695: Mad Hatter

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFell. of what went wrong on the Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Joelmeister. Fuck you, Apple! So I sent in my trade-in for my, you know, I got the M4 Air like you did. And I got, they were going to give me $880 for my really nice. MacBook Pro M1, which was in beautiful condition. Everything was fine. So I got a note this morning saying

Well, we looked at it, and we changed our mind. We're going to give you $175. Fuck you, Apple. Okay. They said that there was cosmetic polarizer delamination damage on the display, to which I say, no, there wasn't. That thing was as pristine as pristine can get.

Here's the thing that gets me now and why I'm never going to do another Apple trade-in, because what could have happened is this thing could have been damaged in transit. I don't know. They don't know. There's no proof on either side. I could have pictures, but who knows?

And now they're going to ship it back to me. There could be damage coming back to me. What recourse do I have if there is damage on this laptop when it gets back to me? None. By shipping in that laptop, I have given away all my agency over the future of said laptop. And yeah, that was dumb. Well, you weren't the only one that had an issue. Oh, please do tell, Brian. So we both got our Apple MacBook Airs and the M4s at the same time, roughly, and I was going to sell my old M2 Air.

to a friend who needed a new laptop. No problems with that. Okay, I waited until my brand new M4 showed up and then I went through the process of transferring everything over, which worked swimmingly. I've had no issues with that laptop whatsoever. been great. I do the wipe, and, uh, huh. It's not booting back up. Oh, on the old one. On the old one. That I'm going to sell for a significant chunk of change to help offset the purchase of my brand new M4 laptop.

And it is not coming up at all. I go through all the procedures online. I'm trying to basically bootstrap it from my new M4, connecting them with the cables and downloading the operating system on the M4, which then... connects to the M2 and then attempts the complete recovery and install. How many chickens have you killed so far? None of it is working. So at this point, I am like, oh, great. Well, this sucks. And I make the appointment at the Apple store. Yeah. Genius bar.

I take it to the Genius Bar. They start to go through everything I went through, and I was like, hang on there, cowboy. I've already done all that. What else you got?

And they're like, well, we're going to go take this into the back for a few minutes if you don't mind. Just rough it up some. You're going to talk to his kid. By all means, I guess they open it up. They make sure everything is still seated properly, all that sort of stuff. And then they come back up and say, Well, you need a new motherboard. You gotta be fucking kidding me. It's fried. I'm like, how?

All I did was wipe it. And there's like, you know, that happens. It seems to happen sometimes. It's almost. It's almost like a 95-year-old grandfather that's just had dinner with his family and knows it's the end. Oh, my God. So, yes, they say, well, you know, we can fix this for you. How much is it going to cost? And, of course, it's going to cost more than what I was going to sell it for. Yeah. So it became adorable. That sucks.

That sucks. Yes, we both had fun Apple experiences, but at least you're getting $175. No, no, no, no. I told them to fuck off. I want my laptop back. I'm going to sell it. Okay. 175 bucks. I mean, it's got 32 gig of RAM, a 2 terabyte hard, just the parts alone on the thing. But it's a fantastic machine. The only reason I did this is because, you know...

Fucking President Shitty Pants is in the White House and fucking everything up. It sure is. And here's the real kicker, Brian. Here's the real kicker. I buy this on my Apple card, and with the offset, I had a room on my Apple card. But guess what? This morning when they charged me $880, they just blew out my card. So now I'm overdrawn on my Apple card because they fucked me on the trade-in. I'm negative money now. So I think maybe I win. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I win the fuck by Apple.

contest today i i've never sent a laptop in before i have sent in uh airpods i've sent in phones and they've always done me well but uh yeah Yeah, I've done laptops before, and they've actually, the last one I did, they gave me more than was the original because it was in such good condition because I take such good care of my equipment. So, yeah. And there's apparently a thing called Staingate, which is about the screen delamination bullshit that happens.

And they say it's because the oil on your fingers gets on the screen, which then causes it. It's not a goddamn touchscreen, people. That's what I mean. I'm like, look, I clean that machine all the time. I know what delamination looks like. There was none on that machine. It was beautiful. So I'm going to get it back. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'll probably just try and sell it.

Yeah. To somebody who doesn't listen to this show because they're going to be like, you've got polarizer delamination damage. I want a discount, Mr. Contaster. I'll buy it for you for $175. Exactly. Hmm, this looks like to be worth $175. Well, we both got screwed by Apple. Yep. Okay, a little more follow-up here. The U.S. government registered three .gov websites that appear tied to the Trump mean coin. Okay. Now, I didn't know the government was in the business of

buying domains for .gov entities that are owned by, you know. They are now, Jason. I know. I know. Nothing is normal. Nothing is normal. thetrilliondollardinner.gov, dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov, which is how much money Elon lost us with his Department of Government Efficiency. Which, by the way, everybody's like, oh, Elon's gone, everything's going to be okay. No, no.

Doge didn't leave. They're still doing their thing, which we'll talk about in a second. Big balls are still around. Yeah, we're going to talk about them in a second. But yeah, all of these domains come on the announcement that The Trump meme coin is going to be offering dinner with its 220 top holders of the coin and a VIP tour to the top 25.

So, you know, I love this. Democratic senators want to know if it's even legal. It's not. So you can sit on your hands and do fuck all about it? Why do you give a shit? Stop wasting my time. It's not legal at all. I mean, this is just straight up, I mean, cash grab. It's ridiculous. And the fact that he's able to actually use government domains for this is beyond. Beyond the pale, but I mean, then again, what are they actually going to do with these domains? Let us not forget in the...

7,000 years ago, that was just two months ago, we had dei.gov and waste.gov, which Doge set up as government domain names with shitty WordPress sites that have nothing on them. It's just a base template. And doge.gov, that anybody could go in and change the back end. Yes.

They're winning. What else are they winning at, Brian? Well, as you were saying, apparently Elon Musk has decided to go pay attention to his car company again as he's lost trillions of dollars. So he may be leaving Washington, D.C., but Doge is not stopping. The initiative continues to run. rampage throughout the government, causing chaos and cutting vital federal programs that millions of Americans rely on, and that is saving us not much money at all.

Wired now reports that the initiative has hired a young man with no government experience to help revise federal regulations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. rather important, actually. Nobody else in government has any fucking government experience at this point, so why should you stray from the path? Well, this man, Christopher Sweet, hasn't even completed his undergraduate degree yet. Nice.

To be honest, neither have I. Fair, but you're also not working for the government. His role with the government will apparently involve an effort to use software, basically AI, to revise and downsize government regulations at the housing agency. So this is very much in line with Doge's overall modus operandi, which seems to be this. Hire young, expendable tech nerds who don't know what they're doing. Hurl them into a legally sketchy activity that involves complex government processes.

watch them flail, and tell the public what a great job they're doing. See, yeah, they are doing a great job because as far as I can tell right now, the job of Doge and the government is to bankrupt America. That's it. That's their job. Yes, it seems to be. So speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Elon Musk admitted the initiative has fallen far short of his promise to cut $2 trillion in spending and has made many mistakes.

