759: Seeking Mrs. Claude

11:58Jason DeFillippo:I think we got to make that a shirt now at this point. It seems to be the solution to all of these problems. Like that is the fuck outside, people. Yeah, seriously.

12:08Brian Schulmeister:Well, here's the funny part. A CNBC Generation Lab survey of more than 1000 Americans ages 18 to 34 finds young adults have sharply soured on AI industry leaders, which is why they're focusing on the 13 to 17 right now to make sure that when they get to 18 to 34, that they don't hate them and want to kill them. That ship has sailed.

12:28Jason DeFillippo:That ship has sailed. I did. I think. Didn't I tell you about that? I talked to my friend that's got 16, 15, 16, 17 year olds. I've talked to a couple of them recently. Every one of those kids absolutely hates AI.

12:41Brian Schulmeister:Really?

12:42Jason DeFillippo:With a passion. They cannot stand it. Yes. So that these these companies are in trouble. For many, many reasons.

12:51Brian Schulmeister:But yeah, that's legally and otherwise. Yes. Legally, ethically, financially, the Ouroboros is getting to the head. It's done with the tail, it's getting to the head. Asked who they trust to act responsibly on artificial intelligence, most respondents said they trust none of the nine executive surveys. Palantir CEO Alex Karp ranked lowest with 81 % expressing distrust. Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman also drew distrust from between 69 % and 79 % of participants. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella performed best, but only 35 % said that they trusted him. We're number one. Yeah.

13:30Brian Schulmeister:The results reflect broader concerns over privacy, degraded online platforms, and technology's impact on democracy. Respondents were also skeptical of AI itself. 45 % said it would negatively affect their careers, while 40 % supported government regulation. 60 % said construction of AI data centers should slow, suggesting the company's leaders may even be less popular than the technology they're promoting. This is just a it's a clusterfuck right now, Brian. It's a clusterfuck.

13:56Jason DeFillippo:It sure is. And you just actually mentioned these these kids concerns about technology's impact on democracy. Well, the House Office of Legislative Council is being swamped with AI generated bills that are riddled with wrong terms, incorrect citations and other mistakes, according to Politico. Hopefully not like, oh, shit, we put in the wrong country. We suggested bombing. But, you know, could be. More and more representatives' offices are using publicly available general AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to write their legislative proposals. Politico sources said lawyers at the U.S. House Office of Legislative Council are spending more time to review and rewrite them than they would have if they had written the bills from scratch.

14:36Which is my point 99 % of the time.

14:39Jason DeFillippo:Also, my wife's point about legal stuff, all the lawyers using ChatGPT and other things right now. It is quicker to do it from scratch yourself than to use these tools and then have to go in and fact check and edit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just do it yourself, people. Anyways, sources explain that AI tools tend to miss nuances and tiny crucial details, which could have a huge effect on how a law is interpreted and enacted. Wade Ballou, who headed the office for almost 10 years until 2024, said AI can't determine whether a pot of money should be a tax credit, a tax deduction, a tax exclusion, or a grant.

15:15Jason DeFillippo:which could be problematic with my tax dollars.

15:19Brian Schulmeister:There's all this stuff going on with these things. I want somebody to add in a prompt injection to just tell me if Mitch McConnell is dead or alive.

15:27Jason DeFillippo:Dead. He's dead.

15:28Brian Schulmeister:He's dead.

15:29Jason DeFillippo:A lawyer who worked with the office also told Politico that AI would incorrectly cite previous statutes and drafts. AI-generated proposals are also creating a different kind of problem. Congressional staffers reportedly aren't as deeply familiar with what their bills are about and hope to accomplish anymore because they didn't fucking do the research themselves.

15:47Brian Schulmeister:Yes.

15:48Jason DeFillippo:No shit. Yes. God damn it.

15:52Brian Schulmeister:You know, there's this old axiom. If you want to be able to learn something, be able to teach it. You know, if you can teach something, that means that you have proficiency and you know enough about it to pass it on and you have a grasp of the material. If these kids can't even reflect what the bill is about, then they have no understanding whatsoever. It's just it's it's sad. It's fucking sad.

16:16Jason DeFillippo:The reliance on this stuff is getting out of control. There's no doubt about it.

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17:58out here's a bright spot brian i just want to break up the break up the show with one little

18:07Brian Schulmeister:thing a group of protesters dressed as gandalf gathered outside peter teal's residence in argentina this week objecting to the tech billionaires growing ties to the country the demonstration followed reports that teal has purchased a mansion there and met with president javier malay how do you pronounce it malay it's malay right javier malay i believe so Yeah, it's been a while since I've had to talk about Argentina. My bad. My bad. I should have asked chat GPT and members of his government. Teal, the co-founder of Palantir and an influential conservative political douchebag, I mean donor, has reportedly been considering Argentina as a political or potential long-term residence.

18:44Brian Schulmeister:Go, go, please fuck off. And concerns about political and economic changes in the U.S. Which you caused, which you fucking caused. reuters also reported that he recently acquired a one percent stake in argentine oil company vaca muerta malay has publicly praised his meetings with teal and discussed the durability of his political movement beyond his presidency meanwhile malay faces faces declining approval ratings and corruption concerns ahead of next year's election which could influence whether teal continues expanding his presence in Argentina. He needs the corrupt government people to do his job.

19:25Brian Schulmeister:That's why he's asking you, dude. Look what he did here. He found the most corrupt motherfucker on the planet, put him in office, and now that this guy's going to be gone, he needs another fucking idiot to puppet. He needs an ass to shove his hand up and say, we're good for your country. We're Palantir. Yay. But he dressed up as Gandalf. You know, come on. That's fucking awesome. I do like that.

19:49Jason DeFillippo:All right, let's move down the list. Who haven't we talked about yet? Elon. Tesla is being forced to recall about 20 ,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles because their low beam headlights can exceed federal brightness limits and potentially create dangerous glare for other drivers. The affected cars are older models, roughly 2017 to 2023, Model 3s, and 2020 to 2023 Model Ys. Tesla has, of course, known about the problem for years. The company filed a petition in 2024 arguing that the defect was inconsequential and shouldn't require a recall. The NHTSA disagreed. Good, good. Tesla says it knows of no crashes or injuries connected to the problem and has argued that there was no demonstrated safety consequences.

20:33Jason DeFillippo:Regulators disagreed, saying the excessive illumination itself creates an increased risk. And of course, you cannot fix this with a Tesla software update. This recall involves the physical headlight assemblies and Tesla is working on a remedy. Now, if only Tesla had built all those stations, those little tiny individual stations that would be dotted all over the place that Elon promised us we were getting. So if you had an old car that couldn't really ever be full self-driving, you could go there and get your car upgraded because he's going to build all these little stations everywhere, which he has never done and he will never do.

21:07Jason DeFillippo:So you can't take your car there to get it fixed. Oh, bummer.

21:11Brian Schulmeister:Oh, well. and i love how they say it's never there's no no evidence that it's caused any problems well the problem is the accident happens after the tesla has moved on and the guy that's been blinded by the fucking tesla has driven off the road and killed 17 children in a bus you know they're like not our problem yeah we're unaware of anything yeah our cameras only point forward we only know about our cars when they blow up yeah actually we don't even do that because we turn off the recording just before the accident happened. How convenient. This is OK. This next story, Brian, is the one that pisses me off the most this week and is pissed off, I think, most of the Internet.

21:51Brian Schulmeister:It's made the mainstream news. So probably everybody's heard about this at this point. 404 Media says Amazon is buying large quantities of printed books, scanning them for AI training data and destroying the physical copies in the process. The outlet placed an AirTag inside a rare book from roughly a thousand book order and tracked it to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas. Employees there say workers removed book bindings, scanned barcodes and ISBNs, then digitized the contents. Amazon confirmed it purchases books through commercial channels to develop and improve its products and services, but declined to provide details about the operation.

