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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show where we discuss the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. I'm Jason DeFilippo.
- [00:11]
B
And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Jason, I. As you know, I grew up in Southern California, but I have lived in some cold places, at least briefly. I've spent some time in New York City. Obviously, in the winter it gets quite cold. London, Buffalo, New York.
- [00:26]
A
Say Buffalo, you're leaving at the big one.
- [00:27]
B
Buffalo, it gets quite cold. Spent a whole winter there once, but I have never been in minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
- [00:36]
A
Really? Oh, man.
- [00:37]
B
Freaking cold, man.
- [00:39]
A
Yeah.
- [00:40]
B
And that's not Windchill. Windchill takes it.
- [00:43]
A
Yeah. Now you know why I moved back from Chicago.
- [00:47]
B
It's rare here, but, you know, to quote everybody on X that leaned to the far right, I thought it was global warming. Zero understanding of how anything works. Anyways, moving on. We have some follow up, Jason.
- [01:02]
A
All right, hit me. What you got? What you got?
- [01:04]
B
Uh, I. Europe is probing Elon Musk. And he enjoyed it.
- [01:08]
A
He enjoyed it. Yeah.
- [01:10]
B
Elon Musk's ex. For failing to take action to prevent the spread of AI generated sexually explicit images, including CSAM materials, regulators said in a press release. So this fallout is just continuing because it's not so much they fail to take action, so much as Elon even trumpeted the fact that his AI system was doing what it was doing. So I think they've got.
- [01:31]
A
What do you mean? Bug? This is feature. This is a feature. Yeah.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah. So they've already levied a 140 million fine against the platform. But the European Commission's investigation could result in further enforcement steps. They said they will assess whether X took measures to reduce risks around the dissemination of illegal content when it deployed Grok on the platform. We already know that they did not. So we'll see what happens. But we'll have to spend a bunch of money to get some money that won't even bother him out of them. And. Well. Yeah, there you go. Good times. Yeah.
- [02:06]
A
This next one I just put in because we talked about the betting markets before and I just love. I love the subtitle on this one. The title was people on polymarket are making a fortune by betting against Elon Musk's famously worthless promises. Yeah, we know that. I just can't believe anybody's making money on that because we all know that his predictions are. Ain't worth the paper they're printed on.
- [02:28]
B
So, I mean, I know. Well, I guess I suppose one could say we're late to the game already. And we are on this one, but I'm definitely going to explore Poly Market. And the next time Elon comes up with a fantastic press release about some bullshit which I'm about to discuss, actually. And we missed this one, too. I'm getting in on this. This seems like I'm not going to go crazy. I'm going to go. I'm going to go coinbase, Bitcoin style, you know, a little bit of gambling money that I wouldn't mind losing in Vegas. Next time Elon makes some grand proclamation and you and I just roll our eyes into the back of our head. I'm hopping on Bali market. I'm placing the bet. We're going to see how it goes.
- [03:03]
A
All right. You know, I've got that eth still stuck in my, my wallet that I can't get out, so maybe I'll. I'll see if I can connect that to Polymarket. We can play the market, Brian. Just like the old days.
- [03:14]
B
Just like the old days.
- [03:15]
A
Well, the actual. The tagline that I wanted to get to on this is sorry. Yeah, it says he does have a solid fan base. And so if I can help separate them from some of their money, I'm always happy to do that.
- [03:27]
B
Agreed.
- [03:28]
A
Yeah, get on it.
- [03:30]
B
Absolutely. Agreed. Well, speaking of those promises, Elon just started Tesla Robo taxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car. He wrote on X last Thursday. That post embedded a second post from the Tesla Enthusiast Account Tesla 99T saying, I'm in a robot taxi without a safety monitor with a video showing the interior of a Tesla stopped at a red light. This video did seem to prove what Elon Musk was saying was true. Tesla Robo taxis are truly driverless now, like Waymo Rides.
- [04:00]
A
But wait, there's more.
- [04:02]
B
There's more. Since that day, small fish, Tesla fans have posted on X about hoping to find unsupervised Tesla robo taxis. And it's possible that there are unsupervised rides for paying customers that are happening anonymously without them hopping on any social media to brag about it. But it looks more like the company is providing preview rides to extremely loyal Tesla influencers, and perhaps only with a human driven Tesla behind the robo taxi every step of the way. Basically, nobody's been able to find one of these things. Everybody that's gotten in them has had either a driver in the actual driver's seat or at least in the passenger seat, or if not that there is a second driven robo taxi right behind it, monitoring it to make sure it's doing okay the whole time. Which hardly seems like unsupervised Tesla robo taxi rides.
- [04:53]
A
Well, over at Futurism, we have confirmation that Tesla has quietly paused its unsupervised robo taxi rides since reality has set in.
- [05:03]
B
So now why, why would. Would Elon and Tesla as the company. Because it wasn't just him. It was Tesla's vice president of software that hopped on and said that this is happening as well. Why would they do such a thing, Jason?
- [05:18]
A
Could it have something to do with the earnings calls?
- [05:20]
B
According to Electrek, who first reported on the story, Tesla's stock climbed 4% on the news of unsupervised robo taxis, even though it was completely and utterly bullshit.
- [05:29]
A
Yeah, isn't the SEC supposed to like, you know, follow up on things like that? Claims. Claims of bullshittery.
- [05:37]
B
Well, here's where the problem happens, Jason. I think the FCC probably has about 7,000 different cases against Elon Musk right now that are all working their way through court. So what are you going to do?
- [05:48]
A
But Brian, as I will talk about in a little bit, the SEC has plenty of time on their hands because they are dismissing all of the crypto cases that they had on their docket.
- [05:55]
B
So true.
- [05:56]
A
Okay, yeah, we'll talk about one of those very shortly. But yeah, right. They have Shenan today. And they will. Shenanigan.
- [06:04]
B
They will. Shanann again. Speaking of Shannan againing, we gotta go back to some of our class action lawsuit news. As I always say, if you are a. If you are a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, it is your duty, it is your right, nay, your duty to sign up for these things because it is the only way these companies ever get punished. And if you don't sign up, they get to keep the cash. So we gotta get that cash. The Apple Siri settlement has hit bank accounts this week. I don't know if you remember this. I completely forgot about it. It's the Lopez vs Apple case, which is all about Siri illegally listening to your conversations and privacy restrictions and all that sort of stuff. That was ages ago. Last year, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of using its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on users without their knowledge. So that did go through. The case actually started in 2021. Again, to my point, how long it takes for all these things to wind their way through. But the money is appearing. If you have a If you have a deposit line in your account that says Lopez versus Apple, it's anywhere from 20 to like $60, depending on the amount of devices you got. I got 40 bucks. Now, I did not sign up for automatic deposit at the time. I. Again, I've completely forgotten about this. I remember at the signup form they were like, put in your. Put it. Put in your routing number and your bank account number. And I was like, hell's to the no.
- [07:26]
A
And then, yeah, I don't know who you are.
- [07:28]
B
I'm not doing that. And I remember there were probably a paper check option, but I didn't do that either because it would have gone to my mom's house instead of coming to me here in Canada. So I can't, obviously. I just like pushed it off until later last night after I'd had a nice can of Guinness while I was watching some tv, I got email. I got the email stating that I'd gotten money from a class action lawsuit. The email had a broken image in it. So, you know, all of my spidey senses are going, this has got to be bullshit. I don't remember this, but it looks semi legit. Okay, let's. Let's sandbox this sucker. Click on the link, figure it out, Google it. Reddit people are saying it's legit, it's legit, it's legit. I go in and then I'm like, oh, God damn it. They are asking for routing numbers and bank account numbers. And you know, I'm not stupid. You don't do that. You just don't do that. And I'm like, okay, well, all right, how am I going to do this? And I remember I had a Venmo account that I never, ever use that has $0 in it. Venmo lets you create routing and account numbers.
- [08:31]
A
They do. I didn't know that.
- [08:32]
B
They sure do, Jason.
- [08:34]
A
Oh, how cool.
- [08:35]
B
I remembered that little bit of knowledge. So I went in and I. And I got my Venmo routing and account number. Pop that sucker in there. And of course the form seemed to break because again, Spidey senses are tingling and I'm just like, oh, fuck, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Luckily, I use the Venmo thing because if somebody gets into my account, there's $0 in there anyways, because I never use this thing. Whatever, we'll deal with it in the morning. Long story short, for whatever reason, even though the site sucked and broke and kicked back all these error messages, I woke up to $40 in my Venmo account. So it is legit, people.
- [09:10]
A
Too legit to quit. All right, that's pretty good news. That's pretty good news. That's a really good tip about the Venmo accountant routing numbers.
- [09:18]
B
Yeah, you don't have to use your actual bank account.
- [09:21]
A
Yeah, the problem with Venmo is I can't actually get them to give me money from the Venmo account to my bank account. That's broken. That whole thing is broken. It's just a regular B of a business account. You'd think they would have that figured out by now, but.
- [09:34]
B
Well, you know, Jason, if you want to do this, there's a workaround. You just Venmo me the cash, and then I'll send it to you.
- [09:39]
A
Okay, but tariffs. Brian, you're in Canada. I can't pay these shoalmeisters.
