752: Grandma Got Run Over By a Tesla

Summary

Grumpy Old Geeks #752: Grandma Got Run Over By a Tesla
June 25, 2026
Hosts: Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister (with Dave Bittner)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and unfiltered episode, Jason and Brian dissect the latest train wrecks in tech and internet culture—taking aim at everything from AI business meltdowns and corporate hypocrisy to the dystopian march of surveillance hardware and failing self-driving vehicles. Expect plenty of rants, sarcasm, and no-holds-barred opinions. The mood is as grumpy and irreverent as ever, blending deep skepticism with humor and a dash of nostalgia.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Social Media, Engagement, & The Bro-ification of Comments

• Jason vents about repetitive, unimaginative Instagram comments on his viral tech video ("these kids are just like, bro, why are you crying, bro?...Be creative, please…Get your shit together, kids." – [01:13], Jason).
• Brian points out chasing engagement worked, but conversions to podcast subscribers remain nil ([02:05]).
• General consensus: Social media engagement is more headache than help for podcasts ([02:18]).

Elon Musk, USAID, and the Illusion of Tech Philanthropy

• Musk downplays harm from USAID cuts, arguing “if aid cuts had caused even a single child's death…it would have become one of the biggest news stories in the world.” ([03:39], recapped by Jason).
• Jason and Brian rip on Musk’s public claims versus actual consequences—highlighting links between aid cuts and child mortality ([04:09], Jason), and the hypocrisy of billionaire “help” that never materializes ([05:55], Brian: "He could put 1/100th of his net worth into a...low yield savings account...and the interest alone could solve so many of the world’s problems.").
• Discussion of the illusory nature of tech mogul "wealth"—it's all loans against paper money ([06:22]).

AI Disasters: Lawsuits, Business Models, and Rented Brains

• Legal tech startup Legion sues the government over losing access to Anthropic’s "Claude Fable 5" AI after just three days: “You built a business from software that's only been available for 3 days?” ([07:57], Brian). Jason mocks the fragility: “This is like suing a hot girl's parents because she won't blow you.” ([08:47]).
• Warning to AI-dependent startups: If your entire business hinges on continued access to someone else’s AI, you have “a hope and a dream, not a business model.” ([08:34], Brian).

Price-Fixing & Dynamic Pricing: Old Tricks, New Tech

• Class action lawsuit in CA vs. gas stations and AI company Calibrate for using algorithms to fix prices ([10:00]).
• Jason reminisces about old-school price checking ("drive around town with a notebook..."), arguing at least that had effort and no collusion ([12:02], Jason).
• Brian: "I would recommend that Calibrate rename themselves to Collusion with a K." ([12:34]).

Living in LA: Rats, Garlic, and Urban Decay

• Jason describes a giant rat falling out of a Mercedes on Ventura Blvd ([13:34]).
• Tips for rat-proofing cars in LA: Zip tie Irish Spring soap in your engine (“...just like women, rats hate Irish Spring...it is a birth control soap, all right. Has so many uses.” – [14:12], Jason).

AI Token Spending Runs Amok

• Enterprises are hemorrhaging money on AI token usage, especially for mundane tasks like “converting PDFs into presentation slides” ([15:03]).
• Jason questions why non-engineers need AI for these things and calls out a pattern: “middle management has never really had much of a thought...” ([17:17]).
• Brian notes that people “can’t seem to write an email anymore by themselves. They have to take the email that they got, plop it into some gen AI and get the crafted email…” ([17:45]).

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Notable Quotes & Segments

On Tech Dystopia & The AI Hype Machine

• “Goat-based AI is just fucking awesome…people often project human qualities onto AI based on how it’s presented.” ([21:16], Jason, discussing Adrian de Winter’s research with Age of Empires 2 goats)

Corporate Layoffs & The AI Excuse

• Oracle’s mass layoffs are framed as AI-induced, but mostly to free up cash for data centers ([23:16]):

  “Let me repeat that. Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash.” – [24:40], Brian.

Norway Bars Kids from AI & Phones

• Striking contrast to the US, Norway bans generative AI in elementary schools and is poised to restrict media for children under 16 ([25:31]).
• Early smartphone bans in Norway led to “a reduction in bullying, better grades, and a significant decrease in the number of visits to psychologists for mental health issues...especially with girls.” ([26:04], Brian)

Privacy, Surveillance, and Tech Gaslighting

• FCC may end anonymous burner phones, privacy orgs are furious ([26:42]–[29:56]).

  "This is just another grab to get personal information so, like, Trump's goons can fucking come in the hallway..." – [29:47], Jason.

• Meta’s employee surveillance program gets suspended only after a data leak, not out of privacy concerns ([29:56]).

  "Now we know Bob and Sue from accounting are boning." – [30:44], Brian.

Smart Glasses: Privacy Nightmare Redux

• Meta doubles down on AI-powered eyewear despite repeated privacy concerns ([32:23]–[34:50]).

  "The way we will adapt is by not buying your shitty product. That's how we're going to adapt." "Legalize punching somebody in the face who's wearing them." – [35:56], Jason.

Self-Driving Mayhem: Tesla, Waymo, Rivian

• Multiple lawsuits and recalls:
  • Tesla on autopilot crashes into a house, kills a grandmother ([39:07]–[40:08]).

    "So the only thing that he did was mistakenly believe that there is full self driving in a Tesla." – [40:08], Brian.

  • Rivian sued for misleading full self-driving claims ([41:04]–[41:55]).
  • Waymo recalls thousands of robo-taxis for entering closed construction zones and failing to avoid school buses ([42:09]–[44:01]).

    "Didn't vibe code school buses. Despite these issues...Waymo's autonomous fleet has largely performed well, according to the company." – [44:01], Brian.

Policy & Crony Capitalism: Broadband, Betting, Prediction Markets

• US broadband subsidy (BEAD) program increasingly just funnels money to satellite billionaires, not fiber infrastructure ([44:58]).

  “Five years after BEAD launched, only a small fraction of the promised connections have been delivered and taxpayers are funding billionaires instead of building lasting local infrastructure.” – [45:01], Jason.

• More grumbling about Meta cloning competitors (now prediction markets, like Polymarket), always poorly ([47:08]–[49:36]).
• Google finally killing Manifest V2, threatening ad blocker extensions ([56:03]).

Light-hearted & Personal Asides

• Listener mail includes Strange New Worlds and Silo TV tracking ([54:16]).
• Jason shares he's training for a food server license as podcasting revenue remains meager ([57:36]).
• Riffing on book recommendations and the upcoming Dungeon Crawler Carl TV series ([58:07]–[62:44]).

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Memorable Moments & One-Liners

• On Instagram engagement: “Our numbers have not really increased. It’s just been a fucking headache for me.” – [02:08], Jason
• On LA’s state: “It is just. It's just a rat-infested hell hole.” – [13:47], Jason
• On AI for emails: “They've stopped thinking at work.” – [17:12], Brian
• On Meta’s data policy: “We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards. Obviously you did not.” – [30:44], Jason
• On self-driving cars: “AI wrote that fucking email.” – [42:58], Jason
• On societal adaptation: “Never forget the glass holes.” – [34:50], Jason
• On crony capitalism: “There’s not a single sector that this cronyism hasn’t touched.” – [45:53], Brian

