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but it's only available to the first 30 standard package purchases. So don't wait. That's store.insta360.com. Use code GOG at checkout. Details are in the show notes. Go shoot something wild. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing... of what went wrong on the internet. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister.
Brian, starting today, guess what? What? Access to my anus is free for everyone! No more wait lists for my anus! Were you getting a lot of emails? Well, I guess the anus AI was getting overloaded. I did share my five invitations with friends, but I gather none of them took you up on it. No, nobody took up the invitation to my anus.
I'll link in the show notes if you want to go check out my anus AI and see how it works compared to other AIs that are not my anus. Have you tried it? I have not tried my anus yet. Okay. Let me know what you think. I don't really think I need a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions. It doesn't just think, it delivers results. Yeah, I actually dug around for a little bit to see what it actually did, and it looks like it's...
about as useless as you would think it would be. It's just a crappy, agentic AI that doesn't do shit, right? Yes, and yes, use the term agentic quite liberally with that, because Doesn't really do anything. It's just fun to save my anus. It's the new Deliveroo. It is. So, 220 crypto investors just bought their way into a private dinner with Donald Trump by spending big on his personal meme coin, as we've been talking about. I mean, can you imagine if Obama had done this? Oh, God, no. Imagine.
This is just straight out grift and bribery. flat out and this isn't even i mean at least these are like you know crypto bros we we have like shady chinese people buying like 200 million dollars of these meme coins i wonder what they're getting I wonder what they're getting. Yeah. So the 25 biggest spenders dropped over $4 million to get the VIP perks, including a personal reception with, you know, Mad President Donnie.
Technically, it says your favorite president in quotes, and I wonder if I get to pick. If I got to pick, it would definitely not be the Cheeto in charge, no. Yeah, and I would bring back Jimmy Carter, but he's dead. So, hey. You had your chance.
Yeah, he wasn't the greatest president, but he turned out to be a very interesting dude. Well, I mean, let's just, not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but since you brought up Jimmy Carter, let us not forget that the American government and people... made him give up his peanut farm. That's right. Because of a potential conflict of interest as president, and we've got this motherfucker.
Yeah, yeah. And so he got one wallet linked to billionaire Justin Sun reportedly dropped $19 million on Trump tokens. Now, here's where the fun comes in, Brian. After these guys got their ticket... At least 30 of them, who are confirmed guests, dumped all their tokens. Wow. Yeah. So they got the ticket and then said, okay, we're done. We're out. Which I think is going to make for a very interesting meet and greet once they get to the White House. Oh, like he knows.
Somebody's going to tell them, I bet. Somebody will, I'm sure. Yeah, I think they're going to get sat at the kids' table in the back. Well, speaking of grift, Elon Musk's tunneling firm, remember them? The Boring Company. Yeah. He's agreed to. I think air quotes are going to figure a lot into this episode. He's agreed to. help the government's Federal Railroad Administration with a multi-billion dollar project to build a train tunnel in Maryland.
It's not clear that Musk's company will actually get a contract related to the project, but I'm pretty sure it will. It seems like yet another conflict of interest for the billionaire who has exerted undue influence over the government ever since Donald Trump took office. Thank God Elon didn't have a peanut farm. Oh, my God. So the funny thing about this is, you know, he's coming in to help, quote unquote, Amtrak. Yes. Amtrak is already destroyed. There's nothing left.
I mean, he already tried to replace Amtrak with the cyber loop, and that went real well. So I'm sure this is going to be just another money grab for whatever. Well, it's all working out pretty well for him. The one place that the Boring Company is actually involved in trying to do something is in Las Vegas, which is being privately funded by Elon. But of course, It's proceeding without much of the regulatory oversight that a project of such size and scope would traditionally have.
And we know what happened so far with the tunnel in Vegas. It was supposed to be these autonomous Teslas going like 100 miles an hour, zipping down this road. No, it's just a bunch of guys driving you back and forth really slowly through a hole in the ground. That's what it turned out to be. Unless you think that, of course, is all that's going on. Why just last week we reported that the White House has been bullying tariffed countries to adopt services from Starlink.
Starlink also has other nebulous and problematic pacts with the U.S. government, including at the FAA. My God, that was almost a month ago now. We've forgotten about that one. Oh, my God. SpaceX has a variety of potential conflicts of interest thanks to Doge's interactions with NASA.
And another recent report also shows that the billionaires' companies may have saved nearly $2.37 billion from federal fines and penalties that were active under Biden, but have since been neutralized in the Trump era. He's saving the money for him, not us. Yeah, him, not us. Can we send him to Mars yet? Please. While we're digging up old failures, Yuga Labs, the geniuses behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Remember NFTs, Brian? It was such a more innocent time for scam artists. Yeah.
Well, they have just dumped their CryptoPunks NFT collection onto Node Foundation, a non-profit now responsible for babysitting pixelated avatars from the peak of the let's set money on fire era. So, basically, a server. I mean, let's call it what it is. It's a fucking server. It's a server full of JPEGs. That's it. Actually, the CryptoPunks were 8-bit, so maybe they were GIFs.
Maybe. I bet they were probably GIFs. Because as we know, NFTs are basically a receipt. You buy a receipt, you don't even get the actual images with it. Yes, that just gets held on a server. Yes, so Node says they're going to future-proof the collection. They're going to put it on a zip disk and put it on their two servers. We have a RAIN server. Oh, my God, yeah. In the old days, we would put it on a PsyQuest and a ZipDisc. That's right. Can't be too safe.
Well, pink slips are common. Microsoft will be laying off 3% of its global workforce and aim to streamline its operations and thin out its management structure. Unlike a lot of other pink slip reports that we've done, this is actually a company that is doing very well. and does not need to lay off people for their stock price or anything else. So this should scare the shit out of a lot of people right now.
Layoffs will be felt across all teams, levels, and regions within the company and are not performance-based. This is the latest round of layoffs following deep cuts back in 2023 when Microsoft laid off over 10,000 employees. So this is all an attempt to weather a shaky economic environment. Wonder why we're having that. made more challenging by on and off again tariffs. Wonder where those are coming from.
a bevy of FTC antitrust activity directed at them and not other people, and the demand to burn billions in cash buying for pole position in the AI race, which is just dumb. And as we reported, Microsoft has actually stepped back away from that, so I'm not entirely sure that's one of the reasons for the layoffs right now. Yeah, I think that they can see how the economic winds are going. Yes, they do. And it's better safe than sorry right now. So that's what they're going to do.
In addition to laying people off, they have raised prices on its Xbox consoles and removed entry-level Surface laptops to drive more profits. And, of course, as per usual with these companies, when they do layoffs last quarter, Microsoft reported earnings that outperformed expectations for both revenue and profit. That's how it goes. We have more money. Let's keep it. Remember, when you join a company, you're a family.
Oh, that's... Remember when that was a thing? That's still... They're still trying. They're still trying. The last company that I had was like that was Kinko's. That was a great company to work for until it wasn't. There's a really interesting story about this that gets into, I mean, there's a lot of twists and turns in this one. I found it a pretty fascinating read. It's over at Gizmodo. Laid off metaverse engineer says he is door dashing and living in a trailer. Again.