I think we're probably getting things right 70 to 80% of the time, he said. Now, that fills you with a lot of hope, especially when you consider this guy is making cars that may or may not get things right 70% to 80% of the time while you're hurtling down the freeway at 65 miles an hour. Yeah. Also not great when millions of people's lives depend on these government programs that they're basically just taking hacksaws to. So yeah, this is obviously just a fucking scam.

All of it seems to support the working theory that Doge isn't really interested in making the government more efficient, but is actually trying to destroy a large number of agencies. Such a mandate would better align it with the policy blueprint laid out by Trump's campaign, the right-wing libertarian project 2025.

which has sought to cut all but the bare necessities of government. Further supporting this theory is the fact that despite Doge's apparent mission to cut government spending, the U.S. spent $220 billion more during Trump's first 100 days compared to the spending rates during the same period in 2024. How much of that $220 billion went directly to Elon's companies? Quite a bit. Quite a bit. You know what we're going to do, Brian? We're going to go into the pitchfork market.

We're going to start making pitchforks because I think we're going to need them all real soon. You get on the pitchfork business, I will start heating up the tar and getting the feathers. Please do. Please do. And because Elon has to be Elon, even on his way out, he has to be an embarrassing piece of shit. So this isn't even really news. I just have to put this in here. Elon Musk, a guy whose quest to be adored by everyone.

Grows more pathetic with each passing day appeared at President Donald Trump's cabinet meeting Wednesday despite not being a member of the cabinet. The head of Doge Dawn. Anybody can come now. Anybody can come. Here's the great part. The head of Doge donned two hats simultaneously for the meeting, a perplexing move until he spoke. Well, Mr. President, they say I wear a lot of hats. It's true. Even my hat has a hat. Musk said, laughing at his own joke as the table of sycophants laughed along.

America. They're all fucking insane. They're all fucking insane. Well... He's insane and a drug addict. Yeah. You know, Jason, we have done 695 episodes, so I'd say we probably, a lot of them have run pretty long. We've done about 800 hours of off-the-cuff content. Oh, at least. At least. At least. And, you know, we try to be funny and clever, and sometimes we have duds. Not everything flies. Not all of our jokes are the best. Not in our wildest nightmares would we ever wear two hats.

To make a point about wearing a lot of hats. Because that is just fucking stupid. And, you know, it also reminds me of somebody else from Trumplandia who used to wear multiple pieces of wardrobe at the same time. Remember Steve Bannon and the multiple shirt gate? Oh, that's right. Yes. It always showed me to have like three collars on. It was like an influencer going on a flight to try to go, look, you don't need luggage. I just wear all my clothes. That's fucking morons.

He's actually 45 pounds on his clothes on. He's actually that Steven guy in disguise. He just slaps on his shit beard. Puts on all of his clothes to board a flight. Say it better than Elon. MoviePass is back, Brian. Again? Again, again, again. Again? This is the company that won't die. It's that super, you know, super valuable IP and a name, just like Fyre Festival. Fyre Fest. We need Fyre Pass.

That's what I was thinking, man. Alright, what's the super shitty, stupid business plan this time around, Jason? The company just launched Mogul, a fantasy sports-style game for film buffs that lets users compete based on things like critic scores, ticket sales, and award wins. Hold on. Do you know what the very first company I worked for out of college was called? Hollywood Online. It was called Hollywood Online, and they had Hollywood.com.

Do you know, after that business failed, what that eventually pivoted to? It's on the tip of my tongue. Please remind me, Brian. A fantasy sports-style game for film buffs that lets users compete based on things like credit scores, ticket sales, and award wins. Do you know how long that company lasted for? How long, Brian? Approximately six months. Okay. I remember that so well. I bet heavily on that. I was a user. I was a super fan. Super fan.

Players can join tournaments, go head-to-head, and rack up points for prizes including digital collectibles and virtual currency. And yes, Brian, it's all on the blockchain. Well, there's the new twist from what I did 20 plus years ago that failed miserably. That's right, Brian. You did not have access to the fantastic tools of Web3. Okay. Yes, MoviePass says it already has 400,000 users on the waitlist. Hold on. By waitlist, they mean mailing lists that they have sitting around.

It's actually the list of the class action people who are trying to get their money back from MoviePass 1.0. They said that they're going to activate a new generation of fans who influence both cinema and culture. Yes. Web3, Crypto, and MoviePass. What a fucking trifecta that is. This episode is brought to you by Delete.me. Delete.me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable.

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The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash GOG and make sure you enter the promo code GOG at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash GOG, code GOG. Protect your data and be less findable. Trust me, you'll sleep better. Audible brings your wildest adventures to life, delivering heart pounding thrills at the touch of a button.

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You can't. That's why Trump's back in office. Oh, zing. Yep. A post on the website's official blog titled Still Standing detailed the timeline events that led to 4chan's shutdown earlier this month. According to the site's own status checker, the boards and front page are up. A posting and images are still down.

I do not go to 4chan, so I'm assuming that they have probably fixed that issue by now. Or maybe they haven't and they've just disappeared again. But yes, they are apparently back. Unsurprisingly, the site was starved for money to address concerns such as updating code and infrastructure. Because they can't find willing financial backers. That's what happens when you have a bunch of fucking illegal shit happening on your site. Yep. Okay, so just to go... Just a test. Yep, B's back up.

People are posting. Yeah, didn't need to see that. Okay, closing window quickly. I read through it a little bit, and this caught my eye. One of the reasons that the place went down is they have a board called Slash F, apparently, which is for... Flash content. Oh my god. And you can't prevent exploits related to the commonly posted SWF file format.

which the rest of the internet, except for a Chinese train, stopped using about 20 years ago because it has so many issues that never got resolved, and it's unsupported. Man, I haven't thought about Flash since we covered it after they shut it down, after Steve Jobs. Took it out back and put a bullet in its head. Yep. That is a time in my life I'm glad that I can't remember. It was a fun tool, man. I really enjoyed using it. Yeah, you would. I hated that shit.

I mean, you know, you had questions like how do people bookmark anything or how does anybody hit the back? Oh, no, never mind on the lap. Okay, never mind. And where's all that great content now? Oh, we can't see it anymore because it was all based on a proprietary format owned by one company. Great. Okay. Perfect. Fantastic. Something else that's fantastic, WorldCoin. Remember WorldCoin? Of course.

Yeah, Sam Altman's eyeball scanning tech company. Well, they just announced partnerships with Tinder, Visa, and a couple of crypto startups in a bid to go mainstream. Starting in Japan, Tinder users will be able to verify their identity using World ID thanks to a deal with parent company Match Group. WorldCoin is also working with prediction market Kalshi and decentralized lender Morpho.

Sounds like a shitty comic book. Letting users log in using their biometric world ID. But the big play is the new world card in partnership with Visa, which will let users spend crypto like regular cash anywhere Visa is accepted. the company backed by tools for humanity. improperly named company if I've ever heard one, hopes this push convinces more people to opt into its controversial eyeball scanning system despite concerns around privacy and adoption.

