The Biggest Tech Disasters | Triforce #324

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Trifles podcast.

Wow, we're back.

It's been a while.

What's that?

Good to be back.

Good to be back.

So, I would like to apologize to you chaps, first of all because while we were away, while I was away, sorry, and we were on a break, we did have a day when we were going to record, and I completely forgot to set an alarm for it.

And I slept through.

Lewis tried to call me, and the lads got together and waited for me to turn up for a recording session.

And I was just asleep.

I apologize.

That's

after the crying and screaming stopped, we all came to grips with what had happened, and it was fine.

I'm still furious with the I'll take it out on you when you listen to me.

So a lot of sobbing.

It's the only way.

A bit of shitting as well, but it was fine.

That's fine.

Guys, good news: my birthday today.

Oh, is it actually?

You're 45 years old today.

Happy congratulations, Sips.

You made it.

I done it.

I made it.

So, so that's a big, big milestone, dude.

How do you feel?

Do you feel do you feel every year of that 45, or do you think you can keep going for another 45?

I feel like I could probably, at a push, keep going, you know.

Like, it's not, it's not too bad.

Like,

I'm achier than ever.

You know, if I sit funny for 10 minutes, I'm achy, which has never happened before.

But,

you know, it's fine.

So I went to a friend of mine's,

well, I went to, I don't want to, okay, I'll start the story again.

I don't want to dox anyone.

I don't want to dox anyone.

That reminds me of a story.

I was at a birthday party for a 90-year-old lady the other day.

Don't ask why.

It's a family thing.

And

she's a bit,

well, I think someone said to her, oh, you know, what's the next big milestone?

Because she's 90.

Right.

And she said, was it Dame Judy Dench?

No, no.

But she said, was it Joanna Lumley?

She said, she said, I want to live to 100, but not a day longer.

Oh, damn.

Right.

So, like, on her 100th birthday at the end, when the clock strikes midnight, she's cast down.

Oh well,

I saw Judy Deshau is 90, by the way, but

Joanna Lumley is only 79.

So, but the thing is, everyone laughed, right?

And then, but she was deadly serious about it.

She was like, I'm serious.

And then everyone laughed again.

And so I sort of joked, I was like, oh, so shall we arrange something like bungee jumping for your 100th birthday, you know?

Yeah.

Or motorcycling or something, something dangerous, you know, to bump you off.

And she was like, no.

i always imagine if a 90-year-old did a bungee jump uh their dentures would just come flying out you know like when

when the when the when the rope like bounces you know like when they hit the bouncing point of the rope but the dentures have to be on some kind of a string that then shoots back yeah so everything shoots out and then everything retracts as they sound like a fucking

seed from alien when the extra mouth comes out yeah yeah and then it just goes back in after yeah that'd be good i guess the the dental the the dental glue now is pretty good though right they use like yeah compounds and like they're they're i don't think dentures come flying out anymore

they come flying out they do detach my mom has dentures and i'll tell you what she's it's not like a full comical pair of horse teeth though like they used to be right that you put in like a glass

like a piece it's like a piece that you hooked it's a piece yeah it covers a bit so you put the glue i don't know how it sticks to your gums i mean god knows sometimes you hook them in though.

Isn't there like a hooking mechanism for them?

They hook around your other teeth.

They like flip in.

Yeah.

But the glue.

So when she takes them out, I think at night, or when she's putting them in in the morning, sometimes the glue will drip out and it forms in, it collects in the sink and she doesn't see it because it's transparent and she's old.

But it's like really hard to get out.

It's like this really horrible goopy shit.

My kids do this with toothpaste all the time.

Like

it looks like they squeeze the tube of toothpaste into the sink

just for fun and then leave it there.

And when it dries up, it's impossible to get it off.

And then they get their toothbrush and it looks like they've covered it in toothpaste and then flicked it towards the mirror.

The mirror is just covered in dots of toothpaste.

And then they're not rinsed it.

It hardens like they all over the tap.

Oh, my God.

Children.

Yeah, I know.

I did prepare a segment for today if you guys.

Oh, so well, this was before we do that.

You've been away in a lot of days.

I was in no working holiday.

Not a whole day.

You've be working.

You've been working.

So your family thinks you've been a holiday.

It's been doing

earning the money to pay for

their wasting.

Exactly.

Out of the last 30 days, I've been home for four.

Jesus.

Holy crap.

I wish that was me.

Well, yeah, it was bloody exhausting, though, because some of these days were like 12 plus hour days.

Well, out of the last 40 days, I've been at home for 40 of them.

And let me tell you, that's exhausting as well.

So,

look, we're not your wife.

You could tell us what really is.

No, I'm serious, dude.

It was really fucking long.

Oh, it was real tough.

It was real tough.

Let me tell you.

12-hour days,

I was up all night.

They kept me in.

Oh, they made me carry stuff around.

They didn't make me carry stuff around.

I was working in a coal miner for a while.

I was digging.

They had me mucking out the pigs.

And did they have you digging in a coal mine over there?

Well, yeah, you know, needs must.

I did bring Jean-Guy Tupperware to a Dota audience.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

And what was the reaction to the introduction of Jean-Guy Tupperware?

They did like Jean-Guy, um, and he came back again with his daughter, uh, Nicole, who was uh Pepsi Joe Louie, indeed, and so yeah, Jean-Guy Tupperware.

But so, interestingly, uh, first of all, uh, Jenkins, who's one of the other Dota guys, he's Canadian, and he said that Jean-Guy Tupperware, like that really made him laugh.

He hadn't heard of the expression before, right?

But one of the other lads there lives in Montreal.

Right.

And he's he's sort of, he's Lebanese, but he's also kind of French-Canadian.

He speaks French and all the rest of it.

But he was telling me that the Quebecois

consider themselves the true French.

Yes.

And that everyone that left France for Quebec has retained the essence of Frenchness, which has been corrupted and ruined back in original France.

Yeah.

Yeah, by Europe, by France, by France.

France have ruined France.

Right.

So yeah, they're like,

they think that that their version of French is the correct version and these French don't know anything and these are the superior guys.

And when I told him about Jean-Guy Tupperware, he said that Jean-Guy was like the most Quebecois name you could possibly imagine.

Absolutely, it is.

No one covers Jean-Guy's, actually.

The whole point.

Guetan, I think, was the other one.

Well, if people are listening to the podcast, they're very confused about this, who Jean-Guy Tupperware is.

It's a fake character

mocking French Canadians.

You can have Jonguis rubber boots as well if you want.

He has Jean-Guy in rubber boots.

And so, but Pyrrhian actually brought him out on stage at one of these events.

And you did a couple of other characters as well.

Technically, it wasn't on stage.

I did indeed bust him out.

There was this segment of the show that they just said, just do whatever you want.

It's like a flavour story.

But you were on a stage.

It's definitely on stage.

Well, yeah, I guess.

But there was no audience, so it didn't really count.

But either way, but you were live to the internet.

That's true.

All right, yeah, I'll grant you that.

So I had to to come out and thousands of people watching.

