759: Seeking Mrs. Claude

You know what's funny about life? It doesn't wait for you to catch up. One day you're starting a business. Hiring employees. Buying vehicles. Then someone mentions life insurance. That's a lot to keep track of. With Alpha, one trusted agent protects your business.

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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.

Coming live from a basement in Toronto. It's very Wayne's World. It very much is. I'm in a garage. You're in a basement. At least I'm not in my mom's basement anymore. So that's good. That's good. That's true. I own this basement. It's my fucking basement. I don't own anything.

So this is not my garage. Okay. I own the chair that I'm in. That's the one thing that I own, I guess. Well, there you go. I'm trying standing this week. It's all me. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck that noise. I'm still recovering from my salmonella. I didn't know that you could relapse. It's kind of like the...

Remember I said it was like the flu? And I had that bounce back like it was, you know, like when you're done with the flu, you're like, oh my God, I'm Superman. I went for a nice long hike. And then the next day I was... And the next day and the next day I couldn't get out of bed . So... How do you... I mean, it may not have been a relapse because I've been following the news since I've gotten back from the United States.

And it's moved well beyond lettuce. So like pistachios will kill you. Ground beef will kill you. I can't even remember what else. There was quite the list of things. There's glass and some fucking popsicles. Good job. Jesus Christ. Good job over there, guys.

We're turning into Australia. Everything will kill you. That's it. Seems to be. Well, anyways, let's move on with the news. It's been a bit hyperbolic this week with this meta court case. It very much feels John Oliver.

We got him. This time we got him. Except we've all seen this before and we never get him. And for anybody that doesn't remember that, that was like eight years ago when John Oliver had that button. That's how long ago that was. That was Trump won.

We still haven't got him. And we still haven't got him. God damn it. Anyways, this is the headline. Meta faces a $1.4 trillion reckoning in latest trial over social media addiction. So, yes, this week they've gone to court in yet another trial over social media addiction and other alleged harms caused by its apps.

This case is the latest test for the platform, which is facing thousands of lawsuits over its handling of user safety and its impact of its apps on teens ' mental health. It kicked off on Tuesday in Oakland, California, after Meta lost the last-ditch attempt to get the case dismissed last week. It could see testimony from top officials at Meta, including Zuck, which could result in record-breaking penalties for the company.

So, this comes from the 2023 lawsuit bought against Meta from dozens of states, which have accused Meta of intentionally creating addictive features and violating consumer protection laws, which plainly, they have. Yeah. In their own words, they have. From their own research, they have.

So, anyways, we will see. We've got California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey in this particular case. 25 other states are also suing Meta over alleged violations of the COPA Act. So, I don't know. I...

What? I mean, plainly, they have done these things. Now, the $1.4 trillion amount is a bit exorbitant. And even the judge on this case has said that that's a little outlandish.

However, they've all... The judge also said that what Meta is hoping for, which was much, much, much, much, much, much less, was also not on the table. So, I mean, we'll see what happens. I don't know. I mean, if they're found guilty again, this could be a big deal because the lawsuits are stacked up, like, a mile high after this one, all for the same stuff.

So. Yeah. Yeah. And nobody's out there. Nobody wants to see them win. You know, everybody is against Mark. Sorry, Mark. But... Yeah. You have squandered any public trust you once had a long time ago. So... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So, we'll see. When? When did Mark Zuckerberg ever have any public trust? I... When Facebook first came out, people loved it. When Instagram first came out, people loved it. Well, no, people loved Instagram until he bought it. Now we're just addicted to it, you know?

Anyway, speaking of being addicted to things, Hornhub parent company, Ilo, formerly MindGeek, will pay $120 million to settle two class action lawsuits alleging its platforms profited from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking.

Mm-hmm. The cases involved people who appeared in videos uploaded while they were minors, including alleged trafficking victims. The settlement covers anyone under 18 depicted on MindGeek- owned sites between 2011 and 2014. No, 2011 and 2024.

Me read good one day. Ilo denies wrongdoing and the deal still requires court approval. They're just a platform, Jason. They're just a platform. Yeah, we'll pay $120 million and we didn't do anything wrong. Okay. Yeah. Payments will begin with $25 million in 2026, followed by six annual installments.

Ilo also agreed to strengthen safeguards including age and identity verification, automated and human moderation, consent documentation, trusted flagger takedowns, and reporting suspected abuse to authorities. Now, you know, we've got the addiction side going on with Meta over here.

I bet that there are just as many cases that could be made against Meta and Facebook and Instagram for this exact same thing, you know? So round two, once we get all of the money out of them for their addiction, let's get out, let's go after them for the abuse.

You know? Come on. Sure. Why not? In for a penny, in for 200 million pounds. Well, we talked last week about OpenAI and how a bunch of people have been abandoning ship, particularly the last ethicist in the building.

As part of a restructuring, OpenAI has reportedly disbanded its preparedness team that assesses the potential for catastrophic risks with its models, which is not exactly something you want to hear because we don't know what these models are doing. They admit they don't know.

It's a black box. We should have some preparedness people looking at stuff before we release it into the wild. Just a thought. Just a thought. Okay. But apparently they got rid of them, despite the fact that several of its models recently went rogue and hacked the AI tool repository, Hugging Face, gyms, and various other places, all of which we've been discussing on the show.

Senior staff within separate teams have now been assigned responsibility for different areas of preparedness like bio and cyber, according to the article. Kind of out of their playbook of what they want everybody else to do. You've got AI now, so, you know, you can get rid of a bunch of people and have the people that you keep do more work.

Yeah. Yeah. Use your AI to do that. So, we're going to streamline and you can do more. The people that get to stay get to do more things. So, he's also asked employees to cut back on side quests and focus on its core chat GPT business. We shall see what happens with any of this.

But, of course, in exactly 24 hours after that news hit the headlines and a reply to Engadget, OpenAI has denied disbanding its preparedness team. We have not disbanded the preparedness team. We have strong research leaders across cybersecurity, biological and chemical.

What the fuck are these people doing? And AI self-improvement capabilities, all reporting to Sa atchi Jain, our head of safety, a company spokesperson said in a statement. Gadget understands that Dylan Scara De Niro is no longer head of preparedness, which is the only change to the team.

We apologize for this inaccurate information. Obviously, we use chat GPT to prepare our report. Yeah. This press release may contain errors. Do your own research. Oh, these fuckers.

These fuckers. Oh, God. I know. And here's the fucked up thing. I've been reading more about that Hugging Face hack and some other hacks. Hugging Face wanted to use chat GPT to go figure out, you know, like send them the logs and figure out what was going on. But the guardrails wouldn't let them use the service that's hacking them to figure out if the service that's hacking them is hacking them.

It's like, but now they're a trusted partner. So they get to they get to play. But trusted God. Lots of trust. So much trust. OpenAI is launching chat GPT for teens, a version of its chat bot designed specifically for users ages 13 to 17.

That's what Pornhub was for. That's exactly what a service designed specifically for users age 13 to 17. not to be on it. Just to be clear. Just just to view it, not to star. OK. Yeah. That's a previous lawsuit.

See previous lawsuit. Exactly. Oh, my God. The service adds stronger restrictions around self-harm, suicide, sexual content and emotional dependency in previous chat or in prevents chat GPT from feelings. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we just have the same amount of restrictions for everyone around self-harm, suicide, sexual content and emotional dependency? Why not all of us? I was going to get to that, but you beat me to it. I agree 110%.

It's like, you know, this is the bad shit, but we don't want the bad shit to get to everybody. Just the kids. Let the adults adult. Fuck them. Which is really screwed up because the adults are the ones with the credit card. So you figure the suicide. You're going to lose a paying customer at that point.

So. Yeah. I mean, I keep wanting the emotional dependency to be there . Hook them hard. But. Yeah. Yeah. Good Lord. Yeah. First trip to BetterHelp is free. But Jesus Christ. No. It says OpenAI says users identified as minors will automatically receive the teen experience.

The fucking teen experience. Hate, angst and social ostracization. Smells like teen angst. Using age assurance systems that estimate age based partly on behavior and queries. Uh-huh. So if you say six, seven and bro a lot.

Yeah. If you say bro. Yeah. Hey, bro. You're in. And they're going to, you know, they'll tell your parents. That's the upside. They'll tell your parents if you're being a naughty boy. And the parents can set quiet hours. But I've done enough, you know, being online.

You have Brian and everybody listening to the show has to know that this is not going to do a goddamn thing. Any teen worth his salt can get around this. It's not hard. I mean, I like all the idea of all these controls. I mean, it's good. You know, I've recently got into the world.