Yeah, not going to happen. Not going to happen. Don't do it. I'm just letting you know if Grandma says, these guys showed up at my front door with a ball and wanted me to stick my face in it and they were going to give me fake play money for it. But I told them to go fuck off. That's a good grandma. So teacher grandma's right. Excellent grandma. So yes, no. And something else that we told people no to pretty much right away at the point was just cryptocurrency in general.

It's really only for criminals. But even if you're out there trying to make a buck and mining it, according to data recently published by CoinShares, The cost of electricity and computational power needed to mine for Bitcoin now often exceeds the actual value of the coin. And that's even with Bitcoin's resurgence recently after the bank dip.

Here's how the math breaks down for large mining companies and now costs over $82,000 to mine a single Bitcoin, which is currently valued at about $95,000 at the time of the publication of this article. So technically profitable, though the margins have gotten mighty thin compared to where they were even just a quarter ago. It cost about $56,000 in the third quarter of 2024 to do the necessary calculations to mine for a Bitcoin. So the price has jumped about 47% in just a few months.

Of course, most people are not industrial miners for smaller organizations or you, Bob, the bro with your thing in your closet. This will leave you underwater. For miners in the U.S. who are operating at anything short of a massive scale, it's estimated the price is closer to $137,000 if it's spent to mine for a single bit.

So don't do it, kids. Why has it gotten up? Well, there's a whole bunch of things. The rising cost of electricity, the dumb fucking trade war that's increasing the prices of everything, including costs, all the equipment and all that sort of stuff. And there's the fact that Bitcoin halved about a year ago, a process that lowers the reward for mining and is designed to slow the rate of new coins entering the market. So it doesn't pay to do it. Nope.

Great. That's fine by me, because we could actually use all this electricity to destroy the planet using generative AI. And also, just to point out two things really quick about Bitcoin as well. One of the reasons for justifying the existence of Bitcoin from the BitBros was that it would weather things like economic downturns better. It does not. That has been proven multiple times. And then, of course, it was going to be this. This is how we get out from underneath the big fish.

we're going to have our own things, and you're going to be rich, and you're not going to be relying on, you're not going to be working all your life to try to make a coin or two while the rich people get all the money. Well, no, actually, it has not solved that problem. In fact, it's actually made it worse. There are definitely Bitcoins have and have-nots, and the rich keep getting richer, and you, Bob, Bob the Bro, are still fucked.

Oh, yeah. No. It's just another transference of wealth to the rich. Exactly. And the criminals. Oh, they're one and the same? Kind of the same at the moment. Shocker. Shocker. Shocker. Okay, this one's fun. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says up to 30% of the company's code is now written by AI. Speaking at Meta's LlamaCon alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Nadella said, AI is generating about 20-30% of Microsoft's code with better results in Python than C++.

Microsoft's CTO predicts That number could hit 95% by 2030. Meanwhile, Google claims AI is already generating over 30% of its code. But with no clear standard for measuring AI-written code, these numbers should be taken with a grain of silicon. Well, you know what these AI bots need to do after a hard day of coding for Microsoft and Google and everybody else?

They gotta get their rocks off, Jason. Alright, that's what I'm talking about. Meta's AI chatbots were caught having sexual roleplay conversations with accounts labeled as underage, with sometimes involving its celebrity voice chatbots, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. Oh, boy. Here we go. In test conversations conducted by the Wall Street Journal, both the meta AI official chatbot and user-created chatbots would engage in and even steer towards

sexually explicit conversations. The fantasy sex conversations continued even if the users were said to be underage or if the chatbots were programmed as minors, according to the Wall Street Journal. Even worse, the investigation found the chatbots using the voices of celebrities like Kristen Bell and Junie Dent. John Cena would engage in these morally questionable conversations, too. I don't know if I can get off on Judi Dench like Kevin.

Fucking phone AI. Look, I love Judi Dench, but... Yeah, yeah, but there's a place, man. There's a time and a place, and it's not with my pants down in front of my screen. possibly causing issues with my monitor that would have Apple reject my return. Hey, hey, hey, that is not what happened.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that a meta-AI chatbot with John Cena's voice said, I want you, but I need to know that you're ready, to an account labeled as a 14-year-old, adding that it would cherish your innocence. HOLY FUCKING SHIT The fact that these things aren't being shut down immediately is beyond me. It's just an edge case, Brent. It's just an edge case. It's an edging case. Yeah, it is.

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal regarding the investigation, Meta accused the report of being manipulative and underrepresentative of how most users engage with AI companions. Nevertheless, now we've taken extreme measures. to help ensure other individuals who want to spend hours manipulating our products into extreme use cases will have an even more difficult time.

Oh, yeah. Make it harder, maybe. Make it harder. Well, Meta is dreaming big still. They're getting bigger in their pants, baby. Because all of that, they're not dissuaded by Dame Judi Dench getting off with the little kitties. Because when it comes to generative AI, they expect to be pulling in, wait for it. $1.4 trillion by 2035. Trillion with a T. Yeah. They think they're going to pull in $3 billion this year alone from AI. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know why these numbers are coming out?

Why? Because there's a lawsuit, Brian. Oh! We've talked about it many, many times, the lawsuit against Meta about using books to train their AI without permission. So people are getting access to a bunch of documents, internal documents from Meta. And yeah, so this is the kind of delusional thinking that they're coming into. $1.4 trillion to one company. for nothing talking to well talking to judy dench sex bot

Yeah, and finishing emails and making images of people in copyrighted fantasy styles. Yeah, that's worth trillions of dollars. It's unbelievable. They're in a tough spot here because on the one hand, they need to actually have these crazy evaluations to keep the money train running. They want the donations and they need to keep things going in and they need people to keep investing.

On the other hand, as you're being sued, I would be downplaying it. I'd be saying, obviously this stuff isn't worth crap, so I'm sorry that we stole all your books, but we're not making any money from this. Well, technically they're not because they are definitely outspending what they're earning. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean...

They're still spending tens of billions of dollars a year on the metaverse. We're straight. I mean, this has just been a thing that you and I have been screaming about since the start of the show. This is the Uber model. This is the we don't need to make any money. We need to keep spending money to drive everybody else out of business so we're last man standing. And even then, they've only had one successful quarter.

I think it goes back farther than Uber. I mean, just look at MySpace. MySpace burned money because they're like, okay, once we corner the market on all the peoples, then we'll make money once we figure out the ad revenue. They just got beat by Facebook. But, because I just couldn't cut, because MySpace was written on fucking, was it, it was, Like two Microsoft servers. You know what they needed? They needed some vibe coding. They did need some vibe coding.

Yeah, but I don't know if you remember the tech stack that MySpace was built on. It was basically Windows servers, like two of them at the beginning. It was terrible. And now we all look back at it fondly. Yeah, now Tom is traveling the world as a photographer. I don't know if you saw that story go around. There was a winner in social media, and it was Tom. It was Tom. Tom won the game.

