747: Why We Sigh

15:40Brian Schulmeister:So this is a follow-up to last week's episode where we talked about the woman getting booed in her commencement speech address when she mentioned AI. There seems to be a trend, Brian. The kids are not liking the AI. No, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed during a University of Arizona commencement speech after praising the promise of AI in encouraging graduates to embrace it, highlighting growing public backlash against the technology. Yes, nobody wants to hear billionaires talk about how awesome AI is anymore or anybody talk about how awesome AI is anymore, especially in a commencement speech when you just got out of college and you have decades of student debt to pay.

16:23Brian Schulmeister:And they're saying, well, AI is going to take your job. They're like, well, I haven't even gotten a job yet that it can take. Fuck you. So read the room, people.

16:34Jason DeFillippo:Read the room. By the room, we're starting to mean the entire planet. The planet, yes.

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18:27Brian Schulmeister:Well, the Elon Musk OpenAI trial is over. Brian, it was basically dismissed. the twat waffle lost to the bag of deplorables. So big shocker there. Moving on is pretty much it. Elon screwed up and he didn't check the statute of limitations for what he was trying to do. So it's like you wasted everybody's time. Everybody's time, everybody's news cycle. Very good at that.

18:56Jason DeFillippo:And all the coverage that I've read about this is nobody look good. They're all jerks. Well, yeah, we knew that.

19:03Brian Schulmeister:We do this show every week. We knew that. But now they have proof. It is in the court record and the public record that they are twat waffles and deplorables. Their bums are cushy. Yes, they are. They do have comfy bums, as we learned. Thanks, Wired. God damn. The SpaceX IPO is everywhere right now. So I don't want to go through all of it because it's being covered everywhere. And it is it is a bad investment if you have not read the news. But you'll find out that it's a bad investment.

19:38Jason DeFillippo:Here's the thing. I would have invested immediately in SpaceX if SpaceX would have went public as just SpaceX. Right. As soon as he rolled it into all of his other bullshit.

19:47Brian Schulmeister:No, thank you. Yep. That's pretty much what everybody's saying. So SpaceX has finally filed for its IPO and buried in the paperwork was a fun little detail. The company plans to spend nearly$3 billion on those lovely mobile gas turbines to keep its AI data centers running. Those are the ones that they're being sued for by the NAACP down in Memphis. Yeah. So they're just saying, fuck you guys. We're going to keep doing it. Fuck the planet. Fuck everything. Yep. Also, you know, since they have all of this is the funny part. They're buying billions of dollars worth of, you know, turbines to run the data centers.

20:26Brian Schulmeister:For Grok, which nobody wants, nobody wants Grok. So it says in the SpaceX IPO filing that Grok might be a giant legal and PR dumpster fire. The company warned investors that Grok's spicy image mode and unhinged voice personality could generate deepfakes, explicit content, misinformation, harassment, copyright violations, and other delightful side effects. and regulators are already investigating allegations tied to non-consensual deep fakes involving minors in the same chatbot that famous famously went full mecha hitler we all remember mecha hitler um and this is the fucked up part brian this is the really fucked up part when you read the numbers spacex claims a completely normal and definitely not delusional 28.5 trillion dollar market opportunity, even though the company lost nearly$5 billion last year.

21:19Brian Schulmeister:I mean, that's straight up AI company math.

21:22Jason DeFillippo:It is. They're all basically claiming, well, I mean, this one's a little bit more ridiculous, but it's only a matter of scale. Yeah, that's it, you know. Yeah. Their IPO claim only has a couple of those gas turbines hooked up to it compared to the other ones. Yep.

21:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And so they did get the government contract for$200 million. $200 million, which$200 million is like pocket change nowadays for all of these guys. But the way that they're making money now, as we discussed last week, is Anthropic is actually going to start paying SpaceX to lease out the Colossus data centers because nobody fucking wants Grok, which SpaceX now owns.

22:03Jason DeFillippo:I would like to point out to everybody that are still thinking that Anthropic is the good company. Let me remind you that that$15 billion a year for data center access, those data centers are being run by the gas turbines that are destroying the planet.

22:18Brian Schulmeister:Yes. And the entire black population outside of Memphis. So, yeah, there's that. There's that, Brian. And I don't know if you saw the AOC congressional hearing the other day with the EPA and she was showing the drinking water after Meta moved in and built a data center. It was basically just sludge. Yeah. Oh, there's so much going on with these things. And it's just not good. It's not good. And yeah, Anthropic is just as evil as open AI. They just they have better PR at this point. I made one or two good decisions. Yeah, that's it. I got them a lot of PR. And they're still running by, none of these people are going to make money.

22:54Brian Schulmeister:There's going to be a reckoning real soon, real fucking soon. And we've seen it. I even got an email this week from Google saying that they're going to start using token-based pricing for Gemini. And I'm like, okay, well, out of all the companies that can afford to not do that, they're like, well, why would we not do it if everybody else is doing it and we can make some money back because we're still losing. gajillions of dollars, but we make katrillions of dollars, so I guess it doesn't matter it's a wash. Anyway. It's a fucking mess. Don't buy SpaceX. No. This is not financial advice. This is common sense.

23:27Brian Schulmeister:That's all it is. Anecdotally, we would say you should not do that. You should not do that. The only profitable part of SpaceX is Starlink. And Starlink is wrapped in Elon drawers. Dirty Elon drawers. So Trump Mobile, amazingly back in the news this week because they have cleared the incredibly high bar, Brian, of, wait for it, existing. They shipped a phone. They actually shipped a phone to some people. Yes, after promising a made-in-America gold smartphone back in 2025, Don Jr. and Eric Trump finally shipped the T1 nearly nine months late. And experts say it's basically a repackaged Taiwanese HTC phone with a gold paint job and specs closer to a bargain bin Walmart Android.

24:18Brian Schulmeister:Wait, so it's not made in America? No, Brian, it's not. Oh, imagine that. It is conceived of by the brilliant minds of Americans. But it is not made in America, which we all knew was the case because you can't make a cell phone in America. That's right. So highlights include a headphone jacked straight out of 2012 and an American flag logo with the wrong number of stripes, which feels pretty on brand. So, and the phone apparently works, which shocked a lot of people. It does come with TrueSocial pre-installed. Go figure that one out. But unfortunately, the celebration lasted about five minutes before reports surfaced that Trump Mobile may have exposed customer data online, including addresses and phone numbers.

25:05Brian Schulmeister:So apparently the phone exists, but their OPSEC does not. Well, that's also pretty on brand. Yeah, I think, you know, it's the cyber truck of cell phones.

25:15Jason DeFillippo:It is. It is. And speaking of cyber trucks, let's talk about Tesla's robo taxis for a second. Newly unredacted data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that at least two Tesla robo taxi crashes that have happened since July 2025 occurred while vehicles were being remotely driven by teleoperators. You know, the people that are supposed to be there to make sure the crashes don't happen.