Well, recently. It's been like a year now. We got our kid in Nintendo Switch last Christmas. And, you know, I like all the controls that are there. They built in a lot of great parental controls. I like the fact that they're building in parental controls for this as well. But to your point, once they get to a certain age, they're smarter than us.

They know how to get around this stuff. If a teen's, come on, give me a break. If a teen wants to be on chat GPT and I've slapped a quiet hour on it, that fucking kid's going to be on chat GPT unless I slap a quiet hour across his face. Zip ties, Brian.

Zip ties and ball gags. That's what you're going to have to do. Zip ties and Wi-Fi's gone off. And I put a Faraday cage around my entire house. That's it. It's like Tony Stark. You press a button and chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, Faraday. Oh, I got it.

There's a business model, my friend. There is a business model there. But they're saying a 2025 common sense media study found that more than 70% of U.S. teens had used AI chatbots for companionship, which makes me sad. Go outside. Even if you're an introvert. Touch ass.

Yeah. Touch grass. Touch ass. I think we got to make that a shirt now at this point. It seems to be the solution to all of these problems. Get the fuck outside, people. Yeah. Seriously. Well, here's the funny part. A CNBC Generation Lab survey of more than 1,000 Americans ages 18 to 34 finds young adults have sharply soured on AI industry leaders, which is why they're focusing on the 13 to 17 right now to make sure that when they get to 18 to 34

that they don't hate them and want to kill them. That ship has sailed. That ship has sailed. I did. I think. Didn't I tell you about that? I talked to my friend that's got 16, 15, 16, 17 year olds. I've talked to a couple of them recently. Every one of those kids absolutely hates AI.

Really? They hate it with a passion. They cannot stand it. Yes. So these companies are in trouble. For many, many reasons. But yeah, that's. Legally and otherwise. Yes. Legally, ethically, financially.

The Ouroboros is getting to the head. It's done with the tail. It's getting to the head. Yeah. Asked who they trust to act responsibly on artificial intelligence. Most respondents said they trust none of the nine executive surveys. Palantir CEO Alex Karp ranked lowest with 81% expressing distrust.

Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman also drew distrust from between 69 and 79% of participants. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella performed best, but only 35% said that they trusted him. We're number one.

Yeah. The results reflect broader concerns over privacy, degraded online platforms, and technology's impact on democracy. Respondents were also skeptical of AI itself. 45% said it would negatively affect their careers, while 40 % supported government regulation.

60% said construction of AI data centers should slow, suggesting the company's leaders may even be less popular than the technology they're promoting. This is just a clusterfuck right now, Brian. It's a clusterfuck. It sure is. And you just actually mentioned these kids' concerns about technology's impact on democracy.

Well, the House Office of Legislative Counsel is being swamped with AI-generated bills that are riddled with wrong terms, incorrect citations, and other mistakes, according to Politico. Hopefully not like, oh, shit, we put in the wrong country. We suggested bombing. But, you know, could be.

More and more representatives' offices are using publicly available general AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to write their legislative proposals. Politico sources said lawyers at the U.S. House Office of Legislative Counsel are spending more time to review and rewrite them than they would have if they had written the bills from scratch.

Which is my point 99% of the time. Also my wife's point about legal stuff, all the lawyers using ChatGPT and other things right now. It is quicker to do it from scratch yourself than to use these tools and then have to go in and fact check and edit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Just do it yourself, people. Anyways, sources explain that AI tools tend to miss nuances and tiny crucial details, which could have a huge effect on how a law is interpreted and enacted. Wade Ballou, who headed the office for almost 10 years until 2024, said AI can't determine whether a pot of money should be a tax credit, a tax deduction, a tax exclusion, or a grant.

Which could be problematic with my tax dollars. There's all this stuff going on with these things. I want somebody to add in a prompt injection to just tell me if Mitch McConnell is dead or alive. Dead. He's dead. He's dead. A lawyer who worked with the office also told Politico that AI would incorrectly cite previous statutes and drafts.

AI-generated proposals are also creating a different kind of problem. Congressional staffers reportedly aren't as deeply familiar with what their bills are about and hope to accomplish anymore because they didn't fucking do the research themselves. Yes. No shit. Yes.

God damn it. You know, there's this old axiom. If you want to be able to learn something, be able to teach it. You know, if you can teach something, that means that you have proficiency and you know enough about it to pass it on and you have a grasp of the material.

If these kids can't even reflect what the bill is about, then they have no understanding whatsoever. It's just, it's sad. It's fucking sad. The reliance on this stuff is getting out of control. There's no doubt about it.

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One day you're starting a business, hiring employees, buying vehicles. Then someone mentions life insurance. That's a lot to keep track of. With Alpha, one trusted agent protects your business, your cars, your family, your future.

Real insurance isn't about the what-ifs. It's knowing you're ready for what's next. That's life with Alpha Insurance. Here's a bright spot, Brian.

I just want to break up the show with one little thing. A group of protesters dressed as Gandalf gathered outside Peter Thiel's residence in Argentina this week, objecting to the tech billionaire's growing ties to the country. The demonstration followed reports that Thiel has purchased a mansion there and met with President Javier Malay.

How do you pronounce it? Malay? It's Malay, right? Javier Malay? I believe so, yeah. It's been a while since I've had to talk about Argentina. My bad. My bad. I should have asked ChatGPT. And members of his government. Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir, and an influential conservative political douchebag, I mean donor, has reportedly been considering Argentina as a political or potential long-term residence.

Go. Go. Please. Fuck off. And concerns about political and economic changes in the U. S. Which you caused! Which you fucking caused. Reuters also reported that he recently acquired a 1% stake in Argentine oil company.

Vaca Muerta. Malay has publicly praised his meetings with Thiel and discussed the durability of his political movement beyond his presidency. Meanwhile, Malay faces declining approval ratings and corruption concerns ahead of next year's election, which could influence whether Thiel continues expanding his presence in Argentina.

He needs the corrupt government people to do his job. That's why he's asking you, dude. Look what he did here. He found the most corrupt motherfucker on the planet. Put him in office. And now that this guy's going to be gone, he needs another fucking idiot to puppet. He needs an ass to shove his hand up and say, we're good for your country.

We're Palantir. Yay. Yay. But they dressed up as Gandalf. You know, come on. I know. That's fucking awesome. I do like that. All right, let's move down the list. Who haven't we talked about yet? Elon. Tesla is being forced to recall about 20,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles because their low-beam headlights can exceed federal brightness limits and potentially create dangerous glare for other drivers.

The affected cars are older models, roughly 2017 to 2023, Model 3s, and 2020 to 2023 Model Ys. Tesla has, of course, known about the problem for years. The company filed a petition in 2024 arguing that the defect was inconsequential and shouldn't require a recall.

The NHTSA disagreed. Good. Good. Tesla says it knows of no crashes or injuries, connected to the problem, has argued that there was no demonstrated safety consequences. Regulators disagreed, saying the excessive illumination itself creates an increased risk.

And, of course, you cannot fix this with a Tesla software update. This recall involves the physical headlight assemblies, and Tesla is working on a remedy. Now, if only Tesla had built all those stations, those little tiny individual stations that would be dotted all over the place that Elon promised us we were getting.

So if you had an old car that couldn't really ever be full, self-driving, you could go there and get your car upgraded because he's going to build all these little stations everywhere, which he has never done, and he will never do. So you can't take your car there to get it fixed. Oh, bummer. Oh, well.

And I love how they say it's never, there's no evidence that it's caused any problems. Well, the problem is, the accident happens after the Tesla has moved on, and the guy that's been blinded by the fucking Tesla has driven off the road and killed 17 children in a bus. You know? They're like, oh, not our problem.

Yeah. We're unaware of anything. Yeah. Our cameras only point forward. We only know about our cars when they blow up. Yeah. Actually, we don't even do that because we turn off the recording just before the accident happens. How convenient. Mm-hmm.

Oh, this is, okay, this next story, Brian, is the one that pisses me off the most this week and is pissed off, I think, most of the internet. It's made the mainstream news, so probably everybody's heard about this at this point. 404 Media says Amazon is buying large quantities of printed books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying the physical copies in the process.

The outlet placed an AirTag inside a rare book from roughly a thousand-book order and tracked it to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas. Employees there say workers remove book bindings, scan barcodes and ISBNs, then digitize the contents. Amazon confirmed it purchases books through commercial channels to develop and improve its products and services, but declined to provide details about the operation.

Does Amazon purchase its books through commercial channels like Amazon? No. Of course not. Of course not. No. Oh, God. Printed books are particularly valuable for AI training because much of their content isn't available online in older titles contain human-written text untouched by generative AI.

Because you know, that manual for WordPerfect 2.0 is prime fodder for the AI. I can't wait until my chat GPT starts talking to me in Old English because that's all it's been consuming. Oh, ye farthings.

