Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet... Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schultz. Brian, hundreds of hundreds, I say, maybe even thousands of pissed off protesters swarmed Tesla dealerships across the US, Canada and Europe last weekend.
in what organizers called the Tesla Takedown. These have been going on for a while, but they're picking up steam. Have you seen any in your neck of the woods? No, we don't actually have a Tesla dealership anywhere near us. There are, I think, two in Toronto, the greater Toronto area. But I did see on social media that there were takedowns there as well.
I've seen the photos. I'd definitely say thousands for sure. Yes, definitely thousands. Yes, definitely thousands. Not hundreds of pissed off protesters, maybe hundreds of individual ones, but thousands altogether for sure. You know, there are a couple of things that Elon's good at. He's good at getting attention and he's good at making an ass out of himself.
He's stepping on his own dick, I think he's saying that. Also really good about whining about the consequences of his own actions. So here we are. People are pissed, and rightfully so. And this was pre-terror. Yeah, this is all pre-tariffs. And the funny thing is Tesla stock price jumped when the news came out that he might be leaving the White House.
How fucked up is that? When you're leaving your job, your company does better. Oh, because you're going back to your job that was supposed to be running the company. Right. Yeah, somebody's got to supervise that glue for the Cybertrucks. No shit, man. But because shit just keeps getting weirder, the far right is showing up to those Tesla takedowns. Armed and cosplaying Hitler. I mean, he put out the call, didn't he? Yeah. I mean, again, this is consequences of his own actions.
Is he upset about it? Probably not. I mean, he's been crying that it's not fair and he wants to make, you know, if you damage one of his automobiles from the company that he's not bothering running. That's a terrorist act now, apparently. Although real terrorists don't get shit happening to them if they're on the right side ideologically. We are so fucked as a nation right now that it's gotten to the point where...
Like, you know, there's always been a Republican Democratic divide. It's been pretty bad a few times in my lifetime. I mean, I remember when George Bush was the evil incarnate. Now he just seems like a kindly old man that paints pictures. It's never been like this.
It's never been like this where this guy this guy's cars are are a dividing point amongst the nation now so you've got uh you've got your kind of liberals and people on the left and let's be honest same people uh that are like Basically protesting against what Elon is doing with our government, but the only way they know how to and the only way that Elon really understands financially.
And they're just going out and protesting. And then you've got the people on his side, which apparently seem to be Nazi cosplayers. Yeah. David Penninger showed up in full. Full Nazi regalia. He actually – Look, there's very fine people on both sides, right, Jason? That's the way this works. There are literally fine people on both sides wearing literally Hitler's shirts.
That's right. Yeah. Unfortunately for Elon, I don't think any of these people can afford to buy his cars. Definitely not now. Not today. Yeah. Well, I mean, Elon has had a lot of bad news this week, which is, as far as I can tell, good news for the country in general. But he did get a bit of good news. As this article states at the beginning, which is a great, great opening. If there is one thing rich people love, it's doing things that allow them to take advantage of their inordinate wealth.
And if there's one thing they hate, it's being held to account for those things. Kind of the story of Elon's life right now, his accountability. But he got a win here from the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. They have made a recent change to the agency's rules that will make it easier for private jet owners to hide their registration information, potentially making it harder to identify and track their movements now.
for a while or been on the internet, you do remember there was the Elon jet tracker, there was the Taylor Swift jet tracker, all those sorts of things. But now the FAA is basically allowing private jet aircraft owners to be able to hide their information, including the name and address of the person in possession of the jet. It will be made private and no longer publicly accessible. via FAA services, which is how people got this.
ahead of time. Of course, private jet usage has spiked thanks to the widening divide and the haves and have nots at the moment. So there's been a lot of this going on. Now, to be fair... This bill, which had bipartisan support and primarily focused on expanding the agency's function, improving infrastructure, was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2024 because the rich stick with the rich.
Yeah. And that's the way it works. So about half of all private flights were under 500 kilometers or about 300 miles and emissions from private trips arose 46% between 2019 and 2023. Similarly, a report from The Guardian found that private jets belonging to 200 wealthy folks made 44,739 trips in 2022, generating more carbon emissions than 40,000 average British citizens do over the course of a year.
So let's make sure you're using those biodegradable straws, everybody. Yeah, get your straws right. Because everything that we do matters ever so much. I told you, man, ever since I went to Hong Kong and saw that they were just literally trying to air condition the outside of the city, I gave up. I'm like, screw it. Whatever we do does not matter. But anyway.
A bit of follow-up on the world-ending asteroid that was coming for a brief period of time, but then was basically ruled out. It is still ruled out. Webb's observations have ruled out an Earth impact in 70 years. Oh, but wait, Jason. but the results suggest that the asteroid continues to have a non-zero probability of impacting the moon. Great.
at its current size estimates the asteroid would likely release about eight megatons of energy during an impact which is more than 500 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima in 1945 and comparable to the energy released in the Tunguska blast of 1908, according to NASA. So we still have seven eaves to look forward to. Okay, hopefully. Hopefully. I need some good apocalypse news, Brian. Like it's going to happen. We might all be dead by then already.
Certainly we'll be all jobless and poor and starving. The apocalypse comes one bite at a time. So Apple Intelligence and Siri are the new Bluetooth, Brian. I noticed. Yeah. So longtime listeners of the show, I mean, like really longtime listeners will recall back in the days of the early iOS updates like.
I think you were on an iPhone 4 or 5 back then or something like that. I think the 4 or 5 was my first one. I think it was the 5, actually. I was kind of late to that. I was a BlackBerry holdout for quite some time. Yeah. So every time Brian would update the iOS. install, Bluetooth would turn on. I don't know why you would have it turned off because
Nowadays, everything is Bluetooth. But it wasn't then, and the reports were that it drained the battery. That's what it was. Yeah, back then I was working with the bands and off and out and about, not near chargers anytime. convenient or often so i needed to preserve battery at all cost yeah and we had wired headphones back then we were using bluetooth all the time so yeah i guess that did make sense so every every update it would turn on or off or on or off it was kind of the flip-flop joke
So now Apple Intelligence and Siri are the new Bluetooth because I had Apple Intelligence and Siri turned off on every Mac that I owned. And then, of course, the 15.4 update came through and everything turned back on. Yep, same for me. So I had to go in and turn it all off on everything again. Thanks, Apple.
Senator Roger Wicker said he and Senator Jack Reed, the Armed Service Committee's top Democrat, will send a letter to the Trump administration requesting an inspector general investigation into the use of signal by top national security officials to discuss military plans. Wicker is also calling for a classified Senate briefing from a top national security official and verification that the Atlantic published.
an accurate transcript of the signal chat. They're going to send a letter, Brian. They are. Important to note that Senator Roger Wicker is actually a Republican, so nice to see some reaching across the aisles here and some pushback at the insanity that's happening. Will it make much of a difference? I don't think so.
It should. They should come in there and say, we absolutely tell people not to use Signal or other services of that nature. We have infrastructure for this that's supposed to be used. That is also accessible. And the main reason they did this by Freedom of Information Act requests. So, you know, they're basically did this to make sure that nobody could ever call them on it. Yep. Well, the Pentagon's inspector general is also investigating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for using signal.
