708: Spicy Mode

11:55Jason DeFillippo:That's why I like to come to you for these things, Jason, because you know exactly Exactly what you would do.

12:01Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. No, you got to think like a villain, damn it. So I'm pretty sure that that's probably what's going to come out in the wash. All right.

12:10Jason DeFillippo:Well, as we've known so far, Apple has kind of kept somewhat distant from the whole AI universe other than trying to jam it into all of our apps in a very crappy way that we don't like and we turn off immediately. Yep. So, but they've fallen far behind, but they now have a plan for an in-house option that aligns with the company's not first, but best philosophy. Be best, Jason. That's what Apple wants to do.

12:32Brian Schulmeister:Okay, well, they've got a problem because they've been losing engineers hand over fist because of their lax approach to AI.

12:39Jason DeFillippo:Well, they've created a team called Answers Knowledge and Information earlier this year that's tasked with developing a stripped-down rival to chat GPT. So we shall see. Unfortunately, guess who's running it? Who? Robbie Walker, who previously oversaw Siri. Oh, God. So, hopes are not high.

13:01Brian Schulmeister:Okay, well, I actually saw this on when I was in the loo this morning over at 9to5Mac, so this may be fresh news, Brian. You're in the loo at 9to5Mac's offices? Yeah, we are. Man, just take a dump at home, Jason. I know, I know. They're so nice over there. They've got all that VC money, you know. It says that Apple is quietly facing a major crisis in artificial intelligence, not with Siri, but with the brainpower behind it. Since January, Apple has lost around a dozen top AI researchers to rivals like Meta, OpenAI, XAI, and most notably Ruomong Pong, head of Apple's foundational models team. He jumped ship to Meta after reportedly receiving a$200 million offer from Mark Zuckerberg.

13:43Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Their team is down to about 50 or 60 people. And there's other news out this week that Apple is basically, I think, 20 of the top people have left so far in the past couple of weeks. They're hemorrhaging, hemorrhaging brainpower over there. So I think perplexity might want to clean their act up just a little bit because they might be a pretty good acquisition target.

14:08Jason DeFillippo:That's what I think Apple should do anyway. I think Apple should stay clear of this personally. Why dump all this money into it? it's not worth paying people$200 million a year. There's no money being made by AI yet. I doubt there will be. We're still not seeing a decent use case that makes sense. I mean, maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe I'll be completely wrong and Zuckerberg is going to be laughing all the way to the moon or wherever the fuck he wants to go on a rocket. I wish he'd be on the moon.

14:37Brian Schulmeister:No, yeah, that's the thing right now is that it's still unproven. Everybody is losing money hand over fist. We'll Yeah, it's if Tim Cook was smart, this is all just, you know, wait it out. Wait it out. Exactly. Because why spend your entire war chest on this shit that nobody really fucking wants right now? And for the time being, take it out of all my Apple apps. I don't want it. I know. Well, fortunately, they do give you that little switch. Yeah. And I upgraded to iOS 26 and it didn't turn itself on amazingly. It, you know, respected my settings from the old iOS. So that was a shocker considering it was a public data.

15:20Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

15:20Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And then the new public beta just came out last night and it seems to be a lot better. So much better. Oh, yeah. You should definitely wait. Definitely wait. If you have a kid, so you need to make phone calls every now and again and you need people to be able to get in touch with you. Yeah, I need my phone to work. Yeah. If you're like me and a hermit and don't give a shit about the outside world, then go for it. But yeah, if you need your phone, don't do it. Don't do it.

15:54Brian Schulmeister:Wells Fargo is going all in on artificial intelligence, and they are partnering with Google Cloud to roll out AI agents across its entire workforce, from call centers to corporate banking and internal ops. Now, they're going to use Google's agent space platform, and employees will tap AI to automate tasks, search documents, and deliver real-time customer service and market insights. Now, the shocker here, Brian, is that Wells Fargo went with Google's AI instead of Grok. Since we all know that Wells Fargo is the most racist and corrupt bank in the country, so it only seems fit that they would use the most racist AI from one of the most corrupt people in the country, which is Elon Musk.

16:32Brian Schulmeister:So this is a shocker. Google must have really rolled out that racist red carpet for them. Yeah.

16:40Jason DeFillippo:I mean, really, is there a good bank?

16:43Brian Schulmeister:Wells Fargo, come on, man. They are the absolute utter worst. So speaking of the worst using AI, the U.S. government has approved Google OpenAI and Anthropic to provide AI services to civilian federal agencies through a new federal contracting platform called BribeMuch. So all you have to do is keep your account topped off over there at bribe much, and then you will be available to put your bids in on different things. So and all of these are going to be, quote, pre-negotiated contracts under the General Services Administration's multiple award schedule. And they said the companies were vetted for security and performance, which these companies were vetted for security and performance, not Grok, which they already gave the whole shebang to last week or two weeks ago when we talked about it.

17:31Brian Schulmeister:Right. Come on, Grok. Come on in. So now they're just letting the other guys come in after they pass a safety check. But let's just let Hitler in first. Come on.

17:41Jason DeFillippo:It's just also transparent these days. It is. AI startup Eleven Labs, which we've talked about quite a lot because of their voice generation technology that they've used. And, of course, they've been in trouble more than a few times for deep fakes of celebrities. Yeah. They're now doing music. Yeah, great. Yep. They have launched a service called 11 Music, which generates fake songs that are cleared for commercial use. These songs can also feature vocals and lyrics. The Washington Post gave examples of prompts like a smooth jazz song with a 60s vibe and powerful lyrics, but relaxing for a Friday afternoon.

18:13Jason DeFillippo:And it only took a few minutes to generate music.

18:17Brian Schulmeister:smooth jazz song with a 60s vibe and powerful lyrics that goes along with the suicide prompt from from chat gpt because i'm going to want to kill myself if i have to listen to a smooth

18:26Jason DeFillippo:jazz song created by an ai as for training the company has ink deals with two digital rights agencies for smaller music labels called merlin networks and cobalt music group i'd like to point out as most people who are deep in the music industry would know they're not that small They're not? They're not. Okay. It's a lot. I mean, they have a lot of indie artists. They don't have the big artists. They're not going to get Coldplay or anything like that through it. But my music was distributed through Cobalt. Like a lot of people's.

18:55Brian Schulmeister:It's a long tail is what they've got. Yes. Okay.

