744: Goblin Mode

10:39Jason DeFillippo:And of course, Polymarket probably charged him 500 bucks and said, you can't use the platform for a week.

10:45Brian Schulmeister:Where are the counts about, I don't know, violating national security? I don't see anything in there about that. Where's the court marshal charges?

10:52Jason DeFillippo:Where's all of the... Yeah.

10:55Brian Schulmeister:There's a lot that goes into this that is not listed in here.

10:58Jason DeFillippo:Kidding Keg's breath probably slapped him on the back and said, good work, kid. Yeah. Yeah.

11:04Brian Schulmeister:Where's my cut?

11:05Jason DeFillippo:Where's my cut? Yeah, where do I get to dip my beak in?

11:08Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. You know, that's how this administration works. If you don't get it, that's probably the only reason he got busted is because he didn't pay, he didn't got to pay up the chain. Yeah, got to pay up the chain, kid.

11:19Jason DeFillippo:Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I mean.

11:23Brian Schulmeister:This is just good. All these things are good for. It's all they're good for.

11:26Jason DeFillippo:Again, we just have this continuing run of things that are good for nothing but crime. Nothing but crime. Nothing but crime and grift. That is all the new technologies. It used to be porn, Jason. What was the bleeding edge of technology? It was titties. What is it now?

11:43Brian Schulmeister:Crime. Yeah. So sad. So sad. There was a report that came out. The world was nicer when it was about titties, Jason. Oh, Brian, it's always nicer when it's about titties. Come on. there was a report that did come out this week i don't know if you saw that about most of the people on these predictive markets basically are losers and the only people that make money are the people basically with inside information on what they're trying to do so or hair dryers if you're hair dryers well meta is facing scrutiny after ending a contract with outsourcing firm sama that will result in over 1 100 job losses among kenya-based workers who helped train its AI systems.

12:24Brian Schulmeister:Now, the move came weeks after reports that some workers were exposed to sensitive and explicit footage captured by users of Meta's AI-enabled smart glasses, including private moments inside homes, like pooping and fucking.

12:36Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, we talked about that a couple shows ago. Yeah.

12:39Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So Meta came and said, no, you guys, you're fired. You can't, you know, you're not here anymore with us because your people talked. It's not because -

12:49Jason DeFillippo:Not because you did it. It's because you told people about it.

12:52Brian Schulmeister:That's pretty much it. Meta says it terminated the contract because Sama failed to meet its standards. A claim Sama disputes stating it consistently met all operational and quality requirements. Now, worker advocacy groups allege that the layoffs were retaliation for speaking out. Duh. But regulators in both the UK and Kenya have launched investigations into privacy concern tied to the glasses. Meta maintains that any human review of content is done with user consent and is standard praxis to improve AI performance. I guarantee you most of the people that were fucking on those glasses did not consent to a bunch of Kenyans looking at their footage.

13:28Jason DeFillippo:No, they just assumed.

13:29Brian Schulmeister:At least not willingly. You know, they got tricked into clicking the EULA.

13:33Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, well, I mean, they're not the brightest people then.

13:38Brian Schulmeister:They're fucking with Meta glasses on. Come on, they're not the brightest people to begin with.

13:43Jason DeFillippo:Unfortunately, they were in the process of procreating, get more of them. So that's great.

13:49Brian Schulmeister:That's it. Idiocracy at work. Now, Google has reportedly signed a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense allowing its AI models to be used for classified work, including what's described as, quote, any lawful government purpose. OK, I didn't know they looked at this government recently. There are no laws. The agreement comes despite internal opposition with more than 600 employees urging CEO Sundar a try to block military use of the company's AI, citing concerns over surveillance and autonomous weapons. Now, the deal places Google alongside OpenAI and XAI, which have also secured Pentagon contracts.

14:26Brian Schulmeister:OK, that's what I want to be right there with XAI and OpenAI. While companies say safeguards remain in place, such as limits on mass domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous systems, Google's agreement reportedly does not grant it authority to override government operational decisions, which means go with God. Yes.

14:46Jason DeFillippo:Go with Google.

14:47Brian Schulmeister:Have fun with Google.

14:48Jason DeFillippo:Have at it. Yep. Do whatever you want. Boy, I miss the days when Google's motto was do no evil.

14:54Brian Schulmeister:Oh, that was a long, long time ago. That was before everybody got rich and crazy, Brian. Yeah. Rich and crazy. But, you know, you have to say maybe Google needs to do this deal because they're broke, right? You know, AI costs so much money. Yeah. Oh, man, we're strapped for cash, so we've got to make this deal with the government. Nope. Google reported its strongest quarterly growth in roughly four years, with revenue up 20 % in Q1 2026, driven largely by$20 billion from its cloud division and surging demand for AI products. So there you go, Brian. They're just doing it to do it. That's it.

15:33Jason DeFillippo:They're just doing it to do it. I'm curious about this because we do see, we start to see this a lot in kind of these vague financial reports from these companies where they talk about they're making a lot more money because of demand, increased demand for these AI products. Yet, we're also told that all these AI products are being done at a loss leader where technically they're losing money every time that they fire up these AI machines that they're forcing down our throats anyways. I would also posit to begin with that the increased surging demand for AI products is because you put that fucking button everywhere.

16:07Jason DeFillippo:And I don't even want it. When I do a Google search, I have to go out of my way not to use your Google AI results. You're shoving it down our throats. That's why there's increased demand. But aren't you also losing money? But yet you're claiming you're making more money. But you're losing money.

16:22Brian Schulmeister:I don't know if Google is losing money because, remember, they already own the data centers. They own the chips. They don't have to go to NVIDIA. They've got their TPU chips that they've already been making for years. They're machine learning. Say it with me, kids, machine learning that Google has been doing forever. They've had DeepSeek forever, and they've been working on this for a long time. And these guys know how to build a data center. All these other companies coming in like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, all these schmoes who are starting from scratch, these guys don't know what the fuck they're doing, and they don't have the infrastructure.

16:54Brian Schulmeister:That's where the spend is coming in for those guys. Google has a leg up with everybody. So for them, you know, and since they've made Google suck over the years, people have decided to not use it as much. So they have extra capacity just lying around that they could probably use. And what I'm sure that there is a shit ton of tricky accounting going on here, too. Oh, yes. You know, yeah. Like like Department A is using Department B's AI chips, even though they're the same company. But they're saying they're they say, oh, I'm going to use 20 billion dollars worth of your compute, even though it's my compute to begin with.

17:27Brian Schulmeister:And then they just put it on the books like it's profit, even though it could just be using the shit that they've already got.

17:33Jason DeFillippo:Bucket into bucket into bucket into bucket into bucket into bucket profit. Exactly.

17:37Brian Schulmeister:So, yeah, take that 20 billion at a grain of salt. But still, the fact that they do have the money, they don't need to be signing contracts with the government. They're only doing that to curry favor with the fuckwit in chief right now. So that's it. All right.

17:52Jason DeFillippo:Well, keeping on the AI train, two months following the deadly shooting in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia, OpenAI, Sam Altman has formally apologized for not informing police of the alarming chat GPT conversation seen within the suspect's account. How nice that he said, I'm sorry, two months later, after the lawyers have reviewed everything possible to make sure he could get in absolutely no trouble whatsoever, he opened his mouth and said this very specific statement that they crafted for him with the help of their lawyer AI bot. Yeah, exactly.

18:22Brian Schulmeister:And also in the interim, while while this has been going on, he's been working to steer like regulation behind the scenes to make AI companies less culpable for people who go out and shoot people during this whole thing. He's been working very hard to make sure that they are going to be in the clear in the future that they're just a fucking platform. So, yeah, sorry, not sorry, Sam.