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Social Media & Comment Culture: [00:52] – [02:18]
• World Cup & Personal Updates: [02:20] – [03:39]
• Elon Musk/USAID Discussion: [03:39] – [06:59]
• AI Model Lawsuits (Legion vs. US): [07:12] – [09:52]
• Price Fixing Lawsuit (Calibrate): [09:52] – [12:34]
• LA Infrastructure & Rats: [12:34] – [14:46]
• AI Token Usage & Middle Management: [14:46] – [18:42]
• Age of Empires Goats & AI Perception: [21:16] – [23:16]
• Oracle Layoffs "for AI": [23:16] – [25:15]
• Norway Bans AI/Tech for Kids: [25:31] – [26:42]
• FCC Burner Phone Rules: [26:42] – [29:42]
• Meta Data Leak & Surveillance: [29:56] – [34:14]
• Meta Smart Glasses & Privacy: [34:17] – [35:56]
• Social Media Lawsuit Settlements: [36:34] – [39:07]
• Self-driving Car Disasters (Tesla, Rivian, Waymo): [39:07] – [44:32]
• US Broadband Subsidy Rant: [44:58] – [45:59]
• Polymarket/Meta Prediction Market: [46:02] – [49:36]
• Climate.gov Restoration: [49:36] – [51:26]
• TV & Pop Culture Asides: [52:30] – [55:45]
• Ad Blocker Extensions/MV3: [56:03] – [57:10]
• Real-life Career Changes: [57:36] – [58:07]

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Closing Sentiments

The hosts close with their signature blend of sarcasm and gratitude—thanking supporters, clowning on their own podcasting side-hustles, and celebrating small wins ("...all 14 of you. I’ve made $36 so far. I only have $63 left to make to actually cover the cost of the app store developer subscription..." – [63:26], Jason). They encourage listeners to “stay grumpy,” keep buying merch, and maybe, just maybe, send a few bucks so they don’t have to work in a ghost kitchen.

Transcript

[Brian Schulmeister]

Support for this podcast comes from Progressive, America's number one motorcycle insurer. Did you know riders who switch and save with Progressive save nearly $200 per year. That's a whole new pair of riding gloves and more. Quote, today, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates national averaged 12 month savings of $197 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between October 2024 and September 2025. Potential savings will vary.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilibro.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Brian Schulmeister.

[Jason DeFilippo]

These fucking bros won't stop. Brian the bro bro. Yeah, something like that. They're on the bro train. It just. I made that video on Instagram like, like a month ago now. It feels. Actually, it feels like 10 years ago. It's still getting. I'm still getting comments every day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The long trail.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It is, it is. And it's just. These kids are just like, bro, why are you crying, bro? Stop crying, bro. A. I'm not crying. I'm just. I. I'm. It's a semantical debate based on script kitties and vibe coding. That's all it is. But everybody takes it to be like the end of the fucking world and just the insults are not creative. Be creative, please. You know, it's. It's shit that I already know. Yes, I'm a. Has been. Why do you think I have a podcast? If I was a fucking bin still, I wouldn't have a podcast. Jesus Christ. Get your shit together, kids. Come. Come on. I expect a higher level of insults

[Brian Schulmeister]

from you, but this is what you wanted with that video. It's mission accomplished, right? The stage.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Technically, it is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You did this as a point to try to get engagement and you're getting it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it worked. Yeah, but here's the thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But it didn't really work because they're not subscribing to our podcast.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's true. Our numbers have not really increased. It's just been a fucking headache for me. So Instagram engagement for podcasts still. Surprise.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Useless.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, man. Are you. Are you, you know, topped off on your World Cup?

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's also exciting, Jason. We're at the end of the group stage, so, like, all the games are being played at the same time. So we figure out who's. Who's doing what in each group. And I. I came to come Record. And I was like, oh, I'm Gonna Ms. Morocco vs. Haiti and Scotland vs. Brazil. Big deal. Brazil's gonna kill Scotland. They are up 1 to nothing. And Morocco should handily take care of Haiti too.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Tie.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right now, Jason, I have my, my Apple app that only does one thing. Open on the desk here.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. Tells you the scores of the games that you're too busy to watch because right, you're, you're making the dollars. The dollar dollars. Singular. Yes. Doing the fucking podcast.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, it's all very exciting. I, I'm having a blast. It is, it is. I still hate FIFA, but, But I can't, I can't. They gave me the one fix and I just can't help myself.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Jesus. I know, I know. You and everybody else. I have not seen one game this time around. Not one.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay?

[Jason DeFilippo]

It saddens me. It saddens me. I just have not.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can fix this.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I've been sick. I've been very sick. So I have not been able to get up to.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, luckily, there's still 48 games to go, Jason.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, I may be able to get one in then. It might be the last thing I do on my deathbed, but I'll take it. Okay? I'd rather do that than look at my fucking Instagram comments one more day. Well, I, I, I love this. Elon Musk is pushing back against criticism over the dismantling of usaid, arguing on X that if aid cuts had caused even a single child's death, Brian. It would have become one of the biggest news stories in the world.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If I recall, it was quite a big news story.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Musk has also claimed that USAID itself was responsible for millions of deaths, echoing allegations tied to federal funding of gain of function research. The debate comes after months of reporting from major outlets documenting the impact of foreign aid cuts on healthcare, food assistance and disease prevention programs around the world. Researchers, public health experts and humanitarian organizations have linked the reductions in aid funding to rising mortality rates, particularly among children in vulnerable areas. Some studies project that the long term effects could contribute to millions of additional deaths by the end of the decade if funding is not restored. So tldr Elon. They did, you ketamine soaked fucking douche nozzle.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, so they absolutely did. And can we, by all means, if we're going to go revisit ancient history, because that's what Trump would call that. That was in the past. Who cares? A long time ago. Let's just talk about Doge in general. Did you save us any money, Elon? No, no, no, you did not. Did you spend a ton of money? Yes. Yes, you did.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly. And now, Mr. Trillionaire, are you or are you not a trillionaire? You're not right now because that SpaceX stock is kind of doing the same things that those starships were doing over the Caribbean, falling back to Earth in a giant chunk of pieces and like that. He's the first person in history to go from trillionaire to billionaire. But you know, he still has a whopping $957 billion, which is obscene and something that, I don't know, just slice off a light, like a slice for the kids, for usaid, you know, that you say you're not killing. Well, that you killed already, maybe restitution.

[Brian Schulmeister]

He could put 1/100th of his net worth into a, into a low yield savings account. Like not even making a lot of money, just your run of the mill stick. Go to Wells Fargo, open up an account and Wells Fargo 100th of your worth into that and the interest alone could solve so many of the world's problems.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But you see, Brad, he doesn't have anything. He doesn't have it, though.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, it's all paper money.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's paper money. And all he does is take out loans against the paper money, which is unrealized tax gains.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sorry, not paper money on paper money. It was actually paper money. We could spend that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah, but no, it's fake money. It's fake money that he's, he's taking loans out against. It doesn't really. You know, I think if the whole thing kind of came down, he'd probably be in about the same boat as you and I, and he might need to start podcasting. But. Hey, what are you gonna do? Yeah, I just, I've been watching that stock all. I've got a separate tab open that I just keep refreshing because it's just the schadenfreude of it just is so delicious.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I would recommend you watch a World cup game instead. But you do you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Jason, the thing is, I don't have cable in Joy.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have a room.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't have cable in my room. I can't afford ca. I can't afford the cable box for

[Brian Schulmeister]

cable on your laptop.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I could, I guess I could do that. I could, I, I. And out of all the people on, in, in this household, I am probably the one that can figure out how to watch a World cup game if I wanted to. I could probably hack the fucking satellite to get it right in my house, but no. Anyway, this is just a fun one. Anthropic's Most advanced consumer AI model, Claude Fable 5, was available for just over three days. Brian. Before being pulled under pressure from a US government export control directive. Now we talked about this last week. This is where it gets fun. Now a legal tech startup called Legion is suing the federal government, arguing that losing access to the model has. Has caused immediate and potentially existential damage to its business.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You built a business from software that's only been available 3 days?