- [09:44]
B
We'll be charging asshole American tax.
- [09:47]
A
Great. This episode is brought to you by. Delete Me. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a moment when surveillance and data breaches aren't edge cases, they're background noise. It's disturbingly easy to find personal information about people online. Your home address, phone number, and even your family. Family members names are often just sitting there in plain sight, quietly indexed and ready to be abused. And that exposure doesn't stay virtual. It spills into the real world as harassment, scams, identity theft, or worse. That same data is increasingly weaponized for doxing attacks targeting business owners, civil servants, journalists, and everyday people who simply dared to have an opinion online. Deleteme steps in before that happens, removing your personal information from the data broker sites that profit from selling it. Even the New York Times wirecutter named Deleteme their top pick for data removal services. And that's not an easy list to get on. As someone with an active online presence and opinion, privacy is not optional for me. I don't need my personal information floating around sketchy data broker sites. And I value knowing that Deleteme is handling the cleanup so I don't have to 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 JoinDeleteMe.com gog and enter code GoG at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com GoG code. GoG in the news. Okay, Brian, sadly I have to bring it back to Elon for a little bit. This will be quick and painless, I hope. I'm gonna rip the band aid off. All right, ready?
- [11:46]
B
Okay, here we go.
- [11:47]
A
Tesla's profits fell 46% in 2025. Fourth quarter profits dropped 61% and revenue declined year over year for the first time since 2020. I wonder what could have happened, Brian, to make everybody not want to buy a Tesla anymore. It's a mystery. It's a mystery. That's right. Global deliveries fell 9% and Tesla has lost its position as the world's top EV seller. Gasp. Europe has been especially rough, with sales plunging in some countries even as EV adoption keeps rising. A Yale study estimates Musk's political turn cost Tesla more than a million vehicle sales. That's a lot of swastikars not going out on the road, Brian.
- [12:27]
B
Totally makes sense why he's getting that huge pay package, Right?
- [12:31]
A
Exactly. Makes all the sense in the world. And now they're going to be cutting the Model S and Model X productions and they're freeing up factory space for. Wait for it, Brian. Robots. That's right. They're going. He's saying, he's saying better get back to Polymarket real quick. He's saying that that factory space is going to be used for their optimus robots, which is basically probably making suits for guys to get in it that lost their job making the Model X.
- [12:54]
B
And Z, by the way, these factories are so custom built for these very specific things that they build, which is for cars.
- [13:03]
A
Yep.
- [13:04]
B
So how are we gonna tweak those to just start making robots?
- [13:09]
A
It's a mystery.
- [13:10]
B
Okay.
- [13:10]
A
It's a mystery.
- [13:11]
B
And who wants these robots that last I saw were being controlled by actual people and fell over when the guy took off his headset.
- [13:18]
A
It's a mystery too, Brian. Nobody.
- [13:20]
B
Okay.
- [13:21]
A
Yeah, just check. I tell you what though, if I could get a remote controlled robot that I could put a headset on and walk around, I think it would be fun. It doesn't mean I want it to, you know, I'm not gonna put it around my children or my pets count. But yeah, it be just fun to have one to play with, you know? But yeah. So to bridge the gap, he's leaning hard on safety, arguing that autonomy delays aren't failures, but proof of Tesla being paranoid and responsible.
- [13:50]
B
Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. Yeah, okay.
- [13:55]
A
God. So yeah, he's putting safety as the Shield for every Ms. Timeline and every unsold car, as it were. All right, yeah, as they say, safety doesn't show up on the balance sheet and neither do fucking robots until they walk out the door.
- [14:11]
B
All right, well, I suspect we'll be seeing lots of pink slips over at Tesla in the near future. Given this pivot that's going to fail miserably. But let's talk about some pink slips that are being handed off now. It looks like Ubisoft is planning even more layoffs to accompany last week's studio closures and game cancellations. The company is planning a massive reduction of the workforce in its Paris headquarters. It's proposed the loss of up to 200 jobs, which is nearly 20% of its current staff. This will be organized under France's I love this name rupture, conventional collective RCC process in which staff can agree to form a collective voluntary mutual termination agreement. That's actually quite clever. We should have something like that here. It's not a done deal just yet, but with the company Post spokesperson saying at this stage this remains a proposal and no decision will be final until a collective agreement is reached, it is much harder to fire people in different countries. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, they're going to be looking to cut about 200 people or 200 willing participants as they like state it.
- [15:11]
A
Kind of like the Stanford Prison experiment.
- [15:13]
B
But not and this is just the latest of the cost cutting measures by Ubisoft last I think it shut down its Halifax studio just 16 days after employees entered into a unionization agreement. And last week it shuttered at Stockholm Studio and announced various restructuring efforts and several other developers under its umbrella. So not going great over there. Vimeo just got hit by a brutal round of layoffs. According to a report by Business Insider, staffers are posting on various social media sites that layoffs have impacted most of the company, including the entire video team. Video being what they do. So that doesn't sound good.
- [15:51]
A
Yeah.
- [15:53]
B
Yesterday, following Vimeo's recent acquisition by a private equity firm, I learned that I, along with a large portion of the company, was being impacted by layoffs, wrote the company's former vice president, Global Brand and Creative, Dave Brown. He's referring to a firm called Bending Spoons that bent the hell out of this spoon. They bought Vimeo for 1.38 billion in the latter half of 2025 and now they're basically canning everybody. They did the same thing to evernote back in 2023 and we transfer in 2024. So this is just one of Those companies that swoops in, buys the shit out of it and liquidates everything.
- [16:27]
A
Yeah, it's private equity. They're shipbags. That's, you know.
- [16:31]
B
Yeah. Now what I forgot about, actually is how long Vimeo has been around for. They were founded a full year before YouTube and had positioned themselves as being a premium alternative for hosting creative and business adjacent videos. So, I mean, one does have to argue, is there a place for Vimeo anymore?
- [16:48]
A
No.
- [16:50]
B
Says no.
- [16:50]
A
So, yeah, no, they, they, you know, the problem with Vimeo the entire time was they did not try to maximize shareholder value.
- [16:57]
B
They certainly did not.
- [16:59]
A
No, they did not. Well, we've got some more pink slip news. Amazon announced another round of layoffs on Wednesday, cutting roughly 16,000 employees just months after eliminating about 14,000 corporate jobs last fall.
- [17:13]
B
How much money did they spend on that Melania movie?
- [17:15]
A
Oh, I don't know, man. I hear it's. I hear it's doing gangbusters out there. I've heard ticket has been sold.
- [17:23]
B
Ticket? Some tens of tickets, Jason. All across the land.
- [17:29]
A
Mm.
- [17:30]
B
75 million. That'll answer my own question. $75 million they spent on that.
- [17:34]
A
I'm sure 75 million.
- [17:36]
B
$75 million probably would have covered those 16,000 employees for a while.
- [17:41]
A
Probably. But they say their sales are continuing to grow up to 13% in its most recent quarter. So sales are up. Let's fire everybody and make a Melania movie. That's great. I know you can't wait to go see it, Brian. It's on your docket for this afternoon, Right?
- [17:57]
B
I got it bookmarked on Vimeo, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get anymore.
- [18:03]
A
Well, here's a good one. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the European Union is prepping legislation to prioritize tech sovereignty and reduce its dependence upon the United States. Sources suggest Brussels is concerned that future White House executive orders could cut off the region's access to essential data centers and software. Consequently, the EU is reportedly considering the use of its anti coercion instrument. Oh, that sounds pleasant. A package of trade tariffs originally intended for China to deter American pressure.
- [18:34]
B
You know what could that anti coercion instrument be? Big stick.
- [18:41]
A
So while the initiative focuses on bolstering domestic companies like AI startup Mistral, the report notably admits arguably Europe's strongest strategic asset, asml, the Dutch company. Is that this. No, stop it, Brian. Don't even. Don't even. That's not that.
- [18:56]
B
Not that. I mean, in an Irish voice, I'd be Totally into that. Like a nice little lilting.
- [19:03]
A
Stop it. Stop it. Can I finish this fucking story?
- [19:10]
B
No.
- [19:13]
A
ASML is the Dutch company that's the sole creator of the lithography machines required to manufacture the GPUs driving the global AI economy.
- [19:22]
B
Hmm, that's much less interesting than mine.
- [19:25]
A
Yeah, I know. If leverage this monopoly represents a significant economic deterrent. Meanwhile, anxieties over digital reliance are filtering down to the public, with some European communities actively seeking local alternatives to US based social platforms to insulate themselves from potential trade wars. Dare TikTok is doing well, I hear in Germany.
- [19:45]
B
ADA's fostering in. Anyways. All right, so we talked a little bit earlier about a class action lawsuit for iPhone users. If you are one of the unfortunates out there using an Android, your day has come as well. Google has agreed to a preliminary $135 million settlement in the class action lawsuit brought by Android users who are accused of harvesting their data without consent, something Google has never done in any suit. Alleges that since November 12, 2017, Google has been illegally collecting cellular data from phones pur purchased through carriers, even when apps were closed or location features were disabled. So set visibility to zero there, I guess. As reported by Reuters, the affected users believe Google is using their data for marketing and product development meant it was guilty of conversion. In US law, conversion occurs when one party takes the property of another with the intent to deprive them of it or exert property rights over it. This would be one of the largest ever in a case of this nature. The payout, according to Glenn Summers, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. So sign up for that. Every user involved in the lawsuit would be entitled to up to $100 from Google, which of course giving $100 to all these users denies any wrongdoing.
