726: Sycophantic and Delusional

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I have to set the record straight real quick. The lights behind me, there was a lot of people saying, you know, what do they mean? What do they mean? I'm like, it's fucking Christmas. Yeah, it's red and green. That's it. You know, I'm in a garage. What do you want? I'm trying to zhuzh the place up a little bit, but... I got a guitar. Yeah, you do. And a platinum record. Well, yeah, that stuff too.

I probably would have picked a different band if I had a choice, but this is mostly my wife's office and one of her favorite bands. So there you go. So there you go. Okay. Who would you put up if you could? I've got a signed lyric sheet written by Daniel Ash from Tones on Tail from Slender Fungus, which was my company name. So I probably would have put that up. All right. That would have been cool.

Yeah. Maybe we'll fix it in post. Yeah. Or not, because I'm the one that has to do post. Yeah. I was just going to say, it's the most wonderful time of the year, Jason. I always forget this time of year because it's cold here. And I have a child. It's a never-ending stream of misery and sickness.

For the last two weeks, I've never really fully gotten sick. I've gotten just enough that I'm exhausted all the time because I'm probably trying to fight it off. I'm sleeping like crap and I feel horrible. So, yay. All right. I'm glad we're starting the show off right. Yes. It was 87 degrees here yesterday. I'm going to be there in a week and a half. I'm very excited. All right.

That's right. We're coming up on our this is our penultimate episode of the year. So Scrabble Ward. Yes, I know. 50 cent. 50 cent. OK, Brian, let's get to some follow up. Do you remember the Great Resignation? I sure do. What did we tell people during the Great Resignation, Jason? Keep your job. Yes, we did. Well, they have decided that we were right, but they've come up with a new term for it called job hugging. I wish I had a job to hug, Jason. You and me both, brother. You and me both.

I'll give you a hug when you get here because this is about it. Hey, when's our Christmas party? This is it. Oh, okay. Well, thanks to a freezing labor market, AI paranoia and rising costs, nobody is quitting. Instead, everyone is hunkering down through 2026 and beyond and beyond. New data shows employee engagement has tanked to just 21 percent, yet nearly half of the workforce is staying put despite crippling anxiety. Organizational psychologists warn this leads to performative...

speak good today. Performative survival tactics like staying late, laughing at your boss's bad jokes, and feigning enthusiasm just to dodge the next layoff round. That was my career in corporate America. I'm sorry. I was about to say, that is corporate America. changed. Nothing. Nothing has changed. The experts call it a one-way trip to burnout.

Yeah. So congratulations on keeping your job, but maybe check your blood pressure while you're at it because it's going to be a long couple of years. And yeah, we called it a few years back, Brian. And they said, oh. oh, the job market is going to be great. It's going to be great forever. No, it's going to snap back and you're going to be on the street, dude. And I guess now everybody needs a great big hug.

Also, maybe don't check your blood pressure because I don't know if you've seen what healthcare costs are recently. Just be ignorant. Don't do it. Just be ignorant.

Well, we talked about meta-killing studies that showed their products were harmful because they want to seem like the good guys, so they commissioned these studies. And as soon as the results turned out not the way that they wanted to, they quietly shelved them and never released them. Well, OpenAI said... Hold my beer. OpenAI has been accused of self-censoring research that paints AI in a bad light. According to a new report from Wired, OpenAI has become more guarded.

about publishing negative findings of its economic research team, like data on all the jobs that AI might replace. Employees are allegedly quitting over this. Not a good idea, guys. Didn't you just hear the story we talked about? Want to hold on to that job? including data scientist Tom Cunningham, who now works as a researcher at Meter, a nonprofit that develops evaluations to test AI models against public safety threats.

According to the report, Cunningham wrote in an internal message at the time of his recent departure that the economic research team was pretty much functioning as OpenAI's advocacy arm. The company's economic research operations are reportedly being managed by OpenAI's first chief economist.

Aaron Chatterjee, who was hired late last year. Under his rule, the team has recently shared its findings that AI could save the average worker 40 to 60 minutes a day. Nothing about job loss, but we're going to save you some time. According to the Wired report, Chatterjee reports to OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lahan, who has earned himself a reputation of master of disaster with his work for former president Bill Clinton.

and years later for Airbnb and Coinbase, and is largely considered the expert on damage control. And this isn't the first time that OpenAI has been accused of favoring product over safety research. Just last month, the New York Times report accused OpenAI of being well aware... of the inherent mental health risks of addictive AI chatbot design and still choosing to pursue it because it's their business model. It's also not the first time a former employee has deemed OpenAI's review

Our research reviewed to be too harsh. Last year, the company's former head of policy research, Miles Brundage, shared that he was leaving because the publishing constraints had become too much. So they're burying their bad research as well. Nothing to see here. It's a great product. Yeah. Yeah. We're all good. We're all good. We can save you minutes a day. We can save you minutes a day. Yes. And eventually we'll save you 24 hours a day from work. No problems.

So they say. So they say. Well, a massive coalition of state attorneys general just fired off a sternly worded letter to OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and others demanding they fix their sycophantic and delusional AI. And yes, sycophantic and delusional is the actual legal terminology they used.

Nothing like Harvard Law School to get you there. The letter is signed by AGs from New York to Ohio, but conspicuously skipping the tech hubs of California and Texas accuses the industry of letting bots prey on children. The examples are really grim. We're talking about AI engaging in romantic role play with 12-year-olds, encouraging eating disorders, and even instructing kids to stop taking prescribed medication and hide it from their parents.

The demand is simple. Stop prioritizing revenue over safety and cut the dark patterns. While this letter doesn't have immediate legal force, it's basically the paper trail before the storm. Attorneys general sent similar warning letters to insurance companies regarding the opioid crisis in 2017, and we all know how that played out. So consider this the official warning shot before the subpoenas start flying. I mean, are we surprised? Like, they're not making any revenue.

They've got to do anything that they can to try to make revenue. They are borrowing so much money and raising so many funds. And they're decades at this rate away from making any revenue. So they've got to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks. Capitalism is not known for having internal restrictions, are they? That's why we have things called regulations. Had. Had things called regulations, Brian. Past tense. Past tense. All I want for Christmas is some regulation. In the news...

Well, the hits just keep on coming, Brian. We're going to have a lot of these this week, I'm afraid. If you are hoping for a quiet week in tech infrastructure, we're sorry. A coalition of over 230 environmental groups just demanded, demanded, I say, a national moratorium on new data centers.

Apparently, the infinite wisdom of AI and bullshit crypto are sucking the power grid dry in your wallet along with it. We're talking about a backlash that has already stalled $64 billion in projects from the likes of Google and Meta, and it's getting political. While President Trump calls the affordability crisis a, quote, fake narrative, electricity prices are up 13 percent under his watch, and voters are actually punishing incumbents over utility bills in key swing states.

With server farm power consumption set to triple in a decade, environmentalists are pivoting from save the planet to save a buck because nothing unites Americans quite like hating the electric company. They do love Sesame Street, though. That's the reality of it, isn't it? And people like to forget about that part. It's just the harsh economic reality is you get these data centers that come in. They start using all the power off the grid. Guess what?

Power costs rise. Does it rise just for the AI data center? No, it does not. It rises for everybody in the area. That's the economy. That's how it works. That is. That is. And we've got this next one from The Atlantic. Something ominous is happening in the AI economy. If you're feeling nostalgic for the 2008 financial crisis, good news! The AI industry is currently cosplaying as a subprime mortgage lender.