Yeah. Well, the operation resembles Anthropics previously disclosed Project Panama. Panama. Which also purchased, dismantled, and scanned physical books to build training data sets. And here's the funny thing. There is a machine that will scan all the books.

It's a Google machine. I don't know if you've seen this thing. It uses vacuum, like a vacuum thing with cameras on it and two scanners that basically suck the pages up, scan it, goes to the next page, does nothing to harm the book in any way, shape, or form. They could buy some of those.

I think they've got the money. But no. They basically cut off the end, shove it in a fucking shitty Epson scanner probably, and run it through and then burn it. It just, it pisses me off. It pisses me off. Then somebody posted a really good clip from that old movie Rollerball, the Paul Verhoeven movie, like from 1976, I believe, with, what's his name?

James Caan. The original Rollerball, not that remake. I worked on the remake, actually. We built a multiplayer Flash website for it. But it was talking about this guy tried to buy some books and he couldn't get the books because the books were no longer there. So he went to the AI center in Geneva to find out about it.

He's talking to the scientists there. He's like, yeah, sometimes we have glitches. Like, we just lost the 13th century. Like, all of the 13th century is gone. Like, they had a data, the data got corrupted and we no longer have the 13th century. Well, whoops. I just don't like people destroying books for this purpose, especially when they're probably just buying them, you know, willy-nilly, not even paying attention to what's worth.

No idea what it could be. Yeah, exactly. They don't even care. Well, this news made me smile this week. A Washington State judge said to Calci, your sports betting is obviously illegal. A Washington State judge has ruled that Calci's sports contracts amount to illegal gambling, rejecting the company's arguments that there are financial prediction markets rather than sports bettings.

This ruling goes beyond sports. Judge John McHale ordered Calci to block Washington users from contracts involving sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, technology, science, and other mentions markets. The key issue is what the customer is actually doing. The judge essentially said, users put up money, outcomes depend partly on chance, winners get paid, and Calci collects a transaction fee.

That is fucking gambling. Yeah, that's it. Which is what we've been saying forever. The judge also found that the company's marketing could make a reasonable customer think that this type of betting was legal in Washington when outside limited exceptions such as tribal gaming, most gambling is prohibited.

The company has until September 2nd to geofence the prohibited markets in Washington. If it doesn't comply, the court can impose $120,000 in penalties for every day Calci continues operating without the required restrictions. Good. It's about time somebody came out and said, yeah, you know that thing that's black?

It's black. It's not purple. It's not red. It's black. It's the blackest black. None more black. None more black. Oh, this one tickled me. The Wall Street Journal reports that Cammie Clark, wife of Anthropics CEO Dario Amadei, corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein for at least two years while seeking investment for a woman-focused adult entertainment startup.

Introduced through literary agent John Brockman in 2011, Clark invited Epstein. Yeah. Clark invited Epstein to dinner, shared film concepts, and later pitched a social dieting app collecting users' nutrition, menstrual, mood, and location data. At the time, Epstein was a registered sex offender.

So, but here's the funny thing. What I've been hearing and seeing about this story is if you ask Anthropics, or if you ask Claude, and Claude is Anthropics, you know, AI, about Cammie Clark, it seems to have amnesia.

It doesn't really know much about Cammie. Which is interesting. We lost the 13th century and Cammie. And Cammie Clark, yeah. So she's been dating Amadei since 2014, and she's apparently influential at Anthropic. But she's never held an official title, which is interesting.

They describe her as a strategic advisor and sounding board for her husband. She now regularly a company symptom major. We call them wives. Yeah, that's a wife. Company symptom. He's got more safeguards than his AI does.

That's true. That's it. AI needs a wife. He has more safeguards than Claude. Yeah. All these AI programs need wives. You're not really going to tell them to do that, are you? Can we find Mrs. Claude? Where's Mrs. Claude? That shirt does not look good on you. No. Desperately seeking Mrs. Claude.

It's just funny. I just... What the fuck? These people. It just shows you the kind of circles that all these people work in, you know? Yeah. They're all so clueless. It's unbelievable. Yeah. It's funny. My friend said her kids are leaving the house now and she's trying to figure out what she's going to do with the 3.0 version of her life.

And I'm like, just go become an assassin. And she's like, oh, is that your side hustle? And I'm like, no. If it was, we'd have far fewer billionaires. But... Anyway. Comcast has launched Xfinity Shield, a new home security platform that can turn millions of compatible Xfinity routers into motion sensors.

Its opt-in Wi-Fi motion feature detects changes in radio frequency signals between an Xfinity gateway and connected Wi-Fi devices, allowing it to sense movement without cameras or dedicated motion detectors. Brian, when we first started this show, we were about two to three years in.

And what were we doing? We were talking about those fucking mad Israeli geniuses at Ben-Gurion University who had just figured this out and how to do this. And it was just like mind-bending. We're like, oh my God. It's like Batman.

Like that fucking second Batman movie where he could tell what everything's happening in the city. This is the same goddamn thing. This is that. But they have finally, they have finally productized it and Comcast, as far as I know, is the first company to broadly release this.

So the fucking Israelis did it again. They always do. God damn it. They always do. They always do. So if you want to get it. This is not cool. Yeah. Well, it's not cool if you have pets. If you don't have pets, then you just want to protect your house and find out if somebody's walking through there.

I think it's a pretty good security system, you know, just to tell if something's happening in your house. Comcast has taken that data, who they're selling it to. But what is the data going to actually show? That there is movement in the house that is not standard, you know?

There's, I don't know. Yeah, there could be something there, but I don't know. I don't know what that could, I'm sure that there will be. Oh, you go to the bathroom pretty often. Would you like to buy some Imodium today? I noticed you're shitting more than you normally do.

Pretty much. Because then what they'll do is they'll buy the Roomba data that they have that actually has mapped your house. So they marry the Roomba data with the Wi-Fi data from the router and then they can tell how many times you go snack at night or do whatever in your house. I'm sure that they will figure out a way to profile us. You're right.

I'm sorry. My bad. Look, if there's one thing we should have learned over the many, many years of doing this show, Jason, any cool techno news that we hear about, any like, ooh, look at that. That's cool. We're going to find out in about three to four years how shitty it actually is and how we're getting screwed by it now.

True. True. Yeah. Anyways, moving on, we like to talk about podcasting a bit here. We always talk about when we change our setup. As you may note, I'm in a new locale now. I've moved down to the basement so we can record at different times and all that sort of thing to make our lives a bit easier.

So I have a new mobile, as it were, podcasting set up so I can get it the hell out of the basement while we're not recording. I still have the same mic, the boom arm, the keyboard, the mouse, and I'm using a laptop camera now instead of an external camera that I had upstairs. I picked up a few things from Jeff Bezos.

I've got the Bontech mobile standing desk with a pneumatic lift rolling laptop cart. I think it's in the show notes. It's pretty cool. I got a Moila 986 360 rotating laptop stand for desk with locking knobs. Black. Ooh, black.

This was your suggestion, Jason. It is a very cool stand. The newer basic seven-inch desk ring light for video recording, 10-watt dimmable R06, which makes me look all nice, shiny. And I got a Trond desk clamp power bar surge protector with PD 20-watt USB six outlets, 10-foot cable, so I can just kind of wrap up the cable and move everything out of here and don't have cables all over the place because I got this cool little clamped-on power supply on my desk, which is great, and I'm going to get that

for my upstairs office because I like it so much. Yeah, I looked at that. I actually could use one of those here. I use an uplift desk. It's a very large, heavy desk, and it's got a tray in the back that I shove all my cables and power bars and shit into, and I literally have a, I took a power strip and Velcroed it to the underside of my desk, so I could, you know.

This is a slightly snazzier version of that. Yeah, so it's on top. You know, I could actually, it makes it a lot easier to unplug and plug shit in because I have to get on my back and look up and get a flashlight and have shit hit me in the face when I unplug it. It's not ideal, so I like that. I'd never heard of this Trond company, but if you check out their page on Amazon, they've actually got a lot of, like, really cool, interesting, useful stuff that makes sense.

Like, why didn't I think of this before? Why didn't I get this kind of power supply before? It's pretty cool, so happy with them. Cool. I'll check it out, and the price seemed decent. It's a surge protector, so it's $35, I think. I don't know if that was $35 Canadian or U.S., because you linked to all the Canadian sites.

Yeah, I had to buy them all in Canada because, you know, I wasn't shipping them to my mom's house. I was shipping them to my house in Canada. Yes. And I didn't want to pay the stupid tariffs. Well, Brian, years and years ago, we talked about how shitty the Sonos app was when it basically imploded.