So, you know, they're moving along. They're moving along. Yeah. One bit at a time. Yep. But finally, it's come out that the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz's team in Trump's ever dwindling National Security Council, which we'll talk about in a second, ran at least 20 signal group chats covering crises. Is that a crisis ease? Worldwide. Well, look, you know, new administration comes in just like it's your job. Say a new general manager or COO comes in. Hey, you're switching apps.
Yeah, this is this is the app of choice for these morons. Oh, man, I remembered I was a I was a all Gmail house when I worked at BLT and this new team came in and then they switched everything to Microsoft and teams and we're getting everybody tablets. And I was just like, I'm out of here. Forget this. I'm not using I'm not using team. Oh, by the way, these guys, these assets from the government were also using personal Gmail accounts. But they're email. Yeah.
Yeah. If you'll remember, the NSA recently issued a warning to all government employees about the use of signal. saying that Russian hackers are trying to access all the encrypted conversations. Well, you know what happens when you're sitting on the shitter, Jason, and you're scrolling through your feed and you see something. You know, they scrolled by real fast and they thought the thing said, you sick.
Yeah, must have been that they were taking a dump from all those fucking burritos they're eating from, you know, the taco truck outside that's run by the immigrants that they just deported because they thought they were gang members. No more burritos for you. Yeah, I thought that since the government switchover came, they all had to switch to McDonald's now. Well, I don't know who you've seen working behind the McDonald's counter at your places, but...
The president. Shittiest fries ever. Well, since the NSA did send that bulletin back in February. Trump today has fired both the director and deputy director of the NSA, General Timothy Haw, who also led U.S. Cyber Command and his deputy, Wendy Noble, and they were both removed. Well, you know, cast our minds back to, oh, I don't know, last week of this disaster, which feels like 18 years ago already. Remember when they put out the directive to stop looking into Russian cybercrime?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that maybe people of integrity, say, I don't know, National Security Agency General Timothy Haw and his deputy, Wendy Noble, kind of pushed back on that a bit? Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Interesting. Now they're fired. Well, this also comes at the same time that far right activist conspiracy nut job and crazy bitch Laura Loomer. Let us not forget. Also, also self-defined white supremacist.
Yes, yes. Met with the president on Wednesday. And right after that, there was a whole bunch of firing. So, yeah. I'm glad she's in charge. Well, Elon's apparently leaving, so they need someone to fill his shoes. We need another crazy-ass white supremacist to come in and hold the swastika. That's it. Hold my swastikas. Hold the line. Yeah. Love does not always come on time.
I hate this. I hate this, Brian, so much. This is the worst possible reality, and I just do my best to laugh my way through it, but I'm crying, really. Tears of a clown. Somebody please go pee on the Large Hadron Collider so we can get a new reality. Please. Anyways, Elon Musk is speaking of him since he's everywhere right now. His AI company, XAI, has purchased X.
So shuffling money around because as we know, anything with AI attached to its name is getting all of the fundings. So his chatbot Grok, which... I love I actually I want to start using Grok because Grok seems to be the only AI out there that is not putting up with Elon's bullshit. There are endless posts on X from people asking questions about Elon, and it's just fucking honest. It says, yes, he's a liar.
Yes, he's doing horrible things. Like his own AI, even though there are reports that he tried to make it stop. His own AI is calling him out for being an asshole. That's great. Anyways, XAI has money and X does not. So XAI now bought X as a write-off. That's what rich people get to do. Well, Trump's Truth Social took a nosedive about 8% after, wait for it, Brian.
He said he's going to sell all of his stock, his entire $2.3 billion stake. That's 114 million shares held in trust by good old Don Jr. Maybe he went to another board meeting because he only went to like two last year and got paid half a million dollars. Call me crazy, but I think that anybody holding a massive office like that needs to actually have all of their stock holdings and all of their financial assets basically frozen for the duration of their serving period.
Well, that's the whole point. They're supposed to be in a trust, a trust that they cannot access. And at this point, these shares are in a trust held by Don. By his son. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I can see how he can't access. Yeah, seriously. So the company filing says that they're going to sell over 142 million shares from time to time.
This includes Trump, Devin Nunez, Pam Bondi, and even a mystery Cayman Islands firm. I'm going to go out on a limb here, Jason, and say that none of our listeners actually hold any true social stock. But if you do, you need to fucking sell it. Because the bag that you're going to be left holding, they're handing it to you right now. I really don't believe anybody that listens to this show would have any true social butt.
I could be wrong. Maybe there's some sort of evil mutual fund. Could be. Oh, wait, we call that crypto. Oh, speaking of crypto. Yes. After announcing his long hype tariffs, the Trump crypto tanked to nine bucks in all time low. That's less than 10 weeks after it launched at a high of $75. Go look at the trend line on it. I looked at it this morning. It's hilarious. The fact that it's still $9 is amazing to me. It should be like zero. It should be one cent.
Well, they're about to unlock 40 million more tokens. Probably going to go there. Yeah. Smartest guys in the room here. Well, they are because they took all the money and ran. Well, they didn't run. They're still here. I'd be okay with it if they ran. No, Brian, they ran. They ran for office. Right. That's not the running I anticipated. Yeah, it's the running we all wanted.
All right. OpenAI has announced new funding, a $40 billion funding round at a $300 billion post-money valuation, which just boggles the mind. Now, to be fair to this, I mean, obviously it's stupid. I don't know who's still giving people any of these companies money, but it is tied to... SoftBank. SoftBank. The funding is tied... to monetization they have to hit certain monetization uh milestones which they are not going to hit
Well, it's also tied to the fact that OpenAI needs to become a for-profit company by October. Right. So that is the big flip. So they have to make sure that that transition from the current model to the for-profit model actually happens. Right. And they didn't get all the money. They only got $10 billion of it because right now SoftBank is out trying to get a loan. It's a house of fucking cards, man. It is a house of cards.
Yeah, SoftBank is looking for a bridge loan, like a $16 billion bridge loan. We need a loan so we can give these guys a loan so that they can become profitable even though there's no path to profitability. Yeah. Which hat is the ball under now? I don't remember anymore. Yeah, and this week was just insane. It was just insane because it started before the show last week when we were covering the... the studio gibbification of the world. So I, I went through Sam's X timeline.
last week. And I just want to run through these real quick because it's kind of funny. He's like, we updated GPT-4.0, really big strides. Then, can you all please chill on generating images? This is insane. Our team needs sleep. Then the chat GPT launched 26 months ago was one of the craziest viral moments I'd ever seen. And we added 1 million users in five days. We added 1 million users in the last hour. Okay.
So we can see it. We can see the ramp coming here. We have a big launch. We're getting more users than anybody's ever had in the history of the world. Please slow down. So the next thing he says is chat GPT image gen now rolled out to all free users. I would love to have been in the dev room when that tweet went out. I would just be like, oh yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm updating my resume.
You know, they have a problem cooling all those GPUs. And I think at that tweet, all those GPUs were instantly cooled by the tears of the devs who knew that they were going to be up for the next 18 days. So then he tweets, working as fast as we can to really get stuff humming. If anyone has GPU capacity in 100,000 chunks, we can get ASAP. Please call. Now, remind me of something here.
