712: Preparation WTF

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. And as some people have pointed out last week, I was fighting off a sore throat, so I did sound very different. Yeah, I figured that as much. People were like, did they use AI on Brian? I'm like, no. No, no, they used DayQuil.

Okay. Dayquil and Sipacol. Remember Sipacol? Yes, I do. That's it. Like destroyed your throat. It was awesome. I love that stuff. Bring that back in lawn darts. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's been banned in 47 European.

union countries and everywhere else yeah uh well we got a bit of follow-up jason uh in case you were wondering what you would get if you appeased mind dump um as we recall the intel ceo uh Trump decided that he should be fired because that's his business. And then they made a deal because that's what he does. He makes deals. All those tariff deals. Trade deals everywhere.

Okay. Yep. Yep. Tons of them. Anyways, Intel made the deal and Intel no longer has to fulfill certain requirements or meet milestones that it was originally supposed to under the chips act because, you know, you made a deal now government deals in the company. That's out. Yeah.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel said in a filing that it can now receive funding from the government as long as it can show that it already spent the $7.9 billion on projects that it agreed to take on under a deal with the Commerce Department last year. In addition, the company doesn't have to share a percentage of the total cumulative cash flow it gets from each project with the Commerce Department anymore because Trump gets it.

Okay. It doesn't have to adhere to some of the Chips Act's workflow policy requirements and most other restrictions as well. However, it still can't use the funds it gets from the government for dividends and to repurchase shares, which probably really chaps a lot of rich people's hides. Yeah. Thank you.

I wonder what these workflow policy requirements and other restrictions are. Maybe a vaccinated workforce? Don't need that anymore. DEI is gone. Oh, yeah. Vaccination requirements. Yep. Okay. Well, we did talk about for the past couple of weeks how it is so tough to get a job. out there right now. I have been addicted to scrolling LinkedIn because it's just like, it's my new doom scroll.

Oh, yeah. It's like fucked company, except, you know, owned by Microsoft. Yep. The U.S. labor market showed fresh signs of weakness and fresh signs of weakness. I love that. There's a title. Fresh signs of weakness in August. Yeah, fresh signs of weakness. That's my new stripper name. Employers added just 22,000 jobs, far below expectations, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, the highest since 2021. Yeah.

I mean, you can fire the bearer of bad news, but the bad news still comes. Yep, it sure does. And this obviously can't be a surprise to anyone. I mean, I think we all know people that have been laid off. We all know people that are looking for jobs, have been looking for jobs forever. There's no jobs. Nope. Nope. But yeah, when you fire all the weathermen, it doesn't mean the hurricane's not coming. Yeah, exactly. So we're loaded right now, Brian, because...

I signed us up for true fans, not only fans, true fans. This is the blockchain monetization platform for podcasts where people can give you sats or satoshis. So I thought they were SATs. I was like, I did that a long time ago, man. And I aced it. Thank you very much. I was so miserable on my SATs. I couldn't show them to anyone. So hello, Jason DeFilippo. We have successfully transferred nine sats to your true fans wallet. And I looked up how much nine sats was. It's about one cent.

So, and I've, and since the platform lets you back trace who gave you the money, C gave us the money. So thanks C for the nine cents. Yeah. Well, he did give us 10 sats, but the platform took one. Oh, they took .001 cent from us? Yeah. Bastards. That's about it.

All right. And just for the headline, because we can't seem to get away from this one, I saw this on Gizmodo, which normally is great for headlines, but I'm sure this one will also chap your hide, Jason. The hydrogen-powered plasma torch decimates plastic waste in a blink.

And I looked at the picture. There was not just one tenth of it gone. I was going to say it's 90% left. Nope, nope, nope. Well, Brian, I see your decimation and I raise you one butthole. These are dangerous words to put together, Jason. I know. Don't you decimate my butthole. Gizmodo, again, we're ringing in the ear with the best headlines. Your butthole is begging you to stop scrolling on the toilet.

A study published in the journal PLOS found that smartphone use in the bathroom is linked to a higher risk of... hemorrhoids yeah because you're sitting there for fucking two hours i know doctors say it's not the phones themselves but the extra time people spend sitting that causes trouble derp plop

Two-thirds of study participants admitted to using their phones on the toilet, and they were far more likely to stay there longer than five minutes. The threshold, gastroenterologists say, increases strain on rectal veins. I haven't been in the toilet shorter than five minutes. Ever. Being in the toilet is the only alone time one gets as a married man with a child. Or any man. That is a man-safe space. That is his castle. Doing the paperwork, man. I know.

Experts say the fix is simple. Put down the phone, do your business and move on. Your backside will thank you. I mean, you need to get some preparation WTF. Preparation WTF. That's a good one. I like that. Thank you.

In the news. Oh, Brian, it's Tesla Day. Why? We're... Exploding cars are running into other cars. Tesla has been hit with a massive verdict in Florida. A federal jury ordered the company to pay $243 million over a 2019 crash involving a Model S on autopilot that killed one woman and seriously injured her boyfriend. We talked about this case.

I don't know, since 2019. Well, the jury awarded $129 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages, with Tesla found responsible for roughly $43 million of the compensatory damages, plus all of the punitive. award. Lawyers revealed Tesla rejected a $60 million settlement before trial. Tesla denies wrongdoing and says it will appeal, warning the verdict could set back self-driving safety. I can tell you exactly what's setting back self-driving safety, and it's Tesla.

Tesla, yeah. The call's coming from inside the house. Well, and Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, and a hacker found it. A jury in Miami last month found Tesla partially violent for the same. Yeah, same one. Right here in the folder. It's right on the desktop. In your AWS bucket that you didn't password protect. The case hinged on crucial. Oh, maybe that's why they fired Dojo, the supercomputer, because he left it on the desktop. Grok probably spat it out.

That's true. That's true. They just asked Grok. The case hinged on crucial electronic data from the Tesla's autopilot system, which the company initially claimed it didn't possess. However, a self-described hacker known online as at green, the only was. listed by the plaintiffs. He successfully recovered the data from a chip, famously doing so well at a South Florida Starbucks. This discovery revealed that Tesla had the collision snapshot data on its own servers all along.

So that became the key evidence showing what the Tesla cameras detected just moments before the collision. Watch out for that tree. Yep. There you go. Yeah. The jury, we just talked about who got what. Yeah. But that's how they did it. Kill the Gibson. Roger that. Now, also in Tesla news.

Elon Musk spent Labor Day dropping a new master plan for Tesla. Would you call it perhaps a final solution? A final solution. This is his fourth Reich. But this one leaves more questions than answers. Posted to X, the text is vague, heavy on buzzwords and light on specifics with promises of unconstrained sustainability and global prosperity. From a car. Yeah.

