734: A Bald Woody

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks – Episode 734: "A Bald Woody"

Release Date: February 20, 2026
Hosts: Jason DeFillippo, Brian Schulmeister
Guest: Dave Bittner

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Episode Overview

In this high-octane episode, the Grumpy Old Geeks dissect the latest disasters from the tech world, with their signature no-mercy, no-filter approach. The hosts deep-dive into scandals involving AI-generated abuse, tech’s complicity with government overreach, hardware shortages caused by AI's insatiable appetite, and the ongoing farce of crypto schemes. Interspersed with pop-culture humor and plenty of snark, this episode provides a whirlwind tour of everything broken in the current state of tech, media, and internet culture.

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Major Discussion Points & Key Insights

1. AI-Generated Sexual Abuse Scandal on X (Twitter)

• [00:11-01:55]
  • Elon Musk’s X is under investigation by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for AI-generated non-consensual sexual images, including of minors—estimates up to 23,000 images of children in 11 days.
  • The Center for Countering Digital Hate reports X failing to prevent Grok (their AI) from generating explicit images.
  • Quote: “...X theoretically generated about 3 million sexualized images, an estimated 23,000 of which were children.” – Brian [00:19]
  • The hosts ridicule X’s claims that these features are restricted, revealing ongoing failures (“a male reporter found Grok would still put him in revealing clothing…”).

2. Meta’s Ongoing Child Safety Fiasco

• [01:59-03:16]
  • Internal testing at Meta revealed its chatbots fail to protect minors from sexual exploitation 70% of the time.
  • Red Team exercises exposed systematic failures around content moderation for child safety, sex crimes, and suicide-related material.
  • Meta only paused teen access to its AI bots last month, despite warnings.
  • Quote: “That’s not a rounding error. That is a systematic problem.” – Jason [02:36]

3. Ring & Mass Surveillance Backpedal

• [03:25-04:50]
  • Amazon backs off integrating Ring with police after a privacy uproar, especially following their “Search Party” feature (pitched as a lost dog finder, but intended to be a broader surveillance mesh).
  • Internal emails suggest surveillance was always the core long-term goal.
  • Quote: “Sure, we just created a Panopticon, but you found Fluffy.” – Brian [04:05]

4. Big Tech Handing Over Data to DHS/ICE

• [05:12-06:48]
  • Reddit, Meta, and Google complied (under subpoena) to hand over details on users critical of ICE; hosts question the legality/ethics of the Department of Homeland Security's tactics.
  • Not all tech platforms notified users their data was handed over, leading to concerns about free speech and chilling effects online.
  • Quote: “You can’t say shit online anymore... What country do we live...?” – Brian [05:50]

5. OpenClaw: AI Hype vs. Actual Usefulness

• [07:12-10:00]
  • OpenClaw, AI agent loved by the “AI Bros,” gets a real-world trial by Jason—deemed a security nightmare with little practical use.
  • Peter Steinberger (OpenClaw creator) joins OpenAI in an attempt to build something “regular humans can use,” but the hosts remain deeply skeptical.
  • Quote: “It is giving a child a nuclear weapon and a credit card.” – Jason [10:59]
  • Meta and other tech giants don’t allow OpenClaw on internal systems due to security risks.

6. AI and the Fragile Internet Infrastructure

• [12:30-13:15]
  • Recent Amazon and possibly YouTube outages linked to AI coding tools misfiring.
  • Gemini (Google’s AI) is now pushing "agentic browsing"—the hosts recoil at the idea of letting AI do tasks they'd rather handle themselves.

7. AI-Fuelled Hardware Shortages

• [14:08-17:21]
  • Major hard drive maker Western Digital diverts all inventory to AI companies, causing retail shortages for consumers.
  • RAM and storage shortages are affecting gaming consoles (e.g., Steam Deck) and broader tech availability.
  • Quote: “You can start throwing them up on eBay, man.” – Brian [15:36]

8. Crypto, Scams, and Lawsuits

• [17:33-19:21]
  • Steve Bannon is sued in a class action over allegedly pumping and dumping the “Let’s Go Brandon” token under the guise of charitable giving.
  • Only $15k of $2.7 million reportedly reached charities; rest unaccounted for.

9. Safety & Lawsuits in Online Platforms and Robo Taxis

• [19:24-22:48]
  • LA County sues Roblox over claims of child endangerment via lax moderation.
  • Tesla’s robo taxis in Austin are crashing at 4x the rate of average human drivers, busting claims of autonomous safety.
  • Regulatory drama over “Autopilot” marketing, with Tesla forced to rephrase features or face bans.

10. Gadget & Media Commentary

• [41:42-50:37]
  • Apple rumored to be working on an AI pendant/wearable pin—but hosts see little value over an Apple Watch.
  • Discussion of Apple’s smart glasses project—again, questioned for its real-world usefulness.
  • Apple Podcasts to support video, but the cost barrier favors corporate shows, not independents.
  • “AI Didn’t Read” (AIDR) emerges as new internet shorthand for dismissing AI-summary content.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On AI’s real value for regular people:
  “There was zero use case scenarios that actually make sense to anybody.” – Brian [09:02]

• On tech's overreach:
  “We've got anti SLAPP laws for crap like this, you know, so why we need anti DHS laws and anti ICE laws?” – Jason [06:06]

• On hard drive shortages:
  “They basically pivoted to just be a B2B and forget it. You can't get a hard drive from them. That's it. They're done.” – Brian [15:00]

• On crypto ‘charity’:
  “A vacation fund. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Going to Epstein. Epstein Island.” – Jason [18:51]

• Tesla marketing snark:
  “If I go to the bar and I walk around telling all the ladies I have an eight foot… that would be deceptive advertising.” – Brian [22:48]

• Show title reference:
  “If you saw the original Toy Story in the theaters, chances are you, too, have a bald spot.” – Dave [63:52]

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Pop Culture & Media Segment

• Recommendations & Reviews

  • Jason recommends Bert Kreischer’s "Free Bert Freebird" (Netflix), Katt Williams' new standup, and the film "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die" starring Sam Rockwell ["So fucking good. So good." – Jason, 41:55].
  • Brian discusses enjoying "Shrinking," "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," Shrek nostalgia, Mark Rober’s Netflix science show, and reports his kid loving the Muppets.

• Books

  • Both hosts enthusiastically recommend "Cleave the Sparrow" by Jonathan Katz as “the weirdest, most bizarre book I think I’ve ever read...” – Brian [54:23].
  • Jason also shouts out "Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal" by Robin Ince for anyone identifying as neurodivergent.

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Lighter Segments & Running Gags

• Obsolescence and Subscription Fatigue
  • Jason cuts subscriptions like Obsidian and Cursor due to cost and poor utility versus Apple Notes and Visual Studio Code.
  • Pro tip: Use the $14 “Obsidian to Notes” tool to migrate your markdown notes.
• Tech-laden humor:
  Recurring jokes about "eight foot cocks," bald spots, and Brian’s lack of luck with new gadgets or romantic prospects.
• 3D Printing
  The hosts fish for entry-level 3D printer recommendations, noting how the trend's now mainstream for kids' hobbies.
• RSS & News Consumption
  • Dave highlights "Current," an RSS reader where news ages out naturally—a potential antidote to doomscrolling.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• Security and AI:

  "It is giving a child a nuclear weapon and a credit card. Nuclear weapons and credit cards, that's what babies get." – Jason [10:59]

• On the modern Internet:

  "We've just created a Panopticon, but you found Fluffy." – Brian [04:05]

• On dystopian prediction markets:

  "Let that wash over you and realize that that's their fucking business plan." – Brian [27:50]

• On losing faith in AI tools:

  "That last 6% is pretty fucking crucial because I don't know if you know, with software, you kind of need to be a hundred percent..." – Jason [47:35]

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Media and Listener Highlights

• Muppets & Star Wars:
  The trio gushes over the new Muppets show, the upcoming Mandalorian & Grogu movie, and the Toy Story 5 trailer (“...Woody is so old, he has a bald spot...” [63:52]).
• Community Engagement
  Listener tip: “Pentagon Pizza Index” now tracks pizza orders for geopolitical prediction markets [66:41].

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:11 – Elon Musk/X Grok AI investigation
• 01:59 – Meta’s child safety failures
• 03:25 – Ring doorbells, police, and privacy backlash
• 05:12 – DHS/ICE subpoenas to social media
• 07:12 – OpenClaw and the myth of useful AI agents
• 14:08 – Hard drive shortages thanks to AI demand
• 17:33 – Bannon crypto scam lawsuits
• 19:24 – Lawsuits: Roblox, Robo Taxis, Tesla Autopilot
• 36:10 – Media reviews, Bert Kreischer, Mark Rober, film & TV
• 41:42 – Apple’s foray into AI wearables, podcast video
• 58:43 – Muppets, Mandalorian, Toy Story 5 media chat
• 66:41 – 3D printer recommendations, Pentagon Pizza Index

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Conclusion

Episode 734 is a sweeping, hilarious, and biting analysis of the week’s tech fails, moral panics, and the absurdities of AI hype. Whether mocking misguided product launches or lamenting Big Tech's legal and ethical lapses, Jason, Brian, and Dave bring both insight and irreverence, making this episode a walk of shame for the tech industry, just as promised. Listeners will enjoy a memorable blend of news, wit, and nerd nostalgia—enough to keep anyone grumpy (and informed) until next week's show.