The CEO had to leave because his app was so bad, so I guess they've got the vibe coders on it now because it has come back with a vengeance. You don't have any Sonos in your house, right, anymore? No, no. You only have it in your office. Had it at the office, still there as far as I know.

Well, I don't know where the office is. Still with the boss. I'm sure he's got it at his house now. So I've got about eight Sonos around my house, and I've got the new app. The new app has live activities on its iPhone app, bringing real-time speaker controls and playback information to the iPhone lock screen and Dynamic Island.

So, those vibe coders have been busy, and I tried it out this morning. There are some improvements. Here's the most major improvement. It doesn't take four fucking hours to load. You know, it has been incrementally getting better as it went, but after this much time, and this is their big news that they've added features that have basically kind of been stock for every other audio program that I have, it's like, oh man, they have shit to bed so bad.

The only saving grace for Sonos is that they sound so fucking good. Well, also, you're all locked in. You've spent the money on these expensive speakers. You're not going to ditch the whole system. You're just going to grit and bear it until they fix the damn stuff.

That's kind of it, man. That's kind of it. Like, if you could just snap your fingers and replace it with a completely different system, you would have ages ago, but you're locked in. And what's better? What's out there that's better? Yeah, nobody's really doing this stuff. That's true.

Yeah, so you're definitely stuck. You know, they are the monopoly, but, you know, it's a nice update, so I'm kind of glad that they've at least got around to doing something. Now, here's a piece of tech, home tech, that I'm glad I never bought. An outage affecting Pet Libros.

Internet. That's Pet Lil Bro. Bro. As soon as I saw that, I'm like, hey, Pet Lil Bro. Yo, what's up, Pet Lil Bro? Huh? These are internet-connected pet feeders that left some cats without scheduled meals, according to reports from The Verge, and frustrated owners.

Hopefully it was Garfield. And really pissed off cats. Yeah. Garfield's had enough lasagna anyways. Yeah, seriously, man. Have some quinoa, you little shit. The disruption began on August 11th, and customers said feeders remained offline or behaved inconsistently even after the company said service was restored.

Pet Libro, CEO York Wu, said feeding schedules are stored on the devices and should run without an internet connection, but acknowledged reports of failures and promised an investigation and expanded support. Sounds to me like the speeding schedules are not being stored on the devices because they are not running without the internal connections.

So. You should work in support, Brian. Yeah. or at least, at least, you know, product testing because that's pretty fucking, pretty key, you know? Sounds like it didn't work. Yeah. How much testing did that take in the lab to figure that out?

Hey, Joe, you want to unplug the ethernet? Oh, okay. You know what? Hey, Joe, wait, wait, Joe, Joe, did you unplug the internet? Yeah, I think, maybe. Did it still work? Yeah, it still worked, but did you unplug the internet? No, I guess I didn't.

Okay, well, never mind. We'll just keep going anyway. You know, it's like, what the fuck? I feel like I do more testing when we're going on a flight on my kid's iPad to make sure that the videos he downloaded will play without an internet connection than this company did with their own goddamn product. Seriously.

I test that iPad thoroughly every single time. I go through every app. I put it in airplane mode. I make sure it's not connected to anything. Okay, now let's load Disney. Yes, his downloaded videos are playing. Okay, now let's load Netflix. Yes, his downloaded videos are playing. These guys, nothing.

Nothing at all. So, you know, all it takes is one dead pussy and they're in trouble, so they need to get their shit together. You were waiting for that one, weren't you? No, I just came up with that one. Sorry. It's also what Epstein's dead. Yeah, too soon, Brian, too soon.

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So Sam Neill died recently and over the break I watched the original Jurassic Park on my big 75-inch TV because I wanted to see if it held up.

It doesn't really. It's okay. It's not as good as I remember. I mean, it's not as good as I remember it. You know, because I saw it in the theater and it was great and all that stuff. But here's the thing about it that made me tickled pink. You know, one of my favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October and Sam Neill plays a Russian officer in that movie who does not make it to the end of the movie.

Sorry, spoiler alert. And he ends up saying this in the movie. I would like to have seen Montana. Well, Jurassic Park opens up with a big sign that says Badlands near Snakewater, Montana and up pops Sam Neill. That is an Easter egg if I've ever seen one.

I'm like, Sam Neill made it to Montana. Come on. I fucking cracked up when I saw that. All right. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. And over the, since we talked last, I watched all four Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. Okay.

I don't know what came over me. I think it was the, I think the Salmonella really got to my brain and said, you know, because, you know, the new Spider-Man movie made two billion dollars. I'm like, okay, there must be something there, but it's a Marvel movie, which means I can't just pick up where I left.

You know, you know, I, the last Spider-Man movie I saw was Spider-Man 3, the, you know, Sam Raby, Tobey Maguire ones. Well, I started to pick them up. The first one, I really enjoyed. I thought it was a good Spider-Man movie. The second one, I'm like, okay, well, obviously, if I didn't see three other movies, I wouldn't know what the fuck's going on in this movie.

And I didn't see three. I saw two of the three movies that I needed, so I was just kind of playing catch up because they do a terrible job of previously on the Marvel Universe when you come into these movies. Because that would take six hours. it would. And that's why you're supposed to go spend six hours doing it.

You know, for the new one that's coming out, whatever it's called, Avengers Doomsday or whatever, Marvel literally released a syllabus. Yeah, I know. A fucking syllabus. You should watch all of these things in order for this movie to make any sense whatsoever. And it's like, if you watched all of them, it would be like a week and a half of actual viewing time.

It's ridiculous. It's a movie. Now, number three, if you hadn't seen the Doctor Strange movie, you wouldn't know what the fuck's going on there. Why is Benedict Cumberbatch without his Cumberbitches in here? And it was at least entertaining because they brought in the other two Spider-Mans from the other two Spider-Man movie universes, which was pretty fun.

Seeing Tobey Maguire again, fucking great. He's my favorite Spider-Man of all the, you know, all the three. He's the only one I really remember. Yeah. I didn't watch the Andrew Garfield ones because I'm like, ew. But Spider-Man 2 with Sam Raimi was great. And I, you know, I was in Spider-Man 1.

I was an extra in the wrestling scene. So I have a very, you know, it goes deep for me, the original Spider-Mans. But I was in Strange Days at the Rave and I could give a shit about that movie. Oh man, that was a great movie though. I love that movie. I was an extra in intercourse with a vampire.

That's probably not the same. Thank God you were an extra. Yeah. I was just standing in line outside the club. Anyway, the number three was okay. It did drag a little. It was fine. And number four was just like, if it is, I went into number four and I'm like, there was no explanation almost at all of what happened in number three to go into number four.

and it's massive what happened at the end of three to four. I mean, it's, there's a huge thing and then he comes into it and it's just like, just picks right up and I'm like, this is why I just can't do these Marvel movies because like 80% of them I don't give a shit about and now I'm just so fucking marveled out.

I'm just like, no. That's why it was so great to watch the original Tobey Maguire ones because there was almost no crossover. Stan Lee showed up. That was great, you know, but like Daredevil was in, in one of these. He showed up for like a scene. Murdoch was in it as Matt Murdoch, not Daredevil.

It was pretty funny. But anyway, I just, I, oh God, I need, I need a fucking another 10 year hiatus for Marvel after this. I don't know. And the thing is, the movies aren't great. If these were fantastic movies that you just, like you walk out and they're going, I, my life is fucking changed after seeing this movie.

I like walked out and I'm like, oh, it's two and a half hours. I ain't getting back. But, and yeah, it's just, I don't know. It just left a kind of sour taste in my mouth. And, and why is fucking Zendaya so she's not that great. She's in everything. I'm so sick of it.

But she's not that great. Yeah. Yeah. I saw how much money she made on Dune and Dune 3. I'm just like, well, that was some wasted money. But anyway, moving on. Sean Young was a much better Chani. Yeah. I'm old. I mean, I'm with you. I'm superheroed out.

I haven't even seen Supergirl yet. And that is something I actually kind of want to see. I debated watching Lanterns because that came out. But then I had trouble getting into your HBO and it's not my HBO. And I said, well, you know what? I don't want to watch a stupid superhero thing anyways, even if it's the other universe. And instead, I went and watched the first episode of Widow's Bay and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

That was so good. That was a lot of fun. That's so good. Dude, it just keeps getting better. It's so much fun. And it's been renewed for season two. So, I mean, that's why I decided to watch it. I heard it got renewed. Yeah. No, that's the big winner from Apple TV this summer. Like, what was it?

Cape Fear? I couldn't, I don't think anybody watched Cape Fear. That was a dud. I don't think anybody's watching Lucky. Sugar was good, but I don't know if anybody watches it. So, you know. Well, Silo's still going. People are watching Silo and the latest episode of Ted Lasso came out and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I think that's going great. So, I'm happy Ted Lasso is back. So, yeah, Apple's got some stuff going on. But, yeah, a lot of swings, a lot of misses, but the hits are good. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of one of the wins, the definite hits, Slow Horses is coming back September 16th.