- [20:58]
A
Of course it denies any wrongdoing. Yeah.
- [21:00]
B
And has agreed to seek consent during the setup process of a new phone. From now on, can we have your data? No. So that will be the Future.
- [21:08]
A
Apparently so. $135 million settlement for Android users. You know how many Android phones are out there? Hell of a lot more than 135 million. So you're literally getting cents. And it's like you're entitled to up to $100. That's if nobody besides you signs up for the class action and it's just you and the lawyers.
- [21:26]
B
By the way, Jason, this is not only the first settlement this week, it is the second settlement this week for Google. And by the way, Jason, it's not only the first settlement of the week for the exact same thing. It is the second settlement of the week for the exact same thing for Google. On January 26, the company also agreed to a $68 million settlement reg regarding claims that Google Assistant had been spying on users after being triggered by what it had just heard as wake words. Again, Google has denied any wrongdoing in the class action suit that they are paying out for.
- [21:57]
A
See, that's the same thing as that Siri settlement too. You know, it's just where Siri just picked up the wrong wake word and started going. Well, Chaotonic on Discord sent this one over and it's the GDPR enforcement tracker and it's kind of cool. You can just sit there on the crapper and. Or while you're having some lunch and just scroll through all of the companies that have been hit by gdpr. It is a surprisingly large amount of companies.
- [22:21]
B
It is basically almost all of them, but notably not Disney or Apple.
- [22:27]
A
Surprise, surprise.
- [22:29]
B
So there you go.
- [22:31]
A
They'll be there.
- [22:33]
B
Well, Waymo has caught the attention of the National Transportation Safety Board as the federal agency launched an official, official investigation in the company for its robo taxis improperly passing school buses in Austin, Texas. This latest federal probe stems from a preliminary evaluation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that looked into how Waymo reacts to stop school buses in the Texas city. Apparently it doesn't. It just drives past them. Yes, they said in a memo that the robo taxis were seen repeating the same offense days after a software update that Waymo voluntarily did back in December. So that didn't fix it. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, that's, that's, you know, you don't want to pass the school buses in.
- [23:14]
A
Between now and then, though we have covered the story where Waymo is like turning down the actual, you know, safety side of things and trying to become more aggressive. So yes, yes, I guess passing school buses is slightly more aggressive.
- [23:28]
B
There are a few things more aggressive than gunning down children, but does seem to be the American pastime.
- [23:33]
A
It is, it definitely is the land of the the inverse trolley problem is what we've got. So as if on cue, a Waymo robo taxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23rd. WIMO says the child suffered minor injuries. Like it's a kid. They bounce. Dust him off. He's fine.
- [23:51]
B
It's fine. He's got two legs.
- [23:53]
A
Yeah, come on.
- [23:54]
B
He only needs one.
- [23:57]
A
Well, 3D. Print him in a replacement just like they did that dog on the six o' clock news yesterday.
- [24:03]
B
I don't see local news from, from LA anymore, Jason.
- [24:08]
A
Well, it's a little cart. We'll put a little leg in a cart and yeah, that's how it's gonna work. So. Yes, Federal regulators are now investigating. The company told the NHTSA that the vehicle was traveling about 17 miles an hour before breaking hard and hitting the child at roughly 6 miles per hour after the child entered the roadway from behind a parked suv. So the crash happened during school drop off hours with other children, a crossing guard and double parked cars nearby. So those kid drop offs, you know better than me, but I just see them from a distance and it just looks like load on the flies over there.
- [24:41]
B
Oh no, it's chaos. And a robo taxi has no business being in that area during those times. That is a simple rule that they could, they could put in. You have to take an alternate route to go around a school area.
- [24:50]
A
But what if you put your kid in the robo taxi to take him to school?
- [24:53]
B
Well then you're a shit parent.
- [24:56]
A
Maybe you just have seven jobs and you're trying to pay for his, pay for his food.
- [25:00]
B
Fair enough. You're working at Tesla and you're worried.
- [25:03]
A
Or Amazon or Vimeo or Ubisoft or, or any job in the United States of America right now. And this one I sent you yesterday, video shows Waymo vehicles slam into parked cars in Echo park here in la. And I just saw it and I was just like, oh, this is a juicy one. No school bus or children in this story though. So this is, it's a different Waymo vehicle than I've seen before. This is kind of like a hybrid minivan, one that was coming down the mountain as it were. The thing about this one is that there was a quote unquote safety driver who was actually just driving the car down the hill and he lost control of the car driving that going down the hill. And to me I'm saying, I wonder how much they paid him to say that. No, this wasn't a, this wasn't a failure of the Waymo, sir. I just was, you know, my foot slipped on the way home. That's all. That's all. But scary as shit. Let's see that thing coming down the hill.
- [25:58]
B
Yeah, I put the story in here and I put a bunch of bullet points. But you know what, I don't care. So I'm going to TLDR this one, please. The Trump admin has reportedly plans to use AI to write federal regulations. They are planning on using Google Gemini to draft important federal regulations. As reported by ProPublica. This is starting with the Department of Transportation. According to interviews with agency staffers, regulations created by the DOT help keep us safe when traveling. See all the above stories about children and other people getting hit by cars that the DOT is doing next to nothing about. But what could possibly go wrong, Jason? Using AI for important federal regulations. Not that we have many of them left anyways, which is probably why they don't mind doing this.
- [26:39]
A
Well, if you, if you throw your mind back to last year, Brian, I'm pretty sure we caught the administration using chat GPT to actually write up the plan for all of the tariffs that, that we imposed upon the world. Remember that?
- [26:53]
B
I do, I sure do.
- [26:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is not new news. They've been doing it all along, Brian. They've been the calls coming from inside the house.
- [27:03]
B
I like this particular quote. Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn't mean that those words add up to quality government decisions.
- [27:12]
A
Well, they actually might be better than what we have now. So maybe we shouldn't poo poo it so much.
- [27:16]
B
Man, tree, cow, horse, Camel.
- [27:19]
A
Camel. It's a camel. Camel recognition software is required every day upon waking. So South Korea just rolled out what it's calling the world's first fully enforced AI law. And basically everyone is unhappy, but for opposite reasons. The new AI Basic act forces companies to label AI generated content, watermark synthetic media and run risk assessments on so called high impact AI used in things like hiring, loans and medical decisions.
- [27:48]
B
Government regulations.
- [27:49]
A
Government regulations. Startups say it's a compliance nightmare they're not ready for. While civil society groups say it barely protects actual humans, so finds top out at about 15 grand. So give these things out. Give these things out like sweet tarts at Halloween. Enforcement gets a one year grace period. Okay.
- [28:10]
B
Okay.
- [28:10]
A
Yeah. And the bar for regulating truly powerful models is set so high that conveniently none exist yet. So this is just basically, yeah, kind of crappy. Oka.
- [28:21]
B
All right.
- [28:22]
A
They're trying.
- [28:24]
B
They're trying to do something. We talked a bit about Anna's archive, which is a pirate platform that scraped basically all of Spotify, Spotify and the big three record. Our labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group have now filed a lawsuit against the pirates, which always goes really well because you know, they follow the laws and you know, suing them is going to help. But claiming an eye popping $13 trillion in damages, now that is not coffee money even to a pirate. So nope, yeah, so they posted on a. In a Dec. 20 blog that they had planned to create the world's first preservation archive for music. Which is a hell of a way to say we're pirating all this shit, we're preserving it for you.
- [29:06]
A
Available, serving it for future generations.
- [29:08]
B
Yes, available through BitTorrent, which they said would ensure that lesser known recordings wouldn't disappear. The suit accuses them of brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world's commercial sound recordings. According to the full complaint. Which is actually true. Yes. The labels and Spotify sought a temporary restraining order on January 2, which they did not respond to by the court appointed date of January 16, as pirates tend not to do. So they. Yeah, legal summons. Fuck you is basically what they said. They're going to try to shut down all the domain registries, which doesn't really matter if you're putting stuff up on BitTorrent. So yeah, there you go. I mean, obviously this is not good. Pirating hurts musicians, even though Spotify hurts them quite a lot too. Their payments are better than nothing. 13 trillion is a truly insane number. More than three times the country of India's GDP. For context, that would mean each of the 86 million files caused $151,000 in damages. Which is true. If true is massive. And it also means they're insanely behind on paying out to their artists if that's how much each of these files is worth.
- [30:17]
A
Yep.
- [30:18]
B
So there you go.
- [30:21]
A
Did you go download it yet, Brian, just to have in your itunes archive?
- [30:25]
B
I have lost too many music archives in my ears to even bother with this again. I will download it, I will sort through it and then my hard Dr. Drive will crash or itunes will fubar the whole damn thing again.