Aren't they partnered with Microsoft and Azure? I'm thinking there's probably something there. So, yeah, this is all just a show. No, no, no. I think Microsoft is at this point holding back services because. Well, the bridge loan hasn't come through for SoftBank, so OpenA, I can't. Would you say they are holding the line? They are holding the line. I'm going to throw out a quick theory here. Microsoft, who has already pulled back on the two gigawatts of...
of capacity that they were going to expand to. I think now they're going to let open AI just shit the bed. They're going to let it die. It's on a straight trajectory to the grave right now. If you look at how much it costs to run the service, how much the queries cost, and just everything about the business is just headed for the grave, they're just going to let it go and pick it up in a fire sale.
And they just get all the assets. That's actually pretty, pretty smart for Microsoft to do so. I mean, this is just stupid. Okay. What would you do if you were switching to a for-profit company? If you were... basically drowning in debt and everything else that they're doing. They are the new order. Blue Monday of generative AI in that that was the most expensive record sleeve ever produced. And the band literally lost a dollar every single time they sold.
They are Blue Monday of AI at this point. Anytime anybody goes and makes a query, they are losing money. They are under pressure to get more funding to become a for-profit company. All of a sudden you add 1 million users in the last hour, the biggest day you've ever had. And then you just start offering it all for free instead of saying, if you want this. Sign up and pay us. Yeah. It's like. What?
business school do these dumb fucks go to any drug dealer in the world will tell you what the first taste is free bitch first taste is free then you gotta pay It's unbelievable to me. I just look at these companies and how they're run and I sit here and go, why am I not? What? Huh? I don't get... Apparently, I've done everything wrong my entire life because I've done it right. We didn't go to business school, Brian. I guess not. I guess not. No.
But I mean, at least at least in the old days, we did know, you know, if you're giving somebody a ride, there was the Trinity cash, ass or grass. Come on. You have to give give something to get from point A to point B. Sam apparently never learned those rules. I do not need your cash, ass or grass. Sam, I am. Sam, I am. Worst Dr. Seuss.
So then he finally tweeted, we're getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges. Earth's lakes are suffocating and fast. A new study shows oxygen levels in lakes have dropped 5.5% in surface waters and nearly 19% in deep water since 1980. Why? A nasty combo of climate change, fertilizer runoff, and intensifying heat waves.
And now they can add gibbification to the list of – It's just the fact that there's still water left in the lakes. you know, surprising at this point. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that over 80% of over 15,000 lakes are now oxygen starved. In between 2003 and 2023, 85% of them saw a sharp rise in heat wave. That heat chokes the water literally because warmer water holds less oxygen.
And how do we cool all our GPUs for all these bullshit chat GPT stuff? We run cold water through things that heats it up. It becomes a natural heat sink, thus making hotter water that has less oxygen in it. And then the cycle continues. Yes. It's the circle of death. Maybe we do need Greenland. To move all the servers to.
Maybe he was right. Melt it. Yeah. ChatGPT, make me a photo of the dead earth, Ghibli style, please. Since launching Image Generator and ChatGPT on March 25th, users have cranked out over, wait for it, Brian. 700 million images. Why? 700 million images. But... These are just like your concert videos. Nobody's ever going to fucking look at them. Nobody cares. Hey, you know, we are just as to blame as everybody else. Because if you look at the show, Hart, last week, we did it too.
But we used that for something. It was our show art. We did. We did. We did. We didn't just like sit there all day masturbating Ghibli style. There's 130 million users doing this. So we are just one of 130 million. But surprisingly, India is the fastest growing chat GPT market. Now, why would you think that, Brian? Because they're all running our customer service and they're generating the scripts in real time.
And all of the scam artists are there too, sending all the fake emails to get your credit card info. Exactly. Yeah, that's not a surprise. And that is a 100 percent supposition. We have no proof of that, but we're probably right. Just saying. It's what we call an educated guess, Jason. So, Brian, also in the new eggs category. Dartmouth researchers have completed the first clinical trial of a generative AI therapy chatbot, and the results are promising.
The chatbot called Therabot. I want to get a little too close to Theranos, I think. They might want to change that. Therabot significantly reduced symptoms in patients with depression, anxiety, and eating disorder. People with depression saw a 51% average drop in symptoms, while anxiety symptoms dropped by 31%. Even among those at risk for eating disorders, a group that's notoriously tough to treat, concerns about body image and weight dropped by 19%.
Maybe there's something to it. Well, yeah, I mean, but this is obviously a specially trained AI, generative AI system that has a very limited data set that has probably been meticulously combed over as opposed to... We threw everything that humans have ever created, ever, including shit paintings, into this thing. Pretty much. And it does not treat your anxiety if your anxiety is based around the destruction of the natural resources of the earth.
I just want a running counter the entire time I'm using Therabot. It's like five trees killed, one lake drained. Would you like to follow up on your mom? No, no, no. We're good. Thank you. Well, Meta's under the microscope again, and this time it's about getting cozy with China. Senate subcommittee just launched an investigation into whether Mark Zuckerberg's crew tried to kiss up to the Chinese Communist Party to get Facebook into China. Of course they did. That's business.
Yep. Senators Ron Johnson, Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley are demanding records tied to Project Aldrin. Not to be confused with Project Alderaan. A secret push from 2014 to build censorship tools for China. So this all came out because of Sarah Wynn Williams' new book, Careless People, because she kind of talked about the whole inside kerfuffle of what was going on with Facebook in China, which really kind of tracks now why they wanted this book torpedoed.
So that's really kind of coming out now. So Meta's response was, of course, deny, deny, deny, deny. They say it's all crap from a disgruntled employee they fired eight years ago, but the Senate's not buying it. And they've given Zuck until April 21st to hand over the goods. All right. Well, he's in trouble. You know, and I think he might actually be in trouble because they still don't want him as part of the game.
You know, Musk and Bezos and those guys. He's not. No, he's just a little twat that nobody likes. And researchers at UC Berkeley and UCSF have achieved a major breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces, developing a neuroprosthesis. that can stream natural-sounding speech directly from the brain in real time. The system uses artificial intelligence to decode brain signals associated with speech and convert them into audible words almost instantly.
which is kind of cool. It's kind of cool. There are systems like that that exist right now, but they take about eight seconds, and this takes about one second. So if you couple that with, you know, something from say 11 labs where you can, you know, build your voice on what it used to be.
You know, especially if you had a podcast and we know everybody in the world had a podcast at some point during COVID. So boom, there you go. Couple that all together. And now you have, you know, a device that can actually read your brain and talk to you without your voice. You know, it's still in the work. But here's what I'm thinking, Brian.
Here's what I'm thinking. Now, you have to have like a neural implant already, right? To get this to go. But people are working on, you know, they're getting pretty far now with the development of very non-invasive brain scanning technique. So couple that with a little cap that you put on and then your brain actually can speak directly to you.
Now, if your brain is really shit at lying, maybe how is this going to be? I'm just thinking of the future of law enforcement and prosecution in a criminal case. fuck the lie detector just put on the brain go speaky cap yeah and there you go yeah don't forget to lie here yeah it's definitely an interesting technology i can definitely like bookmark that and follow up on it and see what happens See how many monkeys that Elon has to kill before it becomes reality. Jesus.
Yeah. So I had talked a little bit about we've been talking about AI nonstop, obviously. And a while back, I took a course on the nuts and bolts of kind of how the large language models actually work and function. And, you know, you learned about the different training. that they used and things of that nature. My takeaway from that was, of course, they have no clue how these things work. It definitely is a black box.