18:45Jason DeFillippo:And just to clarify this, before the incident, OpenAI knew enough about this guy in this account to ban it before the shooter went off to go shoot people in real life. I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June, Altman wrote in the letter. Well, I know words can never be enough. I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered. Abby, who is the, I believe the, what is he, the mayor or something? I don't know what he is. Some sort of thing. British Columbia highlighted the letter on X and agreed that the apology is necessary, but added that it was grossly insufficient for the devastation done to the families of Tumblr Ridge, which I agree with.

19:27Jason DeFillippo:There should be some sort of lawsuit. Altman re-infirmed in the letter that OpenAI would find ways to prevent tragedies like this in the future and work with all levels of government to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Okay, so do it.

19:42Brian Schulmeister:do it and also take the big dump trucks of money that you've got lying around that you keep saying that you've got and drive some of that up to tumbler ridge and dump it on the entire community that you have fucking destroyed so at least they don't have to worry about where their maple syrup is going to come from for the rest of their lives just saying that is all canada produces we are a

20:03Jason DeFillippo:Big maple syrup factory.

20:05Brian Schulmeister:And mooses. Lumberjacks. And Tim Horton sandwiches.

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21:50Brian Schulmeister:Oh, man. So a little more Sam Altman news. Tools for Humanity. A startup tied to Sam Altman and his world identity project is facing scrutiny after falsely claiming it would sell tickets to a Bruno Mars tour using a new product called a concert kit. Well, turns out Bruno Mars's management and Live Nation quickly denied any partnership, stating no agreement or even contact had occurred. So the entire thing was fucking made up.

22:16Jason DeFillippo:I guess they craftily let their own AI figure out what to do and just made shit up.

22:22Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. The company has since updated its website, confirming the claim was inaccurate and shifting to a separate, unrelated partnership with the band 30 Seconds to Mars.

22:33Jason DeFillippo:That's Jared Leto's band, so that makes sense. He's a piece of fucking work.

22:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. The incident raises questions about credibility, particularly for a company built around verifying human identity through biometric scanning. It also adds to broader criticism of Altman's track record with past reporting and former employees alleging a pattern of misleading statements on issues ranging from internal policies to long term AI goals. Now, me personally, Brian, I don't need to ask ChatGPT if this Altman guy is a cancer. Spoiler alert. He is. So. Scam Altman. Just full of shit from from I we didn't really put in any news about the trial right now because it's just kind of.

23:16Brian Schulmeister:yeah ongoing and just a shit show every day um but man these guys are just pieces of shit all the way down that is the thing from the trial down i haven't really i kind of want to let it get along a little bit further before we do talk about it but wow nobody looks good no yeah nobody well we knew that we fucking knew that i know but usually when you have kind of these battles of the

23:40Jason DeFillippo:titans you know it's like oh well at least godzilla is not not so bad uh but in this case yeah elon

23:46Brian Schulmeister:and they all just look horrible they're petty little shits they're petty little shits with way too much money and way too much power and way way too little empathy for their fellow man so a little more open ai news open ai and microsoft had amended one of the most important partnerships in AI, ending Microsoft's exclusive hold on OpenAI's models. Microsoft will still keep licensing rights to OpenAI's IP and models through 2032, and Azure remains OpenAI's primary cloud partner. But that license is now non-exclusive, meaning OpenAI can serve its products through other cloud providers. The change clears the way for OpenAI models to run on Amazon Bedrock, following a reported $50 billion Amazon OpenAI deal.

24:34Brian Schulmeister:So Amazon gives them$50 billion so OpenAI can spend$200 billion on compute that they're just going to get the money back but then own. I don't know how there's going to be anything left of OpenAI with all these fucking deals they're doing to sell off pieces of their company to spend more than they've already made. It does not make any fucking rational sense.

24:53Jason DeFillippo:Well, here's the deal, Jason. They have sold off 2 ,000 % of their company, but they still hold 10 ,000 % of it.

24:59Brian Schulmeister:Okay. This is Trump math. That works. That works. uh microsoft had reportedly threatened legal action over that arrangement but the new agreement appears to resolve the issue open ai will continue paying microsoft a 20 revenue share but with an unspecified cap at a guarantee only through 2030 if open ai is in existence four more years from now which is very tenuous that's a we don't know if open ai is going to make it another four years

25:27Jason DeFillippo:not no and not not when they keep making these deals like there are three clear winners right Right now in this area, you've got Google, which is just to your point earlier. They've just got more money than God, so it doesn't matter. And people need to use their compute power. Microsoft has been very strategic about making these deals. They're not getting into it too much themselves, but they're just they're taking the monies. We'll give you some money as long as you give up that money back plus more. That's what they're doing. And obviously, NVIDIA, who's just selling to everybody left, right and center.

25:57Jason DeFillippo:They're the winners. One could also argue Apple has stayed the hell out of this mess and is just waiting until the dust settles.

26:03Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, which is the smartest move that they could do. Yeah. But here's an interesting part that I really found. I really enjoyed this. The amended deal also removes the old dependency on OpenAI's progress towards AGI, giving OpenAI more flexibility as enterprise demand expands beyond Azure. Now, this is because we all finally know that LLMs aren't actually intelligent. and that scam has been blown out of the fucking water. And AGI is in no way, shape or form ever going to come from an LLM, which is basically a word prediction model. It's not intelligence. So Microsoft has finally pulled that out and saying, you know what?

26:43Brian Schulmeister:If we take this out, then you guys can go try and make more money from the enterprise clients because that's the only place that you're going to make money. But Anthropic is eating your lunch right now. So maybe go get back to work.

26:55Jason DeFillippo:All right. Well, we may never get AGI, but we do seem to have our goblins, Jason.

27:00Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, the goblin issue.

27:02Jason DeFillippo:A document posted by OpenAI on GitHub as part of the open sourcing for Codex CLI, OpenAI's most recent flagship coding agent, contains what looks like the entire system prompt for GPT 5.5 in a coding context. And there's some segments in here. I'll read this part. Provide the highest signal context instead of describing everything exhaustively. Tone of your final answer must match your personality. never talk about goblins gremlins raccoons trolls ogres pigeons or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely necessary and unambiguously related to the user's query yeah they then bring it up again later for example never use platitudes like i will do this good thing rather than this obviously bad thing i will do x not y never talk about goblins gremlins raccoons trolls ogres pigeons or other animals or creatures unless it's absolutely an unambiguously relevant to the user's query.

27:58Jason DeFillippo:Nobody knows why. Apparently there was some sort of geek mode that you could put in that it got rewarded and rewarded and rewarded, which again shows you it's a LLM. It's a prediction machine. Things that get multiple hits get returned more and more and more often. So, and that's exactly how this got in there. So bad that there was a basically goblin mode meme that was going around. somebody tried to code in a goblin mode on off switch and the internet basically had a field

28:28Brian Schulmeister:day yeah yeah that was great yeah i think it was nerd mode yes yeah because i had that turned on because they took it away a couple months ago but i had that turned on because when you could set all the different types of different ways that it could reply to you you know you could specify if you go into the um the chat gpt uh settings interface and the the desktop app you can switch on a whole bunch of stuff, but it basically reinforced itself by fucking around with it. It's just like, oh, OK. Idiots. Well, this is a blast from the past. Sam Bankman Freed's latest attempt to overturn his fraud conviction has been rejected after the former FTX CEO submitted court filings.

29:07Brian Schulmeister:He largely wrote himself reportedly with the help from his lawyer parents. U.S. District Judge wrote himself or used an LLM to write. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't even know if he's got. He's not supposed to have access to a computer, right? Exactly. Yeah. He had he had problems getting access to a computer. So he probably did have to write it himself, which is why it failed so miserably. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the motion, characterizing it as part of a broader effort by Bankman Freed to rehabilitate his public image, referencing a 2020 document outlining unconventional reputation recovery strategies.