We were meant to just be like, talk about the game, but I was like, do you mind if I do like a stupid character?

And they were like, go for it.

It's because they had all these dress-up costumes around the back.

So I brought a beret, my pipe, and sunglasses from home so I could be like a sort of

authentic.

You're like a fucking prop comedian.

You should have brought your mind paint as well.

Oh, God.

You got your little fucking wooden chest full of costumes.

It's called being a character actor.

A character actor.

All right.

But so I did Chad Blatchman,

Professor von Neustadel,

and

Pat Petrillo, and Don Gliziani, the hot dog king of New York.

Nice.

So those are the guys that I did.

I had a lot of fun.

That's good.

You sent me some clips.

They were great.

Hey,

growing up so close to French Canada, like pretty much in French Canada, I'd say,

Guy or Jean-Guy was like, you know,

that, that was, that was the name, right?

They were, they were popular names.

Loads of people named Guy.

Uh, loads of famous people called Guy, like Guy LeFleur and like lots of Guys and Jean-Guys in was Guy LeFleur a hockey player?

Yes.

Yeah, he's a goalie, right?

Guy Le Fleur.

I can't remember, actually.

Um, but anyway, when I first moved over to the UK,

one of my first jobs, uh, we had a client, was like a friend of my boss, but he's a client, and his name was, was Guy.

But when he came in, I called him Gi.

And he's like, why the fuck are you calling me Gi?

I was like, oh, sorry.

I just like, I forgot myself, you know, like in Canada, you would be gi, not guy.

Right.

And he's like, well, here I'm guy.

He was like very posh.

It's like a very posh.

He had like red socks.

He was like a lawyer or something.

I don't know.

But yeah, he was not impressed with me calling him Gi.

But it just, I wasn't thinking, you know, I saw the name and I was like, oh, hey, gee.

And he's like, what, what are you saying?

Why are you calling me gi?

Gi?

Yeah, yeah.

He was like, he was, he was not, not at all impressed.

I'm not gi, you're gi.

Yeah.

Nice.

So Guy LeFlaire was a right wing.

He was not a right winger.

Yeah.

There you go.

All right.

So the little mini segment that I've prepared, if we want to do this, is

computer failures.

Right.

Some, some bad, some funny.

Right.

So I'm going to give you options of what you want to talk about.

We can talk about space.

We talk talk about video games.

We can talk about telecommunications.

Sure.

And we can talk about the real world, physical equipment in the real world.

Which would you like to do first?

Holy crap.

Take your tick, Lewis.

They all sound good to me.

I'm excited for space.

I love space.

Give me space.

First three.

I love space for three, Bob.

Well, of course, the Mars Climate Orbiter, quite famous.

You've heard this one.

The Mars Climate Orbiter.

This was 1999.

This was a probe that they were sending to Mars to sort of low orbit, if you like.

So it was meant to sort of skim the atmosphere and get some interesting details about the

atmosphere.

It was going to have an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring it to within 140 miles of the surface, whiz around, gather data, send it back home, and it was like ready to go.

But unfortunately, part of the software supplied by Lockheed Martin was dealing in feet and inches

and and revealing that and giving that information to the system that was expecting si units uh oh wow so they were off by a factor of four um so it ended up crashing um and uh yeah it was a real it was a real shame

it was a it was a real problem and apparently it cost that that cost in 2023 would have been about just over half a billion dollars uh lost because um because of the uh the si what they call the united states customary units In other words, shit like Imperial measurements.

So what Lockheed Martin were using feet and NASA were using meters, yeah.

Meters, that is insane, dude.

So NASA apparently were like, it's no one's fault but ours.

We're not blaming Lockheed Martin, which is fair because Lockheed Martin supplied their shit and were like, you know, here's the stuff and all the documentation that would have come with it.

And apparently a couple of people raised this issue.

um and were like you know there's something funny we should look into this here regarding the units and blah blah blah but their uh complaints complaints were ignored because they hadn't filled out the correct form to raise amazing.

So the bureaucracy was like, Excuse me, perhaps if you'd filled out the form correctly, we'd have a look at this, but instead, we're going to have to just say, nope, and fire off this half-billion dollar probe.

And this is crazy.

This isn't

a diocracy.

Yes.

Bureaucracy is kind of this shit.

You know, here locally, you know how England's banned the sale of disposable vapes?

Jersey was meant to follow along, had the legislation in place to to time it perfectly with the UK, but it's delayed in Jersey because there was a typo in the legislation.

So they had to resubmit it for review and everything.

So it's been delayed.

So rejoice, you can still have a disposable vape in Jersey, come over for a cheeky weekend and just blast your head off with a disposable vape.

Dump lithium-ion batteries out on the street

as it's been going on for the last few years.

The other thing is that they've easily bypassed this already in that they've all they've added is a tiny USB-C charging port to the disposable vapes.

Oh, right.

So you whack one of those on and say, it's not disposable, mate, it's rechargeable.

And you bypass any of the restrictions.

Right.

And given how long it's taken them to get this one piece of legislation through banning disposables, it's going to take another few years before they get rid of these ones and say, you can't actually recharge these and you can't actually refill them.

So, but then, you know, they'll just say, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, you can.

And they'll, you know, they'll make one where you can just charge it up and bingo yeah so yeah yeah exactly it's just the next um so this is this is what's called capitalism um

i've heard of that

if you want to know what a definition of capitalism is it is literally this it is exploiting loopholes the rules loopholes in the rules to make money

uh through addictive products right cool um so yeah space man i love that i like the idea that we're going to mars to like fucking spray microplastics into the atmosphere or something just to really get it ready for us to live.

Yeah, it's like a dog marking its territory.

That's our thing.

It's microplastics.

We're spraying it everywhere.

We want to let the whole galaxy, we want the whole universe to know that we're on the scene.

We got our plastic and we're ready to spray it wherever the fuck we want, okay?

Can you imagine, yeah, if the aliens came over here and they were like, oh, let's make the perfect environment for a human zoo, right?

They'd be like, okay, they need this background level of radiation from the nuclear testing.

They have this amount of lead in the air from the petroleum.

We forget all the noise as

horns and revving of engines.

At least two or three times a day, a very loud motorcycle sound should be played.

Typical human enjoy sort of a background noise level.

Yes.

That's actually, that is a brilliant little sci-fi trope right there.

I love that.

Yeah.

That they would look at.

our environment and like if we looked at a toad in the wild we'd say oh well this is clearly what it wants knock up an aquarium like that and bosh the toad in.

If they looked at us, you're right.

They'd be like, well, this is clearly their environment.

So we have to, you know, they'd be upset if you, if you did it any other way.

And they'd put us in a fucking shithole.

Yes.

With not enough

average person, they'd be able to make sure they get not enough food.

Lots of people.

Human beings can only survive on hot pockets, leucosate, and monster energy.

They need their brains need to be at least 5% microplastics in order for them to survive.

Make them sterile, too.

You got any little disposable vapes with the USB charger in them?

They love these vapes.

Their environment is literally.