They understand some of the concepts behind it, but the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, and there's no way they could tease apart exactly what's going on. So that was obviously distressing. given that we're using this everywhere now and including important things like, oh, I don't know, generating all the tariffs that we've slapped on all the countries. I don't know if you read that bit of news, but. Oh, yeah, I saw that. Yeah.
Anyways, so I thought, well, you know, that's one way of looking at Gen AI. Gen AI is not going anywhere. We talk about it every week. Why don't I get a user perspective? Why don't I take a course on how to actually use it? Not the way it's created, but use it. And so I found one. It's called Generative AI Leadership and Strategy Specialization.
It's got three courses as part of the specialty, generative AI for leaders, prompt engineering for chat GPT, and trustworthy generative AI. Now, this is taught by... mostly taught by a guy called Dr. Jules White over at Vanderbilt. And he's the main guy over there doing Gen AI study and all that sort of stuff and teaching the courses. I like him. It was a really interesting course. I learned a lot about how you can basically engineer your prompts to get the things that you want.
And I have to point out that Jules White is a smart guy. The entire course, he said, this is the proper usage for chat GPT and large language model. Doing anything that isn't this is not proper usage. You do not use it for fact. You do not use it to prove things. You do not use it as you should never, ever use this for medical information. You should never, ever use this for legal information. It is a storytelling.
And you can use it to generate ideas and to ideate and to flesh out concepts and to save time here and there doing things like. writing emails to partners and or potential, you know, business partners and things of that nature. That is all you use it for. That is what it's for. And if you try to do anything beyond that with it, if you try to do anything real world with logic and. actual facts and everything like that. You're stupid. And of course.
What does everybody, all possible uses out there in the wild are doing things that the learned professor at the university, who is probably one of the most learned people in the world about large language models. is saying you absolutely should not be doing this with it. That's what all the companies are doing. Of course. Yeah. Look, man, he's establishment. You can't trust anything he says.
No, no, no. He's deep intelligence. He can't go there, man. It was definitely like a good course. I'm glad I took it. I have more of an appreciation for large language models and gen AI than I did before. It's just when you look around at the world and how it's actually being used, that's when you get depressed again. I was listening to a podcast this week and somebody said something that I that really struck me and they said. Large language models can get you to mediocre facts.
That is fantastic. That is a great way to put it, because when you think about it, you take all of the knowledge and then you just kind of swizzle it up and spit it back out. It's not creating anything new. It is by definition, mediocre. Yes, it's exactly that. It's a starting block. It's a way to ideate. And I think he said something, I'm paraphrasing him, but he was like, Gen AI is great for giving you 25 different ideas about how to approach something, something that you want to accomplish.
for you to then think about and research yourself. It's a starting block. And he said half of the prompts that he teaches you to generate are how to do fact check. Like it's insane. He's like, because you can't trust anything that comes out of this. You absolutely have to fact check. You should not use generative AI to become an expert in a domain. You will never be that. And my brain is just exploding because I'm going, but that's not how anybody is actually using it.
No, and they're going to be getting dumber because they're starting to trade on themselves now. So we know that that's coming. But it just seems to me now that AI is weaponizing mediocrity against us. Well, yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, the people that are getting all into using this, they get to mediocre fast, and then they stop.
Because they were sub-mediocre before. That's the problem. They don't take what the generative AI gave them and then use their own brain to take it further and to actually make it good. or trustworthy, or verify anything. They just stop with whatever the AI shits out for them. Yeah. I mean, half the time when I use it nowadays, I go back and fact check. It does help me.
format things easier. Like there was a contract I had the other day that I was going through and I'm like, summarize the bullet points on this. What are the hourlies and all of this stuff? And it gave me a really nice thing. Then what did I do? I opened up the contract side by side and I went through it line by line to make sure that everything it said was correct. Yes. And that way it saved me the time on the summary writing. But I still wouldn't fact check it because this is a legal summary.
You know, I wanted to make sure that the numbers were right. It was just easier to get the structure and the framework from it. But I 100% did not trust it. Yeah. You know, and that's that's a valid use case. That's how you should do it. Yeah, and it saved me a bunch of time. I was thankful for that use case. And I use it on different things all the time, but never anything that would be.
you know, be mission critical. God, no. It is great for emails though, for sure. Oh yeah. I use it. I use it all the time for emails now, all the time. Like anytime I'm writing a contractor or trying to get a quote or something or whatever, it's just. spit it out and then I still check it and I change some wording.
And the fun part is the future of AI is so fuzzy right now because the fact that everybody is on a path to zero. Yeah. The open source side of things is, I think, might be all that's left at some point. These big companies who are going to be running it, it's going to morph in the next 12 months, like drastically from what it is right now.
Yep. 100%. Yeah. None of these companies are going to become the next Google, the biggest company in the world. It's just not going to happen. Because again, there's no clear path to making money off of this. There's no killer app. There's no nothing. Yeah, at current state, it's a feature, not a product. That's how I'm looking at it.
We'll see. We'll see. Now, finally, while we were busy doom scrolling through SignalGate, Trump signed another executive order on March 20th called Stopping Waste Fraud and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos. This order gives the federal government the green light to merge unclassified data from across different agencies into one massive pool. The idea...
Kill redundancy, streamline operations, and root out fraud. Now, in theory, that makes sense. But, Brian, here's the thing. Some silos exist for very good legal reasons. I know that they don't think about this when they come up with these grand ideas on the shitter at three in the morning on their fucking signal chat. But. That stuff is legally protected to keep your personal info from becoming government chum.
If the walls come down, privacy experts warn we're headed for a surveillance state, of course, one giant database where any federal official like the president could peek into your life, no matter how sensitive the info. Breaking the silos could backfire in here's a couple of ways. Here's a couple of ways. Now, these sound at a glance like a good idea, but undocumented immigrants. pay billions of dollars in taxes because the IRS doesn't share data with immigration authorities.
criminals pay taxes because the Justice Department can't look at their records as well. That separation actually helps the system work and makes the government money. And there are a lot of different options in there, too, with medical records and things like that. So the order looks like on the surface that it claims to fight waste and fraud.
it is going to just demolish your personal data. So this one kind of does matter. And I hope, hopefully it's already hit the courts and is being challenged because it's a load of bullshit. Keeping up with White Lotus, I don't really have much to say about the latest episode or even this season yet because it's all moved so... More so than any of the other seasons. Oh, no, no, no. Go back and watch season two. This is like...
F1 racing compared to season two. I don't know. I was way more intrigued with season two. I liked it a lot more, but maybe it's the people. I don't know. I think it's faulty memory because we just watched it and nothing happens in season two until episode six. Period. It's so boring. Well, we get the 90-minute season finale this Sunday, so we'll wait to talk about it until we hit the finale.
I watched the first episode of the studio over on Apple TV plus or whatever the hell they call it. This is the Seth Rogen thing who becomes the newly appointed head of a movie studio. It's.
funny-ish I guess I don't know I've only watched one episode so far it's intrigued me enough to watch a second episode I will have to say to anybody that didn't like the Blair Witch Project, and that's going back a long time now, so it's only old people that get that reference, but if you don't like shaky cameras following people around, if it bothers you and it kind of makes you sick like it does for my wife, do not watch this show. She was like, I'm going to puke. I can't watch this anymore.