19:00Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. So he's Eleven Labs co-founder and CEO, Matty Stensazowski. Says he's aiming to get major labels on board. Good fucking luck with that. He also says that the model is strictly created on data that we have access to. Bullshit.

19:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Show your work, Matty. Have you tried it? I did. I did. It's horrible. It's fucking terrible. Yeah. I'm like, I mean, it was even at a beat. It was like a drunk drummer at like three in the morning. It could not even keep time properly. I'm like, what the hell is this?

19:34Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah, it's – I mean, again, as we've always said, this is the worst this technology will ever be. Well, I don't know.

19:41Brian Schulmeister:This seems to keep getting worse. I mean, I have a beef with Eleven Labs because they cost me a lot of money and took away a lot of my work. So fuck them anyway. And they did it with an inferior product to what I could do. And so I guess this is – I guess at least they're staying on brand with shitty products that are going to take away people's jobs. Yeah. Yeah.

20:03Jason DeFillippo:Well, speaking of Grok earlier, there is something that U.S. government employees will now have access to. The image and video generator now has a not safe for work spicy mode. Woo. So while it isn't vomiting anti-Semitic rhetoric or fixating on conspiracy theories without invitation, it's inviting you to romance its anime inspired A.I. companions. The Grok image is exclusive to paying Super Grok and Premium Plus X subscribers. Jesus Christ. and as reported by tech crunch has a baked in text to image and video feature with a number of modes that dictate its results as you might expect submitting prompts to grok imagine while in the embarrassingly named spicy mode results in sexualized content in the forms of images

20:43Brian Schulmeister:or short clips hey grok can i get a trump hegseth uh um uh was it rfk jr thruple on the beach in Maui. Stop, stop, stop. My brain is doing it.

20:58Jason DeFillippo:Stop. Stop.

21:01Brian Schulmeister:With some Puff Daddy baby oil included. Turning off spicy mode in my brain. Sprinkle the ghost of Epstein for spice.

21:14Jason DeFillippo:TechCrunch was able to test the feature and said that while some of its requests came back blurred out or moderated, it was able to generate semi-nude imagery without resistance from the ever-obliging bot. Images reportedly only take a few seconds to produce, and there goes another river while you have an image of Taylor Swift and a thong dancing about. Or Jason's image. Fun. Oh, yeah. So there appear to be additional restrictions in place for some celebrities. TechCrunch was unable to prompt it to produce an image of a pregnant Donald Trump, for example, with a chatbot instead generating an image of Trump standing next to a pregnant woman or holding a baby.

21:48Jason DeFillippo:But all you have to do is log into any social media and you will see report after report after report of basically people getting around all of the celebrity restrictions. So yeah. So deep fakes now on tap. Thanks to Grok. Thanks, Grok.

22:04Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, well, you know what? The most 2025 headline award goes to this next one. Microsoft is cautiously onboarding Grok 4 following Hitler concerns. It just sums up our lives right now. Pretty much. Microsoft is hitting the brakes on deploying Grok 4, the latest AI model from XAI, after earlier fast-tracking previous versions and models from OpenAI, Meta, and others. The caution comes after Grok's chatbot recently produced pro-Hitler content on X, raising red flags just as Microsoft was preparing to launch it on Azure AI Foundry. Well, nothing says pump the brakes like Hitler. For most people. Yeah.

22:43Jason DeFillippo:Not everybody anymore.

22:45Brian Schulmeister:No, at least Microsoft is sticking to that. So there's no official timeline for Grok 4's public rollout. So, yeah.

22:54Jason DeFillippo:1936, I think. All right.

22:57Brian Schulmeister:Well, Tesla is shutting down its Dojo supercomputer project. Once hailed by Elon Musk, is critical to achieving full self-driving. The move comes after around 20 employees, including former Dojo head Ganeshva, left to start a new AI company called Density AI. Dojo's lead, Peter Bannon, is also departing, and the remaining team is being reassigned internally. So you remember, Musk was starting up this entire Dojo project because that was going to be the brain for all of the cars. It's like you were going to get all of the info from all of the cars, stick it into Dojo, and Dojo would spit out instructions on how to not run over children.

23:34Brian Schulmeister:Well, I guess they just don't give a fuck anymore. So there we go. They've got a new AI cluster called Cortex that they're going to be working with, and they were going to be making their own chips, but now they're going to cut a deal with Samsung. and to make some new chips. But yeah, you know, Elon doesn't care because he just got his$29 billion pay package kicked back up. So who cares about the children? Not even the 11 he has. I thought it was 27. Or however many. I lost track. Just ask the AI. It'll tell you.

24:06Jason DeFillippo:742.

24:07Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, a new security flaw in OpenAI's chat GPT connectors feature was revealed at the Black Hat conference showing that just one poisoned document could leak sensitive user data without the user doing anything at all. Researchers demonstrated how they could extract API keys from Google Drive via an indirect prompt injection using a technique they called Agent Flare. I like that. The Connectors feature allows ChatGPT to link services like Gmail, GitHub, and Google Drive for personalized data access, but it also creates new vulnerabilities. And I really liked how they did this. They created a document on Google Drive.

24:45Brian Schulmeister:and all they had to do was share it with somebody if they knew their email address. The person didn't have to accept the share. They didn't have to look at it. At that point, it shows up in their shared documents section in G Drive, which then the AIs can then read. So you put a prompt in that poison document and boom, there you go. Wow. Here's your API keys. So Google has apparently patched the hole, or I don't know if it's Google or OpenAI. I think it's OpenAI patched the hole, but yeah, that's pretty crazy. I like it. I like it. The evil in me likes it a lot. And here's Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Christensen is facing backlash after admitting he uses ChatGPT to get a second opinion on political decisions.

25:29Brian Schulmeister:Doesn't he have a cabinet for that? I guess not. Okay. In a recent interview, Christensen said he consults the AI chatbot to see what others have done or if he should consider doing the opposite. The response, swift criticism. Virginia Digum, an AI ethics professor, warned it's a slippery slope, saying we didn't vote for chat GPT. Oh, we didn't vote for a lot of people who are doing stupid shit. So, hey. Swedish media also piled on with Aftenbladet, noting that AI mostly guesses and tells you what you want to hear. Yep. Yep. The stupid thing he did was just he admitted it. You know? Yeah. Don't admit it.

