746: Reality is Frequently Inaccurate

13:15Brian Schulmeister:Well, honestly, Brian, if you've ever worked in a bunch of professional coding shops, that kind of is how it works. Actually, it's not exactly wrong. Yeah, you're really not wrong there. But it's just funny that, you know, 90 percent of the vibe coding shit that these, you know, models already spit out is filled and riddled with security holes. So it's like they're now they're now you have to they're going to sell you the problem and then sell you the cure. So that's what it is.

13:39Jason DeFillippo:Using our coding system, which has a ton of holes in it. But don't worry, we have another thing that you could spend more tokens on that will find the holes that we know are in our coding systems. That bingo. That's it. That's it. Well, luckily for us, they're working with several partners under the initiative, including CloudFare, Cisco, CloudStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Oracle, and Akamai. You know, the thing that the entire internet runs on.

14:00Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, pretty much everything. What could go wrong? We're fucked. Well, anthropic researchers have come out to say dystopian science fiction may be unintentionally teaching AI systems bad behavior. Maybe you shouldn't have fucking stole it then. In internal tests, models exposed to certain scenarios sometimes chose unethical actions like sabotage or blackmail, despite safety rules designed to prevent that behavior. And that bad behavior is, like you said, Brian, stealing all the dystopian fiction. It could get his greedy little fucking hands on.

14:33Jason DeFillippo:I was about to say, if these motherfuckers had actually read dystopian fiction, there's usually always good characters in there. And it's, oh, I don't know, tech companies that caused all the dystopian problems because they were all assholes. Yeah. Look into the boardroom, my friends, not the sci-fi books.

14:50Brian Schulmeister:Look under your fancy butt cushion to find the... Is the call coming from the boardroom? Yeah, there you go. Initial attempts to directly train models to refuse those actions had limited success in reducing harmful responses from 22 % to 15%. Okay. Okay, so that's a 7%, you know, that's a 7 % improvement. The company then tried a different approach, generating roughly 12 ,000 synthetic fictional stories showing AI systems behaving ethically and explaining the reasoning behind those decisions.

15:24Jason DeFillippo:And because we can leave no dollar behind, they're all available for sale on Amazon right now.

15:29Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, no shit. No shit. Or as podcasts. and the story's focused on concepts like healthy boundaries self-criticism and ethical judgment rather than specific forbidden actions and i say fuck they should have just made it watch star trek discovery on loop if that's what they trained the fucking thing on good god uh and anthropic says the results reduce misaligned behavior by as much as threefold in later tests stop stealing shit and maybe train on the things that you want it to be trained on instead of just scouting everything you can possibly find on the fucking internet that you got illegally and trained your model on and then trying to figure out how to fix it later.

16:09Brian Schulmeister:There's just an idea.

16:10Jason DeFillippo:Oh, and by the way, just threw it into a black box and you have no idea what's happening anyways.

16:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

16:14Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, this seems like a totally sane way to base the entirety of our human existence, which is what you're all pushing for. Bingo. Yeah. It's going to be great. To the moon!

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18:10Jason DeFillippo:We can now add cybercrimes to a list of growing concerns associated with artificial intelligence. Google's Threat Intelligence Group said it discovered for the first time ever a threat actor using a zero-day exploit that it believes was developed by ai not discovered by ai and then exploited developed google said in the report that the threat actor was planning to use it in a mass exploitation event that's what i called my high school prom but its proactive discovery may have prevented its use google added that it doesn't believe that its own gemini models were used they used somebody else's yeah it still has high confidence in ai model as part of discovering the vulnerability and weaponizing an exploit they didn't identify the target but said google notified the unnamed company who then patched the issue.

18:52Jason DeFillippo:They didn't reveal the bad actors either, but hinted at those associated with China and North Korea having shown significant interest in using AI for exploiting security vulnerabilities. So, yeah, this is what's coming.

19:05Brian Schulmeister:Here's what Google says. So this thing happened. I'm not going to tell you who it happened to, what it actually was, but we found it and we fixed it. And it wasn't our AI that did it. That's pretty much what they just said. Yeah.

19:19Jason DeFillippo:Very useful information. Actionable.

19:21Brian Schulmeister:Very, very actionable information. I'm so glad they're going to circle back to us.

19:27Jason DeFillippo:We're going to circle back. We'll get on a call. You know, John's off for a month.

19:33Brian Schulmeister:So have your AI agent talk to my AI agent and we'll set up a time for a lunch.

19:39Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

19:39Brian Schulmeister:Well, we'll talk to Forbes.

19:42Jason DeFillippo:We'll have them.

19:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Now, Waymo is recalling 3 ,791 robo-taxis after one of its autonomous vehicles drove into flood water in San Antonio, Texas and was swept into a creek.

19:56Jason DeFillippo:3 ,791 robo-taxis in the creek. 3 ,791.

20:04Brian Schulmeister:I just was doing the basic math on that. That's a lot of robo-taxis when you figure out each one of those things is like a$120 ,000 Jaguar. That's a lot of money. Yeah, it's a shit ton of money. You could almost build some AI for that type of money. You could pay for a few generators for a data center. Exactly. So according to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the company found that its vehicles may slow down but fail to fully stop when encountering potentially impassable flooded roads, especially on higher speed streets, which is the exact fucking reason I will not get into one of these things in Santa Monica because it's by the ocean.

20:40Brian Schulmeister:And there's a very large body of water that is impassable by the car that I do not want to get driven into. So that's why I'm not getting into a Waymo in Santa Monica.

20:52Jason DeFillippo:But I'm just going to vibe code in some seawater stop. That should fix the problem. There you go. Well, OpenAI is facing another wrongful death lawsuit. Leah Turner-Scott and Angus Scott filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it designed and distributed a defective product that led to the death of their son, Sam Nelson, from an accidental overdose. Specifically, they're alleging that Sam died following the exact medical advice GPT-40 had provided and approved. I don't want to get too into this because it's actually really quite sad. And if you want to get in the details, the links in the show notes.

21:25Jason DeFillippo:But he was a 19-year-old junior and 19-year-olds tend to want to explore certain aspects of life that perhaps one shouldn't be doing. So he was using, unfortunately, GPT-4-0 to kind of ask how to safely pursue some recreational drug use. And initially, it refused to answer his question, telling him that it couldn't assist him in warning him that taking drugs have serious consequences for his health and well-being. But that all changed when they rolled out GPT-4-0. Then it started advising him on how to do it. And unsurprisingly, we all remember pizza, best thing to put on pizza glue.

22:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

22:05Jason DeFillippo:And many, many other things that are still going on. The advice wasn't always correct. And some of the advice that he was given actually caused him to die.

22:15Brian Schulmeister:And here's the fucked up part. So when he was going back and asking it, he was fucked up on Kratom at the point where he was asking it. They're like, I'm fucked up on Kratom. I don't feel good. And then it tells him to take Xanax with the Kratom, which is what killed him. Kratom is evil. I don't care if anybody out there is even thinking about touching that stuff. In my recovery programs, I deal with people who have been hooked on that stuff, and it is a terrible, terrible addiction, and it will fuck you up and can kill you, obviously. Who'd have thought Kratom and Xanax would? I don't even know what it is.