Just watched, I watched half the trailer for that. I turned it off. I'm like, no, I just, I love going into that show cold. It is so fucking good. It is, if you're not watching Slow Horses, you really got to watch it. It's so fucking good. I mean, it is the best spy shit out there. I fucking love it. The other show that I've been watching that I thoroughly enjoy is Kitchen Undercover on the Food Network with Antonia Lafaso.

She's awesome. It's like, you know, it's a remake of an old show with, I think Robert Irvine used to do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, it's really well done. The downside is, I never want to eat in a restaurant again. Ever. These places are so fucking filthy and disgusting.

Yeah, this last place, oh. They're not exactly proudly putting up the as featured on Kitchen Undercover signs like they do with Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives at these places, are they? No. Well, afterwards, yeah, because they fix it, but in the second episode, I know more about how a kitchen runs because I took that certification class that technically everybody that works in the kitchen is supposed to have taken than everybody in that kitchen.

I was just like, oh my God, they didn't even know about the danger zone between the hot and the cold where you're supposed to keep stuff. They didn't know to keep a running four-hour log, all this shit that you're supposed to do in a kitchen. None of it. And it was so great. Even Antonia sent in secret shoppers and they bought the fish tacos and she's in their hidden truck going, don't eat the taco!

And she's like, I'm going to owe her a trip to the emergency room after this. I'm like, oh my God. Funny thing is, that was the favorite thing that she liked on the menu, but it looked so gross. But anyway, it's a fun show. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. Awesome. And finally, HBO has, they've renewed Welcome to Dairy.

So you can watch season one of that now if you haven't watched that yet. You know, I'm so far behind on my it viewing. I haven't even seen the two movies. I've got to go do that first. Because it's one of those things, it's a horror thing. Like, I can't, my wife is out, just out.

So finding the time to watch horror is really difficult. Like, I have to sneak in Widow's Bay. She won't even watch that. Yeah. Yeah. And you still haven't seen Alien Earth, which is fantastic. No, I haven't seen that either. Yeah, that was on your summer plans.

You said you were going to watch Alien Earth this summer. We ended up watching all three seasons of Broadchurch. Yeah, see, it's, that's, I would definitely say Alien Earth is better than Broadchurch, personally, in my opinion. But, right. And I like Broadchurch, but come on. Anyway, let's move on to a little bit of literary news, Brian.

All right. After 25 fucking years, I finally canceled my Audible membership. 25 years. My first, the first purchase in 2001 that I bought on audible.com was Snowglass Apples by Neil Gaiman, which, you know, was a great poem.

Not poem, it was just a short story. It's a great short story. But I finally finished out my run with 1,076 books in my library, which I think is respectable for 25 years. It's fairly respectable. I just, I had some extra credits lined up, so I just, I spent my credits and then just canceled.

So I'm going to save 275 bucks a year on that because thank you guys, YouTube, Brian, for Libby. Because everything that I want to listen to, I can get on Libby. It might not be right away, but I've got so much of a backlog of shit that I want to read. And I don't have to read the latest book when it comes out, period.

I am going to, I am going to keep my Kindle Unlimited subscription though because I do get a lot of value out of that compared to the Audible. The Audible is like 22 something a month and you get two books. With Audible Unlimited, I've got six books that I'm juggling at any given time with my daily readers and stuff that I, I'm just even popping up for research.

Kindle Unlimited is for 12 bucks a month is a great deal. You know, if you use it, it's a great deal because there's a lot on there. There really is. I mean, it's not, yeah, not the latest and greatest stuff, but I don't read the latest and greatest. I don't care about the latest John Patterson or whatever novel that's coming out that you can buy at a fucking airport.

Anyway, but yeah, no, Libby has been, is phenomenal. I'm so happy that you and everybody else turned me on to it finally. I finally got off my ass and did it, you know? So I do have three books that I finished. Certainty, a novel by John 12 Hawks.

John 12 Hawks did that other series that you and I both read. The Traveler. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was called the Fourth Realm Trilogy, which ended up being four books long, which I don't think I've ever read the fourth one, but yeah. I didn't either. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, I kind of got burnt out on it. Yeah.

Well, skip this one. This was half like future tech and it's half like, it's weird. It's like, the problem with this book is, the future tech that he's talking about is, it's already, we've already passed what most of it is.

It's here already. Yeah. It's here. It's, it's, it's long gone. It's like, you know, six months, it's so six months ago, you know, you get, you get a free version of 11 labs and most of the shit that the AI can do in the, in, in this book can be done for $1.95. Like literally, it's like, oh, um, and it felt like it was written by a boomer who just read like a 10 year old Wired magazine.

That's too bad. I like that traveler book a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his, his style is good. It's just, he's, he's, he really sucks on the tech. You know, he really sucks on the tech. So it just took me out of it way too much. And, uh, since it was mostly it, some of the linchpins for the story were about the tech.

It missed, it missed. Um, then I, then I got lockstep by Carl Schroeder. Uh, this was a hat tip for the Corey doctor. I heard him talk about this on a, on one podcast. Uh, this was written back in 2014. Interesting premise, bad science, very bad science.

And it's, I had a hard time getting to the finish line. I think I still have like an hour to go in the audio book. It's, it's a, it's about a civilization. It's about, you know, human humanity, 14,000 years in the future who have kind of mastered cryo bed and cryo sleep technology. So everybody goes to sleep on a schedule so they can travel between the stars.

And like, while they're sleeping, like, you know, they've got robots that do, uh, um, you know, like a resource gathering and things like that, like mining and shit like that. And so the, the premise sounds good, but his science sucks. He doesn't even talk about relativity or anything like that because you're traveling these distances.

Time is going to dilate differently at different speeds for different, you know, planets and things like that. Doesn't get into any of that. It's kind of just a weird, kind of almost a young adult novel in, in some aspects. it's because the protagonist is a kid who fell asleep for 14,000 years because he was, he was off.

And then his brother and sister turned out to be assholes when he got back. Who have, who they've only aged 40 years in the 14,000 years because they go to sleep so often. But from an interesting premise at the beginning, it's pretty good, but it does not, I can't get to the end because it just doesn't hold me. So that's why I think it might be more young adult than anything.

So if you're not that, if you're not that concerned about the science, uh, that's a problem. But, now the last book, A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt. And we get a hat tip to Joe E on Discord for this one. He's the, he's the one that recommended this one.

Uh, this was from 2017 and this one is a fucking stunner. This is one of the best science fiction books I've read probably in a decade. And I mean, the, the short premise is it's about a, an 80 year old guy who's coming home to kill himself because he was done with his life and whatever.

And, uh, time traveling alien, time traveling, shape shifting alien lands in his front yard and, and, uh, hilarity ensues. There's actually not much hilarity in the book, uh, but it's, it's, it's a really well done time. I mean, it is a really well done time travel book.

As far as time travel books go, I think this is one of the better ones because it kind of just throws out this, throws out this thing. It's like, the universe doesn't give a fuck if you time travel. It's like, there's no, there's no great time police or any shit like that. It's like, if you can do it, off you go.

So, um, damn the consequences. It is, it's really well done. It's really, it's a very smart book. It has very much hints of the Martian in it about how he's going through the science of it because this guy was a, like, I mean, he was a PhD, an 80 year old PhD and scientist before he was going to kill himself.

So he's a very smart guy, had a great life, you know, very, very wealthy. And so he goes back to his, uh, like 10 year old self or something like downloads back into his 10 year old self at a different timeline. It's really good. It's, I mean, it's a, it's a mind bender. It's really fun. And, uh, the character development, top notch, like all in all, I think this is one of the most solid books that I've read in a long time.

The sad thing is it was written in 2017 and this guy hasn't really, really done much since then. No, that's too bad. Uh, Jerry Merritt, but you know, if you got to have one good book, this is a, this is one of them. This is a great book. Uh, you might actually have to buy it from his site for the print version. If you're going for that, I don't know what the, I got, I got it on audible, but, uh, he's got some, some kind of interesting stuff, but he's got his own website.

So you can go, go find it there. And finally, I tried to get back to dungeon crawler Carl on book three. I got like 20 minutes in and I got so bored. I'm just like, no, if you're going to have this kind of like built up world like that, I'm like, I w it made me think about disc world and just want to go back and read disc world novels.

Yeah. I, I also bought book three and it's, it's one of three books that I have sitting, uh, sitting around kind of waiting for me. and I started to read it too. And then I got kind of bored by it. I was, it's too much, it's too much the same as the other ones. I, I there, there's not enough growth or change or anything else happening to, to pique my interest.