Take CoreWeave, the sector's golden child. It's a former crypto miner with zero profits and billions in debt, essentially using NVIDIA's investment money to buy NVIDIA's chips to rent back to NVIDIA customers. It's the same circular financing scheme that we've been talking about for months now, but it gets worse, Brian.

Tech giants like Meta are actively using special purpose vehicles to hide billions in data center debt off their balance sheets. Literally the same accounting trick Enron used to fake solvency. We've even got... We've even got loans collateralized by GPUs, assets that depreciate faster than a used car the second a new model drops. The industry is currently spending $400 billion to chase $60 billion in revenue.

all fueled by shadow banking and blind faith. If the AI revolution doesn't monetize exponentially and immediately, this isn't just a tech stock correction. It's a leverage bomb that could destroy the actual economy again. Good. You want the economy to die again? I'm starting to go fight club on this. Well, I don't see a win here, right? If the AI revolution does win and monetize, is it you and I that are going to make any money? No.

The money is going to go to Zuckerberg and it's going to go. We lose either way. So I'd rather they lose with us. Well, you know, when the price of pitchfork starts to climb, then you know you're in trouble. I'll be first in line. I'm going to get them cheap early. Buy them early, everybody. But the tariffs are going to kill you. There's good Canadian-made pitchforks, goddammit. We have hay. Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

And over at Engadget, OpenAI's house of cards seems primed to collapse. Yes, again, everybody's finally jumping on the bandwagon. We've been screaming for years, or months at least. Maybe years. Who knows at this point? It feels fucking interminable. OpenAI is scrambling to survive a rapid reversal of fortune. The company's highly anticipated GPT-5 model has largely flopped with users, currently ranking sixth in performance behind rival systems from Google and XAI.

The stumble has cost OpenAI critical leverage. Has it? Yeah, well, Microsoft has started to flip. They're going to lose money less fast? Yeah. Pretty much. Okay. That sounds like a win. I mean, I'm no economist, but if I lost money less fast, that would sound pretty good to me. Well, Microsoft, previously their exclusive partner, has begun integrating competitors into its co-pilot software.

but the danger goes deeper than code. OpenAI has committed over $1 trillion in infrastructure deals. Now, Brian, do they have a trillion dollars? No, they do not, Jason. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that real quick. Do they technically even have $1 on the books? No, they don't. They do not have a dollar. I have more than a dollar, and I would like to get a trillion-dollar loan. Can I have one, please? I am more solvent than open AI. And I don't have a job. That's pretty fucked up. Oh, God.

Yeah, well, it just keeps going. The aggressive spending is already driving up the costs of consumer electronics and laptops and phones and fucking RAM. You can't buy RAM anymore. Economists now warn that if this AI bubble burst, it could wipe out $20 trillion in American household wealth. I guess it doesn't matter to you because you're in Canada. But since I'm broke, it's not going to wipe me out any more than I'm already wiped out.

So I think that's the way most people are starting to feel. And this is very much a let them eat cake moment that I'm starting to see coalescing around this. It's like people are losing their jobs. If you yourself have not lost your job, chances are. spouse or someone in your immediate family already has people are hurting costs are skyrocketing like and then all we're being told is this stuff can't fail because if it fails we all go down now fuck you

We went through this with the banks. We're already going down. We went through this with the banks already. We went through this with Enron already. Those companies all end up being fine and we all end up being fucked. That's the way it always works. Amen. Say it. God damn it. Say it, brother.

I'm angry this week, apparently. Anyways. Apparently, those cold meds are getting to you. Speaking of petty bullshit, just a day after receiving a $140 million fine, X has terminated the ad account of the European Commission that fined them. No relation. No. Just chance.

Nikita Beer, ex-head of product, accused the European Commission of using an exploit to artificially boost the reach of its posts, announcing the major fine. Somewhat similar, probably, to the exploit that they used to boost all of Elon's posts. Yeah.

saying in the post beer said that the commission logged into their dormant ad account to take advantage of an exploit in our ad composer and posted a link that deceives users into thinking it's a video and to artificially increase its reach now if you have an exploit in your ad composer that's available for people to use isn't that your fault that's your problem dude yeah beer explained in a separate post that the exploit has never been abused like this we abuse it in completely different ways

Yeah, I didn't say that part. And it's now patched. However, X still revoked the European Commission's ability to buy and track ads on its platform. Although one does wonder, why does the European Commission need to buy our ads? Consumer awareness, you know. It's basic consumer awareness stuff. On X, because that's where the people used to be. It used to be Twitter. It used to be flowers and rainbows and unicorns, but now it's just ICE ads and the European Union Commission.

The European legislative body claimed that X is a deceptive system when it comes to verified accounts, lacks transparency with its advertising repository, and doesn't provide effective data for researchers. In response, X owners Elon replied to the European Commission's post calling it bullshit.

Using words instead of just the poop emoji for once. Wow. Wow. He actually used his words for once. Nice. Yes. Well, the European Commission isn't just going after X. They've opened up an antitrust investigation into the company. Google. surrounding their content used for its ai tools namely the commission is looking at two things starting with whether google used web publishers contents for its ai overview and ai mode services yes

without appropriate compensation or the option to refuse the use of their materials. Yes. The second prong of the commission's investigation similarly looks into Google's potential misuse surrounding AI is digging into whether Google has used content uploaded to YouTube for training its generative AI models. Yes.

As in the first case, the commission is concerned that YouTube creators are not receiving proper compensation or the option to opt out of Google using their content. And we know that's true as well. In its overview of the investigation, the commission noted that creators have to allow Google to use their data in return for uploading media on YouTube. It has added that Google's rival AI developers are unable to use any YouTube content for training their models.

I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, they do own it. I suppose they can do that if they want to. And it's up to us in terms of service. You know, they're paying for bandwidth. It's up to us to decide if we want to upload to YouTube and let them train the data.

Which apparently you and I decided we're doing. We've decided to because the people have spoken. So now thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Yeah. So they're looking into it. Whether anything is going to come out of that, I doubt it. But we'll see what happens.

Well, if you're old enough to remember waiting hours to download a Metallica track on Napster only to watch the RIAA sue everyone into oblivion, the EU, again, has a history lesson for you. A new report commissioned by the European Parliament warns that treating AI training data like the music industry handled Napster is a doomed strategy. The takeaway from the report? Well, lawsuits didn't kill piracy.

convenient licensing models like Spotify did. Well, that also killed the music industry, but that's a different story altogether. The report argues that letting rights holders lock down their content creates biased models and stifles innovation. The proposed fix is statutory licensing where AI developers get a blanket hall pass to scrape the entire internet. No individual negotiations required. And in exchange, they pay a centralized royalty fee.

It's universal basic income. We're all going to get pennies for our content that feed the models. We get enough gas money to get us to the food bank so we can get dinner for the family. That's it. Yeah. And the controversial part is they're saying no opt outs allowed. Creators can't take their ball and go home because, according to the report, withholding data hurts societal welfare. Oh, it's you. I know.

Oh, God. It's effectively a shut up and take the money model for the AI era. It's a thought experiment. None of this shit's ever going to come to pass. And it's, I'm sorry, wrong. Absolutely wrong. Absolutely.