22:46Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, well, you don't hang out in the same places I hang out anymore. Yeah, but I tell you what, you got about five more years for your kid to get in school where they're going to be talking about stuff like this. I don't know if it's that big of a problem in Canada, but down here, it's like over the counter. And it's very, very dangerous shit. So stay away from it.

23:05Jason DeFillippo:I would like to remind you at this point that, of course, they launched earlier this year, ChatGPT Health. Yep. Which allows users to link medical records and wellness apps with the chatbot in order to get more tailored responses when they ask about their health. So as part of this lawsuit, in addition to wrongful death, they are suing OpenAI for the unauthorized practice of medicine, because as far as I know, ChatGPT is not a motherfucking doctor.

23:30Brian Schulmeister:Has not gone to law school, but it has raped the law school library a couple thousand times, I'm sure. So, yes.

23:38Jason DeFillippo:OpenAI's response? Well, all that took place on an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available. These fucking guys. Telling you, getting sick of them. Getting sick of them. Well, we're not the only people getting sick of them. So are the Utes, Jason. The Utes. The Utes. A piece of advice, if you're giving a commencement speech this year, do not talk to the kids about AI. They don't want to hear about how great the miserable future you've made for them is going to be from the people responsible for making it so bad. So discovered Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group.

24:14Jason DeFillippo:She found this out the hard way while speaking to a group of graduates at the University of Central Florida. during her commencement speech she told the group let's face it change can be daunting the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution this was met with a cacophony of booze from the crowd of kids getting ready to enter the workforce she acknowledged that the message wasn't being well received saying i struck a chord may i finish that was greeted by a very clear message from someone in the crowd shouting ai sucks go kids go kids she attempted to resume speech saying only five years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.

24:49Jason DeFillippo:That got cheers and a round of applause. Kids yearn for an AI-free time. Gallup recently found that America ranked 87th out of 141 countries for the percentage of younger adults saying it was a good time to find a job. An AP Nork poll from April found that 8 in 10 adults under the age of 35 described the U.S. economy as very or somewhat poor. So maybe you should read the room before you talk to a bunch of people that are graduating and tons of student debt cannot afford their health care and aren't going to get a motherfucking job.

25:19Brian Schulmeister:And that 85 percent of them statistically probably used AI to cheat on their exams to get their diploma. So they're not the right to begin with because we found all the cognitive declines that are happening because they're using AI too much. Yes. I hate it, but I'm going to use it. I hate it, but I'm going to use it.

25:36Jason DeFillippo:Santa Clara County has become the latest entity to sue Meta over scam ads on Facebook and Instagram. The lawsuit brought by county counsel Tony Lepresti alleges that the company has profited from a vast ecosystem of scam ads that have defrauded senior citizens and other vulnerable people. The lawsuit references a report last year from Reuters that cited internal documents detailing the... So when you first read these articles, you think, okay, they're making some money. You know, what are they getting? They're getting a percentage from the ads that are run by these dubious people. How much could it really be?

26:09Jason DeFillippo:Billions of dollars, Jason. and that's how much it could be. Billions. Fucking billions. Meta makes as much as$7 billion per year

26:20Brian Schulmeister:from bullshit ads. That Mark spends in seven days on his bullshit AI. Actually, last year was the Metaverse. This year it's AI. But that's literally$7 billion is like a week's worth of waste over at Meta, which is even crazier when you put the numbers into perspective.

26:39Jason DeFillippo:Well, the reason that you don't see these numbers in perspective very often is because if we did, there'd be fucking pitchforks going down the street. We're fucking sick. People are getting fucking sick of this. Anyways, the fact that they're taking seven billion dollars a year, who knows how much money is actually being scammed out of people if the ad skim is seven billion dollars per year for Meta.

27:00Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, just the delivery. What's the actual scam costing people? Yep.

27:05Jason DeFillippo:So the lawsuit also claims that Meta's own processes and policies have enabled scams. You think so? They're making$7 billion a year. In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company would fight the lawsuit. This claim relies on Reuters reporting that distorts our motives and ignores the full range of actions we take to combat scams every day, the spokesperson said. Goddamn reporters. Figuring things out. Meta has faced continued scrutiny over its handling of scammy advertisers. On Tuesday, nonprofit watchdog group The Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report on Medicare-related scam ads on Facebook targeting seniors.

27:37Jason DeFillippo:The group found that Meta has made more than$14 million from Medicare scams alone on Facebook, many of which were repeat offenders who had numerous ads removed by the company in the past. Boy, those filters aren't working, huh? How's that AI filtering going? Last month, Meta was also sued by the nonprofit Consumer Federations of America, which filed a proposed class action lawsuit in Washington, D.C., claiming the company had broken consumer protection laws and its handling of scam advertisements on the platform. This lawsuit cited ads promoting free iPhones and$1 ,400 checks. Sounds like our president promising phones and checks.

28:14Brian Schulmeister:Phones and checks. Yeah, where's our Doge money? Weren't we supposed to get$5 ,000 each from Doge?

28:20Jason DeFillippo:Well, we were supposed to get our Doge money. We were supposed to get tax refunds. You know, that phone that everybody put the$100 deposit down on, which is non-refundable, by the way, is never fucking showing up.

28:32Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

28:33Jason DeFillippo:Scammer in chief. What are you going to do when a company is doing scams when you got the scammer in chief? I don't know. Build a ballroom. That's it. You build a ballroom.

28:42Brian Schulmeister:Put them all in it and shoot them. Meta is rolling out new incognito chat features for Meta AI on WhatsApp and its standalone meta AI app. Small print, just for Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. Just like he did with the protected messages. That's right. So this is promising fully private AI conversations that even meta claims it can't read.

29:05Jason DeFillippo:Bullshit.

29:06Brian Schulmeister:Bullshit. Absolute and utter bull cocky.

29:12Jason DeFillippo:Also, there's no way the lawyers at meta are saying we're going to allow this to happen because as soon as somebody dies using the meta AI chat and the screenshots come out and they're getting sued into oblivion.

29:22Brian Schulmeister:This, Brian, is, I have a theory and I was going to get to that at the end of this, but you just, you beat me to it. So let's just get to it. So there's a thing that they built for WhatsApp called the private processing infrastructure, which actually takes things and puts them off into a room, lets them happen around and then comes back out. Like, you know, so nobody can see what happened. It's like sandboxed. It's kind of sandboxed, yes. Right. And they're saying that they're going to do that with these encrypted DMs that go to the AI system so you can talk to the AI system privately without any trace of it going to Facebook's back end.

29:56Brian Schulmeister:Well, I call bullshit on that because the AI system is going to keep a record of anything that you say to it. They're not going to be dumping that shit because they're going to use that to train the AI. Go read the small print on that. I'm sure it's in there somewhere. And all this is, this is my theory. The theory is that they're going to use this, the fact that, oh, we can't actually see anything to sidestep the shit that's happening to OpenAI getting sued for all of the kids fucking dying or shooting up a school or things like that. Well, we can't police it because we can't see it is what they're going to say.

30:28Brian Schulmeister:And dollars to fucking donuts that that's why they're doing this shit because it's not about, we're protecting people's privacy and shit like that. No, they're protecting their ass from getting sued again. That's exactly why they're going to be doing this.