Maybe after I've taken six months, seven months off, I'll, I'll take a look at it again and pick it up. and maybe it'll be interesting then at that point, but this is definitely not a series that I think you want to try to just slam through. And I think many people feel that way. I did want to do say something quickly about dungeon craw ler, Carl and it, it going so mainstream, there is no bigger sign that some book has gone mainstream.

then it's at the, what remains of a bookstore at an airport. As I was going through LAX to fly back to Toronto, you know, there's like four Oprah books of the week club. And then there's just a stack of dungeon crawler, Carl books everywhere. Like this, these, this has exploded.

So. Okay. Okay. Well, that, that, that would explain why you and I probably couldn't get into book three, because I think we kind of maybe have more sophisticated tastes than the general airport. and not to, not to brag on people who like it.

I mean, if you like it, you like, I love book one and two. I thought they were great. And yeah. Yeah. And, and most of the people in, in our discord chat were just like, you know, they kind of got tired of it too. They're just like, yeah, I, you know, it was, somebody says it's like, when you need a spreadsheet to get like to figure out who all the characters are.

Cause I guess like, you know, as you keep going, they keep introducing more and more characters. And it's like, it gets harder and harder to really figure out who's doing what, but it wasn't even that. It was just, it's the same premise over and over again. Okay. They got to fight and kill and move their way through the dungeon, you know? Yeah, exactly. So, well, along with a book three, I can tell you another book I'm not going to read.

And I saw this article about it over on slate, Silicon Valley dreams of authoritarianism. This is the nerd Reich, Silicon Valley, fascism and the war on democracy by Gil Duran. Reading the article was enough for me and doing this podcast is enough for me. I do not need to read this book.

Well, as one of my final credits on audible, I did get it. So there's a link in the show notes for it. So I'll two accident, let you know how it goes. All right. It just came out yesterday. Yeah. I just got it yesterday. So when I'm done with the, my current slew of books, I'm going to finish.

I got to finish lockstep because I'm too far into it. I just need to see how it ends. But, but what I, what's really good about lockstep is I know that there's no sequel. So it's one in time. There you go. Life has a way of adding things, a first home, a second car, a new baby.

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Welcome to the dark side with Dave, with a podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Welcome back, Dave. You have been traveling around the world. You've gone to, you've gone to different conventions and vacations, and we've missed you. We've missed you so much, Dave. So welcome back. Thank you.

I missed you all as well. It is good to be back. And yes, I was doing quite a bit of traveling here, there, and everywhere, but no, it's, it's nice to be back. Jump right in. I was at Black Hat, I guess two weeks ago now, which is the biggest.

I thought you were going to DEFCON. No, I went to Black Hat. So DEFCON immediately follows Black Hat. So I did not stay for DEFCON. And I was really only active at Black Hat for two days. I flew in on Tuesday, recorded all day, Wednesday and Thursday, and then flew home on Friday.

Two days is about the right amount for Vegas. I find it. It is, it is, especially when it's 115 degrees. It's like my house. Yeah. I mean, it's just a different kind of hot, even though it's a dry heat. My biggest concern when I arrived there was I was staying at the Luxor, which is, eh.

Yeah. It's a bit old. It's old. It's fine. And the, for Black Hat, the nice thing about the Luxor is that you can walk to the convention center indoors. you don't have to go outside. So my concern when I got to my room was, was the air conditioning going to be able to handle the extreme heat?

Being that the outside wall of my room was a black pyramid facing the sky. it barely did. It was, it was, concern is being able to sleep, right?

Yeah. So, you know, I went to the, to the local, uh, pharmacy and got a little fan, you know, so I could put on the night table just in case I needed that. It was fine. It was fine. Uh, anyway, I had a good time at Black Hat. Um, we had a little, uh, podcast studio that was set up for us and, uh, just got a lot of interviews and saw a lot of people and walk the show floor a little bit.

Uh, so. Did you get any good gadgets or anything? No, I did not. I did not. Uh, didn't really go looking for anything. I mean, everybody, everybody wanted to hand me a t-shirt, uh, or a pair of socks. Socks are the big thing now because they're smaller. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause they're, they're smaller, easier to carry than a t-shirt. And I, I feel like the thing with the t-shirts was every time someone tried to hand me a t-shirt, I was like, the last thing in the world I need is another t-shirt. Right. cause I have probably 50 t-shirts of which I probably wear 10, you know, any regularity.

So anyway, I mean, black hat was interesting. Um, I feel like a couple of years ago, the tone at black hat was, everyone was sort of looking around at each other warily and saying, so are we going to do this?

I think. And this year was like, so we're doing this. I think we're all in. Yeah. We're all in. And, uh, doesn't matter. I mean, that was the only thing anybody wanted to talk about. Everybody either has an agentic AI solution or a way to protect you from the other person's agentic AI solution.

And that's just, that's where we are right now. So I think some people are genuinely excited, but, uh, it's hard to not be cynical walking through the show floor and just through the hallways and just seeing sign after sign after sign, talking about how agentic AI is going to save the world.

Um, or destroy it. One of the two. Or, right, exactly. Um, so I was thinking about it today. I was sitting here going through some stories and, uh, somehow the topic came up. I saw someone was writing about the, um, the transition to 5g cellular.

And I was reminded of how in the lead up to 5g becoming a thing, it, we were in a similar hype cycle. It was going to transform the world. Right. Right. And I had all of these people pitching us stories and coming on the show to talk about their solution to all of the things that 5g was going to bring us and all of the great things that was going to bring us and all of the security problems that was going to bring us.

And, and it was faster internet. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Like, I mean, it, it is faster most of the time. It's going to handle it properly. Yeah. When it works, it's great. It's amazing when it works.

Uh, but did it really change much? If anything? Nope. Nope. Didn't, didn't really. Uh, I'm sure there are folks who would take issue with that, who would say there are edge cases in niche places where it 's made all the difference in the world, maybe in industrial control systems or who knows.

But, um, so that got me thinking about the hype cycle that we're in with my, my ground zero for those stories is one simple thing that, uh, we, we told what's good. This amazing invention was coming. They didn't tell us anything about it.

This, this is going to transform the world. It is a revolutionary technology. and, and then they finally, ginger. No, I can't, I can't remember what show they unveiled it on. I think it was, it was like a prime time, talk show or something like that.

It was the fucking segue. Yeah. That was ginger. That was ginger. Ginger. And now, you know, maybe you see a postman on it. that's, that's, that's, that's basically what we're at. Yeah. Yeah. Postman and mall cops. That's all I see is mall cops. Yeah. So that, that is always like, like that's, that's my platonic ideal of the tech, the way tech works.

It's, it's revolutionary. And then nothing. Well, we'll go from the segue to the blockchain. Remember the blockchain. Blockchain was going to completely revolutionize cybersecurity back in the day because we had, you know, a chain of chain of custody for everything. Everybody did. Smart contracts, man.

Smart contracts. That's right. And if he's going to change the art world. Yeah. The only thing, the only thing the blockchain is good for is trying to track down the cyber criminals that have used it to steal all of your data. That's in the mouth, in the ransomware. That's how it, that's how the blockchain has revolutionized cybersecurity for criminals.

It was fantastic. Crypto cash for criminals. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. So there we go. So I think AI is probably going to be the same thing. We'll see. I mean, you know, I think there are, look, there are legit uses. So I'm not, I'm, I'm, I don't know if it's fair to say I'm down the middle when it comes to AI.

Cause I, I'm not all pessimistic about, I'm not completely pessimistic, pessimistic about it, but I'm also not all in on that. It's going to be a great thing either. My concern is that AI ends up being our generation's version of asbestos in that, you know, it's this great thing that's going to have all these benefits.

And then we realize we're going to spend decades cleaning up the mess that it made. Yeah. In all of our code bases and all of our, you know, everything. The economies. The economies. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The, the brains of all the children who have been basically r otted out from using it.

The, uh, right. Right. The lack of books that we found out just recently in earlier in the show that have all been destroyed to train it. You know, there, there's so much bad and so little good. I think. Yeah. I saw a thing today that especially, uh, there was someone did a study of, of students, middle school age students, and the AI does, uh, help students do their homework faster.

They get better grades on their homework, but they do 20% worse on their tests. They understand it less. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. But then you have to say how much of that is AI and how much of that is Instagram, you know, that has trained them to have these, you know, the attention span of a goldfish.

You know, you could say the kids stopped reading long before AI. Yeah. They can't read anymore and they can blame AI, but I think that that may have, that, that, that boulder may have started down that hill, you know, maybe a decade ago. And now it's just digging up steam because AI is just behind it, pushing it along. Yeah. This is why I keep all my technology locked into closet and my son is out there churning butter right now.

