739: The Thin Black Line

12:42Brian Schulmeister:This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize. Data brokers are making money off your personal information. Your name, contact info, home address, and even details about your family can be compiled, packaged, and sold online to basically anyone willing to pay. That kind of exposure can open the door to identity theft, phishing attempts, and harassment. Now, as someone with a pretty public internet presence, I deal with this constantly.

13:18Brian Schulmeister:People are looking me up all the time, scraping whatever information they can find. It's just part of being a public figure online. But that's exactly why I use Delete Me. They go out and remove your personal information from hundreds of data broker websites, which gives me a lot more peace of mind and honestly helps me sleep better at night. And it's not just me saying it. The New York Times Wirecutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me, now at a special discount for our listeners.

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14:15Jason DeFillippo:Now let's talk about the thin pink slips. in actual news of hiring instead of firing. And this kind of blows my mind. OpenAI is doing the opposite of most other tech companies, although they did hire a bunch of people earlier in the year. So anyways, according to a report from the Financial Times, the AI giant is looking to expand its workforce to 8 ,000 employees by the end of 2026, nearly doubling staff from its current headcount of 4 ,500. Hires will be across several departments, including product development, engineering, research, and sales. probably not coding open ai's hiring spree will include specialists for technical ambassadorship or employees tasked with helping businesses better utilize its ai tools and this is probably because they're trying to ramp up against the competition against anthropic and it's clawed ai chatbot which is basically eating its lunch right now so open ai has some issues people are not adopting it they are attempting to pivot to business services talk a lot about that later and uh they're basically going to hire a bunch of salespeople.

15:15Brian Schulmeister:That's it. That's all sales. Yeah. Yeah. It's all sales. Because in our next story, Sam Altman tried to say thanks to programmers. Instead, it lit up the internet. In a tweet, the OpenAI CEO said it's already getting hard to remember how much effort coding used to take, thanking developers for building the foundation that got us here. You're welcome. Yeah. I call this the great brain robbery of all of this AI shit. A lot of these same developers heard it as a eulogy for their careers. so they might want to pivot into sales. The backlash was immediate and brutal. Replies flooded in, calling the message tone-deaf at best, openly hostile at worst.

15:51Brian Schulmeister:That's Sam Altman. That's Sam Altman, yeah. That's him. Yeah. One user summed it up saying, nothing says you're being replaced like a heartfelt thank you from the guy doing the replacing. Of course, of course. Others pointed out the uncomfortable reality that AI models were trained on code and content scraped from those very same developers without compensation.

16:13Jason DeFillippo:and everybody else yeah yeah so yes all yeah yes everybody anybody creative any coder i if you have farted on tape and is digitized somewhere they stole that they took it from you and it's in

16:25Brian Schulmeister:their fart algorithm uh opening his fart algorithm like i'm sure it exists somewhere i'm sure i'm sure there's some code somewhere yeah and this one's great sam altman went from oscar party like after party to after party and to public enemy number one after getting confronted over open AI's Pentagon deal, which was pretty stupid. At a Vanity Fair bash packed with A-listers, playwright Jeremy O. Harris called him out, first comparing him to a Nazi propagandist, then walking it back and comparing him to a Nazi industrialist instead. Not exactly an upgrade. In an email to Page Six, Harris apologized for comparing Altman to the wrong nazi collaborator yes it was late and i had a few too many martinis so i misspoke when i said gerbils i should have said friedrich flick overstated bravo bravo a man of his principles

17:19Jason DeFillippo:he knows when he made a mistake and he's he's not ashamed to correct it exactly exactly if

17:25Brian Schulmeister:you'd have used open ai you probably got it right the first time i probably would have ended up with himmler that's true because open a guy gets shit wrong uh well soar has been in the news open ai is killing off its hype ai video model and the tiktok style app built around it ending a very short and very expensive experiment this thing was costing them 15 million dollars a day by the way

17:49Jason DeFillippo:which they did not have still don't have still don't have yeah and they're hiring because they

17:53Brian Schulmeister:just really need to make money and they're planning on going public too which is going to be phenomenal when we get to look at the books on that. What launched is a breathtaking and terrifying app quickly turned into uncanny deepfakes, confusing branding and a social product nobody used after the first five minutes. The killer feature, deepfake yourself, felt less like fun and more like reputational Russian roulette, which it pretty much the Jake Paul stuff was just hilarious. People were just tanking on him. It was great. Now it's being shut down as OpenAI pivots to enterprise with vague promises about what happens to your videos and whether the model survives in some other forms.

18:32Brian Schulmeister:Now, here's the big fun. Disney has bailed on Sora and OpenAI because there was that billion dollar deal, which really wasn't a deal. It was more like a press release. And they were going to give them 200 different characters to use in Sora. Well, Disney saw the writing on the wall and said, fuck you guys, we're out of here.

18:49Jason DeFillippo:They are the big winners here because they get out of having to pay a billion dollars and making the worst mistake with their IP of all time.