They cannot survive without these vapes.

God damn, that's so dark.

It's dark, yeah.

It's dark.

That could be an episode of what is that, Black Mirror.

I've never seen Black Mirror before, but

are you serious?

Yeah, no, I've never seen it.

Oh, my God.

Watch the most recent series.

You watch the most recent series to stop.

I enjoy it.

It's good.

I wish I could forget it all the time.

I think you'd love it, Sibs.

I think I would too, Yeah, I just, I'm lazy, you know.

I don't know what the hell I do with my time.

It's a TV.

You don't have to do anything.

You just turn it on.

I know, but like,

I just go down these rabbit holes, you know.

Like, I've been watching, I've been watching that thing that was on BBC One about Lockerbie.

So I've just gone down this rabbit hole.

Yeah, yeah, I missed

watching that as well.

Reading.

Oh, my God.

Have you heard about Virgin Island?

Is that your hometown?

It's a TV show, a reality TV show that started airing this year.

And all of my friends, for some reason, have been talking about this show.

It's called Virgin Island.

Basically, 12 islands.

The Virgin Islands are in the Caribbean, aren't they?

I know.

British Virgin Islands.

It's a tax-exempt area.

Well,

they missed a trick by not setting it in the Virgin Islands, but it's 12 virgins live together on a Mediterranean island with seven sex experts.

And they don't pay any tax.

They're exempt.

It's a tax haven over there in the British Virgin Islands, if that's where it's being filmed.

I'm just saying.

It's exactly as you would imagine.

But it's weirdly, like,

weirdly intimate.

Basically, they're always.

Where are they shagging?

They're basically, yeah, like kind of they're doing a lot of faux shagging, like a lot of dry humping and like test shagging and like and like

stuff like around shagging.

Um, as if as if these people have never watched porn before.

Like, do you know what I mean?

Like, the average 35-year-old virgin, I'm sure, is an absolute fucking porn addict.

But yeah, let's guilty.

That's the thing.

I haven't watched that one.

I haven't even heard of it until now.

Virgin Island, check it out, Situ.

This is my first time hearing about it.

I'm going to love it.

If you fuck The Apprentice, you know.

Well, don't worry about it.

Is that what they do on that show?

They do a crossover.

I won the Apprentice.

Send me to Sex Island.

It's my reward.

I've laid on a trip to Sex Island for you.

You're going to fuck seven 35-year-old virgins.

What's the name of that woman that shagged a thousand blokes in a day?

Oh,

she was in a hospital, I think.

I think a hundred blokes a day is a lot, wasn't it?

A hundred?

No, it was 1057.

Me and Dav were talking about it the other day.

We were playing Dota.

He knew a name like that of the

day.

I think she's like an OnlyFans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, apparently it's not OnlyFans, it's just OnlyMans.

Only men.

fans, yeah.

But she did, she, she, I think she beat the record.

Like, she had like sex, you know, a thousand plus times in the space of 24 hours or something.

Men, yeah, in 12 hours, but

she was hospitalized after.

She could even still be there, I think.

She was in really bad shape, apparently.

Yeah, like fucked her to death.

Well, nearly

within an inch of her life, I think.

She got fucked to death.

Yeah,

you are not gonna

top that experience.

I don't think that's that's that's not gonna come back from that.

I don't think she's died, though.

I don't think she is actually.

No, she's not died.

She wants to do more.

She wants to come back and she wants to feed her previous PB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

I mean, what amazes me is I think out of 1,000 women, you wouldn't find one that would want to do anything like that.

I think you'd have to go to like maybe one in one in a few million women, but apparently you can round up a thousand blokes to just have sex.

Form a queue and have sex with a woman.

Listen, how many?

How many seconds per man is that?

I don't know.

Oh, in some cases, it's like 10 seconds.

It's 43 seconds per man.

So if you want to, hang on, 24 times 6 seconds.

If you're really sex starved, though, and you're standing in line waiting and you're just getting horny, you could probably just nut immediately, right?

Like the excitement just.

82 seconds per man.

Honestly, first of all, how do you even get a thousand men like organized together for an event?

I know, that's what I'm saying.

It's so many people.

I mean, I think

seemingly, you could walk around with a fucking placard, like those ones that say golf sale this way, and just say, We need a thousand forty-seven boats to come and have sex with this woman right now.

And you lads will just form a fucking train behind you and go straight there.

A thousand men on hand.

It's weird.

It's ready to go.

It's weird to think the flip side of this.

You'd never have a man break a record for having sex with like thousands of women.

Even if you found a thousand thousand willing women to queue up and have sex with one guy, like if it was me, I'd have sex one time and I'd be like, okay, great.

I'm ready to play some chess now, read a book and eat a sandwich.

Like, I don't need to have sex again now for like a day, probably.

Right, but imagine doing it a thousand times in a row, it would be impossible.

I would just be completely well, you wouldn't be physically capable.

It wouldn't even work.

Yeah, yeah, there's you need a cooling down period.

I was thinking about the refractory period.

If we didn't didn't have that, I don't think anything would have ever happened anywhere in the world.

Right.

Like, it would just be an ocean of cum.

That would be a lot of fun.

I guess it ties

that was a monkey line that died out.

The cum monkeys of fucking some islands that are like,

all day.

Generation died out instantly.

Yeah.

So just for a second, though, before we move off this,

it doesn't count, right?

Like, what are the rules for what counts as sex?

You know, if if you just get like

well, exactly.

It's so simple to

say, like, some form of patricia.

You could easily get, you know, if you're only, if you're, if you've got 10,000 men, you know, just but they just go P and V and then move on.

Yeah.

You know, that's there's got to be a bit of, I mean, I'd say imagine if your partner, if some bloke came up and she was like, oh, yeah, put it in me, and it was in there for two seconds.

You wouldn't say, well, that doesn't count.

You'd say, why did you have sex with that guy?

So I think that counts.

You never hear from these guys, though.

There's a thousand of them out there that took part in this.

Where are they?

Like,

why hasn't anyone done a trip report, you know, just to say,

yeah,

someone would be live blogging it?

Hi, guys.

I'm here in line to have sex with this woman.

Hey, guys, I'm here in line.

I'm number 425.

It's a bit of a long wait.

You know, I'm just passing the time by watching some TikTok.

On the one hand,

how does this shit happen?

And yet, also, they find enough men for Virgin Island.

I don't know.

I know.

I don't know.

Just get in line, Master.

Get in one of these queues.

There are ways.

People do just join a random queue, but that would be a bad one to find out you joined.

What's this for then?

A gang bang?

Oh, all right then, but I've got to go to the post office.

I was planning on doing a gangbang today, but I don't mind.

I've got milk in my bag, so I better get on the face.

Can I get in front of you tanks?

12 hours?

12 hours?

What number?

818?

Oh, no.

Well, I'll come back tomorrow.

I wonder if they have like one of those ticket systems.

You know, like when you go to the butcher's and you have the paper,

you take the number off.

You wouldn't be waiting a while.

It's a 24-hour period.