[Jason DeFilippo]

3 days. Legion, which uses AI to help lawyers generate court filings and legal documents, probably in Alabama, compared to last week's news, says Fable 5 had become central to its product development in just three days. The company argues that the government's restrictions sidelined engineers, disrupted operations and created uncertainty for any business that depends on cutting edge AI models remaining available first. Didn't take this to do that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

If your business model. If your business model relies on cutting edge AI models remaining available. Have I got news for you. You don't have a business model. Oh. You have a hope and a dream.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, no. This is like suing a hot girl's parents because she won't blow you. But. Which I know is a. It's a flawed analogy, but I came up with it and I was happy with it. So I got to get it out there somewhere. That will come in handy for somebody.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right. It's like relying on the auto Blow four when then. But then they have to pull it from the. From the shelves because the FDA said it actually can cut your dick off.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That would. That would be a problem. Yeah. I only tried the two and I'm still intact. So I did progress. I should stuck with that one. I tried to sell it at the garage sale and it didn't work. It makes for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is that massager? Well, technically, yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's. You know, if you're trying to tenderize a cucumber, that's what it's for. It's a salad device.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I often tenderize my cucumbers for my salad. I fillet them and then I tenderize them.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Comes with being 50 takes time. So yeah. Legion built its business on rented AI and it's discovering that the downside of building your company on somebody else's API sucks. Welcome to the party, pal. Welcome to the party.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep. Well, we talked about dynamic pricing and how the grocery stores all around the country in the US anyways because, you know, we have laws and apparently so does California have been putting in the digital display, digital price change checks so they can Basically roll in dynamic pricing and raise the price of your bananas at the push of a button. Well, a new lawsuit has been filed on Monday in Sacramento, California proposed as a class action which is accusing British Petroleum, 7 11, Walmart, Albertsons and other gas station chains operating in California along with a software platform of using AI to coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers. According to Reuters who reviewed the suit. Reuters says the software in question is called Calibrate with a K because a K got it. A company whose website says it has been removing the guesswork and adding certainty to organizations biggest decisions for decades and that it offers market leading AI analytics and modeling which has been around for decades, oh decades. In California, using AI to collaboratively set prices could be the basis for a valid lawsuit because there's been a 2025amendment to California's primary antitrust law which makes algorithmic price fixing illegal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Go TicketMaster

[Brian Schulmeister]

Specifically no one may use or distribute a common pricing algorithm as part of a contract combination in the form of a trust or a conspiracy to restrain trade or commerce. And what exactly is a pricing algorithm? California law defines it as any methodology including a computer, software or other technology used by two or more persons that uses competitor data to recommend, align, stabilize, set or otherwise influence a price or commercial term. Now, now illegal in California gas station's probably doing it not exactly the same as dynamic pricing. But I, in my view this becomes a very gray area because what do you base your dynamic prices on? You don't ne just base it on demand, you also base it on what competitors are pricing their items at.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Right, right, yes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So technically illegal in California. So somebody should walk down to the Ralphs and say you might not want to spend the money on those dynamic pricing little LED price units for the bananas yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We'll see. We'll see. This actually made it into the, the headline news here in LA because it's a big deal. And in the old days you know what they used to do, Brian? They used to drive around town with a notebook and look at their competitors signs and then take that back and figure out what their pricing should be. This was a common thing. I don't know if you've ever worked at a gas station. I have. And that's what they did. That's how they, that's how they did it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm okay with that because there's

[Jason DeFilippo]

a bit of effort involved and there's no collusion. There's no collusion. Everybody was, everybody had their own guy driving around with a Notebook.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know, I would recommend that calibrate. Rename themselves to collusion with a K.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, there you go. There you go. I got a quick story for you, Brian. We always talk about how, you know, the United States is a third world country and Los Angeles is, is very much right up there, especially with our decaying infrastructure. I was coming back from Trader Joe's and because I go to Trader Joe's now to buy my garlic, because the dynamic pricing at my Ralph's, it's charging me 75 cents a bulb for garlic. Now where I can get it for 49 cents at Trader Joe's. That 25 cents is magical right now. So I need it. There was a Mercedes in front of me pulling up. The light turned green and we're all going. And there's a dip in the road. Right, right at where the, the, the light is. The car in front of me does the boo boop. Out of the bottom of the Mercedes is a giant rat fell out into the middle of Ventura Boulevard. And everybody was just like, holy shit, we're swerving, going crazy, like, trying to avoid the rat. And that's, that's LA in a nutshell. It is just. It's just a rat infested hell hole.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's. Yeah, I never really saw rats when I was in la, but things are, things are getting weird, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, we've had them. I mean, in the Valley, they're just everywhere. I mean, we have signs for people, you know, don't poison the ground and the trees, because they live in the trees, but they also live in the cars. So my car, my roommate's car, the neighbor's cars. You know what we do to get rid of the rats in California?

[Brian Schulmeister]

By cats?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No. We zip tie bars of Irish Spring to the inside of our engine blocks. That's how you get rid of rats inside of a car. Because just like women, rats hate Irish Spring. So two things. Irish Spring is good for deterring women. Deer and rats. So there you go. It is a birth control soap, all right. Has so many uses.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I have to admit, I don't think I've ever owned a bar of Irish Spring in my life.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I did. I did. My girlfriend at the time said, get rid of that shit. You stink.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Okay.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Hat tip to Shauna for saving me for myself on that one. Thank you, girl. Well, a new problem is emerging. Inside Enterprises racing to adopt AI Brian. The cost of the tokens powering those systems, which we.

[Brian Schulmeister]

What, people aren't token maxing anymore?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, no, they're not token Maxing baby.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, they're token frugal.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, they are, because the token algorithmic pricing has taken effect. So according to leaked internal audio from consulting giant Accenture, companies are seeing AI spending rise rapidly. And it's often non technical employees, not engineers, driving the biggest costs. Talk about a plot twist, Brian. So one surprisingly expensive use case is converting PDFs into presentation slides or markdown files.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But still cheaper than the Adobe subscription. You'd need to do it with Adobe Acrobat directly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

True.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Still cheaper.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Fuck you. Adobe. Accenture says organizations are moving beyond simple chatbots into AI powered workflows, coding assistance, and enterprise wide deployments of tools like Microsoft Copilot, Claude Code and OpenAI codecs. As adoption scales, token consumption is becoming a significant and unpredictable operating expense, raising questions from executives about whether the business value justifies the cost. The issue is spreading across the industry. Uber recently capped employees AI usage after reportedly exhausting its AI budget in just four months. In response, Accenture is developing a new product, Brian, called Token iq, to help clients track, manage and optimize AI spending.

[Brian Schulmeister]

How many tokens do you need for Token IQ exactly?

[Jason DeFilippo]

If I was an employer and I had employees that their job was to take a PDF and turn it into a presentation and I'd be like, I'm already paying you to do that, so why don't you just do that? Because that's your job.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You do that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, I don't. What's the. But it's funny that it's the non technical employees because they're also probably dicking around, you know, getting, you know, help with their gout and talking about their relationship issues and trying to find a

[Brian Schulmeister]

girlfriend and getting it to write all their emails because they no longer have the brain capacity to do it themselves and all that stuff, that's what everybody I know that is heavily invested in AI. They're not coders, they're not engineers, they're middle management and they've stopped thinking at work.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And like one could say though, that middle management has never really had much of a thought, so. I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm treading and treading on your domain now since you're middle management. Well, not even so your podcast, like

[Brian Schulmeister]

me, I was too smart for it, unfortunately was the problem.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There you go. See, there you have it. There you have it. So stop using AI or otherwise you might fall down the middle management hole. Oh, so your friends have to use this quite a bit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And you know, it's, it's. I just know an awful Lot of people that just can't seem to write an email anymore by themselves. They have to take the email that they got, plop it into some gen AI and get the crafted email. And now they're getting too lazy to even tweak it. They just send what they get.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So I. That's the one thing that I've just never understood is using AI for email. Email is like the one. The one thing that I'm like, I'm going to write every single word of that because this is communication with another human being that needs. That has a desired outcome. You know, it's like, there's something that needs to be done because of this email. Whatever it is, I'm the only one that knows it. The AI doesn't know it. Yeah, like, you know, okay, Grammarly. I use Grammarly because my I. I failed English in the fourth grade.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You talk pretty one day.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, me, right? Like orc. But that's fine. Grammarly does that, but it doesn't change the words. It puts in the punctuation. But I can't. I just don't get it. Do you. Have you ever written an email with AI, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Absolutely not. I tried it once to see if it would be any better or easier. It was a particularly sensitive email in which I. I was. It was just a tough one to write. Right? So, like, I was like, well, I. How do I get. I want to get the tone just right for this email because this is kind of uncomfortable. And it was a miserable fail. Like, I hated it. I was just like, nope, screw this. I'm just going to agonize this over this for an hour. And then I crafted something that made sense and it went well. So shocker. Shocker. Because I have brain and know how to talk.