18:56Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yep. So I think, you know, now that Bob Iger is out of the picture, the new guy was just like, let's get the fuck out. Yep. So, you know, all those bullshit Hollywood is dead headlines that you read everywhere, they were everywhere when Sora came out. I guess those were just AI slop or maybe just shitty journalism. I'm not sure, but it's over.

19:16Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it's over. Well, there's a pretty good article over on Slate about this called The Tech Bubble Might Finally Be Popping. it's it's definitely worth the read they actually get into the fact that most studios are getting out of all these deals and are training their own internal versions for for video work and all that sort of stuff so ai is not going away it's just going away from the four or five big companies that are out there and people are making their own tools internally which makes a lot of sense to me but some key points from this article that i really liked open ai's abrupt shutdown of Sora reveals the AI boom might be a lot more fragile than it looks.

19:50Jason DeFillippo:No shit.

19:51Brian Schulmeister:No shit.

19:51Jason DeFillippo:And then they say, let's be blunt. A highly capitalized AI startup that bails on one of its most prominent creations and largest corporate deals so soon after hyping them up for months on end is not in a good position as a business, especially at a moment when it plans to pursue an IPO and thus expose itself to more financial scrutiny. And yet it's only one of OpenAI's many recent troubles and a sign that the AI bubble, while far from bursting outright, is wobbling and weakening as we speak. In other words, and here's the downside of this, the one industry that's keeping up the country's growth on paper is closer to giving way and bringing around an all-around slowdown in economic activity, one that'll make the current moment feel like a cakewalk by comparison.

20:33Jason DeFillippo:Oh, joy. Yes. Well, the American economy was built, this is a castle built in sand right now, and the fucking waves are coming.

20:43Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, unfortunately. And I think I predicted it at the beginning of the year, at the end of last year, for my predictions, that open AI isn't going to make it past, you know, the next year and a half. And it's looking like that because just their scam altman's bullshit financials and the Ouroboros of, you know, AI financing right now. Who even knows if Anthropik is going to make it? But right now they're at least poised to go farther because of all the business dealings that they've done, the enterprise dealings. I still think the one that's going to really make it out of this unscathed is going to be Google.

21:16Brian Schulmeister:You know, Meta is going to keep trying and they're failing hand over fist.

21:20Jason DeFillippo:Meta can't make anything work. We've seen that. They just keep trying and trying, yet they still make money hand over fist by doing all the things that are being sued for.

21:29Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. That's the only upside is, yeah, Meta might just be in trouble because of all the lawsuits and they're going to be busy with that for a while. Yeah. So, and if they just keep getting, you know, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So people are just going to keep nibbling away at the old Zuckerberg. So, you know, he should take his Ray-Bans and just hit the road right now. If he was smart, he would just get the fuck out of Dodge. Take his money and run.

21:53Jason DeFillippo:You're done. Get out. Yeah. Well, Elon Musk has announced the TerraFab project. So take your bets on Polymarket right now, whether this will happen or not, because it's Elon.

22:04Brian Schulmeister:It won't. It won't. But if he was smart, he'd get Fabrice Morvan to be the face of TerraFab.

22:09Jason DeFillippo:That's pretty good, actually. I like that. Now, the weird thing about this is it says, a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and XAI to build the largest chip manufacturing facility ever. Aren't they all rolled into one company now?

22:21Brian Schulmeister:Not yet. They're going to be. He tried to, but he couldn't. They're all basically investors in XAI. Right. Because, you know, XAI has been gobbling people up, and he's been trying to get Tesla to, you know, invest more. Or he's trying to make, you know, because he wanted X to be the one platform. So I think he wants to have the one company. Right. But I think shareholders are going, fuck that noise. Screw that.

22:43Jason DeFillippo:I'm investing in this part, not the rest of your crap.

22:46Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. SpaceX. I want to invest in SpaceX, not your porn bot engine. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want a Mecha Hitler. No Mecha Hitler in my SpaceX, please. Well, unless you're building Nazi moon bases, then we can talk. But.

22:59Jason DeFillippo:Well, not content to simply call it the largest chip manufacturing facility ever. it is Elon, so he has to say that this is the next step towards harnessing the power of the sun and creating a galactic civilization. It's a chip manufacturing facility. It may be a big one, but it has nothing to do with galactic civilization.

23:20Brian Schulmeister:Right now it's nothing, so it's not even a big one. That's true. So it's in his ketamine-fueled brain right now, so if it ever goes anywhere, we'll see.

23:28Jason DeFillippo:Yes, the project's ultimate goal is to produce a terawatt of computing power each year so that it can match the company's growing demand for chips. He explained during a live stream that he's grateful to existing supply chain partners like Samsung, TSMC, and Micron, but fuck you. We're building our own. Yeah. True, you guys. I'm going to the moon. It's estimated to cost at least$20 billion, and it will start with the advanced technology fab in Austin, Texas, where Tesla is currently headquartered. As promising as this sounds, it is worth noting that Musk has previously over-promised and undelivered on everything.

24:03Brian Schulmeister:Everything he's ever said that has come out of his mouth has been either late or never happened. Yeah. Hey, but we're getting a new Cybertruck minivan soon, I think. No, we're not.