25:38Brian Schulmeister:Right. They're your safety net. So apparently they're really bad at GTA 6. Oh, wait, GTA 6 isn't out yet. Oh, never mind.

25:46Jason DeFillippo:All self-driving car companies are supposed to report crashes to the NHTSA. But up until this point, Tesla has asked the regulators to redact portions of its data to protect confidential business information. Yeah, right. Both crashes occurred in Austin, Texas, where Tesla first started offering RoboTaxi rides in June 2025, and both happened while a safety monitor was behind the wheel and no passengers were on board. So, safety monitor behind wheel, teleoperators leaping in, still crashing the cars. Wow, that's pretty bad. In one of the July 2025 crashes, TechCrunch writes, after a safety monitor requested assistance, a remote operator took over, increased the speed of the robo-taxi, and then drove it up the curb and made contact with a metal fence.

26:32Jason DeFillippo:In another from January 2026, a remote operator assumed control and made contact with a temporary barricade for a construction site at approximately 10 miles an hour. Okay.

26:44Brian Schulmeister:I mean, we're not talking like, you know, Blues Brothers, you know, end of the movie crashes or anything like that, but it's still... But still. Yeah. Yeah. You know why? Because they have no LIDAR. You know, you can't you can't tell distance when you're a tele, you know, tele operator looking at it on a screen. There's no depth perception. Maybe they should get them those metaglasses, the oculuses, maybe. Oh, but yeah.

27:11Jason DeFillippo:And not all of the crashes have involved teleoperators. There are at least two crashes where Tesla robotaxis accidentally clip mirrors on other vehicles. In another instance, a robotaxi ran over a dog. Thankfully, the dog survived. They're also struggling to overcome other operational issues. A reporter using the service in Dallas on a recent Monday afternoon spent nearly two hours to take what typically would be a 20-minute drive from the campus of South Methodist University to Dallas City Hall, about five miles on a major freeway. They've also noted multiple instances where robo-taxis would drop off riders 15 minutes away from their destination, despite their desired drop-off point being in Tesla's coverage area.

27:49Jason DeFillippo:So, yeah, sure, self-driving cars, yeah, just around the corner. No problems.

27:56Brian Schulmeister:Yep. No problems here. And Waymo will still drive you into the ocean if you let it. All right, let's change tax a little bit here. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, says it's coming after insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket, where traders have been making suspiciously well-timed bets on wars, coups, and geopolitical events. Let's not forget the temperature in Paris. That's right. That's right. Everybody get le hairdryer. Yeah, I saw a thing this week, Brian, where they were talking about how hairstyles have not changed much in quite some time. Everybody's wearing the same hairstyles.

28:34Brian Schulmeister:I believe that you will appreciate this one. It is because we banned Aquanet. I think that's the problem. Aquanet was awesome. I couldn't do my Robert Smith hairdo if I wanted to. I know. I know. Bring back the dippity-doo. I used to wear that shit. So CFTC Chairman Michael Selig told Wired the agency is using AI tools to analyze massive amounts of trading data and identify suspicious activity, even on offshore platforms accessed through VPNs and crypto wallets. Okay. The crackdown follows several high-profile cases, including a trader who reportedly made more than$400 ,000 betting on the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shortly before U.S.

29:15Brian Schulmeister:forces intervened. Another wave of suspicious bets appeared ahead of a U.S.-Iran ceasefire announcement. Despite the Trump administration easing pressure on prediction markets and investors tied to Donald Trump Jr. backing Polymarket, regulators say they're now aggressively monitoring global betting activity for market abuse.

29:34Jason DeFillippo:sure sure you are yeah well i think that they are probably starting to attempt to at least a little bit because the bush back has been so great they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart they're doing it because they realize they're going to get sued out of existence if they don't

29:48Brian Schulmeister:because the you know what they didn't the check's not big enough they didn't write their their payoff check yet yeah that's why sam bankman freed still in jail polymarket cut the right size check they would nobody would bother them but well they are starting to get a little bit

30:01Jason DeFillippo:Minnesota is the latest state to try and curtail the activities of prediction markets like Calci and Polymarket. Governor Tim Walz signed a bill that included a number of public safety provisions, including a ban on those markets operating within the state. These are slated to take effect on August 1st, but they are unfortunately already facing challenges. That's what happens when the entire government is in bed with these businesses. Three of the states that have embarked on legal cases against these businesses were sued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which claims that it only has the power to oversee prediction markets.

30:32Jason DeFillippo:So you see, on one hand, they say they're doing something about it. Yeah. But on the other hand, they're stopping people from doing anything about it. Yeah. The federal regulator has also hopped onto the Minnesota law, but rather than making the same case, its argument is that the law would prevent weather-related predictions made by farmers to hedge against crop losses. That's why we can let people bet on the end of the world. Crop markets. NBR has reported that an updated version of the bill with an exception for the agricultural application is likely to be approved.

31:07Brian Schulmeister:What fucking timeline do we live in, Brian? I don't know. I don't know. See, the farmers can't make money off of their crops, so they're going to bet on their crops failing. So maybe they just won't water their crops because they're going to make more money on the polymarket bet than they would have if they had actually finished making their crops and selling them at market. That makes a whole lot of sense. This is the world. This is why we sigh, Jason.

31:33Jason DeFillippo:This is why we sigh. Why we sigh. speaking of sighing i i sigh anytime i go on linkedin as we've all known linkedin has been a fucking veritable shithole for ages full of fucking new age hucksters and bullshit fucking

31:47Brian Schulmeister:business mba asshole shit wipes gary vd the the most common sexually transmitted disease on linkedin

31:56Jason DeFillippo:but they've also been on the front lines of the ai slopademic recently now the company is taking new steps to reduce the reach of posts that bear the hallmarks of ai generated drivel In a blog post, the company's VP of product, Laura Lorenzetti, said the changes will target everything from outright engagement bait to recycled thought leadership and other generic content that lacks the authenticity and originality. Basically, the way LinkedIn's always been, except now written by bots instead. This is a particularly interesting approach for them to take considering they've been pushing their own AI writing platforms on LinkedIn that will write your posts for you.

32:33Jason DeFillippo:You shitting me, right? No, of course not. The platform offers a bunch of its own generative AI tools, including a big rewrite with AI button and its post composer. So we're going to crack down on the AI slop that we've forced you to start using anyways to get any engagement. Great. Again, why we sigh. Why we sigh. Jesus Christ. And speaking of attempting to avoid AI slop, Spotify is launching verification badges for podcasts to help authenticate creator identity and likeness. Now, do you think we need one? Fuck no. Wouldn't AI do fucking shit like this? No, it fucking wouldn't. That's way too many fucks.

33:17Jason DeFillippo:Yep. M-M-Fuck.