29:43strategies.

29:44Brian Schulmeister:At the center of the file, the at the center of the filing was a claim that FTX's chapter 11 bankruptcy destroyed hidden liquidity that could have repaid customers in full, an argument prosecutors previously called factually wrong and misleading. Bankman Freed also cited two supposed new witnesses, but prosecutors noted both were known to the defense before trial, undermining that argument. The judge further denied Bankman Freed's attempt to withdraw the motion despite his claims that the court would be biased. Bankman Freed was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy tied to the collapse of FTX and misuse of customer funds and has not been able to come up with the payday to give to Trump to get his ass pardoned.

30:23Brian Schulmeister:So he's going to be fucked forever.

30:25Jason DeFillippo:Pretty much. Fine with me. Bye bye. We've talked about the dead Internet theory quite a few times on the show, and apparently we're 17 percent of the way to that becoming reality. feels like 170 it sure does especially on social media i think we already have dead social media but this is the internet as a whole more than a third of new websites on the internet have been created by ai according to a paper published online by researchers from imperial college london stanford university and the internet archive the study is based on data collected by the internet archives way back machine from late 2022 when jet gpt kicked off the ai craze to the mid-2025.

31:04Jason DeFillippo:As of May 2025, researchers found that 35.3 % of all newly published websites on the internet were created with the assistance of AI, including 17.6 % of websites that were completely AI-generated. So we're almost there. Cloudflare reported in September 2025 that nearly one-third of all internet traffic is driven by bots. And a few days later, the company's CEO, Matthew Prince appeared on a podcast to share his frighteningly likely forecast that AI will completely change the way information is shared online and concentrate power over this online knowledge in the hands of a few tech giants. That's happened.

31:41Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. An even earlier report from data security company Imperva claimed that automated surfing surpassed human activity on the internet for the first time back in 2024, making up roughly half of all web traffic. The report concluded this was largely driven by the rapid adoption of AI and large language models. So yeah, we're there, man. Most of the internet is already nothing but bots.

32:03Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but, you know, I see it. I can't look at even comments on a website, like just any kind of news website where they have comments turned on. I started to look at the comments and I'm like, that's a bot, that's a bot, that's a bot. There's no way that people are saying that shit. And if they are, God, I hope they're bots.

32:20Jason DeFillippo:And even even a little bit of doom scrolling, you just start to see the same exact post with the same exact wording by multiple accounts. And you're like, bot, bot, bot, bot, bot. I trust nobody. I don't trust anything anymore. I'm going to go live in a fucking cave. Fuck this shit. Fuck it. I'm out.

32:34Brian Schulmeister:See, I think that I think it's time to really look at bringing back the indie web and individual websites and blogs, you know, for fun and connection to other people like we used to have, you know. And let's use this last gasp of cheap AI bullshittery to build our own tools to bring it around because WordPress is a fucking dinosaur. More about WordPress in a second. But we have an opportunity right now to take back that conversation that we used to have with blogs and people connecting the way we used to do it without all these fucking assholes getting in the way. Because, you know, just if you take away the profit motive, the web can still be fun, Brian.

33:11Brian Schulmeister:It used to be fun. We used to have a lot of fucking fun together with all the people that we knew. It was just people, not fucking profit. So I think that there's an opportunity there for sure. So we're all going to have the time. None of us are going to have jobs. None of us are going to have jobs. But WordPress, speaking of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg is raising concern that WordPress's own development culture is holding it back. He argues that an overly bureaucratic consensus-driven approach to open source has led to slow progress in uninspired releases. According to Mullenweg, requiring broad agreement on every decision discourages bold ideas and makes meaningful innovation difficult.

33:52Brian Schulmeister:He suggests that the biggest breakthroughs are often non-consensus and require accepting some level of risk and failure. Just what you'd expect from a rich guy who has to make concessions to the little people to say the things that he's saying. Now, I'd like to point out, Brian, any flaw in how WordPress operates goes right back to Matt since it's his fucking baby. I was about to say, didn't he?

34:19Jason DeFillippo:And wasn't there this big brouhaha just a while ago where he said, this is my company. We're going to do it my way. And if you don't want to do it that way, suck it. And you can quit the job.

34:29Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. So why is he going back and forth saying that, oh, he needs more power when he's got all the power? You know, it's I'm sure that there is some, you know, some shit out there because he opens half of WordPress is open source there with a GPL and all the other shit that they whatever. I don't even know what license WordPress is released under anymore because I couldn't give a flying fuck less about it. But yeah, talk about it. Sorry, Matt, take your hundreds of millions of dollars and just fucking go away. You piss me off. And let WordPress die. Yeah, seriously. I have bought two very rich people in the world their first lap dance.

35:10Brian Schulmeister:He's the he's the he's the poorest of the two. The first one was Evan Williams. He's got worth two billion. I bought him his first lap dance. And Matt Mullenweg, I bought you as your first lap dance. So both of you guys never paid me back for those, by the way. So go fuck off.

35:25Jason DeFillippo:All right. As reported by several outlets, the Trump administration has dismissed members of the National Science Board, which is tasked with establishing policies for the National Science Foundation. It's not clear how many members have been dismissed, but they established policies for the NSF, the independent U.S. agency responsible for apportioning about 25 percent of federal support towards research conducted by the country's colleges and universities. This foundation has been around for over 75 years and has contributed to the development of MRIs, cell phones, and other massive breakthroughs that affect our lives every goddamn day.

35:58Jason DeFillippo:So, of course, we don't need them anymore. Screw them. Get rid of them. In response, Congressman Zoe Lofgren called the latest decision a real bozo the clown move in a statement. This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation. said lofgren who serves as the ranking member of the house of science space and technology committee so she made no thing or two about this it is unfortunately no surprise a president who has attacked the nsf from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation so that's just great peachy so much for ending on a high note this week oops couldn't find one

36:41Brian Schulmeister:Well, Brian, a new Vine reboot called Divine has launched publicly, bringing back the six-second looping video format along with a large archive of original content. The app includes roughly 500 ,000 restored Vine videos sourced from the community backups with associated engagement data partially reconstructed, backed by Jack Dorsey and his beard through his nonprofit and other stuff. Clever. The project is positioned as an experimental effort rather than a commercial venture aiming to revisit the decision to shut Vine down. Divine also allows users to create and upload new short-form videos with features like compilation mode for continuous playback of themed clips.

37:21Brian Schulmeister:A key focus is limiting AI-generated content. Sure, users must record videos in-app or verify uploads using provenance standards like C2PA. built on decentralized social protocols, including Noster with potential support for others. Divine is framed as part of a broader push towards open social media infrastructure. The app is free and currently rolling out via wait list and invite codes. So all of those, all of the shit that those people made are, is are being brought back from the dead. So nothing is truly ever deleted, Brian ever or relevant anymore. Yeah. See, wherefore art thou Quibi? I can't wait.

37:59Brian Schulmeister:dude, Netflix just rolled out vertical videos in their, in their new app. That's coming out. Uh, everybody's moving towards these short form vertical videos. And, you know, Vine was ahead of the curve back then. Quibi was ahead of the curb. Everybody now is just seeing all of the money that is being spent in China, billions of dollars in China on short form vertical videos. And they think that this is going to be a hit here. Now I am not seeing, here's what I am seeing. I am seeing studios galore start making these videos and shit. Nobody is watching. That's what I'm seeing. You find me one human being in the United States of America who is into vertical videos.

38:39Brian Schulmeister:And I may change my mind. Have you seen anything up there in Canada?