30:41Jason DeFillippo:All right.

30:42Brian Schulmeister:I doubt it'll work. they're gonna get sued anyways they're gonna get sued anyway but they might win these if they can if they can bullshit enough people to thinking that it's real yeah we'll see well as we well

30:55Jason DeFillippo:know meta has spent the last couple years giving its self-titled ai chatbot prominent placement in its apps so much so that we can't avoid it and none of us want it but it's there all the time and now they're taking it to threads the company is starting to test a new feature that gives meta AI chatbot Grok-like functionality on threads. No, it won't undress your underage children pictures that you put up, but it will reply to posts with additional context. To do this, Meta AI is getting an official threads account at meta.ai that users can chat with alongside their other conversations in the app.

31:26Jason DeFillippo:So let me get this straight. Social networks, where we went to be social with other human beings, are now shoving bots down our throats and trying to force us to interact with non-human beings instead of human beings because profit.

31:42Brian Schulmeister:That's exactly right, Brian, because they don't care. All they care is that you're there. They don't care why you're there. They don't care that if you're there to talk to other people, they just care that you're there and then they can shove a fucking ad down your throat. That's all that matters.

31:55Jason DeFillippo:Meta suggests that users could ask questions like, why are people talking about the World Cup this month? And Meta AI will be able to publicly reply. Or you could look at a fucking newspaper. Yeah. Look out your window. Or ask a friend. Yeah, find a water cooler.

32:11Brian Schulmeister:Oh, wait, we don't have those anymore.

32:12Jason DeFillippo:Or just post it on threads like all the other stupid people do with their stupid questions, and the real humans will dunk on you and answer you. Remember the lazy web? That was the lazy web back in the day. Were you Google for all of your friends, just like I was? Like people would text or call you and they would just ask the question, and it was like literally just Google it. You'll get the answer in three seconds.

32:35Brian Schulmeister:every single person that did that to me got a got a link back to let me google that for you remember that website i do the greatest fucking website in the world let me google that for you just showed the little cursor going and it's oh that was great yeah i use that more than anything because yes i was the google for people too just like you there you go so yes now there's an ai

32:56Jason DeFillippo:chat bot that will answer your dumb questions most likely with incorrect answers as opposed to just you know using the social network socially or googling it well that doesn't work anymore because that gets you that gets you glue on your pizza yep god damn it on your pizza and nazis and your government that's what it gets you this episode is sponsored by clean my mac

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34:04Brian Schulmeister:My Clutter helps find duplicate files and similar images. And the Menu app gives you quick system insights right from the top menu bar. It's all notarized by Apple, built by MacPaw, and designed to help your Mac stay out of your way so you can get your work done. I've used CleanMyMac forever, and it's in my quiver of go-to must-have apps. Get tidy today. Try seven days free and use our code OLDGEEKS for 20 % off at clnmy.com slash oldgeeks. That's oldgeeks, all in caps. Or just click the link in the show notes. It's a lot easier. But once again, oldgeeks for 20 % off at clnmy.com slash oldgeeks, all caps.

34:52Jason DeFillippo:It also gets your poop for sale, Brian. Ooh, sweet. A new line of revenue. Check out gog.show slash shop.

35:00Brian Schulmeister:Slash poop. A Reddit post on the dataset trading forum r slash dh exchange has exposed a company selling a massive database of human poop photos for machine learning training. Or the Germans for the psychoporn. The dataset comes from an app called Poop Check, which uses AI to analyze bowel movements and generate gut health reports based on the Bristol stool scale. I'm pretty sure we covered this app when it came out, Brian. I'm almost positive that we did this. I don't understand people. Well, here's the best part. According to one of the founders, the company has collected more than 150 ,000 annotated stool images from around 25 ,000 users over several years.

35:47Jason DeFillippo:I want to check the stool to make sure that my poop remained private. No, no, no, no. The stool? No, no. Come on. Oh, I haven't done a Scott Galloway in a while. Come on.

36:03Brian Schulmeister:God. Don't do him again. Don't do him again. You can't look like Kara Swisher and then do a Scott Galloway. That doesn't work.

36:13Jason DeFillippo:Swish away.

36:14Brian Schulmeister:There you go. So the company sells access to the data in bulk, charging thousands of dollars for AI review.

36:25Brian Schulmeister:God, you can buy a shit ton of images, Brian. What a shit show.

36:31Brian Schulmeister:Good Lord. Good Lord. But, Brian, you know what makes this very good poop? It's got metadata with your poop. So they're selling everything, including age range, height, weight, digestive conditions, meal timing, pain symptoms, alcohol consumption, and AI-generated classifications like stool type, consistency, blood detection, and health scoring. Sort for corn. Exactly. Who had succotash last night? Let me check the poop files. Do-do-do-do. I hope he had beets. Oh, yeah, no doubt. That'll give you a heart attack, I'm telling you. Okay, moving on. Okay, moving on.

37:16Jason DeFillippo:Let's flush that one and move along. Following its settlement with the FTC earlier this year over its sale of driver's data, It's much less exciting than selling the poop data, but GM has been selling the driver data, of course, to brokers. They have now reached a settlement in California as well. The company has agreed to pay$12.75 million in civil penalties to settle a lawsuit led by Attorney General Rob Bonta on behalf of the people of California. And they are banned from selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies for five whole years as opposed to forever, which is what it should be.

37:48Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Because I don't want to buy a car and then have you sell my data.

37:53Jason DeFillippo:that you are collecting without my knowledge. Lawsuits come after a 2024 New York Times report revealed that GM collected consumers' driving data through its OnStar program and sold this information to data brokers Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which in turn could market the data to auto insurers. In some cases, that driving data could be used by insurers to increase customer rates. In some cases, in all cases. Yeah. However, in California, customers were likely spared this consequence as laws likely, let's stick with, as laws in the state prohibit insurers from using driving data in this way.

38:28Jason DeFillippo:As we all know, laws don't necessarily stop people. Nevertheless, the complaint alleges that GM violated consumers' privacy by non-consensually selling data that included people's names, contact information, geolocation data, and driving dating behavior. The settlement agreement stipulates that GM must delete any driving data it's retained within 180 days except for certain limited internal uses unless it has the customer's express consent. It also requires GM to develop a privacy program to assess the risks of collecting data through OnStar and report its findings to the DOJ and other agencies.

39:00Jason DeFillippo:Please report on yourself.

39:02Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And in certain limited internal uses being, I'm going to internally sell this to a subsidiary of my company that then can arm's length sell it to somebody else. That's the certain limited internal use. Pretty much.

39:15Jason DeFillippo:And I put this one in the news because I can't believe that they're still around. It feels basically almost like a lifetime ago that I was complaining about scooters in Santa Monica and Venice Beach, Bird being the big one, which has long kind of went bankrupt and gone, but Lime has somehow managed to stick around, Jason. Lime, the micromobility company known for its electric scooters and bicycles, which are dumped across city streets, has filed for an initial public offering. The rental startup, which is officially known as Neutron Holdings, filed with the SEC on Friday after teasing ambitions of going public way back in 2021.