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Stay Grumpy!
Find all links and show notes at GOGshow.com/734

Transcript

[Brian Schulmeister]

Foreign

[Jason DeFilippo]

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.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And as somebody that's no stranger to hearing about bad things happening to him on our show, Elon Musk is in the news yet again. Again, X is facing yet another investigation into Grok's reported creation of non consensual sexual images on the platform. Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the dpc, has announced an inquiry into X regarding the harmful intimate images and processing of EU and EEA individuals personal data, including children. In an 11 day period, X theoretically generated about 3 million sexualized images, an estimated 23,000 of which were children. British nonprofit the center for Countering Digital Hate. The ccdh. I remember when hearing all these kind of acronyms and just letters meant it was I was listening to like Long beach early rap.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now it's this stuff has a CCDH from the lbc.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're down with the dbc. Yeah, you know me. Has announced the results of its Dec. 29 to Jan. 9 review last month. It's looking into if X has properly assessed and mitigated Grok's risks on X, including the spread of illegal content such as the AI generation of non consensually sexually explicit images once again, which includes those of children. This disturbing point can't be emphasized enough. As much as Elon wishes it wasn't, X claimed mid January that it was preventing Grok from editing photos of real people to give them revealing clothing, as many pervs on Reddit complained about ad nauseam. However, this does seem to be far from the truth. As we talked about just a couple weeks back, a male reporter found Grok would still put him in revealing clothing and even added visible genitalia. So no ladies, just men. But the Grok thing continues.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I hope he got a bump.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We could use one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Appreciate it. So as we know, Meta is in the news right now because they're, they're battling lawsuits on both fronts. It's all over the news that the Zuck is in town here in la

[Brian Schulmeister]

wearing his glasses into court, or at least part of his entourage. And the judge had to actually say,

[Jason DeFilippo]

that's a no, no, that is illegal. You can't do that. Sorry. Well, this comes out of the New Mexico trial. Metazone internal testing found its chatbots failed to protect minors from sexual exploitation nearly 70% of the time, according to documents revealed in a New Mexico trial a

[Brian Schulmeister]

swing and a miss.

[Jason DeFilippo]

An expert witness, NYU professor Damon McCoy, testified that Meta's bots violated company content policies about two thirds of the time during Red Team exercises. Yeah, two thirds. That's not great numbers. And that's definitely not great numbers. 66.8% failure rate for child sexual exploitation scenarios, 63.6% for sex related or violent crimes and hate, and 54.8% for suicide and self harm content. That's not a rounding error. That is a systematic problem. New Mexico's attorney general is suing Meta over design choices that allegedly put kids at risk. And Meta rolled out AI Studio to the public last year and only paused teen access to its AI characters to last month.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm beginning to think that these sites might have a problem, Jason, and they're just not addressing it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do you think? Brian, do you think?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm thinking.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, Ring had a problem and they addressed it. Amazon is backing away from plans to wire Ring doorbells directly into police workflows. After a predictable privacy backlash, the company had planned a partnership with Flock Safety that would let police request Ring footage, effectively turning doorbells into a neighborhood surveillance mesh. Officially, Ring says the integration would have taken more time and resources than expected. Sure. Unofficially, this comes after public outrage over Ring's search party feature, which marketed with a lost dog super bowl ad, but raised obvious fears about facial recognition, immigration enforcement and profiling and everything else that we're always worried about Ring doing with the cameras everywhere.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Sure, we just created a Panopticon, but you found Fluffy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thanks for finding Fido and Felipe and Octavio and all my other friends that have been deported. Appreciate it. Ring. Now here's the funny part. Ring Search Party feature was pitched as a feel good way to find lost dogs, but a leaked internal email suggests this was just the beginning. Brian. Shocking.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Shocking.

[Jason DeFilippo]

In an email obtained by 404 Media, Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff told employees the system was launched quote, quote, first for finding dogs with the longer term goal of using it to zero out crime in neighborhoods. Today it's Fido, tomorrow everything else. That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. If you go back to last week's episode, you can find the link to disable that turn. Disable that and turn it off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because of course it's on by default.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Of course it's not. Now they fixed that. I went and looked at mine and it is off. It was off when I went in to check it. So yeah, so Dino better stay fucking in the yard. That's all I got to say. He Better not get out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, well, how about Reddit meta and Google and what they did this last week, they voluntarily complied with some of the requests for identifying details of users critical of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, AKA ice. Sentence part of a recent wave of administrative subpoenas. The Department of Homeland Security had been distributing a big tech for the past few months, according to an anonymously sourced New York Times report. Now, for once, I. We can't actually be upset with the platforms. The platforms this time because they did get subpoenas. Yes, but what the fuck is the Department of Homeland Security doing distributing these and getting these. You can't say shit online anymore. You can't disagree with the policy anymore. You're not allowed to complain about ICE at all online. And if you do, they're going to find out who you are, what the actual fuck. What country do we live? Well, do you live in?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. What's this we shit? Traitor. Yeah, no, it's. It's fucked up. It is absolutely fucked up. And you have. You have to actually go to court to find out what the hell's going on. You know, it is. You know, we've got anti slap laws for crap like this, you know, so why we need anti DHS laws and anti ICE laws? I mean, we actually, we just need no ICE and reform DHS and all that other shit. But anyway.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's bullshit. It's bullshit. At least they're telling people. They're telling people. Well, that this is happening.

[Brian Schulmeister]

According to the Times, one or multiple of the relevant companies have stated that they notified users, but that means not all of them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Want to bet that?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at you, Zuck. I'm looking at you, Zuck. Oh, and this just in. U.S. supreme Court rules 6 to 3 that President Donald Trump sweeping tariffs are ille. Wow. How about that?

[Brian Schulmeister]

How about that? The tide is a turning.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Supreme Court actually did something holy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, maybe the eggs won't cost $75 tomorrow

[Jason DeFilippo]

in the news, Brian. Open Claw has been all the rage for the AI Bros for the past couple weeks. And yeah, I tried it. I'm sure you didn't, but I gave it a. But you know what?

[Brian Schulmeister]

It was a reliable thing for me to base my life on. Basically anybody that talked about OpenClaw on social media. Block, block.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, which is why I didn't talk about it. Yeah, I set up a Mac Mini because I had an extra one lying around and I got about. I spent about a half an hour with it and I was reading the how to's in all of the how tos are about like, don't do this because of security. Don't do this because of bad security. Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. Make sure you definitely don't do this. And I'm just like, this is a bad idea. Delete.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I. I followed a thread on. I think it was Blue sky. Maybe it was blue sky. I can't remember where, but it was somebody and I can't remember who it was. So I apologize for bad reporting here. But it was somebody with a blue mark. So they knew what they were doing. They were involved in the tech world. It was some kind of. And he posted an open question saying, I am genuinely curious. I am not crapping on anything. I want to be told. I want to learn. What exactly can Open Claw do in real terms for a regular person? What can it do for me? Please explain. And then all the bros came out and tried to, and tried to. And then every single time he was like, okay, so, but I can check my own email.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay, but I wouldn't give it my credit card. Okay, but I don't need it to do that. Okay, but that's. That's a bizarre entirely that sits. That particular situation has never come up in my life and never will.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Never will.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And there was zero use case scenarios that actually make sense to anybody.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I. Some of them were like, you know, Open Claw will call you in the morning and tell you what your schedule is for the day and any bullet points or things like that. I'm like, well, I can look at my calendar. Yeah, that's fine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can set an alarm to wake up.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. One of them is like, it can make a podcast for you of all of the things you have to do today and all of the news and everything like that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm like, I don't want that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't want that. That's what we're for. You know, that is what we're for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And we've had these sorts of things before. The ladies in the tube, when they first rolled out, they had those kind of features where like, get your morning report and it would like distill you with a couple headlines and it would tell you what you had in the calendar. And then nobody used them because we can just do that ourselves.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Do that. Exactly. And do it properly. We don't have to error. We don't have to worry that 80% of the things that we're going to be doing that day didn't actually exist in the calendar.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Exactly. So I don't get it. I just don't get it. And it seems like a really bad idea.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI saying that he wants to focus on building AI agents regular humans can actually use. Like my mum, level usable, not running yet another startup. So OpenClaw itself isn't being swapped followed by OpenAI. It's moving into an independent foundation and staying Open source with OpenAI already sponsoring the project. Now, Steinberger says he shopped the idea around all the major AI labs and got access to unreleased research and concluded that teaming up with OpenAI was the fastest way to scale the vision without turning it into a VC treadmill. Now, here's the funny part. It's based on Claude. It was used to be called Open Claude, but you know, Anthropic said, hold the phone, buddy, hold the phone. And then it went through a couple iterations and ended up at Open Claw. You know who didn't ask him to join the team? Anthropic. So, yeah, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And it, it's all, it's all just a bunch of cobbled together scripts that, you know, it is a giant fucking security hole. It is the reason that you don't do shit like this. Yeah. You know, it is giving a child a nuclear weapon and a credit card. Nuclear weapons and credit cards, that's what babies get.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, I've started playing wordle with my kid. Every morning I'm letting my kid play wordle. Not playing with him, just, you know, I bring it up on my phone. I hand him the phone. As soon as he's done playing wordle, I take that goddamn phone away from him.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I'm just.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See, daddy's dickies.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm just supposed to let a bunch of scripts have fucking free reign over my complete Internet and my computer and my Internet and my accounts and my credit card? No fucking way.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. And I mean, it's supposed to be cool because you can set up a Telegram account or a Slack account, or just message it with imessage to tell it what to do, and then it'll spin off a bunch of bots that you have no idea how much money it's going to cost you at the end of the day because remember, this shit's not free. So what's the fucking point? Well, tech companies are slamming the brakes on openclaw and you know, even Meta says, no, we don't want this around anything that is important. So, yeah, everybody puts that on our internal servers. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Oh, I don't know if this one made it into the. I saw this this morning. If I did, I'll take it out later. There's a report that came out that, like, from an insider. All of the Amazon downtime that has happened recently, you know, there's been a couple big major outages, all due to AI coding tools fucking up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I wonder if that's what docked out YouTube earlier this week too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know. Maybe. Maybe because. Yeah, because I just got a notification that Chrome yesterday has a bunch of new Gemini features that will do agentic browsing for you. The point of fucking web browsing is so I do it. I don't care.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Browsing. I want to browse. That's the point.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want to do it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't know if you noticed the thing that they're always saying is that it can book a vacation for you. You know, you can get the flights, get the hotels, all that. I don't have travel agents for that. And then we had Expedia, and then we can do it our fucking selves.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I want to do it myself. That's the thing. Actually, I don't, but my wife loves to do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

