715: Our Wizard Lies

10:44Brian Schulmeister:I've been a member since it was in beta.

10:48Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, but Amazon did say in a statement that the deal allows it to move forward and focus on customers. Oh, that's so great. Yes. As part of the settlement deal, Amazon has agreed to create a clear and conspicuous button to allow customers to decline a Prime subscription and to make it easier to cancel. They've also agreed to more clearly disclose the terms of a subscription during enrollment and pay an independent supervisor to monitor compliance. Now, please look at that. we're playing for video thing but you're still pumping us ads bullshit fucking assholes so here's

11:19Brian Schulmeister:the deal prime has been around for 20 years next year my amazon prime account will be able to drink that's fucked up yep we old yeah we old we damn old uh i was i remember where i was i was at technorati and we were all talking about it because back then uh we could you know you could put everybody's address on there and i think niall kennedy was the first one to get the account and spread it with people around the office. And then there wasn't enough in his account. So I went and got one and spread it around too to other people in the office.

11:49Jason DeFillippo:I couldn't tell you when I signed up for Amazon, but I can tell you it was literally just a bookstore when I did.

11:55Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. When you signed up, but I'm talking about for Prime, Prime in general. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I think I signed up for Amazon on Mosaic. Well, Microsoft says it has cut off certain cloud services to Israel's defense ministry. After reports that its Unit 8200 stored Palestinians' phone calls on Microsoft's Azure system. President Brad Smith confirmed the company found evidence supporting those claims, including AI services being used in Europe. The move follows weeks of employee protests over Israel's use of Microsoft software during its Gaza invasion. Protests that led to several firings.

12:31Brian Schulmeister:Microsoft told Israeli officials that it had disabled the cloud storage and AI subscriptions. Reports say the unit is now looking to move its operations to Amazon Web Services. Now, I like this. They're getting booted because of phone calls. Someone at Microsoft had to read their own TOS and decide that genocide is fine, but we've really got to draw the line at phone calls.

12:53Jason DeFillippo:Well, look, in Microsoft's defense, who thinks to put genocide in their TOS?

12:58Brian Schulmeister:Well, nowadays, everybody should.

13:01Jason DeFillippo:Apparently so, particularly the next company you're going to talk about.

13:04Brian Schulmeister:Palantir Technologies, the defense software giant known for working with U.S. immigration authorities, the military, and major corporations, is trying to reinvent itself as a lifestyle brand, Brian. The Denver-based company has relaunched its online store selling pricey, made-in-the-USA merch, like$119 tote bags and$55 baseball caps, and T-shirts featuring globe-like graphics suggesting Palantir controls the world. That's not a suggestion, my friend. That's the fucking short. Shop.Palantir.com. Yeah. Unlike traditional defense contractors that sell novelty items to employees and veterans, Palantir is openly marketing its brand identity.

13:40Brian Schulmeister:Pro-Western, military-friendly, and winning-obsessed. Charlie Sheen should get some shirts with them. To a growing fan base, company executives call it the lifestyle brand, encouraging supporters to wear the gear that signals allegiance to Palantir's mission. Yep.

13:55Jason DeFillippo:My God, what is wrong with people?

13:57Brian Schulmeister:The merch push comes as Palantir deepens its work with immigration and customs enforcement. including a new 30 million dollar contract to build immigration os for volunteer selling clothes isn't about revenue but about cultivating a more acceptable public identity and now brian nothing says more acceptable public identity like having your co-founder out there thumping this bullshit billionaire investor peter teal is warning that regulating artificial intelligence could literally be the work of the antichrist yes speaking in a series of religious lectures in san francisco the palantir co-founder claimed government controls over science and technology might fulfill biblical prophecy about the end times that's uh-huh fucking crazy deal who has recently become fascinated with eschatology or

14:47Jason DeFillippo:the study of the apocalypse you know when i became uh fascinated with that jason i was 11 okay i was 11 and i went to the library and i because i was raised roman catholic and then i I started reading all the books about the end times because I was 11 and I did not have a fully formed frontal cortex.

15:05Brian Schulmeister:I just watched The Omen when I was like five, and that was when I got into it. Well, he says his speculative thesis is that a one world government promising peace and safety while restricting technology could be the Antichrist in disguise. Oh, go fuck yourself. He pointed to scripture in 1 Thessalonians to support his view, suggesting that while peace and safety sound good in an age of AI and global weapon systems, they could be tools of destruction.

15:33Jason DeFillippo:I would like to point Peter Thiel through some of the other passages in that book he picked up.

15:38Brian Schulmeister:So like all of the other ones. There's a lot of other scripture that maybe he should be taking a look at. The 57-year-old billionaire even floated the idea that the United States itself, given its global dominance, not anymore, buddy, could play the role of Antichrist. The comments come as lawmakers push for stronger rules on artificial intelligence. Rules Teal has a direct financial interest in avoiding.

16:01Jason DeFillippo:There's this whole bit about chasing the moneylenders out of the temple. Just saying. Just saying. Just saying. Just saying. And much like the top of the show when we talked about the TikTok deal, they've agreed to agree on something. Well, AI experts are urgently calling on governments to think about maybe doing something sometime somewhere about AI. Everybody seems to recognize the fact that artificial intelligence is a rapidly developing and emerging technology as the potential for immense harm if operated without safeguards or apparently could be the ad tech Christ. but basically no one except for the european union kinda can sort of agree on how to regulate it so instead of trying to set up a clear and narrow path for regulations experts in the field have opted for a new approach how about we just figure out what extreme examples we all think are bad and just agree to that please for the love of god ai bad a group of politicians scientists and academics took to the united nations general assembly to announce the global call for ai red lines, a plea for the governments of the world to come together and agree on the broadest of guardrails to prevent universally acceptable risks that could result from the deployment of AI.