33:22Jason DeFillippo:Most obvious use case for this is to help listeners find real podcasts amid a sea of AI slop. And if you remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the fact that, what was it, like almost a third of all new podcasts are now, no, two thirds? One third, two thirds?

33:36Brian Schulmeister:It's thousands and thousands a day. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

33:38Jason DeFillippo:They're all fucking, yes, there's a bunch of AI Slop podcasts out there. So we can go on now, Jason, and get it verified by Spotify badge, which is accompanied by a light green checkmark icon, making our real deal podcast much easier to spot while perusing. Great, except nobody listens to us on Spotify.

33:55Brian Schulmeister:So I don't give a shit.

33:56Jason DeFillippo:this is also of course what they've already done with music so they're just uh pushing that onto their podcasts as well now great that's just what i wanted uh i i don't even know if i have a spotify

34:09Brian Schulmeister:account anymore i may have an account but i haven't had it installed on anything in so long but yeah i the disco ball thing was what was making the rounds this week which is why i thought you had the had this story in here because oh is that really the thing that you're going with the spotify disco ball?

34:24Jason DeFillippo:They're like, I didn't even know it was a disco ball. I thought it was like model lizard skin or something. It's so stupid looking. It's so bad. It's so ugly. Because it was made by AI. I'm sure it was not made by a human. I'm looking at it right now. It is just, what the, okay, I guess. It's fucking atrocious. If you're going for a disco ball, don't make it green.

34:43Brian Schulmeister:It's horrible. Yeah. Anyways. All right. Meta just axed 8 ,000 employees, about 10 % of the company, while reassigning another 7 ,000 people to AI projects. And Mark Zuckerberg says not to worry. Be happy. Because there probably won't be another mass firing for at least seven whole months. So reassuring. Goody, goody. Goody, goody. Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly tracking employee clicks, keystrokes, and mouse movements to train AI agents designed to do those same jobs. So he's apparently thinking that it's going to take seven months to train that new LLM. and then he's going to start kicking people out.

35:20Brian Schulmeister:So workers are essentially being forced to train their own replacements while management hangs motivational posters about the future. I think that they should go back to, I have seen some propaganda posters, some old Nazi propaganda posters about Jews digging their graves while the Nazis are sitting over them with their guns pointed at them. So when they're done digging their graves, they're going to shoot them and put them in their graves. This is basically the same kind of thing. So, you know, meta employees, feel free to take that, run it through Lama, make your posters and hang those up around the campus instead of whatever pussy shit you're doing now.

35:54Jason DeFillippo:I definitely would be doing that if I were working there. Oh, absolutely. I never would have taken a job there. Or been offered one, to be fair.

36:01Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, we aged out. We turned 40, or at least I turned 40 right when they were on a big hiring binge. And they're like, yeah, we don't want you. I'm like, I would have probably taken the job if they offered back then. Because back then, remember, it was a kinder, gentler Zuck. That's true. It wasn't so much a robot. But more than 1 ,500 employees have already signed petitions against the surveillance program. And I have an idea, Brian. I have an idea. So, you know, they're tracking mouse movements and everything you're doing. Get a hand massager, one of those, you know, things that vibrate your hands.

36:33Brian Schulmeister:Use that when you're moving your mouse around your screen. So you're just introducing massive amounts of noise to the mouse movement. Signal to noise ratio, people. flood the zone with shit, as Steve Bannon would say. So, come on, guys. I'm giving you options here. I'm giving you options to our friends at Meta. I don't even know if anybody that works at Meta has ever listened to this show. I don't know, but as Gandalf says,

36:58Jason DeFillippo:I'm trying to help you. We are. Well, OpenAI has signed deals with fintech startups, tech giants, and even Disney, but it's breaking new ground by announcing the world's first partnership with the country of Malta. all right in a post on its website open ai said that would provide chat gpt plus for one year to every maltese resident or citizen malta is the first country to launch a partnership of this scale because we refuse to let our citizens stay behind in the digital age sylvio shembri malta's minister for economy enterprise and strategic projects said in the statement we are putting our people at the very forefront of global change by letting them rewrite emails for the approximately meeting notes yes for the approximately 574 250 residents living in malta

37:46Brian Schulmeister:they'll have to that's not approximately that is specific that's pretty specific that's really

37:51Jason DeFillippo:fucking specific look we don't know how many people were born or died since this was written oh this is true this is true yes yes okay they'll have to complete a course developed by the university of malta before launching the chat gpt plus subscription which costs 20 a month in the us now that idea i like however i do not know what the syllabus is for this course and i would like to see that before i full fully sign off on this but i think again education is a massive part of all of this and rather than just giving your entire country carte blanche access to goddamn chat gpt teach them what it is teach them to be yeah teach them about hallucinations teach Teach them that they need to check the work.

38:31Jason DeFillippo:Teach them all of that stuff.

38:33Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, instead of giving your children loaded handguns, at least teach them where the safety is. Exactly. So we have an inn in Malta, so we're going to find out. We have a spy in Malta, so we will hear how this goes, hopefully. Now, Brian, it was crypto week in my newsreader, so I'm going to run through these real quick. We're bringing back Crypto Corner. I don't know if that was ever, ever a segment that we had. It was more like criminal money corner or something like that. But do you remember when we did the fireside convention in our conference up in Canada to a room full of bright eyed, bushy tailed young people who were so happy about crypto?

39:18Brian Schulmeister:And the first thing out of our mouth was crypto is shit. and I just wonder how many of those people lost their shirts since then and whatever but they didn't like that but they did not like that that kind of kind of we didn't we didn't read the room but we were right we were right and we were ripped by the way god we were drunk it was so much fun I had so much fun at that conference anyway Bitcoin Depot one of the largest crypto ATM operators in North America has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down its entire network of more than 9 ,000 kiosks across the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The company says increasing state regulations and legal pressure made its business model unsustainable.

40:00Brian Schulmeister:Hold on a second. You're telling me... You're telling me your business model collapsed because it was illegal? Yeah.

40:15Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, pretty much.

40:20Brian Schulmeister:oh fuck you so fucking sick of these assholes the collapse comes as multiple states cracked out on crypto atms over fraud concerns attorneys general in massachusetts and iowa sued bitcoin depot alleging the company knowingly facilitated scams removed fraud protections and overcharged customers. Those are features, not bugs. Features. Massachusetts officials claim residents lost more than$10 million through scams tied to the machines because ransomware is the only reason that these things existed. These are part of our portfolio of services. Yep. Evil as a service. Remember that episode? Go back and look it up.

41:06Brian Schulmeister:This is so grandmas could go and so they could unfreeze pictures of their grandchildren that had been frozen by these fucking ransomware assholes and and then wouldn't even unlock the computer for them so but they would take their money and then what did they use bitcoin atms so yeah fuck these guys so moving on brian you got another one this just brought me back to the days of nfts because it's so fucking stupid a blockchain hardware company called PuffPaw is promoting a cannabis vape pen called Good Trip, spelled G-U-D-T-R-I-P, that offers users small amounts of Bitcoin as part of a loyalty program, raising concerns about the growing overlap between crypto gamification and addictive products.

