Remember back when I was mining Chia? I bought two of those little puck PCs. They've got. They've got Windows 11 on over Windows 10. I should fire one of those up and buy it. That might be the easiest way to do it because I really want to play Quake 3 Arena again. Because there is. There's actually a lot of people that have servers out there that still play.
- [49:56]
B
Amazing.
- [49:57]
A
I love that game. I. Well, Rocket arena was my jam. So hopefully some people have ported Rocket arena and I'll be able to play that because.
- [50:03]
B
Oh, God, I hated that one because as soon as I stepped in, either your regs just blew the out of me. Me.
- [50:08]
A
You never played Rocket Arena? No. You just played. Yeah, just regular quake 3 arena. We blow the out of you.
- [50:14]
B
Yeah, I sucked.
- [50:25]
A
At the library.
- [50:29]
B
Well, Jason, I think it was a week or two ago you reached out to me asking me if I had read a particular First Contact book by Peter Cowdron called Dark Beauty. And interestingly enough, and fortuitously I had downloaded it just the Week prior to try to read it. This is. Well, as. Let's backtrack a little bit. The. The first Contact series by Peter Cowdern has been pretty phenomenal. It's a lot of hits. A couple me and I think there was one miss so far. This was the other miss.
- [50:57]
A
Okay.
- [50:59]
B
It's a tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five. It's been written in his style, with anecdotes from his life, like in his classic work, and incorporates actual events into an fictional setting. It actually kind of started, apparently. I read up a little bit further about it. He started as almost a rewrite of Slaughterhouse 5. And therein lies the rub and the problem. I love Kurt Vonnegut. I don't want an imitation. I don't want a. I don't. I don't want a tribute. I don't want anything. I want Kurt Vonnegut. All this book made me do was want to read Slaughterhouse 5. I got like 20 pages into it and went, nope, I'm out.
- [51:33]
A
Yeah, same. Same here. The thing is, I'm not a fan. I love Kurt Vonnegut, but I'm not a fan of Slaughterhouse five.
- [51:40]
B
Yeah, it's not one of his best works. It's an entry book. It's an entry book. I get it. I get why a lot of people start with Slaughterhouse 5, but I have everything by Kurt Vonnegut. I've read them multiple times in my life. Everything else is so much better.
- [51:55]
A
Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed. Well, to hearken back to our conversation about the Amazon Alexa in the previous segment, I started listening in shittification why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it by Cory Doctorow. I bought the audiobook on his Kickstarter and thank God. Thank God it wasn't read by Will fucking Wheaton. Corey reads this one himself, which is perfect because he.
- [52:21]
B
Will Wheaton, the insidifier of the audiobook world.
- [52:23]
A
Yes, he has inshidified my audible stream. So, yeah, it breaks down exactly. You were asking questions about why they do this. Read the book. It tells you exactly why they do it. And it's a beautiful book. I have nothing bad to say about insidification. Well, the book Inside Ification in general sucks, but it's happening everywhere.
- [52:47]
B
Well, since you have nothing bad to say about it, let me. Okay, I have not listened to or read inshitification yet, but I will on Cory Doctorow. What I can't stand about Cory Doctorow and it's not technically his fault, but it's why I have A hard time reading his stuff is. Yes, he gets everything right about what's wrong. He points it out meticulously, he breaks it down and he provides solutions that will never, ever, ever happen.
- [53:14]
A
Kind of like we do.
- [53:15]
B
Yeah, pretty much.
- [53:16]
A
What's your point? Are you just jealous?
- [53:19]
B
I guess so.
- [53:20]
A
No, I, I mean I, I, Corey's, Corey's non fiction, I love Corey's fiction. Just bugs me because it just goes a little off the rails and too deep and into the nerdy stuff. I, I, I am loving his new series though. The, I forget the guy's name, but he's, he's working on this trilogy that, the first one was fantastic. The second one was okay. And I'm waiting for the, the final of the, the trilogy, but they're, they're actually pretty good. He kind of tones back his, his nerdiness. The second one, he kind of goes a little over indexes on it. But yeah, the picks and shovels one, he over indexes on nerd shit like way too much. But this is exactly on point.