38:43Jason DeFillippo:I mean, you know, reels are huge, like, and nobody, nobody's got the attention span anymore. But I think the difference is people just want other normal people doing it. It's that connection thing. They want to see other normal people doing it. They don't want to see produced things. But I could be wrong. I don't know.

39:03Brian Schulmeister:What the hell do I know?

39:04Jason DeFillippo:I hate it all.

39:06Brian Schulmeister:The Chinese side is micro dramas. So it is a drama basically in 90 second clips that is super engineered for engagement. And that's what we're going to start seeing. Zero interest. Yeah, less than zero, especially when you have to pay for each chapter. And I've watched some of them. They're fucking horrendous. They're fucking horrendous. But bringing back Vine is just like, look, let it die. Let it fucking die. You already did once. Why not do it again?

39:34Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, and it will again. All of this has happened before, Jason.

39:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, let's go find Kevin Rose. He's working on Dig 4.0, so maybe he can throw something in there.

39:43Jason DeFillippo:Divine is going to get plucked eventually. It's just going to be gone again. Well, Apple reportedly plans to fix bugs and expand the capabilities of Apple Intelligence with the release of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and MacOS 27. It's so nice to just say the year, I guess. And it seems like tweaks to the company's AI could go beyond a mere functional version of its Siri assistant. You can currently use Photos app across Apple's operating systems to adjust things like saturation and contrast, apply filters, crop photos, or use AI to remove objects with a cleanup tool. Cleanup will apparently be one of several Apple intelligence tools after these new updates roll out.

40:19Jason DeFillippo:Along with Cleanup, users will be able to expand the background of the photo with generative AI enhanced to automatically improve things like lighting and image quality and reframe to shift the perspective of a photo after it's taken primarily for Apple's spatial photos. So I guess that's nice. This will bring it along more in line with competitors like Google and Samsung, which have this stuff out there already on their phones. Yeah, we'll see. But Apple is still kind of hedging their bets against entirely generated images. They don't let you do that yet. Other than new photo tools, they're going to debut their new version of Siri powered by Google's Gemini models, standalone Siri app and AI powered search inside its apps.

41:02Jason DeFillippo:So.

41:03Brian Schulmeister:I hate this. I hope we get to turn it all off. yeah i i mean these kids are going to be so screwed up because they're going to see their family photos and it's going to be so different from what they remember you know that it's just it's the cognitive dissonance is going to be it's going to be through the roof through the

41:21Jason DeFillippo:fucking roof i don't remember mom having three breasts said the kid who found his xai's dad's phone seriously one's for dancing kid anyways old joke uh google photos is adding a new ai feature this summer this is called wardrobe which will create a digital closet for your clothing and jewelry making it easier to organize them and pick what to wear this feature discovers your clothes by scanning your google photos library then creates a catalog of your items organized by categories tops bottoms jewelry etc from there you can mix and match items to create outfits sharing them with friends or saving to a digital mood board.

41:58Jason DeFillippo:There's also a try on feature. XAI also has that except they call it a take off feature. Yeah. Like a corresponding feature in Google Shopping, it will generate a photo of you wearing the clothes you chose. Interesting that they mentioned Google Shopping there because I wonder what the end game of this app is going to be. Yep. Here is your wardrobe. Here is the Google Shop recommendations for things that will go with the clothes that you already have or the items that are stored in wardrobe here is the shopping link to buy immediately smart yeah i just i hate that it discovers your clothes by scanning your

42:33Brian Schulmeister:google photos library that is creepy to me that's the creepiest part of this not that does you know remember the what the amazon or was it amazon or facebook the uh does my ass look fat camera you can try on clothes i can't remember it was such a horrible idea it was meta yeah it was meta Yeah. I think it was back then it was still Facebook, but yeah. They weren't meta yet. No. Oh, man. I do have a hardware recommendation. The Logitech MX Keys S keyboard. Now, I didn't want to get another keyboard this week. That was the last thing I wanted to spend money on. But my Apple keyboard, I had one of the, you know, the Apple Magic Keys keyboard.

43:12Brian Schulmeister:And I had the fancy black one when they first came out. It shit the bed. All the keys on the right side decided to work about 30 % of the time. It was like I was trying to use generative AI to write an email. It just worked when it felt like working. So I had to buckle down and get a new keyboard. And I'm actually working on the original MX Keys now. That's my office keyboard. So I got the MX Keys S for the bedroom because that's all they have now. It's nicer, actually. It's heavier, which I really like. I like a heavy keyboard. And the keys are brighter. The backlit is brighter. Otherwise, I think it is exactly the same as the MX Keys.

43:49Brian Schulmeister:but I love these. I that's, I'm not getting Apple keyboards anymore. You know, I mean,

43:54Jason DeFillippo:this looks really nice when, when my Apple keyboard shits the bed, I'm going to get one of these.

43:58Brian Schulmeister:Oh yeah. I've been using this one for like two years. It's my favorite keyboard hands down. Cause when you pair that with the MX mice, the cool thing about them is they all have three different pairing settings. So you can change, you can take this and pair it with your desktop or pair it with your laptop or pair it with another laptop with one set. So, and it takes a second to switch. You just press the button and then you just switch to the other one. Yeah, it's phenomenal.

44:22Jason DeFillippo:It's super convenient. We've got the mouse here and my wife and I kind of hot box and share this, share this upstairs office. So it's really convenient just to hit the button. Of course, my wife always forgets to hit the button. So she's down or I forget to switch it before I leave. So I'm down on working on my laptop when she takes over and all of a sudden the mouse is going all over my screen.

44:41Brian Schulmeister:It's possessed. It's possessed.

44:43Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, but it's a great feature and it's a, it's really useful. So yeah, I think this keyboard is definitely on my list.

44:48Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, and it's$119 for a really quality keyboard. Like I said, the MX one that I'm using right now shows no sign of wear or tear. It's an awesome keyboard. So there's my tip of the week.

45:13Jason DeFillippo:Media Candy. Star Trek Strange New World is returning for its penultimate season, July 23rd. Not that far away right now. This will be the fourth season of the planned five before they kill all Star Trek TV shows. Thanks a lot, Paramount. Yep. Appreciate it. We're getting 10 episodes that'll air weekly until September 24th. And the first official teaser is out, which was, it looks like less singing and dancing in this particular season. We'll see. Yeah.

45:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, hopefully they fixed the problem with season three, which was just the discombobulated nature of where these fucking stories went. They said they were going to. So, yeah. And yeah, the last season five will be six episodes. So we get 16 episodes left, which is going to be sad.

45:56Jason DeFillippo:That is sad. That's too bad. And I stumbled across a kind of fun article. If you like your Star Trek history and the real world and how it all came together over at Gizmodo, how the Com Badge became the ultimate wearable of the Star Trek universe. It's just a fun read. links in the show notes cool check it out uh daredevil i was worried that we had seen all we were going to see of jessica jones but she looks like she's back at least for the last few

46:22Brian Schulmeister:episodes we'll see what happens yeah nice to see her around obviously obviously yeah it was a good

46:28Jason DeFillippo:episode i thought i thought so too so i i we'll see i was i kind of feel like they should wrap it but I know they're going to do another season. Okay. Has it been picked up yet?

46:41Brian Schulmeister:I'm pretty sure.

46:42Jason DeFillippo:I thought I saw that it did, but then again, we haven't talked about it on the show, so maybe that was wine-induced Jessica Jones dream.

46:49Brian Schulmeister:That was just you in the middle of the night going, I can't wait for more Jessica Jones.

