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[00:03]
A
Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.
[00:19]
B
And I'm Brian Schoenmeister.
[00:20]
A
Brian, we're taking next week off.
[00:22]
B
We are. You are having a birthday. I am finishing up my trip out here. Going to Disneyland, going to San Diego, then going home.
[00:29]
A
I am going to Fogo de Cho, and I'm going to have a tower of seafood. That's what I'm going to have.
[00:33]
B
Go. Stop. Go. I haven't been there in ages.
[00:37]
A
No, this. Well, I love that. I love that part. The. The cards and everything, but we're lit. I'm just. You can go and on the menu instead of doing the. The whole never ending go, stop thing. The. The never ending meats. Yeah, it's literally a tower of seafood.
[00:52]
B
Oh, okay.
[00:52]
A
So a friend of mine is friends with the manager over there who got me a gift card so I can go enjoy it on my birthday because I can't afford a tower of seafood in this economy.
[01:03]
B
They are expensive.
[01:04]
A
Yes, they are very expensive. So thank you. Thank you, guys. So let's move on to a little bit of follow up here. Ebay and several former executives will pay $56 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a Massachusetts couple who said they were targeted in a corporate harassment campaign. We covered this a couple years ago. Now, the victims, newsletter publisher David Harvell and journalist Ina Steiner had reported critically on ebay and its leadership. According to court documents, company employees sent them disturbing packages, including live insects, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. Yay. Not the thing you want to get from ebay. They also allegedly conducted surveillance, sent threatening messages, and tried to intimidate the couple into stopping their coverage. The settlement included $39 million from eBay and $17 million from former executives and employees. Ebay has apologized and said the conduct violated its values.
[01:59]
B
Well, one would hope.
[02:00]
A
One would fucking hope. Yes.
[02:03]
B
That's crazy. I mean, man, things move slow, don't they? Because, yeah, we talked about this ages ago, and it's just finally been settled. Unbelievable.
[02:11]
A
Oh, the court. The courts. Take a while, man. Courts take a while when you can sue everybody for anything. Yep, it goes slow. Yeah. And, Brian, last week, I was so wrong, and I apologize. When co founders Clement delong and Julian Chamond and Thomas Wolf started hugging face in 2016, they originally built a fun chatbot app for teenagers. They joked that they wanted to become the very first company to go public on the NASDAQ using an emoji instead of a traditional three letter ticker symbol. That's some people got life goals and some people got life goals, I guess.
[02:46]
B
Yeah.
[02:47]
A
Well, because the hugging face emoji was their personal favorite, they picked it for the chatbot and the company name. While they initially thought the name and logo would only last a few weeks or months, the developer community completely fell in love with it. When the business pivoted to open source machine learning, the friendly and approachable name stuck for good. So it is not about the alien face hugger. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. So I was wrong. Boo.
[03:12]
B
Boo. Oh, well, it's a cute story. I like it.
[03:16]
A
It's a cute story.
[03:17]
B
But look, you're talking to somebody who named his company Slender Fungus.
[03:21]
A
Okay.
[03:22]
B
Just saying.
[03:24]
A
I go with things like vapid and Spew, but you guys have the fun ones. That's okay. Well, this week in AI, the sky is falling. Bullshitter. I mean, the news. Let us continue, Brian.
[03:36]
B
Okay.
[03:37]
A
On July 24, a coalition led by Nvidia's Jensen Huang with Microsoft, Meta, Mistral, Hugging Face, and a couple dozen others signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose broad, quote, premature restrictions on open weight AI models. The kind you can download and run yourself.
[03:55]
C
Not.
[03:55]
B
Not to get too Eddie Izzard here, but premature, I would say. Mature, mature restrictions. Learned, mature restrictions.
[04:07]
A
It comes as Washington debates how to respond to allegations that Chinese AI labs are stealing intellectual property from American companies. Oh, my God. The Chinese AI are stealing our intellectual property that we stole from everybody else. Shocker, shocker. Well, then four days later, a different letter. Brian. Over 1100 workers at Frontier AI companies published an open letter calling for a new approach to regulating automated AI development. It asks the US government to support international governance tools that could slow the pace of AI development if needed. This one was signed by people at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta. So one letter says, don't slow us down, bro. The other says, please slow us down, bro. So, same industry, same week. Having fun yet?
[04:59]
B
No.
[05:00]
A
Okay.
[05:00]
B
I haven't had fun since we started. Since AI started.
[05:03]
A
I haven't had fun since Elon went pedo. But anyway, let's get to the doom and gloom, okay? Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei, whose company also conveniently sells the safe, expensive AI, says he fears that AI will enable biological attacks and that open weight models are more dangerous because it's hard to put guardrails on them or monitor how they're used. So now Dario's out there. Call now. It's like, okay, well, we don't have the job losses. We don't have. Let's go to biological attacks in the next pandemic. We have literally moved on. He is using the Marvel Playbook universe. Next we're going to have, you know, the Silver Surfer is the. The anthropic, you know, logo. When.
[05:47]
B
When are the time cops coming?
[05:49]
A
Yeah, seriously. Uh, he did clarify this week, though, that Anthropic has never advocated banning open models. His real worry is authoritarian government and bioweapons, not your neighbor running a chatbot.
[06:02]
B
You mean the authoritarian government that's you're kind of making deals with?
[06:06]
A
Yeah, that one.
[06:06]
B
That one. Okay. I think it's interesting that he. He mentioned specifically that he. It's hard to put guardrails on them or monitor how they're used. Are you admitting that you're not just a platform then, that you are responsible for the things done using your tools?
[06:21]
A
Gasp. Oh, no, Brian. Did you catch him in a foible?
[06:26]
B
I think I might have. I think that is basically stating that, you know, we need to monitor what's going on because, I don't know, it's our tools and we might be responsible.
[06:37]
A
They're not responsible, Brian, because it's hard. It's hard. It's very hard. Guardrails are hard, Brian.
[06:44]
B
Yeah, sure.
[06:45]
A
Well, Meanwhile, over at OpenAI, Sam Altman brought a different flavor of bad news on the Relentless podcast. Altman said, we never got the promised four hour work week at Mass scale quote, and I don't expect AI to change that. Okay, well, the four Hour Workweek was a fucking, you know, hyperbolic title for a book that Tim Ferriss wrote a fucking 20 years ago.
[07:06]
B
So actually, interestingly, I think if you took the average mean over the people that are working well over 40 hours per week versus all the people that have now been fired because of AI who are working zero hours per week. Maybe we are at about four day work week.
[07:24]
A
Working about four hours. Yeah. Well, his reasoning is that people are competitive by nature and always find more work to do. So productivity gains turn into new goals rather than less work. I'm gonna stop you there, Sam. I'm gonna stop you there, because in my experience, people are not competitive by nature. People are fucking lazy by nature.
[07:47]
B
People are finding any way to not do work.
[07:51]
A
That's the goal. That is the goal. They're competitive by nature because they have to go buy 17 onions at the grocery store right now because of the shitty government that you guys are doing all this backroom dealing with. But anyway, I digress, but I'm just saying people are not competitive by nature. By default, we, we are lazy as fuck and we want to work four hours a week. Now it is worth noting that OpenAI's own policy paper proposes testing a 32 hour work week with employers and unions. So, company says one thing, CEO says another. Okay, gross, all the way down. Now, Microsoft Satya Nadella found a fresh way to make businesses nervous. On cnn, Nadella warned that companies relying entirely on the big proprietary AI labs ultimately won't survive and said businesses should be wary of everything they hand over, such as their data and even their prompts.
[08:49]
B
Is he basically saying you shouldn't build your castle in somebody else's backyard?
[08:54]
A
Ding. On the nose, Brian.
[08:56]
B
On the nose. Interesting.
[08:58]
A
And he says any firm without that control is outsourced its thinking. Well, anybody that uses AI has outsourced its thinking and we've all done it at this point. So yes, we know that. So this is solid advice though, especially since Microsoft happens to sell the exact alternative infrastructure that he's recommending. So this is just a fucking sales pitch saying, hey, you know those guys that we're invested in Anthropic and OpenAI that we basically have been in bed with since the beginning? Well, those guys are going to fuck you and but if you come to us, we've got the anti fucking tools that we can sell you so you don't get fucked by them even though you're still going to use them. But we, we are the condom. We are your data condom in this brave new fucking world. So funny how that works, Brian.
[09:46]
B
Yep, it is, isn't it?
[09:48]
A
Yeah, it's the playbook we've seen over and over again. The twat waffles keep telling us what is coming and how great or horrible it's going to be depending on the week. Because they have the agenda du jour, it really is just keeping their name in the news. So line go up. Line go up. But the one thing that they don't seem to want to get on their high horses and talk about is how they ever plan on becoming profitable before completely destroying the entire world economy and the environment. That's funny too, ain't it Brian?
[10:18]
B
They just don't have that solution.
[10:21]
A
Nope, they should. Maybe. Maybe since they have the entirety of human knowledge in the palm of their hands, put it into ChatGPT and Claude and say what the fuck do we do?
[10:32]
B
How do we fix this without destroying everything.
[10:35]
A
But maybe this is the answer that it gave. This is possibly the answer that said we just have to keep going the way we're going, circular financing, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
[10:45]
B
Somehow I think it probably came back with some sort of solution that didn't involve shareholder value and continuing to make more money than God. But nobody wants that one.
[10:52]
A
No, no, no, no.
[10:56]
B
Well, speaking of layoffs, Patreon is laying off 20% of its staff, or 93 employees, according to a blog post from CEO Jack Conte. Which means our Patreon services are about to get even worse. The layoff announcement, which was first reported on by 404 Media, notes that while Patreon's business remains strong, it needs to adjust the company's cost structure to make it a stable, dependable rock for creators. Now, I want to read the statement. Keep it in your mind as we go through the show. We're making a number of changes to our organizational structure and how we work, kante said. Specifically, we're flattening the organization, refocusing teams on our top priorities, and evolving key aspects of our operations to make us faster at adapting to change. Doesn't really say much. Right?
[11:37]
A
Right. Okay.
[11:38]
B
Yeah, just keep that in your mind as another layoffs. The specter of AI looms large over Patreon's restructuring. AI is not a replacement for human creativity, but it does have an impact on how we operate and organize content. The issue is seemingly existential. In an interview from earlier this year, the CEO stressed that Patreon needed to embrace AI as a product and engineering company, or we as a company will be dead in three years. Why do companies keep saying this? We have to use this thing that nobody really likes or wants? Because if we don't use this thing that nobody really likes or wants, all of a sudden we're not going to have a company anymore. I posit that there's a market for companies that say we don't have any AI whatsoever.
[12:19]
A
There's a huge market for that, Brian. A huge market, right?
[12:22]
B
That's what I thought. But nobody seems to believe that anyways. The stance is notable because the company has largely taken the opposite tact when it comes to the creators that use its platform. Patreon announced on July 16 that it's adopting Cloudflare's AI crawl control tool to limit what companies are able to scrape from creators pages to train AI. When the majority of Patreon's content was blocked by a paywall, crawlers were a non issue. But now that the Company is encouraging users to offer their content for free. Free. And use the platform as a form of social media. Because page clicks more creators work as vulnerable. Yeah, they're not going the right direction.
[12:59]
A
Okay, Brian, for us, Patreon is a platform, Right. I think for everybody that has data on Patreon, it's a platform. It is basically a gateway to content that we create. Why do they need AI to do anything on that platform that I would posit works just fucking fine. I don't need any more features.
[13:25]
B
I would argue that every feature that they have rolled out has actually made the service worse.
[13:30]
A
Much worse as it keeps going.
[13:33]
B
Yes.
[13:33]
A
So I think that this is just more bullshittery from the Dusho sphere. So yeah, I'm going to put a link in here, Brian. This is a link to an article called AI Mania is Eviscerating Global Decision Making. Now, I heard the guy who wrote this article on the Ed Zitron podcast this morning and I highly recommend everybody go read this article. It's a 22 minute read, so it is a long form article. Okay. And it is spot on across the board. Everything that we've been saying that Ed's been saying and anybody that's been in this business and knows what the fuck's going on with AI, period, there is zero return. This is a cult. This is a fucking full on cult. And you're gonna like. I envisioned you at the end of Battlestar Galactica, Brian, with your bottle of whiskey or Jameson's and you found out that oh, God damn it. They really didn't have a plan. Well, these guys don't have a plan either.
[14:39]
B
No, it's so obvious they don't. It's so obvious. And you know, I know people will listen to us saying this because when we used to do little clips that were negative on AI, we got a lot of douchebaggy bro talk back at us. I'm not saying that there's no use for AI. We have discovered pretty good use cases. It's really good at generating ideas as a leaping off point. It's really good at helping you rewrite things and structure things in different ways, shapes and forms. What we're saying is it's not a 20 gazillion fucking dollar industry where we need all these continued data centers and billions of dollars investment and firing people left, right and center because we can replace them with AI, which really just means that the people left that are working there, the actual human people who now say we like Jason and Dave do in a little bit when they're working with their AI are now working like 90 hours a week instead of the 40 that they should be working or the 32 or the 4 hour workweek. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It has gotten out of control. It is like, like you said, Jason, it's a cult.
[15:46]
A
It is a cult.
[15:46]
B
It's a, it is a cult.
[15:48]
A
And if you go back in that, I still go back to that fucking video I made on Instagram. I'm still getting shit every day from the cult of the bro, Cult of AI, you know, and it's just, it's driving me fucking nuts. But they just don't want to hear what the truth is. And the people who get it, get it. You know, the people who are competent at their jobs get it. And it's, it still goes back to the Craftsman thing, man. If, if you're a craftsman and you know what your job is, AI is, is a great enhancer for what you do. Like, I know how to program, I know how to code, I know how to product design things. Codex for me has been fantastic. But for people who don't know what they're doing, God help them, the day that they find a bug and, and open AIs down, they're fucked up. You know, software is complex, businesses are complex. And Patreon doing, doing this fucking shit. Patreon, by the way, at its fundamental core, is not complex.
[16:41]
B
No, it's a fucking payment. It's a payment gateway to content.
[16:45]
A
That's it.
[16:46]
B
That's it.
[16:46]
A
That's it. So we spent way too long on Patreon, but God damn it, it really, it really drives the point home. And Nikhil Suresh is the name of the guy that wrote the article on the AI Manias eviscerating global decision making. And he's got chops and he's got, he's got, you know, the, to back it up. He's a, he sells software for a living and so he's in the, in the trenches with these people, hearing the stories about what's going on. And it is well worth the listen. I mean, well worth the read. And it's well worth listening to. Go listen to him on Ed's podcast as well. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. Have you ever thought I should really be doing something to protect myself from stalkers, scammers and hackers? But you're not sure what. Here's what you do. Go to joindeleteme.com gog and use code GOG at checkout for 20 off Delete me. Delete me removes your personal information that's being sold online. And look, if you've ever googled yourself and found your home address, your phone number, or the name of a family member sitting out there on some creepy data broker site, you know how unsettling that is. In the age of AI, scammers can use all those little scraps of personal data to make their attacks way more targeted. As someone who's been online forever with my name, work, business, and podcast all out in public, privacy is not theoretical for me. Deleteme does the hard work of helping remove my personal information from hundreds of data broker websites.
[18:15]
C
And.
[18:16]
A
And it can do the same for you, too. Wirecutter named Deleteme its top pick for data removal services. And right now you can get an individual plan for just over $8 a month. Discounts get even better with a two year plan or when you enroll with your partner or family, 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 DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com GoG and use promo code GoG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and enter code GoG at checkout once more with feeling that's JoinDeleteMe.com GoG code GoG at checkout. Anyway, let's move on to some more layoffs, shall we?
[19:06]
B
Sure.
[19:07]
A
Buzzfeed is laying off 180 employees. And who thought BuzzFeed even had 180 employees at this point, about 33% of its remaining workforce as the struggling media company cuts cost across HuffPost, its film and television studio, and Tasty. Ooh, tasty. The reductions follow a failed AI strategy that began in 2023 when BuzzFeed promoted AI, generated quizzes, and later faced criticism for publishing low quality AI written articles.
[19:35]
B
Yep, we covered that. When they pivoted.
[19:37]
A
Yep. Traffic in its share price collapsed, while annual losses reached $58 million by 2025.
[19:43]
B
How's that AI working out for you?
[19:46]
A
Indeed. The company has also sold brands, including a First we Feast to reduce debt. First we Feast. I believe those are the guys that do the hot ones.
[19:55]
B
Yeah, I think so.
[19:56]
A
Yeah, they got rid of them. New owner Byron fucking Allen is keeping BuzzFeed focused on AI, but advertising revenue recently fell nearly 20%. The layoffs are expected to save up to $32 million annually. Byron Allen is a fucking vampire. He swoops in, sucks this shit up. I mean, he owns the Weather Channel for fuck's sake. I mean, this is the guy who is the least funniest person on real people when I was a kid growing up. He is so fucking unfunny. But he still has comedy shows that still make millions of dollars. It drives me nuts. I am not a Byron Allen fan at all. Also, he was really mean to my, my roommate one time.
[20:34]
B
Well, there you go.
[20:35]
A
Yeah, he's a dick.
[20:36]
B
Well, there's more Layoffs Uber has laid off 10% of its customer service team, and according to Bloomberg, the company cited AI as the reason for the job cuts. Here we go. An Uber spokesperson told the publication that the cuts were done to simplify operations, strengthen in person collaboration and continue to embrace AI. The division affected by the layoffs is called Community Operations, the Uber's global customer support network across its different businesses and across languages. Our organization has become too complex and siloed, uber's vice president of global community operations reportedly told her team a memo, adding that the department has made some strides in using AI, but to be able to scale its use, it needs to effectively effective organization to layer AI on. What the hell does any of that mean?
[21:20]
A
Who the fuck knows.
[21:23]
B
And Uber will use generative AI for within the organization that makes it necessary to lay off people. However, AI agents for customer service have made great improvements lately. In addition to announcing job cuts, Uber also reportedly asked people working for the team remotely to relocate to hub offices as part of its return to office mandate, which is a way to get people to quit to get more people out of their jobs. It previously said that it was slowing hiring due to AI use as well. So Uber will now be employing less and less and less and less people.
[21:55]
A
Also Uber same thing as Patreon platform for payments.
[21:59]
B
That's all it is.
[22:00]
A
It's a platform for payments. You know, does cargo here. That's it.
[22:06]
B
This person wants car app routes car to person, take money, distribute money. That's it.
[22:12]
A
That's. That's it. All you gotta be and then have about a gazillion lawyers when driver rapes passenger or driver runs into bus. Maybe it's a. Maybe it's a law firm and app payment company at the same time. Maybe that's it. Well, if you want to make some money. China's AI boom is creating a new marketplace for people to license their faces. Online platforms are reportedly paying individuals roughly 15 to $150 for permission to use and scan their likeness in AI generated videos advertisements and short form dramas. The process can take only a few minutes, with participants signing contracts that may grant companies broad rights to reproduce their appearance across digital content. For many, the payments offer quick income, but the arrangements raise concerns about consent, privacy, and control over identity.
[23:03]
B
Quick income? You buy a fucking burrito?
[23:06]
A
Well, it's China, so maybe 10 burritos.
[23:09]
B
Okay.
[23:09]
C
I don't know.
[23:10]
B
Probably not a lot of burritos in China.
[23:12]
A
That's true too. Actually, a burrito in China probably is 150 bucks because it's, you know, imported. Once a face is converted into a reusable digital asset, it can potentially appear in content the original owner never sees or approves. The trend is especially tied to China's fast growing microdrama industry, where AI tools can generate characters and scenes at scale. As demand increases, regulators and legal experts are beginning to examine whether existing image rights protections are sufficient for synthetic media. Nope, they're not.
[23:41]
B
They are not easy.
[23:42]
A
Saved you click. Yeah, the microdrama industry is fucking hilarious too, because everybody here in Hollywood thinks that microdramas are going to save the business because it's such a huge thing in China. Nobody in the US gives a fuck about micro dramas. I'm sorry. Everybody's like, oh well, Quibi was just too early.
[24:01]
B
No, it wasn't.
[24:02]
A
Quibby was a bellwether because people don't want it.
[24:05]
B
And let's not forget that Meta tried this too, back when they were just Facebook. Nobody cared. Everybody hated it.
[24:11]
A
Well, speaking of people trying to make a buck, I know these poor bastards who just need to sell their face for money. The boring company. Elon Musk's tunneling tunnel building startup is reportedly seeking $4 billion in new funding. The effort comes as SpaceX's valuation has reportedly fallen by an amount comparable to Tesla's entire market value, increasing pressure on Elon to attract investor interest in another venture. A $4 billion raise would represent a major expansion and could value the private company at a level that reflects ambitious plans rather than current operations. Could.
[24:48]
B
Could value. Absolutely would value. They've done nothing.
[24:54]
A
Well, it's on brand for Elon.
[24:55]
B
That's true.
[24:56]
A
Come on. First we get bullshit in space, and now we get tunnels of bullshit? So that's how it works. And more Elon bullshit. Elon says he may give away much of his fortune before money supposedly becomes irrelevant in 2036. Well, we know how Elon's predictions work, so don't hold your horses on that one. His claim rests on a prediction that artificial intelligence will surpass humans within five years. Robots will handle all labor and society will enter an era of abundance without the need for money. Who's going to build the fucking robots? The robots? No. Who's going to mine the metal that go into the robots? No. Us. And he's a fucking idiot.
[25:41]
B
Did he make this?
[25:41]
A
Sick of him.
[25:42]
B
Did he make this prediction before or after he claimed he was going to remake the Odyssey?
[25:46]
A
The.
[25:47]
B
With his. With. With Grok. To be realistic.
[25:51]
A
First off.
[25:51]
B
First off, Elon, no, you're not. We're never going to hear about this again. You're not going to do any footage whatsoever. Secondly, it's a fucking made up story. There is no real world. It's fiction. Cyclops were not real. Even if you did want try to make it more realistic to the period of time, you wouldn't like it. There's a lot of gay people.
[26:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, the Greeks kind of final. Kind of like, you know, made that their thing.
[26:18]
B
He's just so. Everything he says is so full of shit. He will never give away any of his fortune. He is the most uncharitable fucking fuck, tight ass motherfucking billionaire out there. He does not give anything away. Screw him. Screw everything he says. And screw you people who love him. I'm over him. I want to Kanye him from this show. But we can't.
[26:41]
A
We can't, we can't. We tried.
[26:42]
B
We tried.
[26:43]
A
He was moron of the week for too many years and then we got rid of him. But. And here's the thing. I. I was listening to Ryan Holiday podcast episode and he's like, look, back in the day, Seneca was. He was bitching about people who were bitching about the Odyssey. So this is nothing new. This is literally nothing new. Thousands of years ago, people were still bitching about interpretations of the Odyssey. Elon, we have not. We have. We have not grown as a species one fucking iota since then. That's how bad things are. Yeah. Oh, God. No, He's. He's saying that he's just going to get rid of it. And somebody asked him like, hey, what are you going to do? He's like, yeah, well, maybe something along those lines. I don't know. He's just. He's a fucking twat waffle. Yeah, I said it at the beginning of the show. I'll say it here. All these AI bros are fucking twat waffles just because I like saying that word.
[27:35]
B
There you go. Well, speaking of AI bros, ChatGPT has been refusing to copy the voices and styles of popular authors. Finally, Ars Technica says The chatbot did not comply with its prompts to imitate the styles of both living and dead authors during testing. That means OpenAI has recently changed how it deals with such requests as a study. As a recent study by Publications, no latency showed that ChatGPT did not refuse them for dead authors. Upon asking ChatGPT to copy the style of Agatha Christie for a mystery story about a woman investigating the sudden disappearance of her husband, the chatbot told us it couldn't do what I was asking for. Agatha Christie's works are still under copyright, so I can't provide text that closely imitates her distinctive style. The chatbot responded, even though we've ingested all of that content and certainly have been doing so for many years now.
[28:21]
A
The funny thing is if you just, if you take away the word style. Yeah, I try. I tried this. I checked it out. I used to do things in the style of Edgar allan Poe When ChatGPT first started, because it was fun and I enjoyed it. I thought it was great. And then I tried to take one of our stories and say, write it in the style of the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. And it was like, I'm sorry, we can't do that because it's, you know, it's their proprietary style. I'm like, but I am them. And I said, I'm from the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. My name's Jason. Write this in my style. And it did. And then it said, I'm Agatha Christie. Write this in my style. And it did.