It's difficult for me, too. But definitely have her not watch the second episode. Well, she was done. She's like, this is going to be the camera work throughout the whole show. I can't do this. Yeah, it is a problem because the second one is the one-er. And it's all in one shot, and it is a lot of handheld, a lot of handheld. Yeah. And it's a fantastic episode. I highly recommend you watch it at least. Okay. I haven't seen the third episode yet. It just came out and we were busy yesterday.
Brian, we are both fans of Jessica Jones and Kristen Ritter. Yes. Very big fan. There was a series that she did a little while back called Orphan Black Echoes that we talked about on the show that promptly disappeared from the world. It came out on AMC. And AMC Plus. Well, it's not there anymore. It is not on AMC Plus anymore. They kept the original Orphan Black, but Orphan Black Echoes is not there. And I know why now. It is so horrifically bad. Horrifically bad.
That even through the first episode, I was like, I don't know if I can. I don't know if I can take it anymore. I don't know if I can take it. I powered through the first episode. I will not be watching the other seven, period. Well, fair enough. Dude, it is. so bad. And the sad part is It's written and directed by one of the creators of Orphan Black. Mm-hmm.
Remember La Femme Nikita back from the 90s? I do, yeah. Yeah, that was a really bad show too. That alias, they were bad in a specific way that made you kind of want to watch them. Beautiful woman, you know, cool storyline, sorta, but not great, but you'd still get into it. This has none of that except the beautiful woman. That's it. And she can't save it. She can't save it.
So fortunately, Brian, you're never going to just stumble across it and go, oh, Orphan Black Echoes. I really want to see that today. Click. Nope, because it is just nowhere. Orphan Black still is. So if you've never seen Orphan Black, you can still get that one. So I put a link in the show notes to that, which had Tatiana Maslany. I can never say that right. Tatiana Maslany. You say it again. She was amazing. Did you ever watch Orphan Black? I never did, but I did love her in She-Hulk.
Okay, here's the deal. She played eight different characters in Orphan Black. Yeah. And you would swear that they were eight different people. She was so, so good in that. So good in that, which is why when she came in as She-Hulk Attorney at Law, I was just like, oh, I definitely got to watch this. And she was fantastic in that.
Yeah, but that's a piece of shit show, according to everybody that loves Severance, or at least the one guy. I know the one guy. According to the one guy. You love that shit. That was a good show. It was a great show. I was sad that I'm bringing it back. Yeah, I mean, the ending kind of sucked, but it was still a fun show. It was tongue-in-cheek.
Tongue in cheek. And it had Jamila Jamil in it. Come on. How can you go wrong? There you go. Yeah. And I found Tales of the Gold Monkey this week on an old hard drive. And I'm like, hmm, Tales of the Gold Monkey. Didn't I hear something recently about the guy who starred in Tales of the Gold Monkey? Oh, Stephen Collins. Oh, wait, he's in a new documentary. Oh.
That's not good. I missed the whole point where he was canceled back in 2014, where he admitted to inappropriate sexual conduct with three female minors. And, yeah, is living and hiding in Iowa right now. Okay. Well, you know, it's 73, 82, and 94. He seems to like to hit them once a decade. Yeah, yeah. Hit it and quit it.
Wait for that statute. Maybe that's the statute of limitations wave. See, if you took that sentence and you popped it into chat GPT, it would just continue the pattern and say he did it again in 2005. 2016 and then 2027. Watch out, ladies. Yeah, watch out. Lock up your women and hide the fried chicken. Here comes Steven. Yep.
So, yeah, I deleted Tales of the Golden Monkey because I'm just like, it's tainted now. It's tainted. Although, you know, it's not like you paid for it. That's true. That's true. That is true. I did watch a new documentary. It's actually not a new documentary. It came out a couple of years ago called Turn It Around, The Story of East Bay Pump. And we've talked ad nauseum about your musical roots on the show. And this is kind of the history of my musical root.
The East Bay punk scene was just groundbreaking back in the day. You get bands like Op Ivy, Crimp Shrine, Sweet Baby. There's just too many to list. And of course, the one that made it. It was Green Day. So Green Day came out of Gilman and that whole area and Jawbreaker and just all my favorite bands. I was just a huge fan of the East Bay punk scene. That and the Chicago punk scene all kind of coalesced around the same time, the late 80s, early 90s.
But this is a phenomenal documentary. It's almost three hours long. Which was great. I watched it over three nights. I highly recommend it if you have any interest whatsoever. If you ever listen to that music back in the day, this just has the whole story of Gilman Street.
and uh the bands that came out of it it was just it was a really well done documentary and the really strange part is aaron comet bus is in there and he does all the lettering and the interstitials and they show him but he never speaks in the documentary, which I thought was very odd. I want to dig into that. But yeah, no, it is definitely my favorite music documentary that I've seen probably in the past five years. So highly recommended.
And we got a Star Trek Strange New Worlds trailer out. We did. Teaser. Yeah. Yeah. Coming this summer. Please. I didn't watch it. I will not watch it. Did you watch it? I did. Don't watch it. Any good? Don't watch. It doesn't give anything away except for the fact that the costume department obviously had a lot of fun this season. Okay. Yeah. I just, I'm just waiting. I did.
Did his hair get, did Anson's hair get any taller? No, it's the same height. Okay. I didn't know. He's not scaling any new great height. Everybody got a glow up, though. They're all looking pretty good. Obviously, the money is starting to flood in a bit. Yeah, I just wish there was more money so they had them maybe every year instead of every 17 years. That's old school.
It'd be nice to be. Yeah, it'd be nice if it was every year and about, oh, I don't know, 26 episodes instead of every three years and nine episodes. Yeah, that kind of sucks. Well, we get 10 this time. We get 10. Yeah, they upped it by one. Thanks, guys. Now, this is just my final ironic moment. After Trump announced his new tariffs on Wednesday night, Shannon Watts over on Instagram highlighted a scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where teacher.
played by Ben Stein, who is a famous Republican and Trump supporter, lectures on how Republican imposed tariffs during the Great Depression failed and worsened the economy. Oh, the irony, Brian. That is everywhere on my liberal media. Everywhere. It's very funny, though. It's hilarious. Bueller. Ups and doodads. I found a really good one trick pony website, Brian, called Project 2025 Tracker. Define good.
First off, hat tip to Minkowski over on Discord who sent this one along. Yeah, it's good as in it does what it says it's doing. It tracks the overall progress of the horrific Project 2025 document. to actual things that the government is doing. And you can actually see how many there are. There are 302 total. 109 are done and 44 in progress. And it's refreshed my memory here again, Jason. Project 2025 was that far right wing think tank that basically wanted to...
destroy the government as it exists and replace it with something that basically nobody really wants except for far right wing people. But it is the thing, of course, that Donald Trump had never read. was of course not part of their plan, and they would in no way, shape, or form be enacting any of this Project 2025 nonsense once they got it.
Yeah, that's the one. Okay, cool. Thanks. Yep. Just as long as you're clear. I'm where I need to be, I guess. Okay. All right. That being Canada. Fuck you. Damn it. Yeah, this was started by two Redditors, Rustic Gorilla and Molly N. Aquafina. Good job, guys. Very good job. It's well done. So go check it.