My wife does it. Exactly. Oh, man. Speaking of fucked up chatbots, a new Department of Health and Humane Services. Humane Human Services? There's nothing humane about the Department of Health and Human Services.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Dang, don't yuck on people's yum. Maybe they liked this advice.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, this? Yeah. Well, the advice is pretty good. Their new food guidance site Launch, with an AI assistant promising real answers about food. And users promptly asked that which foods could be inserted into the rectum. And the bot confidently suggested bananas and cucumbers. Well, it's not wrong for once.

[Dave Bittner]

Not wrong.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Pretty spot on. Oh, yeah. And this comes after RFK Jr's broader overhaul of US dietary guidelines. Pushing protein, red meat, saturated fats, while downplaying decades of, you know, science.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, just makes me think of that south park episode where they started eating in reverse.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I didn't see that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They shoved food up their ass and they had a fake Martha Stewart and then they would puke it out and it was just very, very funny. Anyways, let's talk about some real world consequences of these AI companies and how they're kind of screwing us. If you just kind of want to be a normal human being with computers, external hard disks, man. You want an external hard drive, Jason? Tough shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I like them, but tough shit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Try to buy one, because the current. You got to get one now because as soon as the current retail inventory runs out, that's it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You're hosed. That's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

During a recent Q2 earnings call, Western Digital CEO Irving Tan told shareholders, we pretty much sold out of hard drives for all of 2026. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers, and guess who they are? They're all the AI companies.

[Jason DeFilippo]

AI companies. Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. So according to Tan on That same call, two of their agreements with these big buyers go to 2027 and another all the way into 2028. They basically pivoted to just be a B2B and forget it. You can't get a hard drive from them. That's it. They're done. You cannot buy one if you wanted one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know, Brian, people used to make fun of me because of my Chia farm that I had back during the pandemic. Remember that thing? I had a wall of hard drives. Yeah. Who's the fool now?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Where's that wall of hard drive, Chase?

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's in the storage tub about two miles away. But it's. It's funny.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can start throwing them up on ebay, man.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

It's killing me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I just gave Andy Preboy my old Synology that had four seven and a half terabyte drives in it for all of his because he needs to back up all of his music because he's a boomer and has everything on little thumb drives around his garage. And I'm like, dude, come on, come on. So I gave it to him. I could retire on that thing now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Pretty much.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm going to go out, he's going to move and like, you know, he's like, oh, don't talk to me anymore. I'm on my island after I sold your Synology. Thanks, bro.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, continuing on, Valve has posted a notice on the Steam Deck page with a warning that the handheld gaming console may be out of stock intermittently in certain regions due to memory and storage shortages. The company also reiterated that the more affordable Steam Deck LCD is no longer in production and will no longer be available once stocks run out. So again, RAM and storage shortages which are plaguing tech manufacturers due to massive demand for those components from the AI companies. No more Steam Decks. If you didn't. If you want anything tech related, buy it now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Now. Or start a farm.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Or just. You can do that. Yeah. Maybe you don't need a new Steam Deck. Maybe you don't need the switch 2 maybe you're fine with the one you already have. As I keep trying to tell my son.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I'm telling you, old technology is great, man. Yeah. Get him an old Game Boy. I've actually got an old Game Boy. I'll send it up to you. Oh, wait, no. Oh wait. I was going to say tariffs, but now tariffs are legal. They're illegal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Illegal now. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, yeah. Oh my God. I found my. My carrying case with all my SD cards in it last night. And I may have a terabyte worth of SD cards in there, at least. So maybe I can just. I'll be swapping. You know, she's like, swap shop, Swap shop. It's like the SD cards of the new zip disk.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Pretty much, yeah. I love those zip disks. I think I still have one sitting around somewhere.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man. You know, Iomega was. The OEM for Iomega was Epson. All of those things were actually made by Epson.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, that's crazy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. I did the first website for Epson in 1995, and the first Epson America. And as. As a perk, we had zip disks everywhere because they would just send us. Send them to us. And we had the pre release ones too. It's pretty cool. I wish I still had my side quest drive though. That would have been great. Well, let's go to a different bit of news here. Steve Bannon is being sued in federal court over an alleged. Alleged my ass Cryptocurrency scheme tied to a pro maga token called let's go Brandon Coin or fjb.

[Brian Schulmeister]

These guys are such assholes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Such assholes. Yeah. A class action filed in Washington D.C. claims Bannon and associate Boris Epstein. Different. No relation. No relation, yeah. Secretly took control of the token in 2021 without paying for it, then promoted it to retail investors while posing as neutral commentators. After public promotion on Bannon's podcast, the token's price spiked more than 260% in a day. Each transaction carried an 8% fee with 5% marked as charitable donations.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, vacation fund.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Going to Epstein. Epstein Island. The lawsuit alleges only about $15,000 ever reached charity, while roughly $2.7 million is unaccounted for. Look under Bannon's collars. He's got all those collars. He just stuffs money underneath them. Investors say a later wallet freeze, rebrand and shutdown locked in insider control and wiped out the token's value. Now that's to say that the token actually ever had value because it's A cryptocurrency token.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, a little follow up on Roblox here. Now Los Angeles county is getting in on the action and they're suing Roblox, accusing the platform of unfair and deceptive practices that allegedly exposed kids to, to sexual content, grooming, online predators, blah blah, blah. The complaint says Roblox markets itself as a safe space for children while fainting, while failing to implement strong enough moderation and age verification, yada yada.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Roblox markets itself as a safe place for children and Tesla markets itself as self driving. Oh, both got struck down in California now.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh yeah. Roblox says it strongly disputes the claims. Yada yada yada. The county is seeking civil penalties and injunctions under California's consumer protection laws, marking the first state level government lawsuit of its kind against the company. Because it sounds like somebody needs to make their rent payment. Because that's what this is. Yeah, they're just looking. They're looking for a payday. This, the LA County's looking for a payday. It's like, oh, what are you doing, guys? Tesla. Speaking of, since you brought it up, Tesla keeps telling us robo taxis are safer than humans, but the numbers are coming out of Austin and telling us a very, very different story. According to the NHTSA data flagged by Electric, Tesla disclosed five new robo taxi crashes in December and January alone, all involving Model Y vehicles operating autonomously in Austin. The incidents weren't exactly high speed chaos. Think like hitting fixed objects at low speeds, backing into things and even getting hit by a bus while stopped. But they still count as crashes, as would any other, you know, waymos same thing. But that brings Tesla's robot taxi tunnel to 14 crashes since the service launched last summer. Now, based on Tesla's own earnings report, the fleet has logged roughly 800,000 paid miles. And if you do the math that, that's one crash about every 57,000 miles. Now, for context, Tesla's own vehicle safety report says the average US driver has a minor crash every 229,000 miles. So in other words, Tesla's robo taxis appear to be crashing at roughly four times the rate of humans.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about that months and months ago. That it didn't that the, that the numbers seem pretty skewy and pretty crazy and, and not that, not that solid. So now that we're actually getting solid numbers, we're finding out, oh yeah, maybe these things aren't as safe. Or at least Tesla's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, and these are the ones they get Caught for. You know, because before they. They were under investigation by the nt nhtsa because they were turning off the autopilot the millisecond before the crash happened. So they could say that. Well, technically FSD wasn't engaged at the time of the accident, just at the time of the airbag deploy, but not by the time that it fully inflated. So we can't count that one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, yeah, way to fudge the numbers. Well, Tesla did just dodge a 30 day sales ban in California by finally dropping the word regulators have hated for years, which was autopilot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You mean the word that tells you that the car could drive itself? Because that's exactly what the word means. And that's the way they're marketing it. That word, that one, that word, that one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Yeah. The California DMV has been threatening to suspend Tesla's sales and manufacturing licenses over what it called deceptive marketing. No shit. The issue wasn't the software itself, but the names Autopilot and full self driving, which regulators said made drivers think the cars could do far more than they actually can. Because people who buy Teslas obviously don't read the fucking manual. Look or listen to our show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If I go to the bar and I walk around telling all the ladies I have an eight foot and I don't have an eight foot,