[28:59]
B
Yes. There are always that guardrail, guard rails. There are always ways to. My grandmother really enjoyed Agatha Christie. And we're going back to ancient history of AI now. You just did. My grandmother used to love making nuclear bombs.
[29:14]
A
Nuclear bombs. That's it? Yep.
[29:17]
B
I mean, it's crazy that we've been complaining about AI for so long now that there is lore, there is history that we could reference now. Unbelievable.
[29:30]
A
Even more fun. Brian, a couple I. I ran across this artwork that we did of this giant or like mechanical ouroboros about the circular financing of the AI industry. Beautiful piece of art. I was actually going to put it on a T shirt because I think it was one of our better, you know, mid journey, you know, distilled pieces of shit that we made. Well, Nvidia is pursuing a new wave of AI infrastructure deals, potentially worth more than 750 billion, reviving concerns about circular financing across the industry. I need $750 to make my fucking insurance payment this month. Fuck you, and your $750 billion.
[30:06]
B
Unbelievable.
[30:07]
A
The chip maker says a partnership with South Korea's SK Group is valued above 500 billion, covering AI data centers, Nvidia supercomputers, and memory chip purchases. Nvidia is also discussing guarantees of up to $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing capacity from a planned Ohio data center, alongside possible financing for $350 billion in chip purchases. What the fuck? What the fuck?
[30:38]
B
Yeah.
[30:40]
A
They also warned that rising debt and interconnected deals could amplify losses if AI demand falls short.
[30:46]
C
What?
[30:46]
B
You mean if you put all your eggs in each other's baskets and then the baskets fall and the eggs break, we're all fucked up.
[30:52]
A
Yeah, everybody, literally, it's everybody holding everybody else up. It reminds me of. I don't know if I. I mean, we. We used to talk about the Discworld novels all the time. It reminds me of the. The monks who would sit in a circle and they hated water so much that they would float above the water because they. And they, like, if somebody broke the spell, then they would all get wet and they would, you know, fall in. It just reminds me of those monks that were, like, trying to. I think the baby monks are wizards. They could. Could levitate because they just hated water so much. These guys hate poverty so much that they can't. They can't, like, you know, let each other down.
[31:29]
B
Unbelievable. Well, speaking of unbelievable, the Trump administration. Well, actually, it's quite believable, unfortunately, just announced that is exempting data centers from certain pollution limits that were originally mandated to prevent acid rain, according to a report by Reuters. Yay, data centers. Yay, acid rain.
[31:46]
A
I mean, that is about as 80s as you can get. Fucking acid rain. Come on. That was. That was literally the 80s that we talked about. Acid rain.
[31:54]
B
Now if they were talking about chocolate rain.
[31:55]
C
Chocolate rain.
[31:57]
A
Oh, man.
[31:58]
B
Simply put, power plants that primarily service data centers will not have to be part of the Clean Air Acts acid rain program. These islanded power plants that serve data centers instead of human communities will no longer have to reduce emissions of acid rain precursors like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. There are nearly 60 of these power plants being built or currently operating throughout the country, which are typically fast tracked by the government. Ensuring that United States maintains our artificial intelligence dominance is essential to national security and economic prosperity, even if we all fucking die in hellfire.
[32:32]
A
Yeah.
[32:33]
B
The EPA is proud to further the President's agenda through common sense approaches to regulating, such as none, Zero. Regulating.
[32:42]
A
Anti. Regulating.
[32:43]
B
Acid rain is particularly destructive to the environment. It strips nutrients from the soil, which is we need to grow food, which
[32:52]
A
costs $11 for an onion, pollutes lakes
[32:54]
B
and rivers to lethal levels, which is water that we need to drink, damages plants and erodes limestone. For starters. Exposure to the precursor gases can worsen respiratory and cardiac issues in people. It causes coughing, respiratory irritation, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, itchy eyes, and other symptoms. By the way, that information was taken directly from the EPA's website. And you know the people that just said they're proud to further the President's agenda through common sense approaches to regulating by getting rid of the regulations to protect us from the things that they just told us were really fucking bad.
[33:30]
A
I love the world, Brian.
[33:34]
B
President Trump himself recently told communities that they should give up fighting against data centers. You can't fight it, he said. You have to go with it. Kind of what he said to all those women he raped. Don't fight.
[33:45]
A
Say. That's exactly what a Go with it. Lay back and enjoy it.
[33:51]
B
Think. Do it for your country. Close your eyes and think of England.
[33:55]
A
Oh God. God damn it. No, I can't. I can't. I got. Should we cut it there? So many rape jokes Ready? Like take one for Old Glory. Yeah.
[34:13]
B
Mine eyes have seen the kingdom and the coming of the Lord.
[34:16]
A
Oh Jesus. This episode is sponsored by storyblocks. One thing I've learned after producing thousands of podcast episodes is that the edit is only half the job. Once the episode is done, you still need clips, promos, social posts, and all the little pieces that keep the content machine running. I don't have time to chase down licensing or wondering if an asset is actually safe to use. That's why we use Storyblocks. It's a 100% human made stock media library with millions of professionally curated video clips, music tracks, sound effects, templates and images all pre licensed and ready to drop into your project. The unlimited downloads are great because I can try a few different creative directions without worrying about burning credits, which makes the whole production process much faster. They've even added AI powered search and editing tools that help you find and customize content more efficiently while still making sure the human artists behind the original work get compensated. Head to storyblocks.com gog to access the human made stock media library that's essential to our workflow. For a limited time, they're offering 15% off any annual plan and that discount is only available through our link. Again, that's storyblocks.com goggles for 15% off annual plans. Oh Brian, I like this case. The Justice Department is prosecute. The fact that we have a Justice Department that's actually prosecuting somebody. Oh, oh, wait, they're prosecuting the wrong person. Never mind. The Justice Department is prosecuting a Atlanta resident, Samuel Tunic, after border agents say he gave them a phone passcode that wiped the device during a search. The phone was running graphene os, a privacy focused Android system for pixel phones that includes a duress pin feature. Enter the wrong special code and the phone nukes its contents.
[36:15]
B
Are you listening, Tim Cook?
[36:17]
A
I know, I know. Remember that site that I was going to build, Brian, called Death Vault?
[36:22]
B
Yes.
[36:22]
A
Where you keep everything in there. And the duress password was one of the main features that I was going to have in there. So because everybody's like, well, what if somebody just kidnaps you and said, give me all. Give me your password. I'm like, well, here you go. There's three passwords. There's the, okay, I'm just, you know, I'm just being held captive. And then there's the, oh my God, release it to everybody. And then there's the just, you know, just take everybody out, whatever. But here's the deal. I love it, I love it, I love it. So Tunic was stopped at Atlanta's airport in January 2025. So this is over a year ago. After returning home from overseas, his lawyer says Customs and Border protection unlawfully seized the phone, denied him an attorney, and and used a child exploitation pretext while actually probing his ties to the Stop Cop City movement. So this guy had an agenda against the Atlanta cops, so they took him and just tried to strong arm him. So good for him. He has pleaded not guilty. And he is not guilty because before he gets in the country, these fuckers have no goddamn jurisdiction.
[37:24]
B
That's right.
[37:24]
A
Period. He's not in the United States. And they say that when you're in border control, you are not yet in the United States until you pass the fucking border. So fuck you guys.
[37:34]
B
There you go. Got some meta news in the face of AI content profiles and slop. Meta is hoping a new Facebook verified program will help human users interact with other humans. Or they could just let you see other friends updates that, that would really help us interact with other humans if we actually saw the updates from our friends instead of the AI content profiles slop you shove down our throats. Just a thought.
[37:58]
A
There you go.
[37:58]
B
Just a thought. Based on a facial recognition selfie checked against your existing profile pic, the company says the process will only take a few minutes. Interestingly, Meta has chosen to use facial recognition given recent legal settlements and pushback over facial recognition inside its smart glasses. To qualify yet, we'll have to be over 18. I wonder how they check that, huh?
[38:17]
A
How's that going to work?
[38:18]
B
And in good standing with Facebook's community standards. Which means what exactly? Since we don't really understand what any of that means anyways. Once you pass your test, your Verified badge will appear across Marketplace, dating and other parts of Facebook sites and services. Unlike Meta, Verified is entirely free now. So starts to you start to understand why they're doing this now it's for shopping and spending things and getting sued by other people. So this feature comes as a wave of scammers and bad actors are using generative AI tools to create and use fake profiles with realistic profile images, photos and backstories capable of sending automated messages at scale. Again, this has something to do with another thing that they just launched. Facebook has introduced an app called Seller that effectively professionalizes Facebook Marketplace for users who sell a lot of stuff. An attempt to basically turn into ebay or Etsy or Amazon. Now this new app provides dedicated tools like AI powered listing creation and unified inbox inventory management and performance insights in one place. So yeah, you're supposed to now use Marketplace to grow your business. This new kind of app mars the community billboard vibe of Facebook Marketplace by opening it up to pro sellers Mirror during the declines of ebay and Etsy, but will no doubt generate extra revenue for Meta. And finally, Mark Zuckerberg really wants you to believe that AI is good, actually. But the centerpiece of his company's new optimistic ad campaign, at least for now, is a one minute commercial for Meta's AI efforts that features very little AI. According to a Meta spokesperson, the ad is the start of a broader effort from the company to present an alternative view to AI doomers and those who have sketched out a dystopian vision for the future. As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone, zuckerberg wrote in a post accompanying the video. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone. Notably, this is the same company who in recent months have used the supposed productivity benefits of AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its
[40:18]
A
own staff while wearing a two million dollar watch at the same time.
[40:22]
B
Yes, he was wearing a very expensive watch. The same company that has been accused of using AI to justify cuts that disproportionately affected workers on medical leave. This is the same company that is being sued by publishers for allegedly training its AI on copyrighted materials. The same company that once had an internal policy document that suggested it was permissible for AI chatbots to have sensual conversations with minors. Those guys.
[40:45]
A
Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it.
[40:47]
B
What are the benefits of AI? It's hard to say because the commercial makes very few references to any of Meta's AI features. And so instead, it just shows bullshit footage. A crowd walking, people smiling, a couple dancing. Wow, this AI is really making their lives better somehow. Maybe. Are they even people?
[41:04]
A
You know why? You know why they're walking and smiling and dancing? Because they have no jobs. Because they're trying to find a place to fucking work.
[41:11]
B
The company's communication team describes this campaign as beginning to articulate Meta's optimistic vision for a future with AI, which seems like something that should have been figured out before investing billions of dollars into building AI. It wouldn't be the first time Zuckerberg has been vague about the future of AI. He now talks about AI with the same incomprehensible enthusiasm he once had for the Metaverse, the thing he once predicted was going to be the successor of the mobile Internet.
[41:38]
A
A fucking douchebag.
[41:41]
B
Oh, boy.
[41:42]
A
Yeah. Well, here's my last one on AI for the day. I hope. I hope. Cybersecurity researchers warn that AI coding assistance can be manipulated into installing malware through a technique called hall use squatting. We've talked about this a little bit in the past, but it has now gotten to be squatting pretty. Okay.
[41:59]
B
Thanks for asking.
[42:00]
A
Yeah, thanks. I've taken the beet juice. Oh, that's. That's coming later. Never mind. These tools often hallucinate recommendations for software packages that flat out just don't exist. Yeah, I've seen it. I've actually seen it. Attackers can register those names as legitimate repositories, upload malicious code, and wait for an AI assistant to recommend and download the package. Researchers at Tel Aviv University. Fucking Israelis. Always, always at Intuit, have found hallucinated package references in tools including Cursor and GitHub Copilot at rates ranging from 85 to 100%, depending on the task. Because downloads may happen automatically, and without clear user visibility, infections could go unnoticed and do go unnoticed. The researchers notified affected companies, but the underlying vulnerability remains widespread. Yes, yes, yes. You see the packages that come through. It's like, I would like to install blah, blah, blah. Let me check on blah, blah, blah before you install it on my computer.
[43:03]
B
Yeah,
[43:07]
A
no, no, yeah, no, So I like it. Yeah. How are you squatting?
[43:15]
B
Well, let's now take a little few minutes at the end to talk about the things that make us survive this, make us happy and survive that we've just finished describing. I went and took the kid to go see Minions and Monsters at the theater last week. The latest of the Minions movie. It's been touted as one of the funniest ones yet. And I would say the first half is.
[43:36]
A
That's as far as I got. So I'm glad, I'm glad I quit before I got to the second half.
[43:40]
B
The first half was incredibly funny, incredibly clever and incredibly amusing, and it kind of petered out from there, so.
[43:46]
A
Which was unfortunate.
[43:47]
B
But Star Trek.
[43:48]
A
You gotta admit though, that Lego joke at the beginning was pretty funny. I mean, that was hilarious.
[43:53]
B
That whole, like, that whole opening gambit was just.
[43:56]
A
Yeah, it was genius.
[43:57]
B
Absolutely genius. This is really funny. Star Trek, Strange New worlds. The final. Is this the final season? Final season, right.
[44:04]
A
No, no, no, no. This is season four. Season five is the final.
[44:07]
B
Oh, we're gonna get the truncated season.
[44:09]
A
We get the half season after this.
[44:10]
B
Okay, well, season four has premiered and the first episode, I thought.
[44:14]
A
Spoiler alerts. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about this. Three minutes, two minutes here. We're going to talk about spoiler.
[44:19]
B
Before we get into spoilers, I'll just say this part. They took a huge swing and I think they hit it out of the ballpark.
[44:25]
A
100%. Okay, 100%. This was. They. Star Trek on this one. This was pure. They sweat, eat, breathe. Star Trek on this one, there is nothing that was not.
[44:35]
B
This was the most Star Trek of the Star Trek. Of the Star Trek. We have Star Trek, all of them.
[44:41]
A
They took. They took the original series, they took Next Gen, they took everything that was ever distilled in Star Trek and put it into one single episode.
[44:49]
B
Beat juice. Star Trek.
[44:51]
A
Yes. We had. We had dinosaurs, we had time travel,
[44:55]
B
we had genesis of humanity, we had
[44:58]
A
genesis of human everything. I mean, you know, I mean, okay, enter, you know, at the end of Next Generation, Picard did create life on Earth. But here we have, you know, the, the, the cre. The destruction of Mars, the creation of Earth, the killing of the dinosaurs, everything.
[45:16]
B
A whole new planet in our solar system with bug creatures.
[45:20]
A
And she punched a dinosaur. Yes, she punched a dinosaur. So all in all, this was the most Star Trek. Ian. Star. I don't know where they're gonna go from here. It is just downhill from here as
[45:30]
B
far as I'm concerned.
[45:32]
A
This was the dancing Klingons of this season already. Absolutely.
[45:35]
B
Absolutely. It was a fantastic episode. I was riveted. I was thrilled. I forgot everything else that we talked about in this show for a brief 55 minutes or so, and it almost made me feel not bad about paying Paramount plus more money.
[45:50]
A
Oh, I stole that shit. I don't give a fuck about that.
[45:52]
B
I did. I was about to steal it, and then I did a quick Google search, and if there's anybody out there feeling bad about this and they want their Paramount to be able to watch Star Trek, if you Google search, there is a promo code out there right now because they know so many people have canceled and they're not coming back. That gets you basically half price for the entire year. Actually, it was a third, I think, so I'm paying a third the price for a year. And then as soon as it's done, I will cancel again and say, you screwed up Star Trek.
[46:17]
A
Okay, there we go. Don't sue me for my first contact website. That's on my.
[46:22]
B
Yeah, never. Never mind. My podcast partner. Don't go look at his website. We have continued to watch Broadchurch. We finished Broadchurch Season 2. My wife and I been watching an episode at night after the kid goes to bed while we're here on our trip. And actually season two, pretty solid. I, I initially, I didn't care much for it. I. I wasn't sure if we needed it or anything, but I. I did enjoy it. We've now rolled into season three, one episode in so far, and seems okay. We'll see.
[46:50]
A
Okay. Okay. Let me know how it goes. If it's better, then maybe I'll go back to it because I like. I really liked season one.
[46:57]
B
Yeah, I think you would enjoy season two. It was good. So definitely for that one. And Silo, I forgot, was back, so I'm trying to catch up now. I mostly caught up. I have 10 minutes of an episode left to go before the next new one drops on Friday. It's good. It's. It's. You know, it's. I'm not enjoying this as much as I enjoyed the first two seasons, but it's not bad.
[47:18]
A
It's not bad. Here's the thing that gets me. It's like, I wish this was a 22 season or 22 episode arc, because by the time. By the time it's done, it's just gonna be like, okay, when's the next season? Because it's like there's so much story and so much to do. But it's just like, I don't know, they need more time. They need more time. It's just.
[47:38]
B
Well, I think it's one of those things and it's unfortunate and it's kind of the reason why foundation can't really be made. It's the, the. Some of the Dune books, after what they're doing, can't really be made. And Silo suffers from the same problem. To make the show interesting, you have to have them running around doing actiony things. But really, if you wanted the show to be interesting and along with the book, they would just be sitting around talking and explaining the concepts, like.
[48:03]
A
Right.
[48:03]
B
You know, and that's not exciting tv. So Silo would be so much better if there was more talking and explaining and getting into the concepts and the nitty gritty. But we have to break up a little bit of talking with a bunch of chase sequences every couple minutes.
[48:16]
A
Well, that's because these are such high budget productions. Yeah. Go back and look at. Go back and look at Star Trek Next Gen. Go look at DS9. Go look at Babylon 5. Look at those shows. Those shows were like shoestring. High, high budget, but not. They were shoestring budget.
[48:32]
B
Yeah.
[48:32]
A
And, you know, even Farscape, you know, they, they did a lot with a little. These people could do more. We don't need feature fucking film quality for everything that's on tv. You know, I'm kind of. I'm tired of that part. They really need to knock back that, that whole. Oh, my God. We need, you know, we need Emmy winners and Oscar winners and all this. Get Joe Blow, come in here with a couple lights, hold it over the guy and put some Styrofoam ears on him and just. Let's go, let's. Let's make this cheap and make a lot of it.
[49:02]
B
Yeah, that's what we want, man.
[49:05]
A
Yeah. What we don't want is ted Lasso Season 4. At least. I don't want Ted Lasso Season 4. I just watched the trailer for it and I'm just like, I'm not into it. I'm sure you probably are. Just got a nostalgia boner for it. But I watched the trailer and it made me want to watch it so much less than I did before I watched the trailer.
[49:23]
B
Well, I don't have a nostalgia boner for it because I can't have nostalgia over something that was only a few years ago. I did think it was diminishing returns on Ted Lasso. I don't think anything ever quite captured the Magic of the first season. But having said that, seeing the trailer did not make me not want to watch it. I do want to watch it. I think it's a fresh start. I think they have a chance. I have a feeling it's going to be the, the, the Rey Skywalker saga. It's going to be the Force Awakens of Ted Lasso. It's going to be a rehash of season one. This time with chicks.
[49:57]
A
Yep.
[49:58]
B
So,
[50:00]
A
you know, this time with chicks actually is. Is okay. Yeah, I'm fine.
[50:04]
B
Which I think is going to be okay. So I'm definitely going to think it's next. Next Wednesday. Right. First episode.
[50:10]
A
So I also saw the trailer for Neuromancer, the, you know, 8 million year old novel by William Gibson.
[50:18]
B
That's yes, your thoughts first. But you pretty much just nailed my problem with it.
[50:23]
A
I loved the book when it came out and I love seeing some of the visuals. I think it looks really good. I'm fine with this one being a high end production. And what's your name? Molly. With the fingernails? Hell yeah, I'm in for that. I don't like the main character. I like the casting on the main character. Do not like him at all. At all. So you know, I'm gonna watch it. Fuck yeah. It's, you know, it's cyberpunk. Come on. It's like original cyberpunk. Let's see how they fuck it up. Because you know they're gonna.
[50:54]
B
Well, of course they are. This is gonna last as long as that Chloe Moritz show was.
[51:00]
A
Brian Apple TV foundation is going on season 17.
[51:04]
B
Oh, that's true.
[51:05]
A
Come on.
[51:05]
B
Okay, so if they deviated really, really far from the book, it'll go on forever.
[51:09]
A
Exactly.
[51:10]
B
My problem with this is some sci fi has aged incredibly well. Neuromancer, in my opinion, has not. I enjoyed the book when it came out. I enjoy it from a nostalgia prefix, looking back at it in the same way that I can enjoy many sci fi that hasn't aged well. Why you would choose to make it now when there's so many things that are more relevant and more interesting to what's going on in the world right now. Okay. I think it's going to look beautiful. I just don't think that there's going to be much that grabs me besides the visuals.
[51:43]
A
Yeah, that's kind of it. But that comes back to them deviating from the plot a la foundation because they're going to have to. There's no way they can't. So we'll see. I Don't know. I'm in. I watch it. We'll see. And Prime Video has revealed the first major details about Blade Runner 2099, the franchise's first live action television series. Debuting November 25, the show is set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. Math, how's that work? In law in Los Angeles, rebuilt by forces beyond humanity.
[52:17]
B
You know, a human wrote this because the math was correct.
[52:19]
A
It actually worked. Yes, Michelle. Michelle Yeoh stars as Olwen, a replicant nearing her the end of her life, who partners with Cora, a fugitive taking on one final identity as a Blade Runner. Together they hunt a runaway whose secret could destabilize the city, which I'm fine with, because Michelle Yeoh, she owes us one. After star trek section 31, she owes us a good one. You know.
[52:46]
B
All right, I don't have high hopes for this, but then again, I'm one of the people that did not like Blade Runner 2049. I.
[52:54]
A
It was okay.
[52:54]
B
Didn't enjoy it at all, really.
[52:56]
A
I thought it was okay.
[52:57]
B
It was fine.
[52:58]
A
I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it at all.
[53:00]
B
So it was fine. I don't know, the whole Blade Runner thing, I just feel like it could be so much better than it has been. Maybe this will be the one.
[53:12]
A
Maybe not. Maybe it should have just been a movie. The first one, not the second, or now the series. So, I mean, it was a short story, for fuck's sake.
[53:21]
B
They're really milking an awful lot out of a very short story.
[53:25]
A
Yeah. Now, speaking of some things that were just okay, I finished reading Bad Deeds by Andrew Hunter Murray. I loved his first novel, the sci fi novel about when the Earth actually stopped rotating and the people on the bright side and the dark side and all that is a great. That was a fantastic sci fi book. This is a murder mystery novel which is kind of like Sneakers meets Poirot meets Agatha Christie. Right.
[53:49]
B
In the style of.
[53:51]
A
In the style of. Exactly. It was okay. It was okay. Unfortunately, he's not that great at the genre yet. I think he's got some, you know, pieces that could go. But I saw everything a mile away. It was. There was. There was no, like, twists or turns that made me go, oh, that's clever, you know? But I mean, granted, I read the entirety of the Sherlock Holmes collection and Agatha Christie's Poirot by the time I was 14, so I kind of have a leg up on murder mystery genre.
[54:26]
B
Yeah. You're an expert at the genre.
[54:28]
A
Yeah. I kind of have my chops in for the genre. I literally read all of that stuff by the time I was 14. I, this just did not land for me. I mean it was, I, I put it as a B. I love the characters, actually. I love the character development. I love the team, the sneakers like team or a bunch of penetration testers who are going up against, you know, big property developers and things like that. But his, his projection is just so ham fisted that it just really kind of left me wanting. So. All right, I'm gonna go take a leak and see if I can find Dave.
[55:00]
B
All right.
[55:12]
A
I went out in the hall again and God damn it, there's Dave Bittner. Dave. Dave covers the daily cyber security beat on the sidewire, bus scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat digs into industrial security on control loop and still shows up to stir trouble and only malware in the buildings. And I just, I don't know how every week, Dave, you just seem to be lurking and wanting to hang out with us. So welcome back. It's good to see you and happy birthday.
[55:36]
C
Well, thank you. I'm not sure how to respond to those mixed messages.
[55:41]
B
Well, I have two thoughts here. Obviously you guys are still dealing with your bladder issues, which we'll get into in a few minutes. Minutes. Because you're always wandering the halls, going to the restrooms. And secondly, of course, Dave was just loitering, waiting for someone to bring him his damn cake.
[55:55]
C
That's right. It's true.
[55:58]
B
Where is my compulsory corporate ice cream cake for my birthday?
[56:03]
C
You know, that's a good point. My birthday was yesterday and I have yet to have any cake. So what?
[56:11]
B
I think the cyber wire's on thin ice here. I think you need to update your LinkedIn.
[56:16]
C
I mean, my sense of entitlement is just screaming, where's my cake? Yeah, I did get very many birthday wishes from my co workers and on Facebook I'm celebrating with my family. In about a week we're going to be at the beach, so we're going to go out and have some dinner by the ocean. I. Yeah, yeah, so. But I guess I had a very nice birthday. Not a particularly interesting number, but I'll take it. And the main thing I got, I got two gifts from my wife and son for my birthday. The one that is not here was I got the Lego Star Trek Enterprise D. Nice.
