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Brian Schulmeister
Foreign.
Jason DeFilippo
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.
Jason DeFilippo
I forgot where we were for a second, Brian. We're only six seconds in and I already had a brain fart.
Brian Schulmeister
That's all right.
Jason DeFilippo
So I. You're the big Dodgers fan and it's baseball season and I'm going to hear about it endlessly. But I just saw, I saw the score come through this week that the Dodgers played the Toronto Blue Jays, where you are ensconced up in can can. And it was 14 to 2.
Brian Schulmeister
It was.
Jason DeFilippo
That's like. That's like a basketball game score. That's not like a baseball game score. What the hell?
Brian Schulmeister
It's worth a reminder that the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers were the two teams playing in the World Series just a scant few months ago. So they were the other best team in baseball, which we beat. Maybe not very popular up here in Toronto. Yeah, yeah, they. They spanked them hard. They won the next game as well. Four to one. Something like that. And then because normally these teams never would have met during the normal season because they're in completely different leagues that. Et cetera, et cetera. But the rules.
Jason DeFilippo
One's in a different country, I'd like
Brian Schulmeister
to point out one is it in a different country. But they changed the way they do things a couple seasons back. So every team plays every other team at least once throughout the season and they switch years. So next year the Blue Jays will play the Dodgers in la. So when they do come here, since I've been living here, we've made a point of trying to go. So the third game was Wednesday, I believe, and it was a. It was an afternoon game as opposed to the night games, which run a little late for me to take the kids. So we pulled the kid out of school a bit early, said they had a dentist appointment and went off to parents and went off to the. What I call the Dodger game. Everybody else here calls the Blue Jays game. And unfortunately the Blue Jays actually did win that one. So it sucked for me and everybody else was pretty happy. So.
Jason DeFilippo
So okay, okay.
Brian Schulmeister
It was a good time. It's a good time. I do love my baseball. Anyways, we do have a bit of follow up. Ireland is testing out a digital wallet that will conduct age verification for social media users. Again, we've been talking about this every show now and the question is, how do we do age verification. So they are trialing what they're calling the government digital wallet, which will include a way to verify users age to access social media platforms. The government's Department of Public Expenditure Infrastructure, Public service reform and digitalization. That's a. That's a running out of room on that business card.
Jason DeFilippo
Yes. Seriously.
Brian Schulmeister
Said people could store digital versions of their birth certificates, driver's license, European health cards and more. They haven't laid out when this digital wallet will graduate beyond testing, but Ireland is required to create one by the end of 2026 as part of a European Union regulation. So I guess everybody in the EU will have to do it. So it looks that's the way they're going to go. Kind of makes sense to me.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. Get the government involved, then you. Then you just know. I mean, come on, it is 2026. You should be able to do this
Brian Schulmeister
shit by now, you'd think. And we do have even further follow up. Yet another country is doing a social media ban for kids. Greece will ban children under the age 15 from using social media starting next year. Prime Minister. Oh, boy. Karakios Mitsotakis. I think that's pretty good. Made the announcement in a video posted on TikTok, where the kids that are about to get banned are. I guess that makes sense. In which he referenced anxiety, sleep problems and addictive design features as the reason for the ban. They've been pretty proactive in their approach to tackling excessive screen time for children. Having already banned mobile phones in schools back in 2024. They. They will be requiring social media companies to uphold new restrictions by verifying the ages of their users. So Greece is kicking it over to the social media companies instead of setting up their own wallet, apparently. We'll see what happens there. Parents would also need to download an app called Kids Wallet, which is backed by the state that could be paired to their child's device and block access. The Prime Minister conceded that he would likely incur the wrath of his country's young children. But fuck them, they can't vote yet.
Jason DeFilippo
Exactly. You didn't say that. Exactly. Well, good for them. Good for them and good for Ireland.
Brian Schulmeister
I mean, the tide is going everywhere. Except for the good old usa.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, yeah, we just get Polymarket here now.
Brian Schulmeister
We'd rather have children all messed up.
Jason DeFilippo
We do. It makes for a much more complacent workforce.
Brian Schulmeister
Exactly. And a very uninformed voting population. Assuming we get to vote.
Jason DeFilippo
Assume that. That is a very big assumption, Brian.
Brian Schulmeister
We'll see
Jason DeFilippo
in the news. Oh, Brian. The fucking irony of this next one is just, it's just kicking me right in the nuts. Rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are teaming up. Yes. Actually cooperating to stop Chinese competitors from basically speed running their models via something that they call adversarial distillation. Now, basically what they're worried about is these Chinese companies coming in and taking away all of their protected IP from their models that they spent all the money training up on our data. Right, right. So they're worried that somebody's going to steal what they have already stolen.
Brian Schulmeister
I would love the Chinese companies to just go ahead and say, hey, free use.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, they are good. A lot of them. Good. Yeah. A lot of these companies are doing like Deep Seek, you know, those are open models. A lot of these Chinese companies are releasing the models, which is great.
Brian Schulmeister
We had to say when I was a kid, turnabout is fair play.
Jason DeFilippo
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you remember when Deep Seek first came out. Like Google lost gazillions of dollars in market share because they're like, hey, we can do this on old hardware and we don't need all of those super duper, you know, GPUs that everybody else gets that we can't buy over here. So they did something that was called innovation. Yeah, they actually innov instead of just saying that we just need the biggest and baddest hardware from Nvidia. We can use the old ones and still make some great shit. But it is just fucking hilarious that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all getting butthurt because these other teams are coming in and just basically reverse engineering their models.
Brian Schulmeister
How dare you do the things we've been doing.
Jason DeFilippo
I know. God.
Brian Schulmeister
Not to us. We do it to you.
Jason DeFilippo
What else we got, Brian?
Brian Schulmeister
Well, we've been talking a lot about these prediction markets, Poly Market, and we haven't even mentioned Kalshi for a while because Poly Market's been the one mostly in the news, but they made the news this week. The 3rd U.S. circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled on Monday that New Jersey has no authority to regulate Kalshi's prediction market, allowing people to bet on the outcome of sports events. Except we know it's not just sports events that power everything. Yeah, the power rests with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The panel ruled 2 to 1. And the commodity Futures Trading Commission is headed by President Donald Trump employee Michael Selig, who vocally and actively supports prediction markets like Halshi and Polymarket, calling them except exciting products.
Jason DeFilippo
Oh yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
It's worth noting here that Donald Trump Jr. Is a paid advisor to Kalshi and an unpaid adviser to polymarket. And True Social, which is run by the Trump media and technology groups, is set to start a prediction market of its own. So their own person who's in charge of their own commission that they've decided is in charge of regulating this says, hey, we don't need to regulate this. See how that works?
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, we, we, we. We have said since day one that the grift is going to be happening in plain sight, and it is absolutely happening right in front of our very eyes. We should bet on it on polymarket.
Brian Schulmeister
Actually, we really should. The one, as I mentioned, it was 2 to 1 in favor of prediction markets and New Jersey not being able to basically block them. The dissenting opinion came from U.S. circuit Judge Jane Richards Roth. Part of our thin black line. Mostly women judges.
Jason DeFilippo
Yep.
Brian Schulmeister
Saying that the Kalshee's offerings were virtually indistinguishable from the betting products available on online sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel. So, yep, here we go. The New Jersey Attorney General has asked the Third Circuit to rehear the case. Good luck with that.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, Not. Not for another two and a half years. Whatever. Six and a half. You know, heat deaths of the universe at this point is what it feels like. But we'll get there. We'll get there eventually, Brian.
Brian Schulmeister
Maybe.
Jason DeFilippo
Maybe. Now, this new. This next story is. Is actually really interesting. The FBI was able to recover deleted signal messages from an iPhone by extracting data stored in the device's notification database. So in a recent case, investigators attached or assessed cached notification content, which can include message previews if that setting is enabled, even after the signal app had been removed from the device.
Brian Schulmeister
Oopsies.
Jason DeFilippo
Now only income. What was that?
Brian Schulmeister
I said that's an oopsies. It sounds like to me, it sounds like some bad programming on Apple's part that, like, if you remove the. If you remove the app, it should go through those sorts of things and pull out notifications and all the things that are stored. It should take everything from the app off.