This is a harbinger of what's to come for many of us. A software engineer has revealed that while he once made six figures at a metaverse company, his recent layoff means he's been thrust into a life of... relative precarity, which involves door dashing, selling stuff on eBay, and living in a trailer. Maybe he should try delivery! Well, it also tells me that he perhaps did not take care of his money very wisely.
He was laid off some 12 months ago, and it landed him in a situation that a few years ago would have seemed relatively unheard of for a seasoned software engineer. The story kind of gets into a bunch of twists and turns. One of the reasons his money is tied up is he bought a bunch of properties, but then he had a bunch of things that happened with his family, so family had to move into them so he's not making money off of them, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, wait a minute. He owns a bunch of property, and he's been able to do this for a year. Yeah, okay. He's got more money. He's doing better than most. He's doing way better than I am. Like I said, lots of twists and turns. Lots of twists and turns in this one. Worth the reading, though. But it basically came down to AI nuked his job.
And he basically wrote this huge thing, basically just telling people, this is probably not unique. I don't think my story is unique. I think I'm at the early side of the bell curve of the coming social and economic disaster tidal wave that is already underway. So basically he's just saying, read this, prepare for shit. You know, see, the thing is,
I have a hard time feeling bad A for this guy because he does own property. But, you know, that's just me being me. The other side of this is we got... you know, kicked out of the technology sphere because we aged out. Yep, we aged out a long while ago. Even though our skills were at the peak of, you know, their relevance. That didn't matter, you know? So... Being a software engineer is not something you want to do for longevity, is all I'm saying.
So I would just recommend people reevaluate if they even want to think about going into that sphere. The clock starts ticking on your tech career as soon as you hit your mid-30s. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, mid-30s is you should be already packing up your desk because once you hit 39, it's over. You know, it is over. Which is really annoying. Sup?
Let's give a round of applause to the New York Times for being late to the party as usual and wearing the most beige outfit that the Gap could muster up, Brian. Okay. Hat tip to Dan P for the link to this one. I know Dan said this, and he's like, I'm sure you got this from a bunch of people, but I'm going to send it anyway.
because I want to. Well, Dan, you were the first, so thank you very much. This is an article over at the New York Times called Silicon Valley's Elusive Fantasy of a Computer as Smart as You. Well, what this is, is this is an article about AGI, Brian. And the New York Times has finally... come to the conclusion that, oh wait, it might not be coming anytime soon. Something that we've been saying for, I don't know, three, four fucking years now.
I had a nice little spiel about it, but I'm not going to give the New York Times any more airtime. So let's just move on and say, welcome to the party, pal. AGI is not coming anytime soon. The link will be in the show notes if you want to go link, like read this mediocre pile of dung. All right. I would recommend.
Yes, AGI is not coming. When it does, perhaps we might all be screwed, but it's not coming anytime soon. In the meantime, if you're like the guy, the metaverse engineer that got laid off, There are jobs for you again. Some new ones have just opened up again. Unfortunately, it's just customer service because we talked about Klarna a while back. Klarna made a big deal about going all in on AI. They are a company that basically just does...
customer service. And company CEO, Sebastian, I can't even pretend to pronounce his name, Simnesiatowski. Something ski. I'm sorry. I was driving through a tunnel. Driving through a tunnel. He went all in. Made a big stink about it. Lots of press releases. We are going to do this. We are going to, I want my company to be OpenAI's favorite guinea pig.
The company instituted a hiring freeze, set out to replace as many humans on its payroll as possible with AI. By 2024, he was bragging about cutting the company's workforce nearly in half, dropping from a headcount of 3,800 to 2,000 by shifting to AI alternatives.
He called the cutbacks natural attrition rather than the result of layoffs. He also claimed that AI chatbots were handling two-thirds of customer service conversations within their first month of deployment and went on to claim that AI was doing the work of 700 customer service agents. The problem is that it's really doing the work of 700 really bad agents. And that quality took a toll.
So, unfortunately, as he says, as cost unfortunately seems to have been a too-predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up with is having a lower quality. Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us. What an asshole. What an asshole. So what he found out is people don't like talking to chatbots.
no matter how advanced they may have become over the past few years. A study conducted last year found that more than four in five people would choose waiting to talk to a human over getting immediately served by a bot. Frankly, this is something that Klarna should have known two years ago when it went the AI route because it had humans in place for those exact roles.
It seems the company opted to create a worse experience for its customers because it wanted to come across as forward-thinking and innovative and wanted to save money until that worse experience actually proved more costly than paying people. This is where the delusion of Silicon Valley really comes into play. These people see and read tech news thinking that AI is coming, AI is coming, and oh my God, we need to get at the beginning of the wave and get in on this so we can be the...
The harbingers of the tech future that is going to be brighter for everyone. What they don't actually think about are their fucking customers. What is their job? They have a product that they're trying to sell to somebody, and that product should be enhanced by whatever decision they make as they sit their fucking fat, overpaid ass in the C-suite. Not for shareholder fucking value. We've talked about this a million times. Fuck shareholder value.
Think about your customers first. He didn't think about his customers first. He thought about his bottom line first, which just shows how big of an asshole he is. And then he has to hire everybody back, hat in hand, going, will you please come back and work for us?
Well, this is absolutely the problem with late-stage capitalism that we're stuck in right now. It's the chase for shareholder value. You will create shareholder value if you actually do what your company is supposed to do and do it well. You become best in market. And then you've created all the shareholder wealth you need, except for the fact we can start to talk about, which is the need for constant growth, which is a complete load of bullshit.
The company is doing well. It's serving the entire market. There's no need for them to create a bunch of different vertices just to continue to create shareholder value. That's bullshit. We need to re-involve that. Anyways, rant over. Okay, okay. 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. A new analysis from nonprofit research group Epic AI warns that progress on reasoning AI models like OpenAI's O3 may start slowing down within the next year.
These models have shown big improvements in solving math and programming tasks by using massive amounts of computing power and reinforcement learning. But Epic says we may be nearing the limits of how much compute can actually be applied to that process. We need to liberate those servers holding those JPEGs for dirty OutCloud. We need that server. Hey, guys, can we borrow a couple of processes, please?
OpenAI has already ramped up compute use by 10x compared to earlier models, and future plans involve even more. While reinforcement learning gains are growing fast tenfold every few months, they could soon hit a wall due to high costs and diminishing returns. What returns? We have zero returns right now.
No, Brian, you know those benchmarks. They are getting better at the benchmarks. Right, benchmarks. And if they're not getting better at the benchmarks, let's change the benchmarks like we talked about last episode. It reminds me of an old joke that was, how does a Microsoft engineer change a light bulb? How? He redefines what dark means. That's good. Yeah. So these guys are just, it's a moving target.
This is the same race that Uber was in. Now, harken back to Uber was spending billions and billions of dollars in hopes that they could outrun their runway to get to the point where self-driving cars would be in place so they wouldn't need the taxi drivers anymore so then they could pivot to that model and get away from having to pay people to drive their cars. And then finally profit.
Yeah, exactly. And finally, Prophet, that was always the plan. We knew it was the plan. If you didn't know it was the plan, you haven't been listening to our show. So these guys, basically they're trying to outrace everything that is known about what quote unquote AI is right now. Hoping, hoping against hope. that there is going to be a breakthrough in the engineering to make these things actually do what they currently cannot do.