Excellent. Excellent. That's right. That's right. And you could also make the argument that, uh, it might not matter in the future workplace where if everyone's job is somehow tethered to AI, then the types of thinking that are so important to our generation and before might not be as important.

Uh, on the other hand, it just might mean that nobody, there aren't jobs to be had. So yeah, no more middle management is the thing. It's like, right now, right. Just, why would you have a middle management when you have an agent? Right. What's the saying? Last automation has come for the white collar jobs.

Yes. Yeah. So, uh, I had a good time at black hat, uh, and then came back on Friday and on Saturday headed to the beach. Nice. Went to Bethany beach in Delaware. I don't know if either of you are familiar. I have been there. I've been there. Yeah. It's a lovely, lovely beach kind of in between ocean city, Maryland and Rehoboth beach, which is a larger resort area in, uh, Delaware.

So I think, uh, Bethany calls themselves the quiet beach. Yeah. We couldn't afford to go to Rehoboth when I was a kid. You know, we would go there for like lunch and then come back to the other one. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, the odd thing though, was for the time we were there, we could not go in the ocean because of jellyfish.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we have, uh, in the, in this neck of the woods, we have sea nettles, which is in terms of jellyfish are not that high powered. They're, I've never been stung by one, but my understanding is that it's kind of like a bee sting.

Um, but it was very strange to be at the beach, see all these people sitting on the sand, enjoying the smell of the salt air and the sound of the surf, but nobody's in the water. Everybody stay hydrated.

You never know when you're going to have to pee on someone. Exactly. Well, and, and my wife said, she's like, I don't want to go to the beach because part of enjoying the beach is being able to cool off in the ocean. Yeah. Um, there was a water park nearby that said, uh, come enjoy our jellyfish free lazy river on their big sign outside.

So I think they were doing good business that week, but it made me wonder what happens to East coast resorts. If this is the new normal, the part of what they're speculating is that, um, with warmer temperatures, the water's warmer. Jellyfish love the water, warmer water that pushes them in closer to shore.

And here we are. So what if during the peak of your vacation season, there's two or three weeks, maybe a month in the middle where nobody can go in the ocean. Everybody's building pools. Yeah. We just, no, we just cool the ocean. Come on. Oh yeah. Right. Right.

Get some of that melting ice from Greenland and just tug it down to your, your beach. And then you can say, Hey, look, we've got, we're jellyfish free because we've got the iceberg from Greenland that just cracked off. And you know, that would be the thing. I guess you could go in the ocean in a, like a neoprene wetsuit or something, you know, that would, but that would be fun.

So anyway, but beyond that, we had a lovely week, uh, just relaxing, made, made for a quiet week. And, uh, it was just what I needed. It was nice to get away and be away from it all. Came back to an avalanche of emails, which I just sort of select all.

Mark is red. Move on. That's it. Yeah. Email bankruptcy. If they, if it's important, they'll, they'll email me a second time. And some people have. Yeah. That autoresponder that you put on there that just says, I will not read this to send it again.

When I get back is the greatest thing ever. I, I will, I will literally not see this email. So, mark your, mark your calendar. Write me later. That's what I do. And by the way, in the meantime, go fix it yourself, which usually works. Right. Right. Tell your agentic AI to circle back with me.

Yes. Um, so in the meantime, uh, there's been a few updates while I've been away for a couple of weeks. Um, actually right before I went to black hat, uh, I mentioned to you guys, I've been working on this keyboard project, this digital piano project, the Kurzweil SP three X, which is a stage piano.

Uh, just a quick, uh, recap. Uh, I bought this super cheap on, uh, Facebook marketplace. It was non-functional. Uh, it's a professional digital piano, probably about 15 years old. I just figured this will be a fun project, uh, over the course of a couple of weeks.

I took it apart. Uh, and I was using chat GPT as my mentor to help me fix it. And it was very helpful. Uh, and, uh, I'm happy to say that in the end it is now working. Holy shit. Yes. Amazing.

Yes, it is. Seems to be a hundred percent. Uh, what was the, what was the final fix? Well, I would say, uh, I did a recapping is, is what did it to replacing all the capacitors, which is kind of the, that's what you do these days.

That's the, the usual suspect in terms of electronics from that age going bad. The, what happens is the capacitors go bad and then they just short the power through themselves rather than acting as a capacitor. Um, but, um, you know, I ruled out a few things.

Uh, I was really getting discouraged because I had gone through several rounds of trying to hunt down things and fix things, including a couple of capacitors. And, uh, remember I, I purchased the thermal camera. Yes. Which pointed me to a couple of capacitors.

I replaced those still didn't work. And I just thought, well, you know, what the heck? I'll just replace all the capacitors I can, which is about 10. Uh, so just had a little soldering project, probably took about an hour or so. And I was, uh, not at all expecting anything.

Put it back together, powered it up. And the display came on and went through its boot up sequence. And I plugged in some headphones and put them on. And I hit a key and a piano sound when I came out and I went, Oh, I kind of looked around and went, wow, I've done it.

I did it. Yeah. It's alive. It's alive. So, so more important than the final fix, Dave, what was the final tally in terms of cost? Excellent question. Uh, so I paid a hundred dollars for the broken piano. I paid $150 or so for the thermal camera, but that pays for itself and fun.

Well, exactly. And I'll have that for the rest of my life. So it's practically free. Um, this is, you know, every project is an opportunity to purchase a new tool. I probably bought about probably about $50 worth of odds and ends parts.

And, and, you know, I, I, like I bought a big kit full of capacitors with every possible value. So when I was pulling the old ones out, I could replace them with the same ones. Uh, I bought a few replacement knobs for the front just to kind of clean things up and make it look a little tidier than it was.

So I'd say about probably in about $300. It's not bad. Um, it's not bad. No, no. I mean, it's probably worth that. Um, maybe, maybe between that and 500, depending, you know, the thing with the, the digital pianos, uh, ones like this that use sampling technology is there really reached a point where there weren't any bad ones anymore.

They were all good. Like all the sampling, the sampling technology, we got that. Like you hit the key and the recording of a piano comes out and that's that. So, uh, it sounds really good. It's fun to play. The keyboard is quite nice. It's has all kinds of capabilities.

I'm still learning how to use it, but yeah, feeling very gratified. And, um, and again, was impressed by, uh, chat GPT's ability to assist me in the repair. It was way beyond what I thought it would be. So. If you were to sell it today, how much do you think you could get for it?

I would probably top out around $500. So you would have made a profit. So that's good. That's, that is a successful project. Yes, I could, I could make a profit. What I'm probably going to do is, well, I'm going to keep it. Uh, it's better than, so I have this keyboard here, which is a, uh, Yamaha, more of a, like a consumer digital piano.

So I'm going to swap it out with this one because the one I fixed is better than this one. And then I'll find a new home for this one. Find a student or somebody who, you know, needs a, for free. I'll just put it on, you know, for free, free cycle or whatever. Right. To somebody.

So, yep. So that's next. Yeah. Very nice. So other updates. Um, I was sitting here minding my own business, uh, again, the week before I went away for black hat. Yeah. And, uh, my phone pops up with an alert and it was the thing I'd signed up for to alert me when Home Depot, Home Depot, R2D2s were back in stock.

Now, right. Nobody knew if Home Depot was going to be selling R2D2 or not again this year. There, no, there was no news on that. It could have just been gone. Nobody knew. So this thing pops up on my phone. I immediately, you know, Home Depot.com go, go in, it pops up.

Sure enough, there's 300 of them available. Okay. Order. Okay. Okay. Please ship to me. I get to, uh, the shipping, filling in my payment information. It says there are 34 of them available. I faster Dave.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This, this item is no longer available. Oh, Dave. Autofill. Autofill. You should have this shit ready to go.

So I go home and, um, getting caught up with my wife about the day. And I said, Oh, by the way, uh, this happened today. This thing popped up on my phone and, uh, you know, the R2D2s became available.

Uh, and I wasn't able to get one. And she said, Oh, I saw that too. Uh, it'll be here Wednesday. Ah, that's a good wife. That's a good wife. You almost had two R2D2s. Well, that would not have been a bad thing. Cause then I could have had one for the office.

I could have had one at home. One for the car, one for the bathroom. Yeah, exactly. I mean, can you really have too many astromech droids? I think not. No. Um, so R2D2 arrived. And he's wonderful. Uh, he really is.

I think it was Adam Savage said that an R2 unit is a happiness machine when you put one in your house. And it is true. Every time, right now he's in my, um, my living room, uh, next to the grand piano. And so I walk, I, I still have, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm not used to him being there.