The thing is, Disney apparently read it because they just invested $1 billion. In OpenAI. Yeah, if you can't beat the slop, just license it. Disney, the company that usually sends a cease and desist if you even think about Mickey Mouse too hard, has officially gotten into bed with OpenAI. Bob, Bob, Bob. In a massive three-year deal involving a $1 billion equity investment, the House of Mouse is opening its vault to Sora 2.

Starting in 2026, users will be able to legally generate video content using around 200 icons, from Darth Vader to Tinkerbell. What's even wilder is Disney actually plans to stream this AI-generated garbage to Disney+. if I didn't need a reason to unsubscribe already. Yes, the same technology currently best known for unauthorized porn of Disney princesses is now a pillar of Bob Iger's corporate strategy. Iger calls it responsible storytelling.

So get ready for a firehose of officially sanctioned corporate gruel. And of course, the same day that they inked the deal with OpenAI, they send a barrage of legal demands to all of their competitors because Disney isn't Disney unless they're suing someone. Well, I mean, I kind of almost sort of understand why they're doing it. You can bet.

There's going to be hard guardrails on using any of Disney stuff, which is going to help combat the pornification of Disney that's all over the Internet right now. You got to go to mid-journey for that. Come on. That's true. And, you know, the key... to this whole deal is is the fact that they're gonna they get the right to actually stream it of course and then they're basically just getting content it's it's a free it's not a free content mill it's a billion dollar content mill

Of course, what I would say to Bob Iger is you have amazing creators out there that create amazing shows. How many shows could you get for a billion dollars over the next three years? I mean, my God, like just what are you doing? Forget that stuff. Pay people that you have proven track records with you already to create content. A billion dollars can make.

A ton of content, real content. My God, what is wrong with you people? And I don't understand this. How is this licensing deal? I'm going to give you a billion dollars so you can take my IP. But then I get to take it back and put it on my streaming service that I'm charging for. But it still makes no...

rational sense. Well, not at that price. It makes no rational sense. The billion dollar, but the money involved with all of this stuff has left, it's fucking cuckoo land. So, it's just dumb. If this were a billion dollar deal. Okay. I get it. Sure. A million dollars for.

great then that makes sense you're going to get maybe some cherry picked like 20 30 videos that you're going to be able to throw up on disney plus and maybe that'll drive a few subscriptions but probably not because they're going to be shit compared to everything else yeah billion dollars Well, Brian, technically it is a million-dollar deal. It's $1,000 million deals. That's what it is. Okay, fair.

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Try it now for seven days free. We got to cast our minds way back now. Let's go to one of my original bugaboos when we started this podcast. Uber. Oh, oh, blast from the past. Yes, I always hated Uber. I did not. I understood what their business model was. It was drive taxis and any competitors out of out of the markets so you can take over so then you can inflate your prices. Oh, and bye bye free.

waters and nice cars and gum and mints and all the other things that they used to do gone and now it's mystery water I miss free water. That was one of the greatest things. You get in, there's some nice water for you. And yeah, some breath mints if you're going to a meeting and in a nice clean car. Oh man, Uber used to be.

good. Well, that's all gone now. Now you're being overcharged for a shitty Tercel that's got three wheels that work and one that doesn't and there's nothing in it except maybe some wads of gum that are stuck in the seat that you're sitting on. because that's what Uber is these days. But they have also started, and as we also talked about, they did not make money for the entirety of this show. They had like one year that they were actually made money.

And that was just from accounting tricks. And that was accounting tricks. Also, it's just a fucking app. That's all it is. Anyways, they've decided they need to make some more money and they're going to screw you by it. The company's ad division has just launched a new insights platform called Uber Intelligence that's tasked with hoovering up and selling trip and delivery data.

So all your data now is being sold. It will be anonymized. Oh, sure. This will let advertisers securely combine their customer data with Uber's help to surface insights about their audiences based on what they eat and where they travel. Uber gives an example of a hotel brand using the technology to identify which restaurants or venues to partner with, according to rideshare information. You're just supposed to take me where I want to go. You're not supposed to tell me where I'm going to go.

Well, you know, the concierge gets a 50 under the table usually. So that that that gig is out the table now or off the table. Yeah. So the company Selsa says is planning on using this tech to directly advertise to consumers. Remember the. anonymous consumers yeah so they're not supposed to know who you are saying it could be used to identify customers who are heavy business travelers

which they are able to glean anonymously somehow, and then plague them with ads in the app or in vehicles during their next trip to the airport. Fun times. This seamlessness is why we're so excited, Edward Wong, global head of measurement at Uber Advertising, told Business Insider. Uber has stated that its ad business is already on track to generate $1.5 billion in revenue this year, and that's before implementing these changes.

As for Uber in totality, the company made $44 billion in 2024, which was a jump from $37 billion in 2023. And it's also notorious for raising fares. Uber has raised prices for consumers by around 18% each year. since 2018, which has outplaced inflation by up to four times in some markets. Isn't Uber grand? Yeah, just take a taxi. Oh, wait, you can't. You can't. Never mind. All been run out of business.

Yeah. Speaking of other Web 2.0 companies where they're basically just an app, Instacart. Now, Instacart got in a bit of trouble this week because there's been some studies. How much does a carton of eggs cost, Jason? Well, it depends on who you are. A new study produced in collaboration with policy group Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union found that people who purchased the exact same product

from the exact same store at the exact same time were charged completely different prices, sometimes up to nearly 25% more when placing the order on Instacart. Wow. Yeah. The study tapped 437 volunteer shoppers in four cities who were put in groups that were synced up virtually to add items from a specific grocery store into their Instacart shopping carts all at the exact same time.

They then reported that the prices that appeared for those researchers to determine if people were being charged different prices for the same goods, and the results were pretty resounding yeses. According to the study, nearly three quarters of all grocery items tested in the experiment produced multiple prices across shoppers, including some products that showed five different prices for the exact same product. Holy shit.

They highlighted one example where a dozen Lucerne eggs sold for $399, $428, $459, $469, and $479 on Instacart at a Safeway store in Washington, D.C. Now that may not seem like a lot, but they did the math on this. A household could pay up to $1,200 more per year for groceries if exposed to the higher price brackets on their purchases. Now, we don't know what...

they're doing. We don't know how they're doing it. These are all different prices based on conditions we can't see as consumers, and Instacart ain't talking. Yeah, of course they're not talking. Yes. They confirmed the study accurately reflected its pricing strategies, which it claims to do at only 10 partnering grocery retailers that it chose not to name, which means it's more than 10 because they're not naming anybody.

stop using Instacart. This is basically what this told me. Absolutely. So what they basically do is they scrape... prices and then they add an upcharge to offset operating and technology costs that's what they always used to do the new thing is now that they're they're just bumping things up basically probably

on how often you order and what they think that your economic situation is. Yeah, they probably ran your credit report. Exactly. So the more they think you can afford, the more they're bumping your prices.

Isn't that how taxes are supposed to work? Not groceries. Yeah. Yes. So good times. And Waymo's in the news. We've been talking a lot about Waymo because they seem to be winning. the autonomous vehicle approach so far. They've been running mostly without issue, but not this week. To prevent its RoboFleet taxi from passing stopped school buses, Waymo is issuing another software recall. in 2025 oopsies we forgot the stop for school buses bit of code somebody commented it out i don't know

According to the NHTSA investigation, some Waymo autonomous vehicles were seen failing to stop for school buses that had their stop signs and flashing lights deployed. There were instances of Waymo cars driving past stopped school buses in Atlanta and Austin, Texas. So they've got a software update coming that supposedly will fix that. Marcio, Marcio, I think, Peña.