You'd want to be like, oh, I'm going to go home and, you know,

have some spaghetti or, you know, walk my dog or whatever.

I'll be back.

I mean, what is that?

Are they on their phones just chilling?

Like, the thing is, as you're getting close to the front of the line, like, standing in line, this in front of you is just a bloke's ass, and behind you is a bloke, and you have to and they're both, they're both fluffing themselves, right?

And you're fluffing yourself, getting ready.

And then, as you're getting close to the line, it's like, it's nearly my turn.

Like, how awkward is that?

Oh, man.

Are they chatting to each other?

What if you're you're the dangerous guy in line?

Yeah.

That would just be awful, wouldn't it?

I reckon in order to find these lads, it's a bit like Putin going to the prisons to recruit soldiers.

It's like that.

You just go get a bunch of prisoners and bust them.

Hello, soldiers.

Who wants to take part in 1,000-man gangbang?

Yes, I will do it, Kamran.

I will do it.

We are coming back in Ukraine.

Get to the front.

Oh, you think that's how they trick him in?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's how they get him.

Yeah, that's how they

the classic.

Oh, shit, I thought I was turning up to a thousand-man gang bang here.

What's this?

Because first, we must

all Ukrainians out of the way.

Once you get past them, then the gangbangs.

You are a gang, and you have a gun which goes bang.

That's how we tricked you.

Gotcha.

All right, let's do another

one of these bad coding.

Did you guys ever hear of Microsoft Bob?

Microsoft Bob.

Yeah,

was that the office paper clip?

POB.

So

this was an entire operating system designed around Clippy, the paper.

Oh, Clippy was Clippy.

Of course, it was Clippy.

Yeah, sorry.

So he was a part of it.

So it's meant to be, this was Windows 95, and it's meant to be like a much more user-friendly version of Windows 95.

Yes.

And basically, he had all these little stupid, clippy-like things to go along with you and help you out and be like, oh, it looks like you're trying to open a web browser or whatever.

but comic sans was invented for microsoft bot so if you hate comic sans that's what you can blame it on

a connector baby so it's like you're jerking it off again

maybe put the penis down for a minute do some accounting spreadsheets Well, hey there, I noticed you're searching up 1,000-man gang bags in your area again.

So I think the idea, it sounds like it's one of these things where they did a survey and they found that, like, most people don't understand how to use a computer.

We need to come up with a simple version for them to use this, like their living room.

Yeah.

And so you'd click on the bookshelf and the calendar would be on the wall.

And it would have the apps would be in the places that it would make sense for them to be, right?

Yes.

You could go on the World Wide Web.

And it's a spider web is what you have to click on to open the web, that kind of thing.

What happened to it?

Well, what happened is people didn't fucking want it and never nobody used it.

Because the thing is, the people complaining about Windows being hard to use should not be your target demographic.

Yeah.

Because that's like 92-year-old people or like people with no tech savvy at all.

They're never going to buy software.

And who knows why they even have a computer?

When Windows 95 came out,

there was a lot of excitement around home computing because I remember my grandma, who was like probably 80 at the time,

I went to go visit her.

This is like around the time Windows 95 came out.

Everybody's talking about Windows 95.

And she's like, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking I might need a computer and I want to get one because I want to get on to the information superhighway.

And then I won't have to go to the library as much.

And I was like, honestly, just go to the library.

Like, you don't, you won't know what to do with the computer.

It'll be broken all the time.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, if you don't, if you never used one before, you don't rely on it for anything.

I would not get one and she was like okay fine i won't get one and i was glad she didn't get one because i there i had enough people in my life at the time who every time i went to their house they're like can you look at my computer and it was like full of ransomware and like fucking ads popping up and it was a nightmare and i did not need another person uh to to have a computer like that

i can relate to that so much but like my mom the same thing she wanted a pc and i was like or a laptop she goes i should get a laptop i was like mom you've got an iPad.

That is as much as you need because this thing is fucking jammed with.

She's like, she'll just, I guess she just Googles free games and clicks on the top link and downloads all this shit.

And it's like, I remember at one point, I gave her one of my old laptops.

And she, we went down to see her.

And this thing was grinding to a halt.

And I looked, I did like, I downloaded some of the sort of spyware scanner things, just a cheap one.

And I ran it through and it was just like thousand files that were malicious on

yeah

holy shit I just like formatted the entire thing it's just unbelievable yeah yeah

let's do it oh sorry go on Lulu we can't help it a little bit and it's the same for us too sometimes I notice like you know I refuse to pay money for a mobile app so I will put up with ads way longer than I should and other people like it's you that I've actually put up I put up with ads on YouTube for so long until they basically made it they knew who I was and they knew what I was watching and they knew what ads would piss me off to the point where I would have to sign up to premium.

But like, I like my parents, you know, they've got like an Alexa and stuff and they listen to music on it, but they obviously listen to some sort of thing where it's just ads.

It's all the time, it's ads.

And I'm, I'm, I'm there and I'm like, I've just listened to 10 minutes of ads.

Is there what is this supposed to be?

And it would just be better if they were playing their music on compact discs, do you know what I mean?

On CDs,

tapes, you know, yeah.

Instead of like getting sucked into just some sort of, I don't know, maybe you just get, you just get immune to it after a while.

You just block it out, but it's got to be affecting you.

It's got to be like having an effect.

I wonder if we'll go back to like vinyls become very popular again.

I wonder if

in some ways we'll go back to collecting music, you know, in a physical form again.

Now that we've, you know, it's great having a huge digital library of music for sure, but I think it's

kind of like having a physical collection of music.

Yeah, I like it.

I like the idea of just disconnecting from.

It is a trend that's happening, and I can see the allure of it for sure.

Just for hipsters, I would say.

Average person isn't going to do it.

No.

No.

It's not completely.

Anyway, I'm going to have

a lot of shelf space when my house is done.

And I'm thinking, you know what?

Maybe I'll get some randomness.

You can clutter the fuck out of the house.

Yeah, what's already super cluttered with other people's stuff.

So I might as well get in on that action and clutter it with some of my own shit, you know?

I like how this is a

you already fill the full shelf space

of your new house with crap that you'll never use yeah perfect I must like I'm I'm a spite-filled record collector

I'm just so mad about all the other crap in my house that I've just decided I'm I'm fighting back with my own my own crap

From the big things to the little things, you capture a lot of stuff on your phone.

Doesn't it sometimes feel like a lot of those photos you want to look at again, you want to share with people that get stuck in your camera roll you maybe even forget you overtook them it'll be a nice way uh to share them might be the aura frames so if you get an aura frame which is named the number one digital photo frame by wirecutter it's effortlessly easy to upload those photos and videos directly from your phone so those favorite memories are always in view i love to chuck a few pictures on there that i know will make my family laugh because they don't have uh you know they're not on the app all the time they just appear on the thing they're not expecting it something there's a picture of me wearing a very fetching cardigan mine is pictures of a family, various families' cats.

Oh, yeah, dog, dog,

it started to become more pictures of cats and pets than actual family members, but it's still fun.