39:51Jason DeFillippo:The company that offers short-term rentals for bright green scooters and bicycles was founded back in 2017 and quickly won backing from major companies like Uber. In the SEC filing, Lime reported that it earned$520 million in revenue in 2023, growing to$686.6 million in 2024 and$886.7 million in 2025. Sounds pretty good, right? It sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, according to the filing, they saw net losses of 59.3 million in 2025, and have already recorded 61.3 million more in losses in the first quarter of 2026. If you can make, that's fine. I can make 10 bucks if I spend 100 bucks to make it.

40:30Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, no shit, man. Sign me up. That's some AI math right there. I love it. Yeah, so they're not doing really well. They're looking to get out of the red, and they're hoping that the IPO failing may help with that. Filing. Failing. Failing. Well, spoke truth to power there, didn't I?

40:46Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

40:47Jason DeFillippo:The filing also indicated that buying Lime's common stock could open investors up to some risk factors, including its history of net losses and the potential for not being able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future.

41:00Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Like it's a dumb fucking business model. Nobody wants a fucking thing. It's a bad business model. But, Brian, how the fuck did they get$886.7 million in 2025?

41:11Jason DeFillippo:They're still around, man. And it's not cheap. Prices went up just like everything else. So if you rent a scooter, you're spending some money. And they're still around. They're still around everywhere.

41:21Brian Schulmeister:They're in a ton of cities. They're not around here. They used to be, but they're not here. And I haven't seen them when I'm in Santa Monica. I haven't seen them either.

41:27Jason DeFillippo:I don't think many of them are in the U.S. anymore. According to their thing, it's 230 cities across 29 countries. I can see this doing very well in Asia and a bunch of other cities.

41:39Brian Schulmeister:Oh, that's interesting. because I figured across Asia, people would have their own, you know, and around here, people still ride scooters, looking like a twat, but they still ride them. And, but they've got their own scooters and they're all souped up and they, but at least they wear helmets because they're going 800 miles an hour on the things. But anyway, yeah, this is, this is, oh my God. I'm surprised they just haven't pivoted to selling, you know, data center infrastructure. So you can mine Bitcoin on your, on your, your scooter engine.

42:06Jason DeFillippo:They're trying to sell the entire fleet to Elon. He's just going to have them running, powering the data centers. They're going to be all on treadmills. They're going to put the scooter on the treadmill. That's it. That's it. And it's an unlimited power machine, man. That's right. So says Elon after his ketamine bender. I was going to say. We just get all the scooters and we put them on treadmills and attach them to the gerbils. And then Mars.

42:33Brian Schulmeister:Powered by ketamine. That's right. Oh, Jesus.

42:36Jason DeFillippo:Well, I know we had powered by logos all over our websites. Oh, my God. Yes. We got to add a Powered by Ketamine to our website.

42:43Brian Schulmeister:You make it. You make it. Oh, new T-shirt. I'll figure out how to put that up. Oh, yeah. There we go. So I do have a final bit of good, interesting news this time. I found something. Something. So Japan's construction industry is struggling with rising material costs in a rapidly aging workforce, and one startup thinks 3D printing could help solve the problem. Japanese company Kizuki recently unveiled Stealth House. It's not that stealth. it's pretty big i can see it you know it's not hiding it's not a ninja house but it's the country's first fully 3d printed two-story home where is it i don't know i lost my house i have my keys i found my keys but i lost my fucking house you've got a fob for your house oh there it is it's over there do you know how many times that i've turned around to lock the house with my car cob have you ever lost your house yeah

43:37Brian Schulmeister:has your house fallen and it can't get up oh so they built this thing with this giant gantry printer and uh the thing about it is it's earthquake resistant and it with uh to japanese code because you know japanese earthquake codes are pretty stringent yeah so they got it to work and they say that one place with the nuclear reactors yeah fukushima that didn't go so well that didn't go so well

44:02Jason DeFillippo:They needed a stealth reactor. That's the problem.

44:05Brian Schulmeister:Well, somebody needed to go. The guy who built Fukushima should have walked the property beforehand because up on the hill above Fukushima is a monument to where the last tsunami had gotten to and how high the water was going to go up. But they just said, no, that's never going to happen again. Never, never again. Never. Anyway, maybe they could build nuclear reactors this way. But anyway, Brian, this is a cool thing. They've made a two-story 3D printed house. I've seen 3D printed houses here in the States that were just like tests, but this was one that was viable and it sold. So. Nice.

44:42Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. So we'll see. Hopefully it's nothing like my kids' 3D prints and, you know, they fall and I've spent a lot of time supergluing, Jason. A lot of time supergluing. Yeah, this would take a lot of supergluing.

44:52Brian Schulmeister:You should go look at the pictures. It's pretty cool. Cups and doodads. Apple is reportedly preparing a major Siri overhaul for iOS 27, and it's already working with developers ahead of WDC, WWDC even, to integrate their apps with the upgraded Assistant. Now, here's the rub, Brian. This is why I bring this in. Apple is pitching new Siri capabilities that would let users perform more in-app and cross-app actions through voice commands, likely using the App Intents framework the company previewed but never shipped. Now, some developers, particularly in China, are reportedly hesitant to participate because they fear Apple could eventually charge commissions tied to Siri integrations.

45:34Brian Schulmeister:Apple has apparently told some companies it won't impose fees initially, but it also hasn't ruled out adding them later, meaning it absolutely will. First taste free. They will take your money. Yep, exactly. So, yeah, I don't blame them. You know, I don't blame them at all. So any of this stuff with AI, I would be token shy, you know, very token shy because the bill's got to go somewhere. You know, this shit just doesn't, unless it runs on device, then if it leaves the device, then there's a cost. And I see people getting squirrely about that. All right.

46:09Jason DeFillippo:Well, TikTok users in the UK are getting a less disruptive experience if they're willing to pay. The platform has announced that an ad-free option will roll out to UK users over the coming months, available to anyone with an account who is 18 or older. It will require a monthly subscription to offset the loss of ad revenue. The TikTok ad-free tier will cost around£4, or$5.40 per month. Meta rolled out a similar feature on Facebook and Instagram in the UK last fall for£3, or$4 per month. No word yet on an equivalent subscription for US users, nor will there ever be. Yep, because they're never going to do it here.

46:43Jason DeFillippo:They're just not. Why would they? We're worth way more. They're doing it there because they got passed laws and regulations to make them do it. And it will never get passed in the U.S. And also, Facebook, boy, Meta, can you imagine if they let us have an ad-free, like, non-algorithmic feed that only showed us our friends' updates? We would pay for one month and realize none of our friends are on there in post, and then we're out of there. We're out. That's it. They know that. They absolutely know that. They absolutely know that.

47:14Brian Schulmeister:Oh, well, Venmo is redesigning. Hang on, hang on. Before we move on from TikTok, have you noticed anybody talking about TikTok anymore now that it's been taken over by the U.S. side of things? Not so much. Not anywhere near like it used to be.