- [30:36]
A
Yeah, that's more likely, yeah. Oh, well, here's some sad news. Amazon is shutting down its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go brick and mortar stores which, which really kind of. Well, the, the Amazon Go. We had one here on the corner. It failed so miserably because it was a terrible location to start with. There's no part. There's like three parking spots on the corner of Topanga and Ventura, which as you've been to, very busy, very, very busy intersection and there's just no parking. So down the street though is our Amazon Fresh store, which we love. Absolutely love the Amazon Fresh Store, mainly because there's great prices and no one's ever there. So the shelves are 99% empty. I think they use that basically as a. As a shipping warehouse now, which is what they're going to end up doing. Some places are going to open up as Whole Foods, Right. And they're just going to convert those and the other ones are just going to go away on the door. Yesterday, our friend Brian Blondell went and said it going to be Friday the 13th in March, that it was going to shut down, but we got an email this morning saying February 1st, so going to go get that. We bought like six hams after, after Christmas, because they're like four bucks for a 20 pound ham. We just got. We got ham every. In. In. In case of apocalypse, if you want a ham and cheese sandwich, come to our house. Bring the cheese and the bread. We got the ham, so just bring cheese and bread.
- [31:56]
B
Gotcha.
- [31:56]
A
Bring cheese and bread. Yeah, and some Dijon mustard if you got it too. Might that be Grey Poupon? Well, we talked about the SEC before and how they were too busy, you know, to go after the people that deserve it. But the US securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to drop its enforcement case against crypto exchange Gemini, founded by billionaire Winklevi twins. And so, yeah, this is just another one of the crypto cases that are just getting thrown out. Thrown out. Thrown out.
- [32:27]
B
Right.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah. Take some of that money, invest it in Trump coin, and you can go on your merry way. As long as you pay the tithe, you're good to go.
- [32:35]
B
Yeah. Well, in related news, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss's crypto exchange Gemini have announced the closure of Nifty Gateway, a non fungible token NFT marketplace that the exchange had previously acquired in 2019. They are currently operating in withdrawal only mode and the platform will be closing for good on February 26th. So go withdraw your JPEGs.
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, get your JPEGs and your receipts, your very expensive receipts.
- [33:00]
B
Yep. NFTs became a key focus of the crypto market from 2021 to 2022, causing much hilarity on this podcast.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah, thanks for all the material, guys.
- [33:09]
B
And Gemini competitors Coinbase and Kraken also launched similar marketplaces around that time. During the time NFT marketplace OpenSea had also burst onto the scene as a startup darling of the crypto industry, eventually reaching a valuation of $13 billion. But where are they now? Unfortunately, the NFT.
- [33:28]
A
$13.
- [33:28]
B
Now $13. Unfortunately, the NFT market has only moved in a downward direction. Coinbase shuttered its NNFT Marketplace in 2024 after denying that they would be doing so. Kraken also shut down its marketplace in 2024amidst the lacks of demand for any of these fucking bullshit anymore. OpenSea recently pivoted to becoming a multi chain crypto trading aggregator, whatever the hell that means.
- [33:51]
A
What it means is they're going the lo around. They're just going to start selling T shirts.
- [33:54]
B
Yeah, pretty much. The Crypto Slam 500 NFT index, which tracks the largest NFT projects on any blockchain, is down 98.98% since its launch four years ago. In terms of sales volume data from the block shows weekly sales dropping from the more than $1 billion in 2021. Yes, you were all that stupid. To less than 60 million in the first couple weeks of 2026, which to me is still surprising.
- [34:22]
A
That's stupider.
- [34:23]
B
That's just dumb.
- [34:24]
A
Oh my God.
- [34:25]
B
Most of these people are trying to pivot into everything. App products. But of course we'll see what happens. And there's all kinds of problems going on and the overhype and who knows what's going to happen with this. Some. Some NFTs are actually still doing reasonably well, but nothing like they used to. But you know, people still collect Beanie Babies and like that and everybody's getting the Lububu. So, you know, people got to do something. Something.
- [34:52]
A
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. If you're the kind of geek who likes to actually own your corner of the Internet, instead of duct taping together a half dozen tools, Squarespace is built for you. It's an all in one platform where you can design, publish and run a serious website without losing your weekends to configuration. Hell. One thing I like is how easy it is to offer services and actually get paid. Consults, events, memberships, invoices, scheduling. It's all baked in. No Franken stack of plugins, no mystery payments floating around. You set it up once and it just works. Squarespace puts everything you need to sell, scale and get paid under one roof. Build a sharp professional online store that actually reflects your brand, take payments with ease, and manage inventory, shipping and fulfillment without juggling a dozen tools so your workflow stays clean and your customers get a friction free buying experience. Then there's the design side. Squarespace's blueprint AI helps you spin up a clean, professional site fast based on what you do and what you're trying to build. And if you want to tweak every pixel, you can. The templates look great out of the box, but nothing's locked down. And once you're live, Squarespace's built in analytics show you what's working and what's not, so you can make decisions based on data instead of vibes. I use Squarespace to run kingo vogue.com and it's made my life so much easier. If you want to build something real online, go to squarespace.com grumpy for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use code grumpy to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com grumpy. Media Candy.
- [36:43]
B
Well, my wife and I finally were able to sit down and start Pluribus.
- [36:48]
A
Oh, how nice.
- [36:49]
B
Yeah, I've watched the first two episodes. The first one was intriguing. I believe I actually fell asleep during the second one. And by the time I woke up, my wife said, I'm done with this.
- [37:04]
A
Okay, there you go.
- [37:06]
B
I'm gonna continue with it just because I think the premise is intriguing and I her as an actress. But it's not. It's not. It's not yum. And my yum or whatever you're saying is Jason.
- [37:20]
A
I enjoy it. I thoroughly enjoy it.
- [37:21]
B
It's okay. It's very slow moving.
- [37:25]
A
Yes. That's what makes it great.
- [37:27]
B
So personally, I'm gonna stick with it. I'm gonna stick with it. But the wife is out, so perfect.
- [37:32]
A
Now you don't have to wait for it. You should have done that like a couple months ago and we could actually talked about it on the show when.
- [37:37]
B
It was coming out. Yes, but I like to stay married.
- [37:40]
A
Oh, well.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah, so there's that. Shrinking is back. I did not get the chance to watch the first episode yet, but I will be watching that tonight. So just so everybody knows because, you know, it's hard to know when shows come back these days anymore.
- [37:52]
A
I'm pretty sure shrinking is impossible to miss. It's everywhere.
- [37:56]
B
That's true.
- [37:57]
A
Everywhere.
- [37:58]
B
Yeah.
- [37:59]
A
And another new show which I didn't think I was ever going to give a shit about or watch is Night of the Seven Kingdoms a Game of Thrones tale.
- [38:07]
B
This is a Game of Thrones thing, right?
- [38:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, the Game of Thrones joint again. Brian Blondell does. He's like, hey, have you checked it out yet? I kind of liked it. And I'm like, wasn't really planning on it, but I had nothing to do that night, so I popped it on. I've watched two episodes so far and I actually thoroughly enjoy. Is not like Game of Thrones. It's just more like Forrest Gump Goes to Westeros. It's kind of like that, but I'm enjoying it.
- [38:33]
B
I liked Game of Thrones until the last season. Ish. Last Two seasons.
- [38:38]
A
But did you spin off?
- [38:39]
B
No, I couldn't get into that one at all. I hated it.
- [38:43]
A
Yeah. So that's why this is like. This has. This is kind of like andor. It's kind of like andor. It's, like, set in the realm, but not really of it, you know, so. And it's. It's like that. I think the second episode was only 35 minutes long. It was ridiculously short.
- [38:58]
B
I like that.
- [38:59]
A
Yeah, it's worth. It's worth checking out. We also watched Steel this week on Amazon prime, which I saw the numbers came in for. She was speaking of. The lead actress was in Game of Thrones, and we watched all six episodes. It was okay. It wasn't like, yay, I can't wait for season two. Because there hopefully won't be a season two. I think this is good enough to be standalone. I think they leave it open, of course, if they want to make another one, because they can make another one out of anything. But, yeah, Titanic 2 coming soon to the theater near you. But, yeah, it was okay. The numbers weren't there. I think it got 7 million hours, 7 million download hours since the premiere. And the guy climbing that stupid building in Taipei, I think he did 6.3 million.
- [39:47]
B
So 6.3 million people just waiting for him to fall.
- [39:51]
A
That's pretty much it. Yeah. See, if they would have named. If they would have named it Splat, then we could. We could tune into something. But, yeah, I want guarantees. I want a guarantee. Damn it.
- [40:02]
B
All right, we got some big sports ball things coming up, Jason. And as I've ranted about many a time here, the networks and the streamers do a really good job of spreading this stuff around. So you have to subscribe to everything to be able to watch anything, and it's almost impossible to know where anything is these days. So I'm doing my public service here. We got. First off, we got Super Bowl 60, the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks on February 8th. So this. This weekend, starting or no, next weekend, this weekend's the Pro bowl that nobody gives a shit about. And It'll be at 6:30pm Eastern time. This is bought by NBC, so it will be broadcast on NBC in Spanish on Telemundo and will stream live on Peacock. Those are your choices. You can stream NBC and Telemundo on platforms like DirecTV and Hulu plus live TV. So FUBU and NBC are currently in the midst of a massive contract dispute, so you will not be able to get it there if you have An NFL plus subscription. You will also be able to watch it, but of course, because just like MLB Network not having the playoffs or the World Series, the NFL plus subscription will only let you watch the game on a mobile device rather than on your tv.