41:53Brian Schulmeister:The vape pen currently sold only in California includes roughly two to three dollars in Bitcoin that users unlock through an app using QR codes or NFC. The company says the reward is issued up front and not tied to how much someone vapes, despite earlier marketing that claimed every hit earns crypto. Wow. There's no gray area there. There's no gray area at all. You suck our pen, you get some crypto. That's what they said. And they're saying, no, that was misconstrued. It's like the world's oldest profession. You suck this, you get this. Good point. Good point. The app also tracks puff seconds and daily streaks, which critics argue still encourages habit formation.

42:35Brian Schulmeister:Addiction researchers warned the system could normalize or incentivize excessive cannabis use. The controversy comes amid broader criticism of crypto based apps and prediction markets that increasingly blur the line between entertainment, finance, gambling and behavioral manipulation, a.k.a. why we sigh.

42:51Jason DeFillippo:And in case you think it's just that, let me quickly launch my ESPN app. ESPN, sports provider, provides news and information about games that are coming up. Oh, look, the betting odds for today's game. You've got to be kidding me. I thought Disney owned ESPN. No, right here in the ESPN app, right next to the Dodgers. Here we go. Oh, yes. Look, I can click on a link that'll give me the betting odds for the game. Wow.

43:24Okay. Great.

43:28Brian Schulmeister:ThorChain, a decentralized crypto exchange protocol that enables cross-chain token swaps, halted trading after a suspected exploit drained roughly$11 million in crypto access across at least nine blockchains. Security researchers trace the attack to a compromised Asgard vault tied to ThorChain's threshold signature system, which manages cross-chain liquidity. Stolen assets included Bitcoin, Ethereum-based tokens, Dogecoin, Litecoin, XRP, and others. Where's Mjolnir coin?

43:56Jason DeFillippo:Strings thing is somebody returned all the Dogecoin because I was like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this crap?

44:02Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. You keep that. Yeah, no shit. So, yep, more, more. At least people still feel that crypto is worth stealing is, you know, kind of the point there. and now let's get to the point of why we talk about crypto for criminals. Iran is reportedly launching a Bitcoin-based insurance program for ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, expanding on earlier plans to charge Bitcoin tolls for safe passage through one of the world's most critical shipping lanes. According to Iranian state-linked reports, the new platform called HormuzSafe would let cargo operators pay premiums in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and receive blockchain-based insurance payouts for events like inspections, detonations, oh, detentions.

44:46Brian Schulmeister:I thought I said detonations. Detentions or vessel confiscations. No, that's only on Polymarket.

44:50Jason DeFillippo:That's where you get the money for that.

44:52Brian Schulmeister:That's exactly it. You got to go to Polymarket for detonations. Detentions or you go to... The move comes after U.S. authorities seized$344 million in USDT tied to Iran, highlighting the risks of centralized stablecoins that can be frozen by governments. Analysts say Iran appears to be shifting towards Bitcoin because it can't easily be seized or censored. Because it's for criminals. Yes. Now, finally, AI Financial, a publicly traded company deeply tied to Trump-backed crypto venture World Liberty Financial, warned in a recent SEC filing that it may not survive the next 12 months. The company reported a quarterly net loss of more than$271 million, driven largely by a massive, unrealized loss on its holdings of WLFI tokens.

45:40Brian Schulmeister:AI Financial generated just$4.7 million in revenue during the quarter while ending with only$10.5 million in cash and a working capital deficit. The company's strategy centers on holding roughly 7.3 billion WLFI tokens, currently locked until August 2026 with hopes of eventually selling portions to stay afloat. Now World Liberty Financial itself is heavily tied to the Trump family with Donald Trump listed as a co-founder emeritus and his sons actively involved. Meanwhile, while both WLFI and the Trump meme coin have seen steep declines over the past year among growing regulatory and ethics scrutiny.

46:16Brian Schulmeister:I don't know where they're getting regulatory scrutiny from because... Not from that administration. Not, not, yeah, seriously. Oh. So that's your week in crypto criminal currency.

46:34Brian 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.

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47:52Brian Schulmeister:That's right. That's Shopify.com slash grumpy. Ups and doodads. Backblaze, Brian. and I finally signed up for a Backblaze account. This is not a paid endorsement or anything like that, but I don't know if you've seen the news about what's going on here in SoCal. It's fire season again, big fires. I'm covered in smoke half the time because there's a big one in Simi Valley. And I'm like, look, last time this happened, I've got, I still got PTSD. Everybody in SoCal has PTSD after the Palisades fires and the Eaton fires and all the other fucking fires.

48:26Jason DeFillippo:I thought you were covered in smoke because you're trying to make some Bitcoin.

48:29Brian Schulmeister:I was, yeah, I was doing, my puff-o-meter was down. And I was trying to, because I have no job, so I need to make some money somehow. So there's smoking, puffing up. So I finally put it out, because I'm like, in the old days, Backblaze would like, you know, I'm like, oh, I don't have the bandwidth. I've got 24 terabytes of data that I need to back up. And I'm like, oh, my old things. And I realized, wait, wait, I have gigabit synchronous Ethernet. I have massive bandwidth. So let me sign up for Backblaze. And because last time I had bags of computers and hard drives and everything sit next to my bed, sleeping with my clothes on, my shoes next to my bed, my wallet in my pocket, ready to go.

49:07Brian Schulmeister:And I'm like, you know what? Let it fucking burn. Just put it on the cloud. I give up. I absolutely give up. And it's been great so far. It's backing up all my externals. And I just don't care anymore. I'm like, let it burn.

49:21Jason DeFillippo:Next. youtube's ai deep fake detection tools now being released to all creators 18 and older this will be able to detect whether their likeness has been copied and used in ai videos uploaded to the website it's technically only been available to creators but now anybody can use it it's getting harder and harder to differentiate between real and ai videos these days and the tools wider availability could end up helping even ordinary people suddenly find their faces used in potentially malicious or misleading ai videos for creators this could help them catch brands and companies using their likenesses without permission to promote products and services.

49:55Jason DeFillippo:So I guess we can attach that to our YouTube account now, Jason. And if anybody is using AI to replicate these beautiful mugs, we'll catch that.

50:06Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I don't think we have to worry about that, Brian.

50:08Jason DeFillippo:Doesn't really do much about the AI slop taking over YouTube, but it's something. It's something. It's something. Now, this one I thought was interesting. X has introduced more incentive to get users to pay for verification on its platform. That incentive being basically taking away things that they had for free. Which is the way the internet works. As seen on X and Reddit. Users are reporting that X has quietly restricted the amount of posts allowed for those without the blue checkmark. Now the X Help Center page on limits reads that posts are limited to 50 original posts and 200 replies per day for unverified accounts.