Yes, for a limited time, you can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $20 off plus free shipping on their best-selling carved mat frame.

That's auraframes.com.

Promo code Aura20.

You can support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

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From the big things to the little things, you capture a lot of stuff on your phone.

Doesn't it sometimes feel like a lot of those photos you want to look at again, you want to share with people that get stuck in your camera while you maybe even forget you overtook them?

It'll be a nice way to share them might be the aura frames.

So if you get an aura aura frame, which is named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter, it's effortlessly easy to upload those photos and videos directly from your phone.

So, those favorite memories are always in view.

I love to chuck a few pictures on there that I know will make my family laugh because they don't have, you know, they're not on the app all the time.

They just appear on the thing.

They're not expecting it.

Something there's a picture of me wearing a very fetching cardigan.

Mine is pictures of a family, various families, cats.

Oh, yeah,

dog, and cats.

It's started to become more pictures of cats and pets than actual family members, but it's still fun.

Yes, for a limited time, you can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $20 off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carve Matt frame.

That's auraframes.com.

Promo code Aura20.

You can support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

Terms and conditions apply.

So thank you very much.

And on with the show.

All right, this is a story from a few years ago.

This is when these lime bikes, Lime scooters, sorry,

arrived in Auckland.

This was 2019.

There was a glitch in the software that meant that occasionally the scooters would just jam on the brakes at high speeds.

Jesus.

So

you'd be going along at, it says here, 48 kilometers an hour was the top speed.

So I think that's around 30 miles an hour.

So as fast as a car basically just coasting down the road and the brakes would just go bang and activate and people would go fucking flying off the scooter, of course.

Broken collarbones, lots of head injuries, and stuff.

Yeah, you don't see people wearing helmets on scooters.

No one does, you're supposed to.

Yeah, absolutely.

You actually are seeing that.

Even more so than on a bike, I would say.

Scooter, you're much more likely to fall off a scooter than you are a bicycle.

Oh,

it's bad.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no, it's, it's only sort of two little wheels.

Yeah.

So it doesn't have as much leeway.

And although you are higher up when you're on a bicycle, I still feel like when a bike is going wrong, you've got the brakes and you can control it.

Those little scooters, when they start to wobble, it's really hard to get them back under control.

And also, because it's just a sort of little electric motor with a with a sort of toggle, a throttle on your right thumb, it's quite easy to sort of slip on that and really accelerate.

And the bikes, the brakes are like bicycle handlebar brakes.

So you have to have sort of, it's a little awkward, but you have to have, when I'm using one, I have grip the handlebars and i put two fingers from each hand on the brakes and my thumb on the accelerator on the throttle but the thing is that means i'm not really holding on to the handlebars as much as i'd like to um and it's just it's just a little bit awkward but so imagine if they just suddenly turned the brakes on and people got seriously injured so uh thanks lime that's the thing with all this that's new and lime bikes lime scooters and stuff that aren't that old um they don't really know how safe they are it's not like cars no they have to go through lots of all this rigorous fucking testing.

Yeah.

These things are just chucked out there.

I mean, I can't imagine line bikes have had much testing done on them.

I was reading about how terribly dangerous they are if you crash in them.

I think I talked about it on a previous episode.

This guy called, I think it's called London Centric or the Londonist or something.

He has a little blog that he sends around.

And it was about the danger of these line bikes when they land on you because of their shape and their weight.

People get terrible leg injuries when they fall over because the bike crashes down.

it's like if you look at the line bike frame it comes to a point right where your femur is so it's regular that people get terrible terrible leg breaks when these things fall over oh my god yeah

i saw a video the other day actually of a woman that crashed into a bus the bus came off far worse than the line bike did i'll tell you that much well it's the these things are built it's like an e it's like a tech business these these things right they they do a little bit of they make an app they do a little bit of get a little bit of investment and they buy all these bikes for next to nothing yeah yeah and they just dump them in a city basically and that's how it that's how it was originally it was kind of this total wild west for it yeah um there's some and some like regulation around it now which is uh why i i feel like you you don't see these uh these things like as as much anymore like they still pop up now and then but probably because it's a little bit more regulated people are like oh there's less money to be made okay the next one uh this is i remember when this happened because i was playing the game of the time this is Eve Online.

Man, I was thinking about Eve Online recently and was tempted to play it as well.

Every once in a while, I think about that game.

This shit happens to us.

It's like, wow.

It like lives red-free in our heads because we played so much of that game.

And it's such founding.

Have you guys played Eve?

I played it a little, yeah.

Every time I played that game, I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to corner a market and I'm going to be like this, you know, art vandale of space.

I'm going to be an importer, exporter, and I'm just going to sit in a space station, station, my own space station, because I'll be so rich.

And I'm just going to import stuff and, you know, buy low, sell high.

It's going to be amazing.

And I log in to play.

I'm all excited.

I'm in for like an hour.

I'm like, yeah, there's no way.

Like, this game, this game has been out way too long to break the economy.

Like, it's impossible.

There's no way.

But back in 2007, they released the Trinity expansion.

And it was the third of these big expansions.

And graphics engine updates, a bunch of new ships, and all the rest of it.

But

It also had a problem, which is that when it first released, under certain circumstances, under certain circumstances, it would delete your Windows XP boot.ini file.

Jesus.

Wow.

And I think it was because boot.ini is not an unusual file name to have in a game folder, but it would like go to the wrong directory and replace that one with the one that was meant to be just the Eve boot.ini file.

So yeah, it would literally destroy your computer.

It was out for six hours before they patched it.

So I remember that very well because I think they released it at a time of day when I wasn't playing.

I logged in and everyone was on our team speak or whatever was like, do not download the patch until they say so because it'll delete your boot.ini,

which is pretty funny.

Crazy.

That's worse than Y2K.

I think it creeps in though, right?

It just goes to show that these people don't really know what they're doing.

And it's all just a hodgepodge.

Everything we're using is all just a glued together stuff built on top of other stuff, built on top of other stuff.

I mean, I'm not being funny, but Valve, Steam auto-patches shit all the time.

Who's to say what is being patched?

You know, when it's like downloading update, you don't know if that's going to fucking trinity your hard drive.

So it'd be crazy.

Interesting you say that.

It does download stuff all the time.

The other day, I was browsing through my games list, went to my secret library, full of porn games.

Secret library, full of porn games in there.

I don't remember ever buying them or downloading them.

People must be gifting them to you.

Right,

right.

I suppose that's the only explanation.

That's the only explanation I can think of.

Indeed, yeah, I can't think of any other explanation.

Here's quite a scary one.

This is this machine called Therac.

Right.

Therac 25.

All right.

This was a computer-controlled radiation therapy machine.

So you needed radiation therapy.

You got in the machine.

Away you go.

Between 1985 and 1987, there were six accidents, bad ones, where due to a

programming error, it would sometimes give people a huge overdose of radiation,

hundreds of times more than intended, resulting in death or serious injury.

Man, oh man.

So

I have many questions.

Number one, this happens one time.