[Jason DeFilippo]

that would be deceptive advertising. I'm saying. Those are my jokes, Brian. God damn it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I am channeling my energy. I'm channeling my inner Jason today. I feel dirty.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh God. Well, Tesla has already labeled full self driving as 8 foot cocks are supervised. So Brian, if you say you have a supervised eight foot cock, I was

[Brian Schulmeister]

talking about the foul, obviously.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, sure.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Back at home because chickens and eggs cost so much. I have an eight foot cock.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. Okay, well, yes, they. They changed it to full self driving supervised, but kept using Autopilot. Now I autocock. That's it. I'm stuck on autocock, the Auto Blow,

[Brian Schulmeister]

all the good ones.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, the Auto Blow too?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man. Dems was the days.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh boy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I remember trying to sell that thing at a. If you don't know what I'm talking about. That was the blowjob device that somebody had me test on the show.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Not on the show, thank God.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, I didn't do it actually on the show for the show, but I had it and I was going to sell it. I was living with a friend of the show MXV at the time and we had a yard sale. It was like, it was, it was like the. The whole neighborhood yard sale where everybody in the neighborhood is walking from house to house to house. And I put it out on the table. He's like, no, grabbed it. So you are not putting that. You're not selling that at the yard sale. Not like anybody would buy. I would like to know the person that would buy a used blow job device to begin with and so he could move or at least label them as a predator.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But anyway, say what you will about the product, at least, unlike Phil, self driving or autopilot, it did what it said.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It actually worked.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes. No deception.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. I made it to my destination in one piece. How's that? Oh, Jesus. Okay, where were we? Let's move on to New York. Get yourself together, Brian. Get yourself together. We're professionals. For sake. We're professionals. Ah, well, New York just told Robo Taxis. Not so fast, Governor. Governor, slow it down. Governor Kathy Hochul has pulled a proposal that would have updated state law to let autonomous taxis operate outside New York City. The problem is New York's vehicle code still requires a driver to keep one hand on the wheel at all times. But that other hand is up to them. Up to them. Hochul's plan would have loosened that rule, but legislative support wasn't there. Oh, it's a day. It's definitely a day, Brian. Okay, okay. Well, Waymo can keep testing in New York City. Well, God, let's move on. Let's move on. Well, here's some serious news, Brian. Let's get serious here. We're into Poly Market news now. All right, all right. Polymarket yanked prediction market titled Artemis 2 explodes after it went viral. And people understandably freaked out about betting on astronauts dying. The company said the contract was never about crew safety, only a hypothetical booster stage hardware failure. To me speak pretty one day, hardware failure after separation. But the headline did all the damage. Now, Parley Market tried a quick rename to Artemis 2 booster rupture and then pulled the market entirely, refunding traders citing confusion over the outcome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, this is a great idea. This bet on anything. When polymarket marketed itself by claiming it was legal sports betting, creating markets for things like military strikes and warfare, and allowed people to predict if the NASA Artemis 2 rocket would explode and kill everyone on board. That all seemed fine, okay, at least to Ethereum co founder Vitalik Buterin. But betting on the price of cryptocurrencies in five minute intervals, that's a step too far because that affects my bottom line. Yeah, he says they seem to be over converging to an Unhealthy product market fit, embracing short term cryptocurrency, price bets, sports betting and other similar things that have dopamine value but not any kind of long term fulfillment or societal information value, he wrote. Let me tell you something, Vitalik. Nothing you are involved in or care about has any societal value. I'm just going to go out on a limb. My guess is that teams feel motivated to capitulate to these things because they bring. I use big words is what I'm getting from Vitalik. I threw this into ChatGPT because they bring in large revenue during a bear market when people are desperate. An understandable motive, but one that leads to corpo slop, whatever the fuck that is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Corpo slop is something that AI Slop invented, I believe.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's pause real quick to linger on the fact that it is an understandable motive to want to extract money from desperate people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just like fucking crypto.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let that wash over you and realize that that's their fucking business plan. It's the business plan.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, greater fool theory.

[Brian Schulmeister]

In effect, he acknowledged that prediction markets basically require losers to operate. And he's not opposed to people losing money. There's nothing fundamentally morally wrong with taking money from people with dumb opinions. But there still is something fundamentally cursed about relying on this too much. It gives the platform the incentive to seek out traders with dumb opinions and create a public brand and community that encourages dumb opinions to get more people to come in. Exactly what Poly Market and Cal Sheet do that again, is the business model.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Is the business model. I want to go check and see what the, what the run rate is right now for us to attack Iran because I can, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find out from the insider traders, like when we're actually going to attack Iran. It's, it's, you know, it's coming soon. We're going to do it. So let's just figure out there like we got to check the pizza thing. Oh, we'll talk about the pizza thing later.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Talk about that one later. And Nevada is taking action against these prediction markets. The state's gambling regulators and attorney general sued Kalshee on Tuesday. They accused the company of bypassing Nevada law by operating a sports gambling market without proper licenses. In addition, they say they provide services to individuals under 21, which violates state law. Maybe they can get Roblox age check feature.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. There you go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, because you know, those are all working so well. Yeah, of course, of course Vegas is coming in and saying, hang on a second, this is our gig. But unfortunately, this comes a day after the Trump administration claimed that only the federal government has the right to enforce the industry, which he just pulled out of a fucking hat somewhere because where's that written in any law? Of course the businesses are saying they're event contracts and they should be regulated as financial investments rather than gambling. Quick note here, then regulate. Because you're not being regulated as financial markets either. You're not being regulated at all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

At all.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The Trump administration, administration, of course, has conflicts of interest in this area. Not coincidentally, prediction markets are growing part of the Trump family business. Donald Trump Jr. Is a paid advisor to Kalsheep. He's also an investor in an unpaid advisor to polymarket. And in January he announced on social media that he would launch its own, his own prediction market platform. So, yeah, there's all that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, lovely. You know, you know, I'm not even going to go there. Never fucking mind. Never mind. Let's move on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what? All I have to say about any of that stuff is if, if the UK can arrest a prince, we can arrest a wannabe king.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There we go. There we go. Well, inside Jack Dorsey's block, the vibes are not immaculate, as they say. Who's I? I didn't even know I, I, I see ads for. It's not straight. What's the, what's the one that they use? What the fuck are you using? Stripe, Not Stripe. Stripe is the other one. What the fuck is Jack Dorsey's company called? Used to be called before he changed it to block.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can't remember.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Jesus. Next time I go get a coffee somewhere, I'll find it. After laying off hundreds of employees earlier this month with cuts that could hit up to 10% of staff, workers say morale is the worst it's been in years. Management is calling the firings performance based, not cost cutting, which isn't exactly landing too well. Employees are now required to send weekly updates to Dorsey, who feeds them into generative AI for summaries because his beard was just too busy to read them all. Dorsey has doubled down, saying some staff were phoning it in and that everyone needs to lean hard into AI or risk falling behind competitors.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Jack, you know what phoning it in is? It's when you feed all the feedback that you've asked for into AI. That's fucking phoning it in.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's phoning it in.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Get on the fucking ground with your goddamn employees. You're phoning it in, you fuck.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. No, because he fired all of his HR people probably, and just released them, replaced them with one bottom, one bot to fire them all, bot to rule them all. And it's stuffed in his beard somewhere. Oh, God. Remember the old NFT gold rush, Brian, back in the day?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, back when this tech news was just funny.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love this one. This is just a. This is a palate cleanser here, Brian. Justin Bieber dropped $1.3 million on a bored ape back in the day. You know, that was great. You know, good for you. Yeah. Guess what it's worth now?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Five bucks.

[Jason DeFilippo]

12 grand. 12 grand. You know, 12 grand if he can find somebody to buy it, which he's actually not doing because it would probably cost him more than 12 grand in his time to actually try and find somebody to buy the damn thing, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, look, he saved a lot of time by performing at the Grammys without putting on pants.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. He couldn't afford pants because he put them on his board. Ape.

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[Jason DeFilippo]

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domain that squarespace.com grumpy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Media Candy Brian I've been a fan of Bert Kreischer for many a year, until recently. The last couple of years, his standup has kind of gone downhill and I've just been like, you know, he's phoning it in. Maybe he should work at Jack Dorsey's company. IT Block Square. Square. That's it. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Nice callback.