Jason DeFilippo
I guarantee you right now that there are some coders at Apple who are tasked with that exact issue because, yeah, the housekeeping should have taken care of this. You know, when the app ID is deleted from the phone, you should go through that and find anything with that app id, you know, notification and scrub it.
Brian Schulmeister
And let's stick a little pin on the concept of somewhat sloppy Apple programming these days, because we're going to return to that now. Apps and doodads.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay. Okay. So only the incoming messages were the ones that were covered because you know, you can set that to say show on lock screen. Show preview on lock screen. So this is the user being stupid to begin with. You don't do that. You should never do that. Because the whole point of having your phone locked is that people can't see what's going on on your phone, especially
Brian Schulmeister
if you've gone out of your way to get an app such as Signal, which is supposed to be encrypted and safe and private.
Jason DeFilippo
Whoopsie. Yeah, so that, yeah, this was, this was just a kind of a fuck up on, on all levels from Apple to the user. You know, Apple should have fixed this. The user should have known better. But yeah, yeah, they were, they were all convicted.
Brian Schulmeister
So I mean that's, I mean, well done on the FBI's part.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I got to give them that because I didn't think there's anybody home at the FBI anymore. You know, there's actually some people left at the FBI that know what the fuck they're doing, which is amaz. But yeah. Yeah, good job.
Brian Schulmeister
All right, we got some pig slip news. GoPro will cut and. Hold on a second, let's backtrack. I didn't even realize GoPro was still around. I thought that they had like pretty much kind of disappeared. And, and because I haven't heard go. GoPro had. GoPro had the second best marketing for a while, only second to Twitter, as I've always talked about, because Twitter is Twitter's actual like name. Q Score, as they used to say in the, in the biz was so much higher than actual usage. And the same thing with GoPro. Like you could not. GoPro almost became the Kleenex of cameras. For a long time everybody said GoPro. That hasn't happened for quite some time. In fact, a GoPro had completely disappeared from my mind until Artemis 2 when they basically mentioned that they had custom GoPro cameras on the outside of the damn ship. And I was like, GoPro. And then next thing you know, GoPro's in the news again. Anyways, they cut 23% of their global workforce by the end of this year as the action camera pioneer looks to reverse its fortunes in the competitive market. That's 145 employees that'll be laid off. With the restructuring process commencing in the second quarter of 2026. At the end of the first quarter, GoPro's total number of employees stood at 631. And it expects the costs to cut it between 11.5 million and $15 million, which is honoring service severance packages and healthcare benefits. Again, it costs them millions of dollars to get rid of all these people. Yet companies, when they fire people, stock price goes up, costs them money, but the stock price goes up.
Jason DeFilippo
To the moon. To the moon, literally. For GoPro. To the moon.
Brian Schulmeister
Despite their layoffs, GoPro is optimistic about 2026, banking on the fact that it was actually mentioned in back in the public consciousness thanks to a rocket ship. As far as I'm concerned. No, they've got an AI centric processor which will spearhead a new era of performance and innovation for the company. So they're going to launch a bunch of new cameras with AI plastered all over it.
Jason DeFilippo
It's a fucking camera. Keep your AI out of my camera.
Brian Schulmeister
AI's in everything, man. I'm gonna go buy a pack of AI gum.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, when your Juicy Fruit has a eula, you're in trouble.
Brian Schulmeister
Look, I'm a purist and I refuse to buy those products. I will only buy machine learning gum.
Jason DeFilippo
Exactly, exactly. It's interesting though because yeah, DJI and Insta360 have basically eaten their lunch. Insta360 came out of now. And I'm using one of their cameras right now. It's a beautiful camera. I've got their 360 camera and they do basically everything that GoPro does, but kind of better, you know, in DJI. DJI's cameras are okay, but you know, we know them for the drones, Ma. You know, mostly.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah. Cause I mean, you know, we even just recently had the Winter Olympics and that. You know, I remember the Olympics for a while. GoPro was plastered all over everything and they were using GoPro cameras, et cetera, et cetera. It was all drones. And they didn't. Obviously they didn't pay the money because nobody was mentioning brand names.
Jason DeFilippo
So those were custom. Yeah, well, those were custom built drones.
Brian Schulmeister
Okay, that makes sense.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. So I saw the write up for the guy who, the guy who actually piloted those drones. Those are very custom built drones. And yeah, there was no. And. And I don't think they can. Well, the, the Olympics are. Where were they this year? Italy. I can't even remember. I didn't, I didn't even watch. Except for when. What's her name? Broker leg. But because dji, you know, has had problems here in the States.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, I was in Italy. So they should have been fine theoretically.
Jason DeFilippo
But yeah, those, those were all custom and I got I gotta say I've had GoPro cameras and I found them to be absolutely lackluster. The, the one place that I, that you can still see that they're in use every week. Guys, grocery games, they got them, they got them taped to the, the grocery carts. That's it. So if they can, they can get Guy Fieri on board, maybe they'll, they'll make that comeback. So.
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Jason DeFilippo
This is an interesting one. OpenAI is backing an Illinois bill that would limit when AI companies can be held liable even in worst case scenarios like MASH casualties or billion dollar damages. The proposal, SB 3444 would shield so called Frontier AI developers as long as they didn't act intentionally or recklessly and published safety and transparency reports. Well, I don't, I haven't seen many safety and transparency reports from OpenAI and they have absolutely acted intentionally and recklessly with their sycophantic fucking AI.
Brian Schulmeister
But this is, this is a stinking of. We're just a platform.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, this is exactly it. This is, you know, they're, they're trying to get ahead of it. They're trying to get ahead of it and they're just going to fight the regulation as much as they can until it's just so funny like let's be regulated. Sort of, sort of. You know, until it comes down to the, on the little. Yeah, yeah, just a little bit. But you know, but don't.
Brian Schulmeister
We're not going to take off anybody's clothes but if they kill themselves, that's on them.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, exactly.
Brian Schulmeister
We will make sure that you can't put your friend in a bikini. But fuck it, if they kill themselves,
Jason DeFilippo
who gives a shit or somebody else.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, you know, it's great. I love how they cherry pick the things that they're going to care about.
Jason DeFilippo
Totally cherry picking. So we'll see if, see if this goes through. Early polling in Illinois shows about 90% of respondents oppose giving AI companies a liability shield. So in Illinois, if you remember, they are the, the frontier of the facial recognition stuff. I got, I got a pretty decent sized check from Facebook because they actually used my, my, you know, they trained their facial recognition on my, my, you know, basically biophoto. Right. And you know, so good for Illinois. You know, you would think that they're, you know, just some country bumpkin. Midwest state.
Brian Schulmeister
Got Chicago.
Jason DeFilippo
It's got Chicago.
Brian Schulmeister
Second city, baby. Well, not anymore, but yeah, once had one.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. So I, I, yeah, this, they're going to slap the shit out of them. They're not going to let that go through good. I don't think.
Brian Schulmeister
And I just mentioned Artemis 2 and the GoPros, by the way. Artemis 2 is coming back today. They will be landing.
Jason DeFilippo
I can't wait.
Brian Schulmeister
It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to watch it. It's going to be just, just amazing. I've been nerding out over this the entire time. It's been fantastic. But I just mentioned Artemis 2 and their GoPros and of course that's not really the company that got the most mention out of this or the most mileage out of this. That would be first Nutella and the floating Nutella jar which was fantastic. And secondly Apple and their iPhones and I just put this article in the show notes. Artemis 2 astronaut puts all of our iPhone moon photos to shame. NASA astronaut Reid Weissman took a photo of the far side of the moon with an iPhone 17 Pro. And then they put that up on the screen and it is just beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Links in the show notes. If you haven't seen these photos. It's science, man. Science. I know the fucking world is shit right now, but boy did we need this. And boy have I loved all this.
Jason DeFilippo
Oh, every second, every second.
Brian Schulmeister
Every second has been a lifeline to not killing myself. Thanks to OpenAI.
