728: No Face to Shoot

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason De... Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schellmeister. Jason, what in the Sam hell is going on down there? Twenty twenty five said hold my beer. Apparently. Or twenty twenty six said hold my beer. One of the two,'cause somebody needs a beer at this point. Everybody. What except for Hegseth. He doesn't need any more. No, no more for him. No for no more for him.

Yeah, you know, it's it's been a year since the LA fires. That was yester yesterday or Wednesday was the the anniversary of the starting of it. Right about now was when I would look out the window and it was like fucking Mordor here. The skies are red, like f helicopters and planes are flying over the house. Go back and look at my Instagram from last year. You can see all the the pictures that I took of all of the

The insanity. And I didn't really realize how much PTSD the entire city has over this. There was a insane. But Yeah. LA is it's generally not a city that looks back and everybody was posting about it and talking about it. Uh Yeah. And uh even when I was there I took a drive up'cause I hadn't really seen any of the stuff, right? So I took a drive up Malibu, uh PCH. Holy crap, it's just gone. Gone. You were like ten minutes from my house and you didn't even pop in to say hi?

It's it's still another twenty plus. Lazy fucker. Uh no, I I haven't even taken it yet. I haven't taken that drive. I don't want to. Yeah, it's depressing. Super depressing. Although everybody does say it's about the first time in, you know, fifty years that you can actually see the beach from PCH, so that must have been nice.

Silver lining. Yeah, over the burned out hulks of, you know, gazillion dollar homes. But hey, what are you gonna do? But uh speaking of holding my beer, three years sober, buddy. Three years. So made it. Congratulations, man. Yeah, last weekend was my was my three years, believe it or not.

So trucking on, trucking on. Hey man, if you can stay sober through the coming civil war. Your gold. I got it. I'm gonna have to. I'm not gonna be able to afford the beer that's gonna be taken up by everybody else that's getting drunk going, What the hell's going on? I d that and I need to save my money for ammo. That's true.

I don't even know what to say. Like at this point, like why why bother? Like maga magas have stopped listening to us, but I guess you need to fight back at this point. Like I don't fucking even know what to say. The American Gestapo, the unregulated fucking proud boys that have been given uniforms and called themselves ICE, have shot three American citizens, one of them in the face who's dead. What the fuck? Stay in Canada, Brian, stay in Canada. I'm going to now.

There's no turning back at this point unless, you know, the um the United States of California secedes from the Union. I'm not coming back. Like, no way. I don't even know what I don't even know what tomorrow's gonna look like at this point. I don't know what this afternoon's gonna look like, Brian. It's insane. Oh well, let's talk about other stupid shit. Well, Wired did a did a did a they did a journalism and uh they wrote a post called How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance.

And they did remove the paywall restrictions from this post so everyone can read it. TLDR you can't. Because you'll just be driving your SUV, uh get caught in uh traffic and then get shot in the face.

Yeah, or I don't know if you saw the the videos from Chicago where the ice agents were just pepper spraying people with their windows down as they were driving through the intersection. That's a new one. That's a new fun and exciting one. That's that's great. That's great. It's just awesome. You fuckers voted for this that aren't listening to us anymore. Yeah, I think they're long gone, Brian. They're long gone. It's just us. It's just us.

Well, the article explains how protesting today carries new privacy risks and bodily harm risks because of expanded surveillance. It warns that phones, facial recognition, license plate readers, and social media can all be used to identify r Oh God. Identify who attends a protest. So assuming you survive, they'll be able to identify you. Right. Teeth records, otherwise. Yeah, your body. That's about it.

Yeah. Yeah. It outlines steps to reduce exposure like disabling biometric phone locks, avoiding distinctive clothing, limiting online posts, and understanding personal risks before showing up, as in all of them. Uh your body and phone are tracking beacons. Facial recognition, biometrics, tattoos, clothing, and unlocked phones all make it easier to identify and follow you. So transportation and surroundings. Yeah. Yeah. Ice.

You know, I've got one here. Oh, wrong arm. I can even forget which arm I'm on. I got I got one here that says free the media. That's that's clever. It is. Oh whoa what a bygone time, Jason. What a bygone era. Yes indeed. Uh so transportation and surroundings matter. Cars can be tracked with license plate readers and cameras can read signs, bumper stickers, and even text on clothing.

Your online history can be used against you. Social media posts, photos, and even old jokes or comments can be surfaced by law enforcement to identify or scrutinize protesters. We are fucked, Brian. If anybody goes back and listens to our history. They're cut they're gonna be knocking on the door this afternoon. That's it. Well, they are going door to door now. Just like the Gestapo. Yeah. By the way, we we did follow up and I just said happy holidays, Jason. I hope you had a really good time.

I figure we'll we'll we'll do some more holiday wrap up when Dave gets here because he lightens the mood. Let's just get the dystopian fucked future over with first. You know, the craziest thing is I think Dave actually feels this more than either of us. Like there's just this heaviness to him these days. Yeah. I mean we have a release valve. We get to do this. He doesn't have I left the fucking country. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Oh my god. Okay, let's keep going.

Yeah, sure. Uh the EFF has a lovely rundown on what hackers and activists are doing to thwart the fucking Nazis invading our streets. More than our fucking congressmen. Oh, way more than them. Uh so people are pushing back against ICE and expanding use of surveillance technology as federal immigration enforcement increasingly relies on license plate readers, drones, cell phone tracking, and shared police databases. Communities are responding with counter surveillance tools.

Stay inside is the only thing you can do and hope they don't knock on your door. Uh, these range from open source hardware and crowdsourced maps to mobile apps and low tech warning systems, all aimed at exposing where surveillance exists and helping people protect themselves and their neighbors. So, uh

Stay inside. Stay inside. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of stuff in there. I would recommend going to read it because the EFF does a really good job of putting it all together and just giving you a landscape of what people are doing. And all that said, be really fucking careful because these goons might just shoot you in the fucking face. Okay, I'm gonna take a second here, shake it out. Okay. Yeah. Deep breaths, deep breaths, Brian, deep breaths. Okay, let's transition back to just tech stupidity.

Please, please. You might be noticing that ads on Instagram and Facebook are getting more personal, and that's because they probably are. That is assuming you're alive and haven't been shot in the face. Meta updated its privacy policy last month, adding that its d the data it collects from user interactions with its AI services will now be used for targeted ads across the company's social media platforms.

Previously, the social media giant's privacy policy said it already said it collected information from interactions with its AI technology, including conversations and related metadata, but the updated policy, they clarify the statement and say that it includes promptly. That can include questions, messages, media, and other information you or others share with or send to AI at Meta.

AI at Meta is the umbrella term the company uses for its AI products, including the Meta AI chatbot, integrated into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as other AI tools like vibes. and AI features on Ray-Ban smart glasses. Now I would normally say who gives a fuck because who's using this shit? But according to Meta, more than one billion people use Meta AI every month alone. Which could explain why we're in the situation we're in.

I d do you get the things from Instagram when you log in and say would you like to turn on meta AI? Would you like to turn on meta AI? All of your friends have turned on meta AI. Would you like to be like your friends too? Yeah, I do. And I go, Boy, that's a dumb friend. Check, make me make a no mental note of that one. Okay. Go ahead.

Uh Disney has agreed to pay ten million dollars in civil penalties to settle allegations that it violated federal data collection laws designed to protect children. I'm sorry, I don't give a fuck that Disney has to pay ten million dollars for screwing this up when fucking ICE is shooting civilians in the goddamn face.

alleged that Disney failed to properly label some of its videos on YouTube as being targeted towards children. By not doing so, Disney and its partners were allegedly able to target ads towards children on YouTube and unlawfully collect children's personal information without notifying parents or obtaining their consent. obviously uh screwing up the COPA act.