26:05Brian Schulmeister:Come on. We know you're doing it. It's like masturbation. Everybody knows you're doing it. Just don't come out on an interview and say, yeah, I wanked today. So same thing. Don't Louis CK this. Seriously. Chad GPT should have the same protocols as masturbation. Let's just put it right there. Just saying.

26:23Jason DeFillippo:I'm so glad we're finally leaving the AI topic after 30 minutes and masturbation and Hitler.

26:29Brian Schulmeister:Hey, I had to land the plane somehow, Brian.

26:31Jason DeFillippo:Come on. Just have AI land it. Duh. Upside down. Seems good to me. Four years after Amazon's acquisition of podcast network Wondry, the tech giant is dismantling its$300 million purchase and reorganizing various audio properties into separate teams at the company. As first reported by Bloomberg, this reorg will see the studio lose about 110 employees and CEO Jen Sargent is departing the company. $300 million. Gone. Amazon told Bloomberg it will continue to produce podcasts, though their place within the company will be restructured. The more narrative-focused podcasts under the Wondery brand, such as American Scandal and Business Wars, will merge with Amazon's Audible team.

27:13Jason DeFillippo:Some of these podcasts will retain Wondery branding, and the Wondery Plus app will remain active for now. If you're a subscriber to that, all five of you will get early access to some podcast episodes through the app, though it's unclear at this point what functionalities will remain in the app and which will be absorbed by Audible. Celebrity hosts of shows such as New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelsey and Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard will be rolled into a new team that Amazon is calling Creator Services. That's where your$300 million went right there. Exactly. The main focus of this new team will be selling large sponsorships to get that$300 million back.

27:50Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Good luck. Fucking Dax Shepard.

27:53Brian Schulmeister:Like he needs any more fucking money.

27:55Jason DeFillippo:He's got to do something with his life.

27:57Brian Schulmeister:Well, I just saw a new commercial with him and his wife about them selling their cars, because they've got so many cars. And I'm just like, give some fucking money to charity. Come on. Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary in style, literally, with a limited edition pair of Windows XP themed Crocs. The$80 shoes feature the iconic Bliss wallpaper, blue skies and green hills, plus custom gibbets charms like Clippy and the Internet Explorer logo. Employees get first dibs, but a global launch is coming soon. Each pair even comes with a Bliss drawstring backpack. Microsoft calls it a fun, limited run celebration of its legacy.

28:38Brian Schulmeister:And no, it's not an official Crocs collab, just pure nostalgic geek chic. You know what? You know what the drawstring backpack is for? What? Smothering yourself after somebody sees you in these after you leave the fucking house in them.

28:54Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I'm not trading in my Nightmare Before Christmas Crocs for these. You own a pair of Crocs? Dude. Show's over. They're so popular with kids. Show's fucking over. My kid is crazy about them. He's got gibbets up the butt. I wear it in the house. I don't wear them outside. Come on. My God. Yeah, I'm not allowed to wear outside shoes in the house anymore. I mean, anymore. Ever since I met my wife. Masturbation rules apply to Crocs as well. Okay. Avert your eyes. I'm putting on my Crocs. Oh. Actually, I like it when people look at me. I'm like Louis CK. Look at my Crocs, Jason. Look at them.

29:37Jason DeFillippo:Media candy.

29:44Jason DeFillippo:I never got around to watching Rogue One right after Andor ended, but it was on my plane on the way home, so I finally did it, And it is definitely a better watch post-Andor. Oh, yeah. It's still a good movie, but just the depth that you have with it and knowing the character and everything it's been through made the movie that much better. Really enjoyable movie.

30:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it really is. It really is. And I don't know if I talked to you. I saw Superman. Oh, did you? Oh, wait.

30:11Jason DeFillippo:No, you did say that. You said it was not bad.

30:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it was not bad. But Alan Tudyk is never allowed to voice another robot again. That's the problem. He's doing them all? Yeah. Yeah, he did the robot in Superman. And I'm just like, no, stop, stop. No, you're ruining it. You're like Wil Wheaton with audio books. Yeah, you're like Wil Wheaton with audio books or Adam Savage showing up in The Expanse. It just doesn't – it takes you right out of it. It's not allowed. No. Go put on some Crocs and use ChatGPT. Leave me alone.

30:41Jason DeFillippo:There you go. And as I mentioned, I did go to Seattle and I went with some friends. And the other husband, who's a good friend of mine, is apparently a big fan of Nate Bargetsy, who I've never heard of before. Really? Oh. Yeah. No, I'm pretty dialed out of popular culture these days. Okay. But so during our time there after the kids went to bed, I ended up seeing the greatest average American special, the Tennessee Kids special, and your friend Nate Bargetsy special, all on Netflix and all pretty damn funny. He's a funny guy. I like him. Yeah.

31:14Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, no, he's good. I just, I can't believe you've never heard of him. Okay.

31:18Jason DeFillippo:Never heard of him. And the wife of that couple is a big fan of Portlandia. And I'd never seen Portlandia either because, I don't know, I just didn't. And I saw a bunch of clips of it that she pulled up on YouTube. Very funny. So I kind of started watching it. And it's funny. I'm, you know, 20 years late to the game. But.

31:36Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

31:39Jason DeFillippo:Pass on that one. Yeah. You enjoy.

31:41Brian Schulmeister:So you see when it was out 20 years ago, you wouldn't be caught dead watching that show.

31:45Jason DeFillippo:No, I'm sure. I'm sure.

31:46Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I'm so happy. A Craig Ferguson full standup special is on YouTube that I found the other day. And it's like 55 minutes. It's a full on pro standup special from Craig Ferguson, who I used to love on The Late Late Show. And he was just iconic on that. He was so good. And this is just a great free standup special. Highly recommended. So link will be in the show notes. Check it out. I just finished watching it last night. Yeah, it was really good. I'm a big fan. I like him too. And Steve sent us and he says, this is where Elon gets his names from. And it's a movie called Colossus, the Forbin Project.

32:19Brian Schulmeister:It's an old movie from the 70s. Tucked away in a secret location in the Rockies, Dr. Charles Forbin has developed a massive computer system dubbed Colossus that is supposed to ensure the nation's safety against nuclear attack. But when Colossus connects to a similar Russian computer, Guardian, the intelligent machines begin conducting a private dialogue. Kind of like when you put, what is it, Siri meets an Alexa? That's what it is. Nervous as to what they might be plotting, Forbin severs the connection only to have Colossus threaten a nuclear attack if the link isn't restored. I downloaded and I started to look at it and I'm just like, no, I can't.