And then catch up and justify all the spending that they're putting in place. But what they're not telling you, and if you also listen to the show, we've been telling you. that the way that the architecture works for these quote-unquote AI models and the reasoning behind them is not going to get you to that next level because it doesn't exist. It's like trying to, let's say, juice an orange with a sewing machine.
That's about what you're trying to do there. It can kind of give you a little bit, but it's not what it's built for. Did you know what AI can do, Jason? What? It can generate an image of you juicing an orange with a sewing machine. That's what it can do. Show art! Right now, AI is like a shitty wedding DJ hopped up on Silicon Valley hopium.
and just remixing everything that it's got in its little bag. YMCA, it's fun to play at the... Sorry, I was doing my wedding DJ in the background. Ah, yes. The Wedding Singer, great movie. I should watch that again. But this is where we're at right now. These companies are pulling back the veil on, oh, they're going to run into walls with the current infrastructure and how that they're progressing on the path that they're progressing.
And that's just to take you kind of away from the fact that they're on the wrong road. They're on the wrong map. So they're not going to get where they're trying to go, period. No matter how much compute you throw at it, it will not work. So... That's kind of where it's at right now. Epic AI, thank you so much for your research paper, but it doesn't fucking matter. Okay. Just saying.
I'm with you. You know who else is with you, Jason? Who, Brian? Shouldn't be a surprise, because you guys are from the same city, really, or at least spent a lot of time there. The Chicago-born Robert Prevost, a.k.a. the newly minted Pope Leo. The Pope! He is with you, the Pope. I like the Pope. The Pope hates AI. I'm with the Pope. In his first formal meeting with cardinals of the church, he pointed to the development of AI as one of the biggest challenges facing humanity.
according to CNN. In her own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor. He told senior clergy members, So there you go. He's with us. He chose the name Leo as a signal of his intention to follow in the footsteps of Pope Leo.
Eighth? Thirteenth? That's thirteen. I'm sorry. It's not Super Bowl time, so I'm not up on my Roman numerals, Jason. Yes, yes. The ones to the right of the X mean it's additive. If it was to the left, it would be subtractive. And they stopped using Roman numerals for movies. It's just like Superman 2 now. Oh, man. Superman double I. Damn it. Anyways, the Pope is against AI and he's going to try to do something about it. God knows what. Literally, God knows what.
See, the problem that he has with all this machine learning is that they can put in the names and addresses of all of these clergy that were moved around and they could probably reverse engineer where all the abuse was taking place. I bet I can find out where Father John from my old church went after he impregnated that 16 year old girl. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder why I left the church, Pope. Yeah.
In a shocking move, the Trump administration fired U.S. Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter just one day after she released a report warning that AI companies may be infringing copyright law by training models on creative works without compensation. Shocker. They may be doing that? Yeah. The report questioned whether such training qualifies as fair use, especially when it competes with the original work.
and recommended licensing models, rattling Silicon Valley and earning praise from copyright holders. Ironically, though, her replacement leadership installed by mega-populists may prove even more hostile to big tech, potentially setting the stage for tougher restrictions on AI training practices. Didn't see that one coming. Did not. Plot twist. Plot twist. Great plot twist. Yes, which AI learned all about from the copyrighted materials that it consumed. It consumed. Exactly.
YouTube is cracking down on channels posting fake AI-generated movie trailers that trick viewers and profit from it. It wouldn't care, except it's profiting. So, channels like Screen Culture have been demonetized for misleading audiences with phony teasers for films like The Fantastic Four and Thunderbolt. The move marks a shift in YouTube's policy ahead of Comic-Con season, with bans now extending across all linked accounts.
Industry groups like SAG-AFTRA have condemned the trend as exploitative and harmful to real actors, calling it a race to the bottom for human talent and intellectual property. Well, then just fucking release your trailers on time. No, I'm with it. Facebook is flooded with these things now. I keep like, oh my god, Star Wars is putting out a new movie, and it's like a really convincing, decent trailer for about three seconds, and then you go, my god, what the fuck?
Why does Darth Vader have six lightsabers? Finger lightsabers. Speaking of that, Jamie Lee Curtis is the latest celebrity to call attention to scam ads on Facebook and Instagram that use AI manipulated video to hawk sketchy products. She also appeared to have encountered another issue familiar to many Facebook users struggling to get the company's attention.
In posts on Facebook and Instagram, the actress asked Mark Zuckerberg to intervene to stop the spread of a totally AI fake commercial of her. She basically just shamed him into it because you can't go through customer service. They don't care. Have you ever sent an email or tried to use their customer service forms? Oh, yes. You never hear anything back. It just goes into a void.
Nope. Even when I was working for the studios, and we had legit problems with some of the stuff. Remember back when you could build apps on Facebook? Yeah. Back in the old days where they were kind of friendly to the companies building on their platform?
Those days are long gone for those of you who don't remember. Yeah, we would literally try and get in touch with the API support and they're like, no. We're working with Dancing with the Stars. You know the biggest show on television right now? Would you please answer our email? What's Dancing with the Stars? We don't watch television. We're working fast and breaking things, so excuse us. We will not write you back. We should have publicly shamed them. Yeah, that seems to be the only way. Yep.
Well, federal safety regulators are scrutinizing Tesla's upcoming robo-taxi plans, not trademarked, by the way, launching a detailed inquiry into how its full self-driving, paren, supervised software performs in low visibility conditions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent Tesla a letter asking how it evaluates its safety of its self-driving tech, especially as the company prepares to launch a paid ride-hailing service in Austin this June.
This probe stems from an earlier investigation opened after four crashes involving FSD and poor visibility. So here's the takeaway, kids. If it is raining or foggy in Austin, stay off the road. Regulators now want to know if Tesla's robo taxis will use the same system or a more advanced unsupervised version.
and how the company plans to ensure passenger safety in conditions like fog, glare, or snow. Now, here's the kicker, Brian. The investigation is being handled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects. I want to work at the office of defect. The Office of Defects. I want that business card. Definitely, definitely. What was that? It was the Island of Broken Toys.
That's it. I've got to send the heat miser over there. I mean, my business card already says Schadenfreude Engineer. So I think Schadenfreude Engineer for the Office of Defects is the perfect title for the job that I want. My perfect job. Well, a former Tesla manager says he was fired after publicly blaming Elon Musk for the company's plummeting sales
Matthew LeBrat, who had worked at Tesla since 2019, created a protest website and even spray-painted his Cybertruck with anti-Musk slogans. Well, I mean, to be fair, that's a bit further than just publicly blaming him. You can make a post on social media, that's one thing, but I think I'd fire this guy too. HR alleged that he abused or misused company resources and he claims he was terminated for speaking out. You think? You fucking think?
Rolling into work with your fuck Elon Cybertruck. I think that might be. Okay, so this brings me to, not to go off on too crazy of a tangent here, Jason, but I mean, this guy has to be younger than us, right? This has got to be a millennium. Oh, yeah. There's just, Gen X would, look, we all hated our jobs. We all publicly fucking bashed our jobs. We've all said a gazillion things. We've said things to coworkers. We've said things to family. We've said things to friends.