Jason DeFilippo
My roommate's a boomer and she's just like, well, what's the big deal? We've already been to the moon. We've done this stuff before. I'm like, not since we've been alive, since Gen Xers, you know, so it's a, it's a big deal because it's like, it's hope. It's something also.
Brian Schulmeister
We're doing it again. We didn't do it for 50 years. We were giving. I, I just, I saw an article I didn't put in the show notes. I saw a map of all the private spacecraft and, and satellites that are around the earth. We gave it away to stupid companies and Elon, this is us. This is our government doing it for us, for science. And that's it. Not for Fucking profit. And that's a big deal.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, that is a big deal. And I love that, you know, they're trying to cut NASA's budget again and they. And they're basically everybody's pushing back, saying, fuck no. Yeah, you know, we love this stuff.
Brian Schulmeister
We want this stuff. This is what I want my money to go to Apps and do.
Jason DeFilippo
Dads.
Brian Schulmeister
This is from the. You have exactly one job file. Mercedes Benz recalls us some G Wagon EVs due to the risk of the wheels falling off. When you build a car, you have really one job.
Jason DeFilippo
Keep the wheels on.
Brian Schulmeister
Oh, they have issued a recall for Every Mercedes Benz G580 with EQ technology. With the 2025 model year. As first spotted by Inside EVs, the current wheel boats could allow a wheel to loosen or detach from the vehicle, potentially affecting 3,734 models that are on the road. The issue here was the wheel boats were not adapted to the increased vehicle mass and higher torque load associated with the electric variant. So they use the same chassis and all the stuff. Except EVs are a lot heavier.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
And they did not take that into account. So.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay, I think 3,700 out of those 3,734g wagons are in my neighborhood hood. They're fucking everywhere. And I hope the wheels fall off of these fucking things. I saw one the other day because I drive a Jeep, you know, and I'm surrounded by these assholes in G Wagons and somebody actually had a bumper sticker that said, enjoy your Jeep peasant on his G Wagon. Right. So I hope your fucking wheels fall off. That's what I'm saying.
Brian Schulmeister
They do say it's unlikely to occur in real world operating scenarios and they will fix it for free if you take it to the dealership.
Jason DeFilippo
So you get new nuts.
Brian Schulmeister
Take it heavier nuts. That's what you get. These nuts. That's what you get. If you're using an older Kindle, you're probably going to get screwed. Amazon has sent out emails to some of its users with a warning that it's discontinuing support for Kindle E Readers and Fire tablets released in 2012 or earlier. Yes, that is a long time ago, but yes, it has one job. You read a book with it. Why should it be discontinued?
Jason DeFilippo
It's so funny because the first Kindle that ever came out, the Kindle one, I bought it with the 3G subscription or whatever so you could get it over cellular, get your books over cellular. And I gave it to my mom and she had Been using it for another decade. They never discontinued any support for that thing, so it's amazing that they're finally doing it now. But. But yeah, it's an E Ink reader. Why would you discontinue support for that?
Brian Schulmeister
It doesn't really make any sense. You can still read books you've downloaded on the devices. You'll no longer be able to purchase, borrow or download new ones as of May 20th. In addition, if the device has an issue that can only be solved by a factory reset, you're fucked. It bricks it. Deregistering it will also render it unusable on Kindle Fire devices. Users won't be able to purchase or download content anymore, but other services will remain functional. This includes the very first Kindle, the Kindle 2, the Kindle DX, the Kindle keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and the first version of the Kindle Paperwhite. Engadget asked Amazon why it decided to cut off support for those models, much as we have, and they said those models have been supported for at least 14 years, some as long as 18 years. But technology has come a long way in that time. Not for an E Reader.
Jason DeFilippo
It's an E Ink tablet. What? What the flyin fuck?
Brian Schulmeister
What? What? So they said. Also, it only affects approximately 3% of its current users whom it's now urging to upgrade. It gave them a promo code for 20% off select Kindle devices as well as ebook credits if they purchase a new model by June 20th. Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements to screen quality, performance and accessibility. And you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle store, the company wrote. Sure, yeah, but the old one works fine.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, it fucking works. Why are you just making jokes? I think that everybody who gets these 3% of the current users that are going to get their device bricked should go find where Jeff Bezos is going to be and just throw them at him the next thing. Just like the tomatoes of our new society.
Brian Schulmeister
I mean, I get it's not a lot of users, and I get you might have to have some old code hanging out and some maybe delivery methods have changed and all that sort of stuff. So you've got some legacy code in the system to send a book to an older thing, but so what? They bought it. It's their product. It's not even that ancient. It's an E reader. It's not complicated. This is total bullshit. Screw you, Amazon.
Jason DeFilippo
100%. 100%.
Brian Schulmeister
And I got a new gadget Jason, I've been, as you know, my wife and I are kind of foodies. We love to cook. We, we basically take our knives that get sharpened at least once a year, which started to get a little bit pricey. My wife is very connected to popular culture. Her people.com and getting her gossip. That's her, that's her downtime. That's her brain breaks from when she's yelling at, at, you know, Spotify or whoever she has to yell at for the day. So at some point recently, Ina Garten talked about her knife sharp or she was cooking on one of her reels and Jennifer Garner posted something about how do you keep your knives so sharp? And then she responded to Jennifer Garner because celebrities only talk to each other and talked about some like $300 a knife sharpener that she has and uses at her house. That's amazing. And we looked at it and we went, wow, that thing is beautiful. But we don't need a $300 knife sharpener. How about the $80 one? And we tried out the Presto 08800 ever sharp electric knife sharpener two stage system silver black does exactly what it says on the tin. You know, this is going to basically recoup the cost in one year in terms of knife sharpening. And did a beautiful job. The knives are great. Slice through everything. Now it slices, it dices, it cuts through a fucking can. Jason. Just like the late night commercials.
Jason DeFilippo
It's so funny. I've heard that these are like, you know, like chef y. Chefs would never use these things because they kind of destroy the blade as they go. But if it's sharp, then sharp, I
Brian Schulmeister
guess I think it will destroy. I mean it definitely like this one will not do serrated edges that it will destroy that. And it does take off a little bit, obviously, but it's micro and you know, it's going to be decades before I've ruined the knives.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I should just get one of these. I've got. Our friend Brian Blondell loaned me his very fancy knife sharpening kit that requires an iPhone app and it's got like, it's, it's a whole thing. And it's like, you know, this looks much easier.
Brian Schulmeister
And for.
Jason DeFilippo
It's only 47.99 right now. Yeah, I can't afford that. But maybe at some point I'll get one.
Brian Schulmeister
Maybe when I fly back for the summer, I'll bring it with me. Jason.
Jason DeFilippo
Bring it with so I can just sharpen my knives.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, I'll charge you the fee. You know.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I'm in the middle of bankruptcy so a knife sharpener is probably not the, the best use of.
Brian Schulmeister
It's a bit of a luxury item I'd say. Jason.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, just, just a little more elbow
Brian Schulmeister
grease and you'll be fine.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I think I'm just going to use it, I'm going to use the, the, the, the stick, the stick in the stone right now to make them sharp.
Brian Schulmeister
And we were talking a little bit earlier about some oopsies by Apple programmers and, and it's my opinion, you know, I still love Apple. I'm, I'm all Apple, all Apple infrastructure. I'm, I'm going to stay that way. I'm going to stay in the Apple environment.
Jason DeFilippo
But which is so funny because when we started this show you were the PC guy.