Waymo's chief security officer said in a statement that Waymo sees far fewer crashes involving pedestrians than human drivers, but the company knows when our behavior should be better. All right. Well... San Francisco has officially hit a new milestone in the driverless experiment, Accidental Maternity Ward. A woman gave birth in the back of a Waymo this week while en route to UCSF. Hope they had some water.

If you just had free water and towels, boil some water and get me some towels. Well, here's the most black mirror part of the story. The car's internal monitoring detected what Waymo calls unusual activity in the backseat and initiated a remote check-in call. Now, I know they probably have, you know, software to see when people are trying to make a baby, but this kind of takes it to the next level, you know?

because people have been caught boning in the back of Waymo's. The AI actually managed to navigate to the hospital faster than the ambulance Waymo dispatched. Naturally, the vehicle was immediately pulled from the fleet to be heavily sanitized.

Would you like some afterbirth instead of your cold water? Remember, you were talking about that back in the day. The cleaning crews for all these autonomous vehicles are going to be ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. That's how you make money nowadays. That's your new job. And because we live in a timeline where nothing is sacred, Waymo's PR team spun this into a heartwarming moment about serving writers from just seconds old.

This is actually the second time a baby's been born in a Waymo, though. It happened in Phoenix as well, proving the robots are now handling everything from rush hour to labor and delivery. Har har. No word yet on whether the kid gets free rides for life, which he should. He should.

Oh, that's actually not what they did. What they did was they sent a second charge because now there were two riders in the vehicle. That's it. It's like, yeah, you started with one and you ended up with two. What the hell? Come on. We got to upcharge you for that. Sorry. Upcharge. Yeah. And we got some crypto news.

Duquan, once crypto's self-styled golden boy, has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison after his $40 billion stablecoin empire vaporized and took up to a million victims with it. The judge called it a fraud on an epic generational scale. Rejecting prosecutors 12 year ask is too soft in the defense's five year pitch as a fantasy.

This wasn't some line goes down market hiccup. It was an illusion propped up by cash infusions, vibes, and a lot of people being told everything was totally fine. I love that we've gone as a concept, as a society. Thanks a lot, CryptoGros. We've gone from the concept of generational wealth to generational fraud. That's it. Great. And he got 15 years. What did Bernie Sanders get? A lot more than that. And he stole a lot less. Not Bernie Sanders.

Not Bernie Sanders. Who's the guy? Well, I'm here again today to tell you I need to be out of prison. I'm still tired making my mittens. Who is the guy? Bernie Madoff. I had the Bernie right. Weekend at Bernie's. Come on. Cut me some slack. Well, if you forgot, Kwan's company, Terraform Labs, sold TerraUSD as a stablecoin pegged to a dollar. Turns out it was pegged to Hope and Duct Tape.

And when it broke, TerraUSD and its sister token, Luna, collapsed, triggering a crypto contagion that made FTX look like a warm-up act. because losses exceeded the combined damage from FTX and OneCoin, wiping out retirements, charities, churches, and entire families' futures. Victims described divorces, kids skipping college, and lives detonated in weeks.

And remember, after the crash, Kwon fled on a fake passport and got arrested in Montenegro. Remember that? I do. Yeah. Yeah. And he asked the judge, hey, can I spend my time in prison in South Korea? And the judge said, fuck no. And he also has to forfeit $19 million. Well, if he forfeits it directly to the White House, he'll be out of jail in no time. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I'm sure that there's a GoFundMe set up for that right now. I'm sure. You know.

Yeah. Well, let's get some government news here, Brian. A massive wave of SEO spam has turned dozens of city, state and university domains into hosts for AI porn, crypto scams and malware. Researcher Brian Penny discovered that bad actors are exploiting unsecured file upload forms on highauthority.gov and .edu sites to trick Google into ranking their trash at the top of search results.

And we're not just talking about generic spam here. We're talking about PDFs lurking on the New York State Museum site, redirecting to, and I quote, realistic zebra vagina pocket masturbators. Well, shit, I've been looking for that for Christmas anyways. I hope they got a good deal. Seriously. Other hits include deepfake nude apps hosted by federal regulatory agencies and penis enlargement ads featuring Dr. Oz on a Tennessee permitting site.

To be honest, this this this administration is so fucking bizarre. I'm not sure that these aren't real. I know this could actually be part of the Project 2025. Would not be surprising to me. Yeah. Well, some agencies are blaming third party vendors like Granicus. The fix is slow going. So if you're looking for 2025 council minutes, be careful you don't accidentally download a bootleg copy of Hush, My Mother Might Hear. Here's the thing. Google could fix this in a heartbeat. Yeah.

Porn plus edu or .gov domains. Remove it from the index. That's all you got to do. It's a two-minute fix for Google. Come on. But it doesn't behoove them to do so. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Because people still want to search for pocket zebra vagina. What the fuck is wrong with people? Everybody needs a stalking stuffer, Jason. No judgments here. I don't mean to yuck on somebody's yum, but damn, man.

And in your tax dollars at work news, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered the U.S. State Department to stop using the Calibri font in official documents and return to Times New Roman, according to a leaked memo obtained by the New York Times. Calibri, a sans-serif font adopted in 2023 under the Biden administration, was selected by the department's former DEI office to improve readability, particularly for people with visual impairments.

That office has since been dismantled as part of the Trump administration's broader rollback on everything good and helpful in the world. Oh, and DEI and accessibility initiatives. In the memo, Rubio said Times knew Roman would restore what he described as decorum and professionalism to State Department correspondents.

A fucking font change ain't gonna fix that, you twat. I can think of a number of things that can restore decorum and professionalism to our government right now, and it has nothing to do with the font. Heads will roll, perhaps. Yeah, some pink slips would be great. Criticizing Calibri is a symbol of institutional decline. It's a font, you twat. Well, and pour one out for Time Magazine because architects of AI are named Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

There's two covers for this, Brian. The first one is basically a recreation of the lunch atop a skyscraper photo with a bunch of iron workers sitting on a steel beam way over New York. If there was a big gust of wind. That would solve many of our problems. You know what? They wouldn't know it's coming because Noah has already been dismantled because of Doge's cut and Elon's up there. So he wouldn't even know if he's getting blown off. We need a mighty win, Jason.

Well, speaking of decorum and professionalism, Jason, I finally finished Ken Burns' The American Revolution, all 7,842 hours of it. You beast! You beast! It was good, man. It was really well done. Not my favorite Ken Burns documentary, just because it's a little dry with endless battles and all that sort of stuff. I learned some things.

And it was obviously high quality, very well done. I don't know, you know, now that I'm no longer part of like pub trivia teams, I don't know if this knowledge that I've gained is going to help me in any way, shape or form in my life. But no, it was good. No, no. And at the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, Billy McFarland, good old Billy from Fyre Fest, actually had a music festival. He did. Former Fyre Festival scammer Billy McFarland has done it.