You can grumble and you can say things. You don't go up to your fucking boss and you say it. You don't paint your house with I fucking hate Hewlett-Packard. You're going to get fucking fired, you fucking idiots. It just reminds me of that scene from Fight Club after Robert Paulson dies. It's like, you morons, you're running around in ski masks and blowing things up. What did you think was going to happen? Exactly. Unbelievable. No accountability. No common sense. No. It's insane. It's just...
Oh my god. I mean, look, he's right. There's no doubt about that. He is 100% right. But he's also fucking stupid. I don't want anybody that stupid working for my company. That's why you got fired, Matthew. You're a fucking moron. So he did the website Tesla Employees Against Elon, which there's a link to in the show notes, which is TeslaEmployeesAgainstElon.com. I hope it's not a wide open WordPress site. It might be. I guess he's smarter than his employees.
So I was thinking, it just got me thinking, okay, I wonder if openlettertoelon.com is taken. Yeah, turns out it is. And back in November 8th, 2024. This guy, the author, writes a letter to Elon about... He should start a business lending company to help the middle class. I'm like, okay, I don't know what the fuck you're smoking, but Elon doesn't want to hurt the middle class, you idiot. He wants to fucking destroy it.
This guy also creates an account on X called Open Letter to Elon. And it says middle class guy, husband, dad to three, joined November 2024. He's following 37 people and he has zero followers. So I'm thinking, okay, well, you write an open letter to Elon and you post it on his platform. I'm guessing this wasn't even shadow banned. This was just outright, no, nobody's allowed to follow this guy. And we're going to leave it up here.
as a warning to anybody else who tries to pull this shit in the future because shot off the bat. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. So that was just a fun little aside. But I was just bummed that this guy got open letter to Elon.com and he just wasted it. Just wasted it. Totally wasted it. Well, Brian, let's end this on a high note. Scientists now believe the universe could die much sooner than expected. Oh, thank God. Unfortunately, it's not next Wednesday.
But that's relatively speaking. New research from Radbound University finds that due to Hawking radiation, even ultra-dense remnants like neutron stars and white dwarves will eventually evaporate. Their revised timeline is, well, the cosmos could fizzle out in 10 to the 78th power years, which is a blink compared to the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100th power years.
Well, still major eons away, that's a major acceleration in cosmic decay. And yes, they even calculated how long it would take a human to vanish via Hawking radiation, a modest 10 to the 90th power years. So obviously they have not checked the news on the tariffs because it could be two Thursdays from now. Who knows? Still not enough time for the Democrats to get their shit together.
Brian, we are coming up on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. I don't think we're going to make it. I don't think we're going to make it to the 4th of July at this point. Well, I've been looking forward to today for quite some time, and it's not because it's my birthday. Oh, Jesus, happy birthday! Oh, thank you, Jesus. It's on my list for later, but you're just going to jump the gun. But that's okay. Happy birthday!
Yes, thank you. Well, today I've been looking forward to ever since the trailer dropped and it didn't look like shit. Murderbot premieres today. They drop two episodes. Then we'll get more episodes every Friday moving forward. I have not watched it yet because apparently it came out at midnight Eastern time, so I was sleepy, sleepy. You watched some. What do you think? I did. I don't know, Brian.
The problem here is I read the book, so I kind of knew what was coming. Yeah, well, I read the book a long time ago, so I don't remember shit. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to land. I don't know. It was late for me. I'm going to try again for episode two tonight. I was not too impressed. But I just know the story. I was expecting not a comedy. That's the thing. And I don't know if it's a comedy. So, okay.
All right. Well, it is my birthday, so I'll be having a glass of whiskey with it. There you go. Yeah, that might lube it up. All right. I'll be checking it out tonight. We'll talk about it more next week. So with my kid, we play a lot of music in the house, and we're trying to, we're moving away from the kiddie music because he's getting older, and so we listen to a lot of the stuff that mom and dad listen to.
But we do listen to an awful lot of soundtracks. We love playing soundtracks in the house. And we have been watching, my kid and I have been watching Star Trek Lower Decks together, which has been a lot of fun to revisit, by the way. Cool. What a great show. So I was just playing Star Trek music recently, and then I put on the Star Trek, the Wrath of Khan original motion picture soundtrack. And I even texted you about this because I'm so, I was blown away. It is such a fucking great soundtrack.
Like the theme is just awesome. It just gives me shivers when I listen to it. So just wanted to give it a highlight here on the show. And then that, of course, made me think of the GOAT of soundtracks. The Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back original motion picture soundtrack, which is probably the best of all soundtracks that there are. Okay.
And because the universe moves in mysterious ways, as I was extolling the virtues of soundtracks and texting you about it and playing all the soundtracks known to man, Nine Inch Nails have announced the Future Ruins, a one-day music festival taking place in the Los Angeles Equestrian Center on Saturday, November 8th, 2025. I would love to go this.
To go to this, this is not a normal music festival. No, it is a first-of-its-kind music festival, a day-long event where the world's most influential film and television composers step out from behind the screen and onto the stage. So Reznor and Ross, they're also going to have John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, who I have seen do orchestral stuff live in London, which is amazing. All kinds of people, Mark Muggler's bar, just a great fucking lineup of great composers.
I would kill to go to this. It sounds amazing. This one I might actually be able to go to because it's not that far and it's not downtown. And it won't be crazy because it's all soundtrack work. Yeah, this actually might be decent. You need to go for me, Jason. You need to be my proxy. Go. Okay, are you going to buy my ticket? No. Goj.show slash donate. Okay. Okay. I'll check that out for sure. Because, yeah, it literally is right up the road for me. I can do this one. I can do it.
Okay, let's get to Andor, because as we know, Dave Bittner's never going to watch this shit. Yeah, he'll get to it in three months. Yeah, so spoiler alert, we kind of know what happens at the end of Andor already because we've all seen Rogue One. So if you haven't seen Rogue One...
Or Andor, and you don't want any spoilers, you might want to fast forward for a few minutes. Okay, so what is the BBY thing at the beginning? The countdown, the... Before Battle of Yavin. Okay, see, I don't know these things. Dave would know that. Yeah, I know, but he doesn't watch the show. So I got behind, and then I started watching one episode, which then turned into more episodes, and then finally I watched all the episodes.
like not moving from my bed and i was i was so so into it that i immediately rolled into rogue one because now i i want to get your take on the end the final batch of episodes I thought were picture perfect as far as setting the scene for rolling into Rogue One. What did you feel like, Brian? Yeah, first off, I will say I think Andor is by far the best The best Star Wars content we have gotten since the original three movies dropped in the 70s. Hands down. Hands down, yeah.
Hands down. Just best acting, best directing, best plot, perfect for its time. It's all about fascism. Hint, hint. Gee, I wonder what he was talking about. It was absolutely a stunning piece of work. I never would have imagined that season two would be this good after season one. Not that I didn't mind season one. Season one was good. But season two was some of the best TV I've seen in recent years. The final year, these last three episodes of this drop,
perfect, perfect role into Rogue One, tied up all the loose ends, lets you know where all the characters have gone, leads directly into it as Rogue One then leads directly into A New Hope. What I did think, though, was I think last week... The two year before. was a peak and or. Like, this was a bit of a letdown in comparison, as it would be. This is the return of the Jedi to last week's Empire Strikes Back.
