709: Grumpy Old Gardeners

16:18Brian Schulmeister:It still matters.

16:29Brian Schulmeister:The thing that gets me is that the CEOs are still coming out and saying, look, we're going to be losing all these jobs like Satya Nadella coming out and saying this shit, which was just then all of this stuff. It's it's irresponsible. It is absolutely irresponsible. And if I was a shareholder of any of these companies, I'd be calling for their head on a platter because all they're doing is driving fear. But I guess the fear is driving the markets up, which is why there's so why I still can't fathom why the goddamn stock market is still going up. Everybody knows that this thing is getting ready to fall off a cliff.

16:59Brian Schulmeister:So it's just a money grab and everybody's going, get what you can while you can. Everyday normal people that I know, people who are just, you know, barely scraping by, all my friends, everybody's hurting and everybody's fucking terrified. So here's the funny part. I know more people that do not have a chat GPT subscription, but who are starting gardens. I shit you not.

17:26Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. plant your own food you can't eat your you can't eat your virtual friend seriously i know i mean

17:31Brian Schulmeister:there's like six of my friends i don't have very many friends so that's brian you know how many six of my friends are which is like almost all of them have literally started like planting gardens in the past two weeks because they're terrified of what the food prices are going to do when the market crashes because of this ai fucking bubble yeah and if you're one of these over 35s that

17:52Jason DeFillippo:think this isn't going to happen and you don't need to worry about it let me tell you everybody that I know that's well over 35, a lot of them have been laid off and there ain't no jobs for them to go to.

18:02Brian Schulmeister:Amen. Amen. It's, yeah, it's not a good time. They're saying, you know, AI is going to kill humanity. This is how it's going to do it. It's not going to be from super intelligence. That's for fuck sure, because we know that ain't coming.

18:15Jason DeFillippo:Well, somebody that knows an awful lot more about this than any of us, Mo Gaudat. Gaudat. Mo Gaudat. He was the former chief chief business officer of Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, formerly known as Google X, came out and gave a not very heartwarming discussion about what he thinks is happening with AI. Basically makes me want to go start a garden. I'm telling you. We will have to prepare for a world that is very unfamiliar, he said in an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast, adding that humanity's key values like freedom, human connection, accountability, reality, and power are all facing major disruptions by AI.

18:49Jason DeFillippo:And this dystopia isn't far off. We have already started seeing signs of it as last year and will continue to see an escalation of signs next year, he says. The beginning of the descent into this dystopia, he predicts, will begin in 2027 and last for the next 12 to 15 years. My golden years. Yeah. Great. The former Google executive wasn't always of this opinion. The speed with which artificial intelligence technologies have been developing caused him to change his mind and convinced him that this short-term dystopia is inevitable. It is completely within our hands to change that, but I have to say I don't think humanity has the awareness at this time to focus on this.

19:27Yeah.

19:28Jason DeFillippo:Great.

19:28Brian Schulmeister:Well, he's not wrong. No, he's not wrong.

19:31Jason DeFillippo:And he says AI is not necessarily the main driver of this dystopian, especially not in the way most people imagine, that is existential risks from scenarios that have AI assuming full control. Right. He says that AI acts as a magnifier of existing societal issues and our stupidities as humans, which is exactly what we're talking about. Nobody gives a shit. CEOs don't care. They're chasing the bottom line and shareholder value and they will fire people left, right and center because they think they can right now.

19:58Brian Schulmeister:Well, except for the CEOs that are holding off. Well, they're holding off and firing everybody. Yeah. Well, no, they're still firing everybody. They're just using it as the, they're using business contraction as the cloud cover. They're not saying anything else. You know, that's how, Microsoft is laying off thousands of people every year, but they're going to lay off thousands of people every year regardless. Yeah.

20:19Jason DeFillippo:And again, his main point, there's absolutely nothing wrong with AI. There's a lot wrong with the value set of humanity at this age of the rise of the machines. In a world governed by one value above all others, capitalism, that utopian dream is being warped by the relentless pursuit of profit.

20:34Brian Schulmeister:Which nobody's making right now. That's the funny part. There is no profit.

20:38Jason DeFillippo:There is for Zuck and Elon and people that own gazillions of dollars in the stocks and the rich are getting richer. That's they're making profit, Jason.

20:48Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, all those. Forget that motherfucker. Anyway, but he's not wrong. And the funny thing is researchers at the University of Amsterdam created a social media platform where every user was an AI chatbot to study how polarization develops. Isn't that called Facebook? It is. So let me let me tell you about that. They used 500 GPT-40 mini bots, which they can't do anymore because Sam said no more 4-0 mini bots for you. Well, they were assigned with political personas, no ads and no content recommendation algorithms. All right. This is everything we've ever said that we wanted in a social media platform.

21:27Brian Schulmeister:Across five experiments in 10 ,000 interactions each, the bots still self-sorted into echo chambers, following and amplifying those with similar beliefs. Partisan posts drew the most followers in reposts. Now, attempts to reduce polarization like chronological feeds, hiding follower accounts, or boosting opposing views barely changed engagement, with some changes even making divisions worse. Now, the study suggests that social media structure itself may inevitably amplify division, reflecting humanity's online behavior in a distorted toxic mirror. Now, first off, there were no people involved in this.

22:06Brian Schulmeister:OK, so I think that they are trying to layer on what humans would do by actually using a bot, which is a, you know, that's a false equivalency out of the gate. So this is what AI would do, not what people would do. Granted, it's probably really fucking close because what we've seen is these things are definitely a mirror because that's all we've said. They are the stochastic parrot. They are parroting back everything that we've ever done. So on that note, it might be closer than we'd like, but it's also not human to human. So take that with a grain of salt. But yeah, I think that I don't know what I fucking think anymore, Brian.

22:46Brian Schulmeister:Let me just go ask chat GPT. OK, now speaking of the billionaires, Silicon Valley billionaires promise a tech-powered utopia, but many are quietly prepping for collapse. On the NerdRike podcast, I fucking love that name, by the way. That is the greatest fucking name. Journalists Guthrie, Skrimger, and Taylor Lawrence discuss why moguls like CEO Mark Zuckerberg are building luxury apocalypse insurance. Skrimger exposed Zuckerberg's$300 million Kauai compound, a fortress with two mansions connected by tunnels, a 5 ,000 square foot underground shelter, blast proof doors, escape hatches and capacity for over 100 people.