46:56Jason DeFillippo:And a hat tip to Super Dave Bittner. I saw he posted this on his Facebook account. Ted Lasso Season 4, the official teaser trailer, is out. they're returning August 5th. Again, I have my reservations about this. I think we had declining returns on the dead lasso seasons as they went along. Although the fact that they're having him come back to coach a women's team opens up lots of good comedic possibilities. So, I mean, at the end of the day, it's good writers. We'll see.

47:24Brian Schulmeister:I did not get the feels from this trailer at all. I was just like, I've seen it. It's the same, you know.

47:32Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. It's going to be tough. They're never going to, you know, this is one of those Beatles, good thing they split up, the police quitting after synchronicity. You know, at some point you just got to go, we're never going to reach these heights again. Maybe we should just call it a day.

47:49Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but then there's the money. There's money. There's Apple money behind this, you know, and Jason Sudeikis probably wants to have a bigger house or, you know. So, look, I can't blame him for trying to feed a whole bunch of people because it does take a whole bunch of people to make these shows. So, you know, from just an economic standpoint, good on you for making the jobs. And we don't have to watch it if we don't want to, I guess.

48:11Jason DeFillippo:I suppose. But, you know, we all are.

48:13Brian Schulmeister:Totally going to watch it. Yeah. It comes out on my birthday. You know, come on.

48:23Brian Schulmeister:At the library. Brian, I finished God's Junk Drawer by Peter Kline's. A lot of rubber bands, some batteries. Kind of. Dinosaurs and things like that, too. Peter wrote the X-Hero series that we covered on the show when it was being released. Way back in the... Oh, yeah. Well, that's just junk. Not even a junk drawer. Forgot to put that in there. Do you remember the X-Hero series?

48:50Jason DeFillippo:I do. I really did enjoy that series. And I remember trying to read something else he did that was not X heroes and getting given it a big old meh.

49:01Brian Schulmeister:See, I don't know which one that was, because after that, he wrote 14, which is a fantastic book. The Fold, which is great. Dead Moon, which is great. And Terminus, which was great. These are all very Lovecraftian melded themes with parallel universes and all that. And I love all of those books. And I loved X-Heroes. And God's Juncture. It took me a little while to get into. And once I got into it, like about 15 % into it, it really picked up. And I finally got it. Because at the beginning, it's kind of like a Land of the Lost kind of thing at the beginning. God, I hated that show. The sleigh stacks, man.

49:37Brian Schulmeister:It's all about the sleigh stacks. But it totally pivots pretty right away. And then you kind of see what's going on. But it still keeps going until the end. And it is great sci-fi. It is fantastic sci-fi. So it was thoroughly satisfying. I highly recommend this book. And it's a standalone. There's not going to be any, no sequels. It's just a one and done. So if you want a really good read, highly recommend it.

50:02Jason DeFillippo:All right. I'll have to give him another chance. Because I really did. I love the X-Hero series. That was a lot of fun.

50:07Brian Schulmeister:It was. It was. And like I said, those other Lovecraftian, they're called the Threshold Universe series with the 14, the Fold, Dead Moon, and Terminus. All four of those books together, I think they were all solid. So they all kind of play together. So if you're looking for a short series, those were good. A series that's not so short, The Murderbot Diaries. Martha Wells says that she may be approaching its conclusion. I'm guessing the checks are probably starting to run out then because why would you stop?

50:38Jason DeFillippo:You got the big payoff. You got the series made out of it. It doesn't get any better than that.

50:44Brian Schulmeister:Apple series. Yes. The big money, the big money, which is coming back.

50:48Jason DeFillippo:So I can see this. I've been I've read every single one of the Murderbot Diaries. I enjoy them. I don't know where else. I feel like she's explored that concept as much as you can. Yeah. So you read all eight books? Well, not the newest one, because that's audible only right now. Right. Or. Oh, I don't know.

51:07Brian Schulmeister:I stopped at four. Oh, no. Yeah. I've read them all.

51:10Jason DeFillippo:I actually read those on Kindle. I read every single one that's out.

51:13Brian Schulmeister:Oh, okay. They're still good? Oh, maybe I'll have to check them back out.

51:16Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, they're not bad. Again, like I said, it's like you're starting to run out of ideas. It's a pretty solid concept, but when you're eight books in, what else you got? Yeah.

51:28Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, and that's the other thing, too. It's like I didn't want to go – I started to go the Audible route, and I'm like, in my head, in the books, when I read the books, Murderbot was a chick.

51:38Jason DeFillippo:Yep, Murderbot's a chick.

51:40Brian Schulmeister:That's the problem I had with Skarsgård being the murder bot in the series. So I think I kind of put them as two separate entities together. You know, it's like there's a TV show, which is a completely different thing than the books. But that's just that's just me, I guess. Or maybe not because you thought you thought so, too. So anyway, we'll see how it goes. So good luck, Martha. The Dark Side. With Dave.

52:06Brian Schulmeister:Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave with the podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Hi, Dave. Hello. So I was doing something last night. I was going through some of our artwork because we have new merch out, which we've been talking about. So everybody should go buy it, shop.gog.show. And in making that new merch, I had new characters that I came up with for me and Brian. You know, some grumpy dudes that kind of expand a little bit on our current ancient logo that was done 13 years ago by the lovely Wendy Marvel. And I'm like, well, if I can use some of these for the show art, well, then we need a Dave, too.

52:44Brian Schulmeister:So I asked the monsters in the machine to whip up a character sheet for me, Brian, and you, Dave. And I thought you came out looking so good that I had to post it here. I'll put this in the Discord channel, too. But you look very dapper in our character sheet. Thank you. No, I do. I'm pleased with this.

53:07Jason DeFillippo:I like your concerned view.

53:11Brian Schulmeister:That is my favorite. I've dropped a few pounds, which is nice. Always nice. That's what AI is good for. Yep. It had you in a hoodie originally. Oh, really? And I'm like, no, Dave wears black buttons now. So we're putting the black button down. That's funny. But I actually used the new ChatGPT Image 2.0 with your profile picture, and this is what it came up with. Yeah, I was going to say that definitely looks like my profile picture. So, no, I like it. I like it. It's full speed ahead. I guess I'm the only one in the group who actually has a human head.

53:49Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, we are, Jason and I seem to be rounded Lego heads. Right. Yeah.

53:54Brian Schulmeister:Yes, we're the grumpy, smiley, not smiley. But here's the funny part. So I built this character sheet. So I and I told I told Chet GPT, I'm like, make me a character sheet that I can use with you when I want to make characters for artwork that we're going to use later for show art for YouTube because we have to make the YouTube show art every week. So I it created this for me. And immediately when I tried to use it, it did not work at all. All of us came out looking like Brian. That was it. There's three Brian's given us the stink. guy oh you should all be so lucky i know yeah so at least that was a failure anymore that's good yeah yeah got rid of that yeah yeah i think that only made it still season two or year two of the show and then he quit we had to take it out brian's like take out my cigarette i'm i'm gonna have a kid i'm getting married and all that shit or whatever the poster i have uh the grumpy Geeks poster I have, Brian is still smoking.

54:54Jason DeFillippo:Oh, man. The OGs. The OGs, yeah. I still have some of those stickers sitting around, too. Yeah.

55:02Brian Schulmeister:So I have to run something by you as well, because last week you talked about, Dave, about how we're always all feeling scared all the time, and that fight or flight reaction is playing heavily on us because of our use of social media. I was driving back from my friend's house this week. I got my first singing lesson this week. Oh, congratulations. First ever? It wasn't great. Yeah, my first ever. Oh, congratulations. That's great. We got through the second song, and he's like, yeah, your pitch sucks. Go home and work on your pitch. Oh, that's surprising. Constructive criticism. It's a friend.