I would tend to agree on that. I just think they did such a masterful job of tying everything together with that. that last that last set of episodes it was uh especially the last episode i thought the last episode was just beautiful yeah it was well done and that that whole walking scene at the end where they do they they show you kind of where everybody's at at the end of it it just made me
Like I almost heard Sia singing Breathe in the background at the end of Six Feet Under. Six Feet Under, yeah. The other best ending of TV of all time, you know what I mean? So yeah, it was masterfully done. I did not roll into Rogue One like so many people did just because I don't have the time, but I do want to watch it again.
It's funny, I saw a lot of commentary online. Rogue One just feels so rushed. Well, yeah, it's a fucking hour and a half movie compared to the 12 hours you just watched. Of course it feels fucking rushed compared to Andor. I mean, I didn't go into the whole movie. I just wanted to see the first 15 minutes. you know, and just to get into the characters. And the funny thing is, I saw so many posts over on Blue Sky, like,
Don't forget Jen Erso is the actual star of Rogue One. I'm like, nope, not anymore, honey. Not anymore. Not anymore. Nobody gives a shit about her anymore. Yep. Yeah, and it did feel rushed, but the funny thing is, it was as long as it needed to be.
Yeah, yeah, it told the story perfectly. I mean, I loved Rogue One when it came out. I thought it was stunning and great, but the backstory that Andor has added to it, and then, you know, of course, that leans directly into A New Hope and the original trilogy that we all love. Masterfully done. I don't think we'll see anything like that coming out of the Star Wars universe again anytime soon. I think we're back to lightsabers.
and epic battles and all that sort of stuff. But I do hope that they think about this and how well it did and explore things. from this perspective more often, instead of just the grand, you know, wizards making things fly around. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, just the, I mean, it was just a perfect story. They really nailed it. Very well done. And the really sad part is when you do watch Rogue One, Tarkin and Leia... Oh man. Yeah, CGI has come a long way since just 2016.
You know what, though? Leave it. Don't do it, Lucas. Don't fuck with it. Don't go back in and fix all the CGI and add stuff left, right, and center. Just leave it. It's of its time, and we all get it. We're not done. It's good enough. It's good enough. So Long Way Home did drop this week too. I watched the first three episodes. It's delightful. It is a delightful show just like the other ones. And I think this one actually is even a little better because the other ones had...
This sense of, they were under time constraints to get to different places and different times that gave them this, you know, this false urgency. And this one, they're just out for a ride. So it's like there's no rush to get anywhere before the Trans-Siberian Express is going to be. leaving and they're going to be stuck in the tundra for six months or whatever. This is just a couple guys driving around Europe on their motorcycles and it's beautiful.
They're in Norway right now. And just the scenery in Norway is like, oh my God, I would love to be there. I would just love to be there right now. No people, no tariffs, no nothing. Just waterfalls and rocks. Looks beautiful. Anyway, I love it. So good. Now, what's also really good is Jessica Jones, our favorite badass private eye, is set to make a comeback and join the Disney plus Marvel street level hero roster. That's right, Brian.
Variety has reported that Kristen Ritter has officially signed on to reprise her role on Daredevil Born Again Season 2. All right. That's all that matters. That makes me happy. Now sign her up for Jessica Jones. Yeah, bring back you. born again Jessica Jones. Born again all of them. Not the Kung Fu guy. You can even bring back Luke Cage, because I think he got short-shifted on the screenwriters for Luke Cage. That was a good show, but the writing was just...
Awful. And Fallout Season 2 is coming in December, and Season 3 has been greenlit. Looking forward to that. Fallout was just, oh man, if you haven't seen Fallout, so good. Walton Goggins is just genius in everything. I'm glad people, I mean, yeah, he was great in White Lotus, but you got to go back and watch him in Sons of Anarchy where he plays basically a trans hooker. It's just fucking awesome.
And the official trailer for Nobody 2 came out this week as well. The Bob Odenkirk movie where he plays kind of an action hero. You saw Nobody, correct? I did, yeah. Yeah, it was a good movie. It was a really good movie. Yeah, so this is kind of nobody meets vacation.
It really is. Nobody meets vacation. So I wonder if I even get a Chevy Chase, you know, cameo. That would be nice. Or Christy Brinkley. I'll take either one. Either one. Yep. So it was good. I like the trailer. It was a little too much story, but I think that movie isn't really. It's not that much of a story, let's be honest. Yeah, that's true.
And speaking of something that's probably not going to be too much about story now that we've had a longer look at it, we saw the teaser. I was intrigued by the teaser, but the first official trailer for the new Superman has dropped. Boy, there's a lot of fucking characters in there. Yeah, I'm not so sure about this. Yeah, that teaser looked intriguing for sure. That teaser was great. This trailer sucked. This looks like a fucking mess. Mm-hmm.
So we'll see. We'll see what happens. We got some good news from Star Trek Land. Star Trek Strange New Worlds will finally be returning this July. It's not that far away now. July 17th with a two-episode premiere, just a month shy of marking two years since the conclusion of the second season. July 17th, let's hope we haven't... We're not in Civil War II at that point, but we'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
And Star Trek Prodigy can't seem to score any luck. Last week it was confirmed that Netflix, who saved Prodigy from being completely scrubbed off streaming services last year after Paramount pulled the plug on the show during the production of its greenlit second season. is about to lose the streaming rights for Prodigy's first season next month, with rights for the second season set to expire at the very end of... 2025.
So who knows where this is going? Why Paramount isn't just going to go ahead and pay for it and buy it and have all Star Trek under one umbrella is beyond me, but that's why I'm not like a David Sasloff type who can't pick a fucking name for a streaming service, I guess. The thing about Star Trek Prodigy is, who fucking cares?
I still don't get who the audience is. You can go back and find my rant about that when it first came out. I tried to watch it. It's not for kids. It's not for adults. They're trying to pitch it as it's like a... continuation of the spirit of Voyager because they have Janeway on it, but I just don't get the show.
No, and the animation style is just like the Star Wars animation style. So I don't know what universe I'm in when I was watching it. I'm like, is this Star Wars? Is this Star Trek? Is this something completely different? What is this thing that we're watching? I think that's the universal assessment.
Yeah, so I don't get it, but, you know, Paramount, you've got everything else, so why you wouldn't have this is beyond me. You even have the original Star Trek animated series that nobody watches. So, you know, phone up. Just get them all. On streaming service news, ESPN is about to launch their long-awaited standalone streaming service and has announced some key details, the first being it's going to cost $30 per month just for one streaming service. Nah.
Yeah, so I guess if you're super into sports, this is maybe a must-have for you, but I think you're better off just bundling it with Disney, which I'm not entirely sure what that price will be, but there you go.