Brian Schulmeister
I know I was, I got converted. I was into it. But I do have to say as everything has gotten more complicated and it certainly has with all the various devices that we have and all the apps and everything is a lot more complicated and interconnected now. Cracks have appeared in Apple's once titanium steeled programming. You know it used to be 100% if you had an Apple product and they, and you paid for it and it would work, absolutely would work. It would be very rare to have any bugs or errors and if there was, they fixed them toot sweet. But that has not been the case anymore. I think it's just all gotten too complicated. So we talked about the signal issue where if you remove the app it should have pulled out all those notifications and deleted those as well. Okay. They figure it out, you find it, you fix it. Great. There's another one and I came across this one. Admittedly it's a very small use case but as someone who uses this flow daily, it's extremely annoying to me. This is with Apple Fitness recent update bug. They have stacks in the workout app so you can stack a bunch of their different workouts together. You can order them and then when you play them they'll play in order. Right. And as you finish each workout it basically removes it from the stack. So it's very convenient. So like on Sundays when I'm at my kids swim class, I will literally go through and I will make my workouts for the entire week. So I'll do something like a 20 minute hit workout, a 20 minute strength workout, a 10 minute, you know, stretching and meditation thing and then the next day I'll do a different set of three different workouts and then when I go down in the Morning to do my workout on my Apple tv, which connects to my Apple Watch. I just pull up the stack, I hit play. It does the three in order that I want to do. I just boom, boom, boom, do my three workouts and then I hit stop and be. Because I've done them all. It deletes them all. The next day I come down, my next three workouts start and it goes through the whole week like that. And it's been beautiful and wonderful until the last update. And now for whatever reason on Apple, on the Apple Fitness app on Apple tv, it randomly reorders your stack.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay?
Brian Schulmeister
No rhyme, no reason, no matter what order I put it in, if I reorder them on the Apple TV app, the next time I load up Apple tv, it will re scramble them all in a completely random order. It is fucking shading.
Jason DeFilippo
You sure you're just not hitting the shuffle button?
Brian Schulmeister
There is no shuffle button. There's no shuffle button. And you know, I googled it. Of course, in the Apple forums and on Reddit, everybody's kind of saying the same thing. The people that all do exactly what I do and it's just we have to wait for an update. They're aware of it. Nobody has responded to anything. It just, we're.
Jason DeFilippo
You're. Yeah, you're in the Apple a little bit.
Brian Schulmeister
Because it's funny. I don't want to be working out anyways. You've added friction.
Jason DeFilippo
Oh, that sucks.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, it's a drag. I'm sure it'll get fixed. But here I am locked in with my Apple Watch and my Apple phone and my Apple TV and my Apple Fitness and it doesn't fucking work the way it used to too.
Jason DeFilippo
You're so grumpy. The really shit thing is Apple makes it almost impossible to go backwards. Like you can't go back to a previous version.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah. And then what I would have to do, but probably I would probably have to go back on my watch. On my Apple tv.
Jason DeFilippo
Exactly.
Brian Schulmeister
On my phone.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
So, you know, just fix it.
Jason DeFilippo
What a pain in the ass.
Brian Schulmeister
Just fix it. I mean. Yes, it's not that big. First world problems.
Jason DeFilippo
This episode is brought to you by. Delete me. Delete me. Makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. Your address, your phone number, even your family members names can end up floating around on data broker sites. And that can have real world consequences. More and more bad actors are using that kind of information to target people, whether it's for harassment, scams, or worse. As someone with an active online presence, privacy is really important to me. I've spent years putting content out in the world, and that also means my personal information is constantly at risk of being scraped, indexed, and resold. It's not a great feeling. Delete Me is doing the cleanup work for me, removing my data from hundreds of data broker websites so I don't have to spend hours chasing it down myself. The New York Times Wirecutter has named Deleteme their top pick for data removal services, and it's easy to see why. This is one of those things you don't think about until it becomes a problem, but by by then it's already out there. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is go to JoinDeleteMe.com GOG and enter code GOG at checkout joinedeleteme.com gog code gog this episode is brought to you by CleanMyMac, your silent partner guarding your flow and attention. Think about how you actually use your Mac. You're in the middle of something, editing audio, rendering, video, juggling a dozen browser tabs, and suddenly the machine starts fighting you, spinning wheels, random slowdowns, storage warnings at the worst possible moment. That's friction, and friction kills momentum. CleanMyMac is designed to remove that friction without getting in your way. It's notarized by Apple and built by MacPaw, and it works quietly in the background, so your Mac just keeps going. It clears out system junk, broken downloads, and duplicate files so you're not wasting time guessing what's safe to delete. The SmartCare dashboard gives you a quick, clean view of what's going on and lets you optimize performance in a couple clicks. If your machine starts running hot or lagging, the assistant steps in with real fixes, not vague suggestions, so you can get back to work fast. And there's even cloud cleanup, which scans your icloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more to find space hogs without sending your data anywhere. Everything happens locally on your Mac. The point isn't cleaning your Mac. The point is staying in your flow, finishing the project, hitting the deadline, keeping your head in the work instead of troubleshooting your machine. Get tidy today. Try 7 Days Free and use our code OldGeeks for 20% off@clnmy.com OldGeeks and the Old Geeks is all caps. So if you can't remember that, just go to the show notes and click the link. If you have a Mac, you need cleanmymac, so go get it today. Media candy. Brian. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I. The Pit's so good, isn't it? I have not been able to stop watching the Pit. I'm five episodes in on season two, and I'm trying to slow down now. I was doing two a night and now I'm just like. I took a break because the boys came out, so I had to start watching the boys last night. And until I fell. I fell asleep, like, halfway through episode two. But it's really good. I really am enjoying the final season of the Boys. But the Pit is just so fucking good.
Brian Schulmeister
It's the West Wing of medical dramas.
Jason DeFilippo
That's what I'm saying, man. It's competence porn. It's literally just competence porn. I'm there for it. I'm totally there for it.
Brian Schulmeister
I'm thoroughly enjoying the second season. We're keeping up with it. We're. Or we'll watch the latest episode tonight. But, yeah, it's just a. It's just so. It's well written, it's well acted. It's. It's just great. It's. It's totally solid.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. 100%. And I still. I still like. There's no other medical procedural drama that I'm ever going to watch.
Brian Schulmeister
Me either.
Jason DeFilippo
Except for this one.
Brian Schulmeister
Nope. This is it.
Jason DeFilippo
I hate the genre.
Brian Schulmeister
This is the one.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah. Seriously.
Brian Schulmeister
Shrinking ended its third season. I feel like it's.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
Third season. Third season. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if I'm gonna watch if there's a fourth. This feels very Ted Lasso y to me. It is started. Started up here and just kind of went. You get those occasional episodes that are really good, but overall, it's just. Again, you can't fault the acting. You can't fault a lot of it, but it's just. They're stretching believability. Like, I just don't see how these people can all just be hanging out with each other all day, every day. Day. Or why they would. Because so many of their personalities are so massively different and some of them are. Anyways, it's. I'm glad the show has existed. I don't know If I'm going to take it much further.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay. Because you've been bitching about it since the thing came on the air.
Brian Schulmeister
This season has been so all over the map and it just. Nothing matches up to that first season. I felt the same way about Ted Lasso. I felt. Although I feel Ted Lasso was a stronger show overall.
Jason DeFilippo
Well, this comes back to the, the point that I made for, with, with hacks, you know, when I found out what, what they do over it shows that actually like win Emmys and are award winners. They fire the writing staff. Yeah. Because they're just going to let the show coast on the, the awards that they've already gotten and then they just hire cheaper writers to come in and do it. I think shrinking probably. I mean, I don't know.
Brian Schulmeister
They haven't. It's. It's still the same writers, which is same team.
Jason DeFilippo
They're just out of ideas. Then I think that they just. The Wells ring.
Brian Schulmeister
The well is dry, my friend.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay, well, scrap that one.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, Daredevil. I've still been watching that as well. I don't, I, I, I, I. They better inject Jessica Jones soon. That's all I gotta say, because I do feel it's same old story over and over again. It's. I. So many of the beats are exactly the same on this show. They didn't. They, sure, they changed, you know, the people and the places and the things and all that. But at the end, it's starting to feel very MCU formulated. So I need something to shake it up.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay. Yeah. I'm behind because every time I went to go watch Daredevil, I'm like, but I've got an episode of the Pit to watch. Which says something because normally Daredevil would be at the top of my queue. The top of the list. You know, I'm such a huge mark for Daredevil, but the fact that it is kind of like the same. It's the same fight scene over and over again too. Yeah, I've seen that fight scene since episode, since season one.
Brian Schulmeister
You know, I could use less fight scenes and more interesting drama happening. Although something did happen happen at the end of this episode that's probably going to shake up the next few. So we'll see.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay.