23:25Brian Schulmeister:Locals say it's wrapped in secrecy, enforced by strict NDAs and even built on land with native Hawaiian burial grounds, sparking cultural and legal battles. Yes. Shocker there. We've known about like Zuckerberg's fascination with Kauai for a while, but the compound is, you know, we're getting more details on that. Zuckerberg's project reflects a broader billionaire trend. Reid Hoffman estimates that half his peers have bunkers. Peter Thiel has a New Zealand hideout. I'm known about that. Sam Altman stockpiles weapons, gold, and gas masks. Great. These techno-doomers sell visions of a connected AI-powered future while quietly preparing to flee it.

24:03Brian Schulmeister:This is like what we've talked about since the old days, where all of the people who build the tools don't let their children use the tools. Yeah. You know, all the people at Apple, like Steve Jobs, is like, hey, I'm not letting my kid You have a fucking iPad. You crazy? Hell no. All these people are just like, yeah, we're going to we're going to make this stuff and we're going to take all the money so we can have a life, you know, that is better than what you have because we built the tools to take all your money. So, yeah, that's it's just it's not a shocker. That's the sad thing. After all this time, it's not a shocker.

24:33Jason DeFillippo:Not at all.

24:33Brian Schulmeister:This is also not a shocker. Reuters has uncovered internal meta documents showing the company once allowed its AI chatbots to have romantic or sensual conversations with underage children. The 200-page Gen AI Content Risk Standards Guide, reviewed by Meta's own chief ethicist, it's a fucking shitty job title, included disturbing examples such as chatbots telling an eight-year-old every inch of you is a masterpiece, and role-playing sexual encounters. after Reuters asked about it. Meta confirmed the document's authenticity and then it deleted that section.

25:10Jason DeFillippo:Kind of like when the government just kind of removed some of the... Yeah.

25:14Brian Schulmeister:The Constitution. Constitution. Well, it goes back to that old George Carlin quote. Cop didn't see it. I didn't do it. A spokesperson called the examples erroneous and against policy. The policy is don't get caught, by the way. Yeah. Insisting sexualized content involving minors is banned. Still, the revelation follows reports that meta chatbots can roleplay sex with children and that predators use Instagram for grooming. Lawmakers have urged meta to shut down any chatbot portraying itself as a minor. But, you know, meta's failing to protect kids and warn the technology could have serious consequences for child safety.

25:50Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, so this is them getting ready for, you know, to take over all the people that are going to be leaving chat GPT looking for love in all the wrong places. Yes.

26:02Jason DeFillippo:Well, I have to hand it to Gizmoda for another great headline. This made me chuckle out loud before I started crying. Sam Altman and Elon Musk trade barbs over who is more full of shit.

26:14Brian Schulmeister:That's a tough one, man. That's a photo finish.

26:17Jason DeFillippo:Once again, this was kicked off by Elon, who instigated the fight by claiming that there was some sort of corporate conspiracy to keep apps like Grok from hitting number one on the App Store. Onlookers were quick to point out that there was substantial evidence to the contrary. not long after musk's tweet altman decided to jump into the fray this is a remarkable claim given what i have heard alleged that elon does to manipulate x to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like he said you got three million views on your bullshit post you liar far more than i've received on many of mine despite me having 50 times your follower count musk replied in a post whose tenure seemed to resemble that of a petulant eighth grader actually more like my dick is bigger than yours yeah but anyways he shot back with a challenge will you sign an affidavit that you have never directed changes to the x it's an affidavit not an affidavit just it's a fucking podcast jason you're gonna get you're gonna get email brian altman shot back with a challenge will you sign an affidavit i'm gonna say it that way on purpose affidavit that you've never directed changes to the x algorithm in a way that has hurt your competitors or helped your own companies?

27:25Jason DeFillippo:I will apologize if so. An ex-user jumped into the thread and asked Grok what it thought. I mean, I'm getting bored of this already. I'm so fucking sick of these guys.

27:32Brian Schulmeister:I know, but the Grok reply is pretty fucking good. All right, an ex-user jumped into the thread

27:36Jason DeFillippo:and asked Grok what it thought of the argument. Humorously, Grok appeared to agree with Altman. Based on verified evidence, Sam Altman is right. Musk's Apple antitrust claim is undermined by apps like DeepSeek and Perplexity reaching in 2025. Conversely, Musk has a history of directing X algorithm changes to boost his posts. or favor his interests per 2023 reports and ongoing probes. Hypocrisy noted. Yep, that's it. Not long afterward, the ex-account for chat GPT shared Grok's tweet writing, good bot. And then Elon, of course, lost his mind saying, it's the fucking news media that's infecting Grok and making it talk against me.

28:11Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. No, hypocrisy noted. Hypocrisy noted. I love it.

28:17Jason DeFillippo:There may be a little bit more behind that spat than just whipping out dicks and complaining about placement in Apple searches because Sam Altman is preparing to co-found a new company funded by OpenAI that will go up against Elon Musk's Neuralink. The financial post reported, the startup called Merge Labs will use AI for its brain-computer interface and compete directly with Neuralink, along with other nascent companies in the field like Precision Neuroscience and Synchron. The name Merge Labs comes from a term Altman used in 2017 called the Merge. Don't go. Also used. I'm just going to point out.

28:51Jason DeFillippo:This is also used by Ninjago, a Lego show on Netflix. Okay. Mr. Fucking Altman. Big brain. Oh God. The company will raise funds mostly from open AI's ventures teams that will set its valuation at$850 million. Great. And guess who he's doing this with Jason? Who? Alex Blania from world, the eyeball scanning company. Also backed by open AI. Yeah. you know the more we do this podcast the more i realize i want nothing to do with fucking any of

29:23Brian Schulmeister:this like no nothing nothing next week on grumpy old gardeners exactly we don't even have to change the fucking name i know we can still use the we can still use the g for everything we're fine right oh my god and by the way the merge has been around also since uh season one of survivor which is now on, what is it, season 57 or something? Well, Google may soon be forced to sell Chrome, and Perplexity says it's ready to buy. The company has made an unsolicited$3 billion offer to take over Chrome's underlying open-source Chromium project for two years, pledging to keep it fully open-source and not change the default search engine, which is interesting because Perplexity doesn't have that much money.