22:27Brian Schulmeister:Does Amazon purchase its books through commercial channels like Amazon? No, of course not. Of course not. No. Oh, God. Printed books are particularly valuable for AI training because much of their content isn't available online. In older titles contain human written text untouched by generative AI. Because you know that that manual for WordPerfect 2.0 is prime fodder for the AI.

22:55Jason DeFillippo:I can't wait until my chat GPT starts talking to me in old English because that's all it's been consuming. Oh, ye farthings.

23:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, the operation resembles Anthropics' previously disclosed Project Panama. Panama! Which also purchased, dismantled, and scanned physical books to build training data sets. And here's the funny thing. There is a machine that will scan all the books. It's a Google machine. I don't know if you've seen this thing. It uses vacuum, like a vacuum thing with cameras on it and two scanners that basically suck the pages up, scan it, goes to the next page, does nothing to harm the book in any way, shape, or form. They could buy some of those. I think they've got the money. But no, they basically cut off the end, shove it in a fucking shitty Epson scanner, probably, and run it through and then burn it.

23:45Brian Schulmeister:It just, it pisses me off. It pisses me off. Then somebody posted a really good clip from that old movie Rollerball, the Paul Verhoeven movie, like from 1976, I believe, with, what's his name, James Caan, the original Rollerball, not that remake. I worked on the remake, actually. We built a multiplayer Flash website for it. But it was talking about this guy tried to buy some books, and he couldn't get the books because the books were no longer there. So he went to the AI Center in Geneva to find out about it. He's talking to the scientists there. He's like, yeah, sometimes we have glitches. We just lost the 13th century.

24:20Brian Schulmeister:All of the 13th century is gone. Like they had a data, the data got corrupted and we no longer have the 13th century. Well, that's great. I just don't like people destroying books for this purpose, especially when they're probably just buying them, you know, willy nilly, not even paying attention to what's no idea what it could be. Yeah, exactly.

24:42Jason DeFillippo:I don't even care. Well, this news made me smile this week. A Washington state judge said to Cal, your sports betting is obviously illegal. A Washington state judge has ruled that Calci's sports contracts amount to illegal gambling, rejecting the company's arguments that they're financial prediction markets rather than sports bettings. This ruling goes beyond sports. Judge John McHale ordered Calci to block Washington users from contracts involving sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, technology, science, and other mentions markets. The key issue is what the customer is actually doing.

25:16Jason DeFillippo:The judge essentially said users put up money. Outcomes depend partly on chance. winners get paid, and Calci collects a transaction fee. That is fucking gambling.

25:27Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that's it.

25:28Jason DeFillippo:Which is what we've been saying forever. The judge also found that the company's marketing could make a reasonable customer think that this type of betting was legal in Washington when outside limited exceptions such as tribal gaming, most gambling is prohibited. The company has until September 2nd to geofence the prohibited markets in Washington. If it doesn't comply, the court can impose$120 ,000 in penalties for every day CalShe continues operating without the required restrictions. Good. It's about time somebody came out and said, yeah, you know that thing that's black? It's black. It's not purple.

26:02Jason DeFillippo:It's not red. It's black.

26:04Brian Schulmeister:It's the blackest black. None more black. None more black. Oh, this one tickled me. The Wall Street Journal reports that Cammie Clark, wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei, corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein for at least two years while seeking investment for a woman-focused adult entertainment startup. Introduced through literary agent John Brockman in 2011, Clark invited Epstein to dinner, shared film concepts, and later pitched a social dieting app, collecting users' nutrition, menstrual, mood, and location data. At the time, Epstein was a registered sex offender. But here's the funny thing. What I've been hearing and seeing about this story is, If you ask Anthropics or if you ask Claude and Claude is Anthropics, you know, AI about Cammie Clark, it seems to have amnesia.

26:57Brian Schulmeister:It doesn't really know much about Cammie. We've lost the 13th century and Cammie. And Cammie Clark. Yeah. So she's been dating Amadei since 2014 and she's apparently influential at Anthropic, but she's never held an official title, which is interesting. They describe her as a strategic advisor and sounding board for her husband. She now regularly accompanies him to wives. Yeah, that's a wife.

27:26Brian Schulmeister:He's got more safeguards than his AI does. That's it. AI needs a wife. He has more safeguards than Claude. Yeah.

27:35Jason DeFillippo:All these AI programs need wives. You're not really going to tell them to do that, are you?

27:39Brian Schulmeister:Can we find Mrs. Claude? That shirt does not look good on you. no oh desperately seeking mrs claude it's just funny i just what the fuck these people it just shows you the kind of circles that they all they all these people work in you know yeah they're all so clueless it's unbelievable yeah it's funny my friend uh my friend said she like her kids are leaving the house now and she's trying to figure out what she's going to do with the 3.0 version of her life and i'm like just go go become an assassin she's like oh is that your side hustle And I'm like, no, if it was, we'd have far fewer billionaires.

28:16Brian Schulmeister:But anyway, Comcast has launched Xfinity Shield, a new home security platform that can turn millions of compatible Xfinity routers into motion sensors. Its opt-in Wi-Fi motion feature detects changes in radio frequency signals between an Xfinity gateway and connected Wi-Fi devices, allowing it to sense movement without cameras or dedicated motion detectors. Brian, when we first started this show, we were about two to three years in. And what were we doing? We were talking about those fucking mad Israeli geniuses at Ben-Gurion University who had just figured this out. And how to do this. And it was just like mind bending.

28:57Brian Schulmeister:We're like, oh, my God. It's like Batman. Like that fucking second Batman movie where he could tell what everything's happening in the city. This is the same goddamn thing. But they have finally productized it. And Comcast, as far as I know, is the first company to broadly release this. So the fucking Israelis did it again. They always do. God damn it. They always do. They always do. So if you want to get it. This is not cool. Yeah. Well, it's not cool if you have pets. If you don't have pets, then you just want to protect your house and find out if somebody's walking through there. I think it's a pretty good security system.

29:37Brian Schulmeister:You know, just to tell if something's happening in your house. Comcast has taken that data, who they selling it to. But what is the data going to actually show that there is movement in the house that is not standard? You know, there's I don't know. Yeah, there could be something there, but I don't know. I don't know what that could. I'm sure that there will be. Oh, you go to the bathroom pretty often. Would you like to buy some Imodium today? I noticed you're shitting more than you normally do.

30:05Jason DeFillippo:Pretty much.

30:05Brian Schulmeister:Because then what they'll do is they'll buy the Roomba data that they have that actually has mapped your house. So they marry the Roomba data with the Wi-Fi data from the router. And then they can tell how many times you go snack at night or do whatever in your house. I'm sure that they will figure out a way to profile us. You're right. I'm sorry. My bad.

30:22Jason DeFillippo:Look, if there's one thing we should have learned over the many, many years of doing this show, Jason, any cool techno news that we hear about any like, oh, look at that. That's cool. We're going to find out in about three to four years how shitty it actually is and how we're getting screwed by it now. true true yeah anyways moving on uh we like to talk about podcasting a bit here we always talk about when we change our setup as you may note i'm in a new locale now i've moved down to the basement so we can record at different times and all that sort of thing to make our lives a bit easier so i have a new mobile as it were podcasting set up so i can get it the hell out of the basement while we're not recording i still have the same mic the boom arm the keyboard the mouse and i'm I'm using a laptop camera now instead of an external camera that I had upstairs.