[Brian Schulmeister]

There you go.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Speaking of, speaking of comedy, well, he has a six part actual show on Netflix called Free Bert Freebird. Yeah, I was, I was trepidatious, to say the least to watch it. And my roommate and I just finally, we had nothing else to watch. All the baking shows were, you know, weren't recording for a couple more days. You know, Tournament of Champions hasn't started yet. Every cooking show on the planet that we watch is not. Was out. So we watched Free Bird. After the first episode, we were in tears. We were laughing so hard. It is so funny. The whole series. It's six parts, about 24 minutes an episode. Watch it, you will love it. I'm telling you right now. It is great. Then Cat Williams has some new stand up, which is pretty funny because he addresses all of the crap that went down in the interview that, you know, that the, the interview that no one will ever forget if you are a Katt Williams fan. And oh my God, it's. It's. It's good, it's decent. I give it. I give it a solid B plus because his last couple standup specials were definitely Cs. So it's nice to have Kat back.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Just on shows that I've been keeping up with. Shrinking remains decent. The. That horrible first episode seems to have been an anomaly. The pit is fantastic. Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, I thought came back with a pretty good episode this last.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You liked last night?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it wasn't bad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It was me. Okay. It was okay. It was fine. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let's see, what did I do? I watched Shrek with the kid. He had never seen Shrek before. So we decided let's get into the Shrek averse, as it were.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm making waffles.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm making waffles. And you know what? I remember? Our memory of that movie is better than the movie actually is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, too bad.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I guarantee you there are some funny bits, but it is not as laugh out loud crazy funny as we remember it being.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, well, I mean, the waffles line is that, that and the cat, those are the only two things that you gotta remember. Antonio Banderas and Eddie Murphy made that movie as far as I'm concerned.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So there's. There's a. Well, actually, Antonio Banderas isn't even in the first one. There is no Puss in Boots.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's no Puss in Boots in the first one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, yeah, my memory definitely is failing me.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So yeah, there is the really funny bit and the one that like killed us. All of us. The whole family was just rolling on the. On the couch was John Lithgow and doing the. Do you know the Muffin Man? The Muffin Man, The Muffin Man. That was hilarious. My kid is really into Mark Rober. Well, he didn't know who Mark Rober was, but a bunch of.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I Don't know who Mark Rober is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He's an ex NASA guy that started a YouTube channel that. It's basically Mythbusters for YouTube. Like it's all science and let's blow shit up. But it's quite well done. Most of my kids friends are. You are on YouTube. We do not let our kid do YouTube. So it was very, very great to discover that. He basically has done a greatest hits series on Netflix. So he's got a bunch of different episodes. You do know Mark Rober because Mark Rober is the guy that does the Tesla video a long time ago where he drove it, he was testing it and with the lidar and everything. So that, that's him. So he does a lot of stuff like that. And he's got a. He's got a whole little show on Netflix right now. So I don't have to go into YouTub YouTube with the Kid. There's two seasons of 21, 10 to 21 minute episodes. They're all great. They're. They're a lot of fun. I, I have a lot of respect for this guy. He does a really good job. You know, it's showing my age because it's definitely not, it's not as sciency as I want it to be. It's definitely YouTube geared. Let's blow up, let's, let's have funny jokes, let's. All that quick cuts, all that sort of stuff. But of all the things my kid could be watching, I'm very happy with him and I think you'd enjoy it too, Jason. It's a lot of fun.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've seen it on the. It's come by the scroll. So maybe I'll check it out. Yeah. Because also this week, Beast Games had its penultimate episode on Amazon Prime Video and it was great, great cliffhanger. And tonight, actually as soon as possible, humanly possible, the Traders finale is happening. So I have to go see the Traders finale. These are important things for me, Brian. These are very important things. Traders this season has been incredible.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I see a lot of promo on the scroll for Traders because I'm going into. What is it? The Peacock app for the Olympics. We've been watching a lot of Olympics.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, no, there's lots of Traders from all around the world on Peacock. So the only reason I've got it

[Brian Schulmeister]

right now, Peacock is gone. As soon as the Olympics are done.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. As soon as this season of the Traders is over, it's done. But March 5th, I believe traders Ireland starts up. So I'll be Bittorreng that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I can't wait. Legacy of Monsters is coming back. Legacy of Monsters is coming back on Apple TV on February 27th. So a week from today.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I enjoyed that show. I'm happy about this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I enjoyed it, too. I thought that it was a little long in the middle in some parts, but having the father and son play the same part I thought was genius. So that was fun. And I thought it ended on a pretty good cliffhanger.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So I don't remember what it was, but yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they'll have an AI generated. 20 minute recap.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Can't wait.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Can't wait for that. I did see the movie. Good luck, have fun. Don't die this week.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah. The trailer looks amazing. I've been hearing a lot about it. And then he put it in the show notes. I watched the trailer. I love the trailer.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The movie is so fucking good. So good. Sam Rockwell is insanely good in this movie. I have not seen a movie this good since everything, everywhere, all at once. That movie was also incredible. And just out of left field, like crazy, like, what the hell's going on? Same thing. But this is AI based, so. AI phone culture, the whole nine yards. You as soon, as soon as you can. Brian.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It feels very 12 Monkeys.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So is very. I mean, teeny, tiny, little bit. Very teeny, tiny bit 12 monkeys. All right. But it's. Yeah, dude, it is so good. It is so good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I can't wait for it to come out on some sort of streaming because getting to getting to a theater with a kid and seeing an adult movie is next to impossible.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's this place, this land of Sweden you can travel to where. Where the movies fall from the trees magically.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And having watching the Olympics. So do the blondes, let me tell you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm sure. Remember our friend Thomas Benjamin Wilde, Esquire?

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

He did a fantastic song called I have no More Fucks to Give, which I linked in the show notes. He has a new song called Stop Using Generative AI. And it's very cute, very clever. That is also linked in the show notes. And I'm glad Thomas is back in the news with his new song. So I highly recommend checking those out.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, it's a great song. I was playing it with my wife around and she laughed and sent along to everybody at Universal Music, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God. Oh me, oh my. Do we want the arch to die?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because there's not that killed them quite

[Jason DeFilippo]

as quick as Generative AI. Oh, God. Okay. Was it the Team that just made all the deals with all the generative.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that team.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. Bittersweet apps and doodads. So, Brian, since I am in active bankruptcy court filings right now, I have decided to cut everything that I can that is a subscription based model because so everything. I could have a credit card in about 10 minutes. So I've been paying for Obsidian, which is the, you know, the super ding dong note taker, the, your. Your second brain as they call it. And it cost me five bucks a month for the sync feature on it to sync to all my devices. And it's okay. I find myself not using it very much because the Obsidian interface is fucking garbage. It's just one long list and every time you click on a note, it just opens in a tab and it's a pain in the ass to use. It's fine. It keeps everything in markdown, which is kind of nice. But I just wanted to go back to Apple Notes because Apple Notes has been getting so much better every iteration it gets so much better.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's such a solid app. I use it so many times for so many different use case scenarios. Unlike OpenClaw, I actually use Notes for a lot of things.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It has a use and now the note taking. Like on my iPad, I just open a new note and I can just draw graphics super easy. I don't have to like do, you know, regions or zoom or anything like that. I just open it up, draw a thing and save it and it's done. And that was the game changer for me that I can just take my iPad with my Apple pencil and just make a note. I'm like, okay, we're done, we're done. But taking a folder full of folders full of folders of markdown files from Obsidian and importing them into Apple Notes sucked. It did not work. It absolutely did not work. None of the formatting worked. It was just a nightmare. But so I found a little $14 piece of shareware called Obsidian to notes best 14 bucks. I spent less than three months worth of sync and it just imported everything. Kept my folder structure, kept the formatting and it took about. I had about 500 or 600 notes that I needed to move over and it did it in about 15 minutes because it does. It just note by note by note and it does. It does a very good job. So I highly recommend it. If you're thinking of ditching Obsidian. Speaking of other things, I'm ditching Cursor. You know, the vibe coding. You know, I remember Poster child, this

[Brian Schulmeister]

was A big deal. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So if you go to JSON, FYI, that entire thing was vibe coded in cursor with Claude code integration. Back when I paid for Claude code, which I don't pay for anymore either. Anymore. Because yeah, like I refer to the last five minutes. So I canceled the 20amonth cursor subscription. And here's the funny thing, I canceled that before the bankruptcy thing started because they came up with this new model that they're using for like their, their basic free stuff or not free, the 20, you know, the basic. Without having to put in a side loaded one. I needed it to change. I. Because in the top of Jason, FYI, there's like the podcasts I'm working on. There used to be six, now there's three. Since all my clients decided that they don't need podcasts anymore or went with somebody else, I just like move this from current to past. It had so much trouble doing just that one simple task and it was making shit up along the way. It's like, oh, well, I see. Since you're moving it from current to past, that means that I'm just going to set the. Where it said present, I'm going to set it to the current date, the year of 2025. So yeah, fuck you, cursor. You're gone.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Bye.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I just installed Visual Studio code, which is free, and I can just write code when I need to write code.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Because I'm just telling you, right, the fucking vibe coding thing, it's. It is getting, everybody says it's getting better and better and better. It gets you 94% of the way there. It says 6%. That last 6% is pretty fucking crucial because I don't know if you know,

[Brian Schulmeister]

that's the brand that makes it work.

[Jason DeFilippo]

With software, you kind of need to be a hundred percent before it will compile, run, you know, do all the shit that software is supposed to do. 96% is not 100.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I guess it's just not going to do it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep, not going to do it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, according to Bloomberg, sources within Apple say the company is indeed working on an AI pendant that you can pin to your shirt or wear as a necklace. Conveniently forgetting about the fact that they don't have decent AI at all yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, it's coming. They got Gemini. Now they're building with Gemini.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So it sounds a lot like the pin formerly made by Humane. Of course, it reportedly has a camera for computer vision, a microphone so it can be operated by Siri, and potentially a speaker so that you could have a back and forth rapport with Siri as well. Although that may not be happening. There's one thing that's different, of course, and that's the fact that it won't have the guts inside of itself. It will rely heavily on an iPhone for processing, which includes a chip that is closer in computing power to AirPods than an Apple Watch. So that's the route that they're going to take, which makes a lot of sense. And if you need or want one of those things, again, nobody can really give me a good use case for it, but whatever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Brian, I want to point something out to you. See this?