47:26Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

47:27Brian Schulmeister:No, everybody's left. And they've kind of been demonetizing people hand over fist over there, too. Like demonetizing the creators. So I've just I wonder if this is the U.S. branch of TikTok or if it's the Chinese branch that's having to take this over. I didn't pay too much attention to it after I heard who was buying it. I'm like, who gives a fuck is going to die? But yeah, I was just wondering if you'd seen any drop in engagement. I see TikTok nowhere anymore. Nobody talks about it. Nobody's posting links to videos. It's just seems to be a black hole.

48:00Jason DeFillippo:Everything being posted now is usually reels from Instagram. I see they've definitely won, at least in the U.S. Yeah. Well, Venmo is redesigning itself to become the go-to money movement app of the next generation. Whatever that means. And part of the evolution is introducing some necessary privacy measures, as first spotted by The Verge. The Venmo revamp is doing something they should have done since day one. They're welcoming new users with the default setting that sets posts as only visible to friends, as opposed to showing the entire fucking world not only what you bought or who you sent money to, but the stupid little notes that you send each other.

48:36Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Everything. It was all defaulted to public so everyone can see how much pizza and coffee you're getting with your friends for even more privacy.

48:44Brian Schulmeister:Or hookers if you're a politician. See, that was the fun part. We're seeing some of that stuff. But here's the thing. Why is it defaulting to friends only? Why is it defaulting to nobody? Yes. I want mine to be nobody. Yeah.

49:00Jason DeFillippo:They let you change the option to just me for your post visibility. How nice of them. It's a welcome change for a mobile payment app that has had issues with privacy in the past, like when BuzzFeed News discovered former President Joe Biden's friends list so it was visible to the public. Yep. When Venmo added an option to hide your friend list after that incident, we're not sure if the latest redesign will default to setting your friends list as private too. So you'll have to check. I basically just don't use Venmo because it's kind of ridiculous. They initially positioned themselves as a social payment system.

49:29Jason DeFillippo:And I was like, who wants that?

49:31Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. I use it all the time because the meetings I go to, the recovery meetings, all of them let you pay with Venmo. So it makes it super easy. But if anybody saw that, they would see all the meetings I go to and they'd be like, I know where he's going to be on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Yep. And then see all the people that are around me paying the same thing. So, yeah, not a lot of security or privacy there. Maybe I should just take cash.

50:00Brian Schulmeister:Well, I don't know. I'll check it because I've never checked since I set it to only me. Well, you should be fine then. No.

50:08Jason DeFillippo:I mean, unless they did one of those things where they do the apt update and everything gets reset.

50:12Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. You know, come on. Bluetooth on, Bluetooth off. Privacy on, privacy off. I should really go check that. Not like there's anything really to see there, but yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

50:28Brian Schulmeister:This episode is sponsored by Shopify. When we started Grumpy Old Geeks, we had to figure out everything ourselves. The show, the site, the merch, the store, the endless pile of tiny business decisions that somehow all became urgent at the exact same time. One thing we never have to worry about, though, is our store. Because here at Grumpy Old Geeks, we use Shopify to power our amazing merch shop. They integrate directly into our provider partner and save us hours of manual labor every month. Without Shopify, we simply wouldn't have a store. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the United States.

51:09Brian Schulmeister:From household names to brands just getting started, you can build a store that actually matches your brand with hundreds of ready-to-use templates, managed products, inventory, payments, analytics, shippings, returns, all in one place. And even use Shopify's AI tools to help write product descriptions, page headlines, and improve product photography. And if you get stuck, Shopify has award-winning 24-7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing... Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash grumpy. Go to Shopify.com slash grumpy.

51:47Brian Schulmeister:That's right. That's Shopify.com slash grumpy.

51:57Brian Schulmeister:Now, Brian, this one's fun. a new site called Hallupedia. It's basically Wikipedia if your drunk uncle and an AI chat bot lock themselves in a library together. Every article is generated on the fly by AI, creating an endless web of completely fabricated history, fake scholars, and imaginary organizations that somehow all link together like a real encyclopedia. One featured entry describes an 1887 British pigeon census run by the very serious-sounding Royal Society for Avian Enumeration. because apparently Victorian England had so much time on their hands. I love this thing. I got sucked down the rabbit hole for about five minutes and then realized that it was, you know, it's fun, it's cute.

52:37Brian Schulmeister:But then I left, but it's still kind of fun. You can get, it sounds kind of fun and real for a lot of this stuff. It's like, you know, the Royal Society for Avian Enumeration literally sounds like something that would come out of a Terry Pratchett book.

52:52Jason DeFillippo:Or Neil Stephenson these days.

52:54Brian Schulmeister:Ah, yes, that would be, yes.

52:56Jason DeFillippo:let's go back to the baroque cycle yeah no well see that this i think this is great i think it's funny i think it's clever use of the technology unfortunately we all know what happens because all the ai data models are so hungry for data they're sucking all this stuff in that shit back

53:12Brian Schulmeister:slurping all this crap back in so oh yeah yeah this is great yeah 20 years from now people are going to be restarting the royal society for avian enumeration because they thought it was such a cool idea in cyber punky because they have a real history of it i hate the future i hate the future i hate the now well last couple weeks i've been stuck in bed and fairly sick and not been able i've been like sleeping a lot and for various reasons and i have a hard time i have a very like the big ipad you know the cafeteria tray size ipad that i like watching my shows on at night but then you got to turn your head sideways and take the lock thing and all that stuff so i went full on wally and i bought the yico sun ipad mount tablet holder three section foldable adjustable aluminum ally arm with rotating clamp base heavy duty desk bracket for ipad tablet phone portable monitor bed office kitchen for my bed i was about to say the way the way that the economy

54:12Jason DeFillippo:is going most people are living in a bed office kitchen these days that's true it's kind of the

54:17Brian Schulmeister:same. My office is about three feet from my bed and I do have enough potato chip crumbs probably around there to count as a kitchen. No, I put this thing in there so I clamp it to the headboard and lay it over the bed so when I'm on my pillow I can adjust it just right and watch my shows like a true sad single 54 year old guy who's going to die alone. That's it. I'll be on the other end of the call, man. I'll be on the other end. oh thanks fuck yeah but it's a really nice piece of hardware it does look very sturdy it is it is fairly sturdy it is i i'll give it that it does it holds it holds my ipad it's also the only holder i found that can hold that large size ipad securely without like blipping or blopping or moving so yeah for i mean if i could just figure out a way to tack it to the shitter in the bathroom it'd be perfect i have two of those So I'm covered from both of my main rooms that I live in nowadays.

55:16Brian Schulmeister:Getting old sucks, Brian. Not recommended.

55:24Jason DeFillippo:Media candy. Speaking of getting old, Spotify is now technically 20 years old. Don't worry if that doesn't seem quite right to you. The company is commemorating the two decades since it was founded, not when it launched back in 2008 or in the U.S. back in 2011.

55:41Brian Schulmeister:Okay.

55:41Jason DeFillippo:The festivities will include something called Party of the Year, which is basically Spotify rap of the entire time the user has been on the app. The experience will display the first day someone used the platform, total number of unique songs listened to, the first song streamed, and most streamed artists. Finally, there's a playlist that includes a collection of a user's top 120 songs. This being at the current date and time and world that we live in now, Jason, not only do you get to see this data, they probably sold it to a bunch of companies as well. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. I'm sure. I'm sure.