31:03Jason DeFillippo:I picked up a few things from Jeff Bezos. I've got the Bontech mobile standing desk with a pneumatic lift rolling laptop cart. I think it's in the show notes. It's pretty cool. I got a Moila 986 360 rotating laptop stand for desk with locking knobs. Black. Ooh, black. This was your suggestion, Jason. It is a very cool stand. The newer basic seven-inch desk ring light for video recording. 10-watt dimmable R06, which makes me look all nice and shiny. And I got a Trond desk clamp power bar surge protector with PD 20-watt USB 6 outlets, 10-foot cable, so I can just kind of wrap up the cable and move everything out of here and don't have cables all over the place because I got this cool little clamped-on power supply on my desk, which is great.

31:50Jason DeFillippo:And I'm going to get that for my upstairs office because I like it so much.

31:53Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I looked at that. I actually could use one of those here. I use an uplift desk. It's a very large, heavy desk, and it's got a tray in the back that I shove all my cables and power bars and shit into. And I literally have a, I took a power strip and Velcroed it to the underside of my desk. So I could, you know.

32:12Jason DeFillippo:This is a slightly snazzier version of that.

32:14Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So it's on top, you know, that I could actually, it's easy. It makes it a lot easier to unplug and plug shit in because I have to get on my back and look up and get a flashlight and have shit hit me in the face when I unplug it. It's not ideal. So I like that.

32:28Jason DeFillippo:I'd never heard of this Trond company, but if you check out their page on Amazon, they've actually got a lot of like really cool, interesting, useful stuff that makes sense. Like, why didn't I think of this before? Why didn't I get this kind of power supply before? It's pretty cool. So happy with them. Cool.

32:43Brian Schulmeister:I'll check it out. And the price seemed decent. It's a surge protector. So it's$35, I think. I don't know if that was$35 Canadian or U.S. because you linked to all the Canadian sites

32:51Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I had to buy them all in Canada because, you know, I wasn't shipping them to my mom's house. I was shipping them to my house in Canada. Yes. And I didn't want to pay the stupid tariffs.

33:03Brian Schulmeister:Well, Brian, years and years ago, we talked about how shitty the Sonos app was when it basically imploded. The CEO had to leave because his app was so bad. So I guess they've got the vibe coders on it now because it has come back with a vengeance. you don't have any Sonos in your house right anymore no no office how did the office still

33:25Jason DeFillippo:there as far as I know well I don't know where the office is still with the boss I'm sure he's

33:29Brian Schulmeister:got it at his house now so I've got about eight Sonos around my house and I've got the new app the new app has live activities on its iPhone app bringing real-time speaker controls and playback information to the iPhone lock screen and dynamic island so those vibe coders have been busy and I tried it out this morning. There are some improvements. Here's the most major improvement. It doesn't take four fucking hours to load. You know, it has been incrementally getting better as it went. But after this much time and this is their big news that they've added features that have basically kind of been stock for every other audio program that I have.

34:07Brian Schulmeister:It's like, oh man, they have shit to bed so bad. The only saving grace for Sonos is that they sound so fucking good.

34:17Jason DeFillippo:Also, you're all locked in. You've spent the money on these expensive speakers. You're not going to ditch the whole system. You're just going to grit and bear it until they fix the damn stuff.

34:28Brian Schulmeister:That's kind of it, man. That's kind of it.

34:31Jason DeFillippo:If you could just snap your fingers and replace it with a completely different system, you would have ages ago, but you're locked in.

34:38Brian Schulmeister:And what's better? What's out there that's better?

34:41Jason DeFillippo:Nobody's really doing this stuff. That's true.

34:43Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So you're definitely stuck. You know, they are the monopoly. But, you know, it's a nice update. So I'm kind of glad that they've at least got around to doing something. Now, here's a piece of tech, home tech, that I'm glad I never bought. An outage affecting pet libros, internet. That's pet little bro. Bro. As soon as I saw that, I'm like, hey, pet little bro. Yo, what's up, pet little bro? Huh? These are internet-connected pet feeders that left some cats without scheduled meals, according to reports from The Verge, and frustrated owners. Hopefully it was Garfield. And really pissed off cats.

35:19Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Garfield's had enough lasagna anyways. Yeah, seriously, man. Have some quinoa, you little shit. The disruption began on August 11th, and customers said feeders remained offline or behaved consistently even after the company said service was restored. Petney Bro CEO York Wu said feeding schedules are stored on the devices and should run without an internet connection, but acknowledged reports of failures and promised an investigation and expanded support.

35:47Jason DeFillippo:Sounds to me like the speeding schedules are not being stored on the devices because they are not running without the internal connections. So you should work in support, Brian.

35:59Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Or at least, you know, product testing, because that's pretty fucking pretty key. You know, sounds like it didn't work. Yeah. How much testing did that take in the lab to figure that out? Hey, Joe, you want to unplug the ethernet? Oh, OK. You know what? I do. Hey, Joe, wait, wait, Joe, Joe, did you unplug the Internet? Yeah, I think maybe. Did it still work? Yeah, it still worked. But did you unplug the Internet? No, I guess I didn't. OK, well, never mind. We'll just keep going anyway. You know, it's like, what the fuck?

36:30Jason DeFillippo:I feel like I do more testing when we're going on a flight on my kid's iPad to make sure that the videos he downloaded will play without an internet connection than this company did with their own goddamn product. Seriously. I test that iPad thoroughly every single time. I go through every app. I put it in airplane mode. I make sure it's not connected to anything. Okay, now let's load Disney. Yes, his downloaded videos are playing. Okay, now let's load Netflix. Yes, his downloaded videos are playing. These guys, nothing.

37:01Brian Schulmeister:Nothing at all. So, you know, all it takes is one dead pussy and they're in trouble. So they need to get their shit together. You were waiting for that one, weren't you? No, I just came up with that one. Sorry. It's also what Epstein said. Too soon, Brian. Too soon.

37:20Brian Schulmeister:This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Shopify. We've been doing this show for a long time, and one of the ways we keep Grumpy Old Geeks coming to you every week is through our outstanding show merch. And all of that merch is sold through our very own Shopify storefront. Shopify gives us the infrastructure to run the store without having to build a commerce platform ourselves. Our storefront is there, the products are ready to go, and one of you decides you absolutely need some Grumpy Old Geeks gear. Shopify Checkout handles the important part, getting you through the purchase quickly and smoothly.

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38:40Brian Schulmeister:So Sam Neill died recently and over the break I watched the original Jurassic Park on my big 75-inch TV because I wanted to see if it held up. It doesn't really. It's okay. It's not as good as I remember. I mean, it's not as good as I remember it, you know, because I saw it in the theater and it was great and all that stuff. But here's the thing about it that made me tickled pink. You know, one of my favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October. And Sam Neill plays a Russian officer in that movie who does not make it to the end of the movie. Sorry, spoiler alert. And he ends up saying this in the movie.

39:15I would like to have seen Montana.

39:18Brian Schulmeister:Well, Jurassic Park opens up with a big sign that says Badlands near Snakewater, Montana, and up pops Sam Neill. That is an Easter egg if I've ever seen one. I'm like, Sam Neill made it to Montana. Come on. I fucking cracked up when I saw that. All right. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. And since we talked last, I watched all four Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. Okay. I don't know what came over me. I think it was the, I think the Salmonella really got to my brain and said, you know, because, you know, the new Spider-Man movie made$2 billion. I'm like, okay, there must be something there.

39:57Brian Schulmeister:But it's a Marvel movie, which means I can't just pick up where I left. You know, the last Spider-Man movie I saw was Spider-Man 3, the, you know, Sam Raby, Tobey Maguire ones. Well, I started to pick them up. The first one, I really enjoyed. I thought it was a good Spider-Man movie. The second one, I'm like, okay, well, obviously, if I didn't see three other movies, I wouldn't know what the fuck's going on in this movie. And I didn't see three. I saw two of the three movies that I needed. So I was just kind of playing catch up because they do a terrible job of previously on the Marvel Universe when you come into these movies.