Um after a$170 million settlement with the FTC in twenty nineteen over similar COPA violations, YouTube began requiring creators to designate whether videos they upload are made for kids or not made for kids. Videos labeled as made for kids if certain features disabled to comply with COPA, including personalized advertising, collection of personal information, and comments. This case is amongst the first in which a content creator has settled with the DOJ since YouTube's own settlement.

They did not uh Disney did not immediately respond to uh comment, but uh a spokesperson said supporting the well being and safety of kids and families is at the heart of what we do. This settlement does not involve Disney owned and operated digital platforms, but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on YouTube's platforms. Uh beyond the financial penalty, the court orders prohibits Disney from violating Copa on YouTube again.

Don't do it again. And requires the company to set up an ongoing content review program to ensure its videos on the site comply with the law. Okay, fine. Great. Okay, yeah, I I'm gonna break this down for anybody who doesn't know. When you when you upload a video to YouTube, there's literally a checkbox that says, Is this made for kids? Yes or no.

Now, I don't know about you, Brian, but I'm pretty sure that when you go into your channel setup, you can set defaults. So it just automatically would say, Yes, this is gonna be made for kids. So they should just have that turn on so basically they got fined ten million dollars because some intern that was uploading the videos to YouTube

didn't figure out how to check the right box. That's literally what this is about. It is about exactly what happens. Somebody forgot to check. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You and I have both been there early in our career when we were doing batch processing and stuff like that and went, Oh crap, we forgot the check box. For the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know they're the interns are getting paid like eight bucks an hour, so do you think they give a shit? No. They should have spent that ten million dollars on the salaries for the people who upload their videos to the platforms where kids are going to watch it instead of, I don't know, anything else.

Yeah. Uh well, you know, uh Grok has their is is an AI that uh is Elon's AI and uh boy, oh boy was it in the news over the holidays. Um, and rather than just kind of reading some of the stories like I and I usually do about AI because I I just don't wanna engage, I decided, okay, I'm gonna go check. I'm not gonna do the things that have been in the news, but I'm gonna I'm gonna upload some photos of myself and and and some friends and family and see what it is that Grok can do with limits.

Just how realistic does this look? How do you look at a bikini, Brian? Holy fuck, man. This should be so illegal. I can't even stress how illegal this should be. Screw what we're gonna about to talk about just with kids. This should be illegal for everyone. There are no fucking gu guidelines on this, no railways, no nothing. And it's really Really good. Scary. Yeah. Yeah. Scary fucking kind. Yeah.

Yeah, I had to back away'cause I creeped myself out and I didn't even do anything weird. Like I was just, okay, like have them take a drink. Have them sit down on the bed. Have them do this. Have the holy shit. This stuff is good. And not in a good way.

I I don't know how we ended up here, Jason. I don't know how people decided that this was a good idea and we should pursue this and this is what we should be doing with our time and collective money and energies and brains and smarts and technology. Why then? Because nerds can't get laid. That's why. Yeah. Bunch of these fucking red pill kids out there and they're like, oh, let's just make some AI so I can have a girlfriend. Yay.

Yeah. This is this is just Elon's side, you know, sideloaded brain that's taking all this over. I I if you wanna actually see some of the the other stuff that people are doing, just literally go to Twitter. I'm sorry, X And search for Grok. That's just search for the word Grok.

And it will you'll just be a an ever going list of just how fucked up people are and what they're doing with the technology. And it's it's it's a mess. It is absolutely a mess. And other countries are coming for'em now, big time. They are pissed off. Not like it matters'cause there's nothing that's gonna happen.

Well we'll see. I I mean hopefully next week we'll we can talk about this. There's a push in England to actually ban X and Grok completely. We'll see. But uh I don't know. If you're wondering i if you've somehow managed to avoid all this, I'll I'll just do one story here.

Uh, this is from Gizmodo. Did you spend the holidays engaging in quality time with your loved ones and catching up with friends or family? Or, like a disturbing number of ex users, did you spend it asking Grok to manipulate images of children and depict them in bikinis? And and less, by the way,'cause people figured out ways around a lot of the limited guardrails that were kind of not there to begin with.

Yep. Uh the transparent tape one is the one that I saw that people are using. Yeah. Turn this outfit into transparent tape. Yeah. So, you know, the deep fake the deep fake stuff has been out there for a while. It just the thing is, it wasn't this available. You you had to like you had to like deep web the shit before. Yeah, you had to have skills and you and and you know processing power and things like that. This is just for everybody. Well, this is this is the AOL of fucking AI porn.

Like you got a CD in the mail, and you're fucking on the you're on the information super bikini highway, baby. Uh Jesus Christ, I can't tell you how wrong this is. The article is in there and basically they haven't said anything about it. Uh Grok doesn't care, X doesn't care. Fucking Trump reposted some of the thing or Trump, I mean sorry, I get these two confused. Elon reposted a bunch of these things that were happening.

Uh yeah, people are pissed. This is insane what people are doing on Grok. There's no guardrails at all. It is and it's non consensual adults, which is bad enough. It's children. People are all over the place with kids. Putting kids making videos it's I it's so fucking creepy. If if this would have happened twenty years ago

ICE agents would have been breaking down Elon Musk's door. They would have been shutting the server. They would have been carting servers out of the server farm. This whole thing would have been shut down, but no, now we just shoot civilians and we let this run amok. This is the world we've created now. Well see, Elon doesn't have to do anything right now because there's n there is no regulation that that has anything to do with anything.

Uh there's a bipartisan take down it's called the the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes non consensual sexually explicit material and requires platforms to remove it within forty eight hours at a victim's request. Unfortunately, Brian, it doesn't take effect until May nineteenth of this year. So until then. So okay, you you report one image, they take it down, it takes what, ten seconds to make another one?

Uh then they're supposed to ban the accounts of people that do that. But you know, until until then, X has no legal obligation to act at all. And uh there's another case that involves Ashley Saint Clair. Do you know who Ashley St. Clair is, Brian? I'm gonna guess a porn side. Nope, one of Musk's children's mamas, baby's mamas. Oh, okay. Well, you say tomato. Yeah. People on uh X were taking pictures of her and sexualizing them when she was even a kid.

And uh she couldn't get it taken down. She she fucked Elon and she can't even get those pictures taken down. And then when they finally, when there was media coverage, did finally, you know, put enough pressure on X to take it down, guess what they did, Brian? What?

Yeah. That's exactly that's exactly what we're dealing with nowadays. So what the fuck are you gonna do? Instagram's top exec Adam Masari has an idea what we're gonna do about all this, Jason. He's made it clear that he expects AI content to overtake non AI imagery and the significant implications that Shift has for its creators and photographers. He shared his thoughts in a lengthy post about the broader trends he expects to shape Instagram in twenty twenty six.

Everything that made creators matter, the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be fate, is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. There's a lot of amazing AI content. Is there

Let's define amazing. Let's start with that. And our platform may need to rethink its approach to labeling such imagery by fingerprinting real media, not just chasing fakes. So basically his big idea now is we can't stop any of this. There's a torrent of it.

We've told you that we were doing moderation. We hired moderators. We told you that we'd have machine learning moderation. Now we have AI. We can use AI to moderate the AI. None of that fucking works. So what we should do is basically let's put it on the cameras. And cameras need to put some sort of stamp on everything that says this is real. And we just have to assume that absolutely everything else isn't. That's the word.