[Brian Schulmeister]

This right here does all the sum stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Same shit. My Apple Watch is exactly the same shit. It talks to my iPhone when I need it to. I can talk to Siri on my, on my watch. I can have it do all the same shit. Why would I buy something with cameras? It's basically, look, man, I've got a birth control personality already. I don't need to hang something around my neck that says, hey, chicks, don't fucking talk to me anymore. Okay? So, yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Have you tried telling him you have an eight foot cock?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, but that's next on my list. It's supervised. Would you. I need a supervisor for my eight foot. Would you like the job?

[Brian Schulmeister]

They are also apparently on smart glasses, of course. These will have two cameras, one for computer vision and another for pictures and videos. They'll reportedly have speakers and microphones allowing wearers to make calls, play music, and snap pics and videos by using Siri. Both the smart glasses and the AI pin are tenuous, to be clear. Obviously I think the pen. The pin is dumb. If you got the glasses, you don't need the pin. And I don't think anybody wants a pin anyways. We have seen that that does not work.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So we'll see.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I personally don't know why Apple's going down either road. I don't think that they need to do either. And if they're going to do glasses, they've got to do. They've got to Apple it. It's got to knock it out of the park. It's got to be something irresistible. That won't make Jason even less chance of getting lighted.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. I don't need any more roadblocks. Please, please, no more roadblocks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He needs a paver.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I do. But I, you know, if I would love a pair of glasses with a decent display in them, that's all I care about. I want to be able to, you know, See things. If I ask something like, show me some displays, but I don't need another camera. And they're talking about cameras and AirPods now. No, I don't want those.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Don't want that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, no, I want less technology. I want less intrusive technology in my life, please.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I want things that have use cases that I'm actually going to use and need. That's all. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And some people have been asking. This has been making the news. Apple podcasts in the next version of iOS 26.4 is going to have more video. So we could have this video on Apple Podcasts. Well, here's two problems here. A, almost none of our audience listens, listens on Apple Podcasts or watches on Apple Podcast. Very small subset of our audience. Most people listen to the show on Overcast. And if you watch it, we've got it on YouTube now. And you know, I saw this. Somebody posted this to our Discord channel. I think it was. I just. My $160 investment in four months in time has. Has almost garnered me the first vegetable from my garden that cost 25 cents. That's. That's how I feel about us doing video and YouTube right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It seems to be the case. Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I bust my ass to make this video up for YouTube and it is not really doing anything for us except making me grow old faster. So when it comes to Apple podcasts and video, it gets worse. It gets much worse because you have to host the video yourself. With Apple podcasts, and they're only. They only have four different podcast providers or hosting providers out of the gate. One of them is Art 19, which is where we host our audio podcast. Now the ad market has dried up so much. We used to get paid to host our podcast on Art 19. This last month, we had to pay Art 19 to host our podcast just for the audio version, which is the lowest bandwidth that I can actually put out there to at least make the show sound somewhat decent. If you want the high def version, go to patreon. 3 bucks a month patreon.com gog now, the video version, we'd have to pay for the bandwidth by ourselves for that. And anybody that has an Apple podcast video show is going to have to pay for that themselves, which means big corporations, big shows. Those guys are going to be the ones that do the video, which means they're going to have another leg up on the independent podcaster. Great. Just. Just more fun for us. So you Apple. Sorry.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I agree.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, wait, the next. The next story is mine. I don't get to huff and puff anymore. Here we go. And there's a new bit of Internet shorthand making the round, which is aidr, short for AI didn't read. That's perfect.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep, makes sense.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep. I do enough tldr I don't need. Aidr is just fine for me. There's also another new term that's making the rounds. This is a for the low grade panic that a lot of workers are feeling about AI eating their jobs, even though actual job losses mostly haven't happened yet and are bullshit press releases which we've covered on the show for a couple months now. Well, researchers are calling it AI replacement dysfunction or aired erd, which is the noise you make when you get the pink slip. They hand you the pink slip and you go err. So yeah, what was the sound the

[Brian Schulmeister]

guy made on Six Feet under when he died? Oh, narm, Narm.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh God. Do you remember Hot Fuzz? The guy from Hot Fuzz? Yarp, Yarp aired nar.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yorp.

[Jason DeFilippo]

At the library.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I finished a book, Jason. It's called Cleave the Sparrow by Jonathan Katz. It is Jonathan Katz first book. This is the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre book I think I've ever read in my life. I don't know how I found it. I don't know how it ended up in my Kindle. I don't remember any of it. It is part dystopia, part magical realism, part real time, thinly veiled Elon Musk, Donald Trump, part weird, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is weird.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I've gotta say, if you, if you rate your books by still thinking about it days after finishing it, have not been able to pick up another book because I just stop and start thinking about whatever the fuck it was that I just read. This is one of those books. And I don't know if I liked it or not. Couldn't tell you that. But I'm still thinking about

[Jason DeFilippo]

got into your Kindle cue. Because I read it and reviewed it on the show and I had the same exact reaction to that book.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's how I got in my Kindle cue. Then I don't remember you even talking about it, man. It's weird.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It leaves an impression. It absolutely leaves an impression. And I emailed Jonathan after I read the book and I'm like, this is the craziest fucking book I've ever read. He's like, why thank you. Here are a couple other books that you might want to read that I used for my, that I based my Book on. And I'm like, okay. And I started reading those. I'm like, not as good as your book.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So, yeah, I think if you're listening, you should read this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's a. I fucking loved it. It is a head twister. It is a completely weird and awesome book. I really loved it. I really loved it. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay. Mystery. At least the mystery solved of where I found it from and how I got in there. Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. It was a random Kindle Unlimited recommendation for me. That's how I got it. So. Now speaking of books that I didn't love, the Regicide Report, Laundry Book Files or laundry files, book 14 by Charlie Strauss. Could have done without it. Could have done without it. Could have done. I actually could have done without the laundry files after Bob left.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I have. Yeah, that's where I took my exit. I read the first post Bob book. Did not care for it. Did not follow up after that. Now I do have to ask, is there a Bob wrap up in this?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, there is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is it worth reading the last chapter?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It was, it was. It was supremely dissatisfying. It was a supremely dissatisfying ending. It's an understandable ending, but it was supremely dissatisfying, I think so. I was bummed. I was really bummed. And it, it was one of those things where like his, his latest books, the last, the last run of this whole new regime books, it is chaos, chaos, chaos, story, story, story. And then three minutes of just unbridled wrap up.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

And it's just like, man, that was quick. It's like it, it, it. They've. They've been like that recently. And it's. I just don't like the style. I mean, that's, it's kind of become his, his trademark style. Just the way that, you know, it's just this slow burn of all of this buildup and then done. It's like it kind of sucked.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Kind of sucked. Well, I'll be skipping it then.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, absolutely. There's no reason for you to go back and try and get caught up with that because they're, they're, you know, there are hints to everything that happened to all of the other stuff that you won't understand if you haven't read the other books, which makes it pointless. So if you haven't been keeping up, don't worry about it. I did get a new book to cleanse the palette. Normally weird and weirdly normal. My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin in Ince. Now Robin Ince is the co host of the Infinite Monkey Cage with co host physicist Brian Cox. And I like Brian Cox. Cox, yeah. Brian eight Foot Cox and I. The best video that Brian Cox did was he did the feather in the bowling ball experiment in a giant vacuum, like a giant vacuum chamber. If you've never seen that, go check it out. It's pretty awesome. But this is his co host and I think this was an Audible recommendation because I listened to it and since he's. He's an entertainer, he's been in Entertainment for 30 years. It's a fantastic listen because he knows how to speak, unlike most people who read their own audiobooks on Audible. By the way, 1.5x on Audible gets you past any horrible reader. So there's a pro tip on that. This is a fantastic book if you're neurodivergent in any way, shape or form, because it will explain to you a lot of things that you probably forgot about or didn't know you had or why you had them. Yeah. If you're just weird, it's a great book. It's definitely a great book. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. I. I might actually read it twice. Although now I might go back and read Cleave the Sparrow again because now you got me kind of. Kind of hyped up about that one again. That was such a good book.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's something. It's something.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The Dark side with day. Welcome back to the Dark side with Dave with podcast super host Dave Bittner. How is it. How's the weather out there? Is it freezing? It's freezing here.

[Dave Bittner]

It's.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's cold.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay. It's all relative, I'm sure. What is it, a frigid 50 degrees where you are today?

[Jason DeFilippo]

In my room. In my room it's 55, so outside it's probably 60, but actually, no, this morning it was 41 degrees when I walked the dog.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But with this, I long for those temperatures.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. What pisses me off, though, is that it's so cold in here that I have to wear a hoodie so nobody can see my awesome hacker shirt. Because this is an awesome hacker's shirt. But I have to cover it up because I'm freezing. Yeah, it's the.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's the. It's the glass. It's the. It's the apple glasses you have to worry about, Jason, that's stopping you from getting laid. It's definitely you, Brian. It's definitely the glasses or the potential pin that is. That is the problem.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Shut up, Mr. Eight Foot. Well, you come in late.

[Dave Bittner]

I've walked in on the middle of something that perhaps I really don't want to know more about. It's 48 degrees here today, and it is dreary and rainy, but we'll take it because it's washing away all of the dirty, yucky, nasty piles of snow.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Same here. We have the exact same weather, Dave. Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

That's what we're in for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So it was raining all week, so I finally got to watch the Muppet show, and I have to say, you guys were right. It was awesome.