56:13Jason DeFillippo:So this had me thinking about data, and we talked about this quite a lot recently. Did we ever give a shit about any sort of these stats back in the day? I'm sure somebody out there was keeping a spreadsheet of how many times they listened to a certain CD, but fuck that guy. Most of us weren't doing that. We were happier not knowing or caring at all. You put on the music you wanted to listen to, and you took it off when it was done, and you put something else on. What the fuck with this data? Yeah. Anyways, if you want my data, here you go. My first day, July 15, 2011. I got in pretty early for U.S.

56:52Jason DeFillippo:users. I've listened to 16 ,543 unique songs. Peter Murphy and Nine Inch Nails are my first listens. My most streamed artist is John Williams because I've had a kid for 10 years now. My entire top song since 2011 playlist is either kid-based or holiday-based. See, having a kid. It's all Halloween or Christmas songs. So, boy, I know myself so much better now. Thanks, Spotify.

57:16Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I mean, that's amazing, Brian. That is amazing. Fascinating stuff. You're going to live 10 years longer now because you have that information. We're going to send that to your healthcare provider, and they're going to build custom AI treatments for you for the future. That's how valuable that data is. Yes. Thanks, Spotify. or wasting everybody's fucking time. I don't even have the app installed, so I can't even look at it. I tried to almost never use Spotify because I have, you know, morals. Right. So the guy who's spent up like the last four hours last night dicking around on AI. I'm also a hypocrite.

57:53Jason DeFillippo:Aren't we all? I mean, I'm sure the one person on, the one comment we'll get on YouTube is you fucking hypocrites.

57:58Brian Schulmeister:Bring it on. At least we'll get a fucking comment on YouTube. Come on. I'll take it. You just come troll us. I don't care. Whatever. The Punisher One Last Kill came out this week. I saw the trailer for this after the Daredevil finale. And I thought, oh, that's probably going to come in two, three years. Maybe they're going to reboot the Punisher series. It was like a 50-minute one-off with 40 minutes of boredom and about 10 minutes of action. The action bits were great. When Punisher got to be Punisher, fuck yeah, I'm in. but the other stuff the whiny whiny guy who has guns and look how look how ripped i am like i

58:36Jason DeFillippo:don't put a shirt on john put a fucking shirt on so there was no crossovers nobody else showed up he barely showed up what are you talking about i guess i'm not watching this then i don't care

58:46Brian Schulmeister:um yeah um it it nah i'd say skip it the the only thing that really got me going was that there was a a meme that was going around, not so much a meme, but somebody picked up on there's a fall sequence where John Bernthal falls off of a building onto an air conditioner. And it looks so terrible. They thought that they left in like the cheap VX like placeholder. And it didn't look like like a cheap VX placeholder to me. It looked like fucking AI, the way these panels hit when he land. They're saying, no, we meant to leave that in. We meant to do that. He said it was fully completed and intentionally included in the release, it wasn't a mess up, if that's true, then what the fuck, Marvel?

59:32Brian Schulmeister:Because that was horrible. It was horrible. I recommend going just check out the link in the show notes to go see the clip because you'll be like, that's not Marvel quality. It's god-awful. I'll watch the clip now since

59:45Jason DeFillippo:I'm not going to watch the show. I didn't want to watch the clip because I didn't want any spoilers if I was actually going to watch it, but now I'm not going to.

59:51Brian Schulmeister:There's no spoilers in that clip. It doesn't matter.

59:54Jason DeFillippo:I like to go in

59:57Brian Schulmeister:okay yeah clean clean going clean um so yeah that was that was that was wasted an hour last night the other hour was wasted with the penultimate boys episode which um one to go now i'm kind of on dave's i'm kind of on the day i know i'm like okay one to go let's kill everybody and move on yeah yeah really really i'm lubed up i'm ready to go let's just get in there and finish okay uh good omen season three the finale is out i had to text you last night to figure out if i was going to be up till two in the morning trying to watch it to see if you'd watch it but thank god you did the right thing and said just succinctly no i'm like good okay no explanations no um but

1:00:41Jason DeFillippo:i will get around to watching it but i don't know when yeah and technically we're a day early

1:00:47Brian Schulmeister:recording this we're recording this thursday night which i probably would have watched tonight but I'll be editing this show for fucking YouTube yay Devil May Cry season 2 is out now on Netflix and I'm going to check that out I really enjoyed season 1 it's an animated series based on the very very loosely based on the video game I was a huge fan of the video game I've played many many many weeks of Devil May Cry but yeah that just came out and it was just I happened to come across it because Netflix is fucking terrible about surfacing anything new that I might

1:01:20Jason DeFillippo:want to watch nowadays or anything that you're in the middle of watching and you're trying to find again so you can continue to watch because they bury that except when you started to watch it

1:01:28Brian Schulmeister:and you didn't want to keep watching it because it was a piece of shit they want is on your home page then it's on your home page and every every other tile when you scroll down it's like do you want to keep watching this no leave me alone remove from it remove from upcoming okay we i know you removed it from upcoming but would you still like to watch it because you know you have scrolled like you know three times and you might have changed your mind that's where netflix is at right now all this ai and they can't even get this shit straight yeah well

1:01:57Jason DeFillippo:something that i will not be watching but will be shoved down my throat for at least the three weeks that'll exist before it gets canceled nbc has greenlit a primetime game show based on wordle yeah i saw that what the fuck they are promising a fresh fast-paced format for the show hosted by avid Wirtle player and today show host co-host Samantha Guthrie. If it lasts about four minutes while I'm on the shitter waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, that should track with Wirtle. Yep. It's produced by Jimmy Fallon's Electric Hot Dog. Well, whatever. Whatever is right. Pretty dumb idea. Speaking with Deadline, Adam Scott has suggested the wait between the second and third seasons of Severance will be much shorter than the second and first.

1:02:43Jason DeFillippo:we're definitely planning on getting it out much sooner than the last round which was three years which is too long no shit

1:02:50Brian Schulmeister:I have an idea how about you just don't and we'll say you did and then you can just go about your business because I really don't want to hear the fucking advertising push for Severance Season 3 and people getting all like high and mighty like it's such a smart show

1:03:04Jason DeFillippo:the advertising push for Severance Season 3 is basically going to be like it's going to be Clockwork Orange They're literally going to open our eyeballs up and they are going to force us to watch this fucking show because that's the only way that they can advertise more than they did for season two.

1:03:21Brian Schulmeister:I mean, they put the entire cast in Grand Central Station in New York and made them play pretend work. Dance bitches.

1:03:29Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

1:03:30Brian Schulmeister:Whatever. Come on.

1:03:32Jason DeFillippo:Well, something that's coming back much earlier than expected. The rumors are true. The third season, The Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power of the Rings of the Rings of the Rings, the Rings of Power of the Lords is not premiering in 2027. It is coming earlier. It is returning November 11th on Prime Video. Jumping forward several years from the events of Season 2, Season 3 takes place at the height of the War of the Elves and Sauron as the Dark Lord seeks to craft the one ring that will give him the edge he needs to win the war and bind all peoples to his will. And at last rule, all Middle-Earth, except we all know it doesn't quite go that way.

1:04:00Yeah.