Yep. Yeah. And I mean, when when this whole AI bullshittery started, I d cast your mind back, Brian, you know, like two, three years ago. I said I said that if you wanna make the next trillion dollar company You need to figure out how to become human verified. Human verifiable information is going to be a thing. And this this twat fucking comes out and says, you know what? It's on you now to prove that you're you.

uh instead of the other way around that it's you know, uh it's it's it's mind boggling and this guy this this guy needs a Uh I I I've ha about had it with him. About had it with him. And he thinks it's a good thing. He thinks that this is amazing. Everybody can make shit now.

And let's just let's just make make the world just full of this crap. No. Well of course it is. They're their product is you. Their product is content. Their product is eyeballs. And now we don't even need people to make content anymore. This is fantastic for them. Well, it's gonna be bots making the content and bots watching the content and them selling ads to the actual people that aren't aren't even there.

And and you know, then they're gonna say, Oh well, you know, we have we have tools in place to make sure that your ad dollars are being spent wisely when nobody is watching any of the ads. That's it. They've inshantified so much. Yeah. The ha the house of cards has to fall eventually because of that because at some point who's gonna keep paying for ads? You're not getting any engagement. Nobody's coming into your silo.

So ridiculous. Uh but let's just keep going, right, Jason? OpenAI is launching a new facet for its AI chatbot called ChatGPT Health. That sounds like a smart thing to use. Yeah. Oh great. Yeah, psychologists. You can connect your personal private medical records and wellness apps to ChatGPT in order to get more tailored responses to queries about your health, Jason. There will be privacy safeguards. Sure there will.

For an extra twenty bucks a month you get a rectal exam too. Elon comes around and sticks a finger up your ass. It's a Haroldman. The announcement from OpenAI acknowledges that this new development is not intended for diagnosis or treatment, yet that's what they want you to use it for. But it's not intended for it. It's not intended for it, Jason. We're telling you So you can't sue it. Yes, terms of service says

So if you use it for something that's not in the terms of service, then it's your fault, just like all the kids that killed themselves because they didn't read the terms of service before they used Chat GPT to figure out how to make a noose or try and go kill their parents. It's all in the terms of service, Brian.

Speaking of that, character AI and Google have reportedly agreed to settle multiple lawsuits regarding teen suicide and self harm. The families of several teens sued the companies in Florida, Colorado, Texas, and New York. The Orlando lawsuit was filed by the mother of fourteen year old Sewell Setzer III, who used a character AI chatbot tailored after Game of Thrones scenarios.

The teen reportedly exchanged sexualized messages with the chat bot, probably with a grok side window, creating her in a bikini jumping up and down and spreading her butt cheeks, and occasionally referred to it as his baby sister. He eventually talked about joining Daenerys in a deeper way before taking his own life.

The Texas suit accused a character AI model of encouraging a teen to cut his arms. It also allegedly suggested that murdering his parents was a reasonable option. After the lawsuits were filed, the startup changed its policies and banned users under eighteen. With a little scroll down what year were you born in clicker, that's about it. That's how they do it. Yeah. Yes.

Character AI is a role-playing chat pop platform that allows you to create custom characters and share them with other users. They were founded in twenty twenty one by two Google engineers. In twenty twenty four, Google rehired the co founders and struck a two point seven billion dollar deal to license the startup's technology. So yes. Twenty twenty six is just shaping up to be a great year, Brian. It's January ninth, Jason. Just I know, I know. We are nine days in.

Nine times We didn't even talk about Venezuela. Oh here we go. Over on Polymarket, the decentralized casino for degenerates, we have a situation that perfectly sums up the crypto ecosystem. First, a mystery trader turned a th turned thirty grand into four hundred thousand dollars by betting Maduro would be ousted. Wonder how that happened. I wonder who knew.

Placed the bet just hours before the Navy SEALs landed, and I'm sure that's just a lucky guess, and not someone with a cousin at the Pentagon or the White House or any of the oil companies that were briefed beforehand, but certainly not someone in Congress because they were kept in the dark. But the real comedy is the bet on whether the US would invade Venezuela. Polymarket ruled it a no, and the people who bet yes lost everything to the tune of about ten million dollars.

Uh, this was decided by something they called the UMA or Universal Market Access. Think of the UMA as the Supreme Court for these bets, but instead of judges, it's just a bunch of random token holders voting on what reality is. UMA holders. UMA voters ruled that flying into a sovereign nation to kidnap its leader is technically a raid, not an invasion, because we didn't hold the territory. So The the probable insider trader gets paid and everyone else gets

fisted by a jury of anonymous crypto bros arguing over dictionary definitions. Welcome to the future, Brian. Welcome to the fucking future. Ah it's a day, it a day. It's a day that ends in why. Why? Why why why why did you fucking people vote for Trump?

Moving on. What do we got now? Well, Waymo's getting a good look at the competition as Uber has revealed the design of its robo taxi that's due to launch in San Francisco later this year, the culmination of Uber's evil plans and dreams for the past twenty years of putting everybody else out of business. And basically never hiring anybody and ensuring through government uh kickbacks and payment forwards.

that uh they would never have to pay taxes or or anybody's health insurance or anything like that. Because eventually they knew they would get rid of the drivers and just have their stupid fucking app and all the money. Travis Kalanik's e evil vision is finally coming to fruition, Brian. That's it. That's true. The upcoming Robotaxi is a result of a partnership announced in July between Uber, Lucid and Neuro. The plan is to deploy at least twenty thousand Lucid EVs.

Now we'll use the NeuroDriver Autonomous Driving Tech and be available through the Uber platform. They've started on road testing last month in San Francisco Bay Area, with Neuro using more than one hundred RoboTaxi prototypes. Supervised by autonomous vehicle operators, the Robotaxi, which is a modified lucid gravity, will feature a multi prong sensor system including high res cameras, lidar and radar.

Aeon. Yeah. Take note, Elon. The design also incorporates a halo mounted on the EV's roof, which will increase sensor visibility and double as a display that uses LED to display helpful info to passengers until they decide that they can stick ads on that fucker too. Yeah, exactly. Oh it's funny these so they announced this at CES. Have you noticed or have you heard anything about CES this year? Because

From everything I've heard, it's pretty much a ghost town. Like a lot of big players are not even showing up because nobody wants to come to the United States. To talk about products that they can't sell here because of all the tariffs. I maybe that's it. I don't know. I'm just I'm just thinking. It's a fucking mystery, Jason. It's a fucking mystery. It's a it really is. It's a fucking mystery. That's right. Yeah.

But uh as we talk about all these uh autonomous vehicles and robo taxis and things like that, Gizmodo points out maybe we should pump the brakes on the idea that robo taxis are safer. The TLDR on this one is most of the studies came from guess who, Jason. The companies themselves? The companies that make the fucking robo taxis. Yeah. Sure. This is a bit like Marlboro. Marlboro says that smoking is safe. That's right.

I can't fucking believe this because we have been pushing back on this and then it's just study after study and we've reported on them on the shows saying that, okay, well in these cases it does appear that uh autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers. Actually fucking no. Well shit.

It's pretty limited the data, as a recent report from Blueberg points out, there is certain data s to suggest that autonomous vehicles can cut back on the number of accidents on the road. Waymo in particular has made this information central to its pitch.

claiming to have achieved eighty-four percent fewer crashes that result in airbag deployment, seventy-three percent fewer crash related injuries, and forty eight fewer percent fewer police reported crashes compared to human drivers during its first twenty two million miles on the road.

That sounds pretty impressive. The data that provides the foundation of these claims, however, comes from the company itself. And as Bloomberg notes, much of much of the research that Waymo highlights on its website has been co-authored by Waymo employees. And much of that safer driving was also done in safer driving conditions than most human drivers face.