[Jason DeFilippo]

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[Jason DeFilippo]

I have a new favorite article this week, Brian and hat tip to curbs on discord for being the first one to send this in. A Microsoft researcher has used an unlikely source goats in the 1999 strategy game Age of Empires 2 to make a serious point about large language models in and claims of AI sentience. In a paper titled if LLMs have human like Attributes, then so does age of Empires 2 researcher Adrian de Winter built simple logic gates using the game's goat characters, then combined them into a basic AI system known as a perceptron. I like that. His argument is that any sufficiently powerful system or substrate can theoretically implement the same kinds of computations that power modern AI. So this guy's sharp. The real takeaway isn't that goat based AI is practical, because goat based AI is just fucking awesome. To say it's that people often project human qualities onto AI based on how it's presented. If ChatGPT produce identical responses through a browser, a smart speaker, or a herd of virtual goats running around a video game, the output would be the same, but our perception of its intelligence would change dramatically, de Winter argues. This demonstrates how much AI anthropomorphism is driven by human expectations rather than objective evidence. And this comes down to language. It's the fact that what we're seeing with the goats is exactly the same as it would be if it was translated to language. But the fact that we as humans, you know, we, we see sentience when we hear language coming back at us instead of. It's like it's just that perception, even though the output is technically mathematically exactly the same. Because think about AI LLMs. It's just math and it's just numbers. That's all it is. So I just, I love this. I love this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They got goat seed.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Goat based. A goat seed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, back in March, it was widely reported that Oracle had sent anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 employees an email notifying them that it was the last day with with the company. We now have a more concrete number of people who have lost their jobs. In its annual regulatory filing, Oracle said that it employs approximately 141,000 people worldwide. As of May 31, that's down 21,000 employees from the 162,000 employed by the company in the same period last year. In its filing, the company said it has an existing restructuring plan in place that it made and will continue to make adjustments to its workforce. It admitted that the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across its operations have resulted and may continue to result in reductions to its its numbers. As Bloomberg has recently reported, Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash it can use for its AI data center buildouts. Let me repeat that. Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash. Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash. The company has spent $1.8 billion in these restructuring costs which include severance payments for laid off employees. Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash that it spends on its restructuring costs. Not for the fucking data centers you follow. People don't believe this bullshit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Don't believe the hype. Well, I mean technically AI did kill their jobs. No, I'm not arguing the way. It's just not the way that they are presenting it to the public.

[Brian Schulmeister]

My point is that they are saf saying that this is to save money to build data centers, but they are not saving any money. Maybe in the long run, but right now it is costing them an awful lot of money to get rid of those employees.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, short term, it's short term for long term. But if there is a long term. Because who know if or yeah, who knows if Oracle is going to survive this.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Until then, they'll just pay Elon for his methane and running the meth labs of AI data centers. That is whatever the fuck he's using to power those ketamine burning in the factories.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I don't Ketamine studded unicorns. That's what we're doing today.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, Norway is imposing a strict ban on the use of generative AI tools by elementary school kids. Thank God, because what the would they be doing using generative AI? Prime Minister Jonas Gar Thor suggested at a press conference that AI lets children skip crucial steps in their education and that schools should focus on teaching them how to read, write and do mathematics. The ban impacts students from first through seventh grade, age 6 to 13. However, the policy also extends to teens in a reduced fashion. Kids aged 14 to 16 can use generative AI, but only with a teacher's supervision. Teens 17 and above are encouraged to use AI appropriately on their own. This isn't the first move Norway has made to remove tech from classrooms. They banned smartphones from Schools back in 2024, which has proven to be a success. It led to a reduction in bullying, better grades, and a significant decrease in the number of visits to psychologists for mental health issues. Notably because they also banned guns. Nobody's schools got shot up. These results were especially potent with girls. Norway is also planning a media ban for all children under 16, which is similar to how Australia handles things. A bill will be introduced to Parliament by the end of the year. Sounds solid. Sounds like a good plan. Maybe we should do something like that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Good luck. Good luck. The FCC is considering new rules that would require. He talked pretty like you said. That would require wireless carriers to verify and retain personal information from every new and renewing customer, including a name, physical address, government issued ID number and alternate phone number. The agency says the proposal would make it harder for robocallers and scammers to obtain a pain service anonymously. But privacy advocates, domestic violence organizations and digital rights groups argue the policy could effectively eliminate anonymous prepaid burner phones that are often critical for abuse survivors, journalists, whistleblowers and others who need to protect their identities. I would also say the homeless, because the homeless actually have cell phones too, believe it or not.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Let me ask you a question. Jason. Hit me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, hit me. These, these, these.

[Brian Schulmeister]

These shady organizations that. That run these robocallers and scam and. And all these, the robocaller rooms and all that?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

They're not going and getting burner phones from Verizon.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, they're not. No. They're not. So we're talking about. They're getting them in Myanmar and they're getting them in China and they're getting them in Russia. They're not getting them, Brian. In Poughkeepsie.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, I would say so. So my argument here would be this is kind of.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We have seen a couple robocaller farms, but that does not mean that every person on the fucking planet, or at least in this country, you know, we do think that we are the planet sometimes. I know. Freudian slip.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We are the world.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. We are the world.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Screw everybody else.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Look, we're going to trade you some ranch dressing for some SIM cards, okay? Let's go. Let's go.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Europe. I'm investing. I'm investing in companies that make ranch right now because Europe is going to go crazy.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Have you not ever made your own ranch dressing? It's really not that hard. It's really not that hard.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's very simple. And again, all your World cup people visiting that are. That are here. I know. The F. Not. Was it the F. Not the fcc. The. Yeah, fcc.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The faa.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The FAA has issued a warning about how you have to check your ranch.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You can just buy packets.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You can just buy the packets, the dry packets. You'll be fine. You don't need to bring the big tubs of ranch with you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's right. Reconstitute it when you get back home. Yes, you can be a ranch mule. Shove them down your pants. But anyway, back to the. Back to the. The. The burner phone issue here. Private. Yeah, so everybody's saying that this is a bad thing. There's a link in the article if you want to go actually make a comment on it, because initial public comments go to June 25th and reply comments due by July 27th. I went and looked at it. There are like 145,000 comments. And in my random sampling, this is not like the last time the FCC opened it up and it was just a bunch of dead people saying, this is a great idea, we should do it. Literally every single one says, fuck you, fcc. This is a terrible idea. Go eat a bag of dicks. Yeah. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And it's not going to solve the problem that you're claiming it's going to solve. It's just not. So.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, this is just another grab to get personal information so, like, Trump's goons can fucking come in the hallway. You know, Pepe and Pedro. So fuck him. Fuck em.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right, well, Meta has decided to suspend the Model Capability Initiative, which is the employee tracking program that they were using to basically, you know, train. Train the AI to take over their jobs and all that sort of stuff. They did it not because of the workers understandable displeasure around being almost perpetually monitored or for potentially breaking privacy laws. They did it because it caused an internal data leak. Business Insider reported that sensitive data collected through the program, including employees, private conversations, performance data and transcriptions, was made inadvertently available to the entire Meta staff. Wow. So now we know Bob and Sue from accounting are boning. We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards. Obviously you did not.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Obviously did not.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees. Yeah, you fucking do. We're pausing it while we investigate.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The fact that we know that it happened means that somebody accessed it. Come the fuck on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't know how we ended up in the whole 1984 doublespeak world, but we really have. Like, I blame Trump because Trump is the person that just started coming up and saying, black is white, white is black. And nobody fucking said shit about it. Nobody fucking challenged him. They just let it go. So now every company's PR agencies basically just stand up and fucking lie. To our faces, to your face, bald faced lies. And nobody, everybody just kind of goes, I don't know, okay, whatever.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Sounds legit.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Despite this official line in previous statements that employees collected data would be tightly controlled, again, no, it fucking wasn't. It appears Meta wasn't quite on top of security as it claimed. This marks the latest in a series of AI related cybersecurity incidents for the company. Meta Reps issued a similar response in March after an agentic AI took unprompted action that also dominoed into a security breach. And earlier this month, the company had to react after hackers exploited its AI customer service chat bot to hijack Instagram accounts.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, this just.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, it didn't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