They're not calling it ESPN Plus or anything. They're just calling it ESPN, so that won't be confusing. Yeah, really. Fox is also releasing their very own streaming service shortly, according to a report by Variety. It's going to be called Fox 1. bucking the trend and the company plans to launch the platform at the start of the nfl season because they have the rights to that so there you go uh they uh ceo lachlan murdoch son of rupert says it'll be holistic of all of our content sports and news
So finally a platform for both Bob's Burgers and angry rants about men with painted nails. Not looking forward to that one. Nope. And as mentioned previously, the once and future HBO Max will take up the title again this summer. They announced it an irony-free press release. With a straight face, the company boasts that the name change is also a testament to WBD's willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach.
and here, boldly iterating its strategy is presumably a chat GPT translation of Ask Covering Retreat. Let me just take this guy out back. this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing I don't understand do you know how much money they've spent on rebranding do you know how much money they've spent on him he's made almost 400 million dollars so far
And I'm sure the fourth rebrand has caused about that much, if not more. Exactly. This guy's just burning money. What the fuck is wrong with these people? We're done with this guy. Just keep making the good shows, please. Yep. Speaking of good shows, I found a great podcast episode this week with my friend Andy Preboy. He was on an episode of Lived Through That. Lived Through That is like This American Life with a rock and roll twist.
Listen to iconic musicians from the 80s and 90s tell stories about pivotal moments in their lives. Folks like Nirvana's Chris Novoselic, indie icon Tanya Donnelly, members of the British band Squeeze, and so many more, like Andy. It's a great little episode.
And I highly recommend it. It just dropped the other night, I think like Thursday night or Wednesday night at midnight. And I was like, oh, let me listen to this. And I was up, you know, way too late past my bedtime because it was really good. I can't remember if I've listened to this podcast before or not. There's chances I have. I think so. There's an awful lot of people that I really like. I mean, then there's also the Wayne Chung guys, like who gives a shit about that.
There's a lot of great people in this list. I just wonder if it's one of those ones where I couldn't stand the host and I didn't keep up with it. The host doesn't even speak, so he introduces it and then goes away.
I think you have reviewed this one on the show before. It's really good. I highly recommend it. I'm going to go back through it because there's an awful lot of people I'm really intrigued by in here. Well, I don't care if you go back through the whole thing. Just listen to Andy's episode.
Okay, I'll download Andy's. Yeah, and he had so much material from Andy that he's doing a bonus episode next week that has kind of the story of Tomorrow Wendy and some of the Walla Voodoo stuff, so looking forward to that. Excellent. The dark side! Ha! With Dave.
Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave. Podcast superhost Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyberwire every day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat. Breaks down industrial cyber security on control loop. It even brings the laughs on only malware in the building. Hello, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. How's everybody doing? I think I have you beat now. Oh, go on. So...
You have five shows that you're working on. Oh, boy. I can hear the unzipping of the pants now. Here we go. Okay. Grumpy old geek. The Kara Golden Show. How to Woo. Christopher Lockhead, follow your different getpaid.ai and Revenue Renegades. I got seven active shows now, baby. and I haven't slept in weeks, and I still have no money at the end of the month. I've got one, and I'm trying to get to zero.
Well, okay. I'm actively trying to keep you from getting to zero, so babysitting Brian on my list as well. Great. So if I count off, I've got Cyber Wire, Caveat, Hacking Humans, Research Saturday, Only Malware in the Building, Grumpy Old Geeks. So that's sick. We're missing Research Saturday on your list. That's okay. Jason, you're going to have to redo that. It's kind of a subcategory of the daily podcast, but it is its own thing. Yeah.
Yeah, well, congratulations. I don't know. I was going to say, I don't know if congratulations are in order. I certainly know. with what it is like to have multiple podcasts be your responsibility every week. So my heart goes out to you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I haven't slept more than five hours in three weeks or two weeks. But here's my question. Are any of your shows a daily?
Uh, no. But, so, Kara Golden has three. Dave, do you also edit your shows and produce your shows and produce your shows? Oh, no, I have people. and write your own material. Exactly. No, no, I haven't. Most people don't know, but we actually script Dave for him on the Grumpy Old Geeks. It's not even Dave. It's just, it's Robo Dave. We replaced him with, what's the hell his name? That's a long time ago. Long ago. Yep, yep. Absolutely.
Three of my shows now are video, so I'm in premiere most of the days, which takes seven times longer than the audio shows. Surprisingly, I get paid the same. Good deal. Good deal. Great deal. I love it. Jason has chose to represent himself, Dave. Yeah. It's one way to go. I think I'm just going to go with that guy that just does DoorDash and sells on Etsy and lives in a trailer. I think he's got it figured out. Yeah, he knows what he's doing.
Right, right. So instead of pursuing greater income, you were pursuing... More work, fewer things to pay for. That's it. Yes, I'm just living in a shack. That's it. Yeah. Best way to make a penny is to save a penny, Dave. That's true. That's true. Me and Dino living in a Jeep. That'll be it. So I put this story in here because we've had so much bathroom talk about what it's like to poop at work. Yeah.
The trials and tribulations of finding the right bathroom. Well, a former SpaceX employee is suing the company, claiming he was fired for taking too long in the loo, despite having Crohn's disease. According to the federal lawsuit, 58-year-old Douglas Altsher says managers threatened to terminate him if he used the restroom too frequently, denied his doctor's note, and eventually fired him for deficient performance. The suit also alleges toxic chemical exposure, unpaid breaks, and wage cuts.
It's the latest and growing list of complaints about working conditions at Elon Musk's companies, including high injury rates at SpaceX and retaliation against employees who raised safety concerns. So pooping on the job is verboten at SpaceX. I mean, I googled ADA and pooping. As one does. You should have put that into my anus AI. It's purposely built for it. And what it came up with, it says, if a person's IBS
symptoms significantly impact on a major life ability, IBS would qualify as a covered disability. So seems to me like this gentleman certainly, if nothing else, has a case We don't know how much time he was spending in the bathroom, but it also seems to me like if possible, this would have been a perfect candidate for work from home. Yeah, but Elon doesn't like that, remember? That's right. That's right.
Well, look, I think we know the real reason that this guy got fired, and we touched upon it a little earlier in the podcast. SpaceX is not what I would call a Silicon Valley company, but it's certainly a tech company, and it's certainly run by Elon. king of the tech bros at this point. I would say take a look at this guy's age. Oh, he's 58. Let's get him the fuck out of here. Yeah, that's depressing. Yeah, maybe I need to start squirreling away like Jason's doing.
Yeah, one can age out of this very quickly. Let's move on to greener pastures as it were. While Disney fans await the arrival of Walt Disney's high-tech robot this summer for Disneyland's 70th anniversary, an interactive Mickey Mouse that can blink and talk while you eat popcorn out of its head is now available for purchase.
Monkey brains! Yes, there's a moving and blinking bucket you can dig into while engaging in fun conversation starters with a simple Hey Mickey. It's pre-programmed with a handful of phrases, but the real treat is the moving head and blinking eyes. It's astounding and a little creepy, but in a cute way at least. And I have to give them credit for not saying that it's packed with AI to make it do it.
What does it cost? They actually don't list that in the article. I don't know what the cost is. It's got to be expensive. Right. Yeah, it's no just normal bucket. Yeah, I don't really understand why they're still making these popcorn buckets. In other words, just make it a little Mickey. Make it a little interactive Mickey. Because people collect them. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you know, you can't do a high-profile movie now without unveiling a popcorn bucket for it.
I guess what I'm complaining about is when the functionality of the thing... far strays from the original functionality of the thing. In other words, this is way more interactive Mickey toy than it is popcorn bucket. Yeah, so last time we were at Disneyland last summer, my son found this little interactive Darth Vader where you tap on its head and it just...
spouts phrases at you and it's super cute and it's a lot of fun and we have a great time with it, but it's also not a popcorn bucket. It's just the toy. Right, right. Yes. just make the toy. And that's interesting. And why make it a popcorn bucket as well? But it's just, you know.