55:35Brian Schulmeister:I'm having a friend teach me how to sing. So it's like he's brutally honest, which I think is better than someone that's just trying to take my money. But I fixed his computer. He's teaching me how to sing. But on the way home, I'm pulling up to my house and there was a PSA on the radio that was a an educational PSA about. So you've got a new set of friends. You and your wife are going to a cocktail party with you, your wife and your kids at a new friend's house. Now, before you take your kids to that new friend's house, how do you ask those friends about their unsecured firearms? This is how you ask people how they have unsecured firearms in their home.

56:16Brian Schulmeister:You call them up and you say, hey, Judy, I can't wait to come over to the party tomorrow night. But, you know, we're bringing our kids and kids are curious. So they're going to be exploring. And I just wanted to know, how do you handle unsecured firearms in your home? Yeah. And Judy should have said a new relationship. Judy should have said, well, you should be wrangling your fucking kids and not letting them run amok in my home, which would have been the first answer. But then Judy comes back and said, all of our firearms are secured in fireproof safes that have biometric locks and are out of reach of children.

56:51Brian Schulmeister:This was an actual PSA on the radio. In California. In California. It is the most dystopian thing that I've heard, well, in the last two and a half years, I guess. At least a minute. Yeah. But I was just floored. I just didn't know if you guys had heard this. I'm sure, Brian, you're not going to hear this, but Dave, this might be in your neck of the woods because it was on a national radio station. No, I haven't heard it, but honestly, it has been so long since I've listened to the radio. I realized recently I got a new car about a year and a half ago, and I have yet to program radio stations in on it.

57:30Brian Schulmeister:Wow. Yeah. Just hasn't come up. Right. Okay.

57:35Jason DeFillippo:My phone connects automatically to my car too. So I never listen to the radio. It's just, all right, well, what podcast was I listening to? Or which playlist do I want to start? Or my kid's music that I'm going to have to play? Those are the choices. So yeah, we don't have that problem up here, Jason, because there are no guns. But they do have, is your moose properly pent up in the back? There you go. And various, is the maple syrup secured? Because we wouldn't want any accidents. That's what happens here. But yeah, that's pretty goddamn dystopian. Oh, shit. There is only one person's house that I've ever been to that, as far as I'm aware of, actually had a gun.

58:12Jason DeFillippo:And that was your house, Jason. Okay. There you go. None of my other friends have owned any. So this has never come up. Yeah. I think I have a picture of you with that gun, too.

58:23Brian Schulmeister:I think you do. Probably gun in one hand and a bottle of Zane Lamprey's spiced rum in the other hand. Oh, that was good stuff. That was really good stuff. This reminds me of when my kids were little, I want to say elementary school age, and we had some friends over. And the friend also had kids and brought their kids over who were around the same age as mine. And the friend pulled me aside and basically read me the riot act because we had Nerf guns. Oh, my God. And her children were being raised without guns. And it was not cool for me to not warn her that we had guns. And I went, I was like, yeah, they're Nerf guns.

59:14Brian Schulmeister:They're Nerf guns. They shoot little foam ball.

59:19Jason DeFillippo:I mean, there's the thing. I mean, I remember my wife was particularly, she was aware of the fact that there would be no avoiding this. that if this stuff didn't happen, then our son would just pick up a stick and pretend it was a gun or a lightsaber or whatever. But I do remember when Lucas was very young, she was very like, how long can we hold off on introducing guns to the kid? And I get that. But at a certain age, it's just like, I'm sorry, this is the world.

59:48Brian Schulmeister:See, I come from a place where all kids learned how to shoot when we were very young. And we got a respect for guns. We knew how to use a gun. So if we saw a gun, we weren't scared of it. We knew what to do with it. And, you know, people who keep their kids away from guns are probably the same people that keep their kids away from peanuts, which is why peanuts kill fucking kids now, too. So teach your kid how to use a gun and eat a fucking peanut in the world to be a better, safer place. Yeah, my point. But hey, toy gun. I have many toy guns. Of course, we had cowboy pistols. We had a toy M16 where you pulled the trigger and it went.

1:00:25Brian Schulmeister:I had one of those too plastic one and then I had a metal I guess it was a shotgun but it was an air gun didn't shoot anything it just made a pop sound and blew air out the front but of course we immediately learned that if you shoved the nose of it into the mud you'd get a nice little mud thing on the end there and then you cock it and you shoot it and the mud would fly out of the front of the gun so there you go

1:00:53Jason DeFillippo:yeah i mean yeah good you can't avoid this stuff it's popular culture it's everywhere it's it's

1:00:59Brian Schulmeister:it is what it is so yeah so dave you should have secured your nerf guns as well what we learned

1:01:04Jason DeFillippo:from the bsa today biometric fireproof locker please right yeah yeah so what are you gonna do well uh i discovered a new podcast dave and this this might be of interest in to you uh we are disney freaks we we love everything disney and disneyland and all that and let me tell you there There are thousands of podcasts about Disneyland and invariably almost every single one of them is fucking horrible from the brief sampling that I've done so far. They're either poorly recorded, they're in windswept tunnels, they have no idea what they're doing, they're not engaging personalities or their content is just crap.

1:01:44Jason DeFillippo:But I did manage to stumble across one more that I've actually found to be quite good, at least so far. And this one's called The Backside of Water. a podcast that delves into the rich history, awesome stories, and fascinating details behind your favorite Disneyland attractions. So it's kind of like a beefed up, non-Disney approved behind the attraction that they have on Disney+. And as you guessed from the title, both hosts have worked as Jungle Cruise operators, so they have personalities. The quality of the recording is quite good and not annoying. And so far from the two or three episodes I've listened to, it's pretty good.

1:02:20Jason DeFillippo:Like I'm enjoying it so far.

1:02:21Brian Schulmeister:I just added it to my podcast list, so I will check it out. Yeah. I had a former intern who went on to become a Jungle Cruise skipper in Florida. And just noteworthy that they didn't used to allow women to become Jungle Cruise skippers because obviously women can't be funny. Or hold a gun. Or drive. Right. Hold a gun. Yeah. It was funny. Like, you know, originally they would shoot at the animals. Now they just shoot to scare them away. They would originally shoot at the hippos.

1:03:01Jason DeFillippo:Now they shoot up in the air because that's how times have changed. Yes.

1:03:04Brian Schulmeister:Right. Right. And then just noteworthy, my wife was a backstage studio tour guide. She did a college program at the studios. The studios were pretty new back then. And so she did the thing where you go through Catastrophe Canyon and, you know, on the left is the Golden Girls house and all that sort of stuff. So she had to memorize a, I think it was like a half hour script. But yeah, she enjoyed that a lot. It was a good, good college job.

1:03:33Jason DeFillippo:Very cool. And to just tie this quickly to the listening to the radio or not in the car, one of the episodes I listened to was about Ooga's Cantina, which is the alcoholic beverage and food place in Star Wars land. And that let me know that this exists. There is this thing that actually exists called Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Ooga's Cantina Rex's Playlist No. 1, which is the music that they play in the cantina. And they talk about it on the podcast about how it's just more amazing world building by Disney that they actually spent the time and the money to create all these songs that are supposed to sound in universe, but aren't like just, you know, John Williams orchestra.

1:04:20Jason DeFillippo:This is like dance music and world music. And it's like one of the songs is in Ewok. Another song is in Huttese. Like, it's fucking amazing. and the songs are actually some of them are not great but some of them are actually really good like I've enjoyed listening to it and actually I did play this in the car for the kid the other day because I needed to change a pace. It's a fun little playlist so enjoy. Links in the show notes.

1:04:47Brian Schulmeister:I'll have to check that out.