This just in. This just in. Meta is now suing the US government because it does not have access to Fable 5, because they needed that for their security system.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, this is why I drink. I. I'm.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I. This is why I wish I still could. So fine.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is why I drink. For you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you. Thank you. Please. Yeah, somebody sent me a meme today. It was pretty funny. It's like when I drink alcohol, everyone says I'm an alcoholic, but when I drink Fanta, no one says I'm fantastic. Anyway, more Meta news. Meta is rolling out a new line of smart glasses, starting at $299, continuing their push to make AI powered eyewear the next major computing platform.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, I can't wait until all the recorded video and audio from those glasses gets leaked.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, it did actually, Brian. If you remember, about a month ago, all the people in Africa that were seeing everybody boning and pooping and all that stuff, they all got fired. So now we have a new company to figure out where to go get all of our smart glass video from. But it does exist. It is out there. The glasses built with Esselor luxottica include cameras, speakers, and access to Meta AI, allowing users to take photos, record videos, translate languages, and interact with the world around them through voice commands. Okay, great. But while new hardware is getting the attention, the bigger story, Brian, is privacy. Because Meta's smart glasses have already been at the center of debates over facial recognition, user data collection, and the potential for covert recording.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, we talked about it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Just.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Wasn't it just last week that they actually shipped the code with the facial recognition software in it? Just not activated. So what's the point?

[Jason DeFilippo]

They just didn't turn it on. Yeah, it was set to zero, Brian. Facial recognition set to zero.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes. Critics have also pointed out that reports that some privacy safeguards, such as recording indicator lights, can be tampered with or removed.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Piece of black tape.

[Jason DeFilippo]

The electrical tape problem, Brian. The electrical tape problem. You know what electrical tape's good for? Nipples at the. At the rave. That's what electrical tape is good for.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's what God intended it for.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It seriously is why it comes in

[Brian Schulmeister]

multiple colors now, not just black.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, really? Man, that would have been great back in the day.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I know. We were so deprived.

[Jason DeFilippo]

When asked about the issue, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth suggested that society, society will simply adapt over time. Comparing smart glasses to the early backlash against camera phones.

[Brian Schulmeister]

No, no, no. Listen to me, Andrew Bosworth. It has been years since we had the glass holes. We have not adapted. We still hate these fucking things.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We have not adapted.

[Brian Schulmeister]

The way we will adapt is by not buying your shitty product. That's how we're going to adapt.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Never forget the glass holes, Brian. Never forget the glass holes. I love this. He argued that quote unquote, social learning and evolving public norms will determine what people find acceptable. I think we're determining that right now, and people are saying, fuck you and your fucking glasses.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Critics countered that this approach effectively shifts responsibility for Meta to the public, asking bystanders to adjust to increasingly powerful wearable surveillance devices. This is. This is Elon's playbook. Let's shift responsibility for our self Driving car betas to the public. This is what the tech bros do now as competitors like Google and Snap enter the market. Well, Snap just put, put a fucking cork in Snap. They're done after those new glasses ship. Jesus Christ. And Apple continues its own wearable ambitions. The future of smart glasses may depend less on technology and more on whether consumers and regulators accept Meta's view that that privacy concerns can be worked out after the products are already on people's faces.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's not really how it works.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I have a fix, Brian, and the fix is simple. Legalize punching somebody in the face who's wearing them.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's it seems fair to me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I think, I think that that is. I think that that is the regulation we've all been looking for.

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[Brian Schulmeister]

We've talked about these sorts of cases more than a few times over the last few weeks. I have a feeling this is going to become a regular of a feature on our show because there's going to be one or two of new ones of these every single week. And it appears everybody's just settling. Following a similar lawsuit earlier this year, Google has settled with a minor known as RKC who claimed that social media platforms harm them. Reuters reports terms of the settlement were confidential. The same plaintiff also sued Meta, Snap and TikTok. With those trials set to proceed next month, I suspect checks are being written right now. YouTube had thousands of similar lawsuits pending. So the second case represents a test run for the many to follow. The the first trial was brought by a 20 year old woman known as KGM. We talked about it on the show who also claimed harm due to the addictive nature of social media. That person won their trial and received $6 million in damages with 3 million coming from Meta and YouTube taking on the other 3 million. YouTube vowed to launch an appeal for that case, saying it responsibly built a streaming platform, not a social media site. You got comments sections?

[Jason DeFilippo]

You got a comment section.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Can you register an account? Yep. Can you have a name and profile? Yep. Sounds like a social media site to me.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yep.

[Brian Schulmeister]

More than 3,300 lawsuits involving social media addiction are pending in California state courts alone. And another 2600 were brought by people, school districts, municipalities and states in California federal court. That is just one state. But it's easy to see the size of the problem for YouTube and other platforms if each plaintiff receives a multimillion dollar award. So at some point, they're going to have to stop writing the settlement checks because it's going to get too damn expensive. And then the real fun will begin. We'll actually get a court case on this and set a precedent.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, I know I have emails and texts somewhere where your son has been harmed irreparably from social media addiction. And I think that if I produce those emails, I should get a 50% cut of whatever, millions of dollars that we can sue out of Google and Meta. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. See what I'm saying?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, here's the problem, Jason. I. I did some responsible parenting and as soon as I saw what the fuck was going on on YouTube, I shut. We tore that fucking iPad from his hands and banned YouTube.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Brian, you're supposed to go along to get along. Come on, we need the money. We need the money. Advertising is down.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I didn't realize there would be millions of dollars of payouts if I just harmed my child.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, true, true. If every boomerang created a Gen X kid. You take the good, you take the

[Brian Schulmeister]

bad, you take them both there, you have a settlement. A settlement. Hat tip to Barrett, who sent this one in. Tesla kills another, he said A Tesla crashed into a Texas home, killing a 76 year old grandmother. 76 year old grandmother died after a Tesla driver reportedly using the car's autopilot feature crashed into a Katy, Texas home Friday evening, according to authorities. 40s photos released by investigators show a gaping hole in the front of the Houston area home with the vehicle still inside the house and debris scattered across the lawn. A neighbor's security camera footage obtained by CNN appears to show the vehicle traveling at a high speed on a neighborhood street before it drives out of frame. A loud noise is heard seconds later. The Tesla driver told responding deputies the vehicle was in autopilot mode, according to Harris County Constable Precinct 5. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment, showed no signs of intoxication, and was cooperating with investigators. So the only thing that he did was mistakenly believe that there is full self driving in a Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, so he's just dumb, but you know and why is he going so fast brakes didn't work. There's a lot to to unpack with this one so I'm sure this. I'm sure that this is going to have a follow up story but this did get me thinking Brian. I think it's time for us to maybe. Maybe we should go to Suno or whatever the Udio or whatever those fucking music AI treatments are and re swizzle. Grandma got run over by a reindeer by Elmo and Patsy which is a classic.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Got run over by reindeer and Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, just Santa Claus driving his Tesla. Santa Claus playing his new stream deck while it's driving on self auto and just runs over grandma. That's it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That's a great song. I haven't heard that Dr. Demento man. Dr. Demeno.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well you know, well the kids that are calling me bro have probably never heard it so if they are. If one or two of you are listening to the show, go check it out links in the show notes.