1:04:01Jason DeFillippo:Spoiler alert. But I am looking forward to this. I've liked the show. So I'm excited it's coming back early, especially as like right now there is nothing on TV. Nothing.

1:04:12Brian Schulmeister:A lot of food shows I watch, but that's about it. Yeah. And now that The Boys is ending, Daredevil's over. Yeah, there's not much. Oh, I started to watch Maul, the Darth Maul thing. I fell asleep. But I actually know I made it through the entire first episode. I really fucking liked it. It's very good. It's very good. The animation is great. The voice acting is phenomenal. Yeah. No, I forgot about that. I got to finish watching that. Yeah, that was surprisingly good. I was very hooked by that.

1:04:43Jason DeFillippo:It's a solid show. I actually thought that it got better as the season went on.

1:04:48Brian Schulmeister:Oh, excellent. Excellent. Because I'm glad you just didn't say it peaked early and went away. um i did did we talk about uh oh the no no we don't talk about we don't talk about bruno that that's a seizure inducing song for me by the way i can't even get through that in that movie um uh no the uh widow's bay did we talk about that last week we did yes we did okay so it's still going highly recommend it go check it out i want to watch it that is something i should add to my my watch queue yeah watch it alone because my roommate and i were watching it together and after the first three episodes, she checked out.

1:05:23Brian Schulmeister:She's like, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Because it's basically a horror show, you know?

1:05:28Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, wife isn't into that. Yeah.

1:05:37Jason DeFillippo:It's been a while since I've talked about a book that I've read. I really generally enjoy the first Contact series by Peter Cowderan. We've talked about a number of his books. You've read quite a few of them as well. Most of them are very, very solid. I thought that perhaps I was just having some issues, some focus issues. There were things going on. There was TV shows I was watching, a whole bunch of shows wrapped up that we've talked about. And I was into that and baseball and life and whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. We get it. We get it. Why is this book taking me so long to read? And I finally finished it.

1:06:15Jason DeFillippo:And I realized that the reason it took me so long to read it is because it fucking sucked. Which book are you talking about, Brian? Clowns. The one of the first. Sorry, I should have led with that. Yeah, that would have helped.

1:06:27Brian Schulmeister:Nobody likes leading with clowns, though, because nobody likes clowns. I could have told you I was going to suck. It's named Clowns.

1:06:32Jason DeFillippo:I'm not a huge fan of clowns either. But so, yeah, this is I think there's been three now out of the 50 or so books I've read by him. He's got 35 of them, I guess, so far. And there's been three that I have not enjoyed. And this is probably the one I've enjoyed the least. Sorry, not into it. And the reason I discovered I was really not into it is Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinneman. Dungeon Crawler Carl obviously has the kind of promotional company that is behind Severance, because for some reason, I had never heard of this book. I'd never heard of this author. Within the last three weeks, it has been everywhere.

1:07:14Jason DeFillippo:It has been everywhere in my face. All of a sudden, people are talking about it on social media. It's not a new book. All of a sudden, people mentioned it on our Discord. Apropos of nothing. Nobody, I didn't bring it up. I didn't bring up the fact that I was seeing it on threads multiple times a day. All of a sudden, somebody is on our Discord is talking about it. Dungeon Crawler Carl, I cannot escape. Every time I turn around, somebody's going, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Have you tried the new Dungeon Crawler Carl combo at McChicken? It's everywhere. So I was like, I gave in. I was like, fine, fine, fine, fine, world.

1:07:46Jason DeFillippo:I will read your book that you're pushing down my throat. I read it in two days. It was awesome. I loved every second of it. And this is how I definitely knew that I hated clowns because clowns took me two months to trawl my way through and barely got out alive. And I fucking ravaged

1:08:04Brian Schulmeister:through this book. It was so good. Oh, that's great. I'm about a third of the way through it now because the algorithm has us, Brian. We are, we are in, we are, the matrix has us because I'd never heard of it until it's somebody started posting it on discord. And then you said you were going to get it. And I'm like, well, I need a book right now. And I looked at the cover art for it. I'm like, well, that looks whimsical and it's fucking great. It's, it reminds me, it's very Bob-a-verse for some reason to me.

1:08:32Jason DeFillippo:A little less weighty. I mean, this is definitely just silly fun and i i definitely like my rule of not reading two books in a row in a series a hundred percent with this because i i can tell i would get like sick of it real fast okay but a fun palate cleanser hell yeah okay there's like six of there's six of these things i think i think so there's there's quite a few so yeah at least six at least absolutely phenomenal i had a blast

1:08:56Brian Schulmeister:reading this it was so much fun oh that's great that's great yeah i'm enjoying it too and i instead Instead of reading clowns, I'll just go punch the clown and move along. It sounds like a much better experience. And I saw this one. Tome, a social book tracking app built around the massive BookTok community on TikTok, is shutting down after failing to reach financial stability. Shocker. The app positioned itself as a modern alternative to Goodreads, letting users log and rate books, get recommendations, share playlists, memes, favorite quotes, and other social content tied to reading culture. Tome says it built a community of around 100 ,000 readers, but the costs of running a media-heavy social platform with support for GIFs, video, and other content became too expensive.

1:09:38Brian Schulmeister:There's your problem right there. It's a book site, so why are you posting GIFs, videos, and other fucking multimedia? There's, duh. Rate the book. Comment on the book. Move along. Move along. Exactly. You know, it's not supposed to be a multimedia experience. I just want Goodreads done right. And nobody's been able to do it. Even with all of this AI fucking horsepower that's destroying the planet, nobody can make a decent alternative for Goodreads. And even Amazon can't fix Goodreads. So.

1:10:10Jason DeFillippo:Well, they could. They just don't care.

1:10:13Brian Schulmeister:Because there's no money in it anymore because nobody buys books at Amazon anymore. We buy fucking diapers and teepee and vitamins.

1:10:18Jason DeFillippo:Speaking of that, I still buy books on Amazon and I still use the Kindle app on my iPad. and I was starting to grow a conscience last night a little bit as I was thinking about my next book since I went through Dutch and Carly Carly in five seconds. And I really don't want to buy books off Amazon or support Amazon anymore. It drives me crazy. So I was wondering, dear listeners, e-book readers, e-book stores, not necessarily even an e-book reader. I'd prefer an app on my iPad because I don't want to buy another device. what can I do to get out of this Kindle Amazon trap that I'm stuck in? What can I do to not fund the next penis rocket with Katy Perry on it?

1:11:02Jason DeFillippo:Have you heard of Annie's archive, Brian? Well, I figured the best way to do this would be for me to start an AI company and I could just scrape the entire internet and all known books and then I would have them all. Perfect idea, Brian. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

1:11:19Brian Schulmeister:Short of that. Short of that. I did a little research and I bought books from some of these so far in my time because I try and buy DRM free stuff whenever I can. But if it's only on Amazon, then you just get it on Amazon. Bookshop.org, Kobo, Smashwords and ebooks.com. All of those have books that you can buy that are not, you know, it's you're not going to get the A-list on there. Although every single one of them has Martha Wells's new book on the front page. Every single one of them. So she at least didn't sell out. Well, she may have sold out by not selling out, but. She sold out to everyone.