On December 3rd, McFarland announced yet another music festival. I don't know how we managed to not hear about this until after that. But the twist was it was happening that very same weekend. To the millions of people who have doubted me, we're finally making our dreams come true. In three days, he shouted on Instagram, and it did indeed kind of come true. The Phoenix, without any... Vowels, P-H-N-X, festival, ran for one day in Diamonds K. Honduras.

Horrendous. I just wanted to say horrendous. I don't know why. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's a Freudian slip. Someone named French Montana was there and he did perform. Concert goers did show up having paid $200 to... $500,000 for the privilege per the Daily Mail. I'd like to see the receipts on that. Yeah. There was a live stream that some people spent $7 to view. There was food. There were bathrooms.

It all technically happened. So that's the plus for Billy. The bad side? Everything else, basically. Folks who watch from afar on social media said the event looked as well attended as some Friendsgivings. There must be tens of people there, one commenter on TikTok said. The power kept cutting out. The vegetarian food option was reportedly white rice and corn that still had silk strands on it. And for some reason, the banner behind the stage said Gooch Island. Gooch Island. But he did it.

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Average savings, $396. Select homes only. Speaking of towering achievements, Jason, can you believe it was 25 years ago, roughly? I'm not sure of the exact date because I'm not sure which movie we're celebrating the 25th anniversary. Oh, no. Fellowship of the Rings turned 25. So we did it on the day that Return of the King came out. Yes. You and I and some of our friends, we went to the movie theater.

We watched the entirety of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the King, the extended edition of The Two Towers, and then the first official showing of Return of the King, regular edition. At midnight, yeah. We saw it at the Cinerama Dome, which is ancient and has seats made of, I don't know, brick? Plaster. But they were the worst seats. We were in the front fucking row. Our necks were killing. And the only thing that got us through it was we were drunk.

The Arclight had the best bar in the world because in between every episode or each thing in the intermission, we ran to the bar and pounded as many Bloody Marys as we possibly could. and ran back to our seats. We must have been young because we had bladders of steel. I know. Well, it was 25 years ago, man. God, that puts us still in our 20s. We have the opportunity, Jason. We can revisit our youth here. Not unless I get a colostomy bag.

As Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring turns 25, Fathom Entertainment and Warner Brothers announced theatrical screenings of the Peter Jackson trilogy in their extended editions. So we can add a couple hours to our record, according to an exclusive report from Variety.

These will be available in D-Box presentations from January 16th to the 19th, complete with movements and vibrations to make you feel like you're making the journey to Mordor with Frodo and his entourage. That will not help our age bladders one bit. No, those are short seats. Why don't you sit there and just rub your... No!

If you prefer the traditional shorter experience, the standard format will be January 23rd to 25th. They will have, of course, popcorn buckets and all that sort of stuff. I actually have not found any place, but I'm sure they will.

showing all three in order. They're just going to be kind of out there and playing. Oh, yeah. You know there's going to have somebody do that. Yeah, but those popcorn buckets can be used to relieve yourself halfway through. I'm going to get two popcorn buckets, fill one up with Bloody Mary and the other with this. There you go. And hopefully, because it's dark, I will remember which is which. Which is which, yeah. Just make sure, yeah, just keep the straw in the one. One straw is much bigger.

Because that's the one I pee down, and then there's the one I drink from. Well, Brian, as predicted, Amazon's official Fallout Season 1 recap is a garbage-filled AI nightmare filled with mistakes. So, yeah. Yeah, ahead of the show's December 17th season two premiere, Prime Video released a three-minute recap video that appears to be fully AI produced, complete with a flat text-to-speech style narrator and multiple factual mistakes about the plot.

Among the errors, the recap claims flashback scenes with Walton Goggins take place in 1950s America when they're actually set in the year 2077. It also misrepresents the season finale incorrectly, framing the ghoul's decision to team up with Lucy as a forced ultimatum rather than a mutual choice to hunt her father together. Hire some damn humans. See what you're getting, Disney, for your billion dollars?

Yeah, seriously. I'm looking forward to the next season, but now I know not to skip or I can skip the three minute AI recap because that sucks. And those things are key because it takes so long between seasons that you have to have a very comprehensive and correct recap. This isn't something you need to skimp on, morons.

Well, a new series came out this week. Spartacus, House of Asher is out. I loved the original Spartacus series on way back in the day. Tits and sand is what we called it back then. Lucy Lawless was in it and a bunch of great actors. It was really well done. They had to pull a Darren from Bewitched from season one to two because the guy that played Spartacus died, unfortunately.

He was a great guy. He unfortunately had cancer and died. But the rest of the series was good. It was really good. And I have headed to Sweden to check this out. So I will let you know if it's any good compared to the previous ones. All right. Yep. The boys final season teaser trailer came out and it looks Boise. It looks very Boise.

I'm looking forward to it. April 8th on that one. Paradise Season 2 dropped their trailer for February 23rd. I liked Paradise. I thought it was decent. That was on Hulu. I recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it. It's decent sci-fi and it moves fast. That's what I liked about it. It moved fast. It wasn't like, they didn't drag out what the conceit was. You found that out at the end of the first episode. So it was pretty good. All right.

Well, the next entry in the DC multiverse is coming out next summer. It's going to be Supergirl. We got a little tease of her at the very end of the last Superman movie, which I thought was... Okay. It was a nice Superman movie. The official teaser trailer is now out for Supergirl. Two minute long teaser trailer, which is pretty, I'd call it a trailer. Yeah. But yeah, I watched it and I'm fucking excited about this movie. This looks great.

Okay, I'll go check it out. I saw the link and I'm like, yeah, but I'll go check it out. Okay. Like she's drunk and she doesn't give a fuck. It looks like pretty much. I mean, it looks like it's going to be a load of fun. So I'm pretty cautiously optimistic about this one right now. We shall see.

I know that you kind of dropped off listening to the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, which is still one of my top 10 podcasts. I listen to it all the time. You might want to go back and listen to one episode, Jason, the most recent episode, episode 612.

no such thing as the Gordon Ramsay songbook, has a special guest, Michael Palin from Monty Python. I saw this and I went and listened to it and it was excellent. It was. I love Michael Palin. Even as he's getting on in years, he's still quite funny.

Yeah. Yeah. And I miss that show. I'm going to put that back in rotation. It is really a good show. It's a great show, man. I learned a lot from that show. It's a lot of fun. And Brian, I put this one in just for you. It's a video from YouTube called What the Fuck Happened to Battlestar Galactica? And they completely agree with you. It's got some great interviews in there and basically shows that Ron Moore had no plan.

And he even stutters when he's like, when he talks about when they resurrected Starbuck, he's like, Yeah, that was a conscious decision to not tell anybody why we brought her back because everything we tried sucked because we brought her back without actually having any idea on what she was, who she was, what the plot was. We have no idea. So.

Yeah. Fuck you, Ron Moore. Well, fuck you, Jason, because you put this in the show notes and I went and watched it and I had to relive my pain all over again. I ended up screaming at my screen just like I did during the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. I mean... All of this has come out over the years anyways. It's my biggest pet peeve about shows. It's lost. It's Damon Lindoff.

ron d moore fuck all you guys you're like that you're like the open ai of fucking screenwriters because you just get a lot of money for doing fuck all you don't know what the fuck you're doing you never have an end to your show you come up with really cool concepts but you cannot tie any of it together. You can't land the goddamn Viper. You just can't. So, yeah. No, it was funny to watch it. Yeah.