If we can pry money from their cold, dead hands, we will. I have two, two interactive R2-D2s. I have one that is about... seven or eight inches tall that sits on my desk, and I have one that's probably about 18 inches tall. That's in my home theater at home, sits next to the movie screen there. You know, life goal is to get a full-size R2-D2, which... I think Adam Savage refers to as a happiness machine. If you have a full-size R2-D2 in your house, how can you not be?
So are you prioritizing the full-size R2-D2 over the full Stormtrooper outfit, or which comes first? Here's the thing. If I can afford a full-size R2-D2, I can afford both. Because the Stormtrooper uniforms are not terribly... Actually, you guys set me up with the most expensive part which is the helmet. So since I have a top-notch helmet, I could get the rest of the Stormtrooper. The thing that's really holding me back from getting the rest of the Stormtrooper is that...
At this point, if I were to pull the trigger and get the stormtrooper outfit, If you were to pull the trigger, you'd miss. That's true. Good one. Thank you. I would be the fat trooper. I was going to say, you'd have to modify your diet to be able to stay inside of it. At our age, we should be more cosplaying Porkins. Yes, exactly. So I would be... I'd need whatever the Imperial version of...
Spanx are to wear under my Stormtrooper suit. So that's kind of been keeping me from... pulling the trigger what it should do is motivate me to lose the weight but so far that hasn't happened so uh yeah you know these are these are fun things to think about but the It's hard to pull the trigger on some of these things when they're really not that practical. On the other hand, I have a new appreciation for a recent...
appreciation for the fact that life is freaking short, so don't postpone joy. Very true. Right. So, one of the things that caught my eye from that article was the fact that they were talking about the arrival of Walt Disney's high-tech robot this summer, which I had not heard about, so I immediately had to find the article about that.
When Disneyland turns 70 this July, Main Street's Opera House will play host to the return of Walt Disney, who will sit down with audiences and tell his story in robot form. The response has been mixed. especially among members of the Disney family. Disney's grandnephew Roy P. Disney was present in support of the announcement. Meanwhile, Walt's granddaughter Joanna Miller wrote a Facebook post stressing that he would not have wanted to be turned into an animatronic.
The idea of robotic grandpa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense. It would be an imposter. To which I say, have you been to the park? Yeah, right, right. Have you been? what the park is right if there were anyone in the world if you made a list of people most appropriately to be turned into an animatronic robot
Walt Disney would be at the top of the list. I mean, the very top of the mountain. So I'm actually looking forward to seeing this because I know the technology has come a long way since, you know, the Hall of Presidents and all that sort of thing. So I'm excited. Right, yeah, me too. What do you guys think of, so the Hall of Presidents is closed right now, in Disney World anyway, for refurb, and I'm putting big air quotes around refurb.
What do you guys think about the notion that the Hall of Presidents needs to be reworked? Um, the last time I was in the hall of presidents, which was probably four years ago. Um, people were booing and cheering for Presidents. So my point being that it no longer has the reverence that it once had for the office of the presidency. So I've heard people say that, you know, wouldn't this be a great place to use the Muppet?
Yes. Turn it into a Muppets Hall of Presidents. Entertainment has moved on and the concept of what Disneyland is has moved on. Walt was very much into education. I don't know how you have a park that sits... that sits a Marvel land and a Cars land and the Star Wars land with the Hall of Presidents. I'm quite frankly astonished that anybody even goes into the Hall of Presidents anymore except for maybe to get into some air conditioning. Yeah, air conditioning and a good nap. Yeah.
I think what you should do is electrify the seats and put in just a DV notification. If you talk too loud, you just get a zap in the ass. Yeah. And speaking of the Muppets, as the Muppets' presence at Disney Parks continues to evolve, the beloved Jim Henson Company characters are marking their 70th year anniversary at the same time at Disneyland.
With that in mind, Disney Experiences and Muppet Studios decided to collaborate on a special show to fit perfectly along with the celebrations across the Disneyland Resort. Well, not quite a special show. The first showing of World of Color Happiness, the nighttime water spectacular at Disney California Adventure is premiering and the Muppets get the special greeting before the show. At least they're doing something.
Yeah, I put a link in here to a video of it. Oh, excellent. And it's good. It's good. I mean, when I say it's good, I mean it is in the spirit of the Muppets. It feels Muppety. It feels like it's written by someone who gets... the Muppets and so there's several really funny moments in it and I think the characters are true to themselves so
I think they did a good job with it. It's one of the better Muppet things I've seen lately, and how nice to see them getting some love from Disney in a forward-facing place. So I like it. Yeah, they're still going to do the Muppet roller coaster in Florida, but I'm hoping to be able to catch this when I go to L.A. for the summer. Ah, okay. Al writes in, Hi, I was not able to find an online copy of Digital Dreams, the work of the Sony Design Center by Paul Kunkel.
For Dave. But I was able to find one of his other classic works, How to Toilet Train Your Cat, 21 Days to a Litter-Free Home. Give us some links. Well, golly. Thanks, Al. I mean, if you want to collect all of his works. Right. I think Paul Kunkel only has three books and I already own one of them, which is his work on the Apple design team. which we talked about last time. He must have had an awful experience toilet training his cat to veer off into this category for his third book.
Right. I have never been a cat owner. I've never owned a cat. I've never lived with a cat. I always say that I don't have enough self-confidence to be a cat owner. I need the unconditional love of a dog. When I come home, I want the dog there greeting me. I want my pet to want me. Right, exactly. I don't want the indifference of a cat. And I understand people love cats. Good for you. I'm happy for you. But just not something I have a lot of experience with, nor much interest in either.
So the notion that people twilight train their cats is kind of fascinating. Seems like the kind of thing you'd see on America's Funniest Home Videos. I think I first saw that on Real People back in the day. Yes. Yes. So here's the little tagline. Paul Kunkel, who toilet trained his first cat while in college and who has continued to train his own and friend's cats ever since.
presents a foolproof 21-day program for teaching any litter-trained cat between the ages of 6 months and 10 years to use a toilet instead of a litter box. Older cats can still be trained, but the process will probably take longer.
requiring nothing more than magazines and or newspapers, masking tape, heavy-duty plastic wrap, and a supply of fresh litter. The plan begins with you placing the box next to the toilet, and after gradually raising it to the height of the seat, ends with a cat, well, using it like any other member of the family for life. Why the magazines and newspapers?
I wonder, do you teach your cat to read at the same time as you're teaching it to poop in the toilet? Right, right. The cat scrolls Instagram. Come on. I was going to say, the cat can no longer poop without... having a mobile device. This book did come out in 1991, so it was pre-device era. Right. And then I guess the thing is that you also have to train the cat to flush, right? Mm-hmm. Which it seems like a cat would be able to do. I don't know. I'm not sure an eight-year-old can at this point.
That's true. Just saying. You look for my new book. I'm still trying to get my 26-year-old to put the toilet seat down when he's done, to understand that he's a contributing member of society and there are some things that a gentleman simply does and does not do. But, you know, pick your battles. Before we wrap up here, I have two items I just wanted to highlight for the grumpy part of Grumpy Old Geeks. A little ranting is in order here.