[Brian Schulmeister]

All right. Well in further self driving news, Rivian has been sued on allegations that had made misleading statements about the self driving capabilities of its R1T truck and R1S SUV. According to the class action complaint bought by Rivian customers, the first generation models of these vehicles are not capable of the offering of offering the self driving potential that the company had promised. They also argue that Rivian represented those early models would be capable of Level 3 autonomous driving, meaning the vehicle would be able to steer, accelerate and brake without driver action. But in reality Rivian manufactures Gen1 vehicles without the hardware, camera sensors and compute to enable hands free driving and or level three autonomous operations. No software update, no matter how sophisticated, will enable its Gen1 vehicles to perform as advertised. Sound familiar? It should because this is exactly what Elon got sued for with Tesla.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And where are these mini gigafactories Brian, that are supposed to be registered?

[Brian Schulmeister]

1 has been built yet, Jason. Imagine that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay, you know what you can do though? You can drive your Tesla up and use Grok for free in the parking lot. Probably.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Maybe. Yeah, perhaps. And Waymo is recalling over 3,800 of its self driving taxis due to a software issue that could cause them to enter closed freeway construction zones at speed accordingly. According to the NHTSA bulletin seen by Reuters, the company is reportedly working on a fix and has restricted freeway driving until further notice. Waymo reported that at least 13 of its robo taxis drove onto highway sections that were closed for construction.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Wait 13. Why did they wait so long to do this? Recall 13 is a lot like one car drives into a puddle and gets stuck. And they recall 4,000 cars. Thirteen of the taxis drive into 4,000. That took them a while. What the hell?

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what they say they've identified an area of improvement regarding performance around freeway construction zones. Jason. That is their statement.

[Jason DeFilippo]

AI wrote that fucking email. I'm telling you right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators and decided to file a voluntary software recall with nhtsa. You know why you did those voluntary things? Because if you didn't and somebody. Somebody's Waymo did this and they died, you'd be sued into oblivion.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But they can afford it. So I think that they. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is the second recall for the Alphabet owned robo taxi company in a bit more than a month. We talked about these other ones. They recalled 3,791 robotoxis after a vehicle drove onto a flood road in San Antonio. Remember, they couldn't. The. The weather didn't. The app didn't update in time.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Didn't update in time.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It didn't get the wet signal.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Prior to that, the fleet was recalled for a particularly dangerous situation where some of its robo taxis were seen failing to stop for school buses that had their stop signs and flashing lights deployed. Oops. Forgot to code that in, didn't we?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Didn't vibe code school buses. Despite these issues, Waymo's autonomous fleet has largely performed well, according to the company.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

On its own safety impact page, Waymo says its vehicles have been involved in 92% fewer serious injury or worse crashes compared to human drivers and 92% fewer pedestrian crashes, noticeably. That is on WH's own page with their own safety impact study. Also, I noticed that Marboro has said that cigarettes are great for you.

[Jason DeFilippo]

They're delicious. Eight. Eight out of ten doctors agree.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, yeah. The NHTSA just has to be. Oh, they've probably been underfunded and they had everybody fired. So there's probably like one dude there right now.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But I'm sure Elon says that if we could. It has. This had zero impact regarding these agencies. Zero.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. Zero impact. Zero impact.

[Brian Schulmeister]

These people were going to die anyways.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Long enough. Timeline. Speaking of. America's $42 billion broadband expansion program was supposed to bring future proof fiber Internet to millions of underserved homes. Instead, critics say it's becoming a massive subsidy pipeline. For Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the bead program originally prioritized fiber networks because they offer higher speeds, more capacity and decades of useful life. We covered this in during the Biden administration when this was passed and we're like, this is good stuff. But after the fuck nut Trump administration rewrote the rules, states were pushed toward a so called technology neutral approach that opens the door for satellite providers like starLink and Amazon Leo. The result? Five years after bead launched, only a small fraction of the promised connections have been delivered and taxpayers are funding billionaires instead of building lasting local infrastructure, jobs and economic growth.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't think there's a single sector that this cronyism hasn't touched. It's insane.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So there you have it. Yeah.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Well, in case you need another reason to be wary of videos showing people winning big on Polymarket, other than listening to our show and hearing us talk about Polymarket and prediction markets, why are

[Jason DeFilippo]

you watching videos of people winning on Polymarket? That's the, that's a great thing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'm sure. They're being served as ads and promoted content. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal has found that the company is paying social media creators to post misleading content promoting the prediction market. Of the 1,105 TikTok videos the publication reviewed, 778 appeared to show someone placing a bet. But a closer look reportedly revealed that none of the latter featured the actual Polymarket website. Instead using dummy sites made to look like the real thing, more than half of the videos that appeared to show winning bets those bets would in reality have been losses. According to the Wall Street Journal, the publication spoke to creators who worked with Polymarket and viewed materials they say they were given to ensure their videos were convincing and engaging. In addition, Polymarket reportedly also enlisted a social media army to repost those videos and help them go viral. Lying liars and the lies that they lie well.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And because this has never had an original idea in his life, Meta is reportedly building its own prediction market app, codenamed arena, as Zuckerberg looks to capitalize on the growing popularity of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. According to the New York Times, arena would launch as a standalone mobile app through Meta. I just, I have to stop here, Brian. I have to stop because it just, it boggles my mind that this guy over and over and over again is just stealing other people's shit and doing it so poorly that he. Nothing's gonna, nothing, nothing is going to happen with this. What he's going to do is try and buy Kalshi or Polymarket in about six months. Like you said last episode.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, first off, this arena is never going to get built. It's never going to get built. He's probably. A billion dollars will be thrown at this and it will never, ever, ever launch. It will never see the light of day. It's just not. He will buy something else. I really feel like Zuckerberg, all he did was about 15 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, he set a Google alert for top tech trends. And, and it was once a month, get a little digest. And he gets his little digest in the email of top tech trends. And he goes, hey, we don't have that one yet. Let's build the. Then he goes to the boardroom and he says, we're going to build this thing that, that we don't have. And then everybody nods their heads and then he cuts checks and lots of money goes down a well. And then eventually, if the idea sticks around long enough, after they've wasted their time trying to build their own thing and it didn't work out, if the idea is still there and it's still working, he'll buy one of the companies that is his entire business model.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, that's how we get Instagram and WhatsApp.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Those are, you know, the main ones that we all know about.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

So, and here's the funny part. They're saying that when they launch it, if they launch it, it's going to be points based, like a video game, but no real money's involved. But they saying that maybe in the future real money will be involved. Right.

[Brian Schulmeister]

This is, this is the way of dancing around potential regulations and people talking about it and maybe some naysayers. And I just, I just want to be able to say something that will get my investors thinking. We're doing stuff.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Exactly.