All right, we have some Apple news. According to Mark Gurman in the Power On newsletter over the weekend, we may see at least two Apple devices with Apple's upcoming M5 chip before the end of the year. An M5 iPad Pro has reached the late stages of testing, putting it on track for production in the second half of the year. And the M5 MacBook Pro should be here sometime in the fall.
in line with the timing of the past few years' releases. So that's pretty exciting stuff, except for the tariffs, which means these things are going to cost $20 gazillion each. I was surprised when I saw this. You usually don't give a shit about Apple News. Well, I was gearing up to buy a new Airbook Pro.
this year. But we'll see what the prices are going to be. They are going to be cheap with these tariffs all in place. They're not cheap to begin with. They're not cheap to begin with. So it's going to be interesting. In continuing Apple news, there apparently is going to be a much more comprehensive version of its health app, which is being worked on under the codename Project Mulberry, with plans... to integrate an AI agent that would somehow replicate a doctor and act as a personal health.
Great. I don't mind the integration of AI in terms of like, maybe, you know, if you can open up the health app and like type in or even just use Siri to like say questions like. Can you let me know how my blood pressure is done over the past six months and all that sort of stuff that that's okay. Acting as a doctor is exactly what the professor emeritus of the said, don't do, said not to do with AI. So that could not good.
There will be a new emphasis on food tracking, which is nice because I've been tracking my food lately and I'd like to not use the third party apps that I'm using. It'd be great for that just to be built right in. Form correction tips for workouts using the device's camera. That's kind of an interesting use as well. So this will be called Health Plus. And it could arrive with iOS 19.4, which should be next spring or summer. Great. Okay.
Got a ways to go there. Got a ways to go. It does seem that they have hired a bunch of doctors on staff. So they're basically custom training an AI agent. They're not going to use just, you know, your standard all in kitchen sink one. So that's a step in the right direction, at least. And speaking of iOS releases, iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, MacOS 15.4, and VisionOS 2.4 all came out.
And it's a sad state of affairs when they have to lead with, there are new emojis. Yeah, that's kind of bad. That's about as good as it's getting. Great. Woohoo. So I get to spend an hour and a half nonproductive while I update every device I own so I can have a fucking carne asada taco instead of the burrito. That's great. Thanks. All right. Love it. We did kind of miss this one in iOS 18.2. They opened up basically the system so you could set a bunch of defaults.
That I completely missed. So you can have different call apps, text apps, email apps. We've had a web browser for quite some time, so that's nice. I wonder if those guys just accidentally reset Signal to be their default app. Oh, maybe that's it. Maybe that's the problem. Yeah, because you can do WhatsApp for texting and calling. So maybe they just signal by mistake. That must be it. Yeah. And going back to your M5 thing.
So I've got an M1 iPad Pro and an M1 14-inch MacBook Pro that I got like right when they first came out. Yeah. Dude, those things are as good as I'm ever probably going to need for at least another two, three years. That iPad, I got it with a terabyte of storage on it because I knew it was going to last a long time. Yeah. I think the only thing that basically the lifespan of those things is kind of just defined by the battery.
Because it's an iPad, you know? How much horsepower do you need in a fucking iPad? I check mail on it. I browse porn on it. Come on. I mean, I browse news. Not porn, news, news. Yeah, but isn't it that HD 3D news? Doesn't that eat up a lot of stuff? Yeah. I don't know. I don't. I'm telling you, go back. I still think that that M1. 14-inch MacBook Pro is... is one of the best laptops ever made. And everybody I knew that got the next gen ones, well, yeah, it's not as good as the M1.
I don't know. I haven't tried any of the new ones because I just can't afford them because they're so ridiculously expensive. Well, you think they're expensive now. Just you wait, Jason. Just you wait. I'm not going to be buying much in the near future. Not everything I need anyways. So, you know, let's just wait.
Speaking of things I do have, I have a bunch of Amazon Alexa's about the house, some of them with videos, some of them just speakers and all that sort of stuff. And as you've heard in the news recently, they are looking to. revamp their AI that's in the Alexas so that they're supposedly better. And as this article points out, if there's one thing you can count on with AI tools is that they'll launch without most of the promised features.
That's why I was thinking that 19.4 for next summer still might be a little too early. Yeah. It happened with Apple Intelligence. It happened with Galaxy AI. And now it's happening with Alexa Plus, Amazon's AI heavy upgrade to its virtual assistant. Apparently it is rolling out. It is not available to everybody yet. I have not gotten it here in Canada because I'm in Canada and it usually rolls out in the US first.
It is available, but it doesn't do a whole lot, according to reporting by The Washington Post. The paper reviewed a number of internal company documents that noted the delay of many features. The documents also suggest that a bunch of tools won't be available for two months or longer. You will not be able to use the platform to order takeout on Grubhub or identify family members via camera to remind them to do chores.
These are all things that were in their promo materials. Of course, there will be no neat sounding tool that the company says will auto generate a story to entertain kids. It can also not be used to brainstorm gift ideas or order groceries. What the fuck can it do? There isn't a browser-based version available either.
All of these delays are because the features do not meet Amazon standards for public release. So what did meet their standard for public release? Tell me, Brian. Apparently, you can order an Uber, identify an object, or draft an email. All things that I would call laptop activities or phone activities.
It is included with Amazon Prime. Non-members have to pony up $20 a month for these lack of services. It may not be accessible to everyone just yet. As I had mentioned, it's coming out over the weeks and months. And it only works on devices with screens. This includes the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21. So at some point, I will get this as I have an Echo 8 and an Echo 10 around the house.
and uh at some point and i have no wait i'm not amazon prime in canada no but it's connected to my u.s account which is there you go so you get your uber show up at your house in in la yeah i can identify poutine There you go. So there you go. Then write an email complaining about the late delivery from Uber Eats of my poutine. Yep. I was under the impression from the last time you talked about this that you had to get one of the new Echoes.
to actually run this. But it's interesting that you can use it on older ones. Yeah, I was surprised as well. I do remember that too. I was like, oh, well, that's no big deal to me. I'm never going to upgrade this device because they're kind of shit now anyways. Yeah. And I was just waiting for the inevitable lawsuit like the one that came with Apple Intel.
The demand was so we were so excited and we bought the new iPhone for Apple intelligence, said no one ever. But God, well, hell must have frozen over, Brian, because Facebook just did something that doesn't completely suck. They're rolling out a new Friends tab in the U.S. and Canada that actually filters out all the algorithmic garbage we've all come to hate. So do you have this? Have you tried it yet? Because I haven't opened Facebook in three years.
I do have it. I have tried it. It is not dissimilar from the plugin that we were using back when we were, what do they call it? Fluff Busting Pro, which was a plugin that you could get for your browsers that basically would... default you to having a friends-only feed and remove ads and all that sort of stuff. It's faster, obviously, than that because it doesn't have to go through JavaScript hell to display on your screen. It's there.
Here's what I have to say about it, Jason. Thanks a lot for fucking nothing. It's way too goddamn late. As they said here, Zuck's crew says they're trying to bring back the magic of friends after spending the last decade burying it under a landfill of sponsored crap and recommended nonsense. Well, that last decade of sponsored crap and recommended nonsense has caused everybody to stop using Facebook. And we are old people. These are the only people you had left Facebook.
I have been doing my Facebook provided friends feed for the last week now. Out of the almost 472 friends that I have on Facebook, Three of them actually still update. Everybody else has dead accounts because you've trained them that Facebook is useless and nobody posts anymore. So that will continue. I have a Facebook friends feed that is tumbleweed.