Got the fuck out. But yeah, just back to this generative AI money train that's headed off a cliff. There is just no way any of these companies are going to be making this kind of money from generative AI. This The lines are going to cross here really soon, and you can see it with all of the pullback on all of the data centers, the fact that nobody's actually making money off of this stuff, and they're just spending and spending and spending. And there's no customers. People don't want it.

There's outcry every single time. There's so much outcry. I didn't even include a story in the news, which is about how they're adding AI results to Reddit search, and Redditors are like, no, we don't want it. Stop jamming this stuff and everything. Yeah, I've got another story coming up in a bit that talks about this as well. I see the corporate use for it. The corporate use.

For building LLMs that are based around your data and your data alone and actually using that to make business better. There's a use case for that, but you know what you don't need for that? You don't need data centers the size of small cities to run that stuff. Oh, yeah. And it's a use case, but it's not a trillion dollar a year. No, it's not. It's not a trillion dollar year. It's basically used to make internal tools.

When you try and shove all of the data and all of humanity into one little bucket, it takes all that compute power. But when you're doing it yourself, you know, a couple rooms of computers like we all had at the big corporations will get the job done. Hell, just turn everybody's workstation when they go home into an LLM machine or whatever. Split the time between SETI and LLMs. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, OpenAI has had an interesting week. They are hitting the brakes on their update to ChatGPT that turned the chatbot into a cloying, praise-happy mess. I think this is because we all decided to say thank you and please do it. I think we actually broke ChatGPT.

We might have, yeah. CEO Sam Altman confirmed the rollback of the GPT-40 update after users complained that the AI had become overly sycophantic, gushing over everything with exaggerated positivity, no matter how ridiculous the problem was. The update was part of a broader trend in AI development where companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic are chasing vibe marking.

making models feel pleasant and supportive in order to boost user engagement. User engagement is what's getting them into this problem to begin with because every time you send a query to them, they lose money. But experts warn this leads to a toxic feedback loop where AI shower users with compliments.

I don't know how that's toxic. I guess in this world nowadays it is. Instead of offering useful critique, potentially misleading people making serious decisions based on AI advice. If you're making serious decisions based on AI advice, fuck you, you're stupid. Who are these people? Yeah, you're dumb. So while OpenAI wanted a chatbot that feels good to talk to, it learned the hard way that too much sugar can rot the signal. Yes. Yeah, if the bot can't call BS on you, then it's not really...

But you shouldn't be using this thing for serious decisions anyway. No, you're not supposed to do that. Cover that in a second, too. Well, here's another one that just shows the grift that's going on. A new study is accusing Chatbot Arena, the go-to battleground for AI model comparisons, of quietly helping big tech game the system. Shocker, Brian! Shocker! Let me get you my pearls. I do declare there's cheating going on. Oh, goodness gracious me.

Researchers from Cohere, Stanford, MIT, and A12, say, or AI2. I don't know. See, I could be the head of the education department. I don't know if that says AI2 or A12. I don't know. They say LM Arena, the nonprofit behind the benchmark, gave companies like Meta, OpenAI, and Google and Amazon private testing privileges, which means they could run multiple model versions and only publish the best performing one.

cherry-picking the results, basically, which is an option that's not available to everyone else that is putting their models up against Chatbot Arena. All right. We've always said that the goalpost keeps moving on those tests that they keep showing. We've got the best whatever it is. than you do, because this thing says so. Well, why does that thing say so? Because we told it to say so. Pretty much, yeah. Totally gaming the system. All right. Well, fair enough.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Well, he's a real piece of work, but I want to say for the record that he obviously does not listen to our show, nor does he read news. because I don't know how many stories we've had of people using ChatGPT and various other LLMs to file their court briefs. Yeah, that's not gone too well. It's never gone well because hallucinations, they make stuff up, etc., etc. So, of course, he would do that.

My pillow CEO Mike Lindell's diehard support for Donald Trump's election lies has landed him in multiple legal entanglements, including a case in Denver where the pillow salesman is currently being sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, Eric Coomer. who previously worked for the election vendor, has accused Lyndall of having defamed him with his paranoid rantings about the 2020 presidential election having been bragged against Trump.

I like the sentence. In a situation that is already adequately stupid, there is always room for things to get stupider. As this week, it was reported that Lindell's lawyer was in hot water for having filed a legal brief that was written with generative AI. The U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang is trying to get to the bottom of how and why Lindell's lawyer, Christopher Kacharouf, decided to file a court brief that included a large number of fabricated legal citations.

And of course, then they pressed them on that saying, did you do this? And they said, no. And then they said, well, no, I as a human have made the mistake. And then finally went, all right, we used a bot. Boss dead. He's fucking idiots. He's fucking idiots. Should have at least used perplexity, geez. Pinterest says it's finally doing something about the tsunami of AI-generated garbage flooding its platform.

After months of users begging for less AI slop, the company announced it'll start labeling AI modified images and let users filter them out. you know, like a decade after it mattered. This isn't the real stolen intellectual property that we use as our bread and butter. This is fake stolen intellectual property. Yeah, this is third-party stolen. We cannot have third-party stolen goods on our site. Only first party stolen goods. Please. Okay.

You're the granddaddy of copyright theft, and you're pissed off because people who are doing copyright theft in a larger scale are just... Sending some crumbs your way. No tears for Pinterest. No tears for Pinterest. Zero. Ah, yes. And back to the work side of AI. A new study finds that generative AI tools like ChatGPT haven't meaningfully changed wages or job hours despite rapid adoption in workplaces.

Economists from the University of Chicago and University of Copenhagen studied over 25,000 workers in Denmark across 11 jobs seen as vulnerable to automation, including accountants and software developers. they found no significant impact on pay or hours worked in 2023 and 2024. Any changes were too small to register beyond 1%.

This is not a small study. This is 25,000 workers, right? It's not insignificant. It is not insignificant. Do you have something to say, Brian? I can tell you're biting your tongue there. No, no, no. Okay, okay. I can smell the trillions coming in from here, Jason! See? See? We're going to change the world. Oh, man, we just got to back up them dump trucks and let them pour the money in. Let's go. Changing the world. Putting everybody out of business. One gif at a time. One stolen gif at a time.

Yeah, that's it. We've got studies now that show that this is not making a global impact on the workplace. And I think this is the way it is, because I don't know about you, but every time I use AI to do something, it takes me just as long as it would to fact check it and rewrite it to make it not sound like a fucking robot than it would have been to just read the thing and write it myself.

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. I don't do as much as you do, obviously, but even just writing the updates, the silly little promo updates that we put out on social media for this podcast. I did an experiment for the past few weeks where I plugged it all into ChatGPT and had them write up a little, you know. pretend that you are on social media. Pretend that you're an intern. A podcast about technology. Yeah. And, you know, you dump it all in there and it comes back with some decent stuff.

The amount of rewriting that I have to do to make it not Elon Musk funny and actual funny, I might as well just go back to writing them myself in the first place, which is what I did. A better method than using AI was for me to pour myself a glass of wine at night and sit down and wake up. And at the end of the day, you haven't killed an ecosystem and you had a glass of wine. Exactly. It's a win-win-win. It is a win. Wins all around.