Brian Schulmeister
No spoilers.
Jason DeFilippo
I'll get caught up. I'll get caught up soon, I promise.
Brian Schulmeister
All right. And as first reported by Deadline, Amazon, MGM Studios have announced on Friday that the upcoming Spaceballs movie will hit theaters on April 23, 2027.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay, great.
Brian Schulmeister
It's in the can, it's done. We gotta wait a whole year for it.
Jason DeFilippo
What the fuck?
Brian Schulmeister
Why?
Jason DeFilippo
Why? Yeah, like, come on. Mel Brooks doesn't have that much time left. Let's get it out.
Brian Schulmeister
Mel Brooks might not be around by the time you're actually going to put this movie out. And, you know, you had a brush, you had a lot of publicity about it and you're still getting a little bit. This, this isn't like the newest Star wars that we waited 20 years for. It's just fucking Spaceballs. It should be funny.
Jason DeFilippo
Exactly.
Brian Schulmeister
But it's not like everybody's waiting with bated breath to run out and see this. Put it out already.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, seriously. I mean, I. And they've got, they've got traction right now because Amazon, MGM Studios put out Project Hail Mary. So they've got a space movie that, you know, that has some legs right now. So they should piggyback off of that and just get it out there. And especially, yeah, if you want Mel Brooks to do a press tour, you better fucking hurry up. You know, I agree.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah. I don't understand why they're sitting on it, but there you go. I, you know, Jeff Bezos is so much smarter than me.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, they better hurry up before they decide not to support it anymore because it's too old. And you have to get a 20% off coupon to get Spaceballs 3 because you can't watch it on your old Kindle.
Brian Schulmeister
And instead of raising prices again, Netflix may have to lower its subscription costs, at least in Italy. A court in Rome recently ruled that Netflix owes its Italian users a refund for price hikes between 2017 and January 2024 and a reduction to previous subscription costs. On top of the refunds, Netflix Italia would have to inform its affected subscribers of their right to have a refund. This is how you do things, people. The lawsuit was originally filed by Muvimento Consummatori, a consumer rights organization based in Rome. They said that more than 25,000 Netflix users have complained that they're not satisfied with the price increases over the years. Me too.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, me too. Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
According to lawyers representing the Consumers, Premium subscribers are entitled to a refund of roughly €500. Standard tier customers should get back about €250. That is a significant chunk of change.
Jason DeFilippo
That's serious money. Yeah, that's a lot of pasta.
Brian Schulmeister
They also said that if Netflix doesn't immediately reduce prices and refund its customers, the consumer rights organization would pursue a class action lawsuit to recover funds. Netflix spokesperson told Reuters that it would appeal, adding that the company takes customer rights very seriously and believe our terms have always complied with Italian laws and practices. On the other side of the world, Netflix again raised prices for US customers, this time across all of its tiers. Yeah, so what's that money paying for? Well, they just released a free app called Playground for smartphones and tablets. This is a gaming app for kids aged 8 and under. It's available to all Netflix members on any tier, and the company promises it doesn't have ads or in app purchases. It works without mobile or wi fi connections, which makes it the perfect companion for long airplane rides or grocery trips. And addicting your kid to Netflix at a young age.
Jason DeFilippo
Here you go.
Brian Schulmeister
I mean, their naming is actually pretty good. Like, I, I, we, we're still playing Boggle, the, the Netflix game almost nightly. And my kid is destroying us now and it's teaching him new words, which is fantastic. But we are, you know, we're very much limiting his screen time. Especially we did so way more when he was under 8, which is exactly, you know, 8 and under is what this is geared right towards. So we'll see how old your kid now. He's turning 10 this year.
Dave Bittner
Man.
Jason DeFilippo
Man. Jesus Christ.
Brian Schulmeister
Time, it flies.
Jason DeFilippo
When we started this show, he didn't exist. He did not exist. That's insane. Insane. Well, I would like to pimp another show that I've got called Anonymous, a recovery and addiction podcast. We finally started releasing new episodes, so season two has come out this week. So if you're into that kind of thing, go check it out. It's Anonymous. Show link will be in the show notes.
Brian Schulmeister
I'm guessing because it's Anonymous, you're not putting it up on YouTube like our show.
Jason DeFilippo
No, there's no video for this one. And I'm technically breaking the rule right now by saying that I'm involved with it.
Brian Schulmeister
Anonymous, except you.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, pretty much. I broke my anonymity a long time ago. But it's this season we're doing. We've got some amazing guests on there.
Brian Schulmeister
Can't tell you about them.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, can't tell you about it, but we're kicking it up a notch. We're kicking it up a notch. So check it out. I think it's a great show. The download numbers would not, would not back me up on that. But, hey, what are you gonna do. At the library?
Brian Schulmeister
So I had talked about Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor a couple weeks back. I officially have given up on it.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay, this is, this is the. You'd given up on it when you talked about it last time I got this book, I like like 10 seconds of it and the rest was, I
Brian Schulmeister
got, I got really stubborn about it and I was like, well there's got to be some nuggets in here. There's got to be some actionable stuff. There's, I, I must be doing something. This will improve my life if I, if I keep reading this and I will get an actionable insight into how to breathe that I didn't already know or I didn't pick up in the first basically in the book flap and no, no, I just, I stopped, I gave up. So I've gone back to some of the first contact books so hopefully I'll finish one of those up by next week. Week.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay, well, I have a book to, to recommend to you. This is a, it's an older book, it's called 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkman. And it, it kind of says it's a time management book, but it's more kind of a life management book because 4,000 weeks is about the average time that we have to live. You know, if you run the numbers on it and I am way past the 2,000 mark. So it's, you know, for, for me it's like I, I, I get a little, I get a little fire under my butt now and again when I, when I read books like this because I'm like there's definitely far fewer days ahead than are behind, you know, so, and it's a, it's really well written. The audiobook is. I, I think I forget who's reading the, the audiobook but it's, it's really well done, the audio version of it. But I, I, I can't recommend this book enough. It's really, really good. I, and, and you know, I, I read a lot of these kind of books to just take the piss out of them. This one's actually solid, this is an actually solid self help book that I, I thoroughly recommend. So yeah, check that one out when you're done with your next First Contact book because you gotta be running out of those at some point. I mean you can't write em that fast.
Brian Schulmeister
He's writing them that fast as far as I can tell.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay. Okay. And I have been working my way through Mouse, the, the comic from 1992. Did you ever read Mouse?
Brian Schulmeister
I did, I did, yeah.
Jason DeFilippo
It's phenomenal. You know, this is absolutely phenomenal.
Brian Schulmeister
This came out while I was in college so of course I read it. This is, you Know.
Jason DeFilippo
Got it.
Brian Schulmeister
This is like a strident, like, you know, as woke as woke can be. So. Better read Mouse.
Jason DeFilippo
Okay. Yeah, I'd never. I'd never got around to reading it and I finally picked up a copy and it's been sitting on my shelf and I'm like, well, since we're going through it right now, I should probably get bone up on it and. Wow, it's amazing. I can't wait to get to the second book and, and, and finish it up. Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
And this administration can't wait to enact the second book.
Jason DeFilippo
I know. I'm. I'm reading in real time is what. How it's going. I'm just following along.
Brian Schulmeister
It's like reading the news.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, it pretty much. Pretty much. So go check it out.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, between Mouse and the Lego videos being put out by Iran, I think that's all the news you need.
Jason DeFilippo
The Dark side
Brian Schulmeister
with Dave.
Jason DeFilippo
Welcome to the Dark side with Dave with podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. How you doing, Dave? It's nice to see you again.
Dave Bittner
Oh, I'm best described as hanging in there. Been a good week. Not a good week. By good, I mean horrific. You know what I mean?
Brian Schulmeister
It's just been something.
Dave Bittner
Here we are.
Brian Schulmeister
But there's Artemis 2. There's Artemis 2. Dave, we've all pinned our hopes on this and if this thing fucking challengers today. That's it. I'm out.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, I have more on Artemis 2 later in my comments.