24:18Jason DeFillippo:As a matter of fact, no, we're not. Let me place my polymarket bet on that right now.

24:22Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. Well, the White House just refreshed its Science and Tech Advisory Board. And this version looks a lot less like a room full of academics and a lot more like a Silicon Valley VIP list. Pay to play, baby. Exactly. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST, grab them by the PCAST, is now stacked with a parade of douchebags like Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Mark Andreessen, Sergey Brin, Jensen Wong, and Mark Zuckerberg, co-chaired by Trump's AI and crypto point man, David Sachs. Good God. If you could bomb one room.

25:01Brian Schulmeister:Seriously, man. It's just like the Monopoly guy. Just a bunch of them lined up out the door with their bags of money, slapping it on Trump's desk. Noticeably absent, though, are the AI triumvirate of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Dario Amadei. So none of those guys got invited to the party because they don't have any money left. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Officially, the board will advise on emerging tech and the workforce. Unofficially, critics see a pay-to-play vibe where companies that stay in the administration's good graces get influence and maybe funding, while others risk getting iced out because nothing says objective policy like a room full of fucking billionaires.

25:40Jason DeFillippo:Very true, very true. I'm just going to read the headline from the next story because it tells you everything you need to know. Pinterest CEO says teens under 16 should be banned from social media, but not Pinterest. douche he should be on the fucking board too pretty much asshole and there could be one more step required before creating an account and posting on reddit in the future according to reddit ceo steve huffman the social media platform is exploring at least they admit it unlike you pinterest and others youtube the social media platform is exploring different ways to verify a user is human and not a bot when asked by the tbpn podcast how to confirm that it's a human using Reddit.

26:21Jason DeFillippo:Huffman responded with several verification methods with varying degrees of heavy handedness and then proceeded to discuss everything that we've talked about as potential ways of verifying age and hemming and hawing about all of them because none of them are perfect and some of them take away privacy. And that's really going to bother a bunch of users on Reddit who like to do things privately because there's some pretty dark corners in Reddit. And yeah, so he doesn't have a solution either, but he knows something's coming. And realistically, it's going to involve a tradeoff on privacy. and they try to not say that part out loud but you can hear it in the article okay

26:56Brian Schulmeister:oh dear it's just a fun time brian it's a fun time the thin black line has made my day for this week at least that's true it's a it's a pretty pretty good week

27:06Jason DeFillippo:ups and doodads well jason i uh gave in to my son uh spent an awful awful lot of money and the Bamboo Lab A1 has arrived. The 3D printing adventure has begun. Okay. It looks pretty cool. It's fancy. It's a lot of fun. I'm sure people have found really good uses for this besides printing up plastic tchotchkes that are going to be all over the goddamn house. I was going to say, it's more shit that you're just going to step on at three in the morning in your bare feet when you go take a leak. It's fun to use it. Like, it's been fun putting it together, understanding how it works. There's no doubt that, as you used to always say, Jason, it is neat.

27:51Jason DeFillippo:It is very neat.

27:53Brian Schulmeister:It's neat.

27:54Jason DeFillippo:And, like, if I were into figurines and I was an adult Dungeons & Dragons player and wanted to make people for all my campaigns, this would be the fucking bombass.com. Is it awesome for a nine-year-old boy? Fuck yeah, it is. Am I ever going to do anything actually useful with it? Probably not. Have I picked up a new skill set? Yeah. Okay. I have. I know how to do 3D printing and I'm messing around with 3D models and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it's fun.

28:20Brian Schulmeister:Okay. I'm going to tell you the one thing that, you know, my birthday's coming up. Yeah. I'll be 55 this year. If you wanted to make me a really cool chess set, you could probably make a really cool chess set with that thing. That would be very expensive.

28:32Jason DeFillippo:That would be a very expensive chess set to do all the pieces. Really? No, this stuff is not cheap. Like the filaments aren't cheap. Oh. This is actually probably going to be the biggest lesson for my son about 3D printing is we're going to learn pivot tables and we're going to start to understand exactly how much everything he prints costs. Okay. Because he's been a very generous. Well, okay, hold on. This is actually very funny. I thought he was being a very generous friend because he came home and he had a list of things that he was going to print for all of it for like seven, eight, nine of his friends at school.

29:08Jason DeFillippo:And I was like, well, I mean, he really does have a big heart. He gets this 3D printer. He's printed. Of course, he prints some things for himself first, because why wouldn't you? But he wants to print things for his friends. The next day, I find out it's barters and trades, and he's basically getting paid for everything.

29:27Brian Schulmeister:Okay. So he's a little busy. I was even more impressed. That is good. That is very impressive. Yeah. Yeah.

29:34Jason DeFillippo:So anyways, it's been fun. It's been interesting. I'm sure I will have continued updates as we go along in the future. And hopefully this isn't something that he just loses interest in and collects dust. And then I got to figure out what to do with it because now we got it here.

29:48Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Well, I mean, you need to do some equations where you show how much his allowance is versus how many strands of whatever the filament is that he can actually play. So, yeah. So it's like if you get five bucks for your allowance, you get this much to make your tchotchkes. So when you go sell them on the playground, you best get 10 bucks so you can buy more filament and then create the empire and buy more machines.