Yeah. Doesn't surprise me at all. Nobody uses it anymore. We all load it. We all look at the news and that's about it. Like nobody posts that you, you lost it. You fucked it. You screwed the boot. And you're not getting it back. So tough shit. Yeah, seriously. And I'm not going to cry a tear over it. I'm not either. They did it to themselves. They completely did it to themselves. This is all people wanted.
This is all we ever wanted. And it was a really good business model for you. You had a million other opportunities and a million different places and a million different products to fuck around with. Facebook was about friends and friends updates and you screwed it. Yeah. No, it's over. It's over, Brian. Yeah, it's dead. It is LO. Speaking of old shit.
Bill Gates just dropped the original source code that launched Microsoft on his blog. He's got a blog calling it the coolest code I've ever written. And so, okay, great. It's nice to take a victory laugh 50 years later. Yeah, I put this in here mainly because the side note at the end of this article was Melinda Gates has a new book.
And so she's talking about the time leading up to when she left Bill. She said she was having all these nightmares and she couldn't take it anymore because Bill was unfaithful. And then he was hanging out with Epstein. Oops. Here's what I have to say about this. Melinda French Gates said her bad dreams would eventually change into images of her family on the edge of a cliff where she plummeted into a void.
I knew in that moment that I was going to have to make a decision and that I was going to have to make it by myself. That's really fucking easy to say as a billionaire. Oh, let me go off by myself into the wilderness with all of this money. Yeah, cry me a fucking river. Cry me a fucking river. I wish you would. Then we could power some of that AI. Yes! There we go.
We don't have to worry about malaria anymore, though. You know, that's the upside of all of the AI and the, you know, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is changing the name. By the way, they fund malaria. research and prevention all across the globe, but there's not going to be any fresh water for the mosquitoes to breed in anymore. So no water, no mosquitoes, no Melinda Gates Foundation. So there we go. And finally, I put in a Vitamix. I have a Vitamix, by the way.
A Vitamix recipe for... Oh, fucking bougie, motherfucker. I'm never buying a new one because tariffs. But there's a great red salsa recipe since spring is around the corner and tomatoes are starting to have flavor again. Link is in the show notes. I highly recommend this. Five ingredients. Delicious. The dark side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the Cyber Wire every day.
exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat, breaks down industrial cybersecurity on control loop, and even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. Hi, Dave. Hello. So how's your week been? Less stressful than yours? Less stressful than yours, yes. Even though I'm hopped up on coffee and cocaine from reading the news every day?
Oh, okay. All right. Coffee and cocaine. Well, you know, I'm going all in. Before the tariffs hit. Before the tariffs hit. Yeah. It's Canadian cocaine. It's just he's mainline in maple syrup. I was going to say, it's maple flavored. So, you know, that's good. Now it's been a tough week here. You know, folks who've heard me, I've talked about many times on this show and probably most on.
hacking humans uh were a good a good amount of my time like most of us who are our age is spent taking care of uh My elderly parents, in this case, specifically my father, my mother passed away about three years ago, which longtime listeners of this show may remember. But about a week ago, my father passed away as well. And he was 90 years old.
He had not been sick very long. It was very quick, mercifully so. And his body just kind of caught up with him, and he kind of got in one of those little... spiraling loops of things going wrong. And I think ultimately when he made the decision to enter hospice care. I was thinking about this this morning, about that line from Shawshank, either get busy living or get busy dying, that he got busy dying and he let go. And he decided he was ready and he was happy. He told me that he was relieved.
And he never thought he was going to live as long as he did. So he felt like he'd done everything he wanted to do. And so he passed very peacefully and quickly. Mercifully, my brother and I said it was kind of a gift that he gave.
My brother and my sister and I, he was scheduled to come home for hospice care the day he passed. He passed in the hospital. And so he... made it so that we didn't have to go through any of that stuff at home, which we had gone through with my mother, the indignity of... going through the many things that people go through when they die or when they're dying, you know, the loss of body control, the loss of their full mental faculties and all those sorts of things.
My father was a remarkable man. He was a very hardworking man. He was very dedicated to his family and his community. He had a lovely career and lots of people who cared for him and loved him. We're all going to miss him, of course, but at the same time, very happy for all the time that we had with him. But, you know, it's a funny thing to have both of your parents gone.
Like I said, when my mom passed, I've never known a world without them. And so it's kind of a new world. And my wife and I were talking about how... You kind of bump up a level on the org chart, right? The family tree org chart. And you're not sure you're ready for that. job or that responsibility, but you don't get to choose. So no. I'm very sorry, of course, for your loss, but 90 is phenomenal. And the way of the passing, it just doesn't sound like it can actually be much better than that.
Yeah, absolutely. And you are one of the first people I know that is in the no parent club. It's not something I'm longing to join anytime soon. As everybody knows, I lost my father as well. a few years back now. So it's, it's weird not having one. I can't imagine not having two. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, it's interesting. I mean, my, My grieving so far is very different than it was when my mother passed. The way I describe the grief that I experienced with my mother was...
Imagine you're standing at the seashore with your back to the ocean, and every now and then a wave comes up and just slams into you and knocks you over. And you know you're going to survive, but you also know that you're not stronger than the wave. So you have to sort of ride that wave out and pick yourself up and put yourself back on your feet.
And with your back to the ocean, you don't know when those waves are coming. Sometimes you can sort of get a sense for it or you could feel it or you can hear it, but then every now and then one will just smack you in the back and knock you face down in the sand. And that was my grief experience when my mom passed. And I was okay with that. I was okay on that journey. And I haven't hit that yet with my father passing. And I suspect part of it is because...
There's just been so much more for me to do. In this case, I'm the executor of his estate, and I didn't have to deal with all those things with my mother. So I've been busy visiting banks. getting wills out of the safe deposit box and just all of the clerical stuff that happens when you experience something like this. So I suspect it'll come. And I'm ready for it. I'm okay with it. But it is interesting to me that so far it's been different.
When I leave you guys today, I'm actually heading off to the viewing at the funeral home. We're doing a couple viewings today, and then tomorrow is the actual. service and burial. Stay tuned. We'll see how I hold together through it all. We've got a good family and good friends, and so I'm lucky to have a really strong support group and a great community, which is all very helpful. Yeah, it's a heck of a journey, you know, and most people go through it and it's different for everybody.
Off we go. I appreciate all of the kind words, and I've gotten notes from... from listeners and from friends and family and everybody. And it really does help. The other thing is I've gotten lovely notes from strangers. People that my father had worked with along the way, you know, throughout his career, he spent over 40 years in the real estate business. And people would drop me notes to say he helped me so much when I was starting my career.
I was so kind and that sort of thing. So far, no notes about a secret family in another town or anything like that. Give it a few weeks. Yeah. So far. You are so good. We seem to be in the clear there, but who knows? You never know. But no, he was a good man and very much loved by the people around him. I'll take any questions that you may have now. Yeah, I really got nothing. It's a horrible thing to have to go through. But again, like I said, it's kind of seems the...
To go on your own terms and in a way where you have no regrets and you're happy and you're in not much pain and it's just kind of a gentle passing. It's the way to go. And, you know, when my father passed, we actually, he got out of hospice and he came home. At that point, it was relatively obvious that there was going to be no recovery. And I don't think he enjoyed his time back at the house because he did feel like he was in a position and uncomfortable and unhappy with.
everything that was happening and it would have probably just been a lot better and easier if he would have passed while it's still at hospice so yeah that is something that uh is a gift that he did give you Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, my heart goes out to the folks who help with hospice. I mean, they are amazing people. And just everyone's just been so kind. and just helping us through, you know, this journey.