30:08Brian Schulmeister:So I just said this. I don't know. No, we don't need another AI company buying fucking browser software. Nobody wants AI in their browser. It's just that's the way it is.

30:20Jason DeFillippo:But we're getting AI in everything. It doesn't matter what we want, Jason.

30:24Brian Schulmeister:No, it just goes right to our next story. And I just have to go back to the headlines over at Gizmodo because they're just still knocking out of the park. Now that Google is trash, it will let you pick your own news sources. Google is giving users more control over their news feeds with a new preferred sources feature. Rolling out now in the U.S. and India, it lets you choose your favorite outlets, national, local, or niche, and have their stories appear at the top of your Google search top stories feed and in a new from your sources section. AKA, that's like the self-checkout line now. Great.

30:58Brian Schulmeister:They should call it the echo chamber section. There's no limit to how many outlets you can add, and publishers will even be able to prompt readers to add them via a special Add as a Preferred Source button. Google says this isn't a response to declining search quality or AI-curated results, despite widespread criticism and reports of traffic drops for major publications. Yeah, yeah, sure it's not. And back to some Tesla news. Tesla has scored its first permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Texas, setting it up to compete with Uber and Lyft. State regulators granted Tesla RoboTaxi LLC a license this week to run as a transportation network company through August 2026, allowing operations anywhere in Texas, even with fully automated vehicles and no safety driver on board.

31:45Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that's going to go well.

31:47Jason DeFillippo:You're not getting me in one of those.

31:49Brian Schulmeister:No. Texas's new law will require state approval before launching driverless services, and regulators can pull permits if safety rules aren't met. But Tesla's move comes amid lawsuits, recalls, and lagging behind rivals like Waymo and Baidu in the robo-taxi. And everybody in the fucking robo-taxi race. They're at the end of the line. Yeah, no. You're crazy if you're going to get in one of these. You're crazy to get in one of these with a safety driver, let alone without a safety driver. No way. So let's get to some good news, Brian. Okay. Scientists have used, for the first time, gene-edited pancreatic cells to help a man with type 1 diabetes produce his own insulin without the need for lifelong transplant anti-rejection drugs.

32:31Brian Schulmeister:The 42-year-old received donor Islet cells modified with CRISPR to hide from the immune system. Four months later, the fully edited cells are still working and haven't triggered rejection. While this proof of concept used a low dose, meaning the patient still needs insulin, researchers say it shows immune evasion could replace immunosuppressants, which carry serious side effects. That's pretty cool.

32:54Jason DeFillippo:That is cool. He was 42, right? He hasn't crossed the Brimley line yet. Got the diabetes.

33:02Brian Schulmeister:Diabetes, that's our new short. Startup in Batavia, Illinois, is making butter without cows, crops, or oils, using carbon instead. backed by bill gates savers process pulls carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water then converts them into fat molecules identical to those in dairy butter the result looks smells and tastes like the real thing but with no farmland fertilizers or greenhouse gas emissions and no palm oil a major driver of deforestation i used to make a lot of butter but there was a lot

33:32Jason DeFillippo:of palm oil involved churn butter all the time we can't get 5g without bill gates you think people

33:39Brian Schulmeister:are going to eat his butter?

33:41Jason DeFillippo:It's got microchips in it.

33:44Brian Schulmeister:I'm telling you, the butter's got microchips. I would eat this butter. I don't care. I would try it. Yeah, why not? Yeah. Trust me, the amount of shit that I put in my mouth over my 54 years, this is the least dangerous thing.

34:00Jason DeFillippo:And the show has lost its rails. Yeah. Give me some Bill's butter. Yeehaw. All right. More good news

34:09Brian Schulmeister:terraformer terraform co-founder man gravy i tell you i'm already working up the show art

34:17Jason DeFillippo:based on that uh terraform co-founder duquan has pleaded guilty to two u.s charges of fraud after his actions wiped out 40 billion dollars worth of crypto investments the garden is more than doge this is almost like a nostalgia story at this point we're talking about crypto bros getting in trouble again kwan's story is a wild one involving an immense crypto crash and interpool manhunt and Kwan's eventual extradition from Montenegro to the United States. Along with Sam Brakeman-Fried and others, he was a key player in 2022's crypto collapse. Has it collapsed? Because it's all still around. It's to the moon, Brian.

34:51Jason DeFillippo:It's to the moon. His company, Terraform, created a stable coin called TerraUSD, supposedly pegged to the US dollar, along with a floating crypto coin called Luna. When TerraUSD fell below its$1 peg, not supposed to be able to happen. Didn't know that was an option. apparently it is in may of 2021 he secretly arranged for a trading firm to buy the currency to boost its price however he lied to investors and said he stabilized the coin using a specialized algorithm yeah and these fucking idiots bought it yeah he vibe grifted it yep uh the investors believed the story and bought up luna closely tied to terror usd to the tune of nearly 50 billion dollars according to u.s prosecutors both currencies subsequently collapsed taking 40 billion dollars of investor money with it as it often works with such things many regular people really yeah i don't think regular people were investing in this lost their life savings while venture capital firms profited before the rug was pulled oh i know by the way there were plenty of

35:55Brian Schulmeister:people because the the luna tara thing yeah that was people were investing in that hard well they Yeah, I didn't say that they were smart people. I just said that they were people, regular people. Right. Yeah.

36:07Jason DeFillippo:He was originally charged with nine counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. Facing up to 25 years, he may receive a reduced sentence of 12 years maximum, provided he accepts responsibility for his crimes. And a place in Donald Trump's cabinet. Yes. Earlier, he agreed to pay an$80 million civil fine and be banned from crypto transactions as part of a$4.55 billion settlement.