- [41:12]
A
Okay.
- [41:13]
B
They also have an app Reasons. All right. And the Winter Olympics are actually starting this weekend or February 6th. Nope. Next weekend, too. I'm so off on everything. So everything starts next weekend. They kick off on February 6th. The closing ceremonies will be on February 22nd. So if you are into winter sports, this is your Super Bowl. This will be on NBC as well, which you can view on DirecTV and Hulu plus live. And the same FUBU restrictions are in place. So if you want to watch any of this stuff, you need NBC or Peacock, basically.
- [41:48]
A
All right, got both. All set to not watch any of them. I'll be busy. Because I just got a. Just got a notification on my phone. 3 million Epstein docs have been released this morning. Morning.
- [41:58]
B
Bullshit.
- [42:00]
A
Three million.
- [42:01]
B
All right, how redacted are they?
- [42:02]
A
I don't know. It just came out.
- [42:04]
B
So how many black pens died for this release?
- [42:08]
A
Well, let's hope they forgot to pay their Adobe bill again and you can just go unredact it, you know, like last time. That was great.
- [42:14]
B
That's so good.
- [42:15]
A
Yep. So, Starfleet Academy. I saw this article.
- [42:18]
B
It says.
- [42:18]
A
Wait, so when is Starfleet Academy set anyway? Well, 32nd century.
- [42:23]
B
Yeah.
- [42:23]
A
So somewhere in the 32nd century, which is long past all the other stuff. Now, I spent a lot of time, the past couple days, a lot of time being about an hour, actually, watching negative reviews of Starfleet Academy from the Critical Drinker and a couple other people.
- [42:38]
B
And, I mean, come on. The Critical Drinker, that's his. That's his shtick.
- [42:41]
A
That's his shtick. That's why I watched a couple different ones, too. And now here's the thing. The vitriol is. The vitriol flows fresh from these guys. They're not wrong about a lot of things, but they're also missing some of the point, which is it's still Star Trek. It's a kid show. Come on, let's. Let's get. Let's get to the point there. Did you watch episode three yet?
- [43:02]
B
I did. It was my least favorite of the bunch. But even that being said, not mad at it. Did I need polyamorous rogue Klingons?
- [43:12]
A
No, not really.
- [43:13]
B
I didn't. But, you know, whatever.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah, it had its moments. It had its moments. It had some terrible moments, but it had some. Okay. Moments too.
- [43:22]
B
Weakest of the three.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah, the weakest of the three. But the lens flare is killing me. JJ. JJ. JJ.
- [43:28]
B
JJ's brightness looms large.
- [43:30]
A
It does. It really, really does. Because I saw another thing where he was, like, complaining about, you know, how he fucked up Star Trek with lens flare, and that came through as one of them. So then when I watched episode three, all I saw was lensfare. I'm like, really? You guys got to do that? Yeah. Wipe your lens down. Wipe your lens to down. But, yeah, it's okay.
- [43:49]
B
I'm still.
- [43:49]
A
I'm still gonna watch it.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's fine. Let's talk about a show that will never have a lens flare. In fact, barely. It's barely lit.
- [43:57]
A
Yeah, there's, like, no lights anyway.
- [43:59]
B
You can barely see anything. The first Daredevil born again season two trailer has. Has dropped. It will be returning to Disney plus on March 24th. And we get our first view of my most beloved character from all of this. Jessica Jones is back and kicking ass.
- [44:14]
A
Yeah, cannot wait, Cannot wait. Teaser looks awesome. Yeah, I'll be queuing that one up same day for sure.
- [44:21]
B
Super excited about that show. It's the only Marvel property I'm into. Ted Lasso is getting kicked back to Apple tv. They'll be returning for a fourth season this summer. This is the season that nobody asked for, but we shall remain cautiously optimistic. Sudeikis will again executive produce and star as Ted alongside Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Jeremy Swift. This list leaves out quite a few members of the original series, including Emmy nominees Nick Mohammed, Sarah Niles, and Phil Dunster. Good old JME Tartt. Gonna miss him. He is coaching. He is coaching a second, second level women's team this time around. So we'll get a lot of new characters and hopefully the writing will be as good as it was the first time around. But I don't know if you can capture that magic in a bottle twice.
- [45:11]
A
Yeah, I don't know. The world didn't need it, so. But we'll see if it's any good. I just. Yeah. Like, how are you going to get rid of Nate? Nate was such a great character. Dr. Sharon was very important. I think all three of those were.
- [45:21]
B
Important characters, but, well, making the way. Making way for new characters. Jason.
- [45:24]
A
Yeah, making way for Jason. Sudeikis's paycheck, I think, is what they. What it basically is like, well, we want you to do another show, but you can have all of the money. We have a little Bit left over for these people, but you're gonna have to cut a few, so.
- [45:35]
B
All right, cut them all.
- [45:37]
A
Cut them all. Cut them all. There was an article that said there can be only one first look at the Highlander reboot. Good, good title, that Gizmodo. It's just basically one picture of Henry Cavill. And to me, he just looks like a Timothy Dalton, like, cosplayer in the photo. But when I look at that photo.
- [45:55]
B
I think, God, he would have been a great Bond.
- [45:57]
A
He would have been a great Bond.
- [45:59]
B
He would have been a great Bond.
- [46:00]
A
Absolutely. The thing is, I, I, I've been poo pooing all over the Highlander reboot for quite some time now. I'm kind of, I'm kind of coming around. It might be okay. You know why? I watched Highlander 1, the original, the other night. I popped it on.
- [46:16]
B
It's really bad.
- [46:17]
A
It does not have legs. It could be only one wink. Yeah. The thing that really bugs me about the Highlander reboot, though, is it's Russell Crowe is going to be playing Ramirez, and if he plays his Ramirez like he played his Javert, we're just in for a shit show. That's all I gotta say.
- [46:33]
B
I gotta say I know the guy gets a lot of crap and I've liked Henry Cavill and everything he's been in everything. There isn't a single thing that I've seen that he's in that I've disliked him in. I think if anybody's going to pull this off and make it good, it's him.
- [46:51]
A
Well, let's hope you just didn't, didn't curse the entire production to.
- [46:55]
B
He's, he's cursed enough. He got a shit canned as Superman. Unfairly. He got shit canned as a, the Witcher. Unfairly. This dude is cursed. Even though he's awesome.
- [47:03]
A
This is going to be the only Highlander reboot where Conor McLeod gets his head cut off in the first five minutes. Sorry, Henry, just read out of time for you. Oh, Colin Farrell is coming back in that show. Sugar. There was a very strange show on Apple tv, the Neo noir drama with a big twist at the end, which I'm not going to, to mention here. So if anybody wants to go check it out, don't, don't click on the link that I put in here either, because they spoil it right at the first paragraph. But it was, I, I thought it was a very good show. I thought Colin Farrell was very good in it. Now granted, if I had the, the, the choice, I would Rather have another season of the Penguin versus Sugar, but Sugar's in the can and coming no matter what anyway. And they don't consult me on these decisions, as I found out in the past. So I guess I'm stuck with whatever I got.
- [47:54]
B
Let's call Jason.
- [47:56]
A
Yeah, he's got a track record. Apps and doodads. Okay, Brian, this time for apps and doodads, I have done something different. I put in 30 links to all of the TikTok drama that anybody who wants to go find out about it can. Who hasn't turned on the tv. But let's just, let's just do a quick recap. The US company that owns TikTok is now in control of TikTok. Once they did that, they changed the terms of service to be very ice friendly, which caused the first blow up. It was a big blow up. Everybody is still going crazy deleting their, their Tick tock accounts. Yes, the, the next thing was, well, they broke it, so it didn't actually work, which then led to more people leaving the platform. And there's a new. There's a couple social networks. One's called upscroll that is now seeing a search. Let me look at my phone. There was another one that I downloaded called Skylight. That is another TikToker clone. Skylight for. I'm gonna warn you right now, lots of dicks. There's a lot of dicks on that one. So they apparently don't care about what gets posted to that one. I have not checked out upscrolled. I probably won't. Just, just to be honest, I'm gonna.
- [49:13]
B
Tell you, I'm feeling a little smug at my decision to never get involved with TikTok in any way shape. And it seems to have paid off dividends. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything. And now everybody's done with it.
- [49:25]
A
Yeah, you have. You had Jomo. You had the joy of missing out.
- [49:28]
B
I sure did. I absolutely did.
- [49:30]
A
So I never got too deep into it, but I've, you know, I've spent a couple, you know, dozen hours doom scrolling because once you, once you, once you go one, you're done. It's one and done. You know, there goes an hour at least.