50:44Jason DeFillippo:So if you really want to, you know, suck up to Elon's fucking cock, you're going to have to pay him. to be able to post a bunch of times about how much you like him, because really that's about all that happens over there anymore, I think.

50:57Brian Schulmeister:Oh, no, it's just, it's all AI. It's all AI. It's all the BitBros just turned to AI. That's all it is. It's ridiculous. But 50 original posts and 200 replies a day? That's a lot. If you're making more than that, you need to get a fucking life. That's what I'm saying. Jesus Christ.

51:12Jason DeFillippo:That is true. That is true. So you've got to pay up now if you want to post more often than that. Christ.

51:19Brian Schulmeister:This next one, I got a hat tip to Gabriel Pagan over on Discord for this. This is a fun site called Retro Codex. It's got nuggets of wisdom that we were all taught when we were young that has been disproven. And it's very fun. There's not a lot up there now because it's in beta, but go check it out. It's like most of the stuff I knew, I don't think there's anything that I didn't know. But I'm smarter than most of the people I hang out with, so I'm going to give it to them. We read books. yeah not trying to be an arrogant asshole but it's just the truth like come on no this is a great idea i i love this idea yeah absolutely so uh you can submit you can submit your own bits of wisdom so have at it that's where the idea falls down rod stewart did not actually have his stomach pumped i hope somebody's verifying this shit

52:15Brian Schulmeister:media candy Brian I just want to start off by saying fuck fire tv never ever buy an amazon fire tv not like I had to tell you that already because people that listen to the show know that smart tv suck and amazon fire tv is the worst of the worst of the worst but I watched a bunch of tv this week and four times it crashed in the middle of my shows three times it updated the software when I turned it on. And it is just it takes forever to boot because it's just a lazy, shitty computer that has to download all of the ads from Amazon before I can get to the thing that I want to watch, which is on my Apple TV.

52:50Brian Schulmeister:So I don't even want to watch anything on the fucking fire TV because it's so goddamn slow. Anyway, that said, Good Omens 3 came out on Amazon Prime Video this week. It did. I started to watch it. I got about 10 minutes into it. Then I saw that you posted that you finished it. So then I went back and finished it. What are your thoughts, Brian? I posted, I finish it so you don't have to. I know, but that's a challenge to me.

53:16Jason DeFillippo:Remember, Brian, I'm weird. I didn't like it. It was horrible. I really, if I go back and I think about it, I didn't really like season two. I didn't like anything that left behind the actual book itself, which was basically the first half of season one. And then they kind of veered off because they knew they wanted to keep it going. if they just would have done the book as a limited miniseries i would have really enjoyed it having said all that it is a true fucking delight watching david tenet and michael sheen play off each other i would that's great i would watch them do anything and it's the only much like what's her face from downton abbey maggie smith it's the only reason i watched out and abbey the only reason i watched any of these good omen stuff was david tenet and michael sheen playing off each other which was fantastic it was trite it wasn't interesting i saw the ending from 7 000 miles away

54:16Brian Schulmeister:okay you could tell that it you could tell that it was going to be a much longer series because there were so many storylines that they started and stopped and did not did not have any you know any follow-through on the whole jesus thing was a waste of fucking time i mean period waste of time Yeah. The only thing that made me smile was when they're in the pub having dinner and then they go to the poster or the painting on the wall and it's Terry Pratchett like a wizard outfit. Yeah. That made me laugh. I was like, OK, nice little nod to Terry Pratchett, who would be very pissed off that this actually exists.

54:50Brian Schulmeister:Exactly.

54:51Jason DeFillippo:Or it actually would have been good because he would have helped write it.

54:53Brian Schulmeister:He would have helped write it. Yes. But yeah, it was I was OK with it because of the same thing. Tennant and Sheehan doing doing their shtick. By the way, Michael Sheehan is going to be on the next season of the Celebrity Traders in the UK filming this summer. So go check that out. Yeah, I was I was let down the exact amount that I thought I was going to be let down.

55:16Jason DeFillippo:does that make sense yeah it makes sense the other thing is like most of the acting was spectacularly bad like yeah it really was and i know a lot of people have a soft spot in their hearts for bbc sci-fi special effects red dwarf style i can't stand it and this is all bbc red

55:36Brian Schulmeister:dwarf special effects and oh yeah pretty much pretty much yeah um so i i watched two other movies this week. I saw Mortal Kombat 2. Fine movie if you like Mortal Kombat 1, the new reboot. If you didn't, then you probably won't watch it anyway, but I thought it was a fine continuation. Makes no sense if you're not a Mortal Kombat fan. There's so many inside jokes with it that it doesn't really make any difference to anybody if you're not into that world. But for what it was, I thought it was good. I thought it was actually really good, and the Johnny Cage stuff was really good. Liked it. Liked it a lot.

56:16Brian Schulmeister:And I had to suffer through The Devil Wears Prada 2 this week. The Devil Wears Prada 1 was actually a good movie. There was a lot of good character development in it. It had a good story. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is just so people can make cameos and say that they were in The Devil Wears Prada 2. There is no character development. The story is thin as shit. Fucking Kara Swisher shows up in the middle of it, which is like Adam Savage showing up in The Expanse. it's just like oh god now i hate this thing um but everything was just for cameos it was just for cameos i thought it was a i thought it was a pale comparison to the first movie which i still say the devil wears prada is a good movie is a very good movie yeah this is just a shit money grab i thought but all right that's that's my opinion well i listened to two new podcast episodes

57:09Jason DeFillippo:this week. One, a completely new podcast, at least to me. The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. Now, of course, Billy Corgan has a podcast. There's no way his raging ego would not allow him to not have a podcast.

57:22Brian Schulmeister:And by the

57:23Jason DeFillippo:way, I say raging ego as if it's a bad thing. He's the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. Lead singers need to have raging egos, so I accept it and moved on from there. The problem I have with it is he's, as far as I can tell, an absolutely fucking horrible interviewer, and all he does is interview people. But having said that, I did watch the episode of David Jay of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets fame. I worked with Love and Rockets. I've gotten to know some of those guys pretty well, but they've always been, they are enigmas. There's for a band as popular as they were and as influential as they are, there's not much known about them.

57:59Jason DeFillippo:So it's really interesting to have the conversation and have him talk about how Bauhaus formed and the dynamics in the group and all of that sort of stuff. So if you are a fan of the goth rock, as I am, like Bauhausen, Love and Rockets, you will survive Billy Corgan interviewing him. And it's quite interesting.

58:16Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Yeah. I've worked with Billy Corgan and he is an egomaniacal douchebag. I fucking hate that guy. But

58:22Jason DeFillippo:other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Moving on. What do we got? And Dan Carlin has put out a new common sense, The Water in Which We Swim. And if you are a fan of Dan Carlin and Common Sense episodes, it is exactly what you would expect it to be. And as the limited releases he's done since Trump came into power, which is basically, how the fuck is this happening?