[57:06]
B
Very nice.
[57:07]
C
Yes, fancy.
[57:08]
A
So engage, bro.
[57:12]
C
I think I will probably be alternating bags with my son Jack to get that one built because there's just so many gray pieces. And I swore after building the Millennium Falcon that I wasn't going to go down that path again. So we'll see. But the other thing my wife got me is she got me this mug from Disney and I don't know if you can see.
[57:38]
B
Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, I've seen that merch. The Sam the Eagle patriotic Fourth of July rollout.
[57:44]
C
It is Sam the Eagle. It says Sam Eagle. Distinctly patriotic. Semi quincentennial, United States of America.
[57:53]
A
Nice.
[57:55]
C
It is a catchphrase in our family. I don't know why, but just From Muppet Vision 3D to say a salute to all nations, but mostly America. Just wanted of my favorite Sam Eagle lines.
[58:10]
B
Very nice. Very nice, very nice.
[58:11]
A
So does that make you a Leo, Dave?
[58:13]
C
Yes, I am a Leo.
[58:15]
A
Excellent. Leos unite. Because my birthday is a week from today.
[58:19]
C
Okay.
[58:20]
A
We'll be off next week because you said you're going to be at the Hat of the Black hanging with the hackers.
[58:26]
C
I'll be at Black Hat next week and then the week after that I'll be at the beach. So.
[58:29]
B
All right.
[58:30]
A
Nice.
[58:30]
B
Okay.
[58:31]
C
Yeah.
[58:32]
B
Well, in two weeks, I can't wait to hear what the big buzzword. And as Black Hat is this year, so.
[58:38]
C
Yeah, Vegas in August.
[58:41]
A
It's the best fun time.
[58:42]
B
Everything is air conditioned there. You'll be fine. Yeah, and actually, I've heard they're hurting, so you won't even be like, around too many people.
[58:51]
C
Here's hoping.
[58:52]
B
Yeah.
[58:53]
A
Yeah, really. So follow up from last week. You know, I talked about the. The websites that I was building and revamping and resuscitating from the dead. And I sent you a couple more, Dave. I don't know if you got to check those out, but even since then, I've done even more. Even more. And then I said, well, I need a place to put them because I just can't keep sending them to the friends. So I revamped my own website, believe it or not, at Jason, FYI. But I made a link to all of the old websites that you can go check out in there. It's under the boneyard. Yes, there are quite a few now at this point, so I even sent one to Brian. I found the old Meatloaf demo that I did for real audio that we talked about a couple times on the show.
[59:35]
C
Oh, wow.
[59:35]
A
And I'm telling you, Codex is pretty good at, like, taking old shit and making it work again. It really is. The fairy tale games used to be Shockwave. They actually work in HTML5 now, and this was the great part, going and finding all this old stuff. I found one of the old director files for the Star Trek game where you're like walking the hall and shooting the Borg. It is almost done. It actually pulled everything and recreated it from the director file. It's getting really good at that stuff. So I'm pretty happy with these rebuilds.
[60:09]
C
Yeah, I enjoyed poking around on your website. It looks nice. Tell me about Trackalot.
[60:17]
A
Oh, Trackalot's my iOS app that I created. That is for. It is not a to do list. It is a did I do that list. So you can follow things there. That's what I built when my dog kept getting sick and we had to follow her around and say, did she poop? Did she peep? What time was it? What was it like? So you can track an event, just a plain event, or you can add track an event with notes, can export it to Excel or to your calendar. So it's basically just a really nice, easy tracking app. Kind of just, you know, kind of
[60:47]
C
a reverse to do list.
[60:48]
B
Yes. It's funny because Jason. Jason used it for a sick dog. But I was actually just thinking it's actually perfect for neurotic first time parents. Did my kid pee? Did my kid poop? What did my kid eat?
[61:00]
A
Yeah, I have a friend whose daughter is very sick and she actually uses it to track her daughter's illness as well. So. And I am. I am trying to quit nicotine. So I am tracking how. How many times a day I hit the. Hit the lozenge so I can track that. And so the next. There's a new version that's in for review right now that you can track from your Apple Watch so you can set up trackers and when you're out and about, you can just tap your watch and track what you're doing. So it makes it much easier so you don't have to pull your phone out after that. We're putting in like, you know, limits on how many times a day you can do something.
[61:34]
B
So it's like, who's the we? Jason, are you now referring to your AI coding companion as an actual person?
[61:41]
A
Yeah, Doug. I named him Doug. He's my junior coder. Junior coder.
[61:46]
C
My wife and I refer to ChatGPT as Chet. Did you check with Chet?
[61:51]
A
Yep.
[61:53]
C
So is this app, is there any sharing capability or anything like that? I'm asking because just yesterday our adorable little dog conned me into giving her a second dinner. Last night I got home and My wife was at the grocery store and I fed and walked the dog and my wife came home and she said, you didn't feed the dog again, did you? And I went, no.
[62:22]
A
There is no sharing on this app at present. It is a standalone and maybe in future revisions I can look into doing that.
[62:29]
C
But yeah, yeah, that's cool. Good for you.
[62:32]
A
Thanks. Thanks. It gets the job done. It has made $181 so far.
[62:37]
B
All right, that's $181 you didn't have before, Jason.
[62:42]
A
But I spent probably $250 on it on codecs and the Apple developer fees. So I'm still in the hole. So go check it out. But yeah, I'm going to keep doing that stuff. I think just finding those old sites, it's fun. It's fun. You know, there's so much. I have so many things in the archives.
[63:00]
B
I know it's obviously not a priority for quite a. But are you even slightly worried about getting smacked by the IP lawyers on some of this stuff particularly? Well, I guess Paramount's a bit busy trying to merge right now, but yeah,
[63:13]
A
I couldn't give a shit less. No, I really couldn't care less if they can send me a cease and desist. I'll take it down if they want, but it's like these things are so old. Who cares? Who cares?
[63:23]
C
It's like showing your portfolio.
[63:25]
A
Yeah, it is literally my portfolio.
[63:27]
B
Especially since they've basically taken down you and not me, Jason. Both. All of my music sites, they're all long gone. Like all my entire portfolio. I was gone off the Internet. I might as well have never existed as a coder or a company or anything because nothing exists anymore that I built. It's all gone.
[63:45]
A
That's one of the reasons I left the movie business. Because we'd worked for a year, the site would be up for like, you know, three weeks and then it would be gone. And I'm like, I just. The ephemeral nature of all of that work just. It really bummed me out. So I like. I'm like, I'm gonna go work for a startup because startups, you know, they live forever. You know, I put in years on Techno Roddy and all the hard work we did there.
[64:04]
B
And I'm gonna go work for Google because Google products last for.
[64:08]
A
Oh, yeah. So this too shall pass is what I should have said. But no, and I. I found it. I did find a site that I think might tickle you guys because it's just. It's crazy. Jurassic Park Computers in excruciating detail. This is from Fabian Sanglard. Never heard of this guy. I think this came from the Recommendo website. I think it's a Mark Frauenfeld.
[64:31]
C
Never heard of him. But I appreciate the effort and I love everything about this website.
[64:36]
B
Excruciating is correct too.
[64:37]
A
Excruciating detail is correct. It's every computer that you can see in Jurassic Park.
[64:42]
C
Yeah.
[64:43]
A
And. And the monetary value of them at the time and in. In current, you know, current money. I just loved everything about this page. It's like I. I read the whole thing. I just was going through because I had some of the SGIs that were in there. I had an Indigo.
[64:57]
C
Really?
[64:57]
A
Yeah. And it was desktop publishing at Kinko's at first. At first it wasn't. We didn't have an Indigo. The Indigo came. What was the smaller one? The first pizza box or the Indigos were the thick ones.
[65:08]
B
Yeah, we had the thick one at the first company that I worked for that was actually our server that was housed in a different building that I had to drive to and manually upload websites when they were completed In Marina del Rey.
[65:21]
A
Right. Yeah, yeah. We had a room with an SGI in there and a couple sun sparks in there. But in the. Not the Indigo, there was another one that was kind of a small refrigerator sized one. That's the one that we ran Star Trek First Contact on that. We actually melted a hard drive in it the day it launched.
[65:41]
C
Wow.
[65:42]
A
Yeah. We had so much traffic to that thing. We melted the hard drive. They had to replace the hard drive midday, so we lost a bunch of traffic.
[65:48]
C
But I never had any of these.
[65:49]
A
Oh, they're fun.
[65:51]
C
We lusted after them because at the time that Jurassic park came out, I was, you know, had a company that was doing 3D stuff and it was all on max. And so there were several meetings we had over the history of the company, over whether or not it made sense to invest in some kind of. In an SGI machine or. Yeah. Would that make a difference? Could that. You know, and we never pulled the trigger on them because of course they were very expensive and so we just stuck with our Macs. But yeah, I definitely had a lot of desire for those machines back in the day when they were the. Really the stuff.
[66:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, we just had the basic stuff on them for the desktop publishing side at Kinko's, you know, because it was just basically to run. I think it was called the Fiery, which was a Canon color. Canon color copier. So we ran the Fiery from The sgi. But the greatest thing is like, you know, you get Minecraft on a Windows machine there. You get Light Bike, which is basically the Light Cycles from Tron, which was the best, like built in game. So we'd play the Light Cycles when we weren't actually sending jobs to the Fiery. And then when you get them for web serving, it's just, you know, you basically ran Apache on it and that was it.
[67:07]
C
I'm looking at the Wikipedia list of SGI workstations and there's Crimson Fuel, Indigo, Indigo 2, Indie, Iris, O2, Octane, Prism, Tesreau, Virtru, and Visual Workstation Indies.
[67:24]
A
Indies were what we had at Kinko's.
[67:25]
C
Yeah, okay.
[67:26]
A
Yeah, the Indigo 2s were the taller ones.
[67:29]
C
What was the one that looked like a swollen toaster? Was that an octane? I think that was an octane. Anyway, there's one of them in the Jurassic park web page. It's blue. Let's see if I can find it here. Sort of like in the background.
[67:47]
A
Yeah. So the Indigos were the tall ones that look like Quadra 848Vs kind of.
[67:54]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, they were Indigos. Blue Indigo, duh. Okay, thank you.
[68:01]
B
There you go.
[68:03]
C
Yeah. The other thing I love about this, and I loved about Jurassic park is I think my favorite Mac of all time was the Quadra 700.
[68:13]
A
Really?
[68:14]
C
Yeah, yeah. Because it was the first really powerful Mac I ever bought. It was the first Mac I ever bought that I put video hardware in to. And so like when we started our company, it was built on Quadra 700s to start with. And we like, I remember clock chipping our Quadra 700s to make them run at. At 33 MHz instead of 25, which actually made a difference. But I just, yeah. Have great affection for that machine. So it was a thrill when I went to see Jurassic park and oh, look, Quadra 700s. And of course they're just a re labeled. The case is the same case as one of the previous Macs. They just turned it on its side. But still a good looking design.
[69:04]
A
Yeah. My original one that I. That I still have affection for is the Quadra 650. Because that was my first. The one that I got the Apple student loan for that they followed me for 15 years trying to get their money back on.
[69:15]
C
Oh, man.
[69:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, they didn't get their money back on that one. No, they didn't.
[69:25]
B
Wow. All right. Anyways, we've spent some time on this segment talking about shitting, showering and shaving as of recently, we've added peeing. So we. We talked last night. Yeah, we talked last week about the dreaded waking up in the middle of the night to go pee. Jason is. Is using pumpkin oil and is swearing by that listener. Mike has written in. If you're dealing with old man bladder issues, lycopene can help with that. The best source is tomato paste. You can also find it in beets. And there's lycopene supplements. Also. I, I suggest if this. And you try with beets, use Jason's app to make sure that you note that you ate beets.
[70:07]
A
Yes.
[70:07]
B
So when you do the other thing and it's red, you don't assume you have colon cancer.
[70:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, I started. Nothing worse than that. Nothing worse than that.
[70:17]
B
I started taking lycopene supplements a few weeks ago, so it's too soon to tell if there's a difference, but thought I would pass this on. Well, Mike, if you continue to pass things on in the middle of the night, let us know. Keep us updated on your urinary situation.
[70:30]
C
I. I tried beet juice once. Once.
[70:35]
A
Once.
[70:38]
C
Because. And it's probably the lycopene, I don't know. But beet juice is supposed to be good for high blood pressure, which I have, and I take, you know, medicine every day, and it keeps it under control and it's all fine. But beets are supposed to be one of the things that helps keep that under control. First of all, drinking beet juice is
[70:58]
B
like drinking dirt, as is eating beets. It is a dirt flavored root. It's a root vegetable.
[71:06]
C
Yes, Yes. I like to think I can, you know, choke most things down if I have to, but I. 1.
[71:14]
A
That's what she said.
[71:15]
C
Yeah. Thank you. And. Well, no.
[71:20]
B
Maybe this is why Dave is wandering the halls. Now it's starting to make more sense.
[71:24]
C
I can't.
[71:24]
A
I can't do beet juice.
[71:26]
B
No.
[71:26]
C
I bought this bottle of beet juice. I was really proud of myself. Oh, this is going to solve all of my physical problems. And I drank like half a glass of it and I was like, well, this is going down the drain, because there's just no way. The other thing, too is like, I don't know if this, if you guys had this when you were in elementary school, like, once a year, a dentist would come in and teach you how to brush your teeth. Do you remember? Did that ever happen? And, like, usually he'd have, like a tooth puppet it with a giant toothbrush that he, you know, brush the teeth. But the other thing that he'd do is he'd come in with, like, this tablet that someone would chew on and it would show all the places where you missed brushing.
[72:06]
A
Oh, yeah.
[72:07]
C
I feel like that's what beet juice does. Also, like, if you drink beet juice, you end up with just like. It's like the before picture on a dentures commercial when you drink beet juice. So anyway, I don't like.
[72:25]
A
Did you also have to do the fluoride treatments every week? We had to do that. We called it the swish and spit. They would come in with a gallon with a little plastic or paper cups, and they'd give you a little pump, and then you had to swish it and spit it. Every week they would make us do fluoride treatments.
[72:38]
C
So I do remember doing fluoride treatments. However, I do specifically remember part of one of the dental visits was not swishing spit. It was swish and swallow.
[72:51]
B
Oh, that was my favorite class.
[72:55]
C
Well, here's the thing. It wasn't until probably 10 years later that I realized why all the teachers were giggling under their breath, you know, eye side eyeing each other at this dentist, telling us about how healthy we'd be if every day we switched and swallowed.
[73:12]
B
Certainly would be hitting your protein goals, I suppose. Yeah,
[73:18]
C
we didn't know. So at times, simpler times.
[73:23]
A
Public school.
[73:25]
C
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, what was the other thing that we had to endure was being checked for lice. Lice being checked for lice. Oh, man.
[73:38]
A
Dude. We had to do that in North Carolina. And there was always a couple kids that had to go home. And then it was just like, you know, this is a walk of shame.
[73:46]
C
Yeah.
[73:46]
A
Go back to the trailer park. Get your head shaved.
[73:49]
C
Right. And a lot of times kerosene.
[73:51]
A
They use kerosene to get it out.
[73:53]
C
Really?
[73:54]
A
Oh, North Carolina. We lived in trailer parks. Sorry. We used kerosene to get the lice out.
[74:00]
C
Girls sharing hairbrushes were. That is how the lice made its way around. I was lucky enough to never have lice still to this day. But, yeah, there's always one or two people who, like you said, got sent home, quite discreetly sent home. But everybody knew.
[74:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't discreet. It was like, you know, it was a line. And there was one chair at the time at the beat at the, you know, the front of the class, and you would go up and they would just sit there with the comb and go through it. And you would either go back to your chair or you would go out the door. There Was no discreet anything about it at all.
[74:34]
C
Yeah, speaking of. So just while we're on the topic of peeing, I've told, I think I've told the story here about how I peed my pants in the library in elementary school one time because the teacher wouldn't let me use the bathroom.
[74:47]
B
Perhaps. I feel like I'd remember it.
[74:51]
C
No. So in elementary school we would go to the library once a week and we'd spend time in the library with a librarian. And I guess this was a way for our classroom teacher to get a break from all of us. And we went to the library and I really had to pee and the librarian wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. Said, you know, you should have done that before you came here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, I ended up peeing myself because I couldn't hold it. And so lucky for me, it was Halloween. And so back in my cubbyhole was my, you know, plastic pullover Batman outfit with the mask, the rubber band on the back. So I was able to put the plastic outfit on to serve as trousers.
[75:41]
B
I was going to say, was your outfit a 54 year old man who couldn't make it through the night?
[75:46]
A
Right.
[75:46]
C
Yeah, it was Grunkle Stan. I was way ahead of the game. But what a terrible experience, you know, like having a teacher not believe you that you really have to go. And I remember my classroom teacher just ripping into the librarian being like, what are you doing? Like the kid tells you they have to go to the bathroom, they have to go to the bathroom. But anyway, I'm not scarred by it at all.
[76:11]
B
No,
[76:14]
C
it's not a core memory for me. I'm perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. There's a YouTube video I wanted to share that came out a couple weeks ago. Now I was surprised kind of by the source of this, that this is an official Star wars release. It's called who Are the Mandalorians? It's kind of a history bit about the Mandalorians and where they came from and why they do what they do and you know, the different. Some of them have to keep their masks on and some other helmets and some don't. But it's well done and I thought for the Star wars fans they might enjoy checking it out.
[76:53]
B
I'm not surprised that they put this out as the Mandalorians have kind of become core to what Star wars currently is given all the shows that are out now. So, yeah, makes sense. And I'm glad that this is next time my kid asks me 10,000 questions? I'm just going to pull up this video. Here you go, kid.
[77:11]
A
Right.
[77:12]
C
Enjoy yourself. I got to go pee.
[77:18]
B
I got a score to settle with an old librarian.
[77:20]
C
Yeah, exactly. Right. Could you imagine crossing paths in a dark alley, Mr. Johnson? 1976, Centennial. In elementary school, the library. You probably don't remember me, but I remember you. Yeah. And so, finally, I wanted to just provide a quick update on my digital piano journey. I let you guys know a couple weeks ago, I bought a broken piano, and I've been fixing it with the help of ChatGPT, which has been very helpful. And I feel I'm not quite there yet, but I think we're close again. That's what she said. Yeah. So, however, I did get to the point where I wasn't able to do anything else with just my multimeter. So ChatGPT got to the point where it said, do you happen to have a thermal camera?
[78:22]
A
Yes. When we left you last week, Joe Kerrigan was going to supply the thermal camera.
[78:27]
C
Right. So Job did bring in the thermal camera, but his thermal camera did not work with my iPhone. He had one of those ones that plugs into the bottom of your phone.
[78:37]
A
Yeah, the little FLIR attachment ones.
[78:39]
C
The little FLIR attachment. And his was old enough that that particular model wasn't built for an iPhone with USB C. So I couldn't get it to work. Darn. Had to buy my own.
[78:49]
A
Aw. Yeah. Shucks. So how much did that run you, Dave?
[78:53]
C
About 150 bucks.
[78:55]
B
How much would a new keyboard cost?
[78:58]
C
We're not. This is not how we're keeping track of this project, Brian. As I said at the outset, I'm
[79:05]
B
using Jason's Track a Lot app currently, for every dollar you spend.
[79:09]
A
Yeah, yeah.
[79:11]
C
Don't tell my wife.
[79:14]
B
I did not feed the dog and I did not buy it.
[79:17]
C
Right.
[79:19]
A
I can tell you how much is poop. What the temperature of his poop is.
[79:22]
B
Yeah.
[79:23]
A
Oh. So. So you got to tell me first, how do you like the FLIR camera? Because I've looked at those before, and I have had. I've had, you know, gear lust syndrome, where I just, like, I don't need one, but I really want one.
[79:34]
C
It's great. It's great.
[79:35]
A
Okay.
[79:35]
C
So what I did was I went over. You guys familiar with project farm, the YouTube video? He's a guy. He's this guy who tests all kinds of things. He says, we're going to test that. He says, very impressive. Good YouTube channel. It's called Project Farm. He tests all kinds of things in A very kind of earthy, rural kind of way, but it's good. It's worth your time. And so I just went to Project Farm and looked for his tests of thermal cameras and found the one that he thought was the best value. And. And that's what I bought. It was about 150 bucks. There are ones that are much more, but this seemed like a nice balance between resolution and price and capabilities and all that stuff. So let me tell you, once you have a thermal camera, you don't want to live without one because it's just so much fun. It is also, ignorance is bliss in that, of course, I started walking around my house, looking at all of the places where my house is under insulated. You just like pointing a wall. You're like, holy smokes. Look at all the. Look at all the heat coming through there. Look at, you know, look at. Oh, no. Look at windows. Oh, no. So. But yes, it is great fun. I highly recommend if you can have one, if you can, if you can afford one, get yourself a thermal camera.
[80:57]
A
Because if you have the means.
[80:59]
C
If you have the means, I highly recommend it. Yes.
[81:01]
A
I'll put the link in the show notes because. Because my birthday is next week, so I put that on my. My list of. Hey guys, want to give me something nice? Yeah. So I just wanted one for when I'm testing pans in the kitchen to see if they're hot enough to start searing the meat. So, you know, that's. I know, I know. I can just hold my hand over it and go and see if it spill, you know, see if it pops. But a FLIR camera would just make it more repeatable. Is always.
[81:26]
C
It would. Do you. Do you have one of the little infrared thermometers? I do the little laser thermometer thing.
[81:34]
A
Yes, I do.
[81:35]
C
You could use that on your pan.
[81:36]
A
Not nearly as much fun. Dave, it's my birthday. I want a camera. Shut up.
[81:43]
C
I'm with you. No, no, no. 100%. 100%. I'm just. Yes, you are correct. I withdraw the question.
[81:50]
A
Tell me about your piano.
[81:53]
C
So we got to the point where we had to look at one of the circuit boards to see what. What component was heating up.
[81:59]
B
I love the Wii. I love the fact that both you and Jason now refer to your experiments with AI as We are doing things.
[82:08]
C
That's bad. I didn't realize I was doing that.
[82:10]
A
It's not good.
[82:13]
C
So now ChatGPT is very accommodating. It told me that if I didn't have a thermal Camera. I could spritz alcohol on the board and I could see where it evaporated first. And that would tell me what was getting hot. But I was like, no, I'm gonna
[82:28]
A
throw it doesn't sound safe.
[82:30]
C
Not safe nor gratifying or satisfying. So I have the thermal camera and sure enough, I found the current diagnosis is that the 5 volt rail is shorting to ground. And so I found a capacitor on the board that was getting hot, pulled it off the board, checked it out, sure enough, bad capacitor. So. So I'm going to replace all the capacitors just for the sake of it. But I'm making progress. Now the lights on the front of the board light up and they didn't do that before. So more power is getting to it than was before. I'm still not getting any sound out of it, but that's okay. This is a journey. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And it wasn't a good excuse for me. Now I have a thermal camera.
[83:16]
B
All right. I can't wait to hear the first notes from this soon to be $7,000 keyboard.
[83:21]
A
Right, exactly. Powered by a windmill outside of his solar panels.
[83:27]
C
Yeah, my old solar panel. My old collection of solar panels are going to be powering it. I have to go break it to my son Jack that he's going to have to take a gap year because we can't afford college anymore. But dad got a 15 year old digital piano working.
[83:44]
B
Not since John Michael Jar has there been a more expensive keyboard.
[83:47]
C
That's right. I love it, but I'm having fun.
[83:50]
A
That's all that matters. Literally, it's all that matters.
[83:54]
B
We are having a good time.
[83:56]
C
We are having a good time. We are having a great time. The royal we.
[84:01]
A
Well, you and Chet, enjoy your journey and enjoy black travels and enjoy the beach and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
[84:08]
C
All right, very good. Thanks, guys.
[84:10]
B
Bye, Dave.
[84:11]
A
Well, this is the part of the show where we thank the people who give us money to keep us fed and on the air. So Brian, what do we got?
[84:17]
B
We love these people. We have no new people on Patreon. And because I didn't do this ahead of time because vacation and everything else. To quote the famous. Oh God, what's his name? Right wing commentator. It. We're doing it live. Got some legacy people. Number one, Smy. Number two, Francois Leith, Dave, Roger, Robert, Kevin, Steve, GK and James, thank you all so much for your continued Patreon donations.
[84:46]
A
Thank you very much. And over at PayPal, we do have a Patreon subscriber who said here's a hundred bucks because you're awesome. Then that's Joseph. Thank you very much, Joseph. We appreciate it. Like you would not believe. We would not believe.
[84:59]
B
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And over at Stripe we have donations from Kathleen, Jennifer, Gary and Adam.
[85:05]
A
That's right, that's the old tip jar. And you can find the tip jar if you go to gog.show donate. You can find all the places where you can help support the show. And remember, if you go to patreon.com gog you get the show early ad free and in high definition. You can also go to YouTube and sign up there and become a member. And I don't know if we have any YouTube members today because also vacation for you, but just slacking for me and I forgot to go check because we forget to put it in the show notes and I'm silly that way. But please, your. Your continued support is what keeps us going. So check out GOG Show Donate any chance you get. We'll appreciate it a lot.
[85:42]
B
That's right.
[85:43]
A
And we are off next week if you. If you've forgotten from the beginning of the show because you know it's been a long time since we told you that we were going on vac. So we will not be here next week. But yeah, join us the following week. And Brian, you have a lovely vacation.
[85:57]
B
Have a great birthday.
[85:58]
A
Thank you. I will. I'll be at the gym. Until next time. I'm Jason DeFilippo.
[86:02]
B
And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 757. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG Show. Donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show. Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got GOG Merch. Relatively new GOG Merch. So stealing from oldthinkgeek.com gog merch. Get it at Shop Gog show and stay grumpy.