- [49:44]
B
So I was, I was reading a lot of these articles as they were breaking too, and it just like, wow, did they screw the pooch so monumentally. Although they don't seem to really care. Like it just became a MAGA government arm of like, let's, let's collect as Much data as we can. Let's let us know if you're an immigration. If your immigration status. Yeah, because an app that shows me videos needs to do that.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:09]
B
Okay, sure.
- [50:11]
A
Yeah, no, it's. It's actually worse than when the Chinese had it. Which is the up part.
- [50:15]
B
Well, at this point I'd rather give my data to the Chinese than the US government anyways.
- [50:19]
A
No. Might be able to order my DJI drone easier. But yeah, this whole thing has just been a fuster. Cl. This is what happens when private equity gets involved in the day to day business of other people's business.
- [50:31]
B
And the government.
- [50:32]
A
And the government. Yep.
- [50:33]
B
Yeah. Oh yeah, I forgot. Aren't there supposed to be less governments? Stay out of people's business. That's what the Republic.
- [50:40]
A
Oh yeah. Except half of them can't read because they didn't go to school. Interesting. So they lost the thread. Now it's just give them all of our money.
- [50:48]
B
Well, I've got some potentially bad news specifically for you these days, Jason. Although I have very fond memories of this company as well. Because back in my music writing days, I used an awful lot of their products. Music Hardware and software manufacturer Native Instruments has entered into preliminary insolvency proceedings. According to a report by Create Digital Music. This is the company behind iconic software such as Massive Tractor, Contact and hardware like Maschine. Plus they also own the brands Izotope, which I know you live in.
- [51:17]
A
I live live in Izotope. If fuck up Izotope, I'm screwed. I am absolutely screwed.
- [51:23]
B
Yeah. Brainworks and the Plugin alliance, we don't have many specifics as to what this entails and what the future of the company will look like. We do know that an administrator has been appointed to handle restructuring and potentially sell off existing assets. They employ hundreds of people and their fates will also remain uncertain until we learn more. This is not the first time Native Instruments has been forced into a major restructuring, which just lets you know they're not running their company very well because these products are massively popular.
- [51:50]
A
Yeah, it's really hard to fuck this up. It really is.
- [51:53]
B
The company experienced plenty of layoffs and uncertainty between 2019 and 2020 before being purchased by private equity, which might explain why things are not getting any better. It's possible new investors will jump on board and it gets back to business as usual. It's also possible everything will be scrapped for parts and sold to the highest bidder if the company's line of software goes up for a sale. Akai is likely the best price bet. I like that company as well. I had a lot of their stuff, so. And they don't seem to have all the problems. We'll see what happens.
- [52:21]
A
Okay. I'm just saying if. If Izotope goes on the market, I hope Universal Audio buys it. That's the one company.
- [52:27]
B
Yeah.
- [52:27]
A
Yeah. I would love if they bought it and just, you know, build that into any of the Apollo line that I've got. Oh, that would. That would make my life better. So much better. But yeah, it's not good. Not good. I got another app here called Whisper Flow Go. It's another one of those talk to your Mac apps because I think you can do it on a PC too. I think they're a PC computer. Exactly. That's it. I don't even have to do the Dolphins. Yeah, I just press. I got a key command here. I press on my keyboard and then it just. It pops up and starts to. And it'll, you know, just do voice to text and it'll do it in whatever app you're in, which is what's really nice about it. I've tried a couple of the other ones and it didn't really work with other apps that well. It was like hit or miss. This one seems to work with every.
- [53:12]
B
Well, given how bad Apple seems to have screwed the pooch on the keyboard on iOS, maybe I should get this.
- [53:19]
A
Yeah, that might work too. The biggest problem with the keyboard on iOS when you use voice is it's so easy to hit that button again and have your entire conversation sitting there waiting for you when you come back to the text message that you were just bitching about the person you had the text message to and everybody jumped on it. It's like a four pager and if you don't hit it just right, you've just ruined a relationship. That's the problem with the Apple keyboard.
- [53:43]
B
It's one of many.
- [53:44]
A
One of many. Yeah. But I use. I use this on my Macs to, you know, just for everything. If you're talking to your. A lot of AI guys use it because you can write prompts, really easy and long prompts. I use it for emails. I put that on everything. I write my text with it and it. It's perfect. So far, I've not had any. Any problems with it at all, so.
- [54:02]
B
Excellent.
- [54:03]
A
Yeah, a couple bucks, but free trial. Check out it out.
- [54:06]
B
It's worth it.
- [54:06]
A
The AirTag 2 launched. I looks like it's the same price. Same size.
- [54:12]
C
Same size.
- [54:13]
A
Yeah, Just got more Goo inside. Put some more goo. What I really want is the precision finding. That's what I really want.
- [54:20]
B
I really hope that instead of like beeping and directions, it does. Hot and cold.
- [54:25]
A
Oh, that'd be colder. Freezing.
- [54:28]
B
Freezing.
- [54:29]
A
Now you're getting warm. Burn it up.
- [54:31]
C
Burn it up.
- [54:31]
B
Up.
- [54:31]
A
My ass is on fire. Here I am. Yeah, but the precision location thing works with the Apple Watch Ultra 2, which I do have, so might be worth. Worth picking that up. It's at least one of them for your keys. You know, you should have one on your keys at all times.
- [54:48]
B
Yeah, I've got three of these. Don't really feel the need to upgrade to the number two, but if I ever need another one, obviously I get version too.
- [54:58]
A
Yeah, that's the say say. It's pretty much how I think about it too. It's like the. The ones work absolutely just fine.
- [55:04]
B
They do exactly what they say on the tin, and I don't feel the need to upgrade.
- [55:08]
C
Yeah.
- [55:15]
A
The Dark side with Dave. Welcome to the Dark side with Dave. With a podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bitner. Dave covers the daily cyber security beat on the cyber W scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on Caveat and digs into industrial security on control loop. But he still has time to show up and stir some shit in. Only malware in the building. Hello, Dave.
- [55:42]
C
Hello. I don't know how you guys are doing weather wise, but I'm done here. On the east coast of the United States, we got a good amount of snow last weekend, but then on top of the snow, we got a couple inches of ice.
- [55:56]
B
Ice.
- [55:56]
C
So everything's just ice.
- [55:59]
B
Yeah. I'm sick of ice on all forms.
- [56:02]
C
Yes.
- [56:03]
B
I will drink a warm soda.
- [56:05]
C
Ice is not. Has. Doesn't have the stellar reputation all around these days.
- [56:11]
A
I'm having an iced coffee because it's nice and warm here.
- [56:15]
C
Thanks, Jason. Thanks.
- [56:16]
B
It was minus 10 Fahrenheit. And that's not with windchill today here, which is a. I've never been in anything like that.
- [56:25]
C
No, it's a different kind of cold.
- [56:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:29]
B
When the news says if you're. If you're outside for more than 15 minutes, whatever is uncovered is nature or frostbite. That's fantastic.
- [56:37]
C
Yeah. Yeah. My poor little dog. I take her out and the sidewalks have been cleared, but everywhere that, you know is Normally Grassy has 6 inches of snow and then a layer of ice on top of it.
- [56:50]
A
It.
- [56:51]
C
And so she just doesn't know what to do? She, she looks at me like, I'll hold it. Like, eventually, sooner or later, it has to come out. And sure enough.
- [56:59]
B
Yeah, all of our sidewalks are basically just walls of snow on either side that almost go up to full, like, person height, except for the bottom layers are all yellow from people walking their dogs. It's just lovely.
- [57:13]
C
Yes. As one of my colleagues used to say, dogs, when they pee on things like trees and so forth, that's how dogs gossip and.
- [57:23]
A
Yeah.
- [57:24]
C
And I feel like my, my little dog runs from P spot to pea spot and sniffs this sniff. Oh, you know, Bob's got new, new kibble. And she leaves her own little comment and then goes on to the next one.
- [57:34]
A
Yeah, we call that checking the P. Male. It's good.
- [57:41]
C
I love it.
- [57:44]
B
Well, there's one thing that will actually supersede any talk of Disneyland or Star wars or anything like that on this particular segment, and that is Muppet News. And literally, after we put away our microphones and stacked the headsets after the show last week, the official trailer for the Muppet show dropped. And it seems fun.
- [58:05]
C
It does. I say the biggest laugh they got out of me was Pepe the Prawn with a sort of, you know, an off color response to somebody. Something about kink or something. Just. What's her name? Sabrina Carpenter.
- [58:20]
B
Sabrina Carpenter, yes.
- [58:21]
C
Yeah. She said, I love kink. And Pepe comes in and says, hello.
- [58:25]
A
Hello.
- [58:29]
C
You know, the old Lenny and Squiggy entrance joke for a new generation. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I'm optimistic.
- [58:40]
B
I am too optimistic. I have a, I have a particularly controversial take and. But I will die on this hill. I do not find Maya Rudolph funny in any way, shape or form. And I'm very disappointed to see her being one of the main people being in here. I was already a little worried with, with Stoner Guy, and now we got Maya Rudolph, too. And who knew that Sabrina Carpenter would be the one human that I like the most in any particular ensemble? But here we are.
- [59:05]
A
That's sad. That's very sad. Okay.