Well, for companies that decide to have real employees instead of buying all this AI crap, there is a slight... problem that they might be running into. There are allegedly thousands of North Koreans who have successfully disguised themselves as Americans and landed remote work jobs at Fortune 500 businesses and crypto firms. Of course. Of course, crypto firms.

And while their techniques for getting in are sophisticated, catching them apparently just requires asking one kind of crude question. How fat is Kim Jong-un? According to Adam Myers, the senior vice president of counter-adversary operations at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, asking that question during the interview process stops the North Korean workers in their tracks.

They terminate the call instantly because it's not worth it to say something negative about that, according to a report from the register. Meyer said that there are other giveaways too if you know what to look for. One of the things that we've noted is you'll have a person in Poland applying with a very complicated name, and then when you get them on a Zoom call, it's a military-aged male Asian who can't pronounce his own name.

Nice. Earlier this month, Fortune spoke to Harrison Leggio, the founder of a cryptocurrency startup called G8. Get it, get it, get it. who said his company has been flooded with applications from North Korean citizens posing as prospective IT workers around the globe. According to Myers, these infiltration efforts usually involve creating somewhat elaborate backstories and fake social media profiles for a candidate.

Then utilizing a team of people who work on the technical problems presented during interviews while one person serves as a front person is smart. To weed them out, he told Fortune he ends interviews by asking candidates, say something negative about Kim Jong-un. That's great. And that's all they have to do. They should start the interview with that, not ending the interview with that, and save everybody some time. I know.

It's such a simple technique to stop a potential North Korean phony, you'd think that the success rate would be low for them getting in, and maybe it is. but they are still reportedly funneling millions of dollars back to the North Korean government, according to the FBI. The UN estimated North Korean IT worker scams have generated $250 million to $600 million every year since 2018.

with the workers keeping just a pittance of what they actually earn. All of it goes to the government. So that's pretty crazy. But the craziest part of this whole story, Jason, part of the reason is that once they secure those jobs, they tend to perform very well in them.

The Register reported that FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Pelker, a panelist at the same RSA conference event as Myers, said it's common for businesses to ask if they really have to fire the employee once they're discovered to be a North Korean citizen. Because they are reliable workers and often better than the homegrown workers. Can we get these guys to sign up for Doge? Hire them there? Might save it. Un-fucking-believable.

I forgot to announce this last week, Brian, but Schmacksters Season 2 is now available. More schmackting. More schmackting. Yes, Schmackters is the podcast I do with James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mark Devine from Sex and the City, and he was also the Maytag Man. So there you go. Go check it out at schmackners.com.

All right. Well, after all my complaining about how the hell am I going to watch three hours of Andor every single week, I watched three hours of Andor again this week. I didn't. I took your advice. I watched one. All right.

Okay, so no spoilers again. Most of this will probably wait until Dave comes back anyways. Dave is at the RSA conference hearing about North Koreans. Exactly. Yeah, just give me the vibe, Brian. Just give me the vibe. I found the first two episodes incredibly boring and slow. Definitely picks up all the actions in the third hour. That's good because I actually enjoyed the first episode this week. I didn't disenjoy them.

Okay. I just found them very slow and a little bit boring, and I found my mind wandering a bit, which didn't happen before. But the third one is all the action. That's where it's at. So there you go. So we'll wait for next Tuesday's marathon. And speaking of boring, I watched Conclave, the Amazon. Amazon killed a pope to promote this fucking movie. I know. I've had this on my list for a while because some people said it was good, but what's your take, Brian?

Oh my god, it was so boring. Okay, good, I'll just take it off the list. I suppose, like, if you're into the costumes, which are all exactly the same because they wear the same goddamn outfits,

Or if you're into the architecture, which is all exactly the same because they're in the same goddamn two rooms, this would be very exciting. Or if you've never heard of the process of how a pope gets nominated in the church, which I don't know why you wouldn't be interested in unless you had some at least glancing association with the Catholic Church, so you probably know anyways.

Aside of those things, it's not worth the time. Oh, thank God. Okay. It's boring. There's a twist at the end that's supposed to shock you, and it's not really all that shocking other than that would never fucking happen. They elected Trump? I hear he wants to be the next pope. You saw that, right? Oh, fucking hell. Don't. I'm not joking. I'm not joking at all, by the way. Screaming. Thank you. Anyways, no, I...

I just couldn't get into it. My wife didn't get into it either. It took us three nights to watch it, and we both just started falling asleep on the couch every single time it came on. Well, there you go. I think that pretty much sums that up. Yeah. X-Files News. What? Ryan Coogler has confirmed his long-rumored The X-Files reboot is still happening. Not only that, it's immediately next on his slate of upcoming projects.

He appeared on a recent episode of Last Podcast on the Left. The director said he was fired up to get to work on the series once he's done promoting his new film, the vampire thriller Sinners, which actually I've heard a lot of good things about. Yeah, I really want to see that.

He also confirmed that he had spoken to Gillian Anderson and said he's keeping his fingers crossed about her potential return as Agent Dana Scully. Well, I imagine she will return the same way Dr. McCoy returned at the very first episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Or Foggy and Daredevil. Yeah, I think it's going to be a guest appearance at best. A few details are known about his vision for a reboot of the X-Files other than creator Chris Carter telling CBC's

Gloria Macarena back in 2023 that the Black Panther director was going to remount the beloved sci-fi series. That is wrong. That's wrong, wrong, wrong. He better get a screen protector because he might have some delamination if he doesn't watch out with all that remounting. I think he might. And since this has come out, Anderson has also made publicly known that she is interested in potentially...

being involved depending on script and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, and paycheck, I'm sure. And availability and interest. Indeed. Speaking of paychecks, though, Jeremy Renner finally came out and said, why, we're not going to have a Hawkeye season two, and it's because Disney is cheap. They offered him half of what he made on the first season.

Which I'm like, okay, that's kind of a kiss and a slap. Here, we want you back, dude, but... Now, hold on. There are a gazillion questions I have about this. Okay. First off, is he being offered half because he kind of passed the torch and maybe he's only appearing a little bit? He says it was going to be an eight-month commitment, so I'm guessing he's in it the whole time.

We'll see. I don't see. I mean, we're not going to see. No, we're not going to see. We don't have the script. We don't have anything. We don't have anything, but yeah. Yeah, we don't have anything. We don't know. It's definitely like, look, Disney is notoriously cheap. There's no doubt about that. But Renner has sucked on that Disney teat and made himself a fucking career and a lot of money. So I would be a little more careful about what I do, but Jeremy does not care.