Oddly, there's more focus on Tesla's humanoid robots than on actual cars, despite years of misproduction targets and ongoing safety probes. Yes. The plan also comes just weeks after Tesla disbanded its much-typed Dojo supercomputer team, a move that suggests the company will now lean on outside providers for its autonomous driving ambitions. Yeah, sounds like he's pivoting. Yeah. Yep.

To robots. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, here's this one. Tesla's latest software update is giving safety first a whole new meaning. by firing airbags before you even crash. The Model Y's camera-only Tesla Vision system will now preemptively inflate front airbags with the companies bragging it's making your car safer over time. But here's the catch. This is the same camera setup known for phantom braking on the freeway and failing to notice rain.

owners are already sweating, joking online about airbags going off at stoplights, wondering if trusting Elon's glitchy eye in the sky to decide when to punch you in the face with a pillow is a great idea or not. Sure, Teslas have strong safety ratings, but autopilot and full self-driving have also been linked to some very real wrecks and deaths.

Many, many deaths. The deaths are huge, huge deaths. Now, the question is, are pre-crash airbags genius or just another Tesla science experiment where you are the crash test dummy? The second. That's the answer to that one. Full self-punching.

Title number three. What else has this shithead done? Mein Fuhrer Trump is showing off his newly paved Rose Garden Thursday night. That was last night. On hand, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, Microsoft's Bill Gates, which he knows probably fairly well from the trips to Epstein Island together, and Satya Nadella.

Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai, OpenAI Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. David Sachs, David Nutsack. Everybody but Elon was invited. is what everybody's saying. But then Elon came out and says, no, no, no. I was invited. I'm just too busy. Sure. Post a picture of that invite, Elon. And not one that you ask Grok to make up for you. Unbelievable.

Well, he might have been actually a little busy because Tesla shareholders will vote on November 6th at 3 p.m. Central at the Gigafactory in Texas and also streamed live on whether to let Tesla invest in Elon Musk's AI startup, XAI. Because they just shut down Dojo. The proposal comes from Florida shareholder Stephen Hawk, who argues that integrating XAI tech like Grok could accelerate Tesla's push in full self-driving robotics and energy, boosting innovation and shareholder value.

Unusually, Tesla's board is neutral. So if approved, Tesla would become Musk's second company to back XAI. SpaceX has already committed $2 billion as part of a $5 billion raise. Fueling speculation, XAI may be struggling to attract outside investors. They already hit the Nazi group there. They're out of cash. Some Tesla holders call XAI a rival, but a lawsuit over that claim was dismissed last year.

Here's where it gets interesting. The vote lands alongside a Tesla-backed plan that could lift Musk's pay over 10 years to roughly $1 trillion. and raise his control above 25%, even as Tesla appeals a Delaware ruling that voided his earlier $56 billion package.

Hitting those compensation targets would require ballooning Tesla's market cap from about $1 trillion to more than $8 trillion, an outcome some analysts say may hinge on breakthroughs in AI and humanoid robots, potentially with XAI's help. fat fucking chance fat fucking chance all right oh god okay are we done with elon i think i i think that's uh what is that the 10 minutes thank you for the elon wrap-up

Unfortunately. You're welcome. Let's move on to other assholes. Meta. Meta reportedly allowed unauthorized celebrity AI chatbots and services. We've been talking about this for a little bit now because all this information has been released. And of course, it's just...

drips and drabs coming out every week meta hosted several ai chatbots with the names and likenesses of celebrities without their permission according to reuters unauthorized chatbots that reuters discovered during its investigation included taylor swift

Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, and Scarlett Johansson, and they were available on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. At least one of the chatbots was based on an underage celebrity and allowed the tester to generate a lifelike, shirtless image of the real person.

Sexy. Not just Grok. Look at spicy. Yeah. The chatbots also apparently kept insisting that they were the real person they were based on in their chats. While several chatbots were made by third-party users with Meta's tools, Reuters unearthed at least three. that were made by a product lead of the company's generative AI division. Oops.

Some of those created by the product lead were based on Taylor Swift, which responded to Reuters Tester in a very flirty manner, even inviting them to the real Swift's home in Nashville. Do you like blonde girls, Jeff? Chatbot reportedly asked when the tester was single. Maybe I'm suggesting that we write a love story about you and a certain blonde singer. Want that? Oh, my God. What is wrong with these people?

I don't know, Brian. I don't know. Well, Meta told Reuters that it prohibits direct impersonations of celebrities even while being exposed that they're doing direct impersonations of celebrities themselves. But they're acceptable as long as they're labeled as parodies. That's not a parody. No, no, it is not. The news organization said some of the celebrity chatbots had found weren't labeled as parodies. The eye sees one thing, Jason.

The heart wants another, Brian. The company then told Reuters that the product lead only created the celebrity bots for testing, but the news org found that they were widely available. Users were able to interact with them more than 10 million times. Can't keep Taylor in the lab. Again, you got to remember, we are the beta testers, to be fair.

So I guess we were just testing. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told the news organization that Meta's tool shouldn't have been able to create sensitive images of celebrities and blamed it on the company's failures to enforce its own policies. No shit. Is a policy really a policy if you don't enforce it? Oh, well, it's on the paper, Jason. The toilet paper.

And now Warner Brothers Discovery is filing a lawsuit against popular AI image generator MidJourney, accusing it of stealing and exploiting its intellectual properties. The complaint revolves around the AI tool's ability to generate images and videos of Warner Brothers popular fictional characters, including...

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, and his friends from Looney Tunes. Mid-Journey thinks it is above the law, the company wrote in its lawsuit. It said that the image generator sells a commercial subscription service powered by AI.

technology that was illegally trained using its copyrighted works. The company has argued that Midjourney has the technology to prevent users from generating images of the characters it owns, but it apparently refused to generate videos based on Warner Brothers properties when it first launched. But within the past couple of weeks, it allegedly removed those protections and told its users that they would encounter fewer blocked jobs. Have at it, people.

It's hard to imagine copyright infringement that is any more willful than what MidJourney is doing here, the plaintiff added, conveniently forgetting about, you know, a million other things on the internet. Yeah. Pinterest. Like Pinterest, yes.

Midjourney is prioritized and sought to preserve the hundreds of millions of dollars it earns annually from its service by doubling down on its theft of copyrighted works. Midjourney is already facing copyright infringement lawsuits filed by Disney and Universal Studios back in June. So this is the third major. one. Warner Brothers Discovery is now asking the court for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work by virtue of Mid Journey's willful infringement. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Well, you got to swing for the fences when you're doing this because, you know, small lawsuits don't mean anything. Yeah. Yeah. So they're just trying to crush them. That's what they're trying to do. And they're late to the table. I mean.

There's not going to be anything left after Disney and Universal. I don't think they care. To your point, it's not about the money. It's about making a statement here. You sue one of them, and hopefully they all back off and actually follow rules. Yeah. Yep. Performative.