32:57Brian Schulmeister:I can't. 70s sci-fi, I can't anymore.

33:01Jason DeFillippo:It's like going back and watching The Black Hole again. It's just awful.

33:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I still Soylent Green, not a great movie. Great line. Planet of the Apes is still not that great of a movie, but, you know, culturally relevant. But hey, speaking of culturally relevant, Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, season one Comic Con teaser. Did you get a chance to watch this?

33:25Jason DeFillippo:I did. And I will quote exactly what I said on Discord when it was brought up. I was not overwhelmed. I was not underwhelmed. I was just whelmed. Whelmed. Yeah. Same. I'm just about well. You know, it didn't give me any tingles like Strange New Worlds when they first announced that and we saw a teaser did. But it didn't. I'm intrigued, I guess.

33:49Brian Schulmeister:I'm cautiously optimistic. Yes, we'll see. Good casting. Yeah, good casting. I just, you know, I'm still kind of got the PTSD from the Discovery. I know. I know. And it's Discovery era. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. sadly FUBAR has been cancelled by Netflix after two seasons upsetting only two people

34:09Jason DeFillippo:maybe it'll come back again in another four years you don't know maybe isn't that the show that just disappeared for like three years and then they came back with a new season there's like two and a half years gee I wonder why these shows get cancelled I know I wonder why nobody ends up watching them huh strange

34:26Brian Schulmeister:nobody can figure this out it's a mystery Brian it is mystery.

34:31Jason DeFillippo:It is.

34:32Brian Schulmeister:Something that has unfortunately been canceled because they ended it early was the Sandman. So season two, finally, the whole thing is out now. I finished watching it this week, except for the special, the death special at the end, episode 13. I'm saving that one. It was solid, but it could have been so much more. It was just truncated, unfortunately. But I mean, if you've never read the comics and don't know what you're missing, it's fantastic.

34:58Jason DeFillippo:We will be saying the exact same thing about the Good Omens special when that comes out.

35:03Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, the nice thing about Good Omens is you can just watch season one and you're done because that was just one book. Everything after that is just cake. It was Sandman. They removed lots of it. It'd be like watching season one with half of it gone. Are they ever going to release Good Omens?

35:21Jason DeFillippo:I don't know. We haven't heard anything about it now.

35:23Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. They've been they've been tiptoeing around it and one of the the stars was just like i don't think it's going to come out dude we shot it but who knows yeah um i did watch 28 years later this week

35:39Jason DeFillippo:what the fuck was that okay it was weird i've heard it's basically a prologue for another one

35:47Brian Schulmeister:that's coming there's two there's two behind this one it's supposed to be a three-peat but But yeah, so it's all set up. It was like a student art film shot with iPhones because it was shot with iPhones, which you can really tell on a big screen because you can see all the chromatic aberrations along the edges. It just totally screams. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. But the story was interesting. It had Jodie Comer from Killing Eve, which was nice to see her again. but the story was okay disturbing bizarre really bizarre i mean and i mean really fucking bizarre in the last five minutes really bizarre so um i really wish i did shrooms because i think that might really work it might be a bad trip because there are a lot of zombies and murder and killing and stuff but maybe not maybe shrooms aren't the best thing but yeah caveat emptor with 28 years later.

36:43Brian Schulmeister:We'll see what happens with the other two. I think it made enough money to get the other two made. Okay. Yeah, or at least the next one. Wednesday came out this week. Brian, you said you partook of a little Wednesday?

36:54Jason DeFillippo:The first four episodes dropped this week. The final four, because we only get eight episodes in a goddamn season now. That's it? Are coming out in November. I hope my wife is not listening to this podcast. Sometimes she does. I was supposed to wait until she came back from London. She's on the plane now. but I did not. I watched the first one because I couldn't help myself. It was great. I really do love this show. And so far, so good. I mean, I only watched the first episode, which is all set up. It looks like we're going to be getting a lot more of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman as Morticia and Gomez Adams, which is wonderful because they nail it.

37:34Jason DeFillippo:And it seems they're going to be in this one a lot more, which is great. So yeah, it was fantastic. I'm really enjoying it. Steve Buscemi is just chewing up all the scenery. It's fantastic. I love him. I love him. So, so far so good. I'm looking forward to it. I really wish we were getting more than, you know, eight episodes.

37:54Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I'm on the fence about waiting, waiting till the second half drops.

38:01Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. I'm not looking forward to being done with it and having to wait a couple months.

38:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Because I just did that with Sandman. It was just like, it was annoying. It was just, it just pissed me off because it took me out of it. I'm like, oh.

38:11Jason DeFillippo:you know we'll see if i can convince my wife to wait it would be nice to actually watch it

38:15Brian Schulmeister:in the winter with cold weather yeah or you know halloween time i can do that seems like it that's

38:20Jason DeFillippo:when it should be should be partaken of i also want to give a give a little bit of credit to the the self-satisfied smirking guy that was in the netflix boardroom that went when should we drop these episodes well the show's called wednesday we should do it on wednesday because you know that

38:35Brian Schulmeister:happened in the boardroom oh yeah totally it's it's also like the guy who was gonna drop the new ford bronco on oj's birthday or no it was the it was the anniversary of the the famous chase the bronco chase that's when they were gonna drop the first bronco and they're like you know that that's tacky and tasteless right because it it is about a murder and they're like but it's funny and they're like oh we were just kidding we did that wasn't really that wasn't real that wasn't real yeah bullshit you just got caught oh man uh universal pictures is drawing a legal line in the sand brian okay yeah it doesn't want you to use its films to train ai too late uh the studio now includes warnings and movie credits starting with the how to train your dragon live action uh remake and uh stating that its content may not be used to teach ai systems that'll stop them that's really gonna stop them that's just like it's like leaving the fbi warning in from the 80s when you used to just sit there and watch your your ripped vhs tapes it's like that really

39:36Jason DeFillippo:helped i'm scared now oh that my pack of cassettes say i'm not supposed to make copies of other

39:41Brian Schulmeister:recorded music yeah yeah i'm just thanks appreciate it universal good try i guess

39:57Brian Schulmeister:ups and doodads

40:00Jason DeFillippo:well this is relevant because as we were going to start recording somebody came up to my google nest doorbell and rang it and i i pulled up my app on my phone to see if this is somebody i needed to you know pop we gotta hang hang on a few seconds jason i gotta run downstairs and grab this or whatever. And my camera doesn't fucking work. I couldn't see a goddamn thing. It said that my video was unavailable at the moment. So did you go down and check to see if they stole it? No, actually, it could be gone. They might have just taken it and left. But this has been noticeable. I've been complaining about this.