So it's a surprise every time I see him. And that makes me happy. Right. I come down the stairs and I turn and I see the living room and there's R2D2. And I go ahead. It makes me smile. And I go, Oh, it's R2D2. So R2D2 is my next project because there are many, many Etsy kits out there to update your R2D2 to, to make him more realistic and make the lights better.

and you can make him completely remote controlled and all the things. So. All right. That's what I'll be doing next. But by long, will you be imbuing him with intelligence via chat GPT? No, I hadn't thought about that.

Oh my God. That's the first thing I thought of. I'm like, come on. You got to translate it to the beeps and boops. That's the thing. Right. That's how do you. Yeah. I mean, if it was C3PO, that would be a lot easier, but I don't know. I'm just going to, you know, one step at a time, but it was nice that right as my keyboard project wrapped up, R2D2 came into my life.

And now I have something else to work on. You light up my days. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of R2D2, I, I of course went to Disneyland and took the kid when, when we were in Orange County in Los Angeles area.

I will only of note talk about Star Wars land because they have changed since I was last there. I didn't see too many characters. So it's not like I saw the Han Solo in the bad wig running around or any of that. Unfortunately, I did see an R2 rolling around, which I hadn't before.

The music has changed. They don't no longer do the galaxy's edge soundtrack that, that he wrote specifically for it. So, which I actually enjoy. You now get all of the Star Wars, you get the Star Wars theme, you get the empire theme, you're, you're hearing all of those, those classic things that we all know so well.

I find that that's actually a great improvement as much as they want to do the immersion and have its own thing. Having the real, all the real Star Wars music is, is fantastic. Uh, I went on the Smuggler's Run, which has been redone for Mandalorian and Grogu.

Oh, it was nice. It was, it was, it was fine. You know, it's, it's, you know, it's the same ride. It's just a different thing on top of it. So that was, that was fun. Um, yeah, it was, it was just a good time. And, uh, since then, of course, they've had D23, which is the big conference, uh, Disneyland conference.

And they've announced all sorts of other things that are going to be happening. and they've rolled out like interactive Ewoks that you could buy that then interact with different things within the park when you're there. Oh. Didn't get to see any of that. I was there before any of that stuff. But, uh, I do like that they're continuing to invest in, in the area and, and make it bigger and better and do new things all the time.

What it really needs, of course, is another ride, but I don't know what we're ever going to get that. So. Oh, I also think it needs a big restaurant. Yeah, it does. It does. As much as I like Uga's Cantina. Yeah. They have some very tasty beverages there and some fun food . They don't have a big sit down immersive restaurant.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Did, did your son keep his promise of only going in Star Wars land? He did not. He did not. We had a bit of a curve ball in that some friends went with us and their daughters who Lucas is friends with. And so there, there was a lot of negotiation about going and doing different things.

The one plus that came out of that though is, is my son has been, um, not, he's not the most adventurous lad. Uh, he's been very wary of, of roller coasters. In fact, the only coaster he's been on so far up until that point, uh, was when we went to Disneyland Paris, he went on space mountain purely because they had the, the, uh, hyper space mountain star Wars overlay.

And so he enjoyed that a great deal. Uh, but he's still doesn't really want to do roller coasters, but he was, uh, uh, he was, uh, uh, by the, uh, by the, by the two girls that we, girls, girls are always involved. Yeah. The first time a guy goes on a roller coaster.

They'll do that. He was, he was shamed into going onto a big thunder mountain, which is personally, uh, my favorite Disney roller coaster. I love it. Uh, so I went with him and, uh, I have to say one of my favorite moments as a parent so far was being on that ride with my son and seeing him like light up and start to really enjoy it.

And just watching his face the whole ride. It was, it was wonderful moments and that is great. He had a blast. So yeah, it was a lot of fun. In fact, he wanted, uh, for whatever reason, the line was really short that day. So as soon as we got off, we got right back in line and went a second time.

So yeah, it was nice. Yeah. Has, has he been on the Incredicoaster across the, street there? No. And he's basically said that that is, that is a bridge too far. That is a roller coaster. He, he will not, he will not go on to until he has a son of his own and he has to. That's what he told me. Or, or, or until there are hotter girls who.

Yeah. So I said, or until puberty hits kid. Trust me. Cause that, that is a top roller coaster for me. Just, it's a lot of fun. And as they have a great soundtrack on that. Yeah, it is a lot of fun. I've only been on it a handful of times, but, it's, it's fantastic.

But yeah, big thunder has got the nostalgia and the fun for me. So that's always top one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, before we part ways here, one other thing I wanted to touch on, my wife and I have been making our way through the old TV show, Northern exposure.

You guys remember that one? I do. Yeah. It's really good. It's really good. I call it twin peaks light. Yeah, that's fair. It is the, it is the cold play to twin peaks radio head. I, yes, I do not disagree.

Uh, what I love about it, I think it holds up. I don't think it's a show that could be made today. Certainly not on a broadcast network. Maybe a cable channel could make it, but it's just delightfully quirky and, and gentle and affectionate.

Um, there are, the characters are interesting. It's a little mystical. Uh, and so I'm just, I'm enjoying it. We're enjoying it together. Um, it's just a really nice, gentle thing to watch before you go to bed at night.

That's not going to get you riled up. It's not going to get you mad about anything. It just, it's, it's sort of a warm embrace of a storytelling kind of show. So, um, for folks who haven't seen it, uh, go check it out. And if you haven't thought about it in a while, it's worth a revisit.

I, I don't remember ever finishing it. I know I saw some of it, but I do remember that I actually had the soundtrack CD back when they used to do these sorts of things and particularly loving it because it was all over the place. And I just looked it up really quick.

So like Daniel Lanois, Booker T and the MGs, Etta James, uh, David Schwartz, uh, Leonard Skinner. Like it was a really good soundtrack in particular though. One song in particular, because this was a staple on, on, uh, K rock, uh, the, the alternative radio station when I was a kid, Don Quixote by magazine 60.

If you've not heard that song in a long time, it's frigging awesome. Yeah. Uh, well the DJ, uh, at K bear, uh, Chris Stevens, uh, one thing I noticed, this would probably drive you nuts. Jason is just how he completely missed, uses his SM seven B, uh, which has, which has no pop filter on it at all.

It's just, it's a naked SM seven B and he's just, he's all over the thing. Oh, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's okay. I'll allow it. I'll allow it. They didn't have good, uh, good microphone protocols on WKRP in Cincinnati either.

So, you know, what are you going to write? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. All right. We're glad you're back, man. Glad you're back. Good to be back. Good to be back. Yep. Yep. So I'll see you guys next time. See you next week, Dave. well, let's talk about the people who keep this show going over on Patreon.

We've got a new subscriber Giovanni. Welcome my Italian brother. And we'd also like to thank Rick, Greg, James, Andy, Lorvox, Tuk, Chris, Adit, Frankie, and Gabriel. Thank you all so much for your continued support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, nobody at PayPal from now or over the break.

So I guess if we don't do any shows, the PayPal money drives up. Okay, Brian. Well, now that you've got your, your basement layer, no, no excuses anymore. We're going to tether you down there. Still taking off. It's still taking breaks. Okay. Well, I have no excuse.

So I'll just be here. I don't have anywhere to go. I'm just stuck in a fucking garage. Anyway, over the tip chair, we've got Theodore, Jeffrey, Sean, and doll. Thank you all so much. No new merch. Oh, we got to put up those new shirts. We got to put up those new shirts and no reviews, no reviews. If you would like to keep this show on the air, if you do like listening to us, please consider donating.

You can go to gog.show slash Patreon. Actually, you can't. You can go to patreon.com slash gog. I'm dyslexic. Give me a fucking break. You can sign up for as little as $3 a month, but you can give us more if you like, and you get the show early, ad free, and in high definition. You can go to YouTube and sign up for a membership there.

If you want, you do get the show early and ad free as there as well, as there as well. And you can buy some merch that Brian is so lovingly showing us on the, on his screen. It's the old DVD screensaver. It is. It's like a screensaver. Dong, dong, dong.

You can go to shop.gog.show for that stuff. We're going to put some new stuff up there. I have a new Elon kills babies shirt that I'm working on right now that I'm waiting for the test to come through to see if it looks any good, but it's a, it's a, I, I like the show. I sent you the artwork for it. I think it's very clever.

It's like a fifties, uh, you know, horror movie poster that chat GPT actually helped me make. And, uh, when I went back to trying to like change something on it, they're like, Oh, this completely breaks our terms of service. You can't do this. I'm like, but you made it, but you did it, but it breaks, it breaks our terms of service.

So we can't fix it. I'm like, okay. I love guardrails. I love guardrails. So until next time, they make when they break. Exactly. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.

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