Surely you pull the machine and say, don't use the Therax 25 or whatever.

We need to fix this thing.

Don't put anyone in it.

But no, for two years, the thing is plugging away.

They must have been blasting people.

Yeah, if it happened seldomly, they probably thought, ah, just switch it off, switch it back on again.

I'll tell you what it was.

Maybe it's just one of those things.

It was, I know this story, and what it was was basically there was like a part of the machine that moved something or opened an aperture and that was mechanical and that took a couple of seconds right um and so what but what sometimes the people who were using the machine they were doing hundreds of scans a day they typed in the codes so fast they were so so used to the machine that they were

zipping through the menu so quickly that they were putting in the next command before it had finished mechanically closing that aperture or whatever do you see what i mean so the issue was software based it was not the issue was software based and it was to do with them being very adept at the machine And that's why they couldn't really repeat this until they actually got the operators there and had them use it a lot.

And then they realized what the problem was finally.

I think, I think,

because the people who coded it weren't that adept at zipping through.

You do what I mean?

It was almost like this thing where in testing, they couldn't physically

use the machine as fast as these people who used it every day would.

So they ran into this problem of

something they didn't consider.

So

here is a paragraph that sort of explains what you're talking about.

Um, so first of all, error codes would often pop up, and you could just some of the errors halted the machine where you had to restart it, and that was bad.

Some of them you just had to press X to continue, and people would just do it.

I think there were so many errors as well that they were used to pressing X, yeah, they were just

told,

an error does pop up here, just press X.

So, one failure occurred when a particular sequence of keystrokes was entered onto the terminal that controlled the computer.

If the operator were to press X erroneously, select 25 MeV photon mode, then use cursor up to edit the input to E to correctly select the MeV electron mode, then hit enter all within eight seconds of the first key press, well within the capability of an experienced user, the edit would not be processed in time and an overdose could be administered.

So you literally ended up just trying to fix your mistake, but by being too efficient and quick at what you were doing, the machine couldn't keep up.

So I thought that was a very interesting one.

Oh, so fascinating.

That's

terrifying yeah it is terrifying yeah i guess there's so many of these things that you don't realize that are gonna

you know

it's all just shonky it's all shonky right it's very shonky i don't know what that means but as a coder sips you know that if it works it works you know and sometimes sometimes it just the reason why

it's the reason why the dota dota2 installation folder is still called dota2 beta you have two former coders in this channel oh sorry sorry that's all right It's fine.

Louis, you just close over.

Gotcha, bitch.

Gotcha.

You got me.

You got me.

Sorry.

Sorry.

That's all right.

Here's a Pokemon-related one, which I think members of our audience who are into Pokemon will already know this.

But there was a Pokemon called Missing Number or Missing No.

Dot.

So Missing Dust.

It's a dual-type bird/slash normal Pokémon that can be encountered as a glitch.

And you can look up for screenshots of missing no and it's like 1996 Pokemon red and blue game, I presume on the Game Boy.

1990s on the NBA.

1996.

Yeah.

Pokemon red and blue.

So this is how you get.

For the Game Boy.

I think so.

You have to talk to the old man NPC in Viridian City.

He who teaches you how to catch Pokemon earlier in the game.

After watching his tutorial, use a Pokemon with the fly ability and fly to Cinnabar Island.

Once you reach the island, use a Pokemon with the surf ability, surf along the tiles that mark the border between the land and the water.

Doing so will allow you to encounter missing no.

So the reason it exists is because

when you talk to the old man and you do his tutorial, the name old man is temporarily saved to a space in the memory where the player's name is stored.

While the player's name is stored in the area reserved for wild Pokemon data.

While the player's name is usually restored to its rightful spot, it doesn't do so if you move to a city environment like Cinnabar Island, blah, blah, blah.

So essentially, it's overwritten a piece of data that it shouldn't have, and then it tries to generate a Pokemon based on your name, which is apparently a thing that it did.

So it just comes up with this splat of colors, but it's still a Pokemon type, which I thought was quite funny, like that it's got a bird/slash normal Pokémon type, but so it became a thing that people would try to collect this Pokemon.

Well, you got to collect them all.

That's the model of Pokemon, isn't it?

So if you can, I'm sure.

If you can, you must.

I'm sure Barry was here.

Barry would love it.

We could, we could, because I think there's been a bunch of other like

glitch Pokemon either deliberately or on purpose as references, right?

And I think there's a, I think they, they, I don't know, it's kind of a bit of a, bit of an interesting thing, isn't it?

And so it's, it's, it's a fun thing, right?

Um, and I, I don't know, people love that kind of shit, you know?

Everyone loves a mystery, right?

Even if it's like something fucking weird.

It's kind of like, you know, when you see that crazy, spooky text, you know, where it's just like gibberish text or scrolling, like some stereotype stuff.

That's, I don't know, it's kind of slightly creepy and haunted, right?

And slightly, it's very Japanese in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think missing no is like always almost accidentally spooky.

Yeah, I don't know why, but it is.

Um, I just want to say

because uh I'm uh one year older

to prove to you how old I am, maybe,

um, I was, I was shown this this this video is 14 years old.

I'd never seen it before, but I was shown a video called Grape Lady Falls.

Have you ever?

Oh, God, I hate that video.

When the woman's crushing the grapes with the

presenter, and she falls over and she makes those fucking

noises.

I can't breathe.

I'd never seen it before.

And people were like, how the fuck have you never seen that?

But

I just had not.

I'd never been shown that video before.

I've never seen it.

Oh, it's horrible.

So in 2025, I watched it for the first time, and it well done.

The fall is awful.

Oh, it's horrible.

Oh, my God.

You can see, like, when she falls, you're like, fuck, she's dead.

Like, immediately.

Like, she's crushing.

Like, yeah, yeah.

Broken many arms.

I think she's broken something.

Yeah, yeah.

She's seriously winded.

And I think she, from the way she lands, it looks like she's broken at least an army.

Unbelievable.

Yeah, but the noise she makes is genuine.

Is she really?

No.

Okay.

What are you saying?

Are you familiar with that one, Lewis?

Have you seen Grape Lady Falls before?

I haven't.

No, I have.

I definitely have.

I definitely have.

Right.

I recall it.

People seem so shocked that somebody had not seen that.

Well, here's a bit of detail about her, actually.

She broke several ribs.

Yeah, well, you can tell.

Like, you can hear it.

She's like,

The sound is so fucked up.

Like, it's crazy.

I remember I saw that.

It genuinely upset me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So extended copy protection.

This was Sony CDs used this thing called XCP Aura, which allowed you to play CDs.

This is a common thing, isn't it?

Where

the executives want to stop piracy.

Right.

And so

they install all this shit, which makes it incredibly difficult for us to actually enjoy.

And all it does is make the product worse.

Every time.

Well, these things are not.

This was so you could play a CD on your computer because they realized that was how people were ripping CDs.

So it was like, well, it won't play in a computer.

So you have to accept this, this EULA.

And once you do it, it installs some software that allows you to play their CDs, Sony CDs, on your PC.