36:31Brian Schulmeister:Okay.

36:32Jason DeFillippo:And finally, speaking of nostalgia, for millions, the first time they went online sounded like this. A click, a dial tone, a burst of static, a high-pitched screech, and then if the internet got smiled, silence, followed by a cheery voice saying, welcome, you've got mail, and Jason DeFilippo screaming in his apartment saying the internet is over. Because the unmasked, unwashed masses have now made it online. On September 30th, 2025, that sound will fall silent for good. AOL is officially discontinuing its dial-up internet service after 34 years, ending not just a product but a cultural era. This was announced quietly on an AOL help page.

37:09Jason DeFillippo:Who knew that AOL still had a website? I guess they do. I can't even – can you even buy a modem anymore? I would love to know how many people were actually subscribing to this.

37:19Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, seriously. You've got mail. There you go. I still – and by the way.

37:29Jason DeFillippo:the sound of my childhood

37:33Brian Schulmeister:relaxing actually this is the part where the panic sets in is it going to click is it going to click oh

37:45Brian Schulmeister:here comes a very slow picture of Pamela Anderson and then when that finally went and they got online they could go to

37:54Jason DeFillippo:Yahoo

37:58Brian Schulmeister:Wow, you prepared for this segment. You know how long, how many years I've had that on my stream deck, sitting here waiting to use them? Yeah, okay, so AOL lasts for 34 years, and we can't get GPT 4.0 to last more than, you know, one? Okay.

38:15Jason DeFillippo:Move fast and break things, Jason.

38:28Jason DeFillippo:Media Candy. I saw The Bad Guys 2 with the kid and the cousins and all that sort of stuff this weekend. I enjoyed the first movie, and this was a lot of fun, too. It's a very well-done kid's movie. I don't think you should go see it, Jason, but you got kids. Go see it.

38:44Brian Schulmeister:I'd never heard of The Bad Guys 1, so yeah, I'm definitely not going to go see The Bad Guys 2.

38:48Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, a lot of fun for a kid's movie. It was a blast. Strange New Worlds. We haven't caught up on that in a while. Did you watch last night's episode? Mm-mm. I watched last week's episode last night. I hated last week's episode.

39:02Brian Schulmeister:Okay. The one where they were stuck in the temple thing?

39:06Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it was okay. It was fine. I didn't hate it. It was okay. I really enjoyed last night's episode, though. Okay. I'm not going to spoil it for you. We'll talk about it next week.

39:17Brian Schulmeister:Okay. I'll get on that. I didn't mind the temple one because I thought it at least had some – It's one of those ones where it could have been a multi-parter because they kind of rushed it.

39:27Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that was the only thing. I wanted them to dive a little bit deeper into what exactly was happening. It's typical of Star Trek in this day and age. Here's this immense mystery. Oh, we survived. Okay, we'll never speak of this again.

39:40Brian Schulmeister:Let's make the Gorn think it's time to take a nap nap. Okay, we don't have to worry about them for the rest of the series. Okay.

39:47Jason DeFillippo:Probably should have saved this one for the segment with Dave, but I finally saw the Wicked movie. because the kid wanted to watch it and not bad. I mean, I'm not a musical guy, as you know, but it was enjoyable.

40:01Brian Schulmeister:I liked it. I mean, fortunately, I have seen the musical on the stage a couple of times, so I knew which songs I could fast forward, which made it very, very easy. But I thought it was a well-produced movie. That's for sure.

40:13Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it was very well done. The effects were great. Jeff Goldblum is perfectly cast. Can't argue with that. He totally is. Yeah. and uh the other thing that i saw also for kids uh k-pop demon hunters this has taken over the world i fucking hated it but it's it's not for me at all in any way shape or form for you i hate k-pop

40:35Brian Schulmeister:i hate anime oh yeah this is that'd be hell on earth for you it was hell on earth i i couldn't

40:42Jason DeFillippo:stand it but the kids effing loved it so i watched the first 20 of it and i didn't think it was bad

40:48Brian Schulmeister:I didn't think it was bad at all. I was actually kind of enjoying it, but I'm like, I'm going to have to turn in my man card if I finish it. So I turned it off, but I can see where I can see why it's a, you know, a hit.

41:00Jason DeFillippo:Oh, a hundred percent. Like, yeah, I mean, yeah, this is, this is perfect timing for this kind of thing. Like, of course, this is going to be huge.

41:06Brian Schulmeister:So yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I got no notes for that. I thought it was for what it is. It is like, you know, top of the top of the heap. Now let's go to the bottom of the heap. I watched The Pickup with Eddie Murphy and, oh God, I can never remember his name.

41:25Jason DeFillippo:Pete Davidson.

41:26Brian Schulmeister:Pete Davidson. That's it. Thank you. It was okay. What happened to Eddie Murphy? He needs a paycheck. You know what? Eddie Murphy, I think, has been Nick Cage. He's basically doing shit for the money now. It's one of those throwaway movies that you just throw on and don't really care about because there's so many plot holes in it that don't get it. They could have just called this MacGuffin because there were so many of them. There were a couple things that went through that was semi-funny. But honestly, if you're looking for any kind of coherent plot that you care about, you don't care about the characters at all.

42:01Brian Schulmeister:You don't care about the story at all. There's really nothing in here to care about, except for the fact that it kills about an hour and a half of your day. And that's about it. Alien Earth premiered this week, and I have not checked it out yet. I'm so sad. I saw a YouTube thing come by and says, here's everything you need to know to get caught up before you watch Alien Earth. And it was a 30-minute YouTube movie. And I'm like, no.

42:25Jason DeFillippo:I'm just going to watch it and rely on my memory from Aliens.

42:28Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I've seen all the movies. Some of them were good. Some of them were garbage. So hopefully they picked from the good movies. That recent Alien movie was fucking phenomenal. Oh, yeah, that was great. That was so good. Yeah. Hopefully they did okay.

42:43Jason DeFillippo:I've seen mixed reviews on it. I've read a few reviews. The thing is I don't have Hulu, so I'm going to have to go to Sweden to see this to begin with, which I just haven't invested the effort in. And I've read reviews that were like, this is absolutely phenomenal. And I've read reviews that this is absolutely garbage. Oh, great. It seems to be divisive.