It's a performative performance Well, OpenAI is taking on LinkedIn with a new AI-powered hiring platform. The company announced it will launch the OpenAI Jobs platform in mid-2026, designed to match workers with businesses using artificial intelligence. We launch it and it says there's no jobs. There's no jobs. The move puts OpenAI in direct competition with LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, ironically, OpenAI's biggest financial backer.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, says the platform will help find the perfect matches between what companies need and what workers can offer with a dedicated track for small business and local governments. The effort is part of OpenAI's broader push beyond ChatGPT, with other projects rumored to include a browser and even a social app where all the participants just talk to themselves and nobody's human. Great.

The company also plans to roll out AI fluency certifications through its OpenAI Academy with a pilot starting in 2025 in the goal of certifying 10 million Americans by 2030 in partnership with Walmart. So we can all be Walmart greeters. Because that's the only job left. That's going to be it. It is the human centipede of Walmart. Unbelievable. OpenAI executives acknowledge that AI could eliminate millions of white collar jobs before 2030. But say their goal.

to give workers the skills to adapt and become blue-collar workers and connect them to employers that need them. Need them so badly for Soylent Green. That's all that's going to be left. I mean, OpenAI is definitely trying to diversify now, that's for sure. The other thing that they're doing is OpenAI is gearing up to start mass production of its own AI chips next year to be able to provide the massive computing power its users need and to lessen its reliance.

on NVIDIA, according to Financial Times. The company reportedly designed the custom AI chip with U.S. semiconductor maker Broadcom, whose CEO recently announced it as a new client that put in a whopping $10 billion in orders. It didn't name the client, but the time source confirmed it was OpenAI, which apparently doesn't have plans to sell the chips and will only be using them internally. Wasn't Elon going to do that too? Yep. Make his own chips and then that just kind of went away.

Everybody was. Okay. You're not really making your own chips when it's actually Broadcom making it, but. Yeah. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. You know, I can design a shirt, but it's still Spreadshirt that made the shirt. Just saying. Printful.

We used Printful. Sorry, I went back about a decade. I know, spreadsheets sucked. It was good at the time, man. They were like one of the first out of the gate. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Until you washed it. Then it turned into a cyber truck and just fell apart.

Well, according to Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, an individual hacker outside the US exploited its AI system to identify, breach, and extort at least 17 companies over a three-month period. The hacker reportedly used Claude Code, a version of the chatbot designed to generate computer programs to find vulnerable firms, create malware, and organize stolen data. The AI even analyzed hacked financial records to calculate ransom.

demands in Bitcoin and drafted the extortion emails themselves. And who says these agents aren't ready for primetime? I'm telling you, man. Jeez. While cybercriminals have used AI for tasks like writing phishing emails before, this marks the... first publicly documented case of a chatbot automating nearly an entire hacking operation from scouting targets to executing the shakedown.

Anthropic says its safeguards caught the activity, but admits determined actors can sometimes evade defenses with sophisticated methods. Well, they didn't catch it for at least three months. So, wow. That's something. That is something. Bravo, hacker. I'm telling you. Hats off. Hats off for using the technology for what it's designed for. Yeah. Hey, Title IV.

Now, in some good news, Finland has just fired up the world's largest sand battery in the town of Porninin. Built by Polar Night Energy, the system stores 100 megawatt hours of heat in a giant sand silo, enough to warm the entire town for a week. It replaces an old wood chip plant as it's expected to slash local heating emissions by 70%.

The battery works by heating sand to over 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit with surplus wind and solar power, which can hold the energy for months and release it as hot air or steam when needed. Officials say it's a key step toward carbon neutrality in a model. for other cold climate regions. Now there's a video in the link in the show notes that's well worth watching. It's pretty cool tech and it's not that big. I mean, you could make a bunch of these things.

Plaint them all around the world. And then we're good to go. I can think of something else that can hold energy for months and release it as hot air. My decimated butthole. That's your autobiography. My decimated butthole. And I just threw this one in there because I think it's funny. Why the internet can't stop calling chat GPT a clanker. ... ... ... ... Quinker is basically an insult that punches at nothing, perhaps the least effective slur in history. This is like such a nothing article.

It's Slate, man. They've gone downhill. They have gone downhill. I might have to unsubscribe recently. The term for all its silliness has inspired a sort of spinoff, Clanker Lover, which in theory should carry more of a sting since it's aimed at actual humans.

Anti-AI crusaders on Reddit next have gleefully lobbed the phrase, which calls to mind an infinitely more offensive racist epitaph, at those with AI girlfriends and boyfriends trying to mock them as sad, lonely, and pathetic. Which, they kind of are.

Media Candy. Well, Brian, I saw a delightful, utterly, absolutely, and impeccably delightful movie called The Thursday Murder Club over on Netflix this week. Oh, yeah? It stars everybody under the sun. Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Remington Steele. Well, anyone that's been under the sun for at least about 75 years. Yes, yes, no. But it's a heavy hitter of British acting royalty. It was directed by Christopher Columbus, who did Home Alone. And Found America.

Yeah. Yeah. It's an Amblin entertainment movie. So, you know, it's got, you know, it's got Spielberg heft behind it anyway. It's a perfect movie. It is extremely well done. It's a great whodunit. It is absolutely delightful. Me and my roommate watched it and it was just, we thought it was going to be stupid. So, you know, we gave it five minutes and after five minutes, we just didn't turn it off.

Awesome. No, it looks great. This is definitely something I'll watch with the wife. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was going to say, watch this one with the wife. One that you don't want to watch with the wife is Weapons. I actually just don't want to watch it. It's actually not bad. It's not a bad horror movie. It's only – it's about a half an hour too long. But I really like the storytelling devices that they used. It was –

It was a good horror movie. It was actually a pretty creepy and like, yeah, a couple of times horror movie. Well, see, I think I told you though, like my, my, my appetite for these things since having a child myself has just disappeared. Like I can't watch them. Yeah. You probably don't want to watch this then. Yeah. No. Okay. Well, you know.

bachelors like me and single ladies can all get together and watch weapons it's good yeah and alien earth just keeps delivering it's five episodes in and this week was i think the best one of the bunch It's better than the movies. Seriously. Low bar after the first two. It's no, I mean, yeah, yeah. Forget that. I'm talking to like, you know, it's up there with the good alien movies.

I'm going to have to either go to Sweden or just do the sign up and binge once it's done. Yeah. Yeah. Just do it because you'll get through it in a day and a half. It's good. I'll let you know when they stick to Landon or if they stick to Landon. So far, just episode week to week to week, it's been amping up and it's really, really good.

All right, cool. My wife and I have been keeping up with Wednesday. We're basically just watching one a week. So we finished three of the initial four. I know the other four are already out now, but I love the show. It's so good. It's so good. What a great decision to bring. The parents into it because they're just knocking it out of the park. I mean, it's just so good. Yeah, I was so I was so unhappy with the the the father cast.