40:34Brian Schulmeister:Because that would take six hours. It would. And that's why you're supposed to go spend six hours doing it.

40:39Jason DeFillippo:You know, for the new one that's coming out, whatever it's called, Avengers Doomsday or whatever, Marvel literally released a syllabus. I know. A fucking syllabus. You should watch all of these things in order for this movie to make any sense whatsoever. And it's like if you watch all of them, it would be like a week and a half of actual viewing time.

40:59Brian Schulmeister:It's ridiculous. It's a movie. Now, number three, if you hadn't seen the Doctor Strange movie, you wouldn't know what the fuck's going on there. Why is Benedict Cumberbatch without his Cumberbitches in here? And it was at least entertaining because they brought in the other two Spider-Mans from the other two Spider-Man movie universes, which was pretty fun. Seeing Tobey Maguire again, fucking great. He's my favorite Spider-Man of all the, you know, all the three. He's the only one I really remember. Yeah. Well, I didn't watch the Andrew Garfield ones because I'm like, ew. But Spider-Man 2 with Sam Raimi was great.

41:35Brian Schulmeister:And I, you know, I was in Spider-Man 1. I was an extra in the wrestling scene. So I have a very, you know, it goes deep for me, the original Spider-Man. I was in Strange Days at the Rave, and I could give a shit about that movie. Oh, man, that was a great movie, though. I love that movie. I was an extra in intercourse with a vampire. That's probably not the same. Thank God you were an extra. Yeah, I was just standing in line outside the club. Anyway, the number three was okay. it did drag a little it was fine and number four was just like if it is i i went into number four and i'm like there was no explanation at almost at all of what happened in number three to go into number four and it's massive what happened at the end of three to four i mean it's there's a huge thing and then he comes into it and it's just like just picks right up and i'm like right this is why i just can't do these marvel movies because like 80 of them i don't give a shit about And now I'm just so fucking marveled out.

42:37Brian Schulmeister:I'm just like, no. That's why it was so great to watch the original Tobey Maguire ones, because there was almost no crossover. Stan Lee showed up. That was great, you know. But, like, Daredevil was in one of these. He showed up for, like, a scene. Matt Murdock was in it. As Matt Murdock, not Daredevil. It was pretty funny. But anyway, I just, oh, God. I need a fucking another 10-year hiatus from Marvel after this. I don't know. the thing is the movies aren't great if these were fantastic movies that you just like you walk out of the guy going i my life is fucking changed after seeing this movie i like walked out and i'm like uh it's two and a half hours i ain't getting back but and yeah it's just i don't know just left a kind of sour taste in my mouth and and why is fucking zendaya so

43:28Jason DeFillippo:she's not that great everything i'm so sorry but she's not that great yeah i saw how much money she

43:34Brian Schulmeister:made on dune and dune 3 i'm just like well that was some wasted money but anyway moving on sean young was a much better chani yeah uh i'm all i'm i mean i'm with you i'm superheroed out i haven't

43:47Jason DeFillippo:even seen supergirl yet and that is something i actually kind of want to see i debated watching lanterns because that came out but then i had trouble getting into your hbo and it's not my HBO and I said well you know what I don't want to watch a stupid superhero thing anyways even if it's the other universe and instead I went and watched the first episode of Widow's Bay and I thoroughly enjoyed it that was so good that was a lot

44:07Brian Schulmeister:of fun so good dude it just keeps getting better it's so much fun and it's been renewed for season two so I mean that's why I decided to watch it got renewed yeah no that's the big winner from Apple TV this summer like what was it Cape Fear I couldn't I don't think anybody watched Cape Fear that was a dud i don't think anybody's watching lucky uh sugar was good but i don't know if anybody watches it so you know well people are watching silo and uh the latest episode of ted

44:40Jason DeFillippo:lasso came out and thoroughly enjoyed it i think that's going great so i i'm happy ted lasso is back so yeah apple's got some stuff going on but yeah a lot of swings a lot of misses but the the Hits are good.

44:51Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah. And speaking of one of the wins, the definite hits, Slow Horses is coming back September 16th. I watched half the trailer for that. I turned it off. I'm like, no, I love going into that show cold. It is so fucking good. If you're not watching Slow Horses, you really got to watch it. It's so fucking good. I mean, it is the best spy shit out there. I fucking love it. The other show that I've been watching that I thoroughly enjoy is Kitchen Undercover on the Food Network with Antonia Lofaso. She's awesome. It's like, you know, it's a remake of an old show with, I think, Robert Irvine used to do it.

45:25Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, it's really well done. The downside is I never want to eat in a restaurant again, ever. These places are so fucking filthy and disgusting.

45:37Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, they're not exactly proudly putting up the as featured on kitchen undercover signs like they do with diners, drive-ins and dives at these places, are they?

45:46Brian Schulmeister:No. Well, afterwards, yeah, because they fix it. But in the second episode, I know more about how a kitchen runs because I took that certification class that technically everybody that works in the kitchen is supposed to have taken than everybody in that kitchen. I was just like, oh, my God. They didn't even know about the danger zone between the hot and the cold where you're supposed to keep stuff. They didn't know to keep a running four-hour log, all this shit that you're supposed to do in a kitchen. None of it. And it was so great. Even Antonia sent in secret shoppers, and they bought the fish tacos, and she's in their hidden truck going, don't eat the taco!

46:23Brian Schulmeister:She's like, I'm going to owe her a trip to the emergency room after this. I'm like, oh my God. Funny thing is, that was the favorite thing that she liked on the menu, but it looked so gross. But anyway, it's a fun show. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. Awesome. And finally, HBO has renewed Welcome to Dairy. so you can watch season one of that now if you haven't watched that yet

46:45Jason DeFillippo:you know I'm so far behind on my it viewing I haven't even seen the two movies I've got to go do that first because it's one of those things it's a horror thing like I can't my wife is out just out so finding the time to watch horror is really difficult like I have to sneak in Widow's Bay she won't even watch that so

47:07Brian Schulmeister:yeah and you still haven't seen Alien Earth which is fantastic. No, I haven't seen that either. Yeah, that was on your summer plans. You said you were going to watch Alien Earth this summer. We ended up watching all three seasons of Broadchurch. Yeah, see, I would definitely say Alien Earth is better than Broadchurch, personally, in my opinion. And I like Broadchurch, but come on. Anyway, let's move on to a little bit of literary news, Brian. All right. After 25 fucking years, I finally canceled my Audible membership. 25 years my first the first purchase in 2001 that i bought on audible.com with snow glass apples by neil gaiman which you know it was a great poem uh not poem it's just a short story it's a great short story but i it i finally finished out my run with 1076 books in my library which i think is respectable for 25 years i think it's fairly respectable i just i had some extra credits uh lined up.

48:04Brian Schulmeister:So I just, I spent my credits and then just canceled. So I'm going to save 275 bucks a year on that because thank you guys, YouTube, Brian, uh, for Libby because everything that I want to listen to, I can get on Libby. It might not be right away, but I've got so much of a backlog of shit that I want to read. And I don't have to read the latest book when it comes out, period. Um, I am good. I am going to keep my Kindle unlimited subscription though, because I do get a lot of value out of that compared to the audible. The audible was like 22 something a month and you get two books with audible unlimited.

48:35Brian Schulmeister:I've got six books that I'm juggling at any given time with my daily readers and stuff that I just even popping up for research. Kindle unlimited is for 12 bucks a month is a great deal. You know, if you use it, it's a great deal because there's a lot on there. There really is. I mean, it's not, yeah, not the latest and greatest stuff, but I don't read the latest and greatest. I don't care about the latest John Patterson or whatever novel that's coming out that you can buy at a fucking airport anyway. But yeah, no, Libby has been is phenomenal. I'm so happy that you and everybody else turned me on to it.