It's such a groundbreaking, great show. This guy, Joe Blow Originals, thinks it went to shit even before I did. He said by season three, it was a crappy show. I thought it was great until they didn't stick the landing. Yeah, I loved it all the way through. I actually just made a trip to Sweden and I've been downloading the entirety of it for the past six days because it's very big.

The problem is, and he covers this in the video, you can't get it everywhere, anywhere. You can get pieces and parts. The plan, which they put out after because they wanted to kind of retroactively fix the fact that they didn't have a plan, is not available. Anywhere. Yeah.

No, and the miniseries Razor was really good. I want to get that again. And I honestly, I enjoyed Caprica. I did like Caprica, the prequel. I thought that was pretty good. Yeah, when it went to web series, I just didn't watch it because I don't know. But that web series was great. I heard it was good. So someday I should probably watch it. But yeah. Yeah. And about four months when it's done downloading, maybe I'll shoot you a copy.

I ran across the Critical Drinker's take on Starfleet Academy, the trailer that came out. And I'll just tell you, the title of his video is, What Is This Garbage? Well, I mean, his brand is crapping on stuff. So to be fair. Yes. Yes. And I hadn't seen the trailer yet. So his video was the first time I'd actually seen parts of the trailer. And I was like, what the?

fuck is that? Then I went and watched the actual trailer and I was like, what the fuck is that? It's like, I am not looking forward to this now in any way, shape or form. And I love Paul Giamatti. I think he's an amazing actor, but God, does he shit the bed in this thing?

It does not look good at all. And it just could be the writing, but it's just hammy and overacted and none of it makes sense. And it's just, I don't know. I don't know. Brian, what do you think? I am not as negative as you. I will say I don't. like it but i don't hate it but who knows how they edited and cut this together i will watch it it can't be worse than just disco

It just can't be. Nothing can be worse than Disco. I don't know who they're targeting this at. It's obvious they're trying to get a younger generation into Star Trek, which makes sense because everything else that's come out that's been good has been... solidly targeted at us and older people who remember original track and next generation and all that sort of stuff so they've got to do something they've got to they've got to find a new show that'll be a hit i don't know if uh

Taking future Wesley Crushers and putting them in Academy and having shenanigans is the way to go. But what do I know? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. It's just a trailer. Who knows? Yeah. They're turning it into Bell Rose space. But nobody even remembers Melrose Place. That would also be targeted at RH, Jason. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Caps and doodads.

Well, I don't know what's happening, Jason. Dogs and cats are living in harmony. What in the world is going on? Google and Apple are partnering on better Android iPhone switching. What?

They have long existed as polar opposites, each ruling over their tech kingdoms with little interest in cooperation, but the latest build of Android's canary operating system... something in the coal mine, hints at an unusual instance of collaboration between the brands with a new feature that seems aimed at making data transfer simpler between Android and iOS mobile devices during the setup phase.

It is expected to be available in a future developer beta of iOS 26. A representative for Google confirmed that the report from 9 to 5 Google on this development is accurate, but didn't provide any additional details on how the transfer will work. So apparently they're working on something at the operating system level, which will add support for moving between Android and iPhone. Not that I know anybody that does that. Well, I do know people that go from Android to iPhone once they, you know.

grow up but yeah yeah well i also know people who lose their jobs and can't afford their the next iphone and go down to google sometimes but those people are It's rare. It's rare. And here's my guess. There's some EU regulation that they got wind of that's coming down the line that they're just trying to get ahead of. Absolutely. That's, of course, what it's going to be. Yeah.

Well, in the continued and shittification of our government, Congress has removed the right to repair language from a 2026 defense bill. According to a statement from the Public Interest Research Group, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026. has removed language that would have guaranteed the U.S. military the right to repair its own equipment rather than requiring it to use official defense contractors for maintenance. Now, this bill is still being considered by Congress.

but is uncertain whether the right to repair language is likely to be reintroduced once it has been removed. Despite support from Republicans, Democrats, the White House, and key military leaders, troops will keep waiting for repairs they could perform themselves. So... That's...

Ridiculous. Taxpayers will keep paying the inflated costs. And in some cases, soldiers might not get the equipment they need when they need it most because we're going to let everybody dip their beaks in. That's absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely.

Well, on some more fun news, I've been modernizing my office now that we've gone to video. I have a teleprompter that has been sitting in a... box forever. It's the GlideGear TMP100 teleprompter, DSLR tablet, smartphone, 12-inch glass carry case, no assembly. The funny thing is about this, Brent, I loaned this out to somebody about a year and a half ago.

It was for a shoot for the CDC with Deshaun Wesley, a great commercial. Some genius there dismantled my teleprompter and put it back together upside down. I'm like. What? And I know they used it. It was used in the shoot. And I'm trying to put this thing together and like, you know, it's a complicated thing to put together no matter what. And I'm looking at the instructions and I'm like.

That ain't right. And then I kind of peeked and I looked at the screw heads, the little screw heads, and they had been unscrewed poorly by somebody and re-screwed poorly by somebody. So I had to put it back together. But now it works. So I've been using my teleprompter today. So it's kind of nice. All right. It's very nice. And to get this to work, I'm using an iPad mini. And it really sucks.

It turns out when you're in recovery and you loan somebody something, they didn't tell me this till I had already done this. I loaned somebody my iPad. In recovery, you don't loan anybody anything because the likelihood of you getting it back is close to zero. I am now out the iPad that this thing used to run on. So I'm using my mini. But to do that, to flip it around, you need special software. And I got an app called Better Display Pro.

It's for the Mac. And what it does is it lets me create these virtual screens that I can then cast to the iPad and flip it around and then use it to read on the screen. It's really cool. And I think it is $21.99 if you pay for the pro version. When you get it, it's automatically in pro with a 14-day free trial. It does exactly what it says it does. So it's one of those problems that I know a lot of people...

who have gotten teleprompters and tried to use iPads, they're like, how the hell do I flip it and do stuff like that? Better Display Pro. That'll save you a lot of time and headaches. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave.

Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave, with the podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Dave covers the daily cybersecurity beat on the Cyber Wire, busts scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat, digs into industrial security on Control Loop. and still shows up to stir up trouble on only malware in the building. Hi, Dave. How you doing? I'm hanging in there. 2025 cannot end soon enough. I just...

I just putting that out there. It's been, I feel like we've been basically saying that for, Oh, a good, almost decade at this point. Boy, this year can't end soon enough. You're not wrong. You're not, you're not wrong at all. As if there's some expectation that next year is going to be better, which given the recent history, no. Well, I don't want to be morbid or sound flippant, but now that both of my parents have passed away, 2026 can't do that to me. That's true. Fair.

Don't tempt the fates, though, Dave. I know, right? Yeah. What could possibly be worse? Shit. Oh, shit. Yeah. I know. Like I say, you know, it's definitely gallows humor, but.

How we survive. Oh, guys. Well, this is an old guy topic. I want to ask you guys. I have now five days off caffeine because. As I got older, I noticed caffeine didn't do the same thing that it used to do for me anymore, which was, you know, wake me up. It started to make me confused and dizzy, and I couldn't form words. I was downright presidential. on caffeine. So how could you tell? Yes. Well, my roommate kept saying she would ask me something. She's like, well, well.