30:11Jason DeFillippo:And then, you know how you were talking about how you've been getting into like the whole vibe coding thing and all that. And I told we talked off off air and I said, I just I don't I don't there's nothing I want to build. I can't think of anything. I've got PTSD from being a developer. I need to build a real-time money clicker that sits above the 3D printer as he's printing and showing him exactly how much money he's spending on the filaments and electricity as it goes through the whole thing. It'll take you about half an hour. Yeah.

30:39Brian Schulmeister:The hardest part's going to be probably getting the little board to put up to the little LCD that you do. The hardware hacking will be the hardest part.

30:47Jason DeFillippo:I think I'm going to get an Arduino and I can 3D print some of the boards and we're good to go.

30:51Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, get an Arduino and you're off to the races. But yeah, oh man, speaking of the coding thing, I've been just into Codex. I created the Grumpinator this week to try and help me parse through all of these feeds because I spend a lot of time going through news every week. I had 100 feeds that I'm going through news on just to get the articles for the show. And I'm like, well, let's write some software to do that and parse it, do sentiment analysis and all this stuff. And I wrote this giant thing and then it got way too complicated. Now I'm paring it down and paring it down. But it's been fun.

31:23Brian Schulmeister:It's been really fun because it's like I only have the$20 account on OpenAI. And if you use the Codex app to code with, it'll tell you in real time how many tokens you're using and when the refresh is. I've never even used a full day's worth of tokens. And I've had that thing running for 24 hours. It's crazy. And it's actually that when it makes a mistake and I tell it, well, you know, like, okay, the front end's janky right now. It's like, okay, let me go check and let me look at this. It talks to me like we would talk to our direct reports, our management people. And I'm impressed by how it fucks up.

31:57Brian Schulmeister:Really? It's that much of an asshole? It is. It really is. It's like, come on. I'm trying to fucking play Quake over here. Don't bug me on my smoke break. But it's definitely a better coder than I ever was or ever will be. So it probably ain't saying much. But damn, it's fun. And it's not that expensive. And I'm running everything locally. I tried to do some Supabase stuff, but it was slow. So now everything's running on Postgres on my little M4 Air and running Node and everything's in TypeScript. It's pretty cool. I mean, I'm having a blast and it's cheaper than a 3D printer. That's for damn sure.

32:32Brian Schulmeister:That's true.

32:33Jason DeFillippo:There's no doubt about that. Yeah. Well, speaking of things that used to be fun and free and now make us feel old, Twitter is officially 20 years old this week.

32:43Brian Schulmeister:Wow.

32:44Jason DeFillippo:That's crazy.

32:45Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

32:45Jason DeFillippo:And then in the article over on Engadget, the author wrote, in another reality, that might make me feel kind of nostalgic, but instead it's making him feel nothing at all because of the way it ended.

32:58Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of it. It's like, yeah, it was so great. Well, when it first started, everybody was like, what the fuck am I going to use this thing for? And then it turned into, oh, my God, it's Twitter. And then it turned into, oh, fuck.

33:13Jason DeFillippo:God damn it. I like this a little bit in the article. It's been 20 years since Jack Dorsey sent the first ever tweet, which was never even a very good tweet anyways. It's been five years, by the way, since he turned that tweet into an NFT. Remember NFTs? And auctioned it for nearly$3 million. It's now functionally worthless. Another chapter in Dorsey's confusing, complicated legacy. so true so true i don't really actually think it's all that confusing or complicated he came up with the idea of 140 character uh microblog and that's it yeah yeah that's it i mean everything else that he went off to do had already been done before except better and he grew a big beard

33:55Brian Schulmeister:that's his legacy yeah yeah because he was never ceo material he was a he was a backroom nerd like the rest of us. He was just a coding dude. You know, he had no he had no he has no business running his businesses. Yeah, he has no qualifications to be a titan of industry. You know, that's really not where he's not.

34:13Jason DeFillippo:You'll notice he's like ignored on all the other things that we talk about. He's not invited to any of these councils. He's not part of it. Trump doesn't even know his name. No, doesn't like he's not a titan of tech industry at all

34:27Brian Schulmeister:anymore. Well, you know, because it requires two invites to get him to go anywhere because they need one for him and one for his beard. And so if either one of them decides to veto the invitation, then they can't go. So, you know, and the beard just wants to go out and meditate. So ayahuasca. Well, the FCC just made a major move. No new approvals for consumer routers made outside the U.S. Existing models can still be sold, but anything new has to be American made or a clear, tough conditional approval process. So it has to be expensive and not work. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Yeah, no back doors, but it still doesn't work.

35:04Brian Schulmeister:That's how we avoid the back doors. It just doesn't work. Right. I don't know where Eros are made. I don't either, but I think we're about to find out. Well, I'm just not going to upgrade mine. Might have been running fine for years. Yeah, I don't need to upgrade either. Yeah, no new specs. That's all you do. Just no new 802.11 specs and we'll be fine. We don't need Wi-Fi 6 or 7. That's okay.