It wasn't until November twenty twenty five that Waymo got the green light to drive on freeways around the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Up until that point, the vast majority of miles were city driving. By comparison, about twenty five percent of all human driving takes place on highways and freeways, according to the Federal Highway Administration, where speeds are much higher and accidents are often more deadly.

There's also little information about how frequently a teleoperator takes control of a vehicle because companies don't provide information as to when interventions happen or what it means when it does. The data that we do have shows that autonomous vehicles in their limited capacity have been safer than human drivers in ideal conditions. However, the researchers have found that while driving at dawn and dusk, accident rates for autonomous vehicles were five point two five percent higher.

Oh no, five point two five percent. Five point two five times higher. Oh shit. In turning scenarios, it was one point nine eight times higher. There's also the fact that while autonomous vehicles can avoid some human errors like distracted driving, they also tend to make mistakes that people wouldn't make, like diving driving directly into a body of water or driving through an active fire scene.

At this point it's not actually clear as the industry would like to suggest that autonomous vehicles will achieve either of those goals. So, you know, all that is PR bullshit. Oh man. See a it is funny that the when the Waymo drove through the active crime scene here in LA that somebody didn't shoot it in the face.

Give it time. No face to shoot. There's no face to shoot. God damn it. That's how they got around it. Yeah, so okay, they fudged the numbers. Shocking. So I'm still not getting in one. Nah, I'm not either after reading that. Yeah, especially after reading that, especially not at dawn or dusk.

Or when there's a turning incident involved, because God forbid if i if I'm going in a straight line and the minority. Yeah. Then I'm I'm in. I'll I'll try it then, but if we got a turn, fuck that noise, man. No way.

Well, I just saw this last one and it just it kinda it just it sums up how I feel about Does Tim cook another Apple Execs make per year? And uh some some numbers came out. In total, Apple says Tim Cook's compensation totaled seventy-four million two hundred ninety-four thousand eight hundred and eleven dollars in twenty twenty five. Now Cook revealed back in twenty fifteen that he plans to give away all of his wealth during his lifetime.

after providing for the college education of his nephew. He plans to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy rather than simply writing checks. Tim, I got Hold hold the phone, Tim. I got an idea for you. I have just a small idea. So put that little bucket of money away for your nephew.

Take a smaller salary and distribute the wealth to the people who work for your fucking company. Like, you know, I don't know, all the people with suicide nets in China because they're getting they're going crazy. Are you a fucking communist? What is this communist? I'm sorry, Brian. I'm sorry. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It's a it's an idea. It's an idea. Run it through Grok and see how it see how it tracks, okay?

See how it looks in a bikini. Yeah, yeah. Some of the other greatest hits. The CFO got twenty-two million four hundred and sixty-seven thousand three hundred nine dollars. General Counsel got twenty-seven million dollars. The lawyer got twenty-seven million dollars. That's a lot of money. COO got twenty-seven million dollars. The former CFO walked away with fifteen and a half million dollars. Maybe that's why they quit because they weren't getting the whole twenty-seven.

And the retail and people SVP got twenty seven million dollars. Brian, I don't know how hard you have to work day in, day out. to get twenty seven million dollars a year, but that's a you know, they m they must have extra hours in the day that us mortals don't have. Because you know, you have to be working at least four hundred hours a day, I'd think, to make twenty seven million dollars a year. But I guess that's just tech. I guess so. Unbelievable.

Well, Brian, over the break, Stranger Things wrapped up. If you haven't read every news article everywhere, people are complaining about it, people are loving it, some people are thinking that it was all a fake out and there's gonna be another secret episode that was supposed to drop yesterday.

Uh spoiler alert, it didn't. It's done. Um it was fine. I ended up fast forwarding half of it. Like the most of the season I ended up fast forwarding half of it because I didn't really care about a lot of the the emotional storylines. I'm like just Get to the bad guy, kill him and let's just let's go home. Um It was it was good. I liked it. You know, I didn't I didn't complain about it, so

Um would I would I recommend you uh going back to watching it since you've been, you know, away since season three. No. Don't don't Take your time. Yeah, just go do something else. That was kind of my impression as well. I I I've kind of monitored the feedback that was going on online about about everything and uh uh my thought was like i if people say they stuck the landing or hit a home run then I'll then I'll go back and and start watching it all again. But uh

It's kinda seems to be a collective meh and uh for a collective meh, I'm not gonna go back and watch the nineteen thousand hours of Stranger Things that would be in front of me still, having only missed two seasons.

Yeah, you can actually go watch the extended editions of all the Lord of the Rings again and still have a couple hours to spare. Yeah. So I'm I'm glad that uh the people that liked it liked it. Uh I'm not sure what anybody who hated it was expecting, but uh It is what it is and it's uh it's over now. Oh man, I did have a John McTiernan holiday movie marathon though, which was kinda fun. I watched uh The Hunt for Red October, classic movie in my top ten. Can't go wrong with that one.

Die Hard Three, also fantastic movie. Can't go wrong with that one. And the the the sleeper hit that I really, really enjoy is the Thirteenth Warrior. I really like that movie for some reason. It's I think it's a fine movie, so Um sadly John McTiernan has been kind of run out of Hollywood. I don't know if it was rollerball, which I I didn't know he did rollerball, which is funny'cause I actually worked on rollerball for a little bit. We're remember our our good old friend uh Dave Riggs?

Oh yeah. Uh Mr. Regler. Yeah, yeah. We worked on that together for a while. And uh uh yeah, it was apparently such a bad movie that uh I I completely forgot that he did it. But uh it I all three of those I think they all have legs and hold water, so just uh just uh you know, something to do. Uh traders UK and US are back.

Uh, you know I'm a super fan of the traders. Um so far the UK's got five episodes out and the US just dropped the first three yesterday. Traders UK has been amazing. It's been so much fun. I'm enjoying every second of it. I can't wait. I'm gonna watch the US one tonight, but uh that's on Peacock.

Lots of them are on Peacock. The UK you have to go to Sweden to get right now, unless you live in the UK and then you can just watch it on TV. But Uh yeah, as a trader super fan I just I'm tickled pink'cause That's how it that's how it is. All right. Well, something else has returned. The pit is back for season two on HBO Max, uh, and uh the first episode is dropped. It is a weekly drop. They do not drop them all at once.

Which I like, especially for this show because it's pretty intense. Uh, more of the same. Just as good as last season was. Uh first episode was was riveting and gross and all the things that you would expect if you watched the first season. So good times. Looking forward to that. Uh by the way, it was it was uh renewed already for season three. So yeah, I saw that as well. Yeah, I mean it's great acting. It's it's really well done. Uh recommend it if so long as you're not squeamish.

Okay. They go in. Uh so I also uh flew to LA and back, so I have some uh not really drunk on the plane movie reviews because early morning flights. I finally got around to seeing Downton Abbey, the grand finale. Did not need it. No. Didn't the the the previous one was fine.

Didn't care. Who cares? Who gives a shit? Like just wrap this shit up already. Everybody's married and happy and you have to give happy endings to everybody and oh my god, she got a divorce. How scandalous and she survives. Okay, great. Okay, great. She got a divorce to come back. To do the show. Anyways, yeah, it's it don't bother.

Okay, I won't. Thanks. Yeah, the the last one where uh where uh Maggie Smith's character dies is is uh that that is a perfect ending to the whole thing. So let it go at that. Selection was limited, uh, so I decided to give a movie that I normally wouldn't watch a tried Jurassic World Rebirth. This is the attempted uh reboot again with Scarlett Johansson to bring some heat. I don't know how you take a movie with Scarlett Johansson and uh dinosaurs and make it boring as fuck, but they did it.