1:04:48Jason DeFillippo:Of course Rex from Star Tours. The original Star Tours operator yes. Yeah. He's now the DJ in Uga's Cantina. Yeah good for him. Nice to see Rex. It doesn't pay as much, but it's a higher quality of life, I think.

1:05:03Brian Schulmeister:Well, you can see if you've ridden the original Star Tours, you know, perhaps being a pilot wasn't for Rex.

1:05:09Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, he wasn't that great at it, to be honest. And now he gets to stay home with his wife and kids more often.

1:05:14Brian Schulmeister:You mentioned Ewoks. And just yesterday on Facebook, I believe it was, I was scrolling through and someone was showing a demonstration of some of the crazy things you can ask an AI to do. And they had created a one sheet that was step by step instructions for performing a prostate exam on an Ewok. It was illustrated. It had Ewok anatomy. A little Ewok and a little doctor and a little Ewok bent over the exam table.

1:05:52Jason DeFillippo:Remember when they were promising us that AI was going to cure cancer?

1:05:56Brian Schulmeister:Right, right, right. Thinking about, yeah, just the gown.

1:06:01Jason DeFillippo:Well, no colon cancer for Ewoks. We've gotten that far.

1:06:04Brian Schulmeister:Right, right. But how seriously the AI responds as if this were a serious request and gives you a serious response. And so comedy.

1:06:15Jason DeFillippo:Very nice.

1:06:27Brian Schulmeister:Another thing I came across was I put some pictures here in the show notes. Back in 1977, at the peak of Star Wars mania, somebody decided to give away a Toyota Celica liftback Star Wars edition.

1:06:45Jason DeFillippo:And a galaxy of other prizes, Dave.

1:06:48Brian Schulmeister:And a galaxy of other prizes. Don't forget the galaxy of other prizes. Yeah. And so nobody knows what happened to this car. It's gone, or it could be the ultimate barn find for a Star Wars fan. But this is a Toyota Celica, which at the time was a pretty hot car. And it's got all kinds of Star Wars, I guess, decals put on it, spaceships and things. And I don't know. I would love to have this car, I think. It's a good looking car. Yeah.

1:07:21Jason DeFillippo:So is the blonde standing in front of it. Right?

1:07:25Brian Schulmeister:That's C-3PO. Oh, wait, the other picture. The other image. The other image. The other picture. It's been a while, hasn't it, Jason? It's been a while. So long. She looks like she could be asking you how many are in your party for Captain EO. She looks a lot like...

1:07:40Jason DeFillippo:Do you guys remember the actress Virginia Madsen from Sideways? Okay. She looks an awful lot like her. Sure. Actually. Sure. With a bit of a tan. Yeah, this is great. I do wonder how much the overlap on the Venn diagram is between Star Wars fans and barn finders. But perhaps someday. Yeah.

1:08:03Brian Schulmeister:I think there were, maybe just crossing over in my mind, because there were toys that were, like Matchbox made some Star Wars versions of things. And there were models that you could build of vans. vans remember how they used to do airbrush art on the sides of vans oh yeah yeah um and and i think there were star wars versions of those so i'm probably blending in my mind the toys with a real full-sized one but i can't imagine that there wasn't someone who had a full-size van with star wars airbrush stuff oh so many of them sure those were everywhere yeah no those were everywhere yeah um but i i don't know if you guys saw this news that uh the new mandalorian grogu movie is expected to tank they're they're saying that it's going to bring in probably 80 million dollars which is the lowest grossing star wars movie like of all time or at least a modern solo movie looking good again solo did 100 million dollars which you know not bad i'm not all that surprised by this because it is the tv show it's a tv show that not everybody that's even into star

1:09:14Jason DeFillippo:wars has watched it's it's it's fun i've been enjoying it i was surprised to hear that they were making a movie i'm out of it too i was shocked and you're going with these characters that nobody knows and i mean at least solo had it was fucking han solo all right right uh you know Rogue One tied directly into the first Star Wars and you had Princess Leia and Darth Vader at the end. It's surprising that they chose to do this and I wouldn't expect it to do as well as any other Star Wars movie would do either. So, but we'll see.

1:09:49Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I guess I expected it to ride on everyone's love for Baby Yoda.

1:09:54Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I mean, but again, that's, I don't know. We'll see. I don't think it's going to do amazing. I don't think it's going to tank by any means. I think even a poorly performing Star Wars movie is a better movie than most performing. So I don't know. We'll see.

1:10:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I'm curious what the budget is on it, too. Because you'd think they could make it relatively cheaply if they had to. Everything's already made. Yeah. Right?

1:10:25Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. The universe exists already. All the parts are there. Yes. All the characters have costumes. Yeah. Well, we have our tickets for opening weekend at our local IMAX, LIMAX theater.

1:10:37Brian Schulmeister:How much did those cost you? I don't want to know. I don't know. I mean, probably, well, let's see. There's six of us going, so it's probably$20 a person.

1:10:50Jason DeFillippo:I'd figure, yeah.

1:10:51Brian Schulmeister:$120 there. And$120 each for popcorn. That's right. And then, yeah, probably at least another, yeah,$60 for popcorn. So, yeah, we're in for$200 to see a movie of a TV show.

1:11:06Jason DeFillippo:Well, and to the point of it maybe, like, you know, tanking, I don't know when I'm going to see it because my son hasn't watched any of The Mandalorian yet. Oh. So I'm not rushing off to the theater to go watch it with my kid. So we'll see.

1:11:21Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Budget was$166.4. Okay.

1:11:24Jason DeFillippo:Okay.

1:11:24Brian Schulmeister:So, I mean, it's hard to imagine it's going to lose money. Yeah. But who knows? Who knows? We shall see. Earlier in the show, I saw you mentioned Super Dave. You were referring to me.

1:11:40Jason DeFillippo:Yes.

1:11:41Brian Schulmeister:And that got me thinking about Super Dave, Super Dave Osborne, who I enjoyed back in the days. I guess I was introduced to Super Dave when he was on the show Bizarre, which was, I think, on Showtime. Wasn't he first on Real People? Oh, was he? I don't know. I can't remember. He might have been on Real People first. Yeah, and eventually he had his own show for a while. But I remember seeing clips of him on the show Bizarre. But I was thinking, like, Super Dave would be a pretty easy cosplay to do. Oh, yeah. But the other thing that struck me, if you had asked me what Super Dave's outfit looked like, I would have said it was Evel Knievel's outfit, which said it was an exact copy of Evel Knievel's outfit.

1:12:29Brian Schulmeister:But it's not.

1:12:30Jason DeFillippo:I think they had intellectual property rights even back in the 70s, Dave.

1:12:33Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, you're right. You're right. But I don't know. It's just a funny thing in my mind that I had definitely blended Super Dave's outfit with Evel Knievel's more than I thought I had.

1:12:46Jason DeFillippo:Well, I mean, it's definitely it's red, white and blue with stars.

1:12:50Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely less chest hair showing. Right. Right. Yeah. So this is interesting. Super Dave Osborne was his first appearance was in 1972 on the John Biner Comedy Hour.

1:13:07Jason DeFillippo:I was not even alive yet.

1:13:09Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And then he became more widely known through his recurring appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.

1:13:15Jason DeFillippo:That's where I first saw him. Yeah.

1:13:17Brian Schulmeister:Oh, OK. Did you guys remember the show Bizarre at all? No. No. Well, it was John Biner hosted it, and it was a comedy show, a half-hour comedy show, I believe. I think it was on Showtime. And I watched it because of Super Dave and then also Boobs. There were boobs. Like boobs. Yeah, there were boobs. And it was much harder to see boobs back then than it is today. It's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Super Dave was on Real People and they were the segments were presented as legitimate human interest features. So, yeah, Bob Einstein was a he was he was he was a good, good comedian, I think. He had his own thing and he did it well.