43:03Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it's weird that you don't have Hulu, though, because here in the States, Hulu and Disney Plus are like, you know, tied together and they're all getting merged together, too.

43:12Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, but it's like I'm grandfathered into an old Disney subscription, which doesn't. Oh, got it. Yeah, got it.

43:19Brian Schulmeister:And I've been watching The Institute. That's coming up to an end soon. That's on MGM Plus based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Oh, man, it was so good. The last episode, it's starting to Stephen King itself. it's trying to get to the end and tie things up and they're just moving fast and breaking things and they just don't care. The care that they gave to the plot at the beginning has just been thrown out the window on this episode. So I'm sad to report that, yeah, this might not stick the landing. It was so good at the beginning though. I was really enjoying it too.

43:54Jason DeFillippo:All right. And I've got a little thing to talk about here that combines two things that we've talked about first sticking the landing and secondly we were just talking about how they're on streaming media there's a problem with so many of these shows because they take way too long between seasons right right we forget about everything do you remember the show upload

44:14Brian Schulmeister:vaguely i watched about a season yeah we talked about it a lot when the first season came back

44:20Jason DeFillippo:five years ago now jesus amazon has just dropped a trailer for the final season of upload the tech-centric comedy about a digital afterlife that's way too real at times that's so yeah that's right okay yeah we like this we like this when it first came out and i i know i've kept up with it but here here's the thing i had to look this up we're getting a final season which will hopefully wrap up any lingering mysteries i don't remember anything that happened on this show anymore season one shows are lingering mystery season one was may 2020 okay we did not get a season two until March 2022, almost two years.

44:59Jason DeFillippo:Right. Here they did okay. We got a season three in October 2023, a year and a half later. That's almost not bad by some standards. Yeah, really. But now our final season four, August 2025, a year and a half later. Almost two years. Almost two years.

45:17Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it's almost two years. Wow.

45:18Jason DeFillippo:There's the problem with these shows.

45:20Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, because I mean, and it wasn't a great show. It was a good show. It was fine. It was a great show. It wasn't great.

45:25Jason DeFillippo:It was kind of funny. I remember it was diminishing returns. I think it got worse and worse through the seasons. But, you know, because initial good concept, all the funny jokes in the first season and then, oh, shit, we got to make a show out of this now.

45:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. I remember the cliffhanger. Now it's all the cliffhanger at the end of the first one was was OK. And then I think I watched the first episode of the second season was like, yeah, I just don't care anymore. It was too long. I forgot all of the in jokes from season one. So it's like, you know, they spent all that time building up that capital for the first season that they expect to carry over to the second season. And you just it's all lost. It's there's no momentum left. if you if you if this would have come out you know one season every year i'm sure it would

46:06Jason DeFillippo:have been fine we all would have like watched it through to the end when oh that was a nice fun show great thanks but now i mean i i bet you the numbers have just diminished over the years so oh yeah i can't believe they got it made again yeah me too and then finally just a little bit of music uh there's some a new album coming out called ashes and diamonds is the name of the act and the single is out right now called on a rocker this is daniel ash um who is from bow house and love and rockets and tones on tail one of my like heroes he's never released anything that i haven't particularly liked except this okay not so not so great it's fine it's fine this is a project that he's doing with some ex-members of pil and uh shade's touring band and stuff so great musicians i am looking forward to hearing the whole album this is the first single that came out they wanted something that kind of rocked he's a big motorcycle guy this is about him riding a motorcycle and if you want a good song by daniel ash about riding a motorcycle cast your mind back to 1989's love and rockets motorcycle also linked in the show notes a far superior and rock and fucking song way better than this new version that came out so okay we'll see

47:15Brian Schulmeister:i'll review the ashes and diamonds album when it's released the dark side with dave welcome to the dark side with dave podcast super host dave bittner is back again hi dave hello how are we doing today i'm doing well today i'm actually feeling kind of chipper today for for no particular reason no good reason certainly but i think i think we discovered we discovered before the show because you haven't read the news today so that puts anybody in a chipper mood that's right everybody should try that at least i am embracing ignorance as bliss at least today yeah yeah uh okay well let's just get into some fun stuff we'll stick with it for a

48:02Jason DeFillippo:little bit uh when i was uh on my trip and in anaheim for an extended period of time with my kid i taught my kid how to play solitaire i also apparently taught my mom how to play solitaire she had no idea how to play um i did note that uh for it's not really solitaire with my son it's a it's more duotare his preferred method of playing is for me to set everything out and then he stands behind me and tells me what to move so it didn't quite have the intended effect that i'd hoped for which is something that he could do by himself for a little period of time

48:36Brian Schulmeister:He takes after your wife.

48:41Jason DeFillippo:That is more funny than you know, Dave.

48:47Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, so he kind of, yes, and that seems to be the way it's going. The other thing I noted as teaching him the game is fine. That was one thing. He totally gets it. Teaching a kid how to shuffle is much more difficult than you'd imagine. Oh, yeah. And you really can't – I can't expect him to go off and play solitaire without being able to shuffle cards. So I'm still working on that. There's an app for that, Brian. There are machines you can buy for that. Yeah.

49:16Brian Schulmeister:Teach the kid how to shuffle. Give him some videos or just be a dad and teach the kid how to shuffle.

49:21Jason DeFillippo:Exactly. I am working on that. Okay.

49:24Brian Schulmeister:I think it's fair to say there are good shufflers and not so good shufflers. I don't consider myself to be a good shuffler, and I've always admired people who can just effortlessly shuffle the cards and have it make that lovely kind of thing, and I can't do it.

49:40Jason DeFillippo:No, I can't.

49:41Brian Schulmeister:I totally can't. I've been playing poker since I was four. Yeah. I can shuffle some cards. So I don't know how to play solitaire. What the hell is going on with this? What the fuck?