58:46Brian Schulmeister:Summed it up in one, got in one. I listened to it twice and I keep falling asleep. So I haven't even gotten through it, the whole thing yet, but yeah, was it, it was good. Yeah, I think it's good.

58:58Jason DeFillippo:Of course it's good. It's the same shit, but it's good. It's good shit. It's my kind of shit.

59:03Brian Schulmeister:The dark side. with Dave. Welcome to the dark side with Dave with the multi-talented Dave Bittner. He sings, he dances, he podcasts. Welcome back, Dave. Hello, good to be back. How are you this fine day? Not bad. Are you ready for the SpaceX launch? Maybe, if it goes up. I see you're wearing your NASA shirt, so I know you're a space guy, so today's the day. I know this is probably terrible of me, but I hope that thing fucking blows up so hard. Well, I was just thinking

59:36Jason DeFillippo:so hard. Elon Musk has so destroyed his own public reputation to the point where I think all, many of us used to be super excited about the SpaceX launches and be like, oh my God, this is so cool. And now it's just so tainted by Elon that I'm torn. Like, much like Jason, it's like, oh, it'd be great if it exploded. I mean, it'd only be better if Jeff Bezos happened to be on it.

1:00:00Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, even better. Especially after that interview this week. Jesus Christ. Right.

1:00:05Jason DeFillippo:Right. No. Yeah. No, doing well. Hanging in there.

1:00:09Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. All right. Let's cover a few things here real quick. The Boys finale was this week. Did you catch it? I did. What'd you think? I'm glad it's over. Me too. Man, talk about a squandered last season. Jesus. Yeah. Man, petered out.

1:00:28Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, and just reeked of budget cuts and and uninterested writers, and they just kind of pissed away all the goodwill they'd built up over the first few seasons. Much like Elon. Sad to see it go, but yeah.

1:00:48Brian Schulmeister:There's an Elon character in there that actually is pretty funny. That was a pretty funny joke.

1:00:52Jason DeFillippo:That was a funny joke, yeah. That was a funny joke. It was a very funny joke.

1:00:56Brian Schulmeister:If only. Yeah, seriously. I finished Maul's Shadow Lord this week. my god is that one of the best things I've seen this year

1:01:06Jason DeFillippo:it's really good right so good I'm two episodes in and we're very much enjoying it so thank you for the recommendation looking forward to checking out the rest of it I agree it's so far strong very much looking forward to season two

1:01:22Brian Schulmeister:yeah and what Brian said is it gets better it totally gets better with every single episode so and I was talking to my friend John Sylvain the other day. He hadn't watched it yet, but he was telling me about The Clone Wars. He'd watched the animated version of The Clone Wars. And he has the same problem that I have. It's just the animation when they walk is so weird that it's kind of unnerving. I agree. That walk style is just not cool.

1:01:48Jason DeFillippo:I agree.

1:01:48Brian Schulmeister:But everything else is great.

1:01:50Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah. If I could just add to that, there's something I noticed in the last week or so that bothered me. And I think it was in the mall show where it seems like in anything animated, when someone jumps from a high perch down to something on the ground that is longer than a human can normally do, it just never looks right. Right. And it goes back to, uh, um, Phantom Menace. There's the very beginning of Phantom Menace. There's the thing where the, where, uh, Obi-Wan and, um, Qui-Gon jump off of this platform down into the hangar and it just never looks right. I'm not sure why we haven't figured out the real physics of that, but time and time again.

1:02:32Jason DeFillippo:Because the real physics means they die.

1:02:35Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, well, I think what they're doing is they're using force brakes. They're like, oh, you know, it slows them down. But I don't think they visually portray it very well at all. I think you're totally right.

1:02:48Jason DeFillippo:No, and yet Spider-Man can land on the ground with his, you know, they do the little tripod landing and we're with that. The Hero Land. Yeah, that's a good name for it. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe just laziness. So the other week I had watched Solo with the kid because he had not seen that one yet and I had remarked about what an actually quite good movie it was and a lot of fun. We watched the last remaining full Star Wars movie at least until, well, I guess today because there's a new one in theaters today that he hadn't seen. We watched Rogue One, a Star Wars story. And as much as I said that solo was a pretty good movie wow rogue one is a really really good movie yeah it is up there like if you take away the childhood feels from star wars empire and return of the jedi this might be the best star wars movie ever made um and i know it's so because my kid is like if there's no sith and no lightsabers and no jedi he got no time for it and he loved this and there's no sith and no lightsabers and no Jedi.

1:03:52Jason DeFillippo:Okay.

1:03:53Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, see, and then I told you, I finished Andor, and the instant Andor was over, I went right into Rogue One, and it was so good. It was so good to have that flow. Such a good movie.

1:04:06Jason DeFillippo:Such a good movie. Yeah, and so just fun. Like, the last act with the space battle and everything is just, it's the type of Star Wars fun that we all love. Mm-hmm.

1:04:19Brian Schulmeister:you weren't worried about showing your kid a movie where the heroes die at the end

1:04:23Jason DeFillippo:in a very big fireball i mean he'd be more you know he gets sad when the bad guys die this is the thing like you know he's he's he actively roots for the empire like right oh you've trained him well you've trained him well yeah i've trained him well and i've started the therapy fund so you know right yeah there you go that's good

1:04:53Brian Schulmeister:well news is coming out about the mandalorian grogu and uh i saw one one review that says not even baby yoda can save star wars this is the mandalorian grogu seems unlikely to truly offend anyone it's neither a confusing mess nor so offbeat as to divide the fan base instead it's content to be a nothing burger. Two dutiful hours of laser blasts and flat dialogue that will do just enough to keep toys stacked on the shelves. Now, this is the thing. Normally I'd be like, oh, that sucks. But I've read so many reviews of things that I've watched this week that have been so fucking wrong that I think that maybe this is going to be an awesome movie now.

1:05:30Brian Schulmeister:Because reviewers have been so bad at it. I saw it last night. Oh my goodness. Yes.

1:05:39Jason DeFillippo:Took the whole family to opening night at our local IMAX theater. It was a packed theater sold out on the opening night of a new Star Wars movie. We all had a great time. Excellent. We enjoyed it. I don't think this review is wrong. They're not breaking any new ground. There's no growth in any character. A couple episodes of The Mandalorian rolled into a movie for me. Yeah. That's it. They took whatever plans they had for the fourth season and they distilled it down to a movie. And it's fun. It's just fun. It's it's I compare it to a theme park ride. You just strap yourself in. You have a good time.