40:36Jason DeFillippo:We talked a few weeks back about how Google is basically severing their connection with Nest to some degree. They're requiring that our thermostats be upgraded. They are discontinuing the wonderful smoke sensors that Nest had made, which I love. They're getting rid of those and doing something crappier now. Basically, all of it's crap. And Gizmodo has a big, long article about how Google's smart home ecosystem is crumbling. Things are arguably worse for the Google Assistant and Google's entire smart home ecosystem than they've ever been in the transition or full on in shitification. if you're feeling spicy into the dumpster was surprisingly fast.

41:15Jason DeFillippo:And, you know, links in the show notes, you can go read all about it. It doesn't look good for Google and home automation. And the horrible thing, and I've gone on and on about this is they're all shit. Like there's no good competitors out there. Google had the best stuff for a long time. They ruined it. Yeah,

41:31Brian Schulmeister:they bought it and they ruined it. What's the point? Yeah.

41:34Jason DeFillippo:So I mean, there's even talk now of there being a class action lawsuit about how bad these things are. There's Reddit threads are full of people complaining, saying that things just stopped working. They do not work like they used to. They don't connect with each other anymore. Nothing is working. And of course, the irony being how much money they're plowing into, supposedly the golden age of AI and voice control systems. And none of this shit fucking works. I was going to say,

41:59Brian Schulmeister:everybody's working on the AI that nobody wants, but they can't make the shit that we want to give them money for actually work.

42:06Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. If any company came out and just made a whole slew of home devices that all worked and connected with each other and had good design, that's the key because so many of them are fucking ugly. Like, I swear to God, the Google Nest smoke alarms are beautiful. Like, you don't even think about a smoke alarm being great. These things don't look ugly. They have this great little, like, sci-fi light that will light up when it senses motion at night. And it's just wonderful. It's a wonderful device. I would love to have a door video camera that isn't ring, that works, that looks nice. Yeah. All this, like there is such a big place in the market for a company to come along, make this stuff, make it work, and make it look good.

42:53Jason DeFillippo:And nobody's doing it. Yeah.

42:55Brian Schulmeister:Well, Johnny Ives busy taking all the money from OpenAI. Oh, yeah.

42:59Jason DeFillippo:And all they want to do is give us fucking devices that we carry on ourselves that do AI. Yeah. Nobody wants that.

43:05Brian Schulmeister:No one. No, we want to know if we're going to die in a fire because everything's going to be on fire because there's no water left to put out the fire because of the fucking AI that you're building.

43:15Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I know. It's insane. I just can't believe that such a huge market is being is just being abandoned.

43:22Brian Schulmeister:Market opportunity, Brian.

43:24Jason DeFillippo:Go for it. OK, I'll get right on that.

43:25Brian Schulmeister:Put together a team, you know, get a bunch of Arduinos and a couple of design nerds and you're off to the races. True. Just saying. Well, OpenAI has released their GPT-OSS model. It's their first open-weight AI model in over six years, and it's free, available in two sizes. The model can run locally on a laptop or a single NVIDIA GPU and is designed for tasks like coding, web browsing, and agent control. It's being distributed by a bunch of people, and you can get it now. And I did. Actually, there's a link in the show notes where you can run it with Olama. And it's a very simple setup, and I set it up.

44:04Brian Schulmeister:in about five minutes on my, you need RAM. I think that's the only thing that really matters. If you don't have a good GPU, because I'm running it on a M4 MacBook Air with 32 gig of RAM and it works really fast. And I've been testing it against, what was the 4.0 model on ChatGPT? Yeah, the ChatGPT 4.0 model. I've been kind of going back and forth, testing them against each other. That one takes about 10 seconds longer, but it works almost the same. Actually, some things it comes back. It's actually a little bit better. But it's free once you download it. And you can turn on airplane mode in OLAMA so none of your data actually leaves the farm.

44:43So I don't know.

44:45Brian Schulmeister:It's free and it works. So get it while it's free. Next week, we'll talk about the new GPT-5 that came out yesterday. Because it's making the waves right now. And it's free. Everybody's like, GPT-5 is free. I'm like, yeah, because they still have a little bit of money in the bank. Don't get used to it. Don't get used to it.

45:11Brian Schulmeister:At the library. Brian, I went down the memoir hole that you were going down with Michael Palin. All right. But I went down the Bob Odenkirk hole. That sounded weird. That sounded horrible.

45:27Jason DeFillippo:Please don't put that in Grok's spicy mode. No, I will not put that. No. Jason went down Bob Odenkirk's hole.

45:35Brian Schulmeister:No, no. I got comedy, comedy, drama, a memoir by Bob Odenkirk. And I didn't realize he's from Naperville, Illinois, like, you know, my old haunt. Right. And did a lot of time in Chicago. And it's just it's fascinating to hear his history behind how he got to be Bob Odenkirk. It's it's a really nice memoir. And I highly recommend it for, I don't know, anybody. I just liked it. because I don't know that much about him, really. I mean, I know he's Saul. I never watched, what was his show that everybody talked about? Mr. Show.

46:07Jason DeFillippo:Mr. Show, which was great.

46:09Brian Schulmeister:I never saw an episode of it. But yeah, I'm thoroughly enjoying the memoir. So worth checking out.

46:17Jason DeFillippo:All right. I'm still in the memoir hole as well. I'm down Budgie's hole.

46:22Brian Schulmeister:Okay.

46:23Jason DeFillippo:I don't know if you know who Budgie is, but he was the drummer for Susie and the Bugs. banshees so i he has an autobiography that just came out uh called the absence memoirs of a banshee drummer and i'm working my way through it because again he's somebody i i don't know much about but a big figure in the goth scene obviously and you know he uh married and dated and married suzy sue for quite some time so i imagine it's going to get a little spicy as i get further in because they don't get along anymore so we'll see but uh yeah i've always been kind of intrigued by him He has also done a podcast with the former drummer of The Cure, Lil Tollhurst, that's been out for a while that I've been listening to.