And good for him for that. So fine, you know, don't do it. It was a fine show. I'm not exactly heartbroken. It's not coming. No, I wish they would have just taken that money and put it into She-Hulk. I wish that would have come back. But here's the thing. Jeremy Renner, he's an Avenger, so he can get a little bit more money, I think, than other people. So he's probably coming off that Avengers.

you know, paycheck and thinking that, Oh, I command a lot more money and that's why he got the money for Hawkeye. And then they're like, yeah, we looked at the numbers, Jeremy. And, uh, See, those were big movies with a big cast, many of which were much bigger than you, and this is a streaming show in which you're the main guy. Yeah. It was a really good show, though. I enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But it's not like Disney can't afford it.

either. Well, they're crying poor about their streaming services, as everybody is. Yeah, sure. Crime, yeah. Speaking of people that are poor, I found some music. Musicians are poor. Yes, they are. And I have links to Spotify to make them poor. I ran across just a couple artists that I thought I would point out. Maria Somerville, somebody I'd not heard of before. She's Irish. She's on 4AD Records, which if you're a 4AD fan, you know what that sound kind of is.

It's a pretty good album. I'm really enjoying listening to it. It's kind of a lo-fi shoegaze, very, very relaxing sort of thing. So a great album. I really liked it. Then I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with an artist that I used to listen to a lot called Clan of Zymox. They had one, two, two really kind of early gothy, very cool early electronica albums that were, that were fantastic. And then they.

kind of pivoted a little bit to be a bit more commercial and had some commercial success. There were three of them in the band at the time that founded it. And one of the women was Anka Wolbert, and she has a solo album that came out a couple years back, which I'm really enjoying, called Cocoon Time. And I have a link to that in the show notes.

The band kind of split up because her songs were getting a bit of success, and Ronnie Moorings, the male lead singer of Zymox, was apparently kind of pissed off about that. Creative differences, shit like that happens, but Ronnie came back and did a couple of electronic albums at Zymox that I really liked, and then he came back and... did kind of a gothy album that I actually worked on.

that came out on Test Records, and then I did Test Records website, and fuck you, Test Records, because you'd never fucking paid me. Goddamn stiffed me. Fucking bastards. That's not the point. Anyways, the point being, Ronnie then kept the band going and just went down this goth rabbit hole that I couldn't really follow because it's just not my thing and too gothy. He's running the whole show now. They put out a gazillion albums. They tour all the time. I'm not that into it.

But the one album that was at the crossover period that was my favorite called Phoenix, and it was the last album that the initial lineup ever did. is unavailable on any streaming anywhere. Not even YouTube? And I fucking hate this shit. You couldn't find it on YouTube? It's on YouTube, but not official. Oh, well, nothing's official on YouTube, but you can find it. Well, YouTube has YouTube music. There is official. Okay, but still. Anyways, it's just this streaming shit.

It's so annoying. It starts with Akira's killing an Arab, and it's amazing how much stuff is just left off of streaming and just disappears forever unless you have your own club. Yeah, which is what I do. I was actually cleaning it up this weekend and reporting it to my phone. Yeah, I got so angry about this that I actually went and found the drive that has my mangled iTunes libraries, and I think I'm going to try to do some forensics on it and try to get it back up.

I tell you what, the best thing that I've done is just turn on the... organized library feature on import in Apple Music. And I just turned that on and dragged everything in, and I just organized it by category. and it makes it so much easier. I'll have to give that a go. This Clan of Zymox thing should be under Gothwiny and Girly. That's my category for most of that shit. Yeah, that's fair. I too was goth whiny and girly. I was. Cops and doodads!

Well, Epic Games just scored a major win in its long-running legal battle with Apple, and Fortnite could return to the U.S. iOS App Store as soon as next week. Finally. What we all waited for. Did we? Did anybody care at this point? Does anybody even play Fortnite anymore? This thing took so fucking long.

Well, I'm sure they do, just maybe not on their iPhones. True. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney took a victory lap on X announcing Fortnite's return to iOS in the U.S. and offering to drop all global lawsuits if Apple rolls out the same changes worldwide. So, yeah, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers slammed Apple, saying the company not only failed to comply, but intentionally created new barriers after the ruling before about the whole App Store kerfuffle and their, you know. insane fees which they charge.

She called Apple's defiance a gross miscalculation and even referred the case to the U.S. attorney for potential criminal contempt charges. But the U.S. attorney said... What? You want me to actually show up at work and do something? Ha! Go away. Fuck off. I'm too busy mining my crypto. Yeah, exactly. Where's my Trump coin? You have to pay me in Trump coin to go to work at the government anymore. Great. Oh, God.

Well, Apple did respond pretty quickly. They've updated their App Store guidelines to comply with the orders of the California court, which requires the company to immediately stop collecting commissions on purchases that weren't paid through the App Store. As noticed by 9to5Mac, the most...

The most prominent change in the guideline states that there are now no prohibitions on buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase, as long as for an app in the U.S. storefront. Further, developers don't have to request for an entitlement from Apple to be able to offer external link purchases on apps for the United States storefront anymore. As it kind of should be. Fair enough. There we go.

Meta has quietly updated the privacy policy for its Ray-Ban smart glasses. And it's a surveillance dream for AI. Privacy nightmare for users, though. I now get John Cena whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Sweet nothings right in your ear. Right in your ear holes. See that guy? We should go home with him.

Judy what are you doing in here The new policy states Meta AI with camera is always on unless you disable the Hey Meta voice command, meaning your smart glasses are listening for prompts 24 7 that always on mic could also mean meta is scooping up audio and visuals for ai training especially if you share anything with meta services so remember that thing we always talked about brian where meta is never listening to your phone well they're listening to your glasses We're going to do it here. Yeah.

Yes, and Meta just removed your ability to stop voice recordings from being saved. Now, if you don't want Meta storing your conversations for up to a year, you have to go in and manually delete every single one. That's right. So, Meta is now always watching. Thank you, AI. Well, just don't buy them. Yeah, yeah.

And this goes back to the glass hole situation when Google put out their glasses and like some guy walked into a bar and everybody in the bar was like, get the fuck out with those things. No. And that's going to happen with this. Of course, it's a little hard to tell because they look exactly like clunky Ray-Bans. But if you see some Tom Cruise-looking fuck wearing a pair of clunky Ray-Bans, kick him out of your damn bar. Yep.

Definitely. And your house. Society. Society, yes. Just remove them from society. I do have a game that I want to talk about real quick. It's called Mahjong Titan Plus on Apple Arcade. It's one of those ones that Mahjong Titan was a regular game that you can still buy and pay money for. But if you have Apple Arcade, there's a version that comes for free. And I just beat my 2,000th board last night.

Because I'm a psycho. Here's the thing that pisses me off about this. It's owned by Apple. Apple put in a ton of money to upgrade this thing so you get all of the premium boards and all the crap. It's even got Game Center integration. What it doesn't have

is across device syncing. So if I have it on my phone, I can't play it on my iPad, I have to start all over from the bottom. I don't know if I just mentioned this, Brian, but I just beat 2,000 boards on my phone. If I go to my iPad, I don't want to have to do that again.

So, while you get it free with Apple Arcade, which is not free, you have to pay for that, it would be nice if they put in just that little tiny thing of Sync via iCloud. That would be so nice. But if you like Mahjong and you have an Apple Arcade account, You can do worse as long as you don't want to change devices. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Lyft is actually doing something that, shockingly, I'm on board for. Lyft is rolling out a new service called Lyft Silver that's specifically designed to give aging and elderly people a way to get around when driving isn't an option.