- [54:00]
B
The simple way to fix my issue with Cory Doctorow is if they just rewrite the promo a little bit. Because right now it's like for all of his books it's very similar, but for the insidification. It's not just you. The Internet sucks. Now here's why and here's how we can de and ify it now. He just needs to add something at the very end of that. But it'll never happen.
- [54:17]
A
Yeah.
- [54:17]
B
And then I'm totally okay.
- [54:20]
A
Yeah. It's basically what it breaks down to is regulation and what competition in getting rid of monopolies. You know, bring back, bring back good old competition. And it will, it will kind of fix that. But monopolies are ruining everything. Closing shout out. Well, we're going to cut this one short, Brian, so you can get on your plane and go shove a bagel up your, shove a baguette up your ass and do whatever.
- [54:52]
B
I'm not going to New York City. New York City.
- [54:55]
A
New York City. Over at Patreon, we've got a new patron, svs. Thank you, svs. And Martim upped his pledge and thank you very much for that. And we've got Cal, Ray, Martin, Derek, Colin, Jeremy, Ernesto, Kevin, Ma, and Aaron from the, from the Continuing to patronize our patronage Patreon Wow List early. It's Thursday. I'm not supposed to be doing this on Thursday. Shut up.
- [55:23]
B
All right, One day. All right, over at PayPal, we got Florian and Ralph. Thank you.
- [55:29]
A
Yeah. And we got nobody from the tip jar because we're a day off. And I think they all ping us.
- [55:34]
B
A lot of stuff usually comes in Thursday nights. Yeah, it's weird.
- [55:37]
A
Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. So next week we'll be loaded up on the tip jar. No merch. We're still working on that. They actually discontinued some of the stuff and finally sent me an email this week saying, hey, a lot of the stuff you have on your store was discontinued because we can't ship it from there anymore. So you might want to go fix that. I'm like, thanks for telling me.
- [55:57]
B
Thanks for the heads up. Biggest shopping cart storefront in the world.
- [56:01]
A
Well, that. That's not. That's. It's printful. The. The print on demand provider. Not that. Not Shopify.
- [56:06]
B
Okay?
- [56:07]
A
Shopify's just got it stuck in there because they didn't tell Shopify either. Shopify still got it. So I got to go fix some stuff. But I got a couple new designs that are going to come out next week too, that are going to be pretty fun.
- [56:16]
B
Awesome.
- [56:17]
A
And no reviews. What the hell?
- [56:19]
B
And nobody died.
- [56:23]
A
This is what happens when we record on Thursday. All the good happens, like, later today.
- [56:28]
B
Yeah, but, you know, Friday to yourself.
- [56:33]
A
Oh, hey, wait. But Diddy got four years, so we. That we missed that last week. So that was good.
- [56:38]
B
Good. Yay. And Dolly Parton's alive, even though her sister scared the out of the entire world.
- [56:43]
A
I missed that. Thank God.
- [56:44]
B
Yeah.
- [56:46]
A
Now, so I. I think, you know, we have the app that was pulled from the store to where to find ICE agents. Maybe they can go rewrite it now to find the Epstein files.
- [56:55]
B
Good luck. I know where the Epstein files are. They're on Mars with Elon.
- [57:04]
A
I wish. I wish.
- [57:06]
B
Okay, until next time, I'm Brian Cholnaska.
- [57:10]
A
And I'm Jason DeFilipo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show. 717. 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 GOG show 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 Vinnie, Sorry, man. We've tried to get through your 15 emails this week and it was a really good one but I just, there were so many to go through I forgot about the one that was really good that I wanted to post about Korea. But sorry man. Keep them coming. Yep. And hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at God show review and we'll read it on the show. Oh, and guess what we've got gog merch. Yeah, we're working on it. We'll fix this eventually.
- [58:05]
B
We're not the global supply chain. It's not our fault.
- [58:09]
A
Tariffs. I got a shirt coming from Italy right now. It's taking three weeks. I don't know if I'm ever going to get it.
- [58:14]
B
But hey, our new shirt design should be. I finally got my shirt. Tariffs. Yep.
- [58:21]
A
Well, you can go to shop gog show and try your luck. Stay grumpy.