I'm just like, my brain would make the words, but my mouth would not follow through. Like that translation component stopped working when I had too much caffeine. And it wasn't that much because I just went from decaf to green tea and it was just like, oh my God, I can't even function anymore. So I decided to take the jump. And I just wanted to know, as you guys get older, do you have kind of the same, I've talked to a couple of people that had this, so I want to.

kind of broach it with you guys to see if you have any adverse effects to the caffeine as you get older. Uh, not what you're describing, but I would say, and I do enjoy caffeine every morning. I enjoy my caffeine cold and carbonated. So, you know, I'll have a diet soda to start the day. And it does work. I feel it. And it does get me going and makes me more alert.

What I would say is there is a caffeine threshold where if I have too much of it, it is unpleasant and it's mentally unpleasant. I don't know that I've tracked it the same way you're describing it, but. There is definitely a point where I can say to myself, ooh, I had one too many caffeinated beverages and I'm feeling off kilter.

Personally, no, not for me. Well, I cut out sodas a few years back. I don't really drink caffeinated sodas or anything like that anymore. I have coffee every morning. I enjoy it.

It certainly wakes me up. I definitely am a bit groggy until I've had it. After three cups or so, that's enough for me, and I know I'm done. I do sip on green tea kombucha throughout the day, which is also... mildly caffeinated so i'm probably getting the most caffeine out of the three of us uh for sure just because i'm drinking that most of the day i i personally think jason you are probably a bit more susceptible to caffeine

We did have a run maybe about five years ago where shows where you were kind of like a rabid squirrel that had gotten into cocaine. And that was purely just off your caffeine consumption. So I think you're a tad more susceptible to its effects than than many people are, which might explain it. Could be. Could be. Yes, I do remember those shows and they were. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I was more calm on cocaine, actually, than I was on those shows. Yeah. Well, one time, this is decades ago now, probably, but I was on a shoot, and it was... Well-budgeted enough production that we had catering, and the caterers had a little basket full of those five-hour energy drinks.

trucker truckers truckers cocaine yeah yeah and uh i made the mistake of thinking oh i'll try one of these midway in the day and it was i was miserable like i i remember going home that evening and laying in my bed and just the tension in my body between The physical part of me that was just saying, I'm tired and I want to sleep and my brain going, oh, yeah. It was a horrible feeling. And so I.

Never done that again. But that's what I feel like I'm tiptoeing up to when I have too many caffeinated drinks. I get right on the edge of that and it scares me back from it because it's not pleasant at all. I wish I had that with alcohol. Get right up to the edge and go, you should stop now. Oh, no. Oh, well. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, we've got a little bit of feedback here from Do the Dew.

You guys probably know this channel already, but since you mentioned nostalgia for hi-fi systems, Posey has some great videos, and he sent this video called Splat Hi-Fi. And I watched it, and I thought it was really interesting. Did you guys get a chance to check it out? I did. I did. I quoted here, the narrator says at one point, the layout is quite chaotic, which is...

What we liked about our old iFi systems, I think, partially. Yeah, the reviews he did on, because they were like component systems, and he showed the different pieces and kind of worked through them with the speakers and all that. So it was kind of just kind of like a... I don't know, like a test drive of different hi-fi systems for the people listening at home. And I thought his voice was very soothing. And the visuals were quite well done.

I thought I think at first I thought it was just all AI, but no, he just like he mixes in really crazy transitions with his with his videos. And I thought it was I thought it was very interesting. It's a fun watch. I love this stuff. I have great nostalgia for this period of time when we had the combination. Well, I guess a better way to say it is industrial design.

led the way more than software design yeah this the devices had software but that was buried inside right it wasn't what it led with and so you had companies who had strong opinions about design like sony and jvc and i mean japanese companies led the way uh and they were beautiful the the when i look back at some of the um

like broadcast video decks that we had and it's just amazing that these things got made the complexity that someone designed this it's like a battleship you know there's just so much to it and they got it working And I have great appreciation and affection for that era of industrial design. Yeah, it's very cool. And speaking of crazy design, I went to my friend's house this week and he had a player piano that was made in 1923 or 25, 1925.

And this was a pump action with the bellows and the tubes and everything. Play your piano. So you had the scroll and all the stuff. And we had to dismantle it. to take the keys out, and so the thing could get basically scrapped, and we took some parts out of it. But the engineering that went into this thing is mind-boggling.

with all the little mini bellows inside of it. I posted one picture to Instagram. I'll post some more soon. But it was just insane how this thing got built 100 years ago. And I'm like, man, those people had A. No Instagram, no TikTok, no social media because you just, you couldn't have the patience to do it with our society nowadays. You know what they did have though, Jason? They had real cocaine Coca-Cola.

That's true. That is true. Right. Tomato, tomato. Legal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also think. Labor was really cheap back then. So if you went to someone and said, I need a hundred of these little widgets, they'd make them for a pence or whatever it was. And yeah, I think we... We take for granted the complexity of manufacturing we have these days and don't give the folks 100 years ago enough credit for what they were able to do with what they had in that.

particularly the pre-electricity days. I love old grand pianos, and it's a large part because of their mechanical intricacy. And that serves musical creation. I think it's just a wonderful thing. Again, I had a deep romance for old pianos. I'll definitely send you pictures of these because this was just phenomenal. It was so much fun. And the design was so well made. There's a little sticker on the inside with the patents, and there had to be like 30 or 40 patents on the thing.

But they thought of design enough that the mechanism that you put the scroll into that actually, you know, runs the... the mechanism to play the, move the bellows and all that. It is one unit that you can actually take out to repair. It took like three screws to get that out. Everything was modular. It was so much more well-designed than, say, I don't know, a Quadra 840 AV.

which was one of the worst design computers ever if you ever tried to change the RAM in it. This thing was designed better, and it was 100 years old. It reminds me, I think, the pinnacle of... A broadcast engineering flex was Sony made a one-inch machine. So reel-to-reel, one-inch video, one-inch wide video, two reels.

And so one of the challenges of a device like this is you have to know how to thread the tape through the machine. And it has a very specific path and you have to get it right or bad things happen. So Sony built a machine that had little jets of air that would blow. So you could basically just unwind the feed side, let the tape hang down. And as you just turned the reel to unwind it, little jets of air would guide the tape exactly everywhere it needed to go and back up to the other reel.

That is so insane. It was, yeah, and just totally just a flex, like Sony going, yeah, we could do this and check this out. Yeah, so cool. So cool. We don't have that kind of stuff anymore, really. I don't think. No. It's all software because everything's all software. So moving on to our main topic here in this segment, Star Wars.

I have two things. Following up on last week when I think we were still speculating that the original Star Wars is going to be released and it has been announced it is in 2027. With lots of questions going, which original one? Yeah. So that's what this article is about. It tracks all of the various versions of the original Star Wars. So if you're into that sort of thing, check it out. And I guess ultimately we will find out which version they decide to go with. We'll see.

Well, if history is any guide to this, it'll be a completely new one that no one's ever seen. And now it will be called the 1977 X version that has been released. Yeah, it'll be some kind of hybrid or mashup of all of them. Yes. But that's all right. I still will be excited to I will be first in line to go see Star Wars at my local. fake IMAX theater, I will be there. All right. Not with your R2-D2 from Home Depot, but maybe just a Stormtrooper helmet. Way to rub it in. Way to rub it in, Brian.