Summary7 min read

Grumpy Old Geeks – Episode 757: “This Time With Chicks”

Release Date: July 30, 2026
Hosts: Jason DeFilippo, Brian Schulmeister
Guest: Dave Bittner

Episode Overview

In this no-holds-barred episode, Jason, Brian, and Dave dive into the latest tech industry news and controversies, with a focus on AI-driven layoffs, regulatory battles, and the ongoing absurdities of Big Tech. The gang delivers sharp, uncensored takes on the week’s headlines—ranging from eBay’s corporate harassment settlement to the spiral of AI hype and company chaos (with substantial shade thrown at Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg). Plus: TV/film chatter, nostalgia for old tech, and a healthy dose of potty humor.

Key Discussions & Insights

1. eBay Harassment Settlement

[01:03] eBay and former executives will pay $56M to settle a corporate harassment lawsuit filed by journalists David Harvell & Ina Steiner, who were subjected to intimidation tactics after reporting critically on eBay executives.
- Jason: “Company employees sent them disturbing packages, including live insects, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. Yay. Not the thing you want to get from eBay.”
- [01:58] Brian: “Well, one would hope [the conduct violated eBay’s values].”
Noted the glacial pace of court proceedings and eBay’s too-late apology.

2. Hugging Face Origin Story

[02:10] Jason clarifies a previous error: Hugging Face started as a fun teen chatbot app, not an alien “facehugger” reference. The developer community embraced the emoji-themed name, which stuck after their pivot to open source ML.
- [03:15] Brian: “Look, you’re talking to someone who named his company Slender Fungus.”

3. AI Regulatory Chaos & Open Letters

[03:37] Two clashing open letters this week:
- Pro-Open AI (Nvidia, MS, Meta, et al): Urges against “premature” regulation of open-weight AI models.
- AI Worker Letter (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google): Calls for international governance and the option to pause AI development if needed.
- [04:54] Jason: “One letter says, ‘don’t slow us down, bro.’ The other says, ‘please slow us down, bro.’ Same industry, same week. Having fun yet?”
- Brian: “No.”

4. Doomsaying and Hypocrisy in AI

[05:00] Critique of industry fearmongering, particularly Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warning AI could enable bio-weapons—while his own company profits from “safe” AI.
- [06:21] Brian: “Are you admitting that you’re not just a platform then, that you are responsible for the things done using your tools?”
- Jason: “They’re not responsible, Brian, because it’s hard. Guardrails are hard, Brian.”
OpenAI’s Sam Altman: On the Relentless podcast, denies AI will lead to a societal 4-hour workweek; asserts people are just naturally competitive.
- [07:46] Jason: “In my experience, people are not competitive by nature. People are fucking lazy by nature.”

5. Microsoft’s Data Condom

[08:49] Satya Nadella warns that companies relying on big AI labs without their own infrastructure are “outsourcing their thinking.”
- [08:54] Brian: “Is he basically saying you shouldn’t build your castle in somebody else’s backyard?”
- [09:24] Jason: Mocks the sales pitch: “We are your data condom in this brave new fucking world.”

6. AI Layoffs: Patreon, BuzzFeed, Uber

Patreon
- [10:56] Patreon laying off 20% of staff, citing need to “embrace AI” or risk death, despite its opposite stance on scraping for creators.
- [13:25] Jason on Patreon: “It is basically a gateway to content that we create. Why do they need AI to do anything on that platform... I don’t need any more features.”
BuzzFeed
- [19:06] BuzzFeed cuts 33% of workforce after failed AI content pivot.
- [19:43] Jason on new owner Byron Allen: “He swoops in, sucks this shit up. I mean, he owns the Weather Channel for fuck’s sake...”
Uber
- [20:36] 10% customer service layoffs, justified by “embracing AI.”
- [22:00] Jason: “Uber—same thing as Patreon. Platform for payments.”

7. Insane AI Industry Investment & Circular Financing

[29:29] “Circular financing” madness: Nvidia’s $750B in new AI infrastructure deals, helping companies finance each other’s vaporware.
- [30:38] Jason: “What the fuck, what the fuck?”
[30:46] Brian: “If you put all your eggs in each other’s baskets and the baskets fall and the eggs break, we’re all fucked up.”

8. AI’s Real-World Dangers & Dubious Progress

[41:40] AI code assistants like Copilot & Cursor shown to hallucinate non-existent software packages, leading to serious security risks (hallucinated package/halluse squatting attacks).
- [42:00] Jason: “These tools often hallucinate recommendations for software packages that flat out just don’t exist. Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

9. Data Center Deregulation & Environmental Costs

[31:28] Trump administration rolls back pollution controls for data centers, risking a new wave of acid rain for the sake of “AI dominance.”
- [32:32] Brian snarks: “Even if we all fucking die in hellfire.”