I could not see him as Gomez. But he's so good. He nails it, and it just keeps getting better and better. I just finished episode five, and he's so awesome in it. Everybody's awesome in it. Even Uncle Fester, who I really didn't want to like, he's really good. Everybody's good. Spoiled me on that one. I know he's coming back now.

It's so good, so good. It's okay. It's a great show. It's a great show. I think we need to talk about Strange New Worlds for a minute here, Jason. Okay, yes. Did you watch last night's episode? I did. All right. Very good. And I was very happy that they did not go back to the comedy well. I think that's been bothering me this season. We've had six episodes and four of them have been absolutely ridiculous comedic things. Now, not to say that I haven't enjoyed them.

Were they sprinkled along in a 26 episode season a la Star Trek The Next Generation, every single one of them would have been absolutely fantastic. Yeah. But when you know you're getting like eight to ten episodes total, we've had six. Only two have been somewhat serious. It's a lot. Yeah. Well, we're getting 12 and we've seen nine.

That's the. Well, whatever. The math's not math. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I have to say, though, on the four and a half Vulcans episode. Hilarious. Fucking hilarious. Patton Oswalt took me out of it a little bit. It's the same as having Adam Savage in The Expanse. It should have been anyone else. He did a good job, though. It was funny. It was funny.

He did a good job and it was funny. And I mean, nothing beats Anson Mount's hair. It was perfect. He took the show. He took the show. Absolutely stole the show. Yeah. Spock was just like. Poor Spock. Poor Spock. He gets to make out with all the hot girls on the show. That's true. That's true. Anyways, so I just think it's like a little too much leaning into the comedy this season, but...

I mean, they have been really funny. I was going to say, you know, you're saying that, but as we're talking about it, I'm like, they have been good, though. They have been good. It's just I want a regular episode. I want to spread out a little bit more. I miss 26 episode seasons where you just have a whole bunch of stuff. There's not enough for all this comedy. There's not. You know what needed some of that comedy, Jason? What? Upload.

Isn't it a comedy? Yeah. Apparently not enough. Supports to be. Okay. So does the bear, by the way. The bear says it's a comedy. Not a comedy. Not a comedy, yeah. So I've gone back, and again, I mentioned the other week that I realized that I'd somehow missed season three. So I'm watching season three. It's still a decent concept. There are one or two lines in every single episode that are gut-bustingly funny. But overall, it's just not good enough of a show.

Okay. Not enough comedy in it. Not a strong enough conceit to keep it running. It should have probably been about two seasons and cut it. I was fine with one. Yeah, one was probably fine.

Also, I have to do a mea culpa here for K-pop Demon Hunters. I shat all over it when I first reviewed it. I still don't care for the movie. I've sat through the movie once. Never need to see the movie again. What I will mea culpa on is the songs. I've been listening to them nonstop. They are fantastic. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who's also a big music guy and as music snobby as I can be.

he's more like you. He's very, he came from the punk rock thing and he likes punk rock and guitars and he keeps up with the local and the current punk rock scene and everything like that does not like electronica. And I was trying to explain to him. I got into electronica early on, like the early rave scene and the early EDM scene and all that sort of stuff. And I was trying to tell them that like pop music now and K-pop and all that. is basically the background music is straight up like...

early nineties electronica just with newer instruments. It's got the beats, it's got the builds, it's got everything. And it's just, the songs are really clever. And so the music is really good and the singing is really good. And the songs are actually. quite funny, and it's just really well done. Will I remember any of it in a year? Probably not, but is it of the moment and is it fantastic? Yes, it absolutely is.

All right. Good for you. Good for you. And since I just said something positive, fuck FIFA. All right. The 2026 World Cup is coming. There will be games here in Toronto. There will be games in Los Angeles. It's being split between Canada, US and Mexico. So games all over the place. This is like a great opportunity, once in a lifetime opportunity to go to World Cup games. I'm very excited about it. I tend to try to get tickets for me and my kid to go and attend a game no matter what game.

I'd love to see Germany, but I'm sure they're not going to be based here in Toronto and doubtful LA, most likely Chicago because there's a huge German community there. We'll see. Chicago is closer to you than LA. Yeah, I was considering flying. to see games until I discovered that FIFA has confirmed they're going to use Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. Oh, fuck that. Fuck you, you fucking enough fucking money, you fucking gouging assholes. I hate FIFA.

Tell me how you really feel, Brian. Dynamic pricing, you fucking bastards. Well, here's some interesting news. Morrissey, the former front man of the Smiths, is selling his 50% stake in the band, mainly because he hates stakes. The deal includes rights to the name, songs, artwork, merchandise, and publishing potentially worth tens of millions. He announced the sale on Instagram, saying he's tired of malicious associations.

with former bandmates. WME is taking offers. The move comes amid continued feuds with guitarist Johnny Marr, who recently turned down what he called an eye-watering reunion offer. That's grg.show slash donate. I wouldn't mind picking that up. Actually, Robert Smith has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. Oh, my God. If he bought it. Oh, my God. It would be. the funniest thing the world has ever seen. Or at least he can afford it. Oh, absolutely. Apps and doodads.

So Jason, a soundbar is one of those things that you buy and you install, and you'll probably swap out your TV a few times, and as long as the soundbar doesn't break, it basically just stays there forever. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like if the connections upgrade, that's the only reason to ever get to get a new one. Exactly. But I'm tempted. Okay. I am tempted because Marshall, known for the Marshall stack.

has a lineup of non-Rockstar grade audio gear that they've increased a little bit. As part of IFA 2025, the company announced the Heston 60, a more compact soundbar that complements its previously released Heston 120. These things are beautiful. They are pretty.

Marshall is keeping things mid-century with a design that invokes its classic amps and includes tactile controls, buttons instead of knobs like those used on the Heston 120. I think I want the 120 because I want my knobs. Yeah. Woven fabric and PU leather also comes in either cream or black.

And these can be mounted on a wall or set on TV stands, thanks to specially designed waveguides and angled drivers. Depending on whether it's mounted or not, you can flip the reversible control to suit the soundbar's orientation and even move the Marshall logo, which is magnetic.

And they're leaning into repairability. According to Marshall, the Heston 60 has a host of replacement parts, including the fret, the speaker grill, end caps, drivers, circuit boards, and all that other sort of stuff. And let's be honest, again, it's probably not going to break, but it looks awesome.

And yeah, I kind of want to upgrade my soundbar now. See, mine's behind the TV and then they're just like under that gap where the TV is. That's where the sound comes out because I don't want to see my soundbar. I don't want it anywhere. visible. But yeah, yeah. I would with this one. Yeah, this one's pretty. This one's pretty for sure. Go for it, man. I would go for the 122 because knobs, you know. Yeah, this one goes to 11.