49:06Brian Schulmeister:Finally, I finally got off my ass and did it, you know. So I do have three books that I finished. Certainty, a novel by John 12 Hawks. John 12 Hawks did that other series that you and I both read. The Traveler. Yeah. Yeah.

49:20Jason DeFillippo:I think it was called the Fourth Realm Trilogy, which ended up being four books long, which I don't think I've ever read the fourth one. But

49:25Brian Schulmeister:I didn't either. Yeah, I didn't know that. I kind of got burnt out on it. yeah um well skip this one this is this was half like future tech and it's half like it's it's weird it's like the problem with this book is the future tech that he's talking about is it's already we've already passed what most of it is here already yeah it's here it's it's it's long gone it's like you know six months it's so six months ago you know you get you get a free version of 11 labs and most of the shit that the ai can do in the in in this book can be done for a dollar 95 Like, literally. It's like, oh. And it felt like it was written by a boomer who just read, like, a 10-year-old Wired magazine.

50:06Brian Schulmeister:That's too bad. I like that Traveler book a lot. Yeah. I mean, his style is good. It's just he really sucks on the tech. You know, he really sucks on the tech. So it just took me out of it way too much. And since it was mostly some of the linchpins for the story were about the tech, it missed. It missed. then I then I got lockstep by Carl Schroeder this was a hat tip for the Corey doctor I heard him talk about this on a on one podcast this was written back in 2014 interesting premise bad science very bad science it is I had a hard time getting to the finish line I think I still have like an hour to go in the audiobook it's a it's about a civilization it's about you know human humanity 14 ,000 years in the future who have kind of mastered cryo bed and cryo sleep technology so everybody goes to sleep on a schedule so they can travel between the stars and like while they're sleeping like you know they've got robots that do uh um you know like resource gathering and things like that like mining and shit like that and so the the premise sounds good but his science sucks he doesn't even talk about relativity or anything like that because you're traveling these distances time is going to dilate differently at different speeds for different planets and things like that.

51:22Brian Schulmeister:Doesn't get into any of that. It's kind of just a weird, kind of almost a young adult novel in some aspects. It's because the protagonist is a kid who fell asleep for 14 ,000 years because he was off. And then his brother and sister turned out to be assholes when he got back. They've only aged 40 years in the 14 ,000 years because they go to sleep so often. But from an interesting premise at the beginning, it's pretty good, but it does not, I can't get to the end because it just doesn't hold me. So that's why I think it might be more young adult than anything. So if you're not that concerned about the science, that's a problem.

51:59Brian Schulmeister:Now, the last book, A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt. And we get a hat tip to Joe E on Discord for this one. He's the one that recommended this one. This was from 2017. And this one is a fucking stunner. This is one of the best science fiction books I've read probably in a decade. and I mean the short premise is it's about an 80 year old guy who's coming home to kill himself because he was done with his life and whatever and time traveling alien time traveling shape shifting alien lands in his front yard and hilarity ensues there's actually not much hilarity in the book but it's a really well done I mean it is a really well done time travel book as far as time travel books go I think this is one of the better ones because it kind of just throws out this that throws out this thing that's like the universe doesn't give a fuck if you time travel it's like there's no there's no great time police or any shit like that it's like if you can do it off you go so um damn the consequences it it's it's really well done it's really it's a very smart book it has very much hints of the martian in it about how he's going through the science of it because this guy was a like i mean he was a phd an 80 year old phd and scientist before he was going to kill himself.

53:15Brian Schulmeister:So he's a very smart guy, had a great life, you know, very, very wealthy. And so he goes back to his like 10 year old self or something like downloads back into his 10 year old self at a different timeline. It's really good. It's I mean, it's a it's a mind bender. It's really fun. And the character development, top notch, like all in all, I think this is one of the most solid books that I've read in a long time. The sad thing is it was written in 2017. And this guy hasn't really, really done much since then. No, that's too bad. Jerry Merritt. But, But, you know, if you got to have one good book, this is one of them.

53:46Brian Schulmeister:This is a great book. You might actually have to buy it from his site for the print version if you're going for that. I don't know what the – I got it on Audible, but he's got some kind of interesting stuff. But he's got his own website, so you can go find it there. Finally, I tried to get back to Dungeon Crawler Carl on book three. I got like 20 minutes in, and I got so bored. I'm just like, no. if you're going to have this kind of like built up world like that i'm like i it made me think about disc world and just want to go back and read disc world novels yeah i i also bought book

54:19Jason DeFillippo:three and it's it's one of three books that i have sitting uh sitting around kind of waiting for me and and i started to read it too and then i got kind of bored by it i was it's too much it's too much the same as the other ones i i there there's not enough growth or change or anything else happening to pique my interest. Maybe after I've taken six months, seven months off, I'll take a look at it again and pick it up and maybe it'll be interesting then at that point. But this is definitely not a series that I think you want to try to just slam through. And I think many people feel that way. I want to do say something quickly about Dungeon Crawler Carl and it going so mainstream.

54:57Jason DeFillippo:There is no bigger sign that some book has gone mainstream than it's at the what remains of a bookstore at an airport. As I was going through LAX to fly back to Toronto, you know, there's like four Oprah books of the week club, and then there's just a stack of Dungeon Crawler Garl books everywhere. Like this has exploded.

55:18Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Okay. Well, that would explain why you and I probably couldn't get into book three, because I think we kind of maybe have more sophisticated tastes than the general airport. and not to brag on people who like it. I mean, if you like it, you like it. I love book one and two. I thought they were great. And yeah, and most of the people in our Discord chat were just like, you know, they kind of got tired of it too. They're just like, yeah, I, you know, somebody said it's like when you need a spreadsheet to like to figure out who all the characters are, because I guess like, you know, as you keep going, they keep introducing more and more characters.

55:51And it's like, it gets harder and harder

55:53Brian Schulmeister:to really figure out who's doing what. But it wasn't even that. It was just, it's the same premise over and over again. OK, they got to fight and kill and move their way through the dungeon, you know? Yeah, exactly.

56:02Jason DeFillippo:So, well, along with book three, I can tell you another book I'm not going to read. And I saw this article about it over on Slate, Silicon Valley Dreams of Authoritarianism. This is The Nerd Reich, Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by Gil Duran. Reading the article was enough for me and doing this podcast is enough for me. I do not need to read this book.

56:22Brian Schulmeister:Well, as one of my final credits on Audible, I did get it. So there's a link in the show notes for it. So I'll 2X it and let you know how it goes. All right. It just came out yesterday. Yeah, I just got it yesterday. So when I'm done with my current slew of books, I'm going to finish. I got to finish Lockstep because I'm too far into it. I just need to see how it ends. But what's really good about Lockstep is I know that there's no sequel, so it's one in time. There you go.

56:59Brian Schulmeister:Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with a podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Welcome back, Dave. You have been traveling around the world. You've gone to different conventions and vacations, and we've missed you. We've missed you so much, Dave, so welcome back.

57:14Jason DeFillippo:Thank you. I missed you all as well. It is good to be back, and yes, I was doing quite a bit of traveling here, there, and everywhere, but no, it's nice to be back. So jump right in. I was at Black Hat, I guess, two weeks ago now, which is.

57:32Brian Schulmeister:I thought you were going to DEFCON.