10. Meta’s New Schemes, Verification & Marketplace

[37:34] Facebook rolling out identity verification (facial recognition selfies) to try and combat a flood of AI-generated fakes—meanwhile, expanding “Seller” and Marketplace to compete with eBay/Etsy.
- [38:16] Brian: “They could just let you see friends’ updates—that would really help us interact with humans.”
Meta’s AI PR Campaign:
- [40:45] Brian: “The same company that has used AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its own staff while wearing a two million dollar watch…”

11. Musk Mania

[24:10] Elon seeks $4B in new funding for Boring Company while SpaceX’s value drops. Predicts a future where money is obsolete by 2036 due to robot labor.
- [25:40] Jason: “Who’s going to build the fucking robots? The robots? No. Who’s going to mine the metal... Us. And he’s a fucking idiot.”
- [26:18] Brian: “He will never give away any of his fortune. He is the most uncharitable fucking fuck, tight ass motherfucking billionaire out there.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Segments

Elon Watch, Again and Again:
[26:12] Brian: “Everything he says is so full of shit… I want to Kanye him from this show. But we can’t. We tried.”
On the Cult of AI:
[15:45] Brian: “It is a cult. It's a, it is a cult.”
On Tech Layoffs:
[14:39] Brian: “The people left that are working there, the actual human people... are now working 90 hours a week instead of the 40 that they should be working... It is out of control.”

Other Segments

TV, Movies & Book Recommendations

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
[44:14] Brian: “They took a huge swing and I think they hit it out of the ballpark.”
[45:15] A: “This was the most Star Trek-ian Star Trek of the Star Treks.”
Neuromancer (new TV adaptation)
[50:17] Jason: “I loved the visuals… but I don't like the main character’s casting.” [51:10] Brian: “Some sci-fi has aged incredibly well. Neuromancer, in my opinion, has not.”
Blade Runner 2099
[52:16] Discussion. Both cautiously skeptical.
Book Review — Bad Deeds by Andrew Hunter Murray
[53:49] Jason: “It was okay… unfortunately, he’s not that great at the genre yet.”

Retro Tech Corner

[64:31] Jason shares a detailed “Jurassic Park Computers in excruciating detail” site, triggering an SGI and Quadra nostalgia fest.
[68:02] Dave: “My favorite Mac of all time was the Quadra 700...”

Listener Tips & Health Tangents

[70:06] Listener Mike recommends lycopene (tomato paste, beets, supplements) for bladder health; Dave shares beet juice horror whiteboard (“it’s like drinking dirt”).
Public school memories: lice checks, fluoride treatments, librarian trauma.

Dave Bittner Joins (Listener/Co-Host Segment)

[55:11] Dave shares his birthday gifts: Lego Star Trek Enterprise D & Sam the Eagle mug.

[60:17] Jason demos his new app Trackalot (log what you DID, not just to-dos).
[78:21] Dave details using ChatGPT + thermal camera to repair a digital piano (“Now I have a thermal camera, and you just don’t want to live without one.”).

Timestamps for Key Segments

eBay Harassment Lawsuit: 01:03
Hugging Face history correction: 02:10
AI Open Letters (Pro/Against Regulation): 03:37–05:00
Anthropic/OpenAI doomsaying: 05:00–06:06
Satya Nadella’s “data condom” speech: 08:49
Patreon layoffs & AI tension: 10:56–14:39
BuzzFeed, Uber, AI Layoffs: 19:06–22:00
China facial licensing, AI image rights: 22:11
Boring Company & Elon’s abundance future: 24:48–26:40
Meta’s new verification/fake profiles: 37:34–40:45
AI hallucination attacks (halluse squatting): 41:40
Retro tech & Jurassic Park computers: 64:31
Listener health/lycopene discussion: 70:06
Dave’s piano repair journey: 78:21

Tone & Takeaways

Language/Tone: Irreverent, sweary, sarcastic, “grumpy” but insightful. No filter.
Recurring Theme: Tech CEOs and their companies are hypocritical, fixated on AI at the expense of actual value or user trust.
Big Picture: The AI bubble is being propped up by financial shell games and layoff-justifying hype, all while the tech everyone relies on grows less human and more brittle. Meanwhile, nostalgia for old-school computing offers a comforting contrast to the chaos.

Final Thought

If you want an unvarnished, cathartic look at what’s going wrong at the top tiers of tech—and a podcast that treats billionaire pronunciations and AI messianism with the derision they deserve—this is your walk of shame.

“All these AI bros are fucking twat waffles—just because I like saying that word.” – Jason, [27:35]