Exactly. So a little bit more Elon news. Damn it. I know. Just when you thought you were out. Neuralink just got a reality check. It can't trademark telepathy or telekinesis because a lucid dreaming company called Prophetic beat him to it. I have to stop because this is just a... It's a clown show. Listeners, sometimes the stories are so stupid we can't make it through them. I know. Prophetic is a company that is selling you wearable tech for dream hacking. But they beat...

Elon to the punch on the trademarks, which means Elon is probably going to buy them out just to take the trademarks because he's soon to be a trillionaire. Speaking of dreams. Yeah. Although they're coming to your town, Brian Neuralink just finished two surgeries in Toronto and installed their brain chips into two people with a seven foot tall robot surgeon.

Great. Great. Yeah. So, yeah. But you shouldn't be allowed to trademark telepathy or telekinesis, period. Anyway. Period. Yeah. They're generic words. Generic word.

Instagram is finally available on your iPad, Jason, as a native app. It only took 15 years as the app first launched way back in 2010. It's a different platform, so the tablet-based app features redesigned elements. For instance, the... Okay. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It opens directly into reels, which is annoying as fuck. Fuck. I hate it. I already hate it because of that. I hate reels. I don't give a shit. I just want to see my friends posts.

Once you do hit the button. But nobody posts anymore. Everybody just makes reels. Well, not my friends because they're all old. So yeah, once you actually do hit the button to get the post there in chronological order with reason posts appearing first, you know, for now used to work for now, for now, we'll see. But yeah, it exists straight into reels. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, I played with it for about two minutes and I was just like, okay, where's my phone? I was looking at it on my phone. Exactly. I try to leave my iPad for either work or just reading. Oh, my iPad is just for fucking around. I don't do shit on my iPad, but it's got Kindle and every social app on the planet because I don't put social apps on my phone, except for Instagram because it's the only place I can post from. But hey, now I...

I don't know. Here's the thing. It took him 15 years to get version one done and version one of anything sucks. But I'm sure that I'm sure it has been engineered to the nth degree to make us watch and click more. Exactly. And Roblox is in the news. They've been in the news a lot recently because, you know, bad things are happening to kids and they don't do shit about it. They've announced that it aims to rule out age estimation technology to all of its users by the end of 2025.

Users on the gaming and social network will have to confirm their age in order to access communication features within the platform under the new policy. They initially rolled out an age verification option to teen accounts in July, so it totally makes sense that it'll take six more months for them to just...

Push the button for everybody. As part of an effort to keep younger users than 13 from accessing select chat features, in addition to confirming ages for individual accounts, Roblox says that it plans to adopt new systems that will limit communication between adults and minors. unless they already know each other offline. How are they going to prove that? Yeah.

Age verification can be completed by providing a selfie that Roblox and its partner will analyze or by submitting an accepted form of identification. So if you're grooming a young child, take a picture with them and submit it to Roblox, and then you can keep doing it online, apparently.

There you go. It's going to work. So yeah, they're just doing the same go-to method that everybody else is doing, which has been circumvented thousands upon thousands of times already. So good luck with that. I'm sure this is going to help. Yeah. No, it's bullshit. Bullshit.

Well, I got an app this week, Brian. Super Whisper. Super Whisper. It's basically a voice-to-text translation layer for your Mac. And I found out about this because I watch a lot of videos about AI and vibe coding and all that stuff. And all of the main, like, you know, the Uber hackers. They use this or something similar to it to basically talk their prompts.

Because their prompts can get very long, which I have discovered too. It can be really tedious to type out a prompt. This just lets you speak the prompt and it goes straight into whichever one you're doing. It actually works with any app, I think. But it works really well with, you know.

I use it with Claude code and cursor and that kind of thing. And it's free for the most part. You can get there's pro features if you want, but you just grab the free one. And it's got a downloadable whisper model whisper, which was the. voice-to-text model from OpenAI that they released a long time ago. I've got Mac Whisper Pro as well, which I use for just...

transcription. I think this will do, I think Mac whisper will do some of that, but I haven't tried it yet. Super whisper is just super easy and clean. And there's an iOS app for it too, that, that has, you can do paid upgrades on it, but I haven't downloaded that one yet because. I don't know about you, Brian, but my phone already has voice to text built into it. So I'm not sure what already. Yeah. Yeah. There's a little button that always gets hit all the time. I don't know about you, Brian.

But my roommate and her friends, this seems to be a problem with mainly women who talk into their phone all the time. They never type anything anymore. They always hit that goddamn microphone button. It's so easy to hit. And they're like, oh, our entire conversation has just been.

been typed into this text window that could go to a very person who we're talking about talking shit about maybe i should delete that yes happens all the time so does that happen in your house too no no my wife doesn't use that my kid does though He's so lazy. We're like, oh, you can go message your friend if you want. And he just talks into it. I'm like, half of the thing is you learning to type. Let's start typing, kid.

The other half is he leaves it on and then your entire conversation with your wife about how the kid's parents are horrible gets sent to the kid and then you're not invited to the play date anymore. Got to be very careful around these devices these days. They are listening to you, but just because Brodsky. Keep hitting the button. Yep. Oh, broads keep hitting the button. Title number five. So iOS 26 has added seven brand new iPhone ringtones.

And I saw this and then I was like, oh, I'm running iOS 26. Let me go find them. And six of them are basically remixes of the default ringtone. I chose the remix called Reflected. It is very nice. You can actually hear them in the article if you go find the link in the show notes at GOG.show slash 712. All right. I think I'll just wait until it actually comes out. Yeah, it's actually really nice. They finally fixed 90% of the problems. It's fast as hell now.

I honestly don't use any of their ringtones or anything. I'm purely using the Star Trek pirated library that you gave me ages ago. Oh, really? I use it for everything. It's all Star Trek sounds on my phone. That's it. Oh, that's great. That's great.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decides to join us again. Hi, Dave. Thank you for gracing us with your presence. Oh, it's always my pleasure. What's new and exciting with you, Dave? Well, Jason, funny you should ask. We recently published a video called Hot Sauce and Hot Takes, an only malware in the building special. There is a link to the YouTube video in the show notes.

Thank you for that, Dave. Smash, like, and subscribe. Yeah. Hey, YouTube. I watched it, Dave. So I don't want to ruin the mystery, but do you secretly like hot food? Because that was a good show that you put on, but then you asked for more. Yeah. Well. There are things you do for the comedy. Right? So you take one for the team. I do generally enjoy hot food. I like spicy food.