57:33Jason DeFillippo:No, I went to Black Hat. So DEFCON immediately follows Black Hat. So I did not stay for DEFCON. And I was really only active at Black Hat for two days. I flew in on Tuesday, recorded all day, Wednesday and Thursday, and then flew home on Friday. Two days is about the right amount for Vegas. I find it is it is uh especially when it's 115 degrees it's like my house yeah uh I mean it's just a different kind of hot even though it's a dry heat um my biggest concern when I arrived there was I was staying at the Luxor which is yeah it's a bit old it's old it's it's fine and the the for Black Hat the nice thing about the Luxor is that you can walk to the convention center indoors you don't have to go outside um so my concern when i got to my room was was the air conditioning going to be able to handle the uh extreme heat being that uh the outside wall of my room was a black uh a pyramid facing the sky so um it barely it did It was, concern is being able to sleep, right?

58:53Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. So, you know, I went to the local pharmacy and got a little fan, you know, so I could put on the night table just in case I needed that. It was fine. It was fine. Anyway, I had a good time at Black Hat. We had a little podcast studio that was set up for us and just got a lot of interviews and saw a lot of people and walked the show floor a little bit. uh so get any good gadgets or anything no i did not i did not uh didn't really go looking for anything i mean everybody everybody wanted to hand me a t-shirt uh or a pair of socks socks are the big thing now because really smaller yeah yeah because they're they're smaller easier to carry than a t-shirt and i i feel like the thing with the t-shirts was every time someone tried to hand me a t-shirt I was like the last thing in the world I need is another t-shirt right because I have probably 50 t-shirts of which I probably wear 10 you know any regularity so anyway I mean black hat was interesting um I feel like a couple years ago the tone at black hat was everyone was sort of looking around at each other warily and saying so are we going to do this AI thing.

1:00:09Jason DeFillippo:And this year was like, so we're doing this AI thing. We're all in. Yeah, we're all in. And doesn't matter. I mean, that was the only thing anybody wanted to talk about. Everybody either has an agentic AI solution or a way to protect you from the other person's agentic AI solution. And that's just that's where we are right now. So I think some people are genuinely excited, but it's hard to not be cynical walking through the show floor and just through the hallways and just seeing sign after sign after sign, talking about how agentic AI is going to save the world. Or destroy it. One of the two.

1:00:54Jason DeFillippo:Right, exactly. So I was thinking about it today. I was sitting here going through some stories and somehow the topic came up. I saw someone was writing about the transition to 5G cellular. And I was reminded of how in the lead up to 5G becoming a thing, we were in a similar hype cycle. It was going to transform the world. Right. Right. And I had all of these people pitching us stories and coming on the show to talk about their solution to all of the things that 5G was going to bring us and all of the great things it was going to bring us and all the security problems it was going to bring us and and it was faster internet you know pretty much yeah like I mean it it is faster most of the time it's yeah when it works it's great it's amazing when it works uh but did it really change much, if anything?

1:01:56Jason DeFillippo:Nope. Nope. Didn't really. I'm sure there are folks who would take issue with that, who would say there are edge cases in niche places where it's made all the difference in the world, maybe in industrial control systems or who knows. But so that got me thinking about the hype cycle that we're in with the AR stuff. My ground zero for those stories is one simple thing that we told this amazing invention was coming. They didn't tell us anything about it. This is going to transform the world. It is a revolutionary technology. Was it a code named Ginger? No, I can't remember what show they unveiled it on.

1:02:37Jason DeFillippo:I think it was like a prime time talk show or something like that. It was the fucking Segway. Yeah, that was Ginger. That was a code named Ginger for months. And now, you know, maybe you see a postman on it. That's basically what we're at. Yeah. Yeah. Postman and mall cops. Mall cops. That's all I see is mall cops. Yeah. So that is always like, that's my platonic ideal of the tech, the way tech works. It's revolutionary and then nothing.

1:03:06Brian Schulmeister:Well, we go from the Segway to the blockchain. Remember the blockchain. The blockchain was going to completely revolutionize cybersecurity back in the day because we had, you know, a chain of custody for everything everybody did. Smart contracts, man. Smart contracts. That's right. NFT is going to change the art world. Yeah, the only thing the blockchain is good for is trying to track down the cyber criminals that have used it to steal all of your data. That's in the ransomware. That's how the blockchain has revolutionized cybersecurity. For criminals, it was fantastic. Crypto, cash for criminals.

1:03:41Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, there we go. I think AI is probably going to be the same thing.

1:03:47Jason DeFillippo:We'll see. I mean, you know, I think there are, look, there are legit uses. So I'm not, I don't know if it's fair to say I'm down the middle when it comes to AI. Because I'm not all pessimistic about, I'm not completely pessimistic about it. But I'm also not all in on that it's going to be a great thing either. My concern is that AI ends up being our generation's version of asbestos in that, you know, it's this great thing that's going to have all these benefits. And then we realize we're going to spend decades cleaning up the mess that it made. Yeah. In all of our code bases and all of our, you know, everything.

1:04:29Jason DeFillippo:The economies. The economies. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

1:04:33Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. The brains of all the children who have been basically rotted out from using it. Right. Right. The lack of books that we found out just recently, earlier in the show, that have all been destroyed to train it. There's so much bad and so little good, I think.

1:04:50Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. I saw a thing today that especially, someone did a study of students, middle school age students. And the AI does help students do their homework faster. They get better grades on their homework, but they do 20 % worse on their tests. They understand it less. Yes.

1:05:12Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

1:05:12Jason DeFillippo:Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:15Brian Schulmeister:But then you have to say how much of that is AI and how much of that is Instagram, you know, that has trained them to have these, you know, the attention span of a goldfish. You know, you could say the kids stopped reading long before AI. Yeah, they can't read anymore and they can blame AI. But I think that that may have that that that boulder may have started down that hill, you know, maybe a decade ago. And now it's just picking up steam. because AI is just behind it, pushing it along.

1:05:36Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, this is why I keep all my technology locked into closet and my son is out there churning butter right now. Excellent, excellent. That's right. That's right. You could also make the argument that it might not matter in the future workplace where if everyone's job is somehow tethered to AI, then the types of thinking that are so important to our generation and before might not be as important. And on the other hand, it just might mean that nobody, there aren't jobs to be had. So we'll see.

1:06:07Brian Schulmeister:No more middle management is the thing. It's like, you know. Right. Why would you have a middle management when you have an agent? Right.

1:06:14Jason DeFillippo:What's the saying? At last, automation has come for the white collar jobs. Yes. Yeah. So I had a good time at Black Hat and then came back on Friday and on Saturday headed to the beach. Went to Bethany Beach in Delaware. I don't know if either of you are familiar. I had been there. I've been there, yeah. It's a lovely, lovely beach kind of in between Ocean City, Maryland and Rehoboth Beach, which is a larger resort area in Delaware. So I think Bethany calls themselves the Quiet Beach, which it was.

1:06:46Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, we couldn't afford to go to Rehoboth when I was a kid. We would go there for like lunch and then come back to the other one. That's it.

1:06:51Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The odd thing, though, was for the time we were there, we could not go in the ocean because of jellyfish. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we have in this neck of the woods, we have sea nettles, which is in terms of jellyfish are not that high powered. I've never been stung by one, but my understanding is that it's kind of like a bee sting. But it was very strange to be at the beach, see all these people sitting on the sand, enjoying the smell of the salt air and the sound of the surf, but nobody's in the water. Everybody stay hydrated. You never know when you're going to have to pee on someone.

1:07:35Jason DeFillippo:Exactly. Well, and my wife said, she's like, I don't want to go to the beach because part of enjoying the beach is being able to cool off in the ocean. Yeah. There's a water park nearby that said, come enjoy our jellyfish free lazy river on their big sign outside. So I think they were doing good business that week. But it made me wonder what happens to East Coast resorts if this is the new normal. Part of what they're speculating is that with warmer temperatures, the water's warmer. Jellyfish love the warmer water. That pushes them in closer to shore. And here we are. So what if during the peak of your vacation season, there's two or three weeks, maybe a month in the middle where nobody can go in the ocean?