Brian Schulmeister
Fantastic. Okay, first thing, first things first, we have new Star Wars. We should always lead with this. We have Mall Shadowlord has dropped on Disney. I watched the first episode with the kid yesterday. Solid. I like it.
Dave Bittner
Really?
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, really.
Dave Bittner
Okay.
Brian Schulmeister
Dark, you know, underworldy. As it should be. It's the plot. So, yeah, episode one, pretty good. Episode two is out and then they start to drop weekly. So be watching the second episode when the kid comes home from school tomorrow.
Dave Bittner
Well, I was not planning on checking that out, but with your recommendation, I will. I can't say that Darth Maul moves me in any way, shape or form. I just don't really care much about him. But if you say it's a good show, I'll check it out.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, they really flesh out his character in the animated series. A bunch of the different ones, so. But you do start like, I'm pretty up on his story and he's almost. You almost feel sympathy for him to some degree. I mean, he's still an asshole because, you know. Okay. But so far, so good. I am enjoying it. I gotta say that they've really been knocking it out of the park with these animated series. They've been pretty good.
Dave Bittner
Well, I mean, we just want to tag on to that idea about shows we've been watching. I saw you guys earlier in the show, talked about shrinking and the Boys. I just thought I'd piggyback on to those. Have not watched the season premiere of the Boys yet, but it's on my list.
Jason DeFilippo
Although very good, highly recommended, first two episodes are solid. Yep.
Dave Bittner
Okay. Well, I did not go back and watch the. What's the other one? Where they're in college.
Jason DeFilippo
Oh, yeah, you should.
Dave Bittner
I know.
Jason DeFilippo
It's really, really good. It's actually. I think it rivals the Boys as far as quality goes. Yeah.
Dave Bittner
I mean, I watched it up until the first episode of the most recent season. And the first episode of the most recent season was so bad that both my son and I were like, yeah,
Brian Schulmeister
we're out of here.
Jason DeFilippo
It gets so much better. You have to. That episode was a stinker. But it gets a lot better. A lot better.
Dave Bittner
Okay. And then we had the season finale of shrinking. How'd you guys come away feeling about that?
Brian Schulmeister
Couple thoughts on that that I had really quickly. I felt that it kind of followed the same arc as Ted Lasso in terms of diminishing return every season. Nothing has quite matched the first season. I felt that it was a satisfying conclusion for the season. And then they immediately followed that with news that it had been renewed for a season four. And I went, no, that was a good end. Yeah. I found that this season in particular was very hit or miss with episodes. There were some episodes that I was just like. Like, what is even happening? And then there were other episodes that did have the feels. So, yeah, personally, I feel like they could have walked away and it would have been a pretty good show. And I'm a bit more than a bit worried about a season four.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, I would agree with every point that you made there, so here's hoping, but we know how these things usually go.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah.
Jason DeFilippo
So I put this in here because I know it's security, and we generally don't talk about security anymore, but this is kind of a big deal, I thought. And it's worth. Worth talking to you guys about because I want to get your read on it and see if this is a tempest in a teapot or just more AI bullshittery. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with major Wall Street Bank CEOs to address concerns about a new AI model from Anthropic and its potential impact on cybersecurity. The focus is Anthropic's latest system called Mythos, which the company says is capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities across major operating systems and web browsers. Regulators. Regulators are concerned that tools like. Regulators who? The regulators. Regulators are concerned that tools like this could enable a new generation of highly sophisticated cyber attacks, particularly targeting systematically important financial institutions. Now this has been making at this
Brian Schulmeister
point, Jason, just really, at this point, the regulators is one guy in a basement office saying, where's my stapler? That's who the regulators are in the government now.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I've seen the reports on the bugs that this thing has found so far, like in the Linux kernel and all sorts of other shit. And people are kind of getting trippy about it. And it's so everywhere right now that Palantir stock is tanked because they think that this is, you know, that like this is going to put Palantir out of business, which is very interesting.
Brian Schulmeister
That'd be great.
Jason DeFilippo
But what are you guys seeing and what are you guys thinking about this?
Dave Bittner
Well, you're right. It's been in all the news, all the cyber news lately. I think initially a lot of folks kind of poo pooed it, that it was really just marketing and pr, that Anthropic was hyping their new model and they were making it exclusive access to a few companies because it's so powerful it can't be released to the rest of the world. And that it was just, just BS and whatever. But then the people who were actually using it started talking about it and like you said, some of the bugs that it was finding started coming out and some of them are decades old. It's finding all sorts of things. So my take on it is that the main concern is that this tool will cause an avalanche of bug reports that there won't be time to mitigate. And that's the same.
Jason DeFilippo
We're already seeing that.
Brian Schulmeister
It's like, we're already seeing those things. It's like the same thing with, with Apple's app stores because vibe coding has enabled so many people to release. Like things are now coming faster than anybody can check them, than there's any oversight, than there's any, anything, right?
Dave Bittner
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Jason DeFilippo
So I seem to be real. You know, that's the thing is like these are like real zero days that they're finding here, which, you know, if the bad guys get a, get ahold of these, which is why everybody's freaking out. It's like this could. This could really be like a major fucking thing.
Dave Bittner
Right? And what's the solution here? And more AI. I was surprised to see that. Yeah, well, more AI, obviously, because that'll solve everything. But I was surprised to see this meeting with the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chair. The. That was unexpected. But I guess in retrospect it makes sense. I don't know. I hate to say that I feel a little numb with all this kind of stuff because it is coming so fast and the rate continues to accelerate. And just for myself, I'm finding it hard to process all of it every day and, and figure out how do we possibly mitigate these things. I guess it's so far out of our previous experience and our history and knowledge of how to contend with something like this when we have a threat that is coming at machine speed. I don't know. Hold onto the bar. We'll see how. Because this is going to go in. This is going to fall into the hands of the bad guys. Count on it. If not already, it is too valuable to not
Brian Schulmeister
so well. And if Anthropic built one, somebody else is going to build one within a few weeks and maybe they're not going to be as circumspect about trying to keep it contained. It's Pandora's box that we've really opened with this stuff.
Dave Bittner
Well, and on top of this, you have the fact that Anthropic is still banned by the federal government. Today we reported on the fact that there was a judge who upheld the Pentagon ban while it makes its way through. In other words, didn't put a stay on it to allow it to stand. So in the midst of the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chair getting together with the Wall Street CEOs to talk about this thing, we have Anthropic in the middle of a pissing match with the Pentagon when what's really needed is everybody getting along and figuring out. Out, you know, how. How we're gonna handle all these things. So it's chaotic. Shocker. It's chaotic.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah.
Jason DeFilippo
Welcome to 2026.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, absolutely.
Jason DeFilippo
No, and you know, I've been trying to keep up with all the AI news and it's just. It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible.
Brian Schulmeister
Everything, it's a fire hose torrent of just. Yeah, and trying to figure out, like to Dave's point earlier, trying to figure out what is just PR bullcrap versus what's real news and what these things can really do versus what they're saying they can do it, to try to get some more money. And it's. It's. It's fucking exhausting.
Jason DeFilippo
It is, absolutely.
Dave Bittner
Yeah.
Jason DeFilippo
So we'll keep an eye on this one for sure.
Dave Bittner
Yeah. So I wanted to follow up. I meant to talk about this last week, but it slipped my mind, I guess. A few weeks ago, before I went off to rsa, we were talking about the Strong Songs podcast, which we're both. Well, we're all fans of. And so when I was on my way back from the RSA conference, loaded up my phone with podcasts to listen to, one of them was the latest episode of Strong Songs, in which he covered Both Sides now by Joni Mitchell. I'm halfway over the continent, 30,000ft, and I'm weeping like a baby.
Brian Schulmeister
Now, to be fair, there's something about being in a plane and that makes me weepy. Anyways. I think I cried to one of the Batman movies once, because you're on a plane, you maybe have had a Jack and Coke and the oxygen is what it is.
Jason DeFilippo
Right.
Dave Bittner
You're already feeling a little isolated and restricted and all those kinds of things. But, you know, I had never. Obviously, I know the song Both Sides Now, I had never really dug into it deeply.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah. It's just kind of part of the firmament. Like, it's there and it doesn't. It was a bit before our generation, so we don't feel it. Like my biggest exposure to it, it probably comes from love, actually. You know, Emma Thompson listening to it and. Yeah.