[Brian Schulmeister]

But not anything bad.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And the funny part is, it's like we look at the metaverse, and the metaverse is such a flop because there was nobody for him to buy because it was such a phenomenally terrible idea that nobody wants it. It's like, if there's nobody else to buy, there's a reason. There's nobody else to buy because it's a terrible fucking idea. Nobody wants it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Nobody wants it. So what are you doing?

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And this isn't the first time he's done this. I don't know if you remember this one, Brian, but six years ago, almost to the day, this article came out. Back in 2020, Facebook decided that what the world really needed during the pandemic was a prediction market. The company launched Forecast, an experimental app where invited experts could earn points by Making predictions about COVID elections and other major events. So we've been here before. It is just over and over again, same shit, different fucking day. Well, I'm going to give you a little good news, Brian. This one tickled my heart. A nonprofit group has restored the entire climate.gov archive after the Trump administration shut down the site and redirected visitors to NOAA's main climate pages. Which is very interesting because NOAA's been gutted too. Climate.gov has served as a central hub for government funded climate information, including research summaries, data sets, educational resources, climate indicators, maps, and public facing explainers developed over more than 15 years. The administration said the move was part of implementing its gold standard science initiative, but former climate.gov staff and volunteers responded by preserving the site's publicly funded content. In launching Climate US, because federal government materials generally aren't protected by copyright, the team was able to recreate the archive in full. Awesome. You fucking go girls. The newly restored site now includes climate news, expert blogs, classroom resources, data tools, and access to the fifth national Climate assessment. Organizers say the goal isn't just preservation. They formed a non profit and planned to expand the platform with new climate education and public information resources. That's awesome.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I like how we're now having to basically publicly source things that our government are supposed to do for us because our government just isn't doing it for us anymore. We have to take. We have to do it ourselves and, and fund it. That's great. First we, first we turned GoFundMe into basically medical insurance and now we're doing it with everything else too. That's great, America.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Isn't it awesome? Isn't it awesome?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah. Just put Charlie Sheen on the flag at this point,

[Jason DeFilippo]

winning. Oh, and here's another one. The Trump administration wants to know if it should regulate bets on reality shows. The cftc, in a notice filed Wednesday, is specifically asking for comments on whether prediction market bets on game shows, reality show competitions and pageants should be permitted as is. No, that's it. That's no. But it'll probably happen.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Not like there's staff on these shows, millions of camera people who get paid peanuts. We know who the winner is.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, of course.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, yeah. Scripted reality. No, no, Brian, it's unscripted reality. Yeah, sure.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It is the point.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's unscripted reality.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, right. I, I have my, My kid finally decided he wanted to watch the Mandalorian and my wife decided she would watch it with him. So I've been sitting there and when I'M not watching soccer games. Have watched the show with them as they've gone along. We've, we've finished season one. We've, we're about halfway through season two. Solid. I forgot how solid of a show it really is really. Okay until Book of Boba Fett comes along. But so far, season one and two are just great. They're just great watches.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Again, we don't talk about the Book of Boba.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Unfortunately, that's coming next because I think timeline wise, after season two ends, I have to watch Book of Boba Fett before Mandalorian season three there.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But no, there's only two episodes that you have to watch. Or at least one episode. Was it two episodes or one?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, but my, my kid's nine. He wants to see everything. Okay, well then fire hose of content

[Jason DeFilippo]

Jason, then you have to sit him down and tell him how terrible it is and explain to him how awful

[Brian Schulmeister]

it is to a nine year old. Is probably great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Ah, he should not have gotten out of the pit that easy is all I'm saying. Come on.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I agree.

[Jason DeFilippo]

30 years of speculation.

[Brian Schulmeister]

30 years of speculation and like the fucking Sarlacc burps and there he is. Great.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Done.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Spoiler

[Jason DeFilippo]

Chase writes in. Okay, first off, yes. Season two of Strange New Worlds has the best musical ever. Especially the part with the Klingons. I can watch that over and over. The Klingons at the end were the best.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So good. Laughing so hard.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, God. Second, I really don't want to resubscribe to Paramount. Do any of the torrent sites still work? Been a few years since I've done that route, but I want to watch the new season and I'm torn. Well, Chase, you're not torn.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're torrent.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yes, because we are the. We are the podcast that giveth. There's a link in the show notes that you can go to Sweden with a link to everything. Strange New Worlds. And it will be updated as new episodes come out. So you're welcome, Chase. Yes. And Silo season three starts next week. I'm looking forward to that.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That snuck up on me. I saw an ad for it earlier today and I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. Quick little update for everybody. I have it in my little TV note because I keep a note of when TV shows are coming and when new episodes are coming out. Silo July 3, Strange New Worlds, July 23, Ted Lasso, August 5 and the new Lord of the Rings, the Ring of the Ring of the Ring or whatever the hell they call that. Amazon show will be in November at some point. We don't have an exact date yet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Plan accordingly.

[Jason DeFilippo]

All right, I will. I actually have. I use things to track my TO dos and I have a notebook in things that tell me what's coming up. Let's see. Let's see what things has to say because I knew I have something coming up in the To Watch folder. Bang. My box is coming out on Tuesday.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Is that Bob and Sue from accounting?

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no.

[Brian Schulmeister]

That we learned about in the Meta League.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, it's great. It's the Robin Bird story about Robin Bird who is a. She had a show in New York. It's. Hey man, it's produced by Sarah Jessica Parker. So, you know.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, that's got a great song of quality.

[Jason DeFilippo]

It's got a great name, though. Come on. Bang.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You know what else is produced by Sarah Jessica Parker? The new section of the city. Shit.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And that was horrible. Yeah. And July 2nd we have undercover Chef Korea. That's all I got on my to do my to watch list.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Just go ahead and throw in Watch World Cup. Get on that.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'll try.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I'll try.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Well, Google is finally shutting the door on manifest v2 browser extensions, a move that effectively marks the end of many traditional ad blockers in Chrome. The company has been migrating extensions to manifest V3 for years, arguing that the new framework improves security, privacy and performance. Critics, however, have long warned that the changes limit how effectively ad blockers can filter web traffic. So this is interesting. I use Brave, which has a built in ad blocker, which is awesome if you can get past, you know, Brendan Ike as the, the founder of Brave, which makes me throw up a little in my mouth every time I use it. But, and, and if you can turn all the crypto shit, it is a fantastic browser. I love it. But chromium based is not the answer for like, what's going to happen in the future because Edge and Opera are more likely to follow Chrome unless they decide to maintain the MV2 themselves. So you may be shit up a creek, Brian, because I think you're still on Opera. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe time to try Brave. I'm telling you, it's like once you turn everything off, it's a fine browser.

[Brian Schulmeister]

At this point, I think I'm just literally going to turn everything off. Jason. Okay, like the computer, the phone, the Internet.

[Jason DeFilippo]

We're going to move to Saskatchewan and be a farmer. We're going to be a dirt farmer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Except you can't even do that because if you buy those John Deere tractors You have to get the subscription to get the software updates.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, you know what I'm actually doing, Brian, after this, after we're done recording the show that I'm doing tonight?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Hmm.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I'm getting my food server license for the state of California so I can go work in commercial kitchens because homie needs a job. So that's. That's what it's come to. So you can joke about it, but I'm literally going to go be a fucking line cook when we're not doing.

[Brian Schulmeister]

You're going to be working at a ghost kitchen, man.