35:25Jason DeFillippo:They fired the people that were building that anyways. It's being vibe-coded. So it's going to be a while.

35:35Brian Schulmeister:This episode is sponsored by Delete.me. Delete.me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize. Data brokers are making money off your personal information. Your name, contact info, home address, and even details about your family can be compiled, packaged, and sold online to basically anyone willing to pay. That kind of exposure can open the door to identity theft, phishing attempts, and harassment. Now, as someone with a pretty public internet presence, I deal with this constantly.

36:10Brian Schulmeister:People are looking me up all the time, scraping whatever information they can find. It's just part of being a public figure online. But that's exactly why I use DeleteMe. They go out and remove your personal information from hundreds of data broker websites, which gives me a lot more peace of mind and honestly helps me sleep better at night. And it's not just me saying it. The New York Times Wirecutter has named DeleteMe their top pick for data removal services. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe, now at a special discount for our listeners.

36:43Brian Schulmeister:Get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeliteme.com slash GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash GOG and enter code GOG at checkout. That's joindeliteme.com slash GOG, code GOG.

37:08Brian Schulmeister:Media Candy So, Brian, I did get to finally see the final episode of Star Trek Starfleet Academy. They could just end it right there. It was fine. They are. Spoiler alert for the next story. Yeah, well, yeah. What I didn't really realize was Tatiana Maslany was the mom. They made her look different enough where I didn't really catch that that was her until I saw the credits. I'm like, oh, OK, I get it. like that just did not, she was not giving She-Hulk vibes. She was not giving She-Hulk.

37:43Jason DeFillippo:Well, no, it's a vastly different haircut. And they, I think they aged her a little bit, like with makeup and stuff. So definitely.

37:49Brian Schulmeister:Or they just left her normal.

37:51Jason DeFillippo:Or that's true. You know, she wasn't green. So hard to tell.

37:55Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. But I mean, yeah, and Orphan Black was a long time ago. She was definitely younger during Orphan Black, which is still, if you haven't seen Orphan Black, worth going back. Not the reboot with the Jessica Jones girl. That one was terrible. Right. The original Orphan Black, I really enjoyed. And she was, she should have got all the awards for that. Her acting was unbelievable. I really believe there were seven different people in that show.

38:16Jason DeFillippo:I thought she was phenomenal on She-Hulk as well. Like, yeah. Very good actress. So.

38:21Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. No. And that was just a great show. I'm bummed that didn't get renewed. Yeah, me too. It just had to be expensive. It was funny. Yeah. Yeah. Surprisingly. Very surprisingly.

38:30Jason DeFillippo:Well, I mean, I would jump the gun a little bit on saying it ended there. We are getting one more season, which has already been shot. But Star Trek Starfleet Academy will end with its upcoming second season, Variety has learned. The first season of Starfleet Academy reached an 87 % critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Variety's Remedy Tinubu describing as a delightful entry point into the franchise. But the show failed to find a significant audience across its 10-episode first season. It failed to rank on the Nielsen Top 10 streaming viewership charts. So there are still two more seasons to come of Star Trek Strange New Worlds, one more season of Starfleet Academy.

39:07Jason DeFillippo:All of them are done except for post-production. And that's it. Paramount has basically killed off streaming Star Trek era. It's done. Theoretically, they're talking about going back. There's a movie in development, but there's been a movie in development for about two decades now. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. We'll see. It's sad. It's a 60-year-old franchise that still absolutely has legs. Sure, there are missteps. I also think the biggest problem is they don't let these shows go on long enough. The first few seasons of most of the older original Star Trek shows, not the original, but we're talking Next Generation, Discovery, all that sort of stuff.

39:48Jason DeFillippo:Well, Discovery, that's a different beast. Enterprise, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Voyager. Those all took a few seasons to really find their footing and really take off. And nothing gets that anymore. I mean, the problem with Discovery is they at the end of every season, they completely fucking just threw the dice and completely changed the show because it wasn't working. No, stick with it. Keep going. The first two seasons of Picard were middling at best.

40:14Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah. Those weren't even great. But man, that ended on a nuclear bomb of awesome.

40:18Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. So there you go. It's just good luck now because I don't know. Yeah.

40:24Brian Schulmeister:There's an article over at Gizmodo called Starfleet Academy Deserved Better Than This. That's worth a read. But Star Trek deserves better than this. Yes. You know. So fuck you, Ellison. I agree. For many, many reasons. Many, many reasons. But yeah. But this is just another one. It's like, I wish they would just sell it. Just take the entire franchise. Give it to Netflix.

40:45Jason DeFillippo:Give it to Netflix. Give it to Apple. Give it to Apple. Apple throws money at SyFy and they're all been crap. And you just give them Star Trek and it'll be awesome.

40:55Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I mean, we're coming up on what? Season six of that one show that we always say we're going to watch. never watch um the space one with the russians uh i can't even remember the name of it right now but then in foundation they gave all that money to foundation for all those seasons and it's like what the hell so yeah okay tim cook if even if it as your as your last great you know humanitarian thing just go over to larry ellison's son or larry whichever one it doesn't matter they're the same They're cloned like Foundation. That's the cloning of the Emperor and Foundation. Just go buy Star Trek.