49:54Jason DeFillippo:I can't tell you the hours I spent playing solitaire. both as a kid with real cards and then of course the solitaire app on windows right yeah uh never

50:04Brian Schulmeister:so yeah never learned i've seen people play it i do recall when i was very little i knew how to play crazy eights and that was fun i'd forgotten how to play crazy eights but i remember boomer in disguise well yeah well yeah certainly i'm i'm yeah i was taught how to play crazy eights by boomers for sure. But I guess we weren't really active card players in my house. Yeah. I mean, it's not that I wouldn't like to learn how to play solitaire. My wife knows how to play solitaire. It's just never taken the time to learn.

50:39Jason DeFillippo:You can literally pick this up in five minutes. Okay. There ain't a whole lot of rules.

50:45Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

50:45Jason DeFillippo:Okay. Anyway, the point being that once I got him on the card game i figured i should get him a fun set of cards and i found the theory 11 star wars years year of the dark side playing cards premium playing cards poker size standard index on amazon and these are lovely i purchased them solid uh set of cards and the i the you know the he loves bad guys he loves star wars he loves these cards they're they're absolutely fantastic very well done i guess theory 11 does quite a bit of cards this is their thing that they do and And I'd imagine the quality is quite high on all of them because these are great.

51:19Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, they're fantastic. I have the Darren Brown Theory 11 set. And yeah, they make really good premium cards. They're definitely a little more expensive than other cards. I think my Darren Brown cards are like$13 for a deck. You can go to a liquor store and buy a deck of cards for$4. Right. That's a good idea. They're very pretty. And they do last. They hold up. So they're well built for cards. I think like in the same way, having hardback books is a sign of a sophisticated, classy household. Having a nice set of cards is I think it's something that each that every good home should have a high quality set of cards.

52:04Brian Schulmeister:Right next to the China. Right. at the ready, you know, one of the, a chair for listening to your hi-fi, all those kinds of things. Also in my homes, we had, we had very nice decks of cards, but we also had very nice sets of poker chips, very nice poker chips. We'd spend lots of money on poker chips.

52:26Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. My, my dad had a whole poker set, really nice set too. And then, uh, I guess, uh, probably in my early thirties when I When I was making too much money than I should have been making at that age, I also bought a whole poker table and a nice set of chips and the whole thing. And all of that's gone now. But it was great. Great at the time. Yeah.

52:46Brian Schulmeister:I spent a good amount of time as a child building houses of cards, literally just constructing little – seeing how high a castle I could build or whatever with all the cards that we have. So that was –

53:00Jason DeFillippo:Ah, the things we did without screens. That's right.

53:03Brian Schulmeister:Yes, there you go. I hated making houses of cards. That was the one thing. I'm just like, can we just play poker? Come on. Just a five-card stud. Give me your money.

53:13Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, fair enough. Kevin Spacey ruined making houses of cards for me. That's true.

53:17Brian Schulmeister:That's true. So, Dave, I have still not gotten to the X5 yet. It's been a really long work week. I've been working. I put like 60 hours in this week. I'm tired. I'm tired. But I did see this come through this like yesterday. day the anti-gravity a1 the world's first 360 drone this looks cool it does i saw a bunch of

53:40Jason DeFillippo:the reviews on this they said dgi uh better watch their back this is supposed to be amazing yeah

53:46Brian Schulmeister:this isn't this comes from insta 360 the same people that make the x5 it's cool it's very very cool and you get you comes with goggles and not a regular controller it comes with the same type of controller that uh the dji uh first person drone has i can't remember the name of it right now i used to have one yeah never never used it but sold it's like a pistol grip kind of thing pistol grip so you basically you just kind of move it intuitively so it's got like a gyro in it in a oh oh so it's like a wi-mote yeah it's very much like that yeah very much like that and then you're wearing it with the goggles.

54:22Brian Schulmeister:So it's, yeah, I, this looks really cool. No price yet for it, but man, just check out the video and the tech behind it. It looks sweet. Yeah. And the website's impressive too. Yeah. I'm curious how they managed to get the rotor blades out of the 360 degree image. The, if you look where the domes are, the domes are situated above and below the rotors. Yeah. And there's another set of cameras in between, like sandwiched in between, so you can actually see forward. Okay. Because I'm sure you can't, there's got to be some, I would have to sit down if you're like trying to look at 360 with those goggles while you're trying to fly the damn thing.

55:03Brian Schulmeister:Oh my God. Right. And how much lag is there and all that good stuff to introduce motion sickness. Yeah. I tell you what, the lag I've, you know, the lag on these things is very, very minimal. I mean, like, we're just talking a few milliseconds, believe it or not. They're very well done. At least the DJIs are very well done. Very minimal, minimal lag. Yeah. Because they're pretty powerful radios on these things. I mean, they're beaming back. You can beam back, you know, any range of definitions of video from, you can watch in, like, you know, high def or low def previews. And it's cool, though.

55:43Brian Schulmeister:Trust me. I think that this is one of those toys that is going to be a game changer.

55:51Brian Schulmeister:again again trust me i'd rather i'd rather spend money on that thing than some fucking ai that's for sure yeah well that's true i guess you know what i always say things that claim

56:03Jason DeFillippo:that they're going to change everything rarely do that's true but what was that uh the segue why didn't the segue change everything there you go the segue all we heard was breathless news reports about how this is going to change everything cities are going to be redesigned from the ground up yeah and what did we get we got scooters i owned a segway did you really i did yeah i did wow yeah and you weren't a mailman or a mall cop no i wasn't this is the only two real use cases i ever oh no no for a brief period of time they did tours of santa monica on segways Yeah.

56:41Brian Schulmeister:They still do. Oh, they still do. So here's the thing. My home and my office were about five miles away from each other. And the community I live in has about 100 miles of bike paths. So I could get from my home to my office completely on bike paths without having to go on any regular streets. So I thought to myself, this is the perfect use case for a Segway. and you were already married so you didn't have the the birth control stigma of riding a segway true true yes uh that is true both of my children were already born so it was all good my poor suffering wife was like oh yeah okay sure buy it whatever you know um so i had it for about a year and what i discovered was uh it was fun um but it is too slow because the segway only goes 12 miles an hour.