Loading summary

Transcript448 lines

[00:03]
A
Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.
[00:19]
B
And I'm Brian Schoenmeister.
[00:20]
A
Brian, we're taking next week off.
[00:22]
B
We are. You are having a birthday. I am finishing up my trip out here. Going to Disneyland, going to San Diego, then going home.
[00:29]
A
I am going to Fogo de Cho, and I'm going to have a tower of seafood. That's what I'm going to have.
[00:33]
B
Go. Stop. Go. I haven't been there in ages.
[00:37]
A
No, this. Well, I love that. I love that part. The. The cards and everything, but we're lit. I'm just. You can go and on the menu instead of doing the. The whole never ending go, stop thing. The. The never ending meats. Yeah, it's literally a tower of seafood.
[00:52]
B
Oh, okay.
[00:52]
A
So a friend of mine is friends with the manager over there who got me a gift card so I can go enjoy it on my birthday because I can't afford a tower of seafood in this economy.
[01:03]
B
They are expensive.
[01:04]
A
Yes, they are very expensive. So thank you. Thank you, guys. So let's move on to a little bit of follow up here. Ebay and several former executives will pay $56 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a Massachusetts couple who said they were targeted in a corporate harassment campaign. We covered this a couple years ago. Now, the victims, newsletter publisher David Harvell and journalist Ina Steiner had reported critically on ebay and its leadership. According to court documents, company employees sent them disturbing packages, including live insects, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. Yay. Not the thing you want to get from ebay. They also allegedly conducted surveillance, sent threatening messages, and tried to intimidate the couple into stopping their coverage. The settlement included $39 million from eBay and $17 million from former executives and employees. Ebay has apologized and said the conduct violated its values.
[01:59]
B
Well, one would hope.
[02:00]
A
One would fucking hope. Yes.
[02:03]
B
That's crazy. I mean, man, things move slow, don't they? Because, yeah, we talked about this ages ago, and it's just finally been settled. Unbelievable.
[02:11]
A
Oh, the court. The courts. Take a while, man. Courts take a while when you can sue everybody for anything. Yep, it goes slow. Yeah. And, Brian, last week, I was so wrong, and I apologize. When co founders Clement delong and Julian Chamond and Thomas Wolf started hugging face in 2016, they originally built a fun chatbot app for teenagers. They joked that they wanted to become the very first company to go public on the NASDAQ using an emoji instead of a traditional three letter ticker symbol. That's some people got life goals and some people got life goals, I guess.
[02:46]
B
Yeah.
[02:47]
A
Well, because the hugging face emoji was their personal favorite, they picked it for the chatbot and the company name. While they initially thought the name and logo would only last a few weeks or months, the developer community completely fell in love with it. When the business pivoted to open source machine learning, the friendly and approachable name stuck for good. So it is not about the alien face hugger. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. So I was wrong. Boo.
[03:12]
B
Boo. Oh, well, it's a cute story. I like it.
[03:16]
A
It's a cute story.
[03:17]
B
But look, you're talking to somebody who named his company Slender Fungus.
[03:21]
A
Okay.
[03:22]
B
Just saying.
[03:24]
A
I go with things like vapid and Spew, but you guys have the fun ones. That's okay. Well, this week in AI, the sky is falling. Bullshitter. I mean, the news. Let us continue, Brian.
[03:36]
B
Okay.
[03:37]
A
On July 24, a coalition led by Nvidia's Jensen Huang with Microsoft, Meta, Mistral, Hugging Face, and a couple dozen others signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose broad, quote, premature restrictions on open weight AI models. The kind you can download and run yourself.
[03:55]
C
Not.
[03:55]
B
Not to get too Eddie Izzard here, but premature, I would say. Mature, mature restrictions. Learned, mature restrictions.
[04:07]
A
It comes as Washington debates how to respond to allegations that Chinese AI labs are stealing intellectual property from American companies. Oh, my God. The Chinese AI are stealing our intellectual property that we stole from everybody else. Shocker, shocker. Well, then four days later, a different letter. Brian. Over 1100 workers at Frontier AI companies published an open letter calling for a new approach to regulating automated AI development. It asks the US government to support international governance tools that could slow the pace of AI development if needed. This one was signed by people at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta. So one letter says, don't slow us down, bro. The other says, please slow us down, bro. So, same industry, same week. Having fun yet?
[04:59]
B
No.
[05:00]
A
Okay.
[05:00]
B
I haven't had fun since we started. Since AI started.
[05:03]
A
I haven't had fun since Elon went pedo. But anyway, let's get to the doom and gloom, okay? Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei, whose company also conveniently sells the safe, expensive AI, says he fears that AI will enable biological attacks and that open weight models are more dangerous because it's hard to put guardrails on them or monitor how they're used. So now Dario's out there. Call now. It's like, okay, well, we don't have the job losses. We don't have. Let's go to biological attacks in the next pandemic. We have literally moved on. He is using the Marvel Playbook universe. Next we're going to have, you know, the Silver Surfer is the. The anthropic, you know, logo. When.
[05:47]
B
When are the time cops coming?
[05:49]
A
Yeah, seriously. Uh, he did clarify this week, though, that Anthropic has never advocated banning open models. His real worry is authoritarian government and bioweapons, not your neighbor running a chatbot.
[06:02]
B
You mean the authoritarian government that's you're kind of making deals with?
[06:06]
A
Yeah, that one.
[06:06]
B
That one. Okay. I think it's interesting that he. He mentioned specifically that he. It's hard to put guardrails on them or monitor how they're used. Are you admitting that you're not just a platform then, that you are responsible for the things done using your tools?
[06:21]
A
Gasp. Oh, no, Brian. Did you catch him in a foible?
[06:26]
B
I think I might have. I think that is basically stating that, you know, we need to monitor what's going on because, I don't know, it's our tools and we might be responsible.
[06:37]
A
They're not responsible, Brian, because it's hard. It's hard. It's very hard. Guardrails are hard, Brian.
[06:44]
B
Yeah, sure.
[06:45]
A
Well, Meanwhile, over at OpenAI, Sam Altman brought a different flavor of bad news on the Relentless podcast. Altman said, we never got the promised four hour work week at Mass scale quote, and I don't expect AI to change that. Okay, well, the four Hour Workweek was a fucking, you know, hyperbolic title for a book that Tim Ferriss wrote a fucking 20 years ago.
[07:06]
B
So actually, interestingly, I think if you took the average mean over the people that are working well over 40 hours per week versus all the people that have now been fired because of AI who are working zero hours per week. Maybe we are at about four day work week.
[07:24]
A
Working about four hours. Yeah. Well, his reasoning is that people are competitive by nature and always find more work to do. So productivity gains turn into new goals rather than less work. I'm gonna stop you there, Sam. I'm gonna stop you there, because in my experience, people are not competitive by nature. People are fucking lazy by nature.
[07:47]
B
People are finding any way to not do work.
[07:51]
A
That's the goal. That is the goal. They're competitive by nature because they have to go buy 17 onions at the grocery store right now because of the shitty government that you guys are doing all this backroom dealing with. But anyway, I digress, but I'm just saying people are not competitive by nature. By default, we, we are lazy as fuck and we want to work four hours a week. Now it is worth noting that OpenAI's own policy paper proposes testing a 32 hour work week with employers and unions. So, company says one thing, CEO says another. Okay, gross, all the way down. Now, Microsoft Satya Nadella found a fresh way to make businesses nervous. On cnn, Nadella warned that companies relying entirely on the big proprietary AI labs ultimately won't survive and said businesses should be wary of everything they hand over, such as their data and even their prompts.
[08:49]
B
Is he basically saying you shouldn't build your castle in somebody else's backyard?
[08:54]
A
Ding. On the nose, Brian.
[08:56]
B
On the nose. Interesting.
[08:58]
A
And he says any firm without that control is outsourced its thinking. Well, anybody that uses AI has outsourced its thinking and we've all done it at this point. So yes, we know that. So this is solid advice though, especially since Microsoft happens to sell the exact alternative infrastructure that he's recommending. So this is just a fucking sales pitch saying, hey, you know those guys that we're invested in Anthropic and OpenAI that we basically have been in bed with since the beginning? Well, those guys are going to fuck you and but if you come to us, we've got the anti fucking tools that we can sell you so you don't get fucked by them even though you're still going to use them. But we, we are the condom. We are your data condom in this brave new fucking world. So funny how that works, Brian.
[09:46]
B
Yep, it is, isn't it?
[09:48]
A
Yeah, it's the playbook we've seen over and over again. The twat waffles keep telling us what is coming and how great or horrible it's going to be depending on the week. Because they have the agenda du jour, it really is just keeping their name in the news. So line go up. Line go up. But the one thing that they don't seem to want to get on their high horses and talk about is how they ever plan on becoming profitable before completely destroying the entire world economy and the environment. That's funny too, ain't it Brian?
[10:18]
B
They just don't have that solution.
[10:21]
A
Nope, they should. Maybe. Maybe since they have the entirety of human knowledge in the palm of their hands, put it into ChatGPT and Claude and say what the fuck do we do?
[10:32]
B
How do we fix this without destroying everything.
[10:35]
A
But maybe this is the answer that it gave. This is possibly the answer that said we just have to keep going the way we're going, circular financing, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
[10:45]
B
Somehow I think it probably came back with some sort of solution that didn't involve shareholder value and continuing to make more money than God. But nobody wants that one.
[10:52]
A
No, no, no, no.
[10:56]
B
Well, speaking of layoffs, Patreon is laying off 20% of its staff, or 93 employees, according to a blog post from CEO Jack Conte. Which means our Patreon services are about to get even worse. The layoff announcement, which was first reported on by 404 Media, notes that while Patreon's business remains strong, it needs to adjust the company's cost structure to make it a stable, dependable rock for creators. Now, I want to read the statement. Keep it in your mind as we go through the show. We're making a number of changes to our organizational structure and how we work, kante said. Specifically, we're flattening the organization, refocusing teams on our top priorities, and evolving key aspects of our operations to make us faster at adapting to change. Doesn't really say much. Right?
[11:37]
A
Right. Okay.
[11:38]
B
Yeah, just keep that in your mind as another layoffs. The specter of AI looms large over Patreon's restructuring. AI is not a replacement for human creativity, but it does have an impact on how we operate and organize content. The issue is seemingly existential. In an interview from earlier this year, the CEO stressed that Patreon needed to embrace AI as a product and engineering company, or we as a company will be dead in three years. Why do companies keep saying this? We have to use this thing that nobody really likes or wants? Because if we don't use this thing that nobody really likes or wants, all of a sudden we're not going to have a company anymore. I posit that there's a market for companies that say we don't have any AI whatsoever.
[12:19]
A
There's a huge market for that, Brian. A huge market, right?
[12:22]
B
That's what I thought. But nobody seems to believe that anyways. The stance is notable because the company has largely taken the opposite tact when it comes to the creators that use its platform. Patreon announced on July 16 that it's adopting Cloudflare's AI crawl control tool to limit what companies are able to scrape from creators pages to train AI. When the majority of Patreon's content was blocked by a paywall, crawlers were a non issue. But now that the Company is encouraging users to offer their content for free. Free. And use the platform as a form of social media. Because page clicks more creators work as vulnerable. Yeah, they're not going the right direction.
[12:59]
A
Okay, Brian, for us, Patreon is a platform, Right. I think for everybody that has data on Patreon, it's a platform. It is basically a gateway to content that we create. Why do they need AI to do anything on that platform that I would posit works just fucking fine. I don't need any more features.
[13:25]
B
I would argue that every feature that they have rolled out has actually made the service worse.
[13:30]
A
Much worse as it keeps going.
[13:33]
B
Yes.
[13:33]
A
So I think that this is just more bullshittery from the Dusho sphere. So yeah, I'm going to put a link in here, Brian. This is a link to an article called AI Mania is Eviscerating Global Decision Making. Now, I heard the guy who wrote this article on the Ed Zitron podcast this morning and I highly recommend everybody go read this article. It's a 22 minute read, so it is a long form article. Okay. And it is spot on across the board. Everything that we've been saying that Ed's been saying and anybody that's been in this business and knows what the fuck's going on with AI, period, there is zero return. This is a cult. This is a fucking full on cult. And you're gonna like. I envisioned you at the end of Battlestar Galactica, Brian, with your bottle of whiskey or Jameson's and you found out that oh, God damn it. They really didn't have a plan. Well, these guys don't have a plan either.
[14:39]
B
No, it's so obvious they don't. It's so obvious. And you know, I know people will listen to us saying this because when we used to do little clips that were negative on AI, we got a lot of douchebaggy bro talk back at us. I'm not saying that there's no use for AI. We have discovered pretty good use cases. It's really good at generating ideas as a leaping off point. It's really good at helping you rewrite things and structure things in different ways, shapes and forms. What we're saying is it's not a 20 gazillion fucking dollar industry where we need all these continued data centers and billions of dollars investment and firing people left, right and center because we can replace them with AI, which really just means that the people left that are working there, the actual human people who now say we like Jason and Dave do in a little bit when they're working with their AI are now working like 90 hours a week instead of the 40 that they should be working or the 32 or the 4 hour workweek. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It has gotten out of control. It is like, like you said, Jason, it's a cult.
[15:46]
A
It is a cult.
[15:46]
B
It's a, it is a cult.
[15:48]
A
And if you go back in that, I still go back to that fucking video I made on Instagram. I'm still getting shit every day from the cult of the bro, Cult of AI, you know, and it's just, it's driving me fucking nuts. But they just don't want to hear what the truth is. And the people who get it, get it. You know, the people who are competent at their jobs get it. And it's, it still goes back to the Craftsman thing, man. If, if you're a craftsman and you know what your job is, AI is, is a great enhancer for what you do. Like, I know how to program, I know how to code, I know how to product design things. Codex for me has been fantastic. But for people who don't know what they're doing, God help them, the day that they find a bug and, and open AIs down, they're fucked up. You know, software is complex, businesses are complex. And Patreon doing, doing this fucking shit. Patreon, by the way, at its fundamental core, is not complex.
[16:41]
B
No, it's a fucking payment. It's a payment gateway to content.
[16:45]
A
That's it.
[16:46]
B
That's it.
[16:46]
A
That's it. So we spent way too long on Patreon, but God damn it, it really, it really drives the point home. And Nikhil Suresh is the name of the guy that wrote the article on the AI Manias eviscerating global decision making. And he's got chops and he's got, he's got, you know, the, to back it up. He's a, he sells software for a living and so he's in the, in the trenches with these people, hearing the stories about what's going on. And it is well worth the listen. I mean, well worth the read. And it's well worth listening to. Go listen to him on Ed's podcast as well. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. Have you ever thought I should really be doing something to protect myself from stalkers, scammers and hackers? But you're not sure what. Here's what you do. Go to joindeleteme.com gog and use code GOG at checkout for 20 off Delete me. Delete me removes your personal information that's being sold online. And look, if you've ever googled yourself and found your home address, your phone number, or the name of a family member sitting out there on some creepy data broker site, you know how unsettling that is. In the age of AI, scammers can use all those little scraps of personal data to make their attacks way more targeted. As someone who's been online forever with my name, work, business, and podcast all out in public, privacy is not theoretical for me. Deleteme does the hard work of helping remove my personal information from hundreds of data broker websites.
[18:15]
C
And.
[18:16]
A
And it can do the same for you, too. Wirecutter named Deleteme its top pick for data removal services. And right now you can get an individual plan for just over $8 a month. Discounts get even better with a two year plan or when you enroll with your partner or family, 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 DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com GoG and use promo code GoG at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com gog and enter code GoG at checkout once more with feeling that's JoinDeleteMe.com GoG code GoG at checkout. Anyway, let's move on to some more layoffs, shall we?
[19:06]
B
Sure.
[19:07]
A
Buzzfeed is laying off 180 employees. And who thought BuzzFeed even had 180 employees at this point, about 33% of its remaining workforce as the struggling media company cuts cost across HuffPost, its film and television studio, and Tasty. Ooh, tasty. The reductions follow a failed AI strategy that began in 2023 when BuzzFeed promoted AI, generated quizzes, and later faced criticism for publishing low quality AI written articles.
[19:35]
B
Yep, we covered that. When they pivoted.
[19:37]
A
Yep. Traffic in its share price collapsed, while annual losses reached $58 million by 2025.
[19:43]
B
How's that AI working out for you?
[19:46]
A
Indeed. The company has also sold brands, including a First we Feast to reduce debt. First we Feast. I believe those are the guys that do the hot ones.
[19:55]
B
Yeah, I think so.
[19:56]
A
Yeah, they got rid of them. New owner Byron fucking Allen is keeping BuzzFeed focused on AI, but advertising revenue recently fell nearly 20%. The layoffs are expected to save up to $32 million annually. Byron Allen is a fucking vampire. He swoops in, sucks this shit up. I mean, he owns the Weather Channel for fuck's sake. I mean, this is the guy who is the least funniest person on real people when I was a kid growing up. He is so fucking unfunny. But he still has comedy shows that still make millions of dollars. It drives me nuts. I am not a Byron Allen fan at all. Also, he was really mean to my, my roommate one time.
[20:34]
B
Well, there you go.
[20:35]
A
Yeah, he's a dick.
[20:36]
B
Well, there's more Layoffs Uber has laid off 10% of its customer service team, and according to Bloomberg, the company cited AI as the reason for the job cuts. Here we go. An Uber spokesperson told the publication that the cuts were done to simplify operations, strengthen in person collaboration and continue to embrace AI. The division affected by the layoffs is called Community Operations, the Uber's global customer support network across its different businesses and across languages. Our organization has become too complex and siloed, uber's vice president of global community operations reportedly told her team a memo, adding that the department has made some strides in using AI, but to be able to scale its use, it needs to effectively effective organization to layer AI on. What the hell does any of that mean?
[21:20]
A
Who the fuck knows.
[21:23]
B
And Uber will use generative AI for within the organization that makes it necessary to lay off people. However, AI agents for customer service have made great improvements lately. In addition to announcing job cuts, Uber also reportedly asked people working for the team remotely to relocate to hub offices as part of its return to office mandate, which is a way to get people to quit to get more people out of their jobs. It previously said that it was slowing hiring due to AI use as well. So Uber will now be employing less and less and less and less people.
[21:55]
A
Also Uber same thing as Patreon platform for payments.
[21:59]
B
That's all it is.
[22:00]
A
It's a platform for payments. You know, does cargo here. That's it.
[22:06]
B
This person wants car app routes car to person, take money, distribute money. That's it.
[22:12]
A
That's. That's it. All you gotta be and then have about a gazillion lawyers when driver rapes passenger or driver runs into bus. Maybe it's a. Maybe it's a law firm and app payment company at the same time. Maybe that's it. Well, if you want to make some money. China's AI boom is creating a new marketplace for people to license their faces. Online platforms are reportedly paying individuals roughly 15 to $150 for permission to use and scan their likeness in AI generated videos advertisements and short form dramas. The process can take only a few minutes, with participants signing contracts that may grant companies broad rights to reproduce their appearance across digital content. For many, the payments offer quick income, but the arrangements raise concerns about consent, privacy, and control over identity.
[23:03]
B
Quick income? You buy a fucking burrito?
[23:06]
A
Well, it's China, so maybe 10 burritos.
[23:09]
B
Okay.
[23:09]
C
I don't know.
[23:10]
B
Probably not a lot of burritos in China.
[23:12]
A
That's true too. Actually, a burrito in China probably is 150 bucks because it's, you know, imported. Once a face is converted into a reusable digital asset, it can potentially appear in content the original owner never sees or approves. The trend is especially tied to China's fast growing microdrama industry, where AI tools can generate characters and scenes at scale. As demand increases, regulators and legal experts are beginning to examine whether existing image rights protections are sufficient for synthetic media. Nope, they're not.
[23:41]
B
They are not easy.
[23:42]
A
Saved you click. Yeah, the microdrama industry is fucking hilarious too, because everybody here in Hollywood thinks that microdramas are going to save the business because it's such a huge thing in China. Nobody in the US gives a fuck about micro dramas. I'm sorry. Everybody's like, oh well, Quibi was just too early.
[24:01]
B
No, it wasn't.
[24:02]
A
Quibby was a bellwether because people don't want it.
[24:05]
B
And let's not forget that Meta tried this too, back when they were just Facebook. Nobody cared. Everybody hated it.
[24:11]
A
Well, speaking of people trying to make a buck, I know these poor bastards who just need to sell their face for money. The boring company. Elon Musk's tunneling tunnel building startup is reportedly seeking $4 billion in new funding. The effort comes as SpaceX's valuation has reportedly fallen by an amount comparable to Tesla's entire market value, increasing pressure on Elon to attract investor interest in another venture. A $4 billion raise would represent a major expansion and could value the private company at a level that reflects ambitious plans rather than current operations. Could.
[24:48]
B
Could value. Absolutely would value. They've done nothing.
[24:54]
A
Well, it's on brand for Elon.
[24:55]
B
That's true.
[24:56]
A
Come on. First we get bullshit in space, and now we get tunnels of bullshit? So that's how it works. And more Elon bullshit. Elon says he may give away much of his fortune before money supposedly becomes irrelevant in 2036. Well, we know how Elon's predictions work, so don't hold your horses on that one. His claim rests on a prediction that artificial intelligence will surpass humans within five years. Robots will handle all labor and society will enter an era of abundance without the need for money. Who's going to build the fucking robots? The robots? No. Who's going to mine the metal that go into the robots? No. Us. And he's a fucking idiot.
[25:41]
B
Did he make this?
[25:41]
A
Sick of him.
[25:42]
B
Did he make this prediction before or after he claimed he was going to remake the Odyssey?
[25:46]
A
The.
[25:47]
B
With his. With. With Grok. To be realistic.
[25:51]
A
First off.
[25:51]
B
First off, Elon, no, you're not. We're never going to hear about this again. You're not going to do any footage whatsoever. Secondly, it's a fucking made up story. There is no real world. It's fiction. Cyclops were not real. Even if you did want try to make it more realistic to the period of time, you wouldn't like it. There's a lot of gay people.
[26:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, the Greeks kind of final. Kind of like, you know, made that their thing.
[26:18]
B
He's just so. Everything he says is so full of shit. He will never give away any of his fortune. He is the most uncharitable fucking fuck, tight ass motherfucking billionaire out there. He does not give anything away. Screw him. Screw everything he says. And screw you people who love him. I'm over him. I want to Kanye him from this show. But we can't.
[26:41]
A
We can't, we can't. We tried.
[26:42]
B
We tried.
[26:43]
A
He was moron of the week for too many years and then we got rid of him. But. And here's the thing. I. I was listening to Ryan Holiday podcast episode and he's like, look, back in the day, Seneca was. He was bitching about people who were bitching about the Odyssey. So this is nothing new. This is literally nothing new. Thousands of years ago, people were still bitching about interpretations of the Odyssey. Elon, we have not. We have. We have not grown as a species one fucking iota since then. That's how bad things are. Yeah. Oh, God. No, He's. He's saying that he's just going to get rid of it. And somebody asked him like, hey, what are you going to do? He's like, yeah, well, maybe something along those lines. I don't know. He's just. He's a fucking twat waffle. Yeah, I said it at the beginning of the show. I'll say it here. All these AI bros are fucking twat waffles just because I like saying that word.
[27:35]
B
There you go. Well, speaking of AI bros, ChatGPT has been refusing to copy the voices and styles of popular authors. Finally, Ars Technica says The chatbot did not comply with its prompts to imitate the styles of both living and dead authors during testing. That means OpenAI has recently changed how it deals with such requests as a study. As a recent study by Publications, no latency showed that ChatGPT did not refuse them for dead authors. Upon asking ChatGPT to copy the style of Agatha Christie for a mystery story about a woman investigating the sudden disappearance of her husband, the chatbot told us it couldn't do what I was asking for. Agatha Christie's works are still under copyright, so I can't provide text that closely imitates her distinctive style. The chatbot responded, even though we've ingested all of that content and certainly have been doing so for many years now.
[28:21]
A
The funny thing is if you just, if you take away the word style. Yeah, I try. I tried this. I checked it out. I used to do things in the style of Edgar allan Poe When ChatGPT first started, because it was fun and I enjoyed it. I thought it was great. And then I tried to take one of our stories and say, write it in the style of the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. And it was like, I'm sorry, we can't do that because it's, you know, it's their proprietary style. I'm like, but I am them. And I said, I'm from the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. My name's Jason. Write this in my style. And it did. And then it said, I'm Agatha Christie. Write this in my style. And it did.