Maybe they needed some AI. Could not have cared less about anything that happened in this entire movie. It was so boring. There was like three dinosaurs top. And I did not care about a single character, a single dinosaur The point, the plot, nothing. The soundtrack was boring. The fucking title sequence was boring. The font they used was boring. Everything was boring. Even the font. Even the font is boring. That's bad. That's bad.

Uh they had the DeJarlene Limited was available, so I decided to watch that. It was a Wes Anderson movie that I had not caught. Now my history with Wes Anderson I loved Some of his first movies. Bottle Rocket is excellent. Rushmore is one of my favorite movies. I loved the Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zisu. Really good. After that, everything's been crap, and this is crap.

This is so bad. He's become a parody of himself. You can't I can't even watch him anymore. It was unwatchable, so I stopped watching it and I instead went and watched a movie that is actually quirky, weird, funny, and brilliant, O Brother, where art thou? I've watched the movie. Haven't watched it in years. Boy does it have legs. Boy is it awesome? And boy did it clean clear that fucking stanky Darjeeling taste out of my mouth. And I normally like Darjeeling.

I wanna watch that again. That was a great movie. Oh Brother War, that was fantastic. It really cheered me up and uh I I really enjoyed watching it again. Uh I watched Honey Don't, which is a newish movie that's got uh what's her name? Uh Margaret Qually and Aubrey Plaza. This is also a quirky, weird movie, uh kind of noir-ish.

uh very sexy lesbian scenes. Uh so I felt a little awkward watching it on the plane, so I had to stop watching it on the plane because I'm not an ex and grok AI user and You know, I don't like to expose children to pornography.

So I started to Stewardess, can I have a bl can I have a blanket, Stewardess, please? Yeah, I have a baby blow. I I felt really creepy so stopped watching it on the plane and I finished it when I got home. It's it's a fun Of course you did. I finished one particular part nineteen times. No, we're just kidding. Nine times It was actually a pretty fun movie, uh well acted and and interesting. I think you dig it, Jason. This is the this is up your alley. Uh re regardless of the lesbians.

Okay. I like Aubrey Plaza. I like her. Yeah, I like her too. She's she's great. I forgot that she was in uh Scott uh Scott Pilgrim versus the World. Totally. Yeah. And I watched the uh documentary about John Candy, John Candy I Like Me. Uh Good. not great. I think they're very limited by the fact that they uh believe it or not, even though he's one of the biggest stars in the world, it was like nineteen ninety four when he died, so

Not a lot of footage and so many years later, like people's reminisces aren't aren't as cutting or interesting or vibrant as they may have been. It's all very kind of washed away with time, like, my God, he was such a great guy. What a great actor, blah blah blah. And that was kinda it. Yeah. I didn't get a lot of the feels from it. Yeah, that's cause you know, it y I look at it, I'm like, ah, that's probably sad, but like it at this point it's like

It was so long ago, you know. It's so long ago. Yeah. Yeah, it was a bit uh like twenty years too late on bringing this thing out. So Yeah, it sounds like it. Still great and it was a good reminder of all the different roles he played because there's a lot of clips from movies and things like that. So it was enjoyable for that.

Uh MTV has shut down its remaining twenty four seven music channels in several countries, including the UK and Australia, at the end of twenty twenty five. However, a developer who goes by the name of Flexosaurus Rex has paid tribute to the MTV of old with a web app that has several channels of nonstop streaming music. MTV Rewind has eleven channels at this time of writing, including one that features videos from the original channel's first day of existence in nineteen eighty one.

There's a channel dedicated to MTV unplugged performances, a rap focus stream, one for each decade from the seventies to the twenties, and 120 minutes in headbanger ball options. And I'm so loading up 120 minutes tonight and watching them.

So get it quick because somebody's gonna somebody's good some lawyer somewhere is gonna say take this shit off, you know. Absolutely. So he said that uh he felt a wave of sadness when the announcement hit that uh they were all shutting down. Nothing felt like it could fill that void. Uh so I started coding, built it in forty-eight hours, MTV rewind.

And they've even put in era appropriate ads in some of the feeds, which is great. Like, I gotta check this out. This is awesome. So I it's certainly gonna get shut down as soon as possible, but I'm very gotta gotta take a look at this. That's this is a good use of technology, you fucks. And finally Star Street Star Trek, Starfleet Academy begins streaming on Paramount Plus January fifteenth, so time to renew that subscription with ads because he wants to pay for it.

Uh uh uh I'm jumping on this bullet for you, Jason. Don't you worry. Okay. Well I'm gonna watch it. I'm just gonna go to Sweden Academy to download this one. I'm I'm not giving giving the Ellison any of my cash. No, no, thank you. Fair enough. Ups and doodabs!

So Brian, I got a Christmas present this year. I got I got the DJI Osmo Mobile Eight. My roommate gave that to me and I love it because my Uh this is one of the new gimbals that use the camera kit in the iPhone, so you don't actually have to use an app if you don't want to, which is really nice because using the Osmo Mobiles, I have a six.

And using the the app that comes with it's just a pain in the butt. It doesn't it does half the shit right. I don't know. But the new one has cool like face detection things so you can make hand gestures to turn it on and turn it off. So you don't have to like go around the back and try and find your face to lock on to to track you and stuff like that. So I like that part. I like it. It was uh I don't know, I don't know how much it was. It was free. It was Christmas. Yay.

Yeah, I did pick up a DJI mic two to go with it though, so I can have a lavalier uh with it instead of having to use the phone mic, so if it's farther away. And I I I put this on my Christmas list because You know, we're gonna since we're doing this stupid fucking YouTube thing now, I wanna be able to make some shorts easier and not standing here in my in my place so I can do'em when out and about and stuff like that,'cause I got some cool product uh reviews coming up.

that are aren't here in my garage. So uh it's cool. I I like it. I played with it for a little bit and kinda got the hang of it. It works pretty much the same as the other ones. Uh the nice part about this new one is it'll spin three sixty. The old other ones wouldn't go all the way around. And um Yeah, a as far as an upgrade goes from the mobile six, it's definitely a big upgrade and it's not that much money, I think. It's it's like under a hundred and fifty bucks.

For what it is, it's like magic. And it even oh, and the handle now has a tripod built in so you don't have to carry a fucking tripod with you and a longer selfie stick. So it's pretty cool. You'll see some videos with that fairly shortly. Alright. Uh well Netflix rolled out Netflix games uh in mid to late December, and uh I did not know about this until I went over to some friends' house for New Year's Eve.

And uh they brought it all out and uh the kids grabbed their iPads and the parents grabbed their phones and we all started playing Boggle and Pictionary together as we were waiting for the new year to ring in. Well, the East Coast New Year, so everybody could go to bed with their kids as soon as possible. Uh these are actually a lot of fun. Uh we're playing Boggle and Pictionary pretty regularly even back at our house now.

Uh they've got Lego Party, uh Boggle, Party Crashers, Pictionary Game Night, and Tetris Time Warp. Uh there's also some other stuff like Red Dead Redemption and they're rolling out more games and obviously branded games to their shows as well as all that is uh coming soon. But yeah, this was kind of a blast. Like we had a lot of fun playing it. So is the boggle uh multiplayer, so everybody has to play on their phones? Okay.

Yeah, just playing boggle with the thing and you just take a piece of paper and write it down. You don't know apps required, but no no paper required now. So yeah, it's just up on the screen. It gives you timers. You just go through it and yeah, it's a it's a blast. It's fun.