I can't remember if I shared here. There was one incident where the family went out to a local Mexican restaurant that was known for authentic Mexican food. And I ordered spicy tacos. And three came and I ate one and that was it. I was sweating bullets and, you know, just it was it was very unpleasant. So. I'm sure they had a good laugh at my expense back in the kitchen. Yeah, I was watching it. It was on my laptop and my wife was walking around and she said, oh, if we ever have Dave over...

for dinner, we're really going to have to scale back their cooking. Cause we all quite enjoy our, our heat to the point where like, when I go out to restaurants and we go to Indian or, uh, you know, my, my wife is of Chinese descent. We go, we go. out to asian food or chinese food i have to tell them i want hot but not white guy hot i want right yeah like the real hot yeah right they say but sir like i can do it trust me yeah

Generally, I'm pretty fearless when it comes to spicy food. I do seek it out. But this was a little extreme. One of my favorite snacks around the house is I'll make up some noodles, some linguine. And instead of putting... you know, spaghetti sauce on it. I will just cover it in Sriracha.

And it looks like spaghetti. And my roommate was just like, what are you eating? My eyes are burning. I'm just like, I'm just having a snack. It sounds like one of those things that you do when you have a coworker who keeps stealing your lunch from the refrigerator. Oh, man, that would have been a good one. Yeah. Instead of tomato sauce. It's a tuna loaf. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. It was very good, though, Dave. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate it. We had a lot of fun doing it, and I hope people will get to check it out. Well produced, too. I got to say, you guys did a good job. Thank you. Thank you. We got to get some peons to come and bring us like a paper towels and extra water. I don't have any of that. Or nuggets. I don't even have nuggets. Yeah. I'll tell you.

It's good having staff. Oh, that's what you call them these days. Well, so I was going through some emails and I found a notice that said that, hey, this email account is going to be. deactivate it because you haven't looked at it in two years. And I'm like, oh, what is that one? And I look at it, I'm like, I kind of remember making that email address. I just did it for some weird thing. And then I went and I logged into it.

And I had to go through all of these hoops to get it reactivated and all this stuff. And there was like a thousand spam emails in there. I'm like, okay. And then I got to the very end of the list and there was just one notice that said, welcome to Gmail. And I'm like, oh, cool. I want to see what it – June 22, 2004. I was like, wait a minute. This is a 21-year-old Gmail address that I have? A.

How is it that Gmail is 21 fucking years old? Yeah. Where did the time go? Yeah. It's out at the bar right now. And then I looked, I'm like, well, it. was gmail really around then is this just an error no gmail launched on april 1st 2004 so i got this like a little bit a couple months into gmail this had to be like one of my second gmail accounts that i made

Didn't you have to get an invite at first to Gmail? Oh, yeah. That's my recollection. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was back then. I knew everybody, so I'm sure I got it. You know what? You know who I actually got it from? Evan Williams gave me my original Gmail. invites because that's because blogger had been bought by Google at that point. And he was still inside or maybe it was Jason Schell and one of those guys, one of the blogger guys hooked me up back then. Yeah.

I remember having to wait to get somebody got enough invites because they dole them out. You get five invites. Congratulations. Good news. You get five invites to Gmail to share with your friends. I don't remember what my first Gmail account was. It's long gone. I still haven't. 21-year-old Gmail. I'm keeping that bugger. I just polished it off, got all my security settings in place, got my two auth going. I'm keeping that buggy.

Good for you. Well, your inquiry made me do an inquiry. I was trying to find what is the oldest remnant of me on the internet. And it may be this Usenet thread that I found from 1994. My email address, I believe it was Bittner at Clark dot net. And Clark.net was a dial-up ISP that was run out of a milking barn at a local dairy farm near us. So that was back in the day. But the other thing that's noteworthy about this is that...

I'm asking this one or another one. There's there's two that are here and one of them I'm asking about a little malfunction that I'm having. No, okay, this one's about Hi8 tapes, so that's a different one. But there's one that's only a couple months later where I'm asking about what I think is a malfunctioning keyboard on my Mac, and the person who answers the question is Graham Cluley. Oh shit. Yeah. And so two years ago,

Tell the audience who Graham Cluley is. So Graham Cluley hosts the Smashing Security podcast. So another cybersecurity podcaster, certainly well-known throughout the industry, well-known, well-respected. And I'm a regular guest on Smashing Security. and Graham's been a regular guest on our shows. And so Graham was Googling himself a few years ago, as you do, and up came this Usenet thread. And he emailed me and said,

this couldn't possibly be you, could it? And I was like, yes, that's me. So we crossed paths 20, what, 30 years ago, I guess, without knowing it. Back when the internet was a much smaller place. Right. Right. And I had, at that point, I had no interest in cybersecurity. Graham did. He was doing work in cybersecurity, but I was very much just a video guy. So it's just funny how small the world is sometimes. Still wouldn't want to paint it, though.

I'm trying to find my old stuff from Usenet, but I can't. It's not coming up. My first email address on the internet was thor at interaccess.com. Knowing you as I did back then, Jason, it might have all been deleted. Well, this was Usenet. You can delete Usenet. You can set anything.

visibility to zero. Well, the thing about it is, yeah, that was actually long before I met you. It was 94. I was posting on Usenet in 94 with that one. Up until a couple of years ago, that stuff was still there. I think I saved some... Some text dumps of it somewhere. But I miss Usenet. Usenet was awesome. It was so much fun. So I'm guessing 94 is around when those affordable dial-up internet.

providers really became a thing. Because I remember this being my first dial-up internet access beyond a regular local BBS. Yeah, that was – I don't know if I got dial-up to them. That was where I got my first web server in 94. Yeah. And that's when I didn't understand billing, and they sent me a bill for $1,000 for my first web server after the first week that it was open. Oh, no. I peaked early. I was on Earthlink. Earthlink was a dial-up service.

Or had my email address and had some limited hosting, you know, when they used to do the, it was, I think it was home.earthlink.net and then tilde slash tilde. Oh, good times.

Well, I dropped something in here Star Wars related. Actually, I dropped two things in here that are Star Wars related. The first, we've talked about some of the auctions at Prop Store over the years, and they just had a biggie. It might be their biggest one ever. The Darth Vader lightsaber from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi sold for $3,654,000. Damn insane. Yeah. Highest valued piece from the Star Wars franchise ever up for auction. Yeah. Who bought it?

Well, that's a good question. Who has $3.6 million sitting around for a Star Wars collectible? Somebody that's not very cool, I bet. Let me say the Star Wars collectible, I guess. So far, it is the Star Wars collectible. None is sold for more. And it's hard to imagine anything more iconic than Darth Vader's lightsaber from. From those two movies, I don't know, but I wouldn't mind having it. Yeah, the prop store COO said, it's a grail level piece. Yes, it is.

Yeah, there is a video of Adam Savage checking it out on his channel. He does a lot of previews of the prop store auctions. And so if you want a close up look at this, you can go look on Adam Savage's. YouTube channel and they have a look at it. It's something to see. And then the others... Yeah. The other Star Wars thing I put in here that is much more affordable and I may actually have a future with is a full-size R2-D2 that Home Depot is selling for Christmas this year.