Dave Bittner
And he digs into the history of it, how she made this song when she was in her 20s, and then she revisited it when she was in her 50s, and compares the recordings, you know, one accompanied by guitar, the other by an orchestra. And how different it is when you consider it in your 20s versus when you're in your 50s. And again, I'm weeping. But one of the things that. What's his name? Kirk, I think, is the host of the show.
Brian Schulmeister
Kirk. Kirk Hamilton. Yeah.
Dave Bittner
Yeah. He said he was talking about conversations with his dad. Now, coincidentally, I'm listening to this on the anniversary of the passing of my father. So I'm already primed to be a big emotional mess. Right. But it hadn't hit me. It was sort of in the back of my brain. And this. Then he starts talking about things with his dad and conversations. And he said this phrase. He said, as you get older, your passions soften into wisdom. I was just like, oh, my God, it's so true. It's so true.
Brian Schulmeister
You know, after the Under Pressure episode and then the Both sides now, I actually. I'm a little worried about Kirk. Jerk. I feel like I should drop him an email and say, yeah, are you trying to kill us or are you not doing well yourself? I don't know what's going on, buddy. But can. Can we get a happy episode? Can we do a disco song? Can we.
Jason DeFilippo
Right, Right. Let's Village People in here.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, let's unpack Walking on Sunshine. Yes.
Brian Schulmeister
Yes, please.
Dave Bittner
Something stupid and meaningless.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, that's.
Brian Schulmeister
No, it was a. It was a very impactful episode. And obviously, you know, same. Same thing. You know, being in my early 50s now, it's not a song I really thought about much, but as he breaks it down and you're listening to it and then you. Jesus Christ. It is one of those episodes like Under Pressure and this one have destroyed me.
Dave Bittner
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's.
Jason DeFilippo
I guess I gotta listen to it. I listened to Under Pressure and I was just. At the end, I was just like, give me a tissue. But. Okay.
Dave Bittner
But I think it's good. I mean, I think it's because I think, like, for me, anyway, there's a difference between weeping and crying. You know, like crying I do when I'm sad, but weeping is more of, like, an emotional release. And it's not necessarily sadness. It's just. It's some sort of escape valve. And so I feel good on the other side of a good. Good weeping session, I think. Or at least relieve.
Brian Schulmeister
How'd the guy sitting next to you feel about it?
Dave Bittner
Well, it was a gal, and fortunately, she was very into whatever she was watching on her iPad. So, you know, I'm sitting there, a blubbering mess. I had watched. Yeah, exactly. I had the window seat. So I'm looking out, you know, the clouds.
Brian Schulmeister
The clouds that she's singing about.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm above the clouds. Before I was below the clouds. Anyway, I've seen both sides now, Dave.
Brian Schulmeister
I've seen both sides.
Dave Bittner
I know, I know. Literally and metaphorically. Somehow I missed that the marathon game had launched.
Jason DeFilippo
It's been out for a couple weeks now. Yeah.
Dave Bittner
So explain to me, how can I play this?
Jason DeFilippo
I think you need to go get yourself a console or a PC.
Dave Bittner
So this will play on my PS5. My son's PS5.
Jason DeFilippo
I do believe it's out for the PS5. I was going to get it, but like I mentioned before in the show, I'm going through bankruptcy and I don't have money for things like that right now, so. I won't be pleased.
Dave Bittner
Huh.
Jason DeFilippo
But yeah, it's out and the reviews were pretty decent that I read.
Dave Bittner
That's what I saw.
Jason DeFilippo
It's a decent game.
Dave Bittner
I watched some gameplay and it seems it has that feeling of old Marathon, which was a classic and very important to me. But the flip side of it is, like all modern first person shooter games, they're so twitchy now. Everything moves so quickly and I'm hoping that there's a way, there's a setting that I can slow that down.
Brian Schulmeister
It's old guy mode.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, exactly. There actually is on most of these games now.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah.
Dave Bittner
Give it a little jelly to not give me motion sickness.
Jason DeFilippo
So, yeah, I, I, I mean, my thing is I like first person shooters. I'm a Quake 3 arena guy. I mean, that's what I, that's what I came up on. You know, I was semi pro. I actually played in a lot of tournaments and I was really good at it. But I need a keyboard and a mouse. Like doing the thumb thing just does not work for me. I just do not like first person shooters if I got to use that stupid controller. You know, give me a keyboard and a mouse any day of the week and I will mop the floor with you. But using the little thumbstick, I suck. They're too sensitive. Even if you turn the sensitivity all the way down, it's like, still, it's like, my thumbs don't work that way. I'm not a kid. I need a mouse, please. Mouse and a railgun and I'm good to go. But yeah, if you check it out, let me know. I would like to play it, but like I said, can't right now.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, no, I get it. So, yeah, I'll have to get my son to spring into action and make it so, which is more and more what happens these days. Just, Jack, make this remote work. Okay, Dad, I hate to admit it, but it's where I am. There's just so much, there's only so much extra mental cycles. And so look, we've been, we've been
Jason DeFilippo
tech support for our families our whole lives. It's time that it's good that you can now offload some of that to your son.
Dave Bittner
Damn straight.
Jason DeFilippo
You know, it's his turn.
Brian Schulmeister
Straight.
Dave Bittner
Damn straight. So I'm curious if I had a little nostalgia moment and I'm curious if you guys are old enough to be in this zone where this would affect you or resonate with you, I guess is a better word for it. One of the shows that my wife and I watch when we're falling asleep. Or I'd say one of the shows we put on while we're falling asleep is the Love Boat.
Jason DeFilippo
It is
Dave Bittner
gentle, it's funny, it's nostalgic. I particularly like it because of all the old Hollywood people who show up on it. You get vaudevillians on Love Boat.
Jason DeFilippo
Charo, Milton Burrell.
Dave Bittner
Right, exactly. Yeah, Charo.
Jason DeFilippo
The Charo. Yeah, yeah.
Dave Bittner
Kate Smith. And so we, we had Love Boat on earlier this week and I'm watching Love Boat, I'm starting to fall asleep and one of the guests come on and I said to my wife, I said I'm probably wrong here, but I think that's Pinky Tuscadero. Now does that name mean anything to either of you?
Jason DeFilippo
Of course it does.
Dave Bittner
Okay. Brian.
Brian Schulmeister
Yes. But I have to say I saw these things on Sunday morning repeats so I, I. A bit later than you guys probably. So like not the.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, I watched, I watched that live.
Brian Schulmeister
Yeah, I didn't watch these live. This was when I was taken to my grandparents house and deposited in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons while my, my dad did things around my, you know, fix things around my grandfather's house.
Dave Bittner
Right.
Jason DeFilippo
I watched him on Friday night when my mom would dump me at my grandparents house because she wanted to go have her free time. So. But I watched, I watched Love Boat with my grandparents because it was, it was Love Boat. And then right after Love Boat was Fantasy Island.
Dave Bittner
Right, right. And it turns out I was right. I figured if she wasn't Pinky Toscadero, she was someone from Greece. But no, it was Pinky Tuscadero.
Brian Schulmeister
It was the Pink Ladies in Greece. Right.
Dave Bittner
The Pink Ladies are in Greece. Right. And I think Pinky Duscadero had the Pinkettes was her little squad of minions.
Brian Schulmeister
Channing was one of the original Pink Ladies who was then awesome as the first lady on West Wing.
Jason DeFilippo
Correct, correct.
Dave Bittner
Stocker Channing, a 35 year old high school student.
Brian Schulmeister
Yes, well, they all were back then.
Jason DeFilippo
Yep.
Brian Schulmeister
It was, it was a, you know, we, we graduated a bit when the 24 year old Johnny Depp was in 21 Jump street as a high school student and.
Dave Bittner
Yeah, right, right. So of course Pinky Tuscadero had a sister named Leather Tuscadero who later came on the show. Anyway, I have a link to the YouTube clip of Fonzie and Pinky breaking a up which is a real, not quite as tear jerking as strong songs, but perhaps nostalgic to some of you.