41:34Brian Schulmeister:We'll forgive you.

41:35Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I'd be fine with Apple getting it, but you know who should really get it, Jason, because this is where the real money would start to come. Let Disney buy it. Let Disney buy it and let them make a Star Trek land. Oh, my God.

41:50Brian Schulmeister:That would be pretty awesome. That would be pretty awesome. though the problem is you'd have the nerd fights in Frontierland where the Star Wars world and Star Trek world would get together. You got Will Wheaton

42:00Jason DeFillippo:in between going we're okay. You can like both. Oh. Fucking Will. All right. Remember I talked about Shrek and how my kids started to get into it. The first one was kind of rocky and not that good but they progressively got better through two and three. We just watched Shrek 4 Shrek Forever After. I didn't even know there was a four. Oh, boy, was that a drop in quality. Okay. I understand why they took a long time off making it after that. Apparently, there's a fifth one that's in production right now, coming soon. Oh, my God. Hopefully, they refound their writing, but this one was horrible. Next up, we're going to do the Puss in Boots standalone movies, which from what I recall were very funny.

42:43Jason DeFillippo:So, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw the first one. That was pretty good. Yeah. All right. and daredevil born again season two dropped this week the first episode i thoroughly enjoyed it

42:53Brian Schulmeister:very absolutely yeah so glad that's back so glad that's back uh yeah jessica jones not backing it yet but you know we're waiting with bated breath five minutes at the end of season of episode eight

43:05Jason DeFillippo:which will end the season yeah probably probably what we're gonna get yeah uh continue to watch shrinking quality is still one episode's really good one episode's kind of boring the next episode's really good the next episode's kind of boring so that's been uh interesting what hasn't been that way is the pit uh the pit is by far my favorite show on television right now this every every episode is fucking cracking just seems to pass immediately it's my wife and i always look at each other going i can't believe it's over already didn't we just sit down this is amazing i can't wait for next week it's really well done jason you should watch it that's what everybody says

43:42Brian Schulmeister:so i guess maybe i'll dig in because i don't really have much else to watch since star trek's

43:46Jason DeFillippo:off the air and i hate these kind of shows like i hate medical dramas except for house house is the only one i've ever liked this is amazing house okay yeah yeah the whole medical procedural thing

43:57Brian Schulmeister:just doesn't yeah you know same same but this is great all right i'll maybe i'll give it a shot give it a shot uh what i won't be giving a shot is harry potter and the philosopher's stone the new series coming on hbo max this uh winter i watched the trailer i think the trailer is probably great for kids and it's going to be great for a next gen a new generation of harry potter fans

44:20Jason DeFillippo:you know it's not for you jason there's no doubt about that um i watched the first one was barely for me i watched the trailer as well uh i like the concept the fact that they're doing each season is a is the book so they can get a lot more into the stories and and and tell more of the actual book than the movies did i will always have a soft spot in my heart for the original cast and the original movies because they were awesome let me the biggest problem i have with this and i wasn't impressed at all either and this goes back to what uh bittner talked about once and on the show with us there's no color to it no it is dark and drab and almost monochrome the original movies burst with colors it was amazing it was beautiful it's magic it's exciting and we got the greens and the reds and all the house colors.

45:11Jason DeFillippo:This is so washed out and drab and horrible looking. And I hate it. I hate it. I fucking hate it.

45:21Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. It's just muted blah. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. They're going to ruin it with that. Ruin it. Yeah. I didn't even pick that up until you mentioned it. I'm like, there was definitely something missing. And it's just like, you know, the house colors were just like, you know. And even my roommate has even talked about this. It's like when we watch these shows and we have the brightness on our TV cranked up. I did the Consumer Reports thing that you told me to do to make my TV max. I maxed out my viewership on my TV, my TV maxing. And it is still too dark to see in a regular room during the day.

45:56Brian Schulmeister:These scenes are so dark, you can't see shit anymore.

46:00Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, and I don't understand it for this first season in the first book because it is so for children. And it is so supposed to bring you into the world and be exciting and fun and beautiful and colorful. And it's for kids. And you wash it all out and make it like we're watching a medical procedural drama for adults. That's like, no, that's not what it's supposed to be. And I understand it gets darker later on as they get older and they're in rain. But this whole first thing should be a fucking rainbow explosion.

46:31Brian Schulmeister:It should be. It's not Fight Club with magic wands. Yeah, exactly.

46:35Jason DeFillippo:I don't get it. I don't get the choice to do it this way.

46:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So it is what it is. I'll still watch it. Yeah, you got a kid. You can. You have permission. You have my permission. Thanks. And Stephen Colbert is going to be writing the next Lord of the Rings movie, it turned out, with his son. So I don't know about Stephen's history with Lord of the Rings, but apparently he's a super duper Uber fan. Oh, massive. Huge. So there we go. So I'm fine with it. I like Steven.