- [59:10]
C
I mean, I, yeah, I can see that. I, I, I enjoy my Rudolph on Loot, which is the show she has.
- [59:18]
B
I would rather pull my eyeballs out and stick hot forks in my ear than ever watch that show again. I never talked about it on our particular podcast. I did try to watch it. I wanted to kill everybody. Everybody. But, you know, to quote Jason, I don't want to yuck on somebody else's yum, but your yum is hor.
- [59:40]
C
But you're wrong.
- [59:42]
B
You said wrong.
- [59:45]
C
Yeah, yeah. No, fair enough. I mean, you know, not everybody likes the same stuff.
- [59:50]
B
That's true.
- [59:51]
C
Related to Muppet stuff. Steve Whitmire, who was the immediate follower to Jim Henson for performing Kermit the Frog, and then, hard to believe, nearly 10 years ago, stopped performing Kermit the Frog, was fired from being Kermit the Frog, wrote a long blog post about the current state of the Muppets and his take on the characters. It follows a lot of the things that we've discussed here about how the main characters seem more like a Beatles tribute band than the Beatles, that sort of thing. And he talks about the soul of the characters. And it's an interesting piece. I don't think there's anything particularly new or groundbreaking, but it's interesting to see somebody who knows all the players intimately, including Kermit the Frog, to comment on it and have his thoughts echo a lot of the types of things that we've discussed here. So if you're into that sort of thing, it's an interesting read.
- [60:54]
B
Yeah, I bookmarked that. I will read through that later. It definitely looks interesting. There's a new Disneyland documentary which I find shocking at this point, that there's any footage left that nobody has seen or any story that I have not personally seen to be told. This is called Disneyland Handcrafted, and it's archival footage of the initial build of Disneyland in Anaheim. So I watched it. Of course I did. I've watched all these things and I was shocked to discover that there were things I did not know. There was footage I have not seen. I did not expect this to hold my interest, much less my 9 year old sons. Yet he sat there riveted, watching this as well. It was actually very well done, very enjoyable. Who knew? I mean, we all knew that it was like a rush at the end, but, boy, you get the feeling through this footage and the way it was edited together, as many, many, many people on social media have commented since seeing this, Boy, there were no workplace rules back then. Look at all the OSHA violations. I mean, you got shirtless guys smoking cigarettes, swinging cranes with no ropes, no nothing holding them. I mean, it was amazing watching all this and how they put it together. So. Right.
- [62:05]
A
Good old days. The good old days. You get no participation trophies at Disney.
- [62:10]
C
Yeah. You think about how now they shut down a ride for a year for refurb and they built Disneyland a couple months.
- [62:18]
A
Yeah, right, right.
- [62:20]
C
My understanding, too. And by the way, this is on my list for this weekend I've been meaning to get to it. I'm sure my wife and I will enjoy it very much.
- [62:27]
B
Much.
- [62:27]
C
And I'm glad that it gets your stamp of approval. I also recall, I don't know if it touched on this, but I've heard stories about how the guy who sort of brought them to the finish line was sort of this mobster kind of character who just got stuff done and as soon as they finished, he got fired.
- [62:46]
B
You will not be surprised to hear that the official Disneyland produced documentary does not touch upon that. Dave.
- [62:52]
C
Oh, okay. All right, all right. Well, there. I can't remember. I'll have to try to look it up for next time. But there's a. I believe there was a book written about him and he's quite a character. But he and Walt butted heads on, oh, things like ethics. But he got it done. It was one of those things. It's like, you want to fight about this or do you want your park to open on time? I can't remember his name, so I'll look it up for next time.
- [63:20]
B
Fantastic.
- [63:22]
A
All right, well, I found some good news this week and Looney Tunes is at the tip of the spear. I miss Looney Tunes. Well, they have found a new home on TV after they got axed by fucking Zaslav Douchebag. So starting on February 2, more than 750 classic shorts are moving to Turner Classic Movies.
- [63:41]
B
Another subscription.
- [63:42]
A
Another subscription. But it kind of makes sense. It's a good home for him. The rollout begins with a week long marathon of 45 cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, including his official debut in 1940s, a wild hare Care, directed by Tex Avery. So this is a six year licensing deal. So they'll get it for six years?
- [64:00]
B
Six years.
- [64:01]
A
That's it.
- [64:02]
B
Stands to reason.
- [64:04]
C
So will these be available on demand on like tcm.com or something, I wonder?
- [64:10]
A
I don't have TCM, so I don't know.
- [64:13]
C
I don't either.
- [64:13]
A
Yeah, any. Anybody who's listening that does, Write in on February 3rd and tell us how it works.
- [64:19]
C
There you go.
- [64:20]
B
Yeah. You know, my son has just shown zero interest in any of this stuff. Not that he's been exposed to it a lot because Zaslav and you know, Moving targets. Where the hell is it? How do you start all that sort of stuff? But I mean, Merry Melodies and all that stuff. Just so good. Like, it's just so good.
- [64:37]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [64:37]
B
Like, I know opera music because of these cartoons.
- [64:41]
A
Absolutely.
- [64:42]
B
Solely.
- [64:42]
C
Right. Well, in the Coyote and Road Runner, Cartoons are timeless. Just timeless. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know that my kids have much exposure to them either. So that's a place I've failed as a parent.
- [64:58]
A
Well, just think about it this way, though. You didn't fail as a parent. When we were kids growing up, we were force fed this because this was all that was on. We had no choice. It's this or Mutual of Omaha. You know, Wild Kings Hit the Heights.
- [65:13]
C
No more rehearsing and nursing apart. We know every part by heart. Every Saturday morning.
- [65:20]
A
Then I would watch Scooby Doo after. And then they introduced Scrappy Doo and I never watched it again.
- [65:26]
B
Yeah.
- [65:27]
A
Although, have you guys heard the conspiracy theory that everybody's dead except for Fred?
- [65:33]
C
No.
- [65:34]
A
In Scooby Doo. Yeah. No.
- [65:36]
B
I will wait until I have an edible tonight and then I'll look it up. Oh, yeah, Scooby Snack.
- [65:42]
A
I'll dig up the video, see if I can find it, put it in the show notes. But it was a great. Somebody sent it to me on TikTok. One of our listeners sent it to me on Instagram. Not TikTok. TikTok. But I watched it and we were both like, man, we got to go back and watch that. Because that's a pretty good theory. Yeah. Fred is dead and he's just doing all this to make up for the fact that he killed his friends long, long ago.
- [66:05]
C
Okay, interesting. I did see a Scooby Doo related thing come by this week that there was a movie that. Oh, what Was the agent 99 in? What was the woman? Maxwell Smart's girlfriend in get smart?
- [66:25]
A
She was 99, wasn't she?
- [66:26]
C
She was 99. Yeah, because. Yes, because he was 86. She was 99. Anyway, the actress who plays her, Barbara somebody. Barbara.
- [66:36]
B
Barbara Feldon. Felden.
- [66:38]
A
Oh, yes, thank you.
- [66:39]
C
Barbara Feldon. Yes. Apparently she was in a movie. And in that film, this is before Maxwell Smart and all that kind of stuff, there's a spitting image of Velma from Scooby Doo. So there's a theory that they just stole the character of Velma from this character that she plays in this film. So that was new to me. All right, I put a link in here to a YouTube video because I got tired of waiting for Jason to do the work.
- [67:11]
A
I saw this and I'm like, you dick. It's such a dick.
- [67:16]
C
Actually, I. Well, first of all, I think we can all agree that I am not a dick. But it came up because we have a crew right now down in Florida. Florida. At Space Week. And they had taken, because of like limits on the number of personnel we had down there, they'd taken a single camera to record some videos, some interviews. And that got me thinking again about the idea of using a360 camera to do multi person interviews. And sure enough, this person did one. I think it's doable. From what I've seen here, I wouldn't have done it exactly the way this person did it.
- [67:56]
B
It's a little off putting at times and. And there is a large phallic shadow that is across the table at many points in the interviewer.
- [68:08]
C
Yeah, it's not from the interviewer. Yes, but I, I like. I wouldn't have panned back and forth using the 360. I just would have cut between the two shots. But it seems like you have enough resolution from this thing to be able to do that sort of thing, so. So I think it's plausible that someone who had better skills at doing a two person interview, someone who had more traditional skills at doing a two person interview could use one of these and pull it off.
- [68:38]
A
So yeah, yeah, no, they definitely did this wrong. You should not pan. You should jump cut. You should absolutely jump cut.
- [68:45]
C
Right.
- [68:46]
A
But it's funny, I almost use it as my webcam today just so you would shut up and I just ran out of time. So it works as a nice webcam if you want to see everything in the garage, but.
- [68:59]
C
Oh yeah, I'll bet.
- [69:00]
A
Yeah, it is a nice webcam. But yeah, this is kind of the same, the same deal I was going to do. People across from each other. He's got it side by side, but yeah, it would have been much better with a jump cut, I think.
- [69:13]
C
Yeah, I mean it seems like having people be having the corner of the table in between them is probably most workable than directly across from each other, just in terms of the angles you get on people's faces so you don't end up with the talking ears, which is you just have a side shot of somebody. So I don't know, it'd be fun to play with. I'm not going to go buy one, but I don't know, maybe someone I know someday will be able to.