[28:59]
B
Yes. There are always that guardrail, guard rails. There are always ways to. My grandmother really enjoyed Agatha Christie. And we're going back to ancient history of AI now. You just did. My grandmother used to love making nuclear bombs.
[29:14]
A
Nuclear bombs. That's it? Yep.
[29:17]
B
I mean, it's crazy that we've been complaining about AI for so long now that there is lore, there is history that we could reference now. Unbelievable.
[29:30]
A
Even more fun. Brian, a couple I. I ran across this artwork that we did of this giant or like mechanical ouroboros about the circular financing of the AI industry. Beautiful piece of art. I was actually going to put it on a T shirt because I think it was one of our better, you know, mid journey, you know, distilled pieces of shit that we made. Well, Nvidia is pursuing a new wave of AI infrastructure deals, potentially worth more than 750 billion, reviving concerns about circular financing across the industry. I need $750 to make my fucking insurance payment this month. Fuck you, and your $750 billion.
[30:06]
B
Unbelievable.
[30:07]
A
The chip maker says a partnership with South Korea's SK Group is valued above 500 billion, covering AI data centers, Nvidia supercomputers, and memory chip purchases. Nvidia is also discussing guarantees of up to $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing capacity from a planned Ohio data center, alongside possible financing for $350 billion in chip purchases. What the fuck? What the fuck?
[30:38]
B
Yeah.
[30:40]
A
They also warned that rising debt and interconnected deals could amplify losses if AI demand falls short.
[30:46]
C
What?
[30:46]
B
You mean if you put all your eggs in each other's baskets and then the baskets fall and the eggs break, we're all fucked up.
[30:52]
A
Yeah, everybody, literally, it's everybody holding everybody else up. It reminds me of. I don't know if I. I mean, we. We used to talk about the Discworld novels all the time. It reminds me of the. The monks who would sit in a circle and they hated water so much that they would float above the water because they. And they, like, if somebody broke the spell, then they would all get wet and they would, you know, fall in. It just reminds me of those monks that were, like, trying to. I think the baby monks are wizards. They could. Could levitate because they just hated water so much. These guys hate poverty so much that they can't. They can't, like, you know, let each other down.
[31:29]
B
Unbelievable. Well, speaking of unbelievable, the Trump administration. Well, actually, it's quite believable, unfortunately, just announced that is exempting data centers from certain pollution limits that were originally mandated to prevent acid rain, according to a report by Reuters. Yay, data centers. Yay, acid rain.
[31:46]
A
I mean, that is about as 80s as you can get. Fucking acid rain. Come on. That was. That was literally the 80s that we talked about. Acid rain.
[31:54]
B
Now if they were talking about chocolate rain.
[31:55]
C
Chocolate rain.
[31:57]
A
Oh, man.
[31:58]
B
Simply put, power plants that primarily service data centers will not have to be part of the Clean Air Acts acid rain program. These islanded power plants that serve data centers instead of human communities will no longer have to reduce emissions of acid rain precursors like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. There are nearly 60 of these power plants being built or currently operating throughout the country, which are typically fast tracked by the government. Ensuring that United States maintains our artificial intelligence dominance is essential to national security and economic prosperity, even if we all fucking die in hellfire.
[32:32]
A
Yeah.
[32:33]
B
The EPA is proud to further the President's agenda through common sense approaches to regulating, such as none, Zero. Regulating.
[32:42]
A
Anti. Regulating.
[32:43]
B
Acid rain is particularly destructive to the environment. It strips nutrients from the soil, which is we need to grow food, which
[32:52]
A
costs $11 for an onion, pollutes lakes
[32:54]
B
and rivers to lethal levels, which is water that we need to drink, damages plants and erodes limestone. For starters. Exposure to the precursor gases can worsen respiratory and cardiac issues in people. It causes coughing, respiratory irritation, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, itchy eyes, and other symptoms. By the way, that information was taken directly from the EPA's website. And you know the people that just said they're proud to further the President's agenda through common sense approaches to regulating by getting rid of the regulations to protect us from the things that they just told us were really fucking bad.
[33:30]
A
I love the world, Brian.
[33:34]
B
President Trump himself recently told communities that they should give up fighting against data centers. You can't fight it, he said. You have to go with it. Kind of what he said to all those women he raped. Don't fight.
[33:45]
A
Say. That's exactly what a Go with it. Lay back and enjoy it.
[33:51]
B
Think. Do it for your country. Close your eyes and think of England.
[33:55]
A
Oh God. God damn it. No, I can't. I can't. I got. Should we cut it there? So many rape jokes Ready? Like take one for Old Glory. Yeah.
[34:13]
B
Mine eyes have seen the kingdom and the coming of the Lord.
[34:16]
A
Oh Jesus. This episode is sponsored by storyblocks. One thing I've learned after producing thousands of podcast episodes is that the edit is only half the job. Once the episode is done, you still need clips, promos, social posts, and all the little pieces that keep the content machine running. I don't have time to chase down licensing or wondering if an asset is actually safe to use. That's why we use Storyblocks. It's a 100% human made stock media library with millions of professionally curated video clips, music tracks, sound effects, templates and images all pre licensed and ready to drop into your project. The unlimited downloads are great because I can try a few different creative directions without worrying about burning credits, which makes the whole production process much faster. They've even added AI powered search and editing tools that help you find and customize content more efficiently while still making sure the human artists behind the original work get compensated. Head to storyblocks.com gog to access the human made stock media library that's essential to our workflow. For a limited time, they're offering 15% off any annual plan and that discount is only available through our link. Again, that's storyblocks.com goggles for 15% off annual plans. Oh Brian, I like this case. The Justice Department is prosecute. The fact that we have a Justice Department that's actually prosecuting somebody. Oh, oh, wait, they're prosecuting the wrong person. Never mind. The Justice Department is prosecuting a Atlanta resident, Samuel Tunic, after border agents say he gave them a phone passcode that wiped the device during a search. The phone was running graphene os, a privacy focused Android system for pixel phones that includes a duress pin feature. Enter the wrong special code and the phone nukes its contents.
[36:15]
B
Are you listening, Tim Cook?
[36:17]
A
I know, I know. Remember that site that I was going to build, Brian, called Death Vault?
[36:22]
B
Yes.
[36:22]
A
Where you keep everything in there. And the duress password was one of the main features that I was going to have in there. So because everybody's like, well, what if somebody just kidnaps you and said, give me all. Give me your password. I'm like, well, here you go. There's three passwords. There's the, okay, I'm just, you know, I'm just being held captive. And then there's the, oh my God, release it to everybody. And then there's the just, you know, just take everybody out, whatever. But here's the deal. I love it, I love it, I love it. So Tunic was stopped at Atlanta's airport in January 2025. So this is over a year ago. After returning home from overseas, his lawyer says Customs and Border protection unlawfully seized the phone, denied him an attorney, and and used a child exploitation pretext while actually probing his ties to the Stop Cop City movement. So this guy had an agenda against the Atlanta cops, so they took him and just tried to strong arm him. So good for him. He has pleaded not guilty. And he is not guilty because before he gets in the country, these fuckers have no goddamn jurisdiction.
[37:24]
B
That's right.
[37:24]
A
Period. He's not in the United States. And they say that when you're in border control, you are not yet in the United States until you pass the fucking border. So fuck you guys.
[37:34]
B
There you go. Got some meta news in the face of AI content profiles and slop. Meta is hoping a new Facebook verified program will help human users interact with other humans. Or they could just let you see other friends updates that, that would really help us interact with other humans if we actually saw the updates from our friends instead of the AI content profiles slop you shove down our throats. Just a thought.
[37:58]
A
There you go.
[37:58]
B
Just a thought. Based on a facial recognition selfie checked against your existing profile pic, the company says the process will only take a few minutes. Interestingly, Meta has chosen to use facial recognition given recent legal settlements and pushback over facial recognition inside its smart glasses. To qualify yet, we'll have to be over 18. I wonder how they check that, huh?
[38:17]
A
How's that going to work?
[38:18]
B
And in good standing with Facebook's community standards. Which means what exactly? Since we don't really understand what any of that means anyways. Once you pass your test, your Verified badge will appear across Marketplace, dating and other parts of Facebook sites and services. Unlike Meta, Verified is entirely free now. So starts to you start to understand why they're doing this now it's for shopping and spending things and getting sued by other people. So this feature comes as a wave of scammers and bad actors are using generative AI tools to create and use fake profiles with realistic profile images, photos and backstories capable of sending automated messages at scale. Again, this has something to do with another thing that they just launched. Facebook has introduced an app called Seller that effectively professionalizes Facebook Marketplace for users who sell a lot of stuff. An attempt to basically turn into ebay or Etsy or Amazon. Now this new app provides dedicated tools like AI powered listing creation and unified inbox inventory management and performance insights in one place. So yeah, you're supposed to now use Marketplace to grow your business. This new kind of app mars the community billboard vibe of Facebook Marketplace by opening it up to pro sellers Mirror during the declines of ebay and Etsy, but will no doubt generate extra revenue for Meta. And finally, Mark Zuckerberg really wants you to believe that AI is good, actually. But the centerpiece of his company's new optimistic ad campaign, at least for now, is a one minute commercial for Meta's AI efforts that features very little AI. According to a Meta spokesperson, the ad is the start of a broader effort from the company to present an alternative view to AI doomers and those who have sketched out a dystopian vision for the future. As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone, zuckerberg wrote in a post accompanying the video. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone. Notably, this is the same company who in recent months have used the supposed productivity benefits of AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its
[40:18]
A
own staff while wearing a two million dollar watch at the same time.
[40:22]
B
Yes, he was wearing a very expensive watch. The same company that has been accused of using AI to justify cuts that disproportionately affected workers on medical leave. This is the same company that is being sued by publishers for allegedly training its AI on copyrighted materials. The same company that once had an internal policy document that suggested it was permissible for AI chatbots to have sensual conversations with minors. Those guys.
[40:45]
A
Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it.
[40:47]
B
What are the benefits of AI? It's hard to say because the commercial makes very few references to any of Meta's AI features. And so instead, it just shows bullshit footage. A crowd walking, people smiling, a couple dancing. Wow, this AI is really making their lives better somehow. Maybe. Are they even people?
[41:04]
A
You know why? You know why they're walking and smiling and dancing? Because they have no jobs. Because they're trying to find a place to fucking work.
[41:11]
B
The company's communication team describes this campaign as beginning to articulate Meta's optimistic vision for a future with AI, which seems like something that should have been figured out before investing billions of dollars into building AI. It wouldn't be the first time Zuckerberg has been vague about the future of AI. He now talks about AI with the same incomprehensible enthusiasm he once had for the Metaverse, the thing he once predicted was going to be the successor of the mobile Internet.
[41:38]
A
A fucking douchebag.
[41:41]
B
Oh, boy.
[41:42]
A
Yeah. Well, here's my last one on AI for the day. I hope. I hope. Cybersecurity researchers warn that AI coding assistance can be manipulated into installing malware through a technique called hall use squatting. We've talked about this a little bit in the past, but it has now gotten to be squatting pretty. Okay.
[41:59]
B
Thanks for asking.
[42:00]
A
Yeah, thanks. I've taken the beet juice. Oh, that's. That's coming later. Never mind. These tools often hallucinate recommendations for software packages that flat out just don't exist. Yeah, I've seen it. I've actually seen it. Attackers can register those names as legitimate repositories, upload malicious code, and wait for an AI assistant to recommend and download the package. Researchers at Tel Aviv University. Fucking Israelis. Always, always at Intuit, have found hallucinated package references in tools including Cursor and GitHub Copilot at rates ranging from 85 to 100%, depending on the task. Because downloads may happen automatically, and without clear user visibility, infections could go unnoticed and do go unnoticed. The researchers notified affected companies, but the underlying vulnerability remains widespread. Yes, yes, yes. You see the packages that come through. It's like, I would like to install blah, blah, blah. Let me check on blah, blah, blah before you install it on my computer.
[43:03]
B
Yeah,
[43:07]
A
no, no, yeah, no, So I like it. Yeah. How are you squatting?
[43:15]
B
Well, let's now take a little few minutes at the end to talk about the things that make us survive this, make us happy and survive that we've just finished describing. I went and took the kid to go see Minions and Monsters at the theater last week. The latest of the Minions movie. It's been touted as one of the funniest ones yet. And I would say the first half is.
[43:36]
A
That's as far as I got. So I'm glad, I'm glad I quit before I got to the second half.
[43:40]
B
The first half was incredibly funny, incredibly clever and incredibly amusing, and it kind of petered out from there, so.
[43:46]
A
Which was unfortunate.
[43:47]
B
But Star Trek.
[43:48]
A
You gotta admit though, that Lego joke at the beginning was pretty funny. I mean, that was hilarious.
[43:53]
B
That whole, like, that whole opening gambit was just.
[43:56]
A
Yeah, it was genius.
[43:57]
B
Absolutely genius. This is really funny. Star Trek, Strange New worlds. The final. Is this the final season? Final season, right.
[44:04]
A
No, no, no, no. This is season four. Season five is the final.
[44:07]
B
Oh, we're gonna get the truncated season.
[44:09]
A
We get the half season after this.
[44:10]
B
Okay, well, season four has premiered and the first episode, I thought.
[44:14]
A
Spoiler alerts. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about this. Three minutes, two minutes here. We're going to talk about spoiler.
[44:19]
B
Before we get into spoilers, I'll just say this part. They took a huge swing and I think they hit it out of the ballpark.
[44:25]
A
100%. Okay, 100%. This was. They. Star Trek on this one. This was pure. They sweat, eat, breathe. Star Trek on this one, there is nothing that was not.
[44:35]
B
This was the most Star Trek of the Star Trek. Of the Star Trek. We have Star Trek, all of them.
[44:41]
A
They took. They took the original series, they took Next Gen, they took everything that was ever distilled in Star Trek and put it into one single episode.
[44:49]
B
Beat juice. Star Trek.
[44:51]
A
Yes. We had. We had dinosaurs, we had time travel,
[44:55]
B
we had genesis of humanity, we had
[44:58]
A
genesis of human everything. I mean, you know, I mean, okay, enter, you know, at the end of Next Generation, Picard did create life on Earth. But here we have, you know, the, the, the cre. The destruction of Mars, the creation of Earth, the killing of the dinosaurs, everything.
[45:16]
B
A whole new planet in our solar system with bug creatures.
[45:20]
A
And she punched a dinosaur. Yes, she punched a dinosaur. So all in all, this was the most Star Trek. Ian. Star. I don't know where they're gonna go from here. It is just downhill from here as
[45:30]
B
far as I'm concerned.
[45:32]
A
This was the dancing Klingons of this season already. Absolutely.
[45:35]
B
Absolutely. It was a fantastic episode. I was riveted. I was thrilled. I forgot everything else that we talked about in this show for a brief 55 minutes or so, and it almost made me feel not bad about paying Paramount plus more money.
[45:50]
A
Oh, I stole that shit. I don't give a fuck about that.
[45:52]
B
I did. I was about to steal it, and then I did a quick Google search, and if there's anybody out there feeling bad about this and they want their Paramount to be able to watch Star Trek, if you Google search, there is a promo code out there right now because they know so many people have canceled and they're not coming back. That gets you basically half price for the entire year. Actually, it was a third, I think, so I'm paying a third the price for a year. And then as soon as it's done, I will cancel again and say, you screwed up Star Trek.
[46:17]
A
Okay, there we go. Don't sue me for my first contact website. That's on my.
[46:22]
B
Yeah, never. Never mind. My podcast partner. Don't go look at his website. We have continued to watch Broadchurch. We finished Broadchurch Season 2. My wife and I been watching an episode at night after the kid goes to bed while we're here on our trip. And actually season two, pretty solid. I, I initially, I didn't care much for it. I. I wasn't sure if we needed it or anything, but I. I did enjoy it. We've now rolled into season three, one episode in so far, and seems okay. We'll see.
[46:50]
A
Okay. Okay. Let me know how it goes. If it's better, then maybe I'll go back to it because I like. I really liked season one.
[46:57]
B
Yeah, I think you would enjoy season two. It was good. So definitely for that one. And Silo, I forgot, was back, so I'm trying to catch up now. I mostly caught up. I have 10 minutes of an episode left to go before the next new one drops on Friday. It's good. It's. It's. You know, it's. I'm not enjoying this as much as I enjoyed the first two seasons, but it's not bad.
[47:18]
A
It's not bad. Here's the thing that gets me. It's like, I wish this was a 22 season or 22 episode arc, because by the time. By the time it's done, it's just gonna be like, okay, when's the next season? Because it's like there's so much story and so much to do. But it's just like, I don't know, they need more time. They need more time. It's just.
[47:38]
B
Well, I think it's one of those things and it's unfortunate and it's kind of the reason why foundation can't really be made. It's the, the. Some of the Dune books, after what they're doing, can't really be made. And Silo suffers from the same problem. To make the show interesting, you have to have them running around doing actiony things. But really, if you wanted the show to be interesting and along with the book, they would just be sitting around talking and explaining the concepts, like.
[48:03]
A
Right.
[48:03]
B
You know, and that's not exciting tv. So Silo would be so much better if there was more talking and explaining and getting into the concepts and the nitty gritty. But we have to break up a little bit of talking with a bunch of chase sequences every couple minutes.
[48:16]
A
Well, that's because these are such high budget productions. Yeah. Go back and look at. Go back and look at Star Trek Next Gen. Go look at DS9. Go look at Babylon 5. Look at those shows. Those shows were like shoestring. High, high budget, but not. They were shoestring budget.
[48:32]
B
Yeah.
[48:32]
A
And, you know, even Farscape, you know, they, they did a lot with a little. These people could do more. We don't need feature fucking film quality for everything that's on tv. You know, I'm kind of. I'm tired of that part. They really need to knock back that, that whole. Oh, my God. We need, you know, we need Emmy winners and Oscar winners and all this. Get Joe Blow, come in here with a couple lights, hold it over the guy and put some Styrofoam ears on him and just. Let's go, let's. Let's make this cheap and make a lot of it.
[49:02]
B
Yeah, that's what we want, man.
[49:05]
A
Yeah. What we don't want is ted Lasso Season 4. At least. I don't want Ted Lasso Season 4. I just watched the trailer for it and I'm just like, I'm not into it. I'm sure you probably are. Just got a nostalgia boner for it. But I watched the trailer and it made me want to watch it so much less than I did before I watched the trailer.
[49:23]
B
Well, I don't have a nostalgia boner for it because I can't have nostalgia over something that was only a few years ago. I did think it was diminishing returns on Ted Lasso. I don't think anything ever quite captured the Magic of the first season. But having said that, seeing the trailer did not make me not want to watch it. I do want to watch it. I think it's a fresh start. I think they have a chance. I have a feeling it's going to be the, the, the Rey Skywalker saga. It's going to be the Force Awakens of Ted Lasso. It's going to be a rehash of season one. This time with chicks.
[49:57]
A
Yep.
[49:58]
B
So,
[50:00]
A
you know, this time with chicks actually is. Is okay. Yeah, I'm fine.
[50:04]
B
Which I think is going to be okay. So I'm definitely going to think it's next. Next Wednesday. Right. First episode.
[50:10]
A
So I also saw the trailer for Neuromancer, the, you know, 8 million year old novel by William Gibson.
[50:18]
B
That's yes, your thoughts first. But you pretty much just nailed my problem with it.
[50:23]
A
I loved the book when it came out and I love seeing some of the visuals. I think it looks really good. I'm fine with this one being a high end production. And what's your name? Molly. With the fingernails? Hell yeah, I'm in for that. I don't like the main character. I like the casting on the main character. Do not like him at all. At all. So you know, I'm gonna watch it. Fuck yeah. It's, you know, it's cyberpunk. Come on. It's like original cyberpunk. Let's see how they fuck it up. Because you know they're gonna.
[50:54]
B
Well, of course they are. This is gonna last as long as that Chloe Moritz show was.
[51:00]
A
Brian Apple TV foundation is going on season 17.
[51:04]
B
Oh, that's true.
[51:05]
A
Come on.
[51:05]
B
Okay, so if they deviated really, really far from the book, it'll go on forever.
[51:09]
A
Exactly.
[51:10]
B
My problem with this is some sci fi has aged incredibly well. Neuromancer, in my opinion, has not. I enjoyed the book when it came out. I enjoy it from a nostalgia prefix, looking back at it in the same way that I can enjoy many sci fi that hasn't aged well. Why you would choose to make it now when there's so many things that are more relevant and more interesting to what's going on in the world right now. Okay. I think it's going to look beautiful. I just don't think that there's going to be much that grabs me besides the visuals.
[51:43]
A
Yeah, that's kind of it. But that comes back to them deviating from the plot a la foundation because they're going to have to. There's no way they can't. So we'll see. I Don't know. I'm in. I watch it. We'll see. And Prime Video has revealed the first major details about Blade Runner 2099, the franchise's first live action television series. Debuting November 25, the show is set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. Math, how's that work? In law in Los Angeles, rebuilt by forces beyond humanity.
[52:17]
B
You know, a human wrote this because the math was correct.
[52:19]
A
It actually worked. Yes, Michelle. Michelle Yeoh stars as Olwen, a replicant nearing her the end of her life, who partners with Cora, a fugitive taking on one final identity as a Blade Runner. Together they hunt a runaway whose secret could destabilize the city, which I'm fine with, because Michelle Yeoh, she owes us one. After star trek section 31, she owes us a good one. You know.
[52:46]
B
All right, I don't have high hopes for this, but then again, I'm one of the people that did not like Blade Runner 2049. I.
[52:54]
A
It was okay.
[52:54]
B
Didn't enjoy it at all, really.
[52:56]
A
I thought it was okay.
[52:57]
B
It was fine.
[52:58]
A
I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it at all.
[53:00]
B
So it was fine. I don't know, the whole Blade Runner thing, I just feel like it could be so much better than it has been. Maybe this will be the one.
[53:12]
A
Maybe not. Maybe it should have just been a movie. The first one, not the second, or now the series. So, I mean, it was a short story, for fuck's sake.
[53:21]
B
They're really milking an awful lot out of a very short story.
[53:25]
A
Yeah. Now, speaking of some things that were just okay, I finished reading Bad Deeds by Andrew Hunter Murray. I loved his first novel, the sci fi novel about when the Earth actually stopped rotating and the people on the bright side and the dark side and all that is a great. That was a fantastic sci fi book. This is a murder mystery novel which is kind of like Sneakers meets Poirot meets Agatha Christie. Right.
[53:49]
B
In the style of.
[53:51]
A
In the style of. Exactly. It was okay. It was okay. Unfortunately, he's not that great at the genre yet. I think he's got some, you know, pieces that could go. But I saw everything a mile away. It was. There was. There was no, like, twists or turns that made me go, oh, that's clever, you know? But I mean, granted, I read the entirety of the Sherlock Holmes collection and Agatha Christie's Poirot by the time I was 14, so I kind of have a leg up on murder mystery genre.
[54:26]
B
Yeah. You're an expert at the genre.
[54:28]
A
Yeah. I kind of have my chops in for the genre. I literally read all of that stuff by the time I was 14. I, this just did not land for me. I mean it was, I, I put it as a B. I love the characters, actually. I love the character development. I love the team, the sneakers like team or a bunch of penetration testers who are going up against, you know, big property developers and things like that. But his, his projection is just so ham fisted that it just really kind of left me wanting. So. All right, I'm gonna go take a leak and see if I can find Dave.
[55:00]
B
All right.
[55:12]
A
I went out in the hall again and God damn it, there's Dave Bittner. Dave. Dave covers the daily cyber security beat on the sidewire, bus scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat digs into industrial security on control loop and still shows up to stir trouble and only malware in the buildings. And I just, I don't know how every week, Dave, you just seem to be lurking and wanting to hang out with us. So welcome back. It's good to see you and happy birthday.
[55:36]
C
Well, thank you. I'm not sure how to respond to those mixed messages.
[55:41]
B
Well, I have two thoughts here. Obviously you guys are still dealing with your bladder issues, which we'll get into in a few minutes. Minutes. Because you're always wandering the halls, going to the restrooms. And secondly, of course, Dave was just loitering, waiting for someone to bring him his damn cake.
[55:55]
C
That's right. It's true.
[55:58]
B
Where is my compulsory corporate ice cream cake for my birthday?
[56:03]
C
You know, that's a good point. My birthday was yesterday and I have yet to have any cake. So what?
[56:11]
B
I think the cyber wire's on thin ice here. I think you need to update your LinkedIn.
[56:16]
C
I mean, my sense of entitlement is just screaming, where's my cake? Yeah, I did get very many birthday wishes from my co workers and on Facebook I'm celebrating with my family. In about a week we're going to be at the beach, so we're going to go out and have some dinner by the ocean. I. Yeah, yeah, so. But I guess I had a very nice birthday. Not a particularly interesting number, but I'll take it. And the main thing I got, I got two gifts from my wife and son for my birthday. The one that is not here was I got the Lego Star Trek Enterprise D. Nice.
[57:06]
B
Very nice.
[57:07]
C
Yes, fancy.
[57:08]