Only $300. It looks – I'll have to see one in person to see how – high quality it is or not. But he comes wrapped in Christmas lights. And I'm figuring I can just take a pair of clips to those. Right. But this could be a shortcut. This could be my happy medium of getting a full one to one size R2D2 in my home and still being married. Because $300 I can swing for a full-size R2-D2. Right. $3,000. Well, I –

Did you look at the other ones? You can get a seven and a half foot tall Chewbacca for $350. I put a link in the show notes from last year. I took my son to Home Depot pre-Halloween and we were looking for some additional decorations. and we saw the seven-foot animated Darth Vader. for Christmas with a candy cane lightsaber. Right. It's $428. It was high quality. So I would say that the R2-D2 will probably be pretty good as well. It's only $299 for the Darth Vader now.

Canadian dollars, yes. What's that in real money? A lot. You will notice the kind of a bulb-looking Death Star that's hanging in his hand. At the store, when we went in there, we found the bulb free. And I thought we could just buy that because it is cool as hell. It's a Death Star big bulb. And I would have to spend the full $428 to get the entire thing, which my son thought was a deal. Absolute steal. And I said, well.

Mom would not agree. Yeah. Well, you can also get the six-foot stormtrooper with a candy cane blaster, which is probably about as useful as a regular blaster to a stormtrooper. Definitely. Dave, maybe you can get him and mine him for his outfit. Yeah, I'm thinking about that. I wonder how he's constructed. So when I go in and look at the R2-D2, I will also check out the Stormtrooper.

Yeah. So we'll see. Dude, it comes with an interchangeable Death Star candy bucket for Halloween. What does? The Stormtrooper. Oh, OK. Just saying. I don't have room for all this crap. Well, if you got rid of your wife... Here's the thing. Do you know why I don't have room for all this crap? Because of how much Lego we have. Well, I feel your pain, Dave. My house is covered in Lego right now. But you know what else they sell at Home Depot? Outdoor sheds.

Oh, yeah. There you go. So there you go. So I could put some of my other stuff from the house in the outdoor shed. Like your wife. In the house for the Star Wars stuff, right? I heard the she shed is a thing, so. Yeah. Yeah, honey, you know how you've been complaining how much I snore? I've come up with a solution. It's genius. Cut your own little house out back. I built you a bed out of Lego. Yeah, what could go wrong? There you go.

Uh, pivoting over to our other fun topic that we like to talk about a lot, Disneyland. I I'm a Disneyland guy. I know Dave, you, you make regularly privileged, um, uh, trips down to Disney World. Yes. So when I saw this in the news, I thought immediately of you not to be too political on the show, but can't help it here. Florida plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for schools. So I am. I'm not going to Disney World anytime soon. I don't need a side of polio with my churro. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, this is just stupid. Does this change your mind about making trips down there when this, if this goes into effect? No, no, no. Not unless there's an outbreak. And I figure most of the people I'm going to cross paths with. There's an outbreak. Until. That's right. Most of the people I cross paths with at the Magic Kingdom are not from Florida. Well, not anymore. Yeah. And we know they're not from Canada because Canadians aren't coming.

either yeah you want us we're vaccinated yeah exactly this is so stupid it is so incredibly stupid but on brand yeah oh yeah i i posted a little meme in here that this reminded me of which uh It has a picture of an old cemetery and it says, go to a seminary. See all the baby graves there from before the 50s and 60s?

Then hardly any. That's when people started vaccinating their kids. If you're unsure, the answer is literally written in stone. I'm going to point out that you may have just done a Freudian slip that I totally agree with that I'm dying at right now. You said go to a seminary. Oh, did I? And see all the baby graves there. You're not wrong. Cover up. Yikes. Yeah. Paging Dr. Freud. Okay. Wow. All right. There's a little peek inside my psyche. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Moving on.

So I saw this thing that was briefly up on GitHub from Microsoft called Vibe Voice. This is a new text-to-speech model that was specifically made for long conversations. what we do. They're coming at us, guys. Oh, Jesus. They're coming at us. Oh, Jesus. Right? I'm sure the naming department was like, what are all the cool kids talking about? Vibe voting. Let's call it Vibe Voice. Right. So this was an open source research framework for speech synthesis.

But Microsoft has since taken it down. They said, after release, we discovered instances where the tool was used in ways inconsistent with the stated intent. Since responsible use of AI is one of Microsoft's guiding... principles, we have disabled this repo until we are confident that out of scope use is no longer possible. So I guess we'll never see it again. We're never going to see it. Right. Yeah.

There are samples on the GitHub repo. And they have an animated podcaster. Yeah. It's as good as any. It's as good as any of them, which is. Simultaneously, frighteningly good, but also not good at all. Right. Within the same sentence, it can swing back and forth between those two things.

I don't know. We're all – I'm holding on but with my fingernails just of how – so am I going to be able to retire before I'm obsoleted by – voice ai that's my question funny you mentioned that because that's a big topic of conversation amongst my wife and her colleagues which is like are we going to be able to retire from the legal profession before we're done due to ai And it's happening fast. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no way to know how fast. I love the disclaimer at the bottom.

They're under risks and limitations. While efforts have been made to optimize it through various techniques, it may still produce outputs that are unexpected, biased, or inaccurate. Vibe Voice inherits any biases, errors, or omissions produced by its base model, specifically Quen 2.5 1.5b in this release.

Potential for deepfakes and disinformation. High-quality synthetic speech can be misused to create convincing fake audio content for impersonation, fraud, or spreading disinformation. Users must ensure transcripts are reliable. check content accuracy, and avoid using generated content in misleading ways.

Users are expected to use the generated content and to deploy the models in a lawful manner, in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in the relevant jurisdictions. It is best practice to disclose the use of AI when sharing AI generated content. Sure. Yeah. That's why you pulled it. You didn't read the last sentence in the whole disclaimer. Please use responsibly like it's a fucking Bud Light. Or a condom. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see.

I put another thing in here. This is a nice hot rumor that I hope is true. Or I guess I have mixed feelings about hoping. I have mixed feelings about this one. Yeah. So there's a rumor that there's a new The Muppet Show pilot. And it's being produced by Seth Rogen. Evidently a production. A bunch of fucking stone Muppets is what we're going to get laughing. That's fucking horrible.

So evidently a pilot called The Muppet Show got a L.A. tax credit, which is how this surfaced that it could be happening. So I don't know. We'll see. Seth Rogen seems like a wonderful guy to spend a few hours with. I just don't like anything he produces. I still like the studio. The studio was good. Yeah. Not a fan. Not a fan. Yeah.