So that's what I'm up to. Before I go, anything else we want to touch on today? I do believe we have a little bit of news that we should touch on here. Because this is relevant to all our interests. How does your dad feel about clackety keyboards, though, first? Clackety keyboards. So my father was a one key at the time typer, like pointy fingers, tap, tap, tap, tap, you know, hunt and peck, I guess is the way to say it. So he just.
He had no opinions when it came to keyboards. He used the keyboard that was put in front of him. All right. Just felt that was important to get in there because it was a big topic of discussion last week. Yeah. Go ahead, Jason. Absolutely. Okay. Kermit the Frog has been announced as the 2025 commencement speaker for the University of Maryland. Yes. My alma mater. My alma mater. Are you going? Maybe.
I am happy for this. I am excited for this. For folks who aren't familiar, Jim Henson was a graduate of the University of Maryland. something they take great pride in, rightfully so. In front of the student union, there is a bronze statue of Jim Henson and Kermit sitting on a park bench together, which is lovely. If I don't go, if I don't get to go, because I'm sure it's going to be a hot ticket, I was lucky enough to go to a previous commencement.
where Kermit the Frog and Elmo were the speakers. Not long after I graduated, so this was sometime in the 90s, I was on the camera crew that videotaped. this event. So this was after Jim's passing. So Steve Whitmire was performing Kermit and Kevin Clash was performing Elmo. Neither of those gents are performing those characters anymore. Kevin Clash had been doing puppetry here in Baltimore. He grew up around here, and he started out doing this local TV show called Red Caboose.
And he had some puppet characters there. And then he was also I don't you guys remember the Great Space Coaster? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. So Kevin Clash did Goriddle Gorilla. Wow. And Gary Gannou. I was going to say, did he do Gary Gannou? I think he did, yeah. But I'm sure he did Gorilla. And so he – Greatest desire was, of course, to work with the Muppets, and ultimately he did and got to do the Alpha Muppet for its time, Elmo.
So a couple of neat things about it. First of all, I got to chat with Kevin Clash for a little bit and told him how much I enjoyed it. His work on Red Caboose, and I think he was very touched that someone remembered from way, way back, you know, before he was Muppet famous. But the other fun thing about it was they built this big black box.
for the puppeteers to hide behind. And then above that was the stage and the lecterns for the puppets to give their presentations. So a few minutes before things start, you see... Steve Whitmire and Kevin Clash, all dressed in black, casually strolling towards this black box with duffel bags over their shoulders. their famous cargo, right?
And there was a moment when I was thinking I could run up and I could grab the duffel bag and make a run for it. And I could have my own genuine Kermit the Frog. But I thought better of it. Good. We wouldn't be having this conversation today. No, we would not. No, I'd probably still be in a jail somewhere in Maryland.
What an odd things that must be running through their minds when they go up there. Like, I've got to go give this commencement speech now, but first I have to shove my hand up this puppet's ass. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean, you think about. Certainly the original Muppet performers, Jim Henson and Frank Oz, of course, how much they inhabited those characters. And what's it like to, could they just switch gears?
and and and become them uh seem like they could but I don't know. We'll see. I'm excited for the possibility of Kermit coming. I do have a friend who may be able to hook me up with a ticket. So we'll see. It might be just what I need to lift my spirits back at my alma mater with my favorite frog to help not think about. loved ones passing away. So we'll see. I hope you do. I hope you make it. I think you, uh, you deserve it after everything you've been going through. And I appreciate that.
All right. Well, gentlemen, I am going to run off. I have many more things to take care of, but thank you for your kindness and thanks for listening. And thanks to all of our listeners for their kindness and for listening and for bearing with me while I... went on about all this sort of thing. I do appreciate it. And hopefully soon we'll be back to the normal tomfoolery. Hope so. All right. Take care of yourself, Dave. All right. Thanks guys. Take care, man. Closing shout out.
Over at Patreon, we've got two new Patreonists, whatever you want to call them, patrons. We've got Dom the Canuck and Brett R. Thank you very much. And Doc upped his pledge. Appreciate it. And from the vault, Dennis, Alexander, James, Jessalyn, seductive verse, Terry, Ansley, Joe, Ron, and Daniel. Thank you all so much for your money. We appreciate it very much.
Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Jonathan, Judge, Nicola, Levy, Thomas and Brett. Thank you. Over at the tip jar, we've got Matthew, Sarah and Tony. And we do have a bunch of people that bought merch, but it was a really long week and I will include you next week in the merch report. So keep buying at GOG.show. And just a quick reminder.
Everybody, you can subscribe to the show over at patreon.com slash GOG for as little as $3 a month. We can take more if you want to give us more. We appreciate more. And you get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And if you sign up for an entire year, you get a discount. So check it out. Patreon.com slash GOG. All right. No reviews this week, Brian. I'm sad. Whatever. Yep.
We do have some other sad news. Bletchley Park codebreaker Betty Webb has died at 101. At least she did it in Boston. one of the last of the badass women who cracked Nazi and Japanese codes in World War II. Betty couldn't even tell her parents what she did until the 70s. She was a badass, and she will be missed. It had a great run, 101. Damn. That's a good run.
We also lost Val Kilmer. Now, I know everybody knows Val Kilmer for playing Iceman in Top Gun or Jim Morrison in The Doors, or he was even a Batman in Batman Forever. He passed away at age 65. He'd obviously been... Ill for quite some time, so it's a little bit sad. But I have to say, forget Iceman. Forget Jim Morrison. Forget Batman. Top secret.
Came out in 1984. I was 11 years old and there was no better movie for an 11 year old at that time than Top Secret. And I will always remember Val Kilmer. That's funny. I've never seen Top Secret. Oh, my God. You can get yourself into 11-year-old mode, I'm sure, and you need to. Okay. See, my favorite Val Kilmer role was in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
That was good. And real genius. Real genius. Oh, geez. Yes, of course. Real genius. Yes. Real genius. One of the greatest movies ever made. How could I forget real genius? Oh, man. So thank you. Thank you, Val. Thank you, Val. Thank you, Val. And also thank you, Wisconsin. Thank you, Wisconsin, for standing up to Elon. I just say thank you very much. Thank you. I love anything that lets Elon waste his money. It's the best.
and makes him look like an asshole. Well, that's waking up in the morning for Elon, so that's not hard. That's called a mirror. Yeah, that's... Oh, zing! And this is coming out on Friday, April 4th. And if you're around on Saturday, April 5th, go check out the hands-off protests all around the country. They're going to be everywhere. So you can either do a Tesla takedown protest. You can do a hands-off protest. There's a million trans protests and LGBTQ protests going around.
It is the weekend of protesting here in the United States. So get your ass out there. About fucking time. Go. Seriously. I'll be out there. You be out there. Let's all be out there doing whatever we do out there. So there we go. Hopefully not cosplaying as a Nazi. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that one. Unless it's an ironic Nazi.
Is there such a thing? I don't think so. I don't think that counts anymore. I think that's going to be a tough one to pull off. Yeah. You can't hold like an open quote on one end and a slash closed quote on the other end around you. It's not going to... A little geek joke there.
Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 691. 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.
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