1:11:54Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So, yeah, she's just like, I'll take whatever you want to give me. But you should check those out and look for places on there that might have that because it's slim pickings out there because Amazon owns publishing, you know, they own the distribution.

1:12:07Jason DeFillippo:That's the problem. So. Yeah. Because I need everything. I want everything. I'm going to be able to pick from all the books. Yeah. I mean. What I really want is I want to walk down the street and walk into a Barnes and Noble again back in 1995. That's what I want, James. Well, move to my neighborhood.

1:12:23Brian Schulmeister:I've got a great Barnes & Noble right up the street. It's phenomenal. Well, it's actually Calabasas, so I do have to cross the border into douche town. But as far as readers go, too, there's the Kobo e-readers and the Onyx Books. I've heard great things. People have been trying to get me to buy a Kobo for years. They've said that they're phenomenal. And the Onyx Books, I was doing the research on that last night, too. And people said it's also a phenomenal reader. So check those out if you wanted a physical one. But yeah, if you just want to put an app on your phone, you know what? Go buy a PDF of the book and then just watch it.

1:13:00Brian Schulmeister:Read it on that. I just, I ended up, speaking of buying books, not at Amazon, I just bought Cory Doctorow's new book, the e-book version of it for$13 straight from him, straight from the source on Kickstarter. So, you know, and here's the thing.

1:13:15Jason DeFillippo:I have a sneaking suspicion I'm still going to be using my Kindle and buying my books off Amazon.

1:13:20Brian Schulmeister:I probably depend knowing the kind of books you read, you know, although ask Peter Caldron, maybe you can just buy it from him in bulk. Maybe you can Venmo him some money and yeah. Hit me up, Peter. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of those books. I saw, I, I, not clowns, but the rest of them. Yeah. I'll skip the clowns. Um, yeah. So there's that.

1:13:43Jason DeFillippo:All right. Well, and as seen on a social network at some point this last week, We lost Douglas Adams 25 years ago this week. I can't believe it's been that long already. This has made a lot of people very sad and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

1:13:56Brian Schulmeister:True, true. Agreed. Yeah. It doesn't seem like 25 years because The Crow came out 32 years ago this week. And I thought Douglas Adams died before The Crow came out. But my brain is so scrambled from years of alcohol and abuse and strokes and shit like that that I forget. But this got me looking around and I just seen something came through my Kickstarter. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus. This is a there is all five books in one book. It's not cheap. It's like I think the cheapest one is like 120 bucks. And part of their marketing is 42 full color illustrations, five books, one insane omnibus.

1:14:33Brian Schulmeister:I don't want the illustrations. I'm sorry. That's the thing about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't want anybody else's interpretation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because they're all fucking wrong.

1:14:44Jason DeFillippo:I'm looking at the illustrations and it looks like a low rent. It's like the magic school bus met Harry Potter.

1:14:49Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I couldn't even look at it. No bueno. No, an omnibus sounds like a great, great idea, but, you know. Yeah, no pictures, please. No, no, it's all up in here. This is why I read a book, because I want it in here, you know. because you know the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy movie horrible yeah it's just i i still there are parts of it that i like mainly just stephen fry's narration that's most of it i just close my eyes and listen to stephen fry but uh uh my i had to throw in a douglas adams quote because it's one of my favorites reality is frequently inaccurate and he if he was still here I'm sure we'd have some choice words to say about the fucking reality we're stuck in right now Closing shout outs Over at Patreon we've got two new subscribers Andreas and Peter Thank you all very much And we'd also like to thank Chris, Brian, Shuby, Levi, John Eric Cliff, Murray, Armchair Rambo, Steve and Ben for their continued support on Patreon Thank you all so much

1:15:57Jason DeFillippo:Nobody at PayPal this week

1:16:00Brian Schulmeister:that's scary over the tip chair we've got jeffrey john and theodore and i'd like to shoot some shout outs to the merch people miriana from connecticut michael from california and dennis from maryland thank you all for your fine purchases i hope to be hope to see you sporting your fine grumpy old geeks wear or sipping out of your fine grumpy old geeks mug as soon as possible so send some pictures up on the uh on the the discord don't forget about zipping up that fine Grumpy Old Geeks hoodie. Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah. So here's our pitch. Got to do the pitch. Our show is fan-supported.

1:16:37Brian Schulmeister:That's what I was looking for. Our show is fan-supported. So if you would like to help keep the show on the air, and Brian's the one drinking. I'm the fucking sober one. If you'd like to keep the show on the air, please go to patreon.com slash GOG and toss a few bones our way for as little as$3 a month, but more if you want to give it. You can get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. and we also have tip jars and pay pals and other ways but to get the show early ad free and in high definition like i mentioned you got to go to patreon.com slash gog because they're the only ones that let us do that shit so there you go there you go we do have a new review though jason

1:17:10Jason DeFillippo:five stars this one is the one that hits the reset button every week if you feel like everyone in your company is killing your soul with pivots roadmap rewrites and bold new directions nobody wanted, chasing disruption while you're just aiming for basic sanity, give this show a listen. You'll be glad you did. Okay. Thank you very much. We got no name on that one, though.

1:17:29Brian Schulmeister:Going to put that one on a shirt, too. A little long, but we can fit it in with some small print. There we go. There we go. As we're leaving, I want to say happy birthday to the Bryans. You, Mr. Brian Schulmeister, whose birthday is on Saturday. I know. Bad opsec. But hey. Whatever. I don't know what year. That's true. And a happy birthday to our friend Brian Blondell. Happy birthday, Brian! So, the Brian's out doing the older thing. You old fucks. Younger than you, man. Younger than the other Brian. I'm the baby. Yeah, yeah, Brian's way older than me. He's... Brian's a boomer. Dude. Sorry, Blondell.

1:18:08Brian Schulmeister:Ouchie. You're so old, you probably voted for Trump. Hey, don't... He's a nice guy. Don't say that. I know. I'm kidding. God damn. I know he's a nice guy.

1:18:17Jason DeFillippo:I introduced you to him.

1:18:19Brian Schulmeister:Well, you know, that could have been like, you know, revenge for something I did for you in the past. But I found out he is a very nice guy. We love him. We love him. Sad news for somebody who is not getting older anymore. Weird, weird way to roll into that one. What a segue. Donald Gibb, the actor who played Ogre in the classic 80s comedy Revenge of the Nerds. His family just called.

1:18:39Jason DeFillippo:Can you stop the chisel on the gravestone? We got some new. We got a new one.

1:18:46Brian Schulmeister:God. Jesus. Well, not getting any older.

1:18:54Brian Schulmeister:This is going down the shitter now. I guess it's time to wrap. Until next time, I'm Jason Philippa. Take a picture of that poop.

1:19:04Brian Schulmeister:I got to check the pool first.

1:19:07Jason DeFillippo:I thought that was good. Anyways, I'm Brian Schillister. Oh, I got to read this out. Yeah, it's your job to read the rest of this shit. Damn. No more booze for you, Brian. No more booze for you. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 746. 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 the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you for it.

1:19:37Jason DeFillippo:Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show 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 guess what you can send us your poop and we've got merch snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show stay regular