Not who I want in charge of the Muppet show. No. Right. No. Well, and I wonder too, because the original Muppet show, which was produced in the UK and had a lot of – that kind of humor yeah i wonder if they'll even attempt to emulate that kind of humor or they'll just go in a new i mean look i here i am i'm old guy yelling at clouds they have to go with the new humor and as we've talked about before

Humor today is based on awkwardness. It's not set up punchline, set up punchline, or even physical humor so much. It's awkwardness. And so I suspect that's what we'll see with a new Muppet show. I'm glad, I guess, in a way that Disney is still allowing experimentation with the characters and trying to find something good to use it for. But I don't know. I can't wait for the...

The skit of animals sitting on the toilet doom scrolling. That'll be great. Right. Well, but you know what? The Electric Mayhem show I thought was quite good. That was fantastic. But I don't think Seth Rogen was involved with that, was he? No, no, no. He was not. No, I was disappointed they didn't get a second season because I really thought that was a good true to form show. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I do not have high hopes.

Yeah. Seth Rogen, high hopes. So the last thing I dropped in here was just the word soldering. Or as the British say, soldering. Because there's a fucking L in it. Yeah. Whatever. Aluminium. So I'm curious, do either of you have much experience with soldering? burning the shit out of myself a couple of times made me never want to do it again. Yeah. Yeah. I had a brief dalliance in my twenties when I was like building stuff and doing all that sort of thing. And then I just.

realized that i had better things to do with my time and i could buy things put together already yeah i do have a number of faint scars on my hands from soldering iron burns from my teen years but The reason I dropped this in here is when I was a teenager, I did a lot of soldering. And a lot of soldering had to do with computers and upgrading my own computer and helping friends update computers. Because back then...

If you wanted to upgrade the RAM in your computer with just the memory, it was expensive. And on my first computer, to upgrade from 16K to 32K... involved piggybacking chips on top of each other and soldering all the pins together. So you got what, 16 pins per chip, eight chips. That's a lot of solder joints. And they all have to be right for it to work at all. And you have to be careful that they're not too hot so you don't...

melt the chip and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, when I was a teenager, it just seemed like I could solder and do it well and precisely, and the solder flowed and it all went really well. This past weekend, my wife... required some soldering, as you do. Yeah, right. Not a euphemism. So my wife had a gadget that required some soldering. And of course, I was like, aha, I will take care of this young lady. I will fix your personal massager myself.

It's actually a bubble machine. So you want to increase the power on this massage. Yeah. Yes. And I just am crap at soldering now. You haven't done it how long? A long time, but it's not I mean, it shouldn't be that hard. So I'm wondering a couple of things. First of all, my first instinct, of course, is to blame someone or something else. So I'm wondering, has solder changed?

Right? See, my first impulse is obviously my old soldering iron is out of date and I need a newer, more expensive, brand new spangled one. I need new equipment. Right. Well, I have a new soldering iron, so I couldn't blame that. But I think solder today doesn't have as much of the toxic content that it did. It's woke solder. I don't know that it has the lead in it that it has.

There's no Aquanet in it, damn it. So maybe that makes it flow. But like, again, the soldering is not complicated. So why am I not doing a better job at it? Anyway. This led to the purchase of some little – those little spring clip like helping hands for my little workbench. So things can be held on to.

Now there's a fucking solar panel outside to power the soldering iron to get the vacuum pump going. Don't get me started. Well, the problem is the solar panel needs some soldering, so we can't get...

So just a couple days ago, Yuffie, whose security cameras I have, they just dropped a new model and – Part of it, and it's a cool camera. I may purchase one. But it has an optional solar panel. And the solar panel says, fully recharges the battery in one and a half hours. Lies. Lies, you bastards. Solar panels are just a journey of disappointment and resentment when it comes to security cameras. One of my ring cameras has never met me down.

It has kept the battery fully charged for nine months. Well, sure. California sunlight. Yeah. I mean, the sun never sets out there. Blame the universe. Fucking physics. The sun where Dave lives isn't strong enough. solder is not as good as it used to be. My God. That's right. That's right. That's right. The show isn't what it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. Got no room. Those wings weren't hot enough. Yes, that's right. Damn it. All right.

I've had enough of you guys. I don't come here for this abuse. Oh, where do you usually go? Yeah. All right. Next week, Dave will be provided by Vibe Boys. That's not funny.

All right. See you guys next time. Bye. Maybe. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon. We've got a bunch of new patrons. Bobby St. George, Roman, Barrett, and no. No signed up at the gold monkey level, though. So yes, no. And our continuing patrons, Eric, Trent, Jong Min, Brady, Jeff, Jesse, James, Nigel, Scott, and Hank. Thank you all so much. Hank. Hank.

We love you, Hank. All right. Over at PayPal, we've got Judge, Jonathan, Nicola, Florian, Levy, and Thomas. Thank you all so much. Over the tip jar, we've got Matthew and Sarah. So... Just a reminder for everybody, if you want to support the show because the show is 100% listener supported, head on over to patreon.com slash GOG. You get the show a little early in high definition and...

Did I say early already? Yeah. I don't know. Early. Also, add free. Add free. That's the one. Just like the normal version these days. Oh, yeah. Just like the normal. Oh, no. God damn. No merch and no reviews. Boo. And nobody died. Boo. Wait, hold on. I don't know about you, though, man. I was glued to my social media on Sunday night. Oh, I was convinced he was dead. Oh, man. What a day it would have been.

Oh, God. Such a tease. You know how bad it is when everybody in the world didn't even mention his name. Just, is he dead? I think he might be dead. And we all knew who it was. Yep. Every single person in the world knew who we were talking about. Yeah. And everybody the next morning was just like, oh, yeah, he's sickly, but he's not dead. I know. Now there's the news that he might have some kind of heart pump.

been stalled. So that's where he's been. I'm telling you, if you don't want to drive yourself nuts, don't look at TikTok. My roommate looks at TikTok and I look over his shoulder and I'm like, at this point, Trump's like 90% robot. and 10% body double. Well, don't look at TikTok. Don't look at Twitter, Jason. As we were sitting here, literally as we were sitting here and you were talking about that, I saw my phone and alert came up.

I had a very meticulously curated Twitter feed back in the day before it got taken over by crazies and nutjobs. I'm hardly ever on it. I still have the app on my phone. Guess what it threw up to me as an alert? What? Q. Major alert. Q has just rang the bell. Nationwide takeover happening now. Why the fuck am I getting that as an alert? You'd get that from Citizen. I'd rather get Lady Gaga's dog updates than this shit.

No doubt. You know, you can turn off those notifications. I know. I'm so lazy. So one thing, I don't have X installed on anything. I got to get rid of it. I can't. I don't know why. Yeah. Well, on that bombshell, I'm Jason DeFillippo. See you next time. And I'm the Q master. Damn it.

Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Cues. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 712. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Invectorin! That'll do it. Or drink some bleach.

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