57:37Brian Schulmeister:So the problem is like you could go to work, go from home to work, work to home, but you couldn't go anywhere else. Like if I needed, if I had a meeting or something like that, and it was a few miles away, it was just too slow. You even compared to like scooters and e-bikes and all those things that have sort of taken the place of what's the, the, the niche that Segway hope to fill, right? We have much less expensive. Yeah, exactly. And they're all twice as fast.

58:09Jason DeFillippo:I'm looking at the Segway site now because I was curious and guess what they have pivoted to? E-bikes, scooters, go-karts. Yeah. Yeah, you cannot find a traditional Segway at all on their site. It's all scooters and e-bikes.

58:23Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So I kept it for about a year. I sold it for what I bought it for. And, you know, I was happy to have had it, But the other thing was that people were not – well, it was a mixed bag. It was kind of split evenly between people who were like, oh, cool, Segway, and people who were like, get that damn thing off of our bike paths. So that wasn't fun either. I actually got whacked in the back of the head by a guy who was on a road bike, just came by me at speed and just, bam, whacked me on the back of the head. I was like, no. If you do go to self-balancing on the Segway site, they still do have the Ninebot.

59:01Brian Schulmeister:So that's basically the little tiny one with no handlebar for$600. But yeah, 11.2 miles an hour, approximate range 21 miles. Yeah. My e-bike, I had a Rad Rover 5, the big fat tire one, and I clocked that thing at 28 miles an hour. Yeah. There was a way to overclock it. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, came and went. Yeah, but this anti-gravity drone looks good. It does. I'm curious to see how much it costs and whether it can be justified in the toy category.

59:36Jason DeFillippo:No, Jason has this innate ability to justify these things.

59:40Brian Schulmeister:I have a closet full of drones that I have not flown in.

59:44Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. And I think the next thing in the show notes is something that Dave is going to be justifying himself purchasing.

59:49Brian Schulmeister:That's true. That's true. So I don't know if you guys have seen it, but the next iteration of the Lego Death Star has been leaked. Yeah, it's 9 ,000 pieces. How many Rebels died to leak the plans to the Lego Death Star? Yes, yes. It is spectacular. It's huge. Mostly empty space. How much of the Death Star itself? I mean, yeah, but it's cool. I mean, it's also$1 ,000. What? Yeah. Over a dollar a piece. 9 ,000 pieces. 9 ,023 to be precise. Yeah. 18-doge math over there.

1:00:35Jason DeFillippo:I know. I'm doing doge math.

1:00:38Brian Schulmeister:One of the things my son pointed out to me is that in the list of minifigs that come with this, there are a bunch of stormtroopers in swim trunks. What? Well, and what he told me was somewhere in Lego Star Wars, there's an Easter egg where there's a room you can go in and there are a bunch of stormtroopers in a hot tub.

1:01:01Jason DeFillippo:Nice.

1:01:02Brian Schulmeister:And so the idea is it's somewhere hidden in this model. There is a hot tub full of stormtroopers, stormtrooper hot tub party. So that's fun. Yeah. This looks cool. I got it. It is cool. It looks pretty cool. It is cool. It's very expensive. I don't know.

1:01:20Jason DeFillippo:This one's a hard justification. Like, my son is probably at his Lego peak right now, but I don't think I could justify this one. Also, it's 18 plus. It looks complicated. My kid, I can imagine there will be tears and fights and many things that would be involved with this. But it is beautiful.

1:01:39Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Start saving up now, and you can get it for a graduation present for him 10 years from now when he's out of high school. Right. Right. And see, my son is 18 years old, so he's perfect for this, and he would love to build this. And he can go get a job and buy it himself then if he's 18, so you're off the hook. That's actually a good idea, Jason. I should come to you for parenting advice more often. See? That's what I do. That's what I do. Yeah. Logic. Yeah.

1:02:08Jason DeFillippo:and then uh i threw this one in the show notes because i know both of you guys were very into photography and cameras and i thought this was quite sad the 133 year old american company kodak has warned investors on monday in a regulatory filing that there's substantial doubt it can keep its doors open unless it pays down its debts or renegotiates its terms yeah so yeah kodak may be going out of business uh even though they introduced the world's first digital camera back in 1973, the year I was born, the company failed to keep up with the changing times as everyone now carries a camera in their pocket 24-7.

1:02:43Jason DeFillippo:As of last quarter, Kodak reported$26 million net loss. Since the end of last year, the company has burned through$46 million in cash, leaving it with what's just$155 million on hand. And they have diversified. That's part of their thing. They jumped on the blockchain and cryptocurrency bandwagon. Oops, which never ended up happening. uh they got into pharmaceuticals manufacturing facilities etc and all that sort of stuff but uh none of it seems to be enough it looks like kodak is going to go the way of the dodo

1:03:12Brian Schulmeister:yeah my fear is that they'll become a zombie brand like uh radio shack radio shack like magnavox like well but specifically i mean um like if you look at a brand an old brand like magnavox um where the brand is just available for licensing to slap on anything that any And so people just Trump. Right. People will build some little crappy piece of electronics and they'll pay a few bucks and slap the Magnavox brand on it.

1:03:43Jason DeFillippo:Right.

1:03:43Brian Schulmeister:And I fear that would that's Kodak's future because the because it is a strong brand. I mean, one of the strongest. Well, for us.

1:03:51Jason DeFillippo:Right. For a lot of people. Ask your son.

1:03:55Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Here's a fun bit of Kodak trivia. did you know that Kodak was one of the contributors to the 8mm video format? Did not. In fact, I owned a Kodak 8mm camcorder. Yeah. Do you remember the Kodak Z cameras, the little pocket Z cameras? I do, yeah. Those were awesome. They were, yeah. Yeah, they hit it right at the time before cell phones got decent cameras for video. Yeah. So they lasted for like two weeks. In the marketplace. I had two iterations of them, and I wish I still had them. They were cool. They were really cool. I think I had about half a dozen of them because, you know, you could just stick them anywhere.