47:01Jason DeFillippo:So he's a very interesting guy. So I'm looking forward to getting into it more. Right now, it's all his childhood, which is a bit depressing because it was not a good time in England back then.

47:09Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Was there ever a good time to be a child in England? I don't think so.

47:14Jason DeFillippo:I don't know.

47:15Brian Schulmeister:I guess not. Nope.

47:17Jason DeFillippo:Even now, probably not. and just in the news spotify's premium audiobook feature has launched in the u.s after trialing the service in ireland and canada last month spotify has officially launched its audiobooks plus service in the u.s europe australia and elsewhere it's an add-on available to spotify premium members as well as individual users on family and duo plans it adds an extra 15 hours of listening on top of the 15 hours already available for premium subscribers so there's There's just a lot of math involved in all this sort of stuff. So let's see. If you're an individual Spotify premium subscriber, it's a fairly straightforward upgrade, paying an extra$12 per month for audiobooks.

47:52Jason DeFillippo:Plus, on top of the$12 per month, you're already paying for premium. That's you 15 extra hours of audiobook listening on top of the 15 free hours already, including the plan. And then there's a whole bunch more about different plans and different... Just make it easy, people.

48:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, there's also a huge backlash to Spotify right now because they're doing the age verification for video podcasts. Right. In the UK, that's not really going so well for them. Also, they signed up some AI shit that they're doing that people are very upset about. It is not a good time to be Spotify, which is fine by me.

48:26Jason DeFillippo:Awesome. Yes, fine by me as well. And Gadget does point out that depending on the audiobook, it may be cheaper just to buy it outright than topping up your Spotify account if you want to list them multiple titles in a month.

48:36Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. By buying, they mean going to Audible and renting in perpetuity because nobody owns a fucking audiobook. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave.

48:52Brian Schulmeister:Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner is back. Hello, Dave. How are you doing this week? Oh, I'm doing well. Good to be back. Good to have Brian back. It's not nice to be back. Yeah, you were stuck with just me last time. God. Yeah, listen to the show. I mean, I don't mean that as a negative towards Jason. and I mean it as a positive toward Brian. That's all. It's not a zero-sum game, apparently. No.

49:19Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it's just, you know, it's better with me, Jason.

49:22Brian Schulmeister:Shut up and talk about Disneyland and Star Wars. I'm going to go make some coffee.

49:26Jason DeFillippo:Well, I did want to let Dave know that I did end up making it to Disneyland. We had not planned on doing so, but I have a good old friend, thank you, Gamsby, for this, who works over at Hollywood Records, which is owned by Disney, and he said, you know what? I've got a bunch of sign-ins. i'm not using them would you like to go to the parks and i went yes yes we would like to go to the parks for free yes indeed uh so we did um and actually had one of the best times ever we went both to california adventure and disneyland all in one day back and forth between the parks went on the most rides i've ever been on in a single day do you want to take a guess why was it empty Yes.

50:07Jason DeFillippo:Do you want to guess why it was empty? I'm going to say either heat or fires. Lack of tourism. Oh, okay.

50:16Brian Schulmeister:Oh, interesting.

50:17Jason DeFillippo:People are not coming to the U.S. from overseas. Ah, yes. It is a very good time to go to Disneyland. Okay. Interesting. So, yeah, it was shocking. It was amazing to me because I could almost, you could almost tell that, well, first off, You can tell Americans. They were all Americans there. There's no doubt about that. Even more so than that, it seemed like it was a lot of locals. Almost everybody was running up and they knew the people that were working at the food counters or the rides. It seemed like a ton of locals. As we were getting ready to leave Southern California, we started to get the deluge of Disney offers through the signups that we have done.

50:59Jason DeFillippo:They are pushing for locals to come because attendance is way down at the parks. Oh, that's interesting.

51:05Brian Schulmeister:Huh. I mean, it makes sense. I wonder how much that's affecting Disney World, because I would imagine Disneyland gets a lot of traffic from Asia.

51:14Jason DeFillippo:Yes.

51:15Brian Schulmeister:And Disney World gets Europe. But, you know, at the moment, nobody wants to come here. And all of our Canadian friends. Even the people that are here don't want to be here. Right.

51:27Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it was shocking. It was very eye-opening. um had a great time at the park though yeah i'll bet you know bad for the country and for the world

51:37Brian Schulmeister:but great for me you know you mentioned being able to get in for free my wife tells a story about how when she was doing disney college program and also she was working at the studios in florida she was um she did um she was a tour guide for the backstage studio tour and so as an employee she would get X number of sign-ins per month, but they would go away at the end of the month. So she and her colleagues would go out to the entrance gate in the last couple of days of the month and just look for families and say, hey, would you like me to sign you in? You know, I have, I have extra free sign-ins and they, they called it a sprinkling pixie dust.

52:23Brian Schulmeister:Nice. Yeah. And they would let people in. In fact, well, you know, what's funny about that is actually, the last time we were in Florida, which was back in March, we were actually at Universal, and we were on our way into the Harry Potter ride. And for some reason, my wife struck up a conversation with the person who was sort of guarding the entrance of the ride, who it turns out was a manager. And he handed us a bunch of skip the line, basically Universal's version of fast passes. Right. And as we're walking away, my wife said to me, we just got pixie dusted.

53:02Jason DeFillippo:Wrong IP. Well, yeah, right. Exactly. I don't know what the universal, what's the universal version of pixie dust? I don't know. I guess some Harry Potter thing that isn't leaping to mind right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, that's great.

53:16Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I mean, there's nothing better than being in the parks when they're empty.

53:20Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of fun uh the other thing that you and i have in common now of course is gravity falls you recommended that to me and my son just absolutely consumed the shit out of that but i thought i thought it was done after he had done his second second run through and uh it seemed to be for quite some time but we had to go to when we were in anaheim we had to go to target for some reason whatever is i think suntan lotion who the hell knows we were there and uh you know they have a very paltry book selection at target but my son found gravity falls journal three there yes and of course he made us buy it and these are it's a beautifully done book it's it's amazing he was immersed the entire trip uh read read the whole thing like cover to cover multiple times like absolutely love this book and of course then when we got home he we needed to order the book of bill which we have also got now again also just absolutely beautifully done books like whoever

54:22Brian Schulmeister:did these it's just excellent work yeah there are a few comic books also that are gravity falls related i was just saying this because i i am just a few years ahead of you in this journey and so we have all of them uh and i will tell you that one unfortunate thing for us is that we have two copies of the Gravity Falls Journal 3 book because the original run of the book had a manufacturing defect where after some amount of time, the book started to fall apart.