1:06:21Jason DeFillippo:You enjoy it. um the other noteworthy thing is that they're not surprisingly there is a ton of fan service in this movie but none of it is cloying okay it's it's like if you know you know kind of fan service which i think is the best they're not hanging a lantern on anything but there were multiple times throughout when i i just leaned back in my chair and went oh thank you that was such a good call back to whatever. I'm not going to ruin any of them for you. I mean, I sure came over and said, excuse me, sir, you can't do that here. You're not people. Yeah, pretty much. You're going to have to leave the theater.

1:06:57Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, sir, where are your pants? So yeah, it's not a great movie and it's not an important movie, but I hazard to say that everyone in that theater last night had a great time together watching this fun Star Wars, authentic Star Wars experience. And so I think it's worth checking out. I enjoyed it. I'm definitely going to see it. But yeah, my expectations are sufficiently low now that I expect to enjoy it. So I'm not going in thinking, oh, it's The Empire Strikes Back or this is the movie that's going to reignite the Star Wars flame in theaters. I just want to have a good time. Yeah. And parts of it are downright delightful.

1:07:41Jason DeFillippo:There are things throughout that are just fun. And there's enough of that. Also Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver, yes. Yes. I'll get your feedback on her after you've seen it. Yeah. Great to see Sigourney Weaver behind the wheel of an X-Wing. Cool. Right. It could only be better if she were fighting the alien queen from behind the wheel of an X-Wing. But yeah, I think they achieved what they set out to do. And thumbs up from me and my whole family. Excellent. Good to know. So a couple other Star Wars things to touch on here. I found this YouTube clip of a Colorado man who creates a replica Millennium Falcon.

1:08:32Jason DeFillippo:And when we say creates a replica Millennium Falcon, the degree of meticulous attention to detail that this man put into building his Millennium Falcon. He went back to the original model kits piece by piece. Wow. And rebuilt a precisely accurate Millennium Falcon. Now, of course, there are many different versions of the Millennium Falcon. So which one did he build and blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. Doesn't matter. It's an amazing Millennium Falcon. This guy, my favorite part of this story, it's like it's like one of those local news stories. But my favorite part of the story is they go down into his man cave, his, you know, his rancor cave, if you will.

1:09:19Jason DeFillippo:And it's full of Star Wars stuff and it, you know, goals.

1:09:26Jason DeFillippo:And the person narrating it says, with his wife's permission, he built out the basement. I was like, boy, that sentence is doing some heavy lifting.

1:09:34Brian Schulmeister:It really is. It really is.

1:09:38Jason DeFillippo:But he sold this Millennium Falcon for$350 ,000 at auction. So it took him like six years to build it. So good for him. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah. He makes more than we do doing this podcast.

1:09:51Brian Schulmeister:I was going to say, we should get into the Millennium Falcon business.

1:09:54Jason DeFillippo:That's right. That's right. So it's a fun little clip to watch if you're into that sort of thing. And then just another quick Star Wars thing. someone made a fan film based around Star Tours. And it's pretty good. All right. It could be tightened up a little bit. It's a little loose. But I think one of the remarkable things is that we are now at this point where anybody who has the desire and the time on their hands can make a film like this. and it's good quality. Like the difference between making something at home and the studios making something, like it's been so narrowed compared to how it used to be when you'd be out there with your VHS camcorder trying to make a Star Wars movie.

1:10:46Jason DeFillippo:As someone who comes from the world of music, where this happened many, many years ago, be careful what you wish for. Right. Right. Yeah. There was something good about there being gatekeeping involved and needing to spend an awful lot of money and have a lot behind you to be able to create something great. Yeah, yeah.

1:11:04Brian Schulmeister:This is why 100 ,000 songs a day are submitted to Spotify. But also, it's keeping the mouse's lawyers very busy, I'm sure.

1:11:13Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Oh, by the way, just real quick, going back to Mando, I will give one mini-spoiler. That's not really a spoiler, but more a reinforcement, which is that in this film, there is yet another... suggestion, reinforcement, nod to the fact that the Captain EO universe may be the same universe as Star Wars. And I love that. I'm 100 % for that. I think it's, why not? Sure, why not? Yeah, so see, when you go and you watch it, see if you spot it. If you're looking for it, it's not hard to spot. But again, they don't rub your face in it, rub your nose in it.

1:11:57Brian Schulmeister:all right all right well speaking of the uh the the house of mouse the original house of mouse

1:12:04Jason DeFillippo:disneyland has a brand new lego set uh this is main street usa the original one that uh planned by walt disney himself uh from disneyland in anaheim california it's a 400 set which costs more than a ticket to disneyland but as they point out will last this week yeah for now it is um i i looked at it i am very tempted but i i do not believe i will get my wife's permission to purchase this one so yeah yes it is beautiful but uh yeah this is uh i'm content to look at the box and i will uh next time i go to a lego store with my kid i will ooh and ah over it much like i did over the one thousand dollar death star set but it will not be entering my home we will probably be purchasing this one in fact i will probably use the excuse of buying it for my wife to purchase it so nice i'll buy it for buy it for my wife for christmas and then our son will put it together uh and it'll go it'll sit next to the uh big castle that we have already built so we have we have disney lego um i have to say my favorite thing about that well i have two favorite things about this set first is the minifigs of the barbershop quartet yes i i would pay 400 just for them um and uh also there's a guy they god damn it they made it happen there's a guy holding

1:13:31Brian Schulmeister:a lego churro i was gonna say is that true yes yes i mean come on tip of the hat to the lego

1:13:40Jason DeFillippo:people for knowing what matters no it's it is beautiful it's got the popcorn stand uh cart which is you know such a mainstay of main street now i i have a quibble and i understand that they probably went with the initial design from walt disney himself so mostly appropriate except except churros didn't come until the late 80s so not not appropriate so the thing since they brought a churro in the thing that is missing from main street usa disneyland anaheim california that my son and i personally run to first thing where is the goddamn corndog vendor i wanted my corndog okay okay i got that all add-ons that's a 50 add-on for next year say if nothing if you get this set nothing's stopping you from making your own little corndog vendor or converting one of the popcorn vendors into a popcorn one well you know i got a project with my kids 3d printer i will make the corn dog vendor i'm just i'm googling right now is there a lego corn dog there is there is a lego corn dog corner with a functional dipping corn dog all right so see someone's

1:14:52Brian Schulmeister:at someone's a step ahead of you all right no worries me oh dear well let's get out let's get out of there for a little bit. Main Street was never my thing, so I'm always about the other. I want an Epcot. I want a giant Epcot set that's like$10 ,000. Takes up my whole garage. That would be fun. So we've talked many, many times about people and swearing that their phones are listening to them, even though we've told you they're not. And then there was that stupid ass company, Cox Media Group and MindSift and 1010 Digital Works. All those companies were saying, hey, we've got the software that you can put on your phone and you can get the marketing info and they're going to hear what people say.

1:15:34Brian Schulmeister:And we're like, that's bullshit. And well, turns out it was bullshit. And the federal trade commission has fined them a million dollars, nearly a million dollars for basically lying to everybody saying that that was a thing. So I think that it should have been a lot more just for all the gruff that we've had to take over the years, telling people that your phone's not listening to you. We should be able to file a class action.