So it installed hidden software, which it doesn't mention.

It remains resident on your OS and it intercepts all accesses of the CD drive to prevent any media player or ripper software other than the one included with XCP Aura.

So you have to use Sony's player or it won't play.

There's no way to uninstall it.

Attempting to remove it will render your CD drive inoperable because it's changed some registry settings that the programmers altered.

And furthermore, for all this faff, it was also discovered you could defeat it just using a permanent marker to draw a dark border along the edge of the disk.

You could get around it that way.

I don't even think you can get a CD drive for a computer anymore.

Like

they don't have them at all.

I mean, yeah, I don't even think, I'd wonder if Windows would even recognize it and know what to do with it, probably.

But so, the other thing is, it, it also allowed you to install a lot of malware using this little hidden program.

Um, and basically, it's an absolute piece of shit.

There were a bunch of lawsuits and stuff like that.

Um, and uh, yeah, it was bloody, bloody awful.

So, yeah, don't, don't, uh, don't ever trust these uh these fucking companies that think they're installing shit

to protect themselves, but they're doing it to protect themselves.

They do not give a fuck about what happens to your computer.

No, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was quite that's crazy.

Yeah.

What about a cascade failure?

You want to hear about a cascade failure?

One of my favorite things.

I love a cascade failure.

I love a cascade failure.

Yeah, me too.

Like, that's the best kind.

I mean, they talk about if one satellite gets smashed to bits, the cascade failure will probably wipe out all satellites in that orbit and beyond.

Because once one gets smashed, those little pieces are likely to smash into others, which makes more pieces to smash into others and so on.

That's an example of a cascade failure.

So this is AT ⁇ T, which had a long-distance telephone network in the US.

This was in 1990.

And essentially, when a telephone call was received by the network from a local exchange, they had a switch that would scan a list of 14 different possible routes to complete the call.

At the same time, it passed the telephone number to a parallel network to check alternate routes.

to determine if the switch at the other end could deliver it and so on.

So it was all meant to be nice and timely and figure out the optimal route and all the the rest of it.

If it couldn't figure it out, it sends a busy signal back to the person trying to make the call.

If it was available, it directs the call, no problem.

Four to six seconds this took, bingo, you're away with it.

So the issue was this.

The switch in New York City performed a routine self-test that indicated it was nearing its load limit.

So it was near the limit for the calls that it could accept.

So by standard procedure, it performs a four-second maintenance reset, sends a message over the signaling network that would say no more calls until further notice.

After the reset, it gets back and sends a signal out that says, we're all good.

Across the country, another Switch received a message that a call from New York was on its way, begins to update its records to show that New York Switch is back online.

A second message from New York then arrived less than 10 milliseconds after the first, because it hadn't handled the first message, couldn't handle the second message.

And that then goes into a reset and sends out the same messages that the New York one had.

So these things being connected and talking to each other was causing them all to just go down.

And 50 million calls were blocked in the nine hours it took to stabilize the system.

So the entire

AT ⁇ T phone system went down in 1990.

And bear in mind, this would have been when you didn't have email as an option.

You couldn't just call someone on Zoom or do some IM shit.

You had to phone them up a whole day offline.

I thought that was, and the code that

is the problem, you can look it up, is very, as with all of these coding problems, it's an incredibly simple line of code where like one thing is wrong.

It just causes the entire thing to fall out of the way.

Wow, these are my absolute favorites.

That's it.

It's very easy to

mess something up or not catch something when you're like testing it and stuff too, right?

Like

when somebody, so many times

we'd write something, we'd test it, we'd test it, we'd test it.

We'd have like these development environments that we could test it in.

We could load test it everything.

And then you put something live, and

inevitably something would just go wrong.

But it was always something that we could never have even replicated in tests.

You know, it would be interfacing with another system or something like that, that we just didn't have any

error.

There's no way you could have anticipated this.

But that, that troubleshooting something when it when it turns live and there's a lot of expectation that this thing is just going to work is stressful.

Like people lose their minds.

You know, like I've actually been on the receiving end of phone calls where people are like screaming because something hasn't worked the way that it was supposed to or whatever.

And you're trying to just say, listen,

we're looking at it.

We're trying to fix it.

I can't fix it if I'm on the phone with you.

And that makes them even more mad.

You're just like, you have to let me try to fix it.

I cannot just talk to you about it.

It's

an example of exactly that that might have been one of the more expensive

errors.

Because this is one of my favorites.

I love this one.

All right.

So this company called Night Capital

had this piece of software that they were going to use to automate their trades.

And they were like, this sounds great.

This is 2012.

They got this software update.

They were going to use this thing called PowerPeg.

Last year's in 2003, they found out that there was something wrong.

Okay.

At 9 a.m., the New York Stock Exchange opens for trading and Night Capital's main investor, like the main thing they're doing when they're buying and selling shares with this program, goes online.

45 minutes later, the servers at Night Capital had executed 4 million trades, losing the company $460 million and placing it on the verge of bankruptcy.

So they went from fine to bankrupt in 45 minutes.

Some of the shares on the New York Stock Exchange shot up by over 300%

because high-frequency trading firm algorithms exploited this bug, saw all these buys and bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and sold.

So they got fined $12 million for fucking up and not managing their risk.

But what had happened was a stock exchange.

So just, I'll read you this paragraph.

A stock exchange works by pairing someone who wants to buy a stock with someone who wants to sell a stock.

The seller has an ask price, the buyer has a bid price, and they agree on sort of this spread around the middle, and then the sale takes place.

Buy low, sell high, pretty obvious.

So the algorithm on Knight's production servers was designed to do the opposite of that as fast as possible.

It was designed to buy a stock at its ask price and then immediately sell it again at the big

price, losing the value of the spread.

We don't know why, but although it's only a few cents, executing thousands of times a second, it adds up.

So here's the problem.

PowerPeg in the test environment would drive up the price of stocks so that other features of the software could check that things were working.

So PowerPeg was not meant to be buying and selling stocks.

It was just meant to drive up prices so they could test their other software.

But the problem is they didn't tell it, this is not a test environment, don't do it.

And it just fucking went ham and acted like it was in a test environment and just jacked up all these stock prices and lost them all.

Jesus Christ.

So they accidentally connected it to the bank account.

Yeah, they basically said, just this is a test environment.

And it's like, cool, I'll just buy stocks as fast as I can and sell them for whatever because it's just a test.

But no, it was actually connected to a stock exchange.

I think that's fantastic.

I think it's 45 minutes is all.

These guys don't really know what they're doing and they're just gambling, right?

Like, oh yeah out of it's out of control yeah it's so it's so easy to to lose tons and tons of money like in seconds with these this high frequency trading this this is what we're i mean this is partly this is the the future we live in right the idea that that a stock market crash today is gonna happen so much faster than it ever has before

yeah we've almost seen it happen recently a couple of times as well yeah it happened it's happened quite a bit that they have these sudden massive wipeouts and then they reset the stock market.

They're like, all right, we none of that happened.