[Jason DeFilippo]

That's seriously. That's going to be it. As long as it's not one of Travis Kalanick's ghost kitchens. I'll be okay. I'll be okay. But, yeah, hey, you got to do what you got to do, man.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Gotta pay the bills.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Gotta pay the bills. That's true. So Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book two. I'm almost done with it.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yep.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I love these books. I listen to the audio version because it is a phenomenal way to consume these books because it is so well done. It is beyond well done. It is a full cast recording done by one fucking guy. It's incredible. But you know what I found? It's interesting about these books, Brian. I don't find myself running back saying, I gotta listen, I gotta keep going. They're great when I listen to them, but it doesn't make me go, man, I feel like I really should be, you know, like a great book. I can't put down. I cannot stop reading it. These I can put down anytime I want and come back to it. And it's still fun. Makes me laugh out loud. They're great, but I'm not. It doesn't have that, like, you know, hook. It's my heart. It's very light.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's light, it's fun. It's effervescent. It's popcorn. It's not. It's not a stink. It's popcorn. And it's. It's also why I really have not had a problem, like, initially, like, as soon as I finished two, I was like, I gotta get three. And I was like, no, I don't.

[Jason DeFilippo]

No, no, I don't.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I need a break from this. I. I need to read something that has actually got a bit of soul to it. It's not, don't get me wrong, Dungeon crawler Carl. Lots and lots of fun.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Oh, so much fun.

[Brian Schulmeister]

So much fun. Deep story. No, there's nothing to it. It's just fun. So. And that's Fine. But I agree with you. It's something that you can easily walk away from and come back to.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And it, you know, it did get me to start playing Diablo again on my PlayStation 5 that I couldn't sell because nobody wanted it. But so I actually went back to actually playing video games because it tickled that itch, which made me think too. It's like when I'm listening to this, I'm like, would. Does Brian even get half the jokes in this thing? Because they're so deeply ingrained in video game culture that, you know, some of this stuff might just go over your head. But I guess there's enough of crossover that, you know, you get it. So.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I mean, I'm sure there's a handful of things that probably would have been a lot funnier if I was a mega gamer, but like, you know, I was.

[Jason DeFilippo]

I played not to be confused with a MAGA gamer.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Fuck those guys. I played, you know, I played games when I was a kid. It's not like I'm not aware of this, like, you know, elf needs food badly. I've played all these games before. They just weren't like modern ones.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. You're not like a World of Warcraft kind of guy, so.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I tapped out with like Link and all those games, so.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Okay. And you know, I do want to do a quick shout out to the guy who got butt hurt because we didn't give him credit for telling us about.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Because he recommended the book to us over a year ago.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. And we get so many book recommendations. If we read every book we get, we would never have time for the books we actually want to read. So. Good on you. I can't. We, we can't search Patreon right now because it's all up. But you know, on, on Discord, that thing, that thing, you know, plan of Planet of Trees. So thank you very much, Planet of Trees for, for recommending it and being a Patreon subscriber. We, we will give you credit when we can search Patreon messages or just let drop me a note with your actual name and I'll give you a shout out. But yeah, sometimes good stuff gets through the cracks. You know, there's a lot of books.

[Brian Schulmeister]

We get a ton of book recommendations and sometimes we get to them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes it takes a year and we don't remember that you recommended it.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah. So we'll give you credit. We promise. We promise. And then finally Dungeon Crawler Carl goes straight to series order at peacock from Seth MacFarlane's fuzzy door. I like Seth MacFarlane and I really. I still think that Orville was the best Star Trek on the air for quite some time. But I don't think this show can be made into a TV series.

[Brian Schulmeister]

I don't think it can either.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's. It's too much. There's too much going on. There's going to be too much cg. It is just. It is, you know, theater of the mind.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Perfect.

[Jason DeFilippo]

You don't want this thing into a TV series. And that's, you know, I'm like, okay, go for it. I don't really know if I care to watch it because it is so good as it is, you know, it's only going to be a letdown. It's only going to be. I am. What's the stoner guy that you hate?

[Brian Schulmeister]

There's so many of them. Seth Rogen.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Seth Rogen. At least Seth Rogen isn't doing this one because, you know, he's done Preacher, the boys, all that stuff. It would just be really depressing if he did it. I think at least Seth McFarlane has the right sense of humor to go with it. But. And I could actually see Seth MacFarlane being Carl. You know, I don't know if he's. I don't know if he's just a producer, he's going to star in it, but I can actually see him kind of pulling it off.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Right.

[Jason DeFilippo]

But I just think there's. There's too much going on there. There's way too much going on there. So anyway, that's the news that's all fit to print there. And I'd like to thank everybody that bought my new app Track. A lot, all 14 of you. I've made $36 so far. I only have $73 or no $63 left to make to actually cover the cost of the app store developer subscription. I had to pay to buy to be able to make the app and put it on the iOS store. But give it a shot. If you want links in the show notes. It's only 2.99 and I've gotten great reviews so far. Everybody that got it, like, actually likes it. So, yeah, I'm cool with that. Thanks.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Keep going. Buy his app, people.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Yeah, please. About 300 of you, please go buy the app. And then. Then I can actually get my health insurance next week without having to go work for a ghost kitchen. But we know that's not going to happen. So. You want fries with that, Brian?

[Brian Schulmeister]

Yes, please.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And now to thank the people that make this show possible. Over at Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Harvard, and we've got. We'd like to say thank you to everybody else. Mark, Craig, J, Eddie, James, Andre, Paul, Dan, Philip, and Ryan, who also keep the wheels on the wagon going round and round. So thank you all so much for your continued support.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Thank you. Michael, who sent us $6.30, which is his Facebook consumer user profile privacy settlement.

[Jason DeFilippo]

Thank you, Michael.

[Brian Schulmeister]

Much appreciated. And Radek, who sent us 20 bucks over on PayPal, thank you so much.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And Damian with the 20 bucks over at the tip jar. And Kathleen, thank you all very much.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I don't know if that Damian is the same one who sent us the long email that we got a little bit earlier today, but if that is, or even if it isn't, shout out to the Damien who sent us a long email. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Hope you were able to access all your accounts at some point.

[Jason DeFilippo]

And over at the YouTube, we've got Jason B. Blackmon at Jason B. Blackman. So thank you very much because you can get a subscription over at YouTube now to help keep the show on

[Brian Schulmeister]

the air and Jason out of the ghost kitchen.

[Jason DeFilippo]

There's no. That's just not going to happen. I'm. I'm destined. I'm destined. And we would also like to thank Dominic from Australia and Christopher from Maine for buying some merch. So thank you all very much, very, very much. And if you can see behind me the wall of merch, the wall of mugs. Oh, oh, Brian's wearing the shirt. Yes, I'm wearing my naked Ray Gun shirt today. Cause I got to represent for Chicago, but I shouldn't have worn it because it's hot as balls in here. And this shirt is, this is, this is one of the thick shirts that our, our fans have been asking for. Like, can you make the thick shirts? I'm like, why? This is hot.

[Brian Schulmeister]

It's summer, people, and we're in a

[Jason DeFilippo]

heat wave and I have to turn the AC off before we do this show. So I am sweaty. So let's wrap this up. So if you want to keep supporting the show and we really, really hope you do, Go to either patreon.com gog and you can sign up there for as little as $3 a month. If you sign up for the whole year, you get a discount and you get the show early ad free. And in high definition, you can also go to YouTube to get the show a little early and sign up there. We've got a couple different packages. You can go to the tip jar, you can go to PayPal at GOG Show. Donate. All of that really helps keep us doing what we're doing. So. And we appreciate every single one of you. I mean that from the bottom of my black little heart, bro. Until next time, I'm Jason Filippo.

[Brian Schulmeister]

And I'm Bro Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show. What the 752 oh my God. Want to keep dropping us 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. Friends, foes and everyone in between will love you for it. By GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. And don't forget to give us a book recommendation and bitch at us a year later when we get around to reading. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG Show. Contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG Show./review and we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got Merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at Shop GOG Show. And I'm super curious. Dominic from Australia. Let us know when that actually arrives. That might be a while. Stay grumpy.