47:06Jason DeFillippo:I like the fact that he's a total nerd about it. There's probably not too many people on the planet more prepared to write something like this. I will say that one little thing that I read in some of the articles about this that gave me a, is this an Elon Musk thing? Will we ever see this? Probably not. is I realized that in order for them to keep the IP, for Amazon to keep the IP, they have to have a movie in development at all times. Oh, dear. Okay. They don't actually have to produce a movie, but something has to be in development.

47:43Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Okay. Well, we'll see. Hopefully, you know, hopefully they'll do it. Hopefully it'll be good.

47:50Jason DeFillippo:Look, I'm all for it. I like the show. I like the Amazon show. I like, I think the original three movies, even the extended ones that require me to sit there for 12 fucking straight hours to watch them are unbelievably good. I don't need The Hobbit. I never need to see those movies again unless you can. I want a short and condensed one hour version of that. Exactly. Of those three movies. The anti-extended edition. But I'm all for more Lord of the Rings content as long as it's good. So that's all I need.

48:19Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And, you know, you turned me around on the series. I actually really liked the series. I got really bummed when I finished it so fast because I binged it. And I'm like, where's the rest of it? Like, oh, it's going to be two more years. I'm like, fuck you. And I just finished rewatching over the Christmas break. I rewatched all the extended editions of the original movies. My favorite Christmas movies. It was an absolute phenomenal experience again. They have total legs. And this is something that I still have never seen the Hobbit movies. They're horrible. That's what I heard. They're not horrible.

48:51Jason DeFillippo:But if you edited all three movies into one, it would be great. It's the fact that it's six hours of that crap.

48:58Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. The story was too thin. Six hours is only one of the other ones. So I'm kind of tempered with how long shit takes. So maybe I'll just watch it. But I want to do the pit first. I'll do the pit first. Okay. Okay. The Supreme Court just handed ISPs a major win, ruling unanimously that companies like Cox Communications aren't liable for what users pirate unless they actively encourage it. For once, it is just a platform. Yeah, yeah. So that kills Sony Music Entertainment's attempt to force providers into acting like copyright cops and mass-kicking users off the internet. A little late on this one.

49:34Brian Schulmeister:The court leaned on Sony's own 1984 Betamax case, basically saying, if a service has legitimate uses, and the internet definitely does, you don't get to blame the pipe. That's questionable nowadays. You don't get to blame the pipe. So, but the problem is Cox had already been hit with a$1 billion verdict back in 2019, which was later overturned. But the ruling shuts the door on that liability theory forever. So, well, until it's relitigated, you know, you can say things are forever. But then I look at Roe v. Wade and go, oh, fuck. Yeah. But so and on the final, this is the bad news of the week or at least the predictably annoying news.

50:16Brian Schulmeister:Netflix is raising prices again across every subscription tier up to$12 or up to 12.5%. So, yeah, every plan is going up, which is like, great, just what we need. So, you know, if the Warner Brothers deal had gone through, maybe.

50:35Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, then you would have a reason.

50:37Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but Netflix's president assured everyone the shelved Warner Brothers deal had, quote, no impact on their pricing strategy. So this one is 100 % all them. And if you don't like it, co-CEO Ted Sarandos wants you to know that you can't, and this is a real quote, cancel with one click. Thanks, Ted. Very helpful. Appreciate it. I might. There's not a lot I watch on Netflix. That's the only one I can't cancel. I got too much stuff on there that I watch. So you got me by the balls, Ted. Fuck you. Well, that's the problem. They know it.

51:15Brian Schulmeister:at the library.

51:19Jason DeFillippo:I decided I needed to take a break from fiction after the last few books that I read. So I wanted to, I've been hearing about this book for a while, so I wanted to check it out. It's called Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. And it's basically supposed to be, you know, it's a bit Elon Musk. It over promises and under delivers. The book is supposed to basically tell you, you know, you were breathing wrong, which a lot of people are. The TLDR on that is breathe in through your nose at all times. Never breathe in through your mouth. Your nose is designed to take air in. There's a bunch of reasons for it.

51:55Jason DeFillippo:He actually illustrates those perfectly, makes total sense. Then he goes on flights of fancy about how basically this can solve everything. It will cure cancer if you learn how to breathe properly, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't say cure cancer. I don't want to get sued by the guy. And there's way too many personal, I guess I just don't like the way he writes. It's way too many personal stories, not enough science, not probably because there isn't about a lot of the claims being made here. A lot of anecdotal evidence, not a lot of real evidence, a lot of, well, people just aren't studying this when if you actually then go in and Google search, they are, and they did.

52:34Jason DeFillippo:And maybe that's not quite so true. I'm trying to decide if I want to finish the book because there are nuggets in there. That's pretty good. I decided to use my AI, my clawed, my desktop clawed. And I popped in. I was like, okay, can you tell me what are the actual scientific opinions about Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor? And it basically came back with decidedly mixed.

52:59Brian Schulmeister:Okay, that's helpful.

53:01Jason DeFillippo:So yeah, again, it comes down to some of it is actually studied and pretty spot on and pretty basic. And, you know, if you're curious about it, and there are some interesting stories in there. And there, I've been definitely more focused on my breath and how I breathe now, particularly when I'm exercising, because I used to just huff and puff because that you think that's what you're supposed to do. No, I breathe in through the nose, measured, relaxed. I've learned some timing methods that I use now. I find that I get, I have more energy when I work out, I'm able to, to lift stronger, go faster on my bike, all that sort of stuff.