Yeah.

It's like going back to a save point because they're just like, this is ridiculous.

Someone's fucking computer went mad.

But it's just crazy to think that this stuff is just, they just connect it to the system and push go.

And they're like, I'm pretty sure it'll work.

So what the fuck is happening?

Yeah.

Like they make out that they're the ones who have all this clever knowledge and that they're the ones that should be trusted to make these kind of trades.

I don't know what the fuck they're doing half the time.

Jesus.

No.

Which one was your favorite from that list?

Oh, God.

They're all pretty doomsday, aren't they?

Yeah, the last one was interesting, though.

Do you know what I mean?

I like the 45 minutes, 460 million loss

seems to be.

When you look at the amount of people

close to some sort of nuclear war, there's been like 20 incidents,

albeit they were at a time during the height of the Cold War in like the 70s and 80s when

we were like minutes away from a fucking multiple times.

Because at the end of the day, you have people you know like on these at the buttons it's not the president who presses the button it's he tells the general to press the button and the general tells the subward to press the button and that person tells the pilot to fire the missile or the submarine captain to fire the missile and they tell someone in their crew to press the missile launch.

Do you know what I mean?

It's much more infallible than you realize.

And I think it could very easily have been someone who was disgruntled or, you know, someone who was certainly indoctrinated in a way that they fully believed in their cause, because, you know, that's how these countries work.

You know, they want, they need a loyal population.

And so they galvanize them with this kind of brainwashing loyalty and patriotism.

And it, and it kind of makes them dangerous in a sense, because they're like, well, why aren't we nuking these guys?

You know, so it's, it's kind of, um, you could see how, how close we could have come.

And I, when it comes to these things, it always makes me think of the

paradox, which is the one which, why, why we don't don't know, why we can't see any aliens.

What's it called?

The Fermi paradox.

The Fermi paradox, where there's

some sort of reason why humanity or civilizations don't reach a certain level.

You can think about it and you can think about it.

Or the Great Filter.

I can't remember which one.

The Great Filter.

Yeah.

So

I always think about the Great Filter because I'm like, well, you know, maybe if we hadn't noticed that...

you know, lead was poisoning the atmosphere, or maybe if we, there were times when, you know, when we had nuclear weapons and we weren't aware of how devastating they were and how potentially it could lead to this uh mutually assured destruction there was a time before that when they were just well the world felt felt so massive that it felt like we couldn't do anything to fuck it up you know you can just dump stuff in the ocean and dump stuff into the air forever and it won't have an effect right because the world's so massive and it's self-cleaning and it and it we've been here for

God put us here and he wouldn't let this happen and all these this nonsense right and so you have this these today you know you look at humanity and you think, fuck, we are still, there's so many pitfalls that we can do to just kill ourselves.

And yet, you know what, the great filters, like, yeah, there's probably reasons why this has happened to other civilizations too.

Like, they have, they have fucking, they never, like, if it wasn't for, you know, we talk about, talk about digital media, but I think, in a sense, you know, if we were still, if everyone was still releasing stuff on plastic videotapes, you know, that would be terrible, you know, the amount of waste of all this, you know, of all the, of all, we were very very wasteful back in the day with with how we use things

the big one for me is the the waste of food yeah food waste

we waste is insane well at least that's combust compostable right at least that doesn't at least that goes back into

the cost of throwing all that food is massive yeah i mean obviously the manufacturing all of those fucking pesticides that dump into the water and everything and they're there to make this huge volume of food we apparently need and then we throw away all of it anyway like it's insane think of all these high street chains that you go to.

They always have food ready.

They don't just say, sorry, we're out of self-strolls for today at 3.30.

They've got them there ready to go.

And when it gets to six o'clock, they'll let them, let some of them go.

There's some apps where you can get them very cheaply at the last minute.

Then they chuck them all behind a locked box so people can't get to them.

It's awful.

It's just waste.

It's pure waste.

That animal that went into that, all the wheat that went into making it, all the fat, all the rest of it was for nothing.

And somebody made it and they transported it and it's just been put in a a fucking bin and then it just rots away into nothing.

That would never have happened in the past.

That's such a such a minor

part of the world though, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's all of the packaging.

It's not the food itself.

It's all of the surroundings of that and all of the

trimmings that go with it and having to, you know, people needing the new thing.

And the thing that powers capitalism, right, is powered on waste.

It should be wasteism.

Yeah.

Not capitalism.

But

I always think about, you know, again, like going back to the alien species watching us and seeing it and then thinking, just looking at the mistakes that we've made.

And I wonder how many alien civilizations there are out there who just choked themselves off with lead fumes or made themselves all sterilized.

Yeah, maybe they're like not quite as advanced as us, but look to us for advancement.

And they're like, how have they done that?

We got to do that.

And then, you know, they make all like the same mistakes or maybe even worse mistakes.

You never hear about that.

It's always like, we're always being overseen by aliens that are like way, way, way ahead of us, superior to us or whatever.

But what if we're not?

You know, what if we're just being watched by just a couple of doofuses, you know, that just, they don't have a clue and they're looking to us for like their next big breakthrough.

Or maybe,

maybe like only a couple of them, like some billionaires from their society, know about us, but nobody else.

And that's where they get like all their innovative ideas or whatever.

It's like having the sports almanac in Back to the Future, you know?

Like you get the the heads up

you get that uh yeah you get that edge yeah yeah so um the the the one you're the the computer error i suppose you're talking about is the the stanislav petrov this this russian uh soviet air defense guy he was in charge who's he was he wasn't high ranking but he was in one of the bunkers and they received the early warning from the satellite because they have this satellite in something called a millennia orbit which is a very very long on one end orbit and then it whips around at the other so that you can keep more of an eye on a particular area So you're sort of watching a latitude more.

So it's watching for launches, and there's this weird glint of the sunlight on this cloud, and it looked like a launch to the satellite.

And it says, it's a first strike.

It's a US first strike.

And everything in the system, everything about his training was said, he was meant to launch.

And he was like, why would they just launch one missile?

That's ridiculous.

So he's a lot of people.

Well,

I read a really great one, which was that it happened the other way around.

So the Americans at their Greenland base spotted a launch.

and they were the only reason they didn't think it was a nuclear attack was because the president of russia happened to be in america at the time on some sort of diplomatic visit and they just thought there's no re there's no way yeah that they're gonna pick the time when the premier is actually visiting yeah to do the launch right that would be that that would be the ultimate though imagine he was visiting and he and he just stared the president straight in the eyes and said it's over

it's over, Donald.

Opens his jacket and there's dozens of nuclear warheads inside.

Oh, man.

Checkmate.

Donald.

Yeah, checkmate.

That would be the worst.

I can't believe you've done this.

I thought they checked him on the way in, but it turned out he's teeming with nukes.

Teeming.

Teaming.

Teaming.

Well,

I got to go.

yeah, that's an hour and a bit.

Thanks for broadcasting.

Thanks for enjoying it.

And I hope you all enjoyed it.

And we'll see you next time.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks, everyone.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.