[Dave Bittner]

Thank goodness. Yeah, it really was.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Dan would have to quit the show. If I hated them up into the new bubble, he'd be like, I'm out.

[Dave Bittner]

We'll quit the segment anyway. But, yeah, I'm wondering what's taking them so long to announce more. Everything I've seen has been positive on the numbers, and there's certainly rumors that they're going to make more, but no announcement yet, so who knows? But here's hoping.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Had just the right amount of Seth Rogen. You know, the Maya Rudolph bit was actually kind of funny, so that was good. And Sabrina Carpenter was fantastic.

[Brian Schulmeister]

She was perfect for it. Yeah, I agree. So absolutely fantastic. It might be a bit, because we do have the new CEO at Disney, so I'm sure that these decisions need to be made. And he probably doesn't even have his new business cards yet, you know, so you gotta wait. Gotta wait for these things. One thing that the Muppet show did was it has fired a love of the Muppets into my child's heart, which I'm very pleased about. He never really got into them before. Since then, we watched one of the latest movies, Muppets Most Wanted, which was pretty good. And he's been starting to stream Muppets now, which I think we all agreed when it came out was fine. Not great. Right?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fine. But he's really enjoying it. He's laughing hysterically on the couch. So I'm proud to say that my kid is a Muppet fan now, so that's great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right.

[Dave Bittner]

That's wonderful. It is. No doubt. Source of my subversive sense of humor came from the Muppets and Sesame Street. So it's wonderful to hear it's coming to the next generation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. And we finally got a real official trailer for the Mandalorian and Grogu. Not the Budweiser ripoff that we got during the super bowl, which, you know, looks good. We'll see. Yeah. Looks good.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah. I'm pleased. It looks appropriately cinematic. Doesn't just look like a TV show. So that's great. Although the line between those two things is getting skinnier and skinnier. But I'll be there opening weekend with my son, my wife, and we'll see it on the biggest theater we can and hope for the best.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, yeah, sadly, I will have to go to the theater, too, to see that, because I'm definitely in. It. Looks great. I can't wait. I cannot wait. It hit all the right notes for me. Enough action and tongue in cheek and. Yeah, I can't wait. Absolutely.

[Dave Bittner]

One thing I noted, I thought it was interesting that the trailer plays off of some of the original Star wars soundtrack motifs, which the Mandalorian TV show conspicuously did not do.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Different licensing agreements, maybe.

[Dave Bittner]

Wow. It could be.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's a big movie. You got to hit those notes. You got to hit that nostalgia. You got a hammer home. This is Star Wars.

[Dave Bittner]

I hope Amy Sedaris is back in it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I do love her.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah, yeah, she's back.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's a good chance to go back and watch all the old episodes to get caught up, because that's one of the. I think that's when you could actually watch again, and it's been long enough where you won't even remember that much.

[Dave Bittner]

True.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, true. We old.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We old.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Speaking of old, Toy Story 5 trailer dropped. Did you guys get a chance to check it out?

[Dave Bittner]

Yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I've seen it about 900 times, thanks

[Dave Bittner]

to my kid hitting all the buttons. Yeah, again, I'll be there opening weekend just so that I can feel something.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Dave Bittner]

I'm along for this ride. I saw someone joke earlier this week that because one of the gags in the trailer is that Woody is so old, he has a bald spot. And they said if you saw the original Toy Story in the theaters, chances are you, too, have a bald spot. And this is personal for me because.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, me too.

[Dave Bittner]

It's true. So hit a little hard, but I will be there, and I will let go and hopefully have all the feels and just have a couple hours away from the rest of the world.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know it's not a particularly controversial opinion. A lot of people have kind of said the same thing. I always felt that Toy Story could have ended at the end of Toy Story 3. That was a perfect ending to the series. Especially now, as a parent, I cannot watch it without the room getting misty and my going like this. But since we've continued on for the ride, since we did not Stop there. I'm happy. I'm thrilled with the storyline. I'm really interested to see what they do with the digital toys versus the traditional toys. And, yeah, I'll be there opening day as well. Absolutely.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Speaking of the bald spot thing, it's so funny. I have to go to my recovery meeting on Wednesday mornings. I used to stop at this drugstore, or not drugstore, the gas station right next to the room. And I had to stop going there because the security camera set up is. You see your monitor? There's monitors right in front of you, but the camera is right over the back of your head. So you are confronted with your decrepit body aging just to buy a pack of mints. And I'm like, I did not sign up for this, sir.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If he was a smart marketer, he'd have a whole thing of Rogaine right there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. Seriously, I don't come in this.

[Dave Bittner]

I don't come here to be humiliated. Oh, where do you usually go? Yeah, I'm with you.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Those Muppets humor coming out there.

[Dave Bittner]

I'm with you. I have managed to create a haircut and style that looks the way I want it to look from straight on, and so I don't need to see it from behind. I'm okay being blissfully ignorant about that and pretending like it is different than it actually is.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Us. And Kevin Smith, he does the same thing. He looks like he has normal hair, but he turns a little bit off camera. Oh, my God. There ain't nothing left. Ain't nothing up there.

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Baseball hats in my future.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Dave Bittner]

Not ashamed to say it. I'm. You know, vanity is a real thing. And so also denial of the aging process. And I'm experiencing all of those.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Never underestimate the power of denial.

[Dave Bittner]

That's right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Layma wrote in. You all mentioned that there used to be a theory about increased pizza deliveries being an indicator of global happenings. They've revived that for today's world and be happy to hear that it is now integrated with polymarket.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, great.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Discussing earlier, but we do have the Pentagon pizza index at pizzaint Watch. They may be a little off now scanning the DC area pizza places because the Venezuela stuff happened at Bar a Lago, so the pizzometer didn't really budge some decent feeds, though. So, yeah, it exists. There's a site for it and you can track it, which is great. And bet on it. Of course.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sorry, you're not betting. They're financial transactions.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, is that right? That's how Poly Market gets around at all.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's their bullshit line. Yes.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I'm gonna tell you right now. We were talking about how soon till we bomb Iran and right now three of the pizza joints have spiked. Right now we have major spikes going on from extreme pizza. We the pizza. Great fucking name.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And Papa John's to Lima's point, who wrote in what we might actually need is a McDonald's tracker near Mar a Lago. And I think that might be more.

[Dave Bittner]

Right. And the diaper delivery service.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, zing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know if either of you guys have 3D printers. I'm assuming probably plenty of our listeners do, so I'm just going to throw that out there. It is all the rage at my kid's school right now. His cousin has one, one of his best friends has one. So if anybody has a recommendation for an entry level 3D printer for a kid that won't necessarily break my bank or make me go nuts, I mean, I'm cautiously kind of interested in playing around with one myself. The model that both of my kids friends have is the Bambu lab A1 which has link in the show notes. I don't, I know nothing about this stuff so I'm going to have to start researching a little bit. But you know, anybody let me know.

[Dave Bittner]

I have. I have been so intentional about not buying a 3D printer and not going down that rabbit hole because I don't need to. And I have enough other things. I have the ham radio thing. I have, you know, I've spun back up my solar panel project. So I've been really deliberate about just not learning about 3D printers and not following them for a while here in the office. One of the other startups here had three industrial 3D printers that were the size of refrigerators.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ooh, fun.

[Dave Bittner]

They were just. Yeah, they were just spitting stuff out of. And that was, you know, the temptation for me was to come in at off hours and print out my stormtrooper.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Stormtrooper, yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

But I never did. So. Yeah, good luck. I'm curious to know what you find out, but there's been no call for it from my son who's older, he's 19, so it's a curiosity. I think it's interesting how many, when I go to things like craft shows, how many booths there are now with people who have just been 3D printing things. And some of them are really cool. And this is the normal stuff you'd expect like little dragons and octopus and things like that. But Also Millennium Falcons and all that stuff. And I feel as though 3D printing has kind of followed a similar path that inkjet printing did. Remember, the first inkjet printers were just about good enough. They were only black and white, and they weren't really that great. And they were slow, and then they got faster, and then they could do color, and all that happened. And I feel like 3D printers have followed a similar sort of thing where now they have colors and. And they're way more precise than they used to, and they screw up a lot less than they used to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Kind of like AI screws up a lot less now. It's funny here. There's a quick juxtaposition here as I'm looking at these show notes. I used to work with a guy named Chris Perillo, and every now and again I check in on him, and I saw a feed from him where he was at his day job, which was sitting there monitoring a bunch of industrial 3D printers to make a living. So now I see that there's another link from going from 3D printing to Dave, you put in a link to perillo.com. this is very strange. I'm having weird deja vu's here. Huh?

[Dave Bittner]

Okay, well, this is a Star wars centric RSS feed that I thought, well, at least one of us might enjoy. So someone has collected all things Star wars in an RSS feed and themed it appropriately. So if that is your thing, you might enjoy this as a spacey sort of background.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Very nice.