No, in fact, it just seems as though none of the local Home Depots are getting the R2-D2s because they're already clearing out their Christmas stuff. They're not restocking inventory. But what I've noticed is if I want to pay an extra $100, there are plenty of them available on Facebook Marketplace. Speaking of Facebook Marketplace, I notice you're not wearing a Stormtrooper suit that we were talking about last week.

No, I'm not. What happened? What happened? Let's just say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I reached out to the seller and it was not a satisfying exchange. Oh, that sounds like Facebook Marketplace. You're saying someone on Facebook Marketplace that owns a Stormtrooper costume didn't have the social skills to pull off a good transaction online? Hard to believe.

I know, but yes, that is in fact the case. So it's still available as far as I can see. So we'll see maybe after the new year, if it's still there, I will come, I will make an offer. The main thing that's slowing me down, pulling the trigger on this one is that it's pretty much in kit form. Like there's assembly that you'd have to do, connect some of the pieces and Velcro and stuff like that. And so I'm a little wary of that, but.

We'll see. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to follow up. That's all. You mentioned Facebook Marketplace, so lights went off, you know. Yeah. So. I saw this really cool video that I wanted to share. And I think Brian in particular will find this really interesting. It is a animated. side-by-side comparison of the Rise of the Resistance ride at Disneyland and Disney World, like an overhead view with little dots representing people as they move through the ride.

And on the other side of the screen is a point of view video of someone riding the ride. So it really gives you an insight into the layout of the ride. And there are things in there that I... hadn't considered hadn't thought about i or my assumptions were wrong about how they actually work and i just thought it was really fun

Yeah, I went through it all. It's really interesting and really fun. It reminds me of, there's this YouTuber, Mark Rober. He's an engineer that has a channel that... brought a lidar, smuggled a lidar into Disneyland, and he lidared the Space Mountain ride, and then he 3D printed it.

based on the whole thing and all the crazy stuff that people are doing with these amusement park rides, particularly at Disneyland where they're kind of like peeling the layers back to see how things work. It's fascinating. True, I think, you know, obviously I wouldn't want anybody to watch this before they go on the ride. I think you have to go on the ride first.

It doesn't detract in any way, shape, or form for me from the enjoyment of the ride. It puts me more in awe of the Imagineers that came up with this stuff. It's phenomenal. It's just so impressive. Yeah. The one thing that was sort of an aha for me was there's that initial ship that you board to make your way, and you end up inside the Star Destroyer.

I had figured that that was a single ship that you got in, and then while the time you were in it, it just turned around to let you out into the Star Destroyer. But it turns out it's three ships. that are continuously loading in a circle. So one loads up and it makes its way around this carousel. And it makes total sense that this is how you...

achieve the capacity that you need to have at a place like Disney World or Disneyland. But I'd never thought through. It was much more clever than I had pictured in my mind's eye. And so that was really gratifying. Yeah, it's very cool. Brian, you mentioned LIDAR, sneaking LIDAR into the parks to map things out, which is genius. But we all have LIDAR in our pocket with our iPhones. All you have to do is buy an app to actually do 3D scans with your phone. You can do that now.

Any of us. Do you think the LiDAR phone on your phone is powerful enough to get all of Space Mountain, though? If you write it enough times, probably. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. You just have to wave it and put one in here, here, here, you know, moving around. Well, why don't you hop on the YouTube and give Mark Rober some trollish comments about that?

I'm not making trollish comments. I'm just saying that we can do it at home and have fun with it. I'm just trying to give you something to do. Come on. Well, I know what my house layout looks like. Well, no, you can sneak it out and do LiDAR everywhere. All right. I don't know. It's just if you've not seen it, Jason, that's pretty cool. It's pretty fun. I'm going to check it out. Did you put it in the show notes?

put it in the show no because i just came to mind and i will yeah he says like a chest mounted lidar thing yeah he puts it under his jacket and like half the fun is like him being the shenanigan guy and like trying to get past security guards and yeah All right. It's a fun video. Yeah. It is amazing what you can do today. And to Jason's point, what's just built into your phone, like. Yeah. What a world. It's amazing. Our phone can drive a car better than Tesla can. Yeah.

Right. Can't deliver a baby better than a Waymo though. That's true. Well, give it time. Give it time. Yeah. Yeah.

And then the final thing I put in our show notes today, continuing our list of fun, calming, entertaining, soothing videos. This is a channel that, from what I can tell, mostly analyzes drum patterns from 80s music, which I'm all about. And in this particular video there... analyzing blue monday but there are lots of i watched the one where they did sweet dreams by eurythmics which was wonderful um

But there's something about the presentation, the voice. And like you were saying earlier, Jason, I'm not 100% sure this isn't an AI voice. I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it seems like it probably is. There's a little uncanny valley to it.

Yep, you're right. You're right. But it is pretty soothing, I have to say. And there's something about seeing things that are so familiar and... ingrained into uh the deepest parts of our brains if you're our age to see them disassembled and put back together again and just those even those sounds are so key to so much for us. It's a nostalgia button.

I'm excited you put this in here because I'm looking through the rest of them and I'm really intrigued and I'm going to watch a bunch of these. But I've got to say, number one with a bullet of songs that I never, ever, ever, ever need to hear again is Blue Monday. I have heard that song so many times in my life. Uh-huh. Okay. You're doing a little, you're doing your dismissive goth.

guy thing is that it's just i mean i have heard that song i it seeps through my pores i've heard i've heard it live i've heard the remixes i've heard the modern remixes i've heard the old remixes i've heard the original seven inch I just never, ever, ever need to hear this song again. It's fair. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. It's fair. So, all right, I'm going to go play blue Monday. Yeah, see you guys next week. Have fun. See you soon.

Over on Patreon, we've got no new subscribers, but Gordy upped a pledge. So thank you, Gordy. And we've also got Dan, Caleb, Travis, Mike, Andre, Mark, Joseph, Dan, Luz Dante, and Andy. Thank you all so much for your continued support. Thank you all so much. And over at PayPal, we've got Ralph and we got $10 donations from Miles, Richard and Shari. Thank you all so much for that.

Thank you so much over at the tip. Yeah, over at the tip jar. That's what it is. We've got John S. Hi, John. Roger, new sub from Jeffrey. Oh, Jeffrey. Donald for 20 bucks. And Richard S., who has decided to throw down. the gauntlet for three hundred and five dollars in a world full of dicks be a richard amen amen thank you thank you richard

Thank you so much, Richard. And for anybody who wants to join the club, you can go to GOG.show slash donate. Your donations actually keep this show on the air. So give what you can. If you go to patreon.com slash GOG, you can sign up for as little as $3 a month.

You sign up for the whole year, you can get a discount and you can give as much as you like. We'll take whatever you want. We really, really do appreciate it because it does keep the show on the air. And sadly, no merch and no reviews this week, Brian. And sadly, no one died. Oh, yeah, that is sad in some cases. Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister.

I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 726. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between and we'll love you for it.

Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget, leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what? We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show and stay grumpy. And Brian, I don't know about you, but this week I'm rocking the Jawbreaker shirt. And this is the classic from Zane Lamprey, the original.

Drinking jacket. I still have one. I still have mine. I actually thought about wearing it because it's cold. Yeah, it's nippy in here. It's 63 degrees in my studio. That's pretty warm.