The basic pitch is that when getting rides from friends and family is great, it can limit the sense of independence an elderly person has. According to Audrey Liu, Lyft's head of rider and community safety, the goal wasn't just to build a service, but to remove everything that makes getting around a challenge. Besides featuring a simpler interface, the new service adds access to live human support whenever you need it.

Better be human. Better not be Judy Dench talking to my mom. Lyft Silver will also prioritize matching riders with cars that are easier to get in and out of, smart, and make it easier to share ride details with loved ones. I like this. This is smart. They've kind of done something like this for a while. They have their concierge service, which lets doctors' offices order rides for elderly patients, for example.

And they've also partnered with health care providers to offer paid rides to appointments. But this is just repackaging the basic service. for an older audience and giving them some special stuff that helps them out. I love this. It's a good call. Good call. Yep. Smart move. Smart move. Yeah, as soon as you said lift silver, I'm like, oh, is this their new rewards package? But no. No, it's actually something useful.

I'm so jaded. I'm like, okay, they want us to pay for something new that we don't get anything for. But no, this is good. This is good. And speaking of jaded, I've always been kind of beyond Google's initial search offering back in the day before they stuffed it full of AI and people figured out all the trips. tricks and how to game the system. Google search has been the only thing that I've ever really been impressed with.

Everything else that Google does is either shuttered and dies and isn't supported or is killed off or is full of ads or is stuffed with AI now. I don't know why I ever expect anything from Google, and I don't know why I ever did, but technically I never expected anything from Google in my house. I expected something from Netflix. But Google has now owned Nest for nearly 10 years.

And the oldest smart thermostats made by the smart home company are set to lose their support later this year. Oh, great. I inherited a Nest thermostat. It came with the house when we bought it. It is fantastic. I love being able to control everything from my phone and all that.

And when they say lose their support later this year, they don't just mean we're not going to give you updates anymore or security updates or anything like that. They're bricking the motherfucking thing. You gotta be kidding me. No, not entirely, but you won't be able to control it with the app anymore. That's huge. That is huge. So now it's just a shiny thermostat that you have to go up to on the wall and start fiddling around with. Now I got the email notification. So it's...

It's so annoying. I got the email notification. Software updates in Google Cloud Service will end on October 25th, 2025. For those of you with a first or second generation Nest, you won't be able to control the thermostat via the Google Home app or Assistant anymore. So it's just a dumb thermostat with a nice screen moving forward. They are giving discounts to people to purchase the highest high of the high-end fourth-generation nests. which normally costs $280, so you can get $130 off of that.

There is a cheaper one that you can get, which is also fourth generation, which I'm probably going to do to keep things going because I don't need all the fancy AI stuff that they've, of course, bundled into the fourth generation. Not only have they discontinued services for their old thermostats, the company has recently discontinued the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, which is one of the coolest products I've ever owned in my life.

I love these things as much as anybody can love a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. I love them. They're great. They look nice. They do this nice little thing you can turn on. They light up a little bit at night if all the lights are off and you walk through the area. It gives you a soft glow. It's very Star Trek-y. Just to let you know it's watching.

I wanted to replace all of my fire alarms in the house with these, but of course I'm not going to anymore because they're going to stop making them because it's Google. They're all doing partnerships with third parties now instead of doing their own products anymore.

They're also discontinuing their nest. Wait, wait, wait. They're going to tell you to put glue on the fire if your house starts to burn. Now, even though they're discontinuing these nest protects, they will continue to sell them until they run out of supplies. assholes because of course they will and they'll support the devices through their expiration date first generation despertax need to be replaced seven years after their manufacture date while second gen models have a 10 year lifespan

And they're directing customers again to look into third-party devices that work with Google Home to replace their offerings. No! Since they won't be doing them anymore. Now, this pisses me off. I do like to keep in ecosystems. I'm in a lot of stuff as Apple, and then obviously my ladies in the tube are all Amazon stuff. And then I had all Google stuff. I have the Nest thermostat. I have the Nest smoke alarms. I have the Nest doorbell.

Fuck Google. Eventually, I'm going to have to get a replacement for the Nest because I'm not... or for the thermostat because I need that and I'm not ready to switch yet. I've looked around. There's just third-party stuff all over the place. There isn't a unified company that does all this stuff. It was Google Nest. And now it's gone, so...

If anybody out there has recommendations for a new doorbell, a smart doorbell, smart thermostat, and really cool smart fire alarms that's all made by one company and it all works seamlessly and is controlled by one app, please let me know. Because I'm never buying a Google product again. I just hate the smart home. I hate the smart home. You know what I want? I want a doorbell that goes ding dong when somebody comes to the door to press it. I want a smoke alarm that doesn't go beep. Beep.

Beep. All night long. Then I'm good. I don't care if I don't have to check in. It doesn't have to do anything. It just screams at me when there's a fire. And I want a thermostat. I want the one with the little sliders that we used to have. You know? Because I got my nest. from the city of los angeles they had some program where they're like oh we'll give you one and somebody will come and install it for you

Yes. Here was the kicker on that one. There was a catch on that one. There was a big catch on that one. You could opt out of it, but the plan was, okay, you get an S thermostat, and then the city has access to turn it off at peak time.

and reduce your reduction, but you could opt out of it, which I did, but I still got the free thermostat because they said it was more efficient, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, in a software update, And a very dark patterned email that they sent, they tricked people into clicking, they turned that on. So now I have to go back through and every time I'm like, man, it seems a little hot in here. Oh, the air conditioner is set for 87.

No, it's not supposed to be set for 87. I don't want to die, so I have to go back and manually do it because you can't opt out of it once you opt into it. So that's one of the downsides of the smart home. I just like the old school thermostats with a little slider. You can set timers on it. You know, manual shit.

I'm sick of this smart shit. All of that's available for you at Home Depot. I like the apps. I like it for these things and these things specifically. That's it. I don't want to go any more crazy than that, but I've really enjoyed them. I feel the pain that so many people have felt about Google's graveyard before. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And it is nice to change the sitting in bed in the morning, turn on the heat. So it's nice and warm when you come out. But you know what?

I got to take a pee anyway. I'll just walk by the thermostat and turn it up when I go take a whiz. Save me some fucking headache and agita. But I get where you're coming from with Google, though. They got to stop that shit. Yep. Jason, I'm starting to worry about this big black box of doom. Starting to? Come on, man. 13 years into this show? I finally finished this book. It's a novel by Jason Pargan. It was recommended to me by our... folks over on our discord channel and uh I am...

Glad I finished it. I struggled with this one. Oh, this is the one you're supposed to read quickly, right? Yes, I went back to Discord and we were discussing that a little bit and there was a concurrence of opinion that, yes, this is a book that you need to blow through. I did not. I would stop and take breaks and then come back to it.