1:08:22Jason DeFillippo:Everybody's building pools.

1:08:23Brian Schulmeister:No, we just cool the ocean. Come on. Oh, yeah. Right. Get some of that melting ice from Greenland and just tug it down to your beach. And then you can say, hey, look, we're jellyfish free because we've got the iceberg from Greenland that just cracked off. And that would be the thing.

1:08:37Jason DeFillippo:I guess you could go in the ocean in like a neoprene wetsuit or something. But that would be fun. So anyway, but beyond that, we had a lovely week, just relaxing, made for a quiet week. And it was just what I needed. It was nice to get away and be away from it all. Came back to an avalanche of emails, which I just sort of select all, mark as read, move on. That's it. Yeah. Email bankruptcy. If it's important, they'll email me a second time. And some people have.

1:09:12Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. That autoresponder that you put on there that just says, I will not read this, send it again when I get back, is the greatest thing ever. I will literally not see this email. So mark your calendar. Write me later. That's what I do. And by the way, in the meantime, go fix it yourself, which usually works. Right, right.

1:09:31Jason DeFillippo:Tell your agentic AI to circle back with me. Yes.

1:09:37Jason DeFillippo:So in the meantime, there's been a few updates while I've been away for a couple of weeks. Actually, right before I went to Black Hat, I mentioned to you guys I've been working on this keyboard project, this digital piano project, the Kurzweil SP3X, which is a stage piano. Just a quick recap. I bought this super cheap on Facebook Marketplace. It was non-functional. It's a professional digital piano, probably about 15 years old. I just figured this will be a fun project. Over the course of a couple weeks, I took it apart. and I was using ChatGPT as my mentor to help me fix it, and it was very helpful.

1:10:22Jason DeFillippo:And I'm happy to say that in the end, it is now working. Holy shit. Yes. Amazing. Yes, it seems to be 100%. What was the final fix? Well, I would say I did a recapping is what did it, replacing all the capacitors, which is kind of the, that's what you do these days. That's the usual suspect in terms of electronics from that age going bad. What happens is the capacitors go bad and then they just short the power through themselves rather than acting as a capacitor. But, you know, I ruled out a few things. I was really getting discouraged because I had gone through several rounds of trying to hunt down things and fix things, including a couple of capacitors.

1:11:12Jason DeFillippo:and remember I purchased the thermal camera.

1:11:16Brian Schulmeister:Yes.

1:11:17Jason DeFillippo:Which pointed me to a couple of capacitors. I replaced those, still didn't work. And I just thought, well, you know, what the heck? I'll just replace all the capacitors I can, which is about 10. So just had a little soldering project, probably took about an hour or so. And I was not at all expecting anything, put it back together, powered it up and the display came on and went through its boot up sequence and i plugged in some headphones and put them on and i hit a key and a piano sound when i came out and i went i kind of looked around and went wow i've done it i did it yeah it's alive it's alive so so more important than the final fix dave what was the final tally in terms of cost Excellent question.

1:12:08Jason DeFillippo:So I paid$100 for the broken piano. I paid$150 or so for the thermal camera. But that pays for itself in fun. Well, exactly. And I'll have that for the rest of my life. So it's practically free. This is, you know, every project is an opportunity to purchase a new tool. I probably bought about, probably about$50 worth of odds and ends parts. And, you know, like I bought a big kit full of capacitors with every possible value. So when I was pulling the old ones out, I could replace them with the same ones. I bought a few replacement knobs for the front just to kind of clean things up and make it look a little tidier than it was.

1:12:53Jason DeFillippo:So I'd say probably in about$300. it's not bad no no it's probably worth that maybe maybe between that and 500 depending you know the thing with the digital pianos ones like this that use sampling technology is there really reached a point where there weren't any bad ones anymore they were all good like all the sampling the sampling technology we got that like you hit the key and the recording of a piano comes out and that's that. So it sounds really good. It's fun to play. The keyboard is quite nice. It has all kinds of capabilities. I'm still learning how to use it, but yeah, feeling very gratified.

1:13:36Jason DeFillippo:And, um, and again, was impressed by, uh, chat GBT's ability to assist me in the repair. It was way beyond what I thought it would be.

1:13:46Brian Schulmeister:So if you were to sell it today, how much do you think you could get for it?

1:13:50Jason DeFillippo:I would probably top out around$500. So you would have made a profit.

1:13:55Brian Schulmeister:So that's good. That is a successful project.

1:13:57Jason DeFillippo:Yes, I could make a profit. What I'm probably going to do is, well, I'm going to keep it. It's better than, so I have this keyboard here, which is a Yamaha, more of a, like a consumer digital piano. So I'm going to swap it out with this one because the one I fixed is better than this one. And then I'll find a new or somebody who, you know, needs a, for free, I'll just put it on, you know, for free, free cycle or whatever and give it to somebody. So, yep. So that's next. Yeah. Very nice. So other updates. I was sitting here minding my own business again the week before I went away for Black Hat.

1:14:40Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. And my phone pops up with an alert and it was the thing I'd signed up for to alert me when Home Depot R2-D2s were back in stock. Now, nobody knew if Home Depot was going to be selling R2-D2 or not again this year. There was no news on that. It could have just been gone. Nobody knew. So this thing pops up on my phone. I immediately, you know, homedepot.com, go in, it pops up. Sure enough, there's 300 of them available. Okay, order. Please ship to me. I get to the shipping, filling in my payment information. It says there are 34 of them available. I passed her, Dave.

1:15:30Hit pay. I'm sorry this item is no longer available.

1:15:36Brian Schulmeister:Oh, Dave. Autofill. Autofill. You should have this shit ready to go.

1:15:42Jason DeFillippo:So I go home and I'm getting caught up with my wife about the day. And I said, oh, by the way, this happened today. This thing popped up on my phone and, you know, the R2-D2s became available and I wasn't able to get one. And she said, oh, I saw that, too. It'll be here Wednesday. That's a good wife. That's a good wife. You almost had two R2-D2s. Well, that would not have been a bad thing because then I could have had one for the office. I could have had one at home.

1:16:16Brian Schulmeister:One for the car, one for the bathroom. Yeah, exactly.

1:16:19Jason DeFillippo:I mean, can you really have too many astromech droids? I think not. No, I think not. So R2-D2 arrived and he's wonderful. He really is. I think it was Adam Savage said that an R2 unit is a happiness machine when you put one in your house. And it is true. every time right now he's in my um my living room uh next to the grand piano and so i walk i i still have uh i'm i'm i'm not used to him being there so it's a surprise every time i see him and that makes me happy right i come down the stairs and i turn and i see the living room and there's r2d2 and i go ahead it makes me smile and i go oh it's r2d2 so r2d2 is my next project because there are many, many Etsy kits out there to update your R2-D2 to make him more realistic and make the lights better, and you can make him completely remote-controlled and all the things.

1:17:18Jason DeFillippo:All right. That's what I'll be doing next.

1:17:21Brian Schulmeister:Will you be imbuing him with intelligence via chat GPT? No, I hadn't thought about that. Oh, my God. That's the first thing I thought of. I'm like, come on. You got to translate it to the beeps and boops, of course.

1:17:32Jason DeFillippo:Well, that's the thing, right. That's how do you, yeah. I mean, if it was C-3PO, that would be a lot easier. But I don't know. I'm just going to, you know, one step at a time. But it was nice that right as my keyboard project wrapped up, R2-D2 came into my life. And now I have something else to work on.

1:17:50Brian Schulmeister:You light up my days. Yeah.