1:15:57Jason DeFillippo:That's what I'm thinking.

1:15:58Brian Schulmeister:We should. I don't think they had the million dollars to begin with, but we can try and get a few cents out of them, I guess.

1:16:04Jason DeFillippo:That's true. All the people who said, see, see, they've admitted it. No, they were lying.

1:16:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I wanted to smack every single one of them. But, I mean, this company, their slogan was creepy? Sure. Great for marketing? Definitely. I want to smack them, too.

1:16:20Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

1:16:21Brian Schulmeister:Smack them all. Yeah, top nine.

1:16:23Jason DeFillippo:That's who I want to partner with.

1:16:25Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So.

1:16:27Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

1:16:27Brian Schulmeister:That was some good news this week.

1:16:30Jason DeFillippo:Well, finally, the last thing I put in here is we were talking about mechanical keyboards a couple weeks ago and our appreciation for them and whether or not they are appropriate for podcasters to have. And it came to my attention that someone has an app on the macOS App Store that simulates the sound of a mechanical keyboard, even if you don't have one. so you can have all the clickiness of a mechanical keyboard without actually having a mechanical keyboard. So you could turn it on and off depending on whether you're in front of a hot mic or not. Someone pointed out you can turn it on and off depending on how much you want to annoy your coworkers around you.

1:17:15Jason DeFillippo:Turning it up or down. What do you make of this, Jason?

1:17:18Brian Schulmeister:I think this is some vibe-coded AI bullshittery is what I think this is. Fair enough.

1:17:24Jason DeFillippo:Now, excuse me if I'm wrong, but isn't most of the enjoyment of the mechanical keyboard not so much the clicky click as the feel? Yeah. So you're kind of only getting, you're getting the sizzle, but not the steak. Right.

1:17:39Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

1:17:39Jason DeFillippo:That's a good way to put it.

1:17:41Brian Schulmeister:I like that. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I would not, I would definitely not pay$5 for this, for sure.

1:17:50Jason DeFillippo:But I'll just sit here and go clickety clack, clickety clack, click. Right.

1:17:54Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Also, can you replace the sounds?

1:17:58Jason DeFillippo:Can I get like horse clomping down Main Street instead of clacks? I was thinking fart sounds. Oh, God. If I got that, my kid would never stop using it. The pre-OS 10 days when there were little control panels that would do that, you could assign a sound to anything that your Mac did.

1:18:16Brian Schulmeister:Oh, dude, ResEdit. ResEdit was the shit back in the day. Right, right.

1:18:20Jason DeFillippo:Right. But there was also a control panel that would do it more, you know, not have to dig in so deeply. And I remember I got in big trouble with the family across the street from where I lived because they had a Mac. And I was just playing with the sound effect thing one day when I was playing with their computer and I didn't turn it back. And so like every thing that every key and the woman who lived the mom who lived across the street, she ran an interior design firm off of this Mac. And so like every time she pressed a key and like went, so I got a Dave come over here now.

1:19:03Brian Schulmeister:You know what I want to do? I want to make an app that randomly every now and you can just, you can surreptitiously put it on anybody's Mac, but every now and again, it'll randomly pick a key and then just do the Willem scream. and just scream at you and just scare the shit out of people. I think that would be a fun one.

1:19:20Jason DeFillippo:My favorite subversive control panel was there was one called Speed Chopper. And I remember the icon was a little helicopter. And the idea behind it was that you installed it on your boss's computer. And every time they restarted the computer, it would slow the computer down by 1%. percent. So over time, your boss would feel like their computer was getting slower and slower. They would upgrade and you'd get their hand-me-down faster than you would have otherwise. Thanks to SpeedChop.

1:19:53Brian Schulmeister:That is genius. That is the best use of gaslighting I've ever heard in my life. Right, right.

1:19:58Jason DeFillippo:You say, Bob, this just feels like my computer's getting slow. I don't know. Well, boss gets his time to upgrade. Yeah. Good stuff.

1:20:08Brian Schulmeister:It's awesome. I miss the old Mac days when you just customize everything. It was so much fun. Yeah, it was. And everybody's Mac was personalized. I mean, it was gaudy as hell. It was like the MySpace days, but it was fun. It was fun. Everything now is just so homogenous and boring. We got dark mode now. Yay. They know best.

1:20:27Jason DeFillippo:That's right.

1:20:28Brian Schulmeister:That's right.

1:20:29Jason DeFillippo:All right, gents. Well, thank you very much. Good to see you again. Good to see you. Good to see you next time. Let me know when you get that Lego set. You can tell us.

1:20:39Brian Schulmeister:Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, we've got one new patron, Temario. I thought Temario was here before. Maybe Temario left and came back. Welcome back, Temario. I remember saying that, and it felt fun. That's true. I like that. And we'd also like to thank C, Dave, Jason, MultiSweetness, BonutZeroFollowers, Ryan, Sin Taxes Nick, Travis, and Taylor thank you all so much for your continued support on Patreon.

1:21:07Jason DeFillippo:Thank you and we got one donation over at PayPal, Chris, who gave us 50 bucks. Thank you so much Thank you Chris.

1:21:13Brian Schulmeister:Over at the tip jar we've got Sean, Dahl, Brandon, and Kathleen. And merch this week we got Tim from Australia, Bruce from North Carolina, Paul from Texas, John from Oslo, Robert from Brooklyn, Artem from Redmond, Alana from Portland. Thank you all so much for picking up your merch at shop.gog.show. And just a reminder, this is a fan-supported show. Advertising sucks. So if you would like to get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition, go to patreon.com slash gog. And for as little as$3 a month, you can get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. If you want to give us more, you can, but that's the only place that we can give you the special bonus stuff.

1:21:50Brian Schulmeister:But there are other ways to give too. Just go to gog.show slash donate. And we thank you from the

1:21:55Jason DeFillippo:bottom of our black little hearts we do we do and i just want to point out i think it's really interesting i know sometimes we were getting these stats from other places like patreon and whatnot but particularly with the the merch purchases recently we have got listeners all over the fucking place and that's pretty cool if we could figure out how to do a tour where we only had to play for one person we could go all around the damn world we really could it'd be very

1:22:20Brian Schulmeister:expensive tickets, you know, but we'd come to your house and play a show. We'll do a show, damn it.

1:22:27Jason DeFillippo:Anyways, thank you all, and until next time, I'm Brian Shulmester.

1:22:31Brian Schulmeister:And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 747. 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, and we'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. The Discord is fun. We have a ton of fun over there. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links?

1:23:01Brian Schulmeister:Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And, hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got merch, new shirts, not shirts. I don't know what a show is. We've got new shirts and stuff coming this week. So snag it now at shop.gog.show and stay grumpy.