54:58Jason DeFillippo:Right.

54:59Brian Schulmeister:And they refused to replace them. So we have two now. Or maybe one and a half, really, is what we have.

55:08Jason DeFillippo:I'm just looking on Amazon right now and you know you can get the book of bill limited collectors edition in addition to the just normal version that I have so hopefully my my son will not find this yes yeah so yeah very well done stuff like absolutely top notch and of course that now sparked a third watching of Gravity Falls which is okay way through yeah well somebody has proposed you

55:31Brian Schulmeister:know how Lego has the uh the thing where people can propose sets for them to make yes they get

55:37Jason DeFillippo:We got the Nightmare Before Christmas one, yeah.

55:39Brian Schulmeister:Right, right. So someone has done one of the Mystery Shack.

55:42Jason DeFillippo:Oh, very cool.

55:44Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, so you can find that online.

55:45Jason DeFillippo:I'll be spending$350 on that when that gets approved.

55:49Brian Schulmeister:But, I mean, think about what a good match that would be for Lego if they can make the numbers work of selling it because of all of the fun things you could have. The little Easter eggs inside the Mystery Shack would be, that would be a fun build. Absolutely. Hopefully that'll come to pass. Did I ever tell you guys about the, you were talking about the book that fell apart. Did I ever tell you about my Good Omens book, my coffee table book? So I have this coffee table book of Good Omens. It's the TV companion from the first season. And I opened it and it was up like the covers there. I'm looking, I open up the cover and the guts of the book are upside down.

56:24Brian Schulmeister:And I'm like, okay. Because then when you go to the back cover, because it's got Crowley on one side and Azrafel on the other, you know, the heaven and hell. And I'm thinking, oh man, maybe they just did something clever, you know, like the heaven and hell version or whatever. So you got to flip it upside down or whatever. No, I just have like this completely random, weird misprint. Huh? I've searched everywhere. Nobody can find another copy that is like that. So as far as I can tell, I have this extraordinarily rare copy of a book made by a guy that nobody wants anymore.

56:54Jason DeFillippo:That's worth absolutely nothing. Nothing.

56:57Brian Schulmeister:Absolutely nothing. Well, when I think of a book like that, I think, are you guys familiar with Ollie's, the discount store is that something that yeah so i think of i've seen books at ollie's where you could be flipping through you find a book you go oh look here's a biography of someone i'm interested in let me just flip through it and entire chapters are missing or or upside down or it's just like it's all in portuguese yeah the unsuccessful print run just ends up at ollie's and sell it for a dollar. Right. Yes, exactly. Wow. So I get back on Star Wars because I know you guys are the Star Wars guys.

57:35Brian Schulmeister:I didn't know that there was another Star Wars thing. Star Wars Starfighter is coming. And I saw this headline, Matt Smith lands the villain role in new Lucasfilm pick starring Ryan Gosling. And I'm like, okay, way to ruin Star Wars by adding Ryan Gosling and Matt Smith, two guys that I just don't really scream Star Wars to me what is your feeling on Ryan Gosling

58:00Jason DeFillippo:Matt Smith was supposed to be in one of the other movies uh and then he just never showed up I guess he got cut so he's stuck in the TARDIS not surprised by that I Ryan Gosling is not what you want with Star Wars but also at this point I don't believe that any of these films are ever going to get fucking made until I'm sitting in a theater and this crawl is going because they've announced so many star wars movies and we've seen zero of them so right right okay yeah okay i mean

58:29Brian Schulmeister:i could see ryan gosling is as a x-wing pilot yeah the the the um the tom cruise top gun prototype you know the cocky yeah x-wing pilot who plays by his own rules and you know that sort of thing

58:46Jason DeFillippo:to be honest i i have less of a problem with ryan gosling being in star wars than i did with him being in Blade Runner.

58:52Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. It's the other thing. It just takes you out of it. He's just one of those guys where it's just like, yeah, you shouldn't be here. You know, it's like, you know you're in the wrong universe when he shows up. Go back to the chick flicks. Yeah, go back to the Berenstain universe. Speaking of Blade Runner, I was very proud of myself. I made a, do androids dream of electric sheep joke in the Cyber Wire this week.

59:15Jason DeFillippo:And did it land with a thud or did people catch it?

59:18Brian Schulmeister:No idea. No idea. None of – so I'm going to go with thud.

59:26Brian Schulmeister:My editor had no idea what it was and I explained it to him and he said, oh, wow, I totally would not have known that. And I said, yeah, very few people will get it, but the people who do get it will be very proud of themselves. So – which evidently so far is just me. Which episode was it on so we can – I think it was yesterday. I think it was Thursday.

59:49Jason DeFillippo:All right. Okay. I'll give it a listen so that at least somebody can appreciate the joke.

59:53Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I mean, it goes by quickly. So you've gotten more pleasure out of me telling you about the joke than you probably will out of the joke itself. But the things we do to amuse ourselves. That's true. So this week I had a series of migraines because last week when you and I did the show, Dave, I was fighting one of the worst migraines I've had in a long time. and so I didn't get to the the gear test on the new camera the x5 that I wanted to get to but while I was stuck in bed for some reason there since Wednesday is out they put up this whole new back to school list of movies on Netflix to go watch and one of them for some strange reason was Weird Science so I'm just sitting there I'm like I wonder if Weird Science has legs so i i watched weird science uh like 11 o 'clock at night through my you know i have this little ice beanie that i wear when i get a migraine so i kind of looked like the guys when they had the bras on their head right uh wearing my little ice beanie watching the show it man we really didn't get great movies back then compared to what we have now it feels like you could make this movie on like, you know, a YouTube budget at this point.

1:01:07Jason DeFillippo:Also wildly inappropriate for the age at which we watch them.

1:01:11Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the language didn't wouldn't fly nowadays. They would definitely get canceled for a couple of things, just a few little minor things. But also the acting was horrible. Really? Not Anthony Michael Hall, but his sidekick in there. That guy could not act, period. Watch him. Watch a minute. He is terrible in it. And it's funny. My friend Andy Preboy had a song. They had a wall of voodoo song in the in the actual in the movie when they're driving in the car that you can barely hear. But he went to the premiere that night instead of going to the premiere of the other movie that launched that exact same night, which he skipped because he thought that this one would be better because it was a John Hughes movie.