- [69:38]
A
Maybe someday I'll get it. It's ready to go. I just don't have anybody to play with.
- [69:41]
B
I was about to say maybe someday somebody, you know will sell one a little bit cheaper than he bought it for Dave.
- [69:47]
A
And you can hear it's not going anywh. Is not going anywhere.
- [69:52]
C
Oh no, no, that never happens.
- [69:54]
A
I just need to.
- [69:55]
C
Maybe I. Maybe I am a little bit of.
- [69:56]
A
A dick from time to time.
- [69:58]
B
Yeah.
- [70:01]
C
Just quick swing around back to our countertop dishwashers. A kind listener pointed out on Mastodon that as we were talking about this, the Verge actually had a story on countertop dishwashers. Okay. I had this on my mastodon feed. Yeah, this had come by on my mastodon feed and Mastodon has no algorithm, so that was weird. But I, I'm.
- [70:25]
A
I've.
- [70:25]
C
I'm just resigned. I'm resigned.
- [70:27]
B
Some of our listeners joined in on with the game on Discord and mentioned animal crackers multiple times throughout the week and nobody has been reporting any animal crackers ads. We have, we have broken, broken the chain once again.
- [70:40]
A
Well, we may have actually picked something that does not have advertising on the Internet, so.
- [70:44]
C
So, yeah, animal crackers. That's true.
- [70:47]
B
Well, what a market opportunity they're missing out on.
- [70:49]
A
Get them on the horn, white space.
- [70:51]
B
Get a big animal cracker on the horn.
- [70:55]
C
Yeah, a little bit more.
- [70:57]
A
Follow up.
- [70:57]
C
I've been playing Angry Birds. Thank you.
- [70:59]
B
Solid. Solid choice.
- [71:00]
C
Solid. It really is solid.
- [71:02]
B
Yeah, it is.
- [71:04]
C
And you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it. And yeah, there's a reason it's a classic.
- [71:09]
B
I particularly enjoyed the Star Wars Angry Birds crossover when that was out. That was a lot of, of fun.
- [71:15]
C
It was fun. It was fun. I feel like they were just on the trailing edge of getting a little too cute. But I love Star wars, so there you go. I put a link in here for no particular reason. This is a demonstrator's guide to gas masks and goggles.
- [71:33]
A
Okay.
- [71:36]
C
Just came across my desk.
- [71:39]
B
Information you may need for some reason.
- [71:41]
C
Reason perhaps someday in the future. Better to be prepared than not. So, and this is in depth, all.
- [71:52]
A
Kinds of 35 minute read.
- [71:53]
B
I hear some of these things are very good for you if you're very cold, like if you're surrounded by a lot of ice, this could be helpful.
- [72:02]
C
That's right.
- [72:03]
B
Yes, that's right.
- [72:04]
C
That's right. You don't want any frost to get inside your goggles or your lungs. These devices could be very helpful to protect you against those sorts of things. But this guide I think is interesting for as much as what they tell you not to do is what they tell you to do. Because there are a lot of things on here that you would think that would be helpful that could actually be not helpful and perhaps even harmful. So better to be prepared ahead of time. And I hate the fact that I'M seriously thinking about this.
- [72:35]
B
Yeah. Should know these sorts of things at this point. Yeah.
- [72:37]
A
Well, what you should do, Dave. Dave, is get one of these gas masks and replace the inside of your stormtrooper helmet with it. So you can just wear your stormtrooper helmet out there and say that you're cosplaying, but you're actually protected from, I don't know, ice falling on your head.
- [72:53]
B
But he's going to have to adopt the Hoth Imperial snowtrooper uniform.
- [72:58]
A
That's true.
- [73:00]
C
Right, right. Yeah. The problem with the stormtrooper helmet is just the visibility out of that thing is just zero. It's just.
- [73:08]
A
Just terrible.
- [73:10]
C
So you wouldn't actually want to be in any kind of situation. I'm looking at it right now. You wouldn't want to be in any situation where you had to actually see anything. But. Yeah, that would be cool.
- [73:22]
A
I just put a link in our group chat to my favorite of the masks that they're talking about in the article, which I think we should all adopt, which is the water bottled version. Three water bottles and some dirty toilet paper, it looks like. I think he's. He's rocking it. He's rocking it.
- [73:43]
B
Yeah.
- [73:44]
A
With an N95 on the inside.
- [73:47]
C
Yeah. I don't know. It's like that guy in college who could make a bong out of an apple.
- [73:51]
A
Yeah, pretty much.
- [73:53]
C
It's that thing. And finally, I have a recommendation for a YouTube channel. This falls into the category of sometimes you just want your mind distracted from things. And I found this channel to be very nice for that. It's called Emma Repairs. And Emma is a piano technician and she repairs pianos, but mostly electronic keyboards. And it's just something kind of soothing and distracting and nice about it. So check it out if it's. If you're looking for something else to help distract you from whatever. I enjoy things.
- [74:35]
B
Yeah.
- [74:36]
C
Yeah, from all the things.
- [74:38]
B
All right, well, this is actually really interesting. I'm going down the rabbit hole.
- [74:44]
A
Don't come back. We're not done with the show yet.
- [74:46]
B
Brian, she fixes a Wurlitzer. I'm in.
- [74:49]
A
Right. See? Told you.
- [74:51]
C
Yeah, it's good stuff. All right, gents.
- [74:55]
B
All right, Dave, Take care.
- [74:57]
A
Stay warm.
- [74:58]
B
See you soon.
- [74:58]
A
Stay warm. Stay safe, please. Closing Shout out Over at Patreon, we've got a new subscriber. Javier. Thank you. Javier and Fat Fat up to their pledge and sent me a very nice email about how awesome I'm doing on the YouTube side of this video podcast that we're making. He's saying it's absolutely perfect. He wouldn't change it. No, he's. It's actually not that. It's. It is a diatribe of all the things that I've gotten wrong. To be fair, they're absolutely all correct. Fat. Fat.
- [75:32]
B
You're not wrong. But for $20 a month that we're making right now off YouTube, they're not happening.
- [75:37]
A
I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm trying to put food on the family, as they say. And yeah, we'll get to these at some point soon. Hopefully get more people to watch it on YouTube and it'll go faster. That's all I'm saying. Our YouTube numbers are not going like this. This, this would be up and to the right as I'm showing on the video. If you were watching the video, it's going like this, which is down and to the right, which is not what is. Is desirable. But so he says, yeah, the YouTube experiment just needs a bit of polish. Working on it. We're working on it. So thank you, Fat fat. And he signs off by saying, P.S. so you're welcome, fat fat. Thank you very much. And we've also got other Patron subscribers. Subscribers. Ryan, Ramsey, Jimmy Paul, Doug, Jesslyn, Joe, Brian, Fabian and Nancy. Thank you all for your continued support.
- [76:28]
B
Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Jonathan and Judge. Thank you all so much.
- [76:34]
A
Over at the Tip Jar, we've got Jennifer, Cheryl and Sean. No merch because we're too busy to make new merch, but it's there. You can get the old merch here. I'll hold it up for this.
- [76:44]
B
Fix the YouTube.
- [76:45]
A
Hold it up for the world to see. I don't know if you can see that or not. There we go. There's my grumpy old geeks mug, also used as a pen holder. And my. My voice straws, which I've not used since I got fired from making all the audiobooks. They trigger me, Brian. They trigger me.
- [77:02]
B
I. I hear you. We do have a new review. A five star rating from Koch 22. Give our modern dystopia a fun spin. This pod is a great way to keep up with tech news that flies under the radar. Especially the stories pertaining to our billionaire overlord. I may be 10 to 15 years behind their nostalgia and references. I grew up playing point and click zork games. Not text based, but their takes never fail to entertain. From social commentary to movies and books, to new devices and apps that cover it all. Who knew Grumpiness could be so enjoyable. Well, I agree. Koch22 tell 22 of your friends.
- [77:34]
A
Yes, definitely. And just a quick reminder, if you do want to support the show, please head over to patreon.com gog or gog show.com donate and get on the bandwagon and support the show. Because yeah, we need it. It's actually the only thing that keeps us on the air. So pretty please for Patreon, as little as $3 a month. We'll get you the show early ad free and in high definition on audio only. You can Sign up for YouTube now to help throw some bucks our way. You can go and send us some money on PayPal. We take that and we'll take straight donations from the tip. Sure. Anything you want to do to help support the show, including telling everybody you know about it, we'd love you for. We'd love you for.
- [78:15]
B
Send us your routing number and your and your checking account number through Venmo. I mean, whatever you want to do.
- [78:20]
A
Yeah, exactly. We'll take anything.
- [78:22]
B
We're desperate and I want to wish a very happy 90th birthday to, I would say, international treasure Alan Alda.
- [78:30]
A
Yes indeed. Happy birthday, Alan.
- [78:32]
B
Birthday Alan.
- [78:33]
A
Until next time, I'm Jason Defilipo.
- [78:36]
B
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. 731. 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. And really, it's the only reason we stay 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. Swingbygog 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 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. Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shopnot GOG Show. Stay grumpy and stay frosty.