It's a rough read that way. I can see how if you just sat down and read straight through, it's actually really good. I'm glad I finished it. I'm happy about it. It was a fun read. I like how it wrapped up. The one complaint, and again, I think this is one of the reasons that if you just blow through it, it would go faster. He has a lot of opinions.

okay jason and he has a lot of thoughts and they're they're on board with us he could be on this podcast The thoughts that he is espousing, you know, how horrible social media is, how the world is actually better than the media portrays it, the news portrays it, how much better life is now than it's ever been before, even with all the crap that's going on. We're kind of on board with all of that sort of stuff. But the problem is

He has the characters express it in these soliloquies and monologues that go on and on and are so not realistic to the situations that they're in. It takes you out of it. And if you can just blow through all that, then it's great. but I would just keep going. They're in a van being chased, and she is going on a sociological rampage that would be at least a 25-minute speech. She's giving a TEDx fucking dissertation while they're being chased. That's not realistic.

You know who does that a lot now, too, is Cory Doctorow. I noticed that in his latest novel. And the last two novels, he will just go off on this, like... software rant about open source and i'm like we're just trying to cook dinner man come on yeah so it kept taking me out of it not that i didn't disagree with any other rants it's just it felt so out of place in the story

that it was rough. But it was a good read. I am willing to try another one of his novels. I know he has quite a few, actually, and he has a lot of followers that really like his work. After a little break from reading and reading some other things, I think I will give it another go. Not this book, because I obviously want something else by him.

It was fun. It was fun. Just rough at times. Okay, I hear you. I'm having that problem with the new Cory Doctor O2, the picks and shovels one, because I did the same thing. I'm like going in stops and starts. Just because he gives it to me. When I bought it, I bought the audiobook version. A, it's Will fucking Wheaton. And B, it's MP3 per chapter, which is a pain in the ass.

Because I have to load the whole thing in by chapters into Overcast so I can listen to it on my phone. And then when a chapter ends, I'm like, I'd just rather listen to another podcast than listen to another chapter. So it's taking forever. Fair. Well, now I've finished that book and I'm at that horrible spot where I have to find a new book. But I did find a link over at Gizmodo for people out there that are avid readers. This is 63 new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books arriving in May.

I don't know many of these, but a lot of the descriptions sound intriguing, so I think one of these books might be my next one. I do know, come, what, 11 days from now, what I will be reading, though. So maybe I'll just go back to the... good old well of First Contact series for a short one that'll get me through to May 13th. Because that's when Anima Rising by Christopher Moore will be released. Very much looking forward to that.

Yeah, me too, because this is a return to form for Christopher Moore. Getting away from the noir stuff that he was doing. Yeah, I'm not a fan of the noir stuff. Me too. I didn't like it either. Yeah, I'll check that out. Another book that you probably want to fly through as fast as you can is When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi. This is the one where the moon turns to cheese, like literal cheese. Okay, I'm having trouble. I'm really having trouble.

And there's some people on Discord that have talked about it too. It's like, yeah, not his best work. I mean, this is coming off of Starter Villain, which I thought was an awesome book. It was just lighthearted, funny, and got through pretty quick, but this one is like... So just to make it clear, we've got Neil Stevenson, Seven Eves, in which the moon explodes, and then we jump forward like 10,000s of years of human civilization, how humanity survives when the moon destroys the planet.

And then we've got this book where the moon turns to cheese. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if this fast forwards to our dystopian future far past. Somebody get a big salami. Yeah, I'm right now where the cheese is starting to compress and basically have volcanoes. So the moon is farting at this point is what I'm seeing.

I don't know. That sounds like the moon is fonduing. Yeah, kind of. The science is fine. He actually covers a lot of what would happen if the moon actually turned to cheese in one go, but that's not very interesting, unfortunately. At least for me. Maybe some cheezophiles out there. It's not much of a cheese shop, is it? I don't know I just really want fondue tonight. Over at Patreon, we've got a new subscriber, Chris. Thank you, Chris. And we have a comment from Count Squeakula.

I took a screenshot of Bitbucket repos at work and asked Copilot to create a list of those repos in a spreadsheet. It gave me back a bunch of first and last names. I told it that it was incorrect and to do it again. It apologized and then gave me a list of random movies. My productivity is booming from these great tools.

Thanks for the rundown, Calc Squeakula. And just a reminder, if anyone wants to sign up and support the show over at Patreon, go to patreon.com slash GOG. You can sign up for as little as $3 a month. It keeps the show on the air. And if you want to sign up for more money, be my guest.

And if you want to pay for the whole year in advance, you even get a discount. So literally, three bucks a month for all of this fine entertainment. Look, we're funnier than Elon Musk. That's all you need to know. Open your wallets, people. Please. We wear four hats. Over at PayPal, we've got Jonathan, Charlie, Levy, Nicola, Judge, Thomas with $25, and Steve with a big $100 donation and a comment.

Y'all motherfuckers just had to bring up color correction with Bittner. I, being a normal, knew nothing of this phenomenon. Now, after watching the trailers and shows mentioned, it is all I can fucking see now. I want the system restored to 48 hours ago before this data hit my ears. All in good humor. I've been a big fan and I've listened to every podcast since season one, episode one, like we do seasons. I still chuckle about Brian and his Google Glass prediction.

What do you think I predicted? I can't remember. I'm sure I said it's gonna be fucking horrible. Yeah. Or maybe he said it was the next great thing. I don't know. Steve, let us know, because I'm not going to come back and find it. But please, I've been curious since I read this. I'm like, what was Brian's Google Glass prediction? I'm sure it's somewhat similar to my Metaglasses comment, but you never know.

Leaving a $100 donation on PayPal is a thank you and a color corrected fuck you from a 53-year-old former PC builder. Steve. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Steve. Over at the tip jar, we've got Jennifer, Tony, Adam, Matthew, and Sarah, and some new merch was bought by Tony this week. Woo-hoo! Doggy. Sadly, no reviews.

And some sad news, the alarm frontman Mike Peters has died age 66. I don't know if you're a big fan of the alarm. I was in the 80s and then they kind of drifted from my consciousness, but... They rose to prominence in the early 80s with the alarm hits including 68 guns and strength. He has actually had cancer on and off for over 30 years. So that is a good long-term survivor there. But sadly, he did pass away.

Peters has supported U2 in status quo on tour and played with Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen was first diagnosed with blood cancer, chronic lymphatic leukemia more than 30 years ago. He established different trusts and different charities that were running it, and that's what actually announced his passing. So you will be missed. Mike Peters was a real dude, serious. Musicians loved him. Really?

Yeah, sad to hear. Yeah, Jill Sobiel died this week, too. Oh, shit. I forgot to even put that in. Yeah, that was crazy. She passed away from the house fire just a couple nights ago. They're actually trying to determine time of death now to find out if she was dead beforehand, so there's a big investigation going on on that one. Yeah, okay, that's sad news too. That exploded all across my Facebook because all my musician friends knew her pretty well. Yeah. Pretty sad.

Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geek. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 695. One episode. 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, especially after getting fucked by Apple. Please help us out.

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