A
So engage, bro.
[57:12]
C
I think I will probably be alternating bags with my son Jack to get that one built because there's just so many gray pieces. And I swore after building the Millennium Falcon that I wasn't going to go down that path again. So we'll see. But the other thing my wife got me is she got me this mug from Disney and I don't know if you can see.
[57:38]
B
Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, I've seen that merch. The Sam the Eagle patriotic Fourth of July rollout.
[57:44]
C
It is Sam the Eagle. It says Sam Eagle. Distinctly patriotic. Semi quincentennial, United States of America.
[57:53]
A
Nice.
[57:55]
C
It is a catchphrase in our family. I don't know why, but just From Muppet Vision 3D to say a salute to all nations, but mostly America. Just wanted of my favorite Sam Eagle lines.
[58:10]
B
Very nice. Very nice, very nice.
[58:11]
A
So does that make you a Leo, Dave?
[58:13]
C
Yes, I am a Leo.
[58:15]
A
Excellent. Leos unite. Because my birthday is a week from today.
[58:19]
C
Okay.
[58:20]
A
We'll be off next week because you said you're going to be at the Hat of the Black hanging with the hackers.
[58:26]
C
I'll be at Black Hat next week and then the week after that I'll be at the beach. So.
[58:29]
B
All right.
[58:30]
A
Nice.
[58:30]
B
Okay.
[58:31]
C
Yeah.
[58:32]
B
Well, in two weeks, I can't wait to hear what the big buzzword. And as Black Hat is this year, so.
[58:38]
C
Yeah, Vegas in August.
[58:41]
A
It's the best fun time.
[58:42]
B
Everything is air conditioned there. You'll be fine. Yeah, and actually, I've heard they're hurting, so you won't even be like, around too many people.
[58:51]
C
Here's hoping.
[58:52]
B
Yeah.
[58:53]
A
Yeah, really. So follow up from last week. You know, I talked about the. The websites that I was building and revamping and resuscitating from the dead. And I sent you a couple more, Dave. I don't know if you got to check those out, but even since then, I've done even more. Even more. And then I said, well, I need a place to put them because I just can't keep sending them to the friends. So I revamped my own website, believe it or not, at Jason, FYI. But I made a link to all of the old websites that you can go check out in there. It's under the boneyard. Yes, there are quite a few now at this point, so I even sent one to Brian. I found the old Meatloaf demo that I did for real audio that we talked about a couple times on the show.
[59:35]
C
Oh, wow.
[59:35]
A
And I'm telling you, Codex is pretty good at, like, taking old shit and making it work again. It really is. The fairy tale games used to be Shockwave. They actually work in HTML5 now, and this was the great part, going and finding all this old stuff. I found one of the old director files for the Star Trek game where you're like walking the hall and shooting the Borg. It is almost done. It actually pulled everything and recreated it from the director file. It's getting really good at that stuff. So I'm pretty happy with these rebuilds.
[60:09]
C
Yeah, I enjoyed poking around on your website. It looks nice. Tell me about Trackalot.
[60:17]
A
Oh, Trackalot's my iOS app that I created. That is for. It is not a to do list. It is a did I do that list. So you can follow things there. That's what I built when my dog kept getting sick and we had to follow her around and say, did she poop? Did she peep? What time was it? What was it like? So you can track an event, just a plain event, or you can add track an event with notes, can export it to Excel or to your calendar. So it's basically just a really nice, easy tracking app. Kind of just, you know, kind of
[60:47]
C
a reverse to do list.
[60:48]
B
Yes. It's funny because Jason. Jason used it for a sick dog. But I was actually just thinking it's actually perfect for neurotic first time parents. Did my kid pee? Did my kid poop? What did my kid eat?
[61:00]
A
Yeah, I have a friend whose daughter is very sick and she actually uses it to track her daughter's illness as well. So. And I am. I am trying to quit nicotine. So I am tracking how. How many times a day I hit the. Hit the lozenge so I can track that. And so the next. There's a new version that's in for review right now that you can track from your Apple Watch so you can set up trackers and when you're out and about, you can just tap your watch and track what you're doing. So it makes it much easier so you don't have to pull your phone out after that. We're putting in like, you know, limits on how many times a day you can do something.
[61:34]
B
So it's like, who's the we? Jason, are you now referring to your AI coding companion as an actual person?
[61:41]
A
Yeah, Doug. I named him Doug. He's my junior coder. Junior coder.
[61:46]
C
My wife and I refer to ChatGPT as Chet. Did you check with Chet?
[61:51]
A
Yep.
[61:53]
C
So is this app, is there any sharing capability or anything like that? I'm asking because just yesterday our adorable little dog conned me into giving her a second dinner. Last night I got home and My wife was at the grocery store and I fed and walked the dog and my wife came home and she said, you didn't feed the dog again, did you? And I went, no.
[62:22]
A
There is no sharing on this app at present. It is a standalone and maybe in future revisions I can look into doing that.
[62:29]
C
But yeah, yeah, that's cool. Good for you.
[62:32]
A
Thanks. Thanks. It gets the job done. It has made $181 so far.
[62:37]
B
All right, that's $181 you didn't have before, Jason.
[62:42]
A
But I spent probably $250 on it on codecs and the Apple developer fees. So I'm still in the hole. So go check it out. But yeah, I'm going to keep doing that stuff. I think just finding those old sites, it's fun. It's fun. You know, there's so much. I have so many things in the archives.
[63:00]
B
I know it's obviously not a priority for quite a. But are you even slightly worried about getting smacked by the IP lawyers on some of this stuff particularly? Well, I guess Paramount's a bit busy trying to merge right now, but yeah,
[63:13]
A
I couldn't give a shit less. No, I really couldn't care less if they can send me a cease and desist. I'll take it down if they want, but it's like these things are so old. Who cares? Who cares?
[63:23]
C
It's like showing your portfolio.
[63:25]
A
Yeah, it is literally my portfolio.
[63:27]
B
Especially since they've basically taken down you and not me, Jason. Both. All of my music sites, they're all long gone. Like all my entire portfolio. I was gone off the Internet. I might as well have never existed as a coder or a company or anything because nothing exists anymore that I built. It's all gone.
[63:45]
A
That's one of the reasons I left the movie business. Because we'd worked for a year, the site would be up for like, you know, three weeks and then it would be gone. And I'm like, I just. The ephemeral nature of all of that work just. It really bummed me out. So I like. I'm like, I'm gonna go work for a startup because startups, you know, they live forever. You know, I put in years on Techno Roddy and all the hard work we did there.
[64:04]
B
And I'm gonna go work for Google because Google products last for.
[64:08]
A
Oh, yeah. So this too shall pass is what I should have said. But no, and I. I found it. I did find a site that I think might tickle you guys because it's just. It's crazy. Jurassic Park Computers in excruciating detail. This is from Fabian Sanglard. Never heard of this guy. I think this came from the Recommendo website. I think it's a Mark Frauenfeld.
[64:31]
C
Never heard of him. But I appreciate the effort and I love everything about this website.
[64:36]
B
Excruciating is correct too.
[64:37]
A
Excruciating detail is correct. It's every computer that you can see in Jurassic Park.
[64:42]
C
Yeah.
[64:43]
A
And. And the monetary value of them at the time and in. In current, you know, current money. I just loved everything about this page. It's like I. I read the whole thing. I just was going through because I had some of the SGIs that were in there. I had an Indigo.
[64:57]
C
Really?
[64:57]
A
Yeah. And it was desktop publishing at Kinko's at first. At first it wasn't. We didn't have an Indigo. The Indigo came. What was the smaller one? The first pizza box or the Indigos were the thick ones.
[65:08]
B
Yeah, we had the thick one at the first company that I worked for that was actually our server that was housed in a different building that I had to drive to and manually upload websites when they were completed In Marina del Rey.
[65:21]
A
Right. Yeah, yeah. We had a room with an SGI in there and a couple sun sparks in there. But in the. Not the Indigo, there was another one that was kind of a small refrigerator sized one. That's the one that we ran Star Trek First Contact on that. We actually melted a hard drive in it the day it launched.
[65:41]
C
Wow.
[65:42]
A
Yeah. We had so much traffic to that thing. We melted the hard drive. They had to replace the hard drive midday, so we lost a bunch of traffic.
[65:48]
C
But I never had any of these.
[65:49]
A
Oh, they're fun.
[65:51]
C
We lusted after them because at the time that Jurassic park came out, I was, you know, had a company that was doing 3D stuff and it was all on max. And so there were several meetings we had over the history of the company, over whether or not it made sense to invest in some kind of. In an SGI machine or. Yeah. Would that make a difference? Could that. You know, and we never pulled the trigger on them because of course they were very expensive and so we just stuck with our Macs. But yeah, I definitely had a lot of desire for those machines back in the day when they were the. Really the stuff.
[66:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, we just had the basic stuff on them for the desktop publishing side at Kinko's, you know, because it was just basically to run. I think it was called the Fiery, which was a Canon color. Canon color copier. So we ran the Fiery from The sgi. But the greatest thing is like, you know, you get Minecraft on a Windows machine there. You get Light Bike, which is basically the Light Cycles from Tron, which was the best, like built in game. So we'd play the Light Cycles when we weren't actually sending jobs to the Fiery. And then when you get them for web serving, it's just, you know, you basically ran Apache on it and that was it.
[67:07]
C
I'm looking at the Wikipedia list of SGI workstations and there's Crimson Fuel, Indigo, Indigo 2, Indie, Iris, O2, Octane, Prism, Tesreau, Virtru, and Visual Workstation Indies.
[67:24]
A
Indies were what we had at Kinko's.
[67:25]
C
Yeah, okay.
[67:26]
A
Yeah, the Indigo 2s were the taller ones.
[67:29]
C
What was the one that looked like a swollen toaster? Was that an octane? I think that was an octane. Anyway, there's one of them in the Jurassic park web page. It's blue. Let's see if I can find it here. Sort of like in the background.
[67:47]
A
Yeah. So the Indigos were the tall ones that look like Quadra 848Vs kind of.
[67:54]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, they were Indigos. Blue Indigo, duh. Okay, thank you.
[68:01]
B
There you go.
[68:03]
C
Yeah. The other thing I love about this, and I loved about Jurassic park is I think my favorite Mac of all time was the Quadra 700.
[68:13]
A
Really?
[68:14]
C
Yeah, yeah. Because it was the first really powerful Mac I ever bought. It was the first Mac I ever bought that I put video hardware in to. And so like when we started our company, it was built on Quadra 700s to start with. And we like, I remember clock chipping our Quadra 700s to make them run at. At 33 MHz instead of 25, which actually made a difference. But I just, yeah. Have great affection for that machine. So it was a thrill when I went to see Jurassic park and oh, look, Quadra 700s. And of course they're just a re labeled. The case is the same case as one of the previous Macs. They just turned it on its side. But still a good looking design.
[69:04]
A
Yeah. My original one that I. That I still have affection for is the Quadra 650. Because that was my first. The one that I got the Apple student loan for that they followed me for 15 years trying to get their money back on.
[69:15]
C
Oh, man.
[69:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, they didn't get their money back on that one. No, they didn't.
[69:25]
B
Wow. All right. Anyways, we've spent some time on this segment talking about shitting, showering and shaving as of recently, we've added peeing. So we. We talked last night. Yeah, we talked last week about the dreaded waking up in the middle of the night to go pee. Jason is. Is using pumpkin oil and is swearing by that listener. Mike has written in. If you're dealing with old man bladder issues, lycopene can help with that. The best source is tomato paste. You can also find it in beets. And there's lycopene supplements. Also. I, I suggest if this. And you try with beets, use Jason's app to make sure that you note that you ate beets.
[70:07]
A
Yes.
[70:07]
B
So when you do the other thing and it's red, you don't assume you have colon cancer.
[70:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, I started. Nothing worse than that. Nothing worse than that.
[70:17]
B
I started taking lycopene supplements a few weeks ago, so it's too soon to tell if there's a difference, but thought I would pass this on. Well, Mike, if you continue to pass things on in the middle of the night, let us know. Keep us updated on your urinary situation.
[70:30]
C
I. I tried beet juice once. Once.
[70:35]
A
Once.
[70:38]
C
Because. And it's probably the lycopene, I don't know. But beet juice is supposed to be good for high blood pressure, which I have, and I take, you know, medicine every day, and it keeps it under control and it's all fine. But beets are supposed to be one of the things that helps keep that under control. First of all, drinking beet juice is
[70:58]
B
like drinking dirt, as is eating beets. It is a dirt flavored root. It's a root vegetable.
[71:06]
C
Yes, Yes. I like to think I can, you know, choke most things down if I have to, but I. 1.
[71:14]
A
That's what she said.
[71:15]
C
Yeah. Thank you. And. Well, no.
[71:20]
B
Maybe this is why Dave is wandering the halls. Now it's starting to make more sense.
[71:24]
C
I can't.
[71:24]
A
I can't do beet juice.
[71:26]
B
No.
[71:26]
C
I bought this bottle of beet juice. I was really proud of myself. Oh, this is going to solve all of my physical problems. And I drank like half a glass of it and I was like, well, this is going down the drain, because there's just no way. The other thing, too is like, I don't know if this, if you guys had this when you were in elementary school, like, once a year, a dentist would come in and teach you how to brush your teeth. Do you remember? Did that ever happen? And, like, usually he'd have, like a tooth puppet it with a giant toothbrush that he, you know, brush the teeth. But the other thing that he'd do is he'd come in with, like, this tablet that someone would chew on and it would show all the places where you missed brushing.
[72:06]
A
Oh, yeah.
[72:07]
C
I feel like that's what beet juice does. Also, like, if you drink beet juice, you end up with just like. It's like the before picture on a dentures commercial when you drink beet juice. So anyway, I don't like.
[72:25]
A
Did you also have to do the fluoride treatments every week? We had to do that. We called it the swish and spit. They would come in with a gallon with a little plastic or paper cups, and they'd give you a little pump, and then you had to swish it and spit it. Every week they would make us do fluoride treatments.
[72:38]
C
So I do remember doing fluoride treatments. However, I do specifically remember part of one of the dental visits was not swishing spit. It was swish and swallow.
[72:51]
B
Oh, that was my favorite class.
[72:55]
C
Well, here's the thing. It wasn't until probably 10 years later that I realized why all the teachers were giggling under their breath, you know, eye side eyeing each other at this dentist, telling us about how healthy we'd be if every day we switched and swallowed.
[73:12]
B
Certainly would be hitting your protein goals, I suppose. Yeah,
[73:18]
C
we didn't know. So at times, simpler times.
[73:23]
A
Public school.
[73:25]
C
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, what was the other thing that we had to endure was being checked for lice. Lice being checked for lice. Oh, man.
[73:38]
A
Dude. We had to do that in North Carolina. And there was always a couple kids that had to go home. And then it was just like, you know, this is a walk of shame.
[73:46]
C
Yeah.
[73:46]
A
Go back to the trailer park. Get your head shaved.
[73:49]
C
Right. And a lot of times kerosene.
[73:51]
A
They use kerosene to get it out.
[73:53]
C
Really?
[73:54]
A
Oh, North Carolina. We lived in trailer parks. Sorry. We used kerosene to get the lice out.
[74:00]
C
Girls sharing hairbrushes were. That is how the lice made its way around. I was lucky enough to never have lice still to this day. But, yeah, there's always one or two people who, like you said, got sent home, quite discreetly sent home. But everybody knew.
[74:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't discreet. It was like, you know, it was a line. And there was one chair at the time at the beat at the, you know, the front of the class, and you would go up and they would just sit there with the comb and go through it. And you would either go back to your chair or you would go out the door. There Was no discreet anything about it at all.
[74:34]
C
Yeah, speaking of. So just while we're on the topic of peeing, I've told, I think I've told the story here about how I peed my pants in the library in elementary school one time because the teacher wouldn't let me use the bathroom.
[74:47]
B
Perhaps. I feel like I'd remember it.
[74:51]
C
No. So in elementary school we would go to the library once a week and we'd spend time in the library with a librarian. And I guess this was a way for our classroom teacher to get a break from all of us. And we went to the library and I really had to pee and the librarian wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. Said, you know, you should have done that before you came here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, I ended up peeing myself because I couldn't hold it. And so lucky for me, it was Halloween. And so back in my cubbyhole was my, you know, plastic pullover Batman outfit with the mask, the rubber band on the back. So I was able to put the plastic outfit on to serve as trousers.
[75:41]
B
I was going to say, was your outfit a 54 year old man who couldn't make it through the night?
[75:46]
A
Right.
[75:46]
C
Yeah, it was Grunkle Stan. I was way ahead of the game. But what a terrible experience, you know, like having a teacher not believe you that you really have to go. And I remember my classroom teacher just ripping into the librarian being like, what are you doing? Like the kid tells you they have to go to the bathroom, they have to go to the bathroom. But anyway, I'm not scarred by it at all.
[76:11]
B
No,
[76:14]
C
it's not a core memory for me. I'm perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. There's a YouTube video I wanted to share that came out a couple weeks ago. Now I was surprised kind of by the source of this, that this is an official Star wars release. It's called who Are the Mandalorians? It's kind of a history bit about the Mandalorians and where they came from and why they do what they do and you know, the different. Some of them have to keep their masks on and some other helmets and some don't. But it's well done and I thought for the Star wars fans they might enjoy checking it out.
[76:53]
B
I'm not surprised that they put this out as the Mandalorians have kind of become core to what Star wars currently is given all the shows that are out now. So, yeah, makes sense. And I'm glad that this is next time my kid asks me 10,000 questions? I'm just going to pull up this video. Here you go, kid.
[77:11]
A
Right.
[77:12]
C
Enjoy yourself. I got to go pee.
[77:18]
B
I got a score to settle with an old librarian.
[77:20]
C
Yeah, exactly. Right. Could you imagine crossing paths in a dark alley, Mr. Johnson? 1976, Centennial. In elementary school, the library. You probably don't remember me, but I remember you. Yeah. And so, finally, I wanted to just provide a quick update on my digital piano journey. I let you guys know a couple weeks ago, I bought a broken piano, and I've been fixing it with the help of ChatGPT, which has been very helpful. And I feel I'm not quite there yet, but I think we're close again. That's what she said. Yeah. So, however, I did get to the point where I wasn't able to do anything else with just my multimeter. So ChatGPT got to the point where it said, do you happen to have a thermal camera?
[78:22]
A
Yes. When we left you last week, Joe Kerrigan was going to supply the thermal camera.
[78:27]
C
Right. So Job did bring in the thermal camera, but his thermal camera did not work with my iPhone. He had one of those ones that plugs into the bottom of your phone.
[78:37]
A
Yeah, the little FLIR attachment ones.
[78:39]
C
The little FLIR attachment. And his was old enough that that particular model wasn't built for an iPhone with USB C. So I couldn't get it to work. Darn. Had to buy my own.
[78:49]
A
Aw. Yeah. Shucks. So how much did that run you, Dave?
[78:53]
C
About 150 bucks.
[78:55]
B
How much would a new keyboard cost?
[78:58]
C
We're not. This is not how we're keeping track of this project, Brian. As I said at the outset, I'm
[79:05]
B
using Jason's Track a Lot app currently, for every dollar you spend.
[79:09]
A
Yeah, yeah.
[79:11]
C
Don't tell my wife.
[79:14]
B
I did not feed the dog and I did not buy it.
[79:17]
C
Right.
[79:19]
A
I can tell you how much is poop. What the temperature of his poop is.
[79:22]
B
Yeah.
[79:23]
A
Oh. So. So you got to tell me first, how do you like the FLIR camera? Because I've looked at those before, and I have had. I've had, you know, gear lust syndrome, where I just, like, I don't need one, but I really want one.
[79:34]
C
It's great. It's great.
[79:35]
A
Okay.
[79:35]
C
So what I did was I went over. You guys familiar with project farm, the YouTube video? He's a guy. He's this guy who tests all kinds of things. He says, we're going to test that. He says, very impressive. Good YouTube channel. It's called Project Farm. He tests all kinds of things in A very kind of earthy, rural kind of way, but it's good. It's worth your time. And so I just went to Project Farm and looked for his tests of thermal cameras and found the one that he thought was the best value. And. And that's what I bought. It was about 150 bucks. There are ones that are much more, but this seemed like a nice balance between resolution and price and capabilities and all that stuff. So let me tell you, once you have a thermal camera, you don't want to live without one because it's just so much fun. It is also, ignorance is bliss in that, of course, I started walking around my house, looking at all of the places where my house is under insulated. You just like pointing a wall. You're like, holy smokes. Look at all the. Look at all the heat coming through there. Look at, you know, look at. Oh, no. Look at windows. Oh, no. So. But yes, it is great fun. I highly recommend if you can have one, if you can, if you can afford one, get yourself a thermal camera.
[80:57]
A
Because if you have the means.
[80:59]
C
If you have the means, I highly recommend it. Yes.
[81:01]
A
I'll put the link in the show notes because. Because my birthday is next week, so I put that on my. My list of. Hey guys, want to give me something nice? Yeah. So I just wanted one for when I'm testing pans in the kitchen to see if they're hot enough to start searing the meat. So, you know, that's. I know, I know. I can just hold my hand over it and go and see if it spill, you know, see if it pops. But a FLIR camera would just make it more repeatable. Is always.
[81:26]
C
It would. Do you. Do you have one of the little infrared thermometers? I do the little laser thermometer thing.
[81:34]
A
Yes, I do.
[81:35]
C
You could use that on your pan.
[81:36]
A
Not nearly as much fun. Dave, it's my birthday. I want a camera. Shut up.
[81:43]
C
I'm with you. No, no, no. 100%. 100%. I'm just. Yes, you are correct. I withdraw the question.
[81:50]
A
Tell me about your piano.
[81:53]
C
So we got to the point where we had to look at one of the circuit boards to see what. What component was heating up.
[81:59]
B
I love the Wii. I love the fact that both you and Jason now refer to your experiments with AI as We are doing things.
[82:08]
C
That's bad. I didn't realize I was doing that.
[82:10]
A
It's not good.
[82:13]
C
So now ChatGPT is very accommodating. It told me that if I didn't have a thermal Camera. I could spritz alcohol on the board and I could see where it evaporated first. And that would tell me what was getting hot. But I was like, no, I'm gonna
[82:28]
A
throw it doesn't sound safe.
[82:30]
C
Not safe nor gratifying or satisfying. So I have the thermal camera and sure enough, I found the current diagnosis is that the 5 volt rail is shorting to ground. And so I found a capacitor on the board that was getting hot, pulled it off the board, checked it out, sure enough, bad capacitor. So. So I'm going to replace all the capacitors just for the sake of it. But I'm making progress. Now the lights on the front of the board light up and they didn't do that before. So more power is getting to it than was before. I'm still not getting any sound out of it, but that's okay. This is a journey. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And it wasn't a good excuse for me. Now I have a thermal camera.
[83:16]
B
All right. I can't wait to hear the first notes from this soon to be $7,000 keyboard.
[83:21]
A
Right, exactly. Powered by a windmill outside of his solar panels.
[83:27]
C
Yeah, my old solar panel. My old collection of solar panels are going to be powering it. I have to go break it to my son Jack that he's going to have to take a gap year because we can't afford college anymore. But dad got a 15 year old digital piano working.
[83:44]
B
Not since John Michael Jar has there been a more expensive keyboard.
[83:47]
C
That's right. I love it, but I'm having fun.
[83:50]
A
That's all that matters. Literally, it's all that matters.
[83:54]
B
We are having a good time.
[83:56]
C
We are having a good time. We are having a great time. The royal we.
[84:01]
A
Well, you and Chet, enjoy your journey and enjoy black travels and enjoy the beach and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
[84:08]
C
All right, very good. Thanks, guys.
[84:10]
B
Bye, Dave.
[84:11]
A
Well, this is the part of the show where we thank the people who give us money to keep us fed and on the air. So Brian, what do we got?
[84:17]
B
We love these people. We have no new people on Patreon. And because I didn't do this ahead of time because vacation and everything else. To quote the famous. Oh God, what's his name? Right wing commentator. It. We're doing it live. Got some legacy people. Number one, Smy. Number two, Francois Leith, Dave, Roger, Robert, Kevin, Steve, GK and James, thank you all so much for your continued Patreon donations.
[84:46]
A
Thank you very much. And over at PayPal, we do have a Patreon subscriber who said here's a hundred bucks because you're awesome. Then that's Joseph. Thank you very much, Joseph. We appreciate it. Like you would not believe. We would not believe.
[84:59]
B
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And over at Stripe we have donations from Kathleen, Jennifer, Gary and Adam.
[85:05]
A
That's right, that's the old tip jar. And you can find the tip jar if you go to gog.show donate. You can find all the places where you can help support the show. And remember, if you go to patreon.com gog you get the show early ad free and in high definition. You can also go to YouTube and sign up there and become a member. And I don't know if we have any YouTube members today because also vacation for you, but just slacking for me and I forgot to go check because we forget to put it in the show notes and I'm silly that way. But please, your. Your continued support is what keeps us going. So check out GOG Show Donate any chance you get. We'll appreciate it a lot.
[85:42]
B
That's right.
[85:43]
A
And we are off next week if you. If you've forgotten from the beginning of the show because you know it's been a long time since we told you that we were going on vac. So we will not be here next week. But yeah, join us the following week. And Brian, you have a lovely vacation.
[85:57]
B
Have a great birthday.
[85:58]
A
Thank you. I will. I'll be at the gym. Until next time. I'm Jason DeFilippo.
[86:02]
B
And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from Today's episode at GOG Show 757. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG Show. Donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show. Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG show to join our discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts? Feedback? Cool links? Hit us up at GOG show contact and don't forget to leave a 5 star review at GOG show review and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got GOG Merch. Relatively new GOG Merch. So stealing from oldthinkgeek.com gog merch. Get it at Shop Gog show and stay grumpy.