53:36Jason DeFillippo:It actually really does help. So there are some great nuggets in here that are worth learning about. It's just, it's a really long book to get to just those nuggets. And then the other thing I wanted to point out, which I kind of knew, but it just never clicks into my head right. Exhaling is actually how you lose weight. You don't sweat it out. You don't anything. It's all carbon monoxide leaving your body. That is how you lose weight. So if you learn to breathe properly, to maximize the output of carbon dioxide from your body, you are actually helping yourself to lose weight, which is kind of cool.

54:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it is. It is cool. Also, if you've ever, take a voice lesson, you know, just take a little bit of voice classes for a couple of weeks and you'll learn everything you need to know about breathing. That's one of the best things that you can do. Yes, in through the nose, out through the mouth and learn a couple of different techniques.

54:33Jason DeFillippo:Deepen your diaphragm, feel your ribcage separate and rise with each breath exactly exactly from the diaphragm from

54:40Brian Schulmeister:the diaphragm and when you get stressed out learn box breathing oh box breathing is the best after

54:45Jason DeFillippo:my surgery when i was like in pain that got me through it yeah box breathing you know very simple you know four in hold four four out hold four yep and you can change those numbers based on

54:57Brian Schulmeister:based on lung capacity and things like that but four four four four is the is the easy way to remember it so there we go four on the floor closing shout outs over at patreon we've got a couple new subscribers first is byron and byron right scene what do you mean you don't like firefly insanity this membership's not for you this membership is for the other guy the guy with taste love the show look forward to it every week i am now officially the other guy yeah you're the

55:27Jason DeFillippo:guy. That's okay.

55:28Brian Schulmeister:You're the guy with no taste and I'm the other guy.

55:30Jason DeFillippo:Somebody on YouTube basically thinks I'm Dave and keeps responding to things that I said and is like, Dave. I'm like, I'm not Dave, man. Dave's not here, man.

55:40Brian Schulmeister:I should get on that lower third business so people can remember who the fuck we are. The next one comes from Sean. Thank you both. Your grumpiness is proof that I'm not alone. Please continue shitting on the tech elite because we all knew who they really are. Don't wear that fucking shirt out again, Suckerberg. How's the Metaverse doing, you Ray-Ban wearing wannabe bunker bro? Thank you for your time. Godspeed. Thank you, Sean. Sean, some box breathing might help you. Helps us. Helps us get through the show every week. And we'd also like to thank Jamie, Jim, Plumman, Vision, XT1, Niklaus, Karts, Tiny Wings, Rabbi Steven, Les Deux Lesbiennes Fabelieu, and Clark.

56:23Brian Schulmeister:Thank you all so much for your continued you to patronage at patreon i think i found my favorite patreon

56:32Jason DeFillippo:over at paypal we've got charlie joseph jens and jason who gave us a 50 donation thank you so much

56:39Brian Schulmeister:great name thanks for the 50 over the tip jar we've got steven kathleen jennifer and gabriel with the big 20 so thank you all very much and we are a fan supported show so if you would like to keep the show on the air please head over to gog.show slash donate or you can go to patreon.com slash GOG and sign up for as little as$3 a month. You buy the whole year, you get a discount. And that's as little as. You can give as much as you like. We'll take whatever you want to give us. I recommend the Gold Monkey tier. Mighty fine tier. You get to show a little early, ad-free, and in high definition. So thank you all for your continued support.

57:10Jason DeFillippo:All right. It was about, what was it? Oh, my God. It's been two years now already. Right around this time that we lost Carl Wallinger, the main driving force behind World Party. Good friend of mine, close friend of mine. I was very sad to hear it. I unfortunately don't think I'm going to be able to make it over to London for this, but the family and friends have put together a special concert that will be taking place. It's a celebration of Carl Wallinger's life and music presented by all World Party members. There were quite a few and special guests. It'll be the 25th of October this year at Shepherds Bush Empire in London.

57:45Jason DeFillippo:More details are to follow. Sign up at worldparty.net to hear them first. If you can make it to the show, I guarantee you it's going to be phenomenal. I'm going to try my damnedest to get there, but that's just not looking good for me right now.

57:58Brian Schulmeister:That would be a fun show. That would be a fun show. Very missed. Very missed. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Guy. I'm the guy that likes Firefly. Jason DeFillippo. Right. He's the other guy. Firefly guy, me, not Dave.

58:13Jason DeFillippo:Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 739. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Want the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness of friends, foes, and everyone in between. Tell them that Dave's guy is hilarious. Swim by gog.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, feelings? Except for Dave, because he can't get on Discord. Dave's not there, man.

58:42Jason DeFillippo:Hit us up at gog.show slash contact. And don't forget to leave us a five-star review at gog.show slash review, and we'll read it on the show. And guess what? We've got merch. I swear to God we're going to make new merch someday. Snag your grumpy gear at shop.gog.show. Stay grumpy.