Okay. Cool. I because Netflix games have been around for a while. I had the Mahjong version of Stranger Things that they had, and there were like fifteen hundred boards in it or something like that. And I finished it and they never I finished all fifteen hundred Major boards. Yes, I I'm crazy like that. But uh they they never updated it again. So and I guess they're probably not gonna update it now now that the show's over. So but this one's cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Uh we talked a little bit about CES earlier and how we didn't really see or hear about anything. I did see this in the news and I had to question. Now technology may have moved on a bit, but uh Victrola. the old timey company that uh put out radios and turn tables back in the day is still out there doing turntables. They put out a speaker that sits underneath the turntable and streams audio via Bluetooth. Now

Correct me if I'm wrong. I I I only took audio engineering as a as a double major at college, but speakers create vibrations. That is how they make sounds. So, you know, they they tend to vibrate. If you put your hand on a speaker, it's moving because that's how it makes the sound. Needles on record players read vibrations, uh basically waveforms that are put into the record.

If you have a vibrating item underneath your record player, it will bounce that needle ever so slightly, thus killing your audio fidelity. That is the reason when you see DJs with turntables, they're in these big road cases that have all kinds of foam underneath them to isolate them from any vibrations caused by the sound from the speakers.

So you have put a speaker underneath your turntable. Okay, Kermity Frog. I am sure that you have worked very hard on the technology, but still this seems very fucking stupid to me. Oh well I d you know, Vic Troll is still working on eighteen hundreds technology, so who knows? I didn't know they were still alive. Comes with optional leeches for your health.

Yeah. After the bloodletting you play the turntable. Yes. But they do say they have a vibr vibration isolated design, to which I say you fucking better. Yeah ya fucking better is right. Well, it's just silent. That's the whole point. It's just a brick. You put it under there. It doesn't it doesn't v make any vibrations at all. You have to use your imagination.

Oh well this I just saw this one. This came in uh California's privacy protection agency has launched DROP, the delete request and opt out platform, which is a free tool that lets residents of California submit deletion requests to more than five hundred registered data brokers in a single submission.

According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, the service went live on january first with data brokers required to delete your information within ninety days and continue deleting it every forty five days going forward. The process is straightforward. Verify California residency through the state's identity gateway. Create a profile with as much or as little personal information as you choose, and submit it. That's it. One form, five hundred plus brokers, no charge.

Now we uh one of our advertisers is delete me. Do not get confused with delete me. Delete me does a lot more than this. And this is only the registered brokers that California is following, so You still maybe want a backup plan like, I don't know, delete me slash G-O-G or Grumpy Old Geeks or however the code goes. It'll be it'll be around somewhere. But um this is pretty cool for Californians. I recommend giving it a shot.

Yeah, might as well. You should sign up with as many as possible. That and say, Delete me.

The dark side. Mm with Dave? It's a new year and it's a new dark side with Dave with super podcast host Dave Bittner. Welcome back to the show, Dave. How ya doing? I'm Missed you. I I m I missed you too. Uh both of you. And uh I just wanna s at the outset say congratulations, Jason, on three years. Um Thank you very much. I I I am proud of you and admire you at the same time. Three years is nothing to sneeze about. Absolutely. I mean I look at the news and I'm happy to make it three minutes.

Yeah, I can really see you right now, but hey, what are you gonna do? It's been at least three minutes since my last sip of whiskey. And I'm really white knuckling it right now. Yeah. So uh this is an interesting question, Jason. How to what degree is it uh annoying or uh bothersome at all that folks like us who do not have the disease of alcoholism when we joke about it the way we just did. Does that at all bother you or are you just long for the ride?

Just along for the ride. Doesn't bother me at all. Okay. No. I'm not I'm not gonna what is it, yuck on your yum because I just can't have any. It's you know. You know, you can make fun of cancer patients too. If I had cancer, I wouldn't be f yeah, yelling at you. It doesn't matter. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. No, it's just a thing. I I I was born with it. I got it. C'est la vie. So no, I I you guys have have have have the chuckles at my expense. That's okay. I'm used to it.

I've been on this show long enough. It's not like that's what triggled us ha triggered us having chuckles at your expense or anything. I know. I know. Waking up in the morning is just is good enough for the thing. Who needs a reason? Exactly. No, but seriously, no, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't think it bothers most people in recovery because, you know, you get used to it. So I need my my my roommate has a bottle of wine every day.

And it's like I I I think of it as training like the Olympics. Like the Olymp the Olympians go up to Colorado because the air is thinner because that way they're, you know, they're stronger when they come back down. So You know, I I just watch people exactly. That's all I do. Just to, you know, strike it up, you know. Yeah. Play the rocky theme, go in there and, you know, have a diet coke and go. Ha and walk out. That's how it goes.

Well hats off to you. Excellent. Uh well I hope everybody had a holiday break. I thought we'd get the Disneyland thing out of the way quickly because I did go. Uh my wife uh was able to get a free Parkhopper tickets uh through her work,'cause we had said we are absolutely not going to Disneyland this winter, and of course we got free tickets, so we went. And uh it was very nice. We went on the thirtieth of January, so in between Christmas and New Year's. Thirtieth of January hasn't happened yet.

Oh sorry, thirtieth of December. We're trying to get through this month as fast as possible. I know. I don't know what day it is, I don't know what year it is. I just know I don't like it. That's where I'm at. So That's that's about it. So yeah, we had a we had a good time. It was very busy, but of course they roll out all their hollow our holiday decorations and the special treats and drinks and all that sort of stuff so we were able to enjoy all that and walk around.

I have to say though that um as much as I enjoy uh the Christmas decorations and whatnot at Disneyland. Uh, over the past few years it appears to me that the imagineers much more enjoy Halloween and as if they've started to make it a much bigger deal. Halloween is is They go above and beyond compared to Christmas. Christmas is very nice and it has been that way forever, but ever since they've really kind of adopted we're gonna do Halloween, they have gone all in and I would much rather

go during the Halloween decorating season time than Christmas at this point. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I I have been at Disneyland at Halloween'cause I remember the pumpkins outside the you know, the the gate where you get in, there were all these pumpkin heads and things. Mm-hmm. But it was nice. And then I've seen the Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween Uh haunted mansion. Yeah. Which is great.

But uh yeah, that's interesting. So the crowds weren't too overwhelming? Uh i it was busy, but we were able to get on most of the rides that we wanted to go on. Uh we've definitely had better trips, but it was still it's still Disneyland. It still does what it's What it says on the tin, it's a it's a blast. So And it was free. And it's free. I mean Yeah. It was free. So can't complain about that.

That's true. That's true. We were pretty uh quiet over the holidays, just uh stayed close to home and uh had family and visited with family and just uh kind of vegged out over the the break. Um Uh m so much so that I was kinda ready to come back to work by the time it was over. I was getting a little bit of cabin fever, but uh overall nice to step away and recharge and

Do a lot of napping and eating and all that holiday stuff. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, we did the same. I actually took Brian's advice and took time off. I I I started on I'm gonna do all this stuff. And then like a day or so into it, I'm like, nap. I can take a nap right now. Holy shit. I don't have to do anything. All my work's done for my clients. They're they're gone. Brian's gone. I don't have to open my RSS reader. Oh shit. I I I can get used to this.

So it turned out I took two week I literally took two weeks off and enjoyed every second of it. It was amazing. Good for you. I'm glad you finally did it. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. No. I came back I came back on uh July or January second just like ready to rock. I'm like, let's go. And now

I'm like, let's go somewhere else. Anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Did get retro tech support requests this y this year. I had to set up an HP printer on a Windows ten machine. Mm-hmm. That That was uh challenging. That was challenging for me. I haven't used Windows in quite some time and I haven't used an HP printer in quite some time. And most of it was trying to get around them making you set up an account. on the HP site so they can send you ink notifications

Over and over the dark patterns that they use. I'm setting this printer up for a ninety-seven year old woman. There is no way in hell that she could ever do this. I'm I'm trying to disable stuff and I'm like, okay, if it asks you this, don't do this. If it asks you this, don't do this. And it's like ninety-seven, there's probably gonna be little need for an ink replacement cartridge.