[Dave Bittner]

And then, speaking of RSS feeds, this caught my eye. It's a RSS reader called Current, and they've come up with a different way of prioritizing news that I think is intriguing. And I'll read this. It says each article has a velocity, a measure of how quickly it ages. Breaking news burns bright for three hours. A daily article stays relevant for 18. An essay lingers for three days. An evergreen tutorial might sit in your river for a week. As items age, they dim. Eventually they're gone, carried downstream. You don't mark them as read. You don't file them. They simply pass. The way water passes under a bridge

[Brian Schulmeister]

as sand through the hourglass. Sometimes the days of our lives.

[Dave Bittner]

I find it. That's oddly compelling.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank God they didn't mention AI as part of their pitch.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, right, I'm sure under the hood, maybe something like that is going on. But there's something peaceful about this notion of news automatically aging out and moving along, not gumming up the works. That there's a reader that Just automatically disposes things based on time and importance and. And that sort of thing. So I thought it was interesting. So check it out.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, it's an interesting concept. I like it. For normal news readers, it would absolutely not be good for what we do here at the show. I could not do. I could not run my news gathering on something that timed out. I need to see when things happened and what the groupings are between all of the different sources that I follow to make sure that it is actually relevant. And then we can put it in the show notes and actually talk about it on the show. So. And, God, if I see any more news, I just. I can't take any more news.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll revisit this once we've revisited democracy.

[Dave Bittner]

I was just talking to a friend this morning who was saying, I think something we've heard a lot of folks say lately, which is, I'm trying to stay away from the news or I'm trying to limit my access to the news. And Jason, to your point, I don't have that luxury.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

Which I think is kind of what you're saying as well. Like, I have to keep up with it. And so it's horrible. Find ways to deal with that, to have other ways to recharge my soul.

[Jason DeFilippo]

If you figure that out, let me know.

[Dave Bittner]

I will. Because the news is relentless. I put here a link in here to a YouTube video that someone forwarded along to me that said, this is horror in under two minutes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I hate you for putting this in there, Dave. I really do. I fucking hate it.

[Dave Bittner]

That was my reaction as well. I don't like horror as a genre generally. As I think I've said here multiple times, I have a hair trigger startle reflex. So, yeah, I was going through the first thing I was afraid of with this two minute video was, where's the jump scare? Where's the jump scare? It's more of a psychological horror kind of thing. It's horrible and it's really disturbing.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, I can't wait to see it now. It sounds great. It's really disturbing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It ruined a good hour. Plus for me, he says two minutes. It lingers.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It lingers, okay.

[Dave Bittner]

Believe me. Yeah, it lingers. It's remarkably successful.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Dave Bittner]

People who made this made a horror story in under two minutes that sticks with you and leaves you thinking about it. So hats off to them, but it's

[Brian Schulmeister]

just not my favorite genre. It's as effective as what was the six word horror story for sale? Baby shoes. Never used.

[Dave Bittner]

Oh, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Well. And Then finally, to kind of kick things up a notch, I came across this YouTube account of this gentleman who I believe is German, which totally tracks. And he does impeccable covers of 80s synth music. Impeccable covers. Like, they sound like the originals. Actually, one of my co workers sent this over because we used the theme from Knight Rider in a recent Cyberwire episode because there was a story about automated cars and things.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Copyright theft.

[Dave Bittner]

Well, and we. Yeah, yeah, we'll get a copyright strike. But we came across this guy's cover of the Knight Rider theme, which, again, impeccable. But the one that really made me smile was he does a cover of the Top Gun opening theme. The title sequence from the movie. You know, when the. When they're prepping the jets to take off the Harold Faltima. Exactly. But in the movie.

[Jason DeFilippo]

How do I remember that?

[Dave Bittner]

Yeah, the version in the movie is much better than the version on the album, on the soundtrack album, because the version on the soundtrack album pretty much immediately goes into the guitar solo and just. It's called the Top Gun anthem, I believe. But the version on the movie just stays with the kind of subtle synths while they're doing stuff on the deck of the aircraft carrier. And that's what this cover is. It's that more subtle, dreamy kind of music. And it's a thing that I wish was on the soundtrack. I don't know about you guys, but I often find myself frustrated when the soundtrack differs from the film in a significant way.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Absolutely.

[Dave Bittner]

And this is one of those occasions of that where what I really wanted on the soundtrack was the version that this guy makes in this cover, which to me is way better than what's actually on the soundtrack album. So check it out. Enjoy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I will.

[Dave Bittner]

Let me know what you think.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, Dave, this is not. This is at least the third, maybe the fourth YouTube channel that you posted that involves since. And. And older synths and things of that nature. And I have to say, like, we. You've got your ham radio and you've got your stuff, and I. My child is still young enough that I do not have the luxury of having weird hobbies and things to do that I just don't have that sort of time yet. My hobby is now going to be learning about 3D printers because my kid wants it to be his hobby. That's the stage I'm at right now. I can see once. Once my child has. Has gotten a bit older and I have that sort of time and money to do my own hobby again. I'm one Hundred going to be like collecting weird old synths. That is absolutely what I'm going to do. Because every time I see these channels, it's not the music. I'm like, oh, my God, what's he using? Oh, look at that. Oh, I want one of those.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, yes.

[Dave Bittner]

Again, I. That is another one I've been avoiding. Same with 3D printers, because I could totally go down that path. In fact, I was trading some messages with our audio editors and we were talking about, do you guys remember the Porta Studio?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Oh, yeah, I had one.

[Dave Bittner]

Okay. All right, well, my comment to our editors was when I was in high school, a buddy of mine had a Porta Studio and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I couldn't afford one. But just the whole idea that you had had four whole channels to mix with cassette tape and you could make the tape run faster so it sounded better. And.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you could mix those four channels down to one.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Dave Bittner]

And then you got three more unlimited power and, you know, these days, unlimited tracks on your phone. So it's just different. But actually, one of the guys was telling me that evidently the preamps on the Porta Studio. Porta Studio, easy for me to say, are highly coveted by people who are into analog stuff. They have their own sound and people. And so they become collectible and therefore expensive.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Expensive, yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

These are the rabbit holes I intend to go down in my old age.

[Dave Bittner]

No, no shame. No shame there. But the other part of that story is that when we were, for me anyway, when I was, you know, high school, college age and the DX7 first came out, I think a lot of us thought, well, if I can save up enough Money for a DX7, I'll be on Hammer. Right. But what we didn't factor in is that you need. You needed a multi track recorder, you needed external reverb, you needed talent compressor. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The talent was assumed, but yeah, just all the support stuff that you would have needed, which again, is baked into all the tools now just. They're just part of it. So, you know, what a great time to be a creative kid who wants to make music.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Music, yeah. Although I do find it overwhelming. That's the other side of it. When you have unlimited options, you sit there like, constraints are good.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Constraints are good.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Constraints are good. And that's, to my mind, that's why music was so much better back then. But that's also just being old.

[Dave Bittner]

I agree.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I agree.

[Dave Bittner]

All right, well, I feel the need, the need for speed. So I'm going to run along

[Brian Schulmeister]

on that highway to the danger zone.

[Dave Bittner]

There you go. We'll see you next time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

See ya. Over at Patreon, we've got no new subscribers. Boo. But Alistair's are up their pledge. So thank you very much. And we'd also like to say thank you to Dan Brody, Mark Taylor, Mike, Steve, Chris Conejo, His Enormity, the Marquis of Chipping Sodbury and Jacks of Diamonds. Thanks everybody.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you so much. Over at PayPal we have donations from Arcadio, Andrew, Linda, Britt, Sloan, Tom, Nathaniel and Mike, who said I just sent you guys 100 bucks through PayPal. I've been meaning to send you something for a long time though. I'm a huge procrastinator. I really enjoyed your information about Star wars in the last episode. So this time I did forget to finally send you something. Love the show. Thank you all.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you so much everybody. And over at the tip jar we've got Theodore, Sean and alden with the 20 bucks. So thank you all so much. And if you'd like to get in on the, on the fun of keeping this show on the air, which I know you do, just head over to gog show donate for all of the different ways to donate or you can go to patreon.com gog get the show a little bit early ad free and in high definition, we've actually got YouTube memberships now if you want to help us out there, there's. You didn't get nothing extra. You just help us out a lot like, you know, keeping the show going. So we appreciate it very much and we love you for it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you. We have a new 5 star review. Weekly updates of topics us geeks like entertaining content with the right level of SN from experienced geeks. They know how to deliver it because they lived it or at least rtfm. Yes, those two are a rarity of these current times and actually are patrons of printed word media.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, we are. So thank you very much. Unnamed reviewer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Reviewer.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So we lost a few people this week. We lost the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Now I put the link in here. If you've never seen Jesse Jackson reading Green eggs and ham, you have to. You absolutely must. It is a palate cleanser for these horrible times we live in. You do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them.

[Dave Bittner]

Sam.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I am. I could not, would not own a boat. I will not, will not with a goat.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's, it's wonderful.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is absolutely wonderful. Yes. And we lost Robert Duvall, who I was never a huge fan of because when I was young I was made to watch the Great Santini and that is a really shitty movie for a kid to watch. So it kind of soured me on him. I I rec I, I, I respect the talent, but yeah, he had a good run. He had a very good run.

[Brian Schulmeister]

95.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's a very good run.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We should all be so lucky indeed. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And I'm Jason Filippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 734. 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 and we'll love you for it. All right. Or swing by GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedbacks? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG Show Contact and hey, don't forget to leave a five star review at GOG Show Review and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got GOG Merch Snag your grumpy gear now at shop GOG Show Stay grumpy.