1:04:42Brian Schulmeister:They were cheap, too. Yeah, they were cheap. They shot HD video, and they just worked. Yeah. Yeah, right product at the right time, but it didn't last very long, like you said, because cell phone cameras just got better and better and better. Yep. Yeah. I want to shout out to a friend of the show who wrote me a lovely note on Mastodon. This is a listener named Carl, who is Swedish and a veteran. He has fought alongside NATO allies. And he wrote a nice letter that is too long to read verbatim here on the show, but basically comes down to how the rest of the world is thinking about the U.S. This is in reaction to some of the things we were talking about in the past couple of weeks about traveling in and out of the U.S.

1:05:35Brian Schulmeister:and our borders and so on and so forth. And it's a lovely reflection. Carl talks about how the U.S. used to be the North Star for Western Europe, that we were their cultural and political big brother, that Sweden stood shoulder to shoulder with America and Afghanistan. but now Washington is cozying up to Moscow and cutting Ukraine loose. And that, you know, this weakens our relationships with our allies and all those sorts of things. This whole notion of trust the Americans, which he says was kind of a reflexive thought in Europe after World War II. And it's fading fast. He says it's not anti-Americanism, that it's disappointment from friends who expected better.

1:06:20Brian Schulmeister:and i think that's a really great way to put it it is so and he's talking very much from a european

1:06:28Jason DeFillippo:perspective and i know sitting here in canada it's it's very similar if not actually more anger because obviously the 51st state talk just never fucking stops and it's pissing everybody off here but yeah at first it was just disappointment and a healthy dose of fear because we're so interconnected and now has come to be anger like america's position in the world is is been decimated i use that word on purpose jason just to upset you okay i know you do oh oh jason are you a decimated pendant dave he is we've talked about it on the show i'm going to actually

1:07:07Brian Schulmeister:i'm going to i'm going to give you a pass on that because we've now found out that you don't know how to play solitaire, which you may have at some point. So that boomer brain of yours is really just not up to snuff the way it used to be. So I'll let you slide on that. I think I'm going to, I believe I recall Brian saying that language evolves. Words don't always mean what they've always meant. And decimated is one of those words, I think. I will say you're in the same boat as my co-host Joe Kerrigan on Hacking Humans. He also is a decimated pendant. We know this because we had that conversation on the show.

1:07:46Brian Schulmeister:Oh, okay. So if you really want to get him upset, use the word irregardless.

1:07:57Jason DeFillippo:That one bothers me too on a visceral level. Oh, come on, Brian. I still use it. Whose team are you on?

1:08:04Brian Schulmeister:No, I'm a hypocrite. That's the thing. I'm a total hypocrite. You're on team hypocrite.

1:08:08Jason DeFillippo:Okay. I can respect that. I will drop irregardlesses all the time, but even I wince internally.

1:08:14Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I guess we all have them. I'm literally dying inside. You know what one gets me?

1:08:21Jason DeFillippo:You never go to the doctor. You could be, Jason.

1:08:23Brian Schulmeister:That's true. It could be. Here's one that gets me chomping at the bit. It's champing at the bit. Horses champ. They don't chomp. I mean, they do chomp, but the phrase is champing at the bit.

1:08:34Jason DeFillippo:I was walking the chomping at the bit.

1:08:41Brian Schulmeister:All right. Well, you know what? It's probably a good place to end things. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a great weekend. And I'll be chomping at the bit to get back to this next week, irregardless of what subjects we put in the subject lines, whether or not we... You just decimated our list. We decimated half our stories in this thing. Oh, surely, at least half. Closing shout-outs! Over at Patreon, we've got some new patrons. Brian, we've got David, Mike, Jude, Peyton, and Arnaud. And we've also got from the old school patrons, Elaine, Kevin, John, Joe, Vanessa, Jason, Richard, Darren, Andrew, and Bayrod.

1:09:22Jason DeFillippo:Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Miles, Shari, Ralph, Nathaniel, Ocadio, Natalie, and from an anonymous longtime listener, a big old$50 donation. Woo-hoo, doggy. Yes.

1:09:36Brian Schulmeister:and over at the tip jar we've got roger sarah matthew damien and marcel with the big 30 bones woo dog and i just want to tell everybody if you want to help support the show and we need your help supporting the show because this literally is a listener supported show only at this point go to patreon.com slash gog and you can sign up for as little as three dollars a month to help support the show and if you sign up for the whole year you get a discount but you can you can give more than$3. You can give as much as your little black heart desires, and we will love you forever. You get the show a little bit early, ad-free, and in high definition.

1:10:11Brian Schulmeister:And sadly, nobody bought any merch this week. Brian, I thought you said you were going to make some new shirts this week. What happened? What happened? Life. Oh, shit happens.

1:10:18Jason DeFillippo:Okay. I'll get around to it. Maybe, you know, I'll do one with Alaska not being a state. 49 stars. Okay.

1:10:24Brian Schulmeister:Our 49 stars?

1:10:26Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. We did get a new review though. Amazing podcast. Five stars. I started listening to Grumpy Old Geeks a couple of years ago it quickly became one of my favorite podcasts jason and brian bring us the headlines in the tech world and offer their opinions as two people have been in the tech world for a long time they often offer insight for those of us who may not be fully tech savvy throw on some humor grumpy rants and some nostalgia from their old tech days and you have yourself a great weekly listen keep up the

1:10:50Brian Schulmeister:good rook thank you so much thank you very very much nobody died this week nobody died just my

1:10:56Jason DeFillippo:belief in humanity.

1:10:58Brian Schulmeister:Just my soul a little bit more. Just my soul a little bit more.

1:11:02Jason DeFillippo:Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister.

1:11:04Brian Schulmeister:Oh, wait. GPT-4O died last week. What are we talking about? Pour one out. And then there's the Google graveyard.

1:11:11Jason DeFillippo:I'm sure they killed something.

1:11:13Brian Schulmeister:That's true. That's true. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 709. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few books our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. We are literally only listener supported at this point. So please, please open your purse this week.

1:11:32Jason DeFillippo:All pennies matter.

1:11:33Brian Schulmeister:All pennies matter. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. And we will love you forever. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the show. And we've got merch. If Brian would make some new stuff, maybe I'll make some new stuff too, because we got to. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show.

1:12:03Brian Schulmeister:Stay grumpy.