That's right. This is true. This is true. We don't need a subscription. A couple of years ago I took my father to buy a new T V at the local Best buy and the the guy said, like, Do you want the extended warranty? I said, My father is ninety years old. He doesn't buy green bananas. And the guy shook his head, he said, Understood, understood. Yeah. So that's funny.

Yeah. So yeah, it was it was a good uh good tech support experience. And you know, like it's not like the old days. The old days I'd be like I'd walk into a room and everybody'd be like, Can you help me fix this? Can you help me fix this? Can you help me fix this and this and this and this? But this time it was just like Yeah. Oh, you got that. Okay. That's what I had over the break. I uh

My nephew got a PS five that I had to set up and you know, nothing is just plugging it in and figuring out cables anymore. Now it's a door to accounts. Where do you have to set up accounts? How are the accounts connected? How do you do the parental account? How do you oh so no what's your email? Ask what w who's we what what which email do you want me to use for that?

And then of course, you know, uh somebody else is streaming. The streaming stopped working on the T V and there, go fix that. Oh, the Wi Fi's down again. Which part of the Wi Fi is down? Which I there's two different Wi Fi's here, which one's Okay, I'll do that. Oh, my mom got a new computer, so I had to set that up. Not only do I have to set up the new computer, I have to figure out it's Dell. Dell used to have a software package that would transfer from one Dell to the other Dell.

That type of software package has been depreciated. You can't use that one anymore, so you have to buy this software package. But go through Dell to buy it so we can get our beacon. No, uh well that that it's not taking my credit card. Screw this. I'm going to their site directly. I'm just gonna buy the software package from them. Okay, fine.

Let's start that process. Let's transfer everything from one Dell to the other Dell. Let's do it over Wi-Fi because I don't want to buy the goddamn cable. Thirty-five hours later, after having it crapped out five times, oh, it's finally all over there now. Great. Awesome. That's done. What's next? Okay, I'm getting PTSD just listening to that, so let's I think well, we've all lived it, you know. Yeah. Uh yeah.

The other th thing I think that that happens so much these days is the excitement of a new gadget is tempered by the fact that the first time you power it up, it has to do two hours worth of downloads and and software updates. Yeah. Or charging even if it doesn't need that. It's gotta charge up, so

Right. As soon as I got my my my my my Osmo mobile, the first thing it did was it's like, Okay, gotta charge it a bit and then you had to do the firmware updates and all that crap, just but just so you could even turn it on. I'm like, Can I just play with my new toy, please? Uh dare I ask, did you put the uh three sixty camera on the Osmo Mobile?

Kinda defeats the purpose. You don't really need to put a three sixty camera on a gimbal. I'm just giving you crap about the three sixty camera. Yeah, it's sitting right next to the DJ Osmo Mobile right now. Yeah. It's got a three hundred and sixty degree view of the Osmo Mobile. Right. I can tell it from any angle I can see see that. All right. Fair enough. We had a surprisingly t t uh tech free Christmas this year. Is especially for me. I

Uh there really wasn't much My son got a um my oldest son got a uh Flipper Zero. So he was playing with that all day, uh, you know, copying remotes and And everything. Uh so he's l looking to use that for uh doing uh lighting control, like uh for special events and things. He he he's a lighting technician or pre programs the lighting boards.

And evidently a lot of the lights have like IR receivers on'em, so he can use the flipper zero to program lights and things like that. My flipper zero is sitting right next to the three sixty camera on my my shelf. Yeah. I think I mean he's he's gonna use it for that, but he's also gonna find ways to get in trouble with it. I know. He was already talking, he was like I you know, I hear people can get out of uh free for parking garages. I'm going

Yeah, you can. I d that's the the one time I've actually used it is for that. Is that right? It works great. Yeah. Yeah, you just walk by somebody that has a pass and you can clone the pass and then just use that to get in and out of the park. So okay. I was uh I was going through the airport and I don't know if you guys have flown recently, but do you uh if you go through the airport and

Especially in the US obviously. Uh you will get a lovely Christy Nome video. Uh and uh that was playing on one of the TVs and I'm pretty sure somebody in the area had a flipper because all of a sudden that TV went off. And it did not come back on. So what was the what was the remote, the the gadget that you could have that would turn off all the TVs? What the hell is the name of that thing? I have one of those. Yeah. I have one of those here uh that I per purchased for a very specific purpose.

Uh namely when the um the monitor in the lobby of our office building was s stuck on Fox News all the time. Uh I would just walk by and click my keys and off it would go. Okay. Yeah.

Uh well since it is the the new year now, I would just I got a little question for both of you guys. Um well actually more for Dave than than Brian,'cause Brian's in Canada

And uh you have free health care. But uh are you getting gouged on your health insurance now?'Cause everybody's has gone up. Mine went up uh uh com mine I got hit fairly lightly compared to most of my friends. Mine only went up to Uh it went up to seven hundred and forty bucks a month, which is a hundred and twenty dollar increase.

Um so how you doing, Dave? How did you get uh Well I had uh a mixed no. My so my experience this year is a little odd because my oldest son turned twenty-six, so he rolled off of the family insurance. So I saved some money from that. So because of that savings my bill was pretty flat this year. Um I got hit hard last year. Mine doubled for my family. Uh it went from about six hundred dollars a month to about twelve hundred dollars a month for the family.

So now I and I have I admit I have very good insurance. For twelve hundred dollars a month. There's not a whole lot. I yeah. And and you know that's even I mean, that's a company policy. So that's you know, the company's pitching in on it probably that much themselves. Yeah. Um so yeah, it's it's so um

Madding madding maddenly frustrating. Maddening. Thank you. Maddening's the word I was looking for. No problem. Yeah. Um wouldn't know anything about it anymore. Yeah, it says the fucking Canadian. Well, I know, but but but Brian, I mean you can't get any services. Right? You can't go to the doctor. You have to wait forever for everything. That's what everyone here tells me. I mean like a week. Uh got a doctor appointment two weeks from now. Um when I had my cancer issues, not a problem.

Scheduled everything was scheduled, taken care of. I think I got charged thirty-five dollars once. And it's thirty five Canadian, right? So it's like a quarter. Right. In real money. Right. Yeah. It's not that hard, people. All the rest of the countries in the world have it. That's right. Yeah, and I bet if you get shot in the face in Canada, they'll patch you right up. They don't shoot you in the face here conveniently.

Saves on the insurance costs, I guess. Sure does. That's uh that's how that's how we keep the costs down. Okay. We don't have government thugs shooting people in the face. Yeah. Excellent. Um just real quick uh back to Christmas stuff. Uh I resigned that I uh am not getting my Home Depot R two D two this year. Oh that's It saddens me too. They're down to seventy five dollars on clearance. So if you can f find one, you can get them super cheap.

Okay, listeners, you have your assignment. That's right. Dave will uh give you the seventy five dollars and cover the shipping. That is true. I will absolutely do that. If you if you have a Home Depot with a R2D2 nearby, uh hit me up. And I will say that. Okay. I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that. I'll find out. Just to clarify, don't reach out to Dave first on Mastodon. Yeah. I'll find pla oh yeah, believe me, I'll find places to put'em. Don't worry about it. Yeah. At seventy five bucks a pop. No problem. Resale value on this mountain is? Yeah.

So I don't know if they're gonna come there's a lot of scuttlebutt over whether or not they'll be back next year'cause they had a high number of returns because they weren't packaged very well. So they came they got delivered cracked and broken and All that stuff. So hopefully, I don't know, they'll be back next year or I may just end up buying a more robust one somewhere else. I don't know. Okay.