Brian Schulmeister
But then they obviously on both sides now.
Dave Bittner
That's right.
Brian Schulmeister
Pinky and leather.
Dave Bittner
Oh, my. But then the other thing this reminded me of, we were talking about the Evel Knievel stunt cycle.
Jason DeFilippo
Yes.
Dave Bittner
Fonzie had his own stunt cycle, and it was comparatively lame.
Jason DeFilippo
Was it?
Brian Schulmeister
Because it very famously jumped over sharks?
Dave Bittner
Well, this one didn't. So I included a link to a YouTube commercial for Fonzie's garage, which was a toy. And so it's Fonzie's garage, where you get to fix cars and spend time with Richie and Potsy and Ralph Malfunction. But they also have Fonzie's stunt cycle, which, instead of jumping over things, turns around in a circle. Ooh, that's exciting. That's.
Jason DeFilippo
Yay.
Dave Bittner
It's like it's got training wheels on it. It's really lame compared to the Evel Knievel thing. And when I first remembered that Fonzie had a stunt cycle, I thought to myself, they must have just taken the Evel Knievel stunt cycle and just rebadged it. It, you know, put a leather jacket on it. Yeah.
Jason DeFilippo
Put.
Dave Bittner
Put a leather jacket on Evil Knievel and paint his hair darker, and, you know, bip, bam, boom, you got Fonzie. But that's not what they did. They made us his own stunt cycle. That was very lame. So it's a fun commercial, though, of its time.
Brian Schulmeister
I do like those old commercials. What I. What I do wish that when. When they have these reruns of these shows from the 70s and the 80s, I wish they ran the original commercials. I would. I would love. I would watch. I would watch the shit out of. Like, I would actually skip the show. Like, I don't even want to see the show. I just. I want to see all the original commercials that ran when this show ran. I want the live feed from back in the day.
Dave Bittner
Well, and there's plenty of that on YouTube. You can go find strings of 70s commercials and. And you can find original shows which still include the commercials. Yeah.
Brian Schulmeister
The reason I haven't done that is I'd be withering away and still watching it right now. Like, I wouldn't have shown up for this. I probably wouldn't eat. I would just be sitting there scrolling endlessly.
Jason DeFilippo
Old McDonald's better than watching what's on the air now. So.
Brian Schulmeister
That's true. That's true.
Dave Bittner
Old McDonaldland commercials are weird. They are weird. Like, psychedelic weird. I guess it was because it was the time. I mean, the McDonaldland was a ripoff of HR puff and stuff.
Brian Schulmeister
So, Yeah.
Dave Bittner
I guess that was the aesthetic that they were going for. And it's weird. Well, the last thing I have here is a video that NASA posted about the Artemis astronauts put together a little music video. It's called Moon Joy. It's wonderful. One of the flight directors said, if you can't take love to the stars, why do we even do it? And so it's a happy little boost, I think, when we all could use one. So here's hoping that they touch down safely later this evening. But this is a nice little video. So highly recommend it. It made me smile and made me happy and that was much appreciated.
Jason DeFilippo
We need more of that.
Brian Schulmeister
We do.
Dave Bittner
Absolutely. Absolutely. Take the win.
Jason DeFilippo
All right, guys, until next week.
Dave Bittner
Until next week. All right, see you guys. Take care.
Jason DeFilippo
Closing Shout Out. So I don't know if you guys didn't hear the last episode where we said that this is an ad support or a fan supported show because we don't have ads that much anymore. We have no new patrons, but we do want to thank our current patrons. Peter, Brian, Jade, Howard, Andrew, Hot Wings, ftw, Darrell, Derek, and geeky Grump I am. And Ben. So thank you guys for still sticking with us. We appreciate it very, very much.
Brian Schulmeister
We absolutely do. And over at PayPal, thank you to Florian who made a donation.
Jason DeFilippo
And over the tip jar, we've got Patrick and John. Hi, John. And so if you guys want to help support the show and keep us on the air, we really appreciate it. Go to GOG show donate and you can find ways to donate there. Or you can go to patreon.com gog and sign up for as little as $3 a month and you can get the show early ad free and in high definition. That's right, high definition. So check it out. We appreciate it. Seriously.
Brian Schulmeister
We sure do. And hip hop pioneer Africa Bambatta has died at the age of 68. He's one of the founding figures of hip hop culture and the Hip Hop alliance has confirmed that he passed away. In a statement, the organization said Bambaata helped shape a global movement rooted in peace, unity, love and having fun, playing tribute to his role in the emergence of hip hop as both a musical genre and cultural force. Unfortunately, in his later years, his reputation was overshadowed by allegations of child sexual abuse and trafficking, which he denied. But that's why we haven't heard too much of him. He said the TMZ had reported the artist died in Pennsylvania due to complications from cancer on Thursday. Africa Bambata is somebody that appeared a lot in the music that I listened to. He did some stuff with Johnny Lydon from the Sex Pistols Time Zone, which is a great song, absolutely fantastic. And he also appeared on a lot of EDM and stuff that I was listening to too. And. Yeah, well, I. I don't know if we're sad or not because apparently he was not that great of a guy. So.
Jason DeFilippo
Yeah, kid toucher.
Brian Schulmeister
Yep. So there you go.
Jason DeFilippo
What you gonna do?
Brian Schulmeister
I don't know. Everybody seems okay with Michael Jackson. So here we are.
Jason DeFilippo
And the President.
Brian Schulmeister
Oh yeah, that too.
Jason DeFilippo
Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilipo.
Brian Schulmeister
And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old Woke geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 7. 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 and punch a fascist. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the show. And guess what we've got. Merch Snag Crump here now at Shop GOG show. And stay. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong boob. Wrong boob. And stay grumpy.
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Hosts: Jason DeFillippo, Brian Schulmeister, with Dave Bittner
Date: April 10, 2026
Episode Theme:
The week’s episode dishes out Grumpy Old Geeks’ signature blend of no-bullshit takes on tech news, regulatory shakeups, security oopsies, AI anxieties, and pop culture obsessions. The hosts dissect news “train wrecks”—from global policy shifts to Silicon Valley’s latest ironies and failures—peppered with dark humor, generational shrugs, and a stubborn quest for meaning (or at least functional gadgets). It's a tech walk of shame with baseball, space nerd joy, and a dash of nostalgia.
00:04 – 02:01
02:01 – 04:32
04:53 – 06:42
06:43 – 08:49
08:50 – 10:46
10:56 – 14:50
15:24 – 17:33
17:33 – 19:31
Apps & Doodads, 19:36 – 30:42
25:33 – 26:40
34:11 – 45:12
45:21 – 68:49
On Tech Hypocrisy:
“They're worried that somebody's going to steal what they have already stolen.” – Jason [05:24]
On US Regulatory Capture:
“Their own person who’s in charge of their own commission that they've decided is in charge of regulating this says, hey, we don't need to regulate this. See how that works?” – Brian [07:47]
On Security Gaffes & Apple:
“Cracks have appeared in Apple's once titanium steel programming…” – Brian [26:56]
On Hope from Space:
“It's science, man. Science. I know the fucking world is shit right now, but boy did we need this.” – Brian [18:27]
On Emotional Aging:
“As you get older, your passions soften into wisdom.” – (quoted by Dave from Kirk Hamilton, 57:05)
On the State of Tech:
“It's a fire hose torrent of just... trying to figure out what is just PR bullcrap versus what's real news and what these things can really do...” – Brian [54:47]
The hosts offer their trademark blend of sarcastic humor, exasperation, and occasional optimism. This week, the hope and joy from the Artemis 2 mission stands out against a backdrop of tech ironies and blunders. The show is a cathartic look at a world where AI is moving too fast to regulate or understand, tech companies keep screwing their users, and pop culture is both a comfort and a distraction. Through it all, the Grumpy Old Geeks continue to “stay grumpy”—and perhaps a little bit hopeful.
"If you can't take love to the stars, why do we even do it?" – NASA Artemis 2 Astronaut [68:01]
Stay grumpy.