I had two customer service run-ins this week that have left me frustrated. So I thought I'd share. The first one was, as we know, about a week ago was Mother's Day. And so my mother passed away a few years ago, but I wanted to send some flowers to a close relative. who lives a couple hours away. So I called up one of the big online flower providers and put in my order, and off it was supposed to go. And Sunday comes and goes.
And I get a message that says, we're terribly sorry, but your delivery is not going to happen today. We've scheduled it for tomorrow. We understand how important it is. to have these things delivered to loved ones, and we apologize for the inconvenience. I'm thinking to myself, okay, whatever. It's Mother's Day. It's on a Sunday, and they're very busy. The person I'm sending this to is very understanding. Like, they're not one of those people who...
hold this over you, you know, that how dare the flowers you send me be late. So I'm like, all right, fine. Monday rolls around. 4 o'clock Monday. We are terribly sorry that we are not going to be able to deliver your flowers today. We understand how important it is to you to have these things delivered to loved ones on time, and this will be scheduled for tomorrow. At least use chat GPT to vary up the emails. I'm like, okay. Fine. I'll wait another day. Next day, four o'clock rolls around.
We are so sorry that we are unable to deliver your flowers today. We have rescheduled it for tomorrow. I'm like, okay. So the next morning, I sit down on my computer and I send a little note to customer service and I say, look, all I want is someone to be straight with me. Are these flowers ever going to be delivered? Or is this just a way for you to convince me to cancel my order?
Because if it's just the best thing for us to do is to part ways, let's do that so I can move on with my life and not have this day-to-day sort of leading on. I got no response other than a message saying, your order has been canceled. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So there's two things I've learned over many Mother's Days and various other flower delivering occasions, which maybe will help you in the future and any listeners. First off, Mother's Day, flower delivery, always due Saturday.
Do not even attempt to try to have them delivered on Sunday. Moms will not care. They will be happy to get the flowers. And secondly, never use any of these services, the big flower services. I'm thinking specifically of one that might start with 1-800. What I have always done is I have used the Googlebot to find a local small flower shop very, very close to the...
the delivery address and call them up if they do not have a website. Most do have websites these days and they appreciate and they appreciate your custom because they are a small mom and pop shop and not a big corporation. and they're also local and will deliver. That is indeed what I ended up doing. There you go. Yeah. The funny thing was, the woman I spoke to is a very small town, and the woman I spoke to was delightful.
small business owner, all those kinds of things. And she said to me, well, when would you like this delivered? And I said, well, as soon as possible. She said, well, I can't deliver it today because I'm not having flowers delivered till tomorrow because I didn't really think there'd be many deliveries the rest of this week. Right. I said, fair enough.
that is fine and so they got delivered the next day which of course added another day to the delivery here but in the end the person was delighted that they got them no hard feelings And I ended up doing what I should have done from the very beginning, which is, as you say, Brian, go to the local place. Not the big place. By the way, happy birthday. Thank you very much. I will expect my flowers in two weeks. Crap. So the other one...
As I've shared here, a couple months ago now, my father passed away. And so we are in the process of preparing his home for sale. And as part of that, we have a relative is living in the house, sort of house sitting. and helping prepare the house for sale. And so because of that, I have not shut off the internet and Comcast. cable in the house for the sake of this person living there. I'm already feeling pain. Yeah. However, they did not have to have a $300 a month Comcast bill.
for a single person living in the house. I think my father had six TVs. all around the house that had cable boxes. They're paying monthly rentals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Also, this person does not need gigabit internet at the house. So all I wanted to do was dial down the service, right? I didn't want to disconnect the service. I just wanted to save some money. Just scale it back. Cut it in half, right?
So I go to Comcast's website, and of course, what they really want you to do is talk to the chatbot. I said, all right, let's give this a whirl. So I bring up the chat bot and it comes up and it says, Hi, how can I help you today? I say hello, I am trying to dial down the service for a loved one who recently passed away. I'm just trying to save some money. So my understanding is, you want to save some money.
That's correct. Yes, I'd like to save some money for my deceased relative who no longer lives in the home while we prepare to sell the home. Great! Let me look at your bill, and I'll see what kind of money I can save you. Stand by. Very good. I'll just wait here. Comes back. I'm waiting. A few minutes pass. Comes back. Great news! I can save you $50 a month and add a mobile line to your account. Does that sound like a great deal? No, my dead father doesn't need a mobile line.
Thank you very much. I mean, unless it would work. You guys have figured that out. Somebody actually mentioned, I posted about this and said, boy, that would be one hell of a long distance call. It's just true. So I just said, No thank you. I will pursue other avenues and I disconnected with the chatbot. But it just reminded me that these chatbots are completely ill-equipped for anything that is outside of a very narrow band.
of normal exchanges. And they make it so hard to actually find a real live human being. So what I ended up doing in the end was I sicked my wife on them. and She took care of it. So cut the bill in half. That's usually a good way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, honey, I am frustrated. Would you like to have a run at this? And she was like, oh, let me at him. Let me. Yeah. So. Which is probably what I should have done to begin with. But anyway, so...
You know, eventually I will have to shut off the service. But I also want to contrast this, that... In my journey with all the things that I've had to take care of, with my father's estate, everyone...
except for Comcast, has been delightful. They've been helpful. They've been kind. They've been understanding. They've been patient. So this is really what makes this stand out is how... boneheaded it was from start to finish and that it didn't have to be this way but yeah And all those chatbots, they're not ready for primetime.
No, absolutely not. But they've been put in prime time pretty much everywhere. Right. I used to go to websites for customer service. I just won't anymore. I'll find a phone number. Yeah. The websites are just useless. Well, it reminds me of the story you guys covered earlier in the show about that company that had... gone all in on AI and then decide, oh, this doesn't work. We need to hire people. Hire those people back that we fired. Yeah. Yeah. Funny that.
All right. Well, that's what I have this week. So take care and I'll talk to you guys soon. Talk to you soon. Out! Over at Patreon, we've got two new people, Lucas and Figure 15. Welcome! And thanks to Gordy, who upped their pledge. And from the Legacy Files, we've got Kenny, Jordan, James, Dan, Sam, Brian, Tara, Zaddy Mortis, Gary, and Michael. So thank you, everybody, for being a patron.
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Thank you. I've got a shout out this week to the Everyone is Titled to My Own Opinion Substack newsletter by Jeff Tiedrich. It is the greatest newsletter about the Trump administration to hit the internet. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. It is filthy and pulls no punches. It's very funny. I enjoy it as well. It is the greatest thing I've found, yes.
And happy birthday to my Brian's. You, Brian, and our friend Brian Bondale, who also celebrated a birthday this week. So, welcome to being older, you old fucks. Youngest of the Bryans and youngest on this podcast. Still, thank you very much. And not that young. No, not that young. I wish Brian a happy birthday as well. And then thank you for my birthday wishes. I'm looking forward to... finishing this podcast and then doing nothing. Drinking! What a fish!
No, those days are long gone. Dinner with the family and I'll have a little bit of whiskey tonight with Murder Bomb. All right. Until next time, I'm the older, and not necessarily wiser, Brian Schulmaster. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links to goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 697.
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