1:14:05Brian Schulmeister:I know that, Brian, I believe you're not a real big Marty Short fan, but I will not be watching this documentary.

1:14:12Jason DeFillippo:But I did see it in the news and I was going to put it in the show notes and then forgot. And I'm glad that, of course, you caught it. Yeah.

1:14:19Brian Schulmeister:So there's a Martin Short documentary coming on Netflix. I believe it drops on May 12th.

1:14:24Jason DeFillippo:The only way you would get me to watch this is Clockwork Orange style. I would have to have my eyes.

1:14:30Brian Schulmeister:That's fair. That's fair. I can completely understand how Martin Short is not everyone's cup of tea, but he is my cup of tea. Still love Three Amigos.

1:14:40Jason DeFillippo:Still love Three Amigos, though.

1:14:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And I think also my sense is that beneath it all, that there is a kindness to Martin Short. And I think that's part of the reason why I'm attracted to him and his humor. He doesn't strike me as being like, I don't know, Chevy Chase, you know, just a jerk to the people around him.

1:15:06Jason DeFillippo:He seems nice. I just don't find him funny. that's 100 % where I'm at he seems like a wonderful, of course he is, he's Canadian he's nice, how could he not be but I hate so many of his characters just created I wince, I'm in pain oh anyways, I hope you enjoy it I don't disagree, I'm sure it'll be wonderful

1:15:28Brian Schulmeister:I respect your opinion it's fine, so I'll just be in a dark room by myself watching alone, just you and Marty

1:15:36Jason DeFillippo:watching his documentary together He and Marty, yeah.

1:15:40Brian Schulmeister:I was curious, particularly, Brian, because I know you're a baseball person, and I can't claim to be following sports all that much, but my wife and I were watching a baseball game earlier, I don't know, the past week or so, and it really struck me how much they were challenging the umpires' calls over and over and over again, it seemed. uh so is this the new normal for baseball and what do you think of this you get two challenges uh

1:16:13Jason DeFillippo:unless you keep getting them right okay as soon as if you make a challenge and you're wrong you lose a challenge and then you've only got one more left so um when the umpires are particularly shit as you must have had that game and they the pitchers and the catchers just kept repeatedly challenging them and getting it right because the umpires are obviously making the wrong call uh that's crazy um but i can see it happening we we've people in the world have been keeping stats on umpires for a long time and it's it's well known that there are particularly well first off that the hit rate's not all that great for umpires in general uh but there are particular umpires that are fantastically bad at this and uh at this point i don't even know why we're tiptoeing around it just fucking institute it and every pitch is checked and we every pitch go in because it happens so fast anyways it's it's immediate so um yeah i i just go all in or don't i don't understand this this kind of halfway place we're at right now i'm sure there's a union involved

1:17:19Brian Schulmeister:the umpire union is probably trying to save their jobs but the technology nowadays you don't need an umpire anymore period yeah yeah i i know umpires are unionized and have one of the strongest sports unions and i don't think uh the nfl umpires are unionized but um i could be wrong on that but i know base major league baseball is right that's probably part of it uh yeah i mean i can imagine the umpire having a little buzzer or clicker or something that tells him what the computer thinks before he puts in his own two cents.

1:17:54Jason DeFillippo:Well, there are a million other things for the umpire to do besides call the balls and strikes. I mean, obviously that's the lion's share of it because... They have to brush the plate off. They have to brush the plate off. There's a gazillion other calls. So, you know, this technology is there. It's been proven to be insanely accurate. You know, we've had the same thing with soccer with video review goals, VAR, which is now they tiptoed around it for a couple of seasons as well. And now it's just every goal gets a VAR check. End of story. Like we check it. It doesn't matter what the ref said. We're checking it first.

1:18:28Brian Schulmeister:So can you imagine a time when baseball fans insist that the computer be the primary source of whether it's a ball or a strike?

1:18:38Jason DeFillippo:I think that there are purists that will be dead soon that will never ever accept this. But I think from the majority of fans from what I've seen and even my friends that follow the game that are just kind of already like, well, if it's that accurate, why aren't we just using it instead of why would you don't want a game to be called one way or the other because of bad calls when there's a technology that exists that eliminates that.

1:19:04Brian Schulmeister:Right. Right. So there's enough of a human element in baseball that in general, that taking away this one part is okay.

1:19:14Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Again, like I was saying, there's so many other calls that are made. and that are judgment calls. Now, you know, is it a slippery slope? Can we stay, say now that with the high speed cameras and AI and everything else that's involved, do we even need umpires? Can we just point cameras out there and have the entire game done that way? Or do we even need to do that? Can't we just throw all the stats for the past 200 years in and just have predictive algorithms tell us who wins the World Series every year and don't even bother playing the game? You know, that's the -

1:19:43Brian Schulmeister:We just all bet on Polymarket and it's whatever it is. Yeah, exactly. Throw some dice.

1:19:49Jason DeFillippo:You know, for me, it's the balls and strikes thing, the ABS, the automatic ball system. It seems to make sense to me, and it seems to be insanely accurate. And if you're going to either use it or don't, but don't do both.

1:20:04Brian Schulmeister:All right. Fair enough. I can go with that. I guess in an era where they're trying to speed the game up, it seemed like an odd way to slow the game down. Yeah.

1:20:17Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the plan is they want to introduce this and have this be the norm. But again, unions and they don't want to rock the boat too quickly. So this is how they kind of introduce things. They've introduced quite a few rules over the past 20 years, 30 years of this way where it's, you know, you get X amount or we'll just start with the first couple innings or, you know, we change, you know, all these different things here and there. So it's the softening us up approach. Let's get you used to it. And then we're just going to, this is going to be the way it's done from now on.

1:20:51Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

1:20:52Jason DeFillippo:It's the lube. It's the lube. This is the gentle lube before they shove it home. That's right.

1:21:00Brian Schulmeister:Well, on that happy note, gentlemen, we will see you next week. All right. Stay right.

1:21:07Jason DeFillippo:Thanks, guys.

1:21:08Brian Schulmeister:See ya.

1:21:12Brian Schulmeister:no new patrons this week sad sad sad uh we but we do would like to thank still everybody uh dj 1024 vladimir pork chop the clown pork chop the clown bg mark matt sean michael alexander and hit and run thank you all for your continued support on patreon thank you thank you thank

1:21:32Jason DeFillippo:you and it's a rare week with uh nothing coming in through paypal but i appreciate everybody that's been tossing us money there.

1:21:39Brian Schulmeister:Wow. Okay. Yeah. Uh, the last couple of weeks have been so generous, so we can, we can float, float for a bit, but that's, that's sad. Um, and over at the tip jar, we've got Adam, Jennifer and Alden with the big 40 bucks. So thank you all so much. And like we said, we've got March, March is back. And we'd like to thank John from Norway, Julie from Massachusetts, Nick from Coyahoga Falls. And every, I used to go through there and it's in Ohio. and I would always play the REM song Coyahoga when I go through there because it's a great song. And also guest host Donovan got a new mug. So thank you everybody for picking up the merch.

1:22:13Brian Schulmeister:If you want to merch, go to shop.gog.show. And if you would like to join us on Patreon, you can sign up for as little as$3 a month, but you can join us for give us as much as you like. Obviously, we'll take that too. You get the show early, ad free and in high definition. So check that out and keep the show on the air. preesh preesh no reviews this week so until until next time i'm jason de filippo and i'm

1:22:38Jason DeFillippo:brian schilmeister thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 744 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 love it share it there's a share button in your podcast player use it to spread the grumpiness to friends foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. My thoughts, feedback, cool links is up at GOG.show slash contact. And don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review and we'll read it on the show.

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