Speaking of R two D two, one of the uh my favorite gifts that I got for Christmas, which actually was just delivered yesterday, was this book. Ooh, look at that. Yeah. So this is the newest coffee table book about ILM and it's called Industrial Light and Magic Fifty Years of Innovation. Uh we've talked about the ILM coffee table books here before. The first one is still the best one. Uh because it has the big gatefolds. Of matte paintings and things like that.

Uh this book is excellent. Uh if you love movies and special effects and all that stuff. You're gonna want it for your bookshelf. Uh it's lovely. I haven't had time to read it yet, but I've just flipped through it and it's everything you want a book like this to be. Lots of Old pictures, lots of new pictures. This book covers up through the modern era, including things like the Mandalorian and the the newer technology that they're using and so

Uh that was a lovely Christmas gift. Um very much enjoyed that. Uh I also uh put a link in here. Th the rumors are flying that Dave Faloni's gonna be the next one to run. Lucasfilm, I guess. Star Wars. There have been multiple rumors about Kathleen Kennedy stepping down over the years, so I'll I'll believe it when they've removed her name from the

sliding door over the Millennium Falcon. But uh right now, um right now nothing's confirmed. I I would love to see it. I I don't think there's anybody better to to do it. So yeah Yeah, I agree. I agree. He seems like the perfect fit of the of that would the person who would most make who would make the most people happy. Yeah. He's obviously a fanboy, but he has his own ideas and I I I've liked the majority of what he's done, Book of Boba Fett accepted. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey man, there were two of the greatest Mandalorian episodes in the Book of Boba Fett. So that's true. Yeah. Uh I have a link in here to a story from the Financial Times, uh where the Financial Times is not holding back. Uh, I know you you guys talked about the stuff going on at uh ex Twitter with all the deep fakes and undressing young girls and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um the Financial Times did a rundown of the people who work at uh

uh at X uh but used AI, used Grok to put clown costumes on all of them. Should have put them all in bikinis. Right. It it interestingly, uh, it did not uh put a costume on Elon. Uh I wonder if Grok is somehow prohibited from uh making adjustments to him in the U.S., no costume needed. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I love the title of this article though. Who's who at X, the deep fake porn site formerly known as Twitter. It's beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah. That's good. That's a Gizmoto level writing right there. Yeah. Uh I mean I hope the EU really comes at them. They're they're They're saying they're going to. Um, so Yeah. We'll see. Hope they'll be on the report next week.

Right. Right. Uh I wanted to ask you guys, uh, coming into the new year, if you had any IOS Games recommendations. I'm I'm I'm itching for a new game. I am so boring. Go for it, Brian, because you're the gamer. I am so boring, Dave. I I do not I I have solitaire and I enjoy that. That's that's it. That is the one game on my phone. Oh, wow. That is boring. Jason. Did you ever play Tiny Wings? No.

Tiny wings. I think you can get it are are you do you belong to Apple Arcade? I do. Yeah, th I I think there's a version on Apple Arcade that they put out. Okay. Look, Dave is writing a note by hand. I am. Ooh. Old school. Wow. How do you spill tiny again? Tiny wings. There you go. Tiny wings. Okay. Yeah, it's really fun. It's a it's an older game. It's like, you know Ten years old at least. But it's one of those ones that has legs.

Yeah. Yeah. It has legs. I I I beat it. That was one of those games it took me like three months to beat because the last level will drive you mad. But it it was uh I tell you what, it is one of my my most proud accomplishments. Definitely. Uh if you have if you have I I know, I I don't have much to live for, Brian. It's okay. Um Dude's been sober three years and his priv his his m biggest accomplishment is he beat Tiny Wings. Yeah. Funnily enough, I beat that when I was drunk. Uh

No. Be on his tombstone. Beat tiny wings. Yeah. You know, I've I've had this John Mellencamp song stuck in my head for a while and there's a refrain in there. Um Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone. That's pretty much what sums up my life right now. So Um yeah, Supermonster 8 My Condo is a fun one. Check that one out. That's on Apple Arcade too. Supermonster eight my condo Supermonster eight my condo.

Okay. Fantastic game. It's very fun. They just revamped it with new graphics and it's on Apple Arcade, so check those two out. They come back to me next week. You can't go wrong with any of the Angry Birds variants. There was a Star Wars one for a while that was a lot of fun. So I was reading. Oh do suck.

Yeah. I was thinking about um revisiting. Remember Where's My Water with the little alligator? The it was so it was like an iPad game and water would flow and you had to create different ways for the water to flow and things. That's the kind of thing. you know, w I I'm I guess what I'm looking for most in games these days is occupation, like occupying my time. Not I don't want it to be too hard. I don't want it to be too easy. I want it to be pleasurable.

I want it to be distracting and Uh so that's what I'm looking for. Yeah, you can go back to the old the old standbys, plants versus zombies. That was a fantastic one. Play that again. And uh Cut the Rope. Cut the Rope's another old classic. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's what I'll do. Just revisit all the classics. Anger Birds is is a great one too.

Yeah, I I I think the the golden age of iOS games is, you know, long gone and the the ones the the when they were really making, you know, a big deal about apps and games, you know, Back then, seven, eight, ten years ago, th those were some great games that still have legs. If they still work,'cause some of'em don't get updated, you know, like uh

Was it flight controller or whatever? That one where you land the planes and I'm desperate for Apple Arcade to buy and revamp because I love that game so much. Okay. Um yeah. That one that one was great. But yeah, the old stuff, the old stuff totally has legs. Totally has legs.

All right. Well before we wind up today, uh wanna as we're recording here today, I just want to point out it is David Bowie's birthday, uh also Elvis' birthday. Uh but uh David Bowie, were he alive today would be seventy nine, which I don't want to think about but uh I I I

There's uh who was it? Uh it was an actor who posted a thing about how nothing's been right since Bowie died. That's been a long standing theory that uh D. Bowie dying has uh sent our planet off on the wrong axis and everything's wrong. Yeah. It's harder and harder to uh deny that that may indeed be the case. So Yeah. Yeah. Happy birthday, Mr. Bowie, and thanks for all the All the good music and entertainment over the years. Agreed. Wherever you are, be be well. Out!

Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. Jason, Phil, and Jeff. And Peter upped their donation, so thank you very much. And from the legacy files of people who are still supporting the show that we love, Brent, Don, Corey, Stephen, Dave, Paul, Mark, Jesse, Kira, and Rude. Or rudd. Rude? I think rude. I'm gonna go with rude. It's our show, it's rude. Thank you all. Over at PayPal we've got Joseph, Tom, Jens, Charlie, Levi, Florian, Nicola, Ralph, Judge.

Cedric with the ten dollar donation, Jonathan with a twenty dollar donation, Thomas with a twenty five dollars donation, going up another five bucks as Marcel at thirty, leaping twenty ahead, Leslie with fifty bucks, and Robert matches at fifty. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much for those year end donations. It really helps it it it brings a smile to my heart and keeps the show on the air'cause

You guys are what's keeping us on the air. And over at the tip jar, we've also got Adam, Jennifer, Sarah, and Matthew, and Michael M with the big hundred and sixty dollar tip. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. And we've even got some merch, Brian. Leonid and Drawer both bought some merch. So thank you guys very much. You actually you actually kept the store going with your purchases this year. So uh yeah, that's it. No uh no reviews though, sadly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well that's okay. It's twenty twenty six, so we got a long way to go, obviously. We got ten more years to go before twenty twenty seven. What are you talking about? Until February. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.sho slash seven two. That's a lot of episodes.

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