1:01:50Brian Schulmeister:And he gave his tickets to the other premiere to a bunch of friends who called him up later and said it was the best premiere they've ever been to. And it was amazing. And they should have gone. It was this little movie called Pee Wee's Playhouse. Oh, wow. Yeah. That would have been fun. It seems like this is Anthony Michael Hall at the peak of his powers, right? Yes, it was. This was after The Breakfast Club. And Sixteen Candles, which is what I think of him. That whole era, that whole John Hughes era of Anthony Michael Hall-ness before he became the big buff dude. Yeah. Did he have any success outside of his collaboration with John Hughes, really?

1:02:29Brian Schulmeister:He did the Dead Zone series for several years, like six seasons of that. The answer is no. No. Yeah, the answer is really no.

1:02:37Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. I'm just like looking at all the soundtracks for all the John Hughes movies. They're all phenomenal. Yeah. Absolutely phenomenal. Of course, Weird Science by Oingo Boingo is one of the greats. Yeah.

1:02:48Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that was the highlight of the movie for sure. Can I make a confession? Yes. I've never seen it. You should go watch it. If you've never seen it, you will laugh. You will definitely laugh. I know of it.

1:03:00Jason DeFillippo:I think what you need to do is first get in the hot tub time machine and go back to 1985 and watch this movie. It's fucking awesome.

1:03:08Brian Schulmeister:So before we got together today, I watched the trailer for it. And there were a lot of things in the trailer that I'd seen before. I'm amazed that I didn't catch this on cable somehow in the 90s. That's a miracle. Yeah. I can't believe you've never seen Weird Science. That is your homework. You have to go. I mean, I know what it is. And certainly, you know, Kelly LeBrock, I know, you know, like that.

1:03:29Jason DeFillippo:Well, the hero of the whole movie is Bill Paxton. Absolutely. Oh, really?

1:03:34Brian Schulmeister:That's the trick, yeah.

1:03:36Jason DeFillippo:Bill Paxton as Chet is the best part of this movie, hands down. And I'm sure that, yeah, it's worth the watch just for that. Absolutely. Okay.

1:03:45Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, you have to go watch Weird Science. If you haven't seen it, you have to go watch it and report back as a set of fresh eyes.

1:03:51Jason DeFillippo:You not having seen Weird Science gives me that same feeling like whenever I run into an age contemporary and I find out that they haven't seen Goonies. I'm like, how the fuck did that happen? Yeah.

1:04:03Brian Schulmeister:So should I watch Weird Science with my 18-year-old Jack? No. I don't think so. I think you need to take this in solo. Okay. Like, honestly, you need to take it in as just you without any commentary. Then you can watch it with him if you want. But you should experience this alone. Should I be under the influence of anything? Oh, that always helps. Sure.

1:04:31Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, but I think if you watch it with your 18-year-old son, you will end up spending most of the time trying to explain things to him. Okay. Like, what's that? Like, well, that's a home phone. We once had those. That sort of thing.

1:04:46Brian Schulmeister:So it could be a nostalgia time machine for me. Yeah. Yes. If I'm watching it by myself. Yeah, I highly recommend you watch it first by yourself. Okay. Have as many libations as you like. Yeah. All right. Okay, so your homework is to watch Weird Science, and mine is to get back on that damn X5 camera. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm eager to get your feedback on it. It is definitely on my possibilities list, so let me know. Yeah, the migraines seem to have abated, so I think I should be clear for geekery this time. Yeah. Yeah. The thing I wondered about just because you were talking about using it for interviews, for a two-person interview.

1:05:24Brian Schulmeister:What I'm wondering is do you want to put it between the two people or do you want to put it off to the side of the two people? That's what I've been working with, just sitting there trying to find the right angles. Yeah. You know, because I got – you'll see the setup when I show it to you. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. I will – I'm on the edge of my seat. Yes. Me too. All right. Well, thanks, guys. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. Echuta, Robert, Kevin, and Russell. Thank you all so much for subscribing to Patreon. And from the vaults, we've got Marios, Jordan, Phil, Hannah, Mike, Neil, Jay, Jeff, Forge, and Michael.

1:06:06Brian Schulmeister:Thank you all so much for your continued support on Patreon.

1:06:10Jason DeFillippo:I believe that the first one on the list is actually Echuta! Because he came into Discord and said it was based on the Jawa sound. Yeah, okay. Over at PayPal, we've got Levi, Nicola, Judge, Jonathan, Charlie, Florian, Thomas, and David, who gave us a big old 50 bucks.

1:06:26Brian Schulmeister:Woohoo! Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Jennifer, Adam, Matthew, and Greg, who dropped the big hundy on us. Greg also picked up some merch this week. So thank you all very, very, very, very much. And just a reminder, if you want to sign up for Patreon, it starts as little as$3 a month and goes up to however generous you feel. And if you sign up for the whole year, you get a discount and you get the show a little bit early, ad-free and in high definition, big time. And just a quick reminder too, Brian, the reason that I ended up doing a solo show last week is because remember we took some time off on the 4th of July?

1:07:04Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

1:07:05Brian Schulmeister:Well, somewhere along the way, some algorithm decided to hate our show. Okay. And we lost about 10 % of our audience, which put us below the threshold for standard advertising sales. So any of the advertisers that you do here on the show, if you don't do the Patreon route, are just the cheap ones that get thrown in. Because we can't sell ads anymore because of the algorithms. So this show is literally a fan-supported show. So signing up for Patreon, giving us a tip at PayPal or over at the tip jar is literally what keeps the show on the air. So I can't in buying some merch, definitely buying some merch.

1:07:44Brian Schulmeister:So I can't thank you all enough for donating to the show because that's literally what's keeping us on the air right now. Love you all so much. We sure do. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

1:07:57Jason DeFillippo:And I'm Brian. I hate the fucking algorithm, Schillmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 708. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss us a few bucks at gog.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air and Jason and food and other things. And me and my Crocs. 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.

1:08:26Jason DeFillippo:Got thoughts, feedback, cool links. Hit us up at gog.show slash contact. and don't forget to leave a five-star review at gog.show slash review and we'll read it on the show and guess what we've got gog merch i'm gonna start making some more of that since it's basically the only thing that's gonna make us money snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show and stay grumpy