1:17:54Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of R2-D2, I, of course, went to Disneyland and took the kid when we were in Orange County in Los Angeles area. I will only of note talk about Star Wars Land because they have changed since I was last there. I didn't see too many characters, so it's not like I saw the Han Solo in the bad wig running around or any of that. Unfortunately, I did see an R2 rolling around, which I hadn't before. the music has changed they don't no longer do the galaxy's edge soundtrack that that he wrote specifically for it so which i actually enjoy you now get all of the star wars you get the star wars theme you get the empire theme you're hearing all of those those classic things that we all know so well and i find that that's actually a great improvement as much as they want to do the immersion and have its own thing having the real all the real star wars music is is fantastic uh i went on the smuggler's run which has been redone for mandalorian and grogu oh it was nice it was it was fine you know it's it's like you know it's the same ride it's just a different thing on top of it so that was that was fun um yeah it was it was just a good time and uh since then of course they've had d23 which is the big conference uh disneyland conference and they've announced all sorts of other things that are to be happening and they've rolled out like interactive Ewoks that you could buy that then interact with different things within the park when you're there.

1:19:24Jason DeFillippo:Didn't get to see any of that. I was there before any of that stuff. But I do like that they're continuing to invest in the area and make it bigger and better and do new things all the time. What it really needs, of course, is another ride, but I don't know what we're ever going to get at that. I also think it needs a big restaurant. Yeah, it does. It does. As much as I like Uga's Cantina, they have some very tasty beverages there and some fun food. They don't have a big sit down immersive restaurant. Yeah. So, yeah. Did, did your son keep his promise of only going in Star Wars land? He did not.

1:19:58Jason DeFillippo:He did not. We had a bit of a curve ball in that some friends went with us and their daughters who Lucas is friends with. And so there, there was a lot of negotiation about going and doing different things. The one plus that came out of that though, is, is my son has been, um, not, he's not the most adventurous lad. Uh, he's been very wary of, of roller coasters. In fact, the only coaster he's been on so far up until that point, uh, was when we went to Disneyland Paris, he went on space mountain purely because they had the, the, uh, hyperspace mountain star Wars overlay. And so he enjoyed that a great deal.

1:20:33Jason DeFillippo:Uh, but he's still doesn't really want to do roller coasters, but he was, uh, shamed, uh, by the, by the two girls that we were girls girls are always involved the first time a guy goes on a roller coaster he was he was shamed into going on to a big thunder mountain which is personally uh my favorite disney roller coaster i love it so i went with him and uh i have to say one of my favorite moments as a parent so far was being on that ride with my son and seeing him like light up and start to really enjoy it and just watching his face the whole ride it was it was wonderful moment and that is great he had a blast so yeah it was a lot of fun in fact he wanted uh for whatever reason the line was really short that day so as soon as we got off we got right back in line and went a second time so yeah it was nice yeah has has he been on the increda coaster across the street there no and he's basically said that that is that is a bridge too far that is a roller coaster he will not he will not go on to until he has a son of his own and he has to that's what he told me or or or until there are hotter girls who yes i said or until puberty hits kids trust me because that that is a top roller coaster for me just it's a lot of fun and as they have a great soundtrack on that yeah it is a lot of fun i've only been on it a handful of times but it's it's fantastic but yeah big thunder has got uh the nostalgia and the fun for me so that's always top one yeah yeah oh that's great that's great well uh before uh we part ways here one other thing i wanted to touch on my wife and i have been making our way through the old tv show northern exposure you guys remember that one i do yeah it's really good it's really good i call it twin Peaks Light.

1:22:25Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that's fair. It is the it is the cold play to Twin Peaks Radiohead.

1:22:35Jason DeFillippo:I yes, I do not disagree. What I love about it, I think it holds up. I don't think it's a show that could be made today, certainly not on a broadcast network. Maybe a cable channel could make it, but it's just delightfully quirky and, and gentle and affectionate. Um, there are, the characters are interesting. It's a little mystical. Uh, and so I'm just, I'm enjoying it. We're enjoying it together. Um, it's just a really nice, gentle thing to watch before you go to bed at night. That's not going to get you riled up. It's not going to get you mad about anything. it just it's sort of a warm embrace of a storytelling kind of show so for folks who haven't seen it go check it out and if you haven't thought about it in a while it's worth a revisit I don't remember ever finishing it I know I saw some of it but I do remember that I actually had the soundtrack CD back when they used to do these sorts of things and particularly loving it because it was all over the place and i just looked it up really quick so like daniel lanois booker t and the mgs etta james uh david schwartz uh leonard skinner like it was a really good soundtrack in particular though one song in particular because this was a staple on on uh k-rock uh the alternative radio station when i was a kid don quixote by magazine 60 if you've not heard that song in a long time it's freaking awesome yeah uh well the dj uh at kbear uh chris stevens uh one thing i noticed this would probably drive you nuts jason is just how he completely misuses his sm7b uh which has which has no pop filter on it at all it's just it's a naked sm7b and he's just he's all over the thing oh yeah yeah yeah but it's okay i'll allow it i'll allow it they didn't have good uh good microphone protocols on wkrp in cincinnati either so you know what are you gonna right yeah that's true yeah all right we're glad you're back man glad you're back good to be back good to be back yep yep so i'll see you guys next time talk to you next week well let's

1:24:58Brian Schulmeister:talk about the people who keep this show going. Over on Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Giovanni. Welcome, my Italian brother. And we'd also like to thank Rick, Greg, James, Andy, Lorvox, Duke, Chris, Adit, Frankie, and Gabriel. Thank you all so much for your continued support. Thank you.

1:25:15Jason DeFillippo:Thank you. Thank you. Nobody at PayPal from now or over the break. So I guess if we don't do any shows, the PayPal money drives up.

1:25:23Brian Schulmeister:Okay, Brian. Well, now that you've got your basement lair. No excuses anymore. We're going to tether you down there.

1:25:30Jason DeFillippo:Still taking off. Still taking breaks.

1:25:34Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Well, I have no excuse. I'll just be here. I don't have anywhere to go. I'm just stuck in a fucking garage. Anyway, over the tip chair, we've got Theodore, Jeffrey, Sean, and Dahl. Thank you all so much. No new merch. We got to put up those new shirts. We got to put up those new shirts and no reviews. No reviews. If you would like to keep this show on the air, if you do like listening to us, please consider donating. You can go to GOG.show slash Patreon. Actually, you can't. You can go to Patreon.com slash GOG. I'm dyslexic. Give me a fucking break. You can sign up for as little as$3 a month, but you can give us more if you like, and you get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition.

1:26:09Brian Schulmeister:You can go to YouTube and sign up for a membership there if you want, and you do get the show early and ad-free as there as well, as there as well. And you can buy some merch that Brian is so lovingly showing us on his screen.

1:26:23Jason DeFillippo:It's the old DVD screensaver. It is.

1:26:25Brian Schulmeister:It's like a screensaver. Dong, dong, dong. You can go to shop.gog.show for that stuff. We're going to put some new stuff up there. I have a new Elon Kills Babies shirt that I'm working on right now that I'm waiting for the test to come through to see if it looks any good. But it's a it's a I like the shirt. I sent you the artwork for it. I think it's very clever. It's like a 50s, you know, horror movie poster that ChatGPT actually helped me make. and when I went back to trying to change something on it, they're like, oh, this completely breaks our terms of service. You can't do this. I'm like, but you made it.

1:27:00Brian Schulmeister:But you did it. But it breaks our terms of service, so we can't fix it. I'm like, okay. I love guardrails. I love guardrails. So until next time. I love the sound they make when they break. Exactly. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

1:27:15Jason DeFillippo:And I'm Brian Chilmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 759. 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. 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.

1:27:47Jason DeFillippo:And we've got that merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show. Stay grumpy.