17:16Jason DeFillippo:This might have actually made news, except for the fact that our dear leader decided to get up and word salad some shit about every country going to hell. Oh, God, that was fucking embarrassing. You think?

17:28Brian Schulmeister:Hero of the week is the cameraman who tripped the escalator, though. Good for him.

17:33Jason DeFillippo:uh the only thing the group offered offers concretely is that any global agreement should be built on three pillars a clear list of prohibitions robust auditable verification mechanisms and the appointment of an independent body established by the parties to oversee implementation everything else is for the governments to agree to which is kind of the hard part because it hasn't happened yet so fucking stupid so nothing's going to happen

17:56Brian Schulmeister:from that nothing nothing at all so much forget it yeah waste of time

18:09Jason DeFillippo:and we got a new term that's uh that's been going around this week jason work slop yeah i can see that's a good one good one it is a good one ai generated work content is slowing everything down so we've been talking a lot about how we're not seeing any of the pluses of this ai revolution that's being shoved down people's throats, particularly at work where, you know, there are mandates that everybody has to work AI into their workflows for them at this point. But, you know, nothing's really coming of it. And now an MIT Media Lab study found that fewer than one in two. Well, we talked about this last week.

18:42Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. That one in 10 AI pilot projects deliver any real revenue gains and warned that 95 % of organizations are getting zero return on their AI bets. But new research from Harvard Business Reviews Better Up Labs, working with the Stanford for Social Media Lab paint an even worse picture. Not only are we not getting any results, we're actually slowing shit down. Great. It's getting worse. The insidious effects of work slop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver, the report's authors wrote.

19:17Jason DeFillippo:They have defined work slop as AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. So you used to have to do that by hand.

19:27Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

19:28Jason DeFillippo:So you have to gum up the works by hand and pretend that you were working. Now you just press a button.

19:33Brian Schulmeister:These people drop the ball. They so drop the ball. And I'm going to coin something new right now, Brian. Okay. When you get that work slop from your co-worker that he's been handed down, it's work sloppy seconds. Yep.

19:48Jason DeFillippo:You can get that at pump.fun. You can get that at pump.fun. surveyed workers reported spending an average of one hour and 56 minutes per incident dealing with low quality ai outputs researchers calculated that based on respondents salaries work slop carries an invisible cost of around 186 dollars per month per employee for companies with thousands of employees that can translate into millions of dollars in lost productivity each year from this revolutionary technology that was going to make everything better and they don't even count on the

20:19Brian Schulmeister:the actual cost that they're spending on the AI itself, the first seat license.

20:23Jason DeFillippo:And it also takes a social and emotional toll on the office. When asked 53 % of participants said receiving work slot made them feel annoyed, 38 % confused, and 22%, where we would solidly fall, offended.

20:37Brian Schulmeister:And then they took the time to actually send the AI their emotions to create a gift that they could send back to the person, thus killing several watersheds in the process. Well, Deutsche Bank is warning the U.S. economy may be riding a shaky AI wave. Well, no shit. Welcome. Welcome, Deutsche Bank. In a new report, analysts say tech spending has been the main force keeping the economy out of recession this year. George Cerovelos, the bank's head of FX Research, wrote that AI machines, in quite a literal sense, appear to be saving the U.S. economy right now. That growth isn't coming from AI itself, but from the massive infrastructure buildouts, data centers, chips, and talent needed to support it.

21:18Brian Schulmeister:Now, Deutsche Bank argues that kind of parabolic spending can't last. Been saying that for several months now. If it slows before AI delivers on its big promises, the U.S. could face higher unemployment, falling incomes, and hidden weaknesses in consumer demand. Could face.

21:35Jason DeFillippo:I would argue we're already facing that.

21:37Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's seeping through right now. Bain & Company estimates the AI sector would need$2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 just to fund its computing needs. Now, there's also news this week about how NVIDIA is investing$100 billion into Open AI or getting part of Open AI for the$100 billion, which Open AI is then going to spend on NVIDIA chips, thus creating the ultimate AI Ouroboros. and uh but you know you run the numbers on this it's it's not going to work nothing none of this is going to work and the other thing that i read this week that was a ponzi scheme yeah and mark zuckerberg is saying that this is what this is really he kind of he kind of lifted the kimono a little bit on this one he's like yeah it would be unfortunate if we misspent like hundreds of billions of dollars but if you don't and the thing actually comes to pass and they can get something out of it, you know, some kind of super intelligence or figure out how to make it actually work.

22:39Brian Schulmeister:You know, if you're not if you're not investing now, you're going to be out of position when it actually happens and you'll be playing catch up. So they're just staying and trying to stay ahead of it. It's the world's dumbest, biggest bet that we've ever seen. They're just betting on the fact that this is going to happen. Now, none of these guys need to work ever again. They're just doing this for shits and giggles. So, you know, all of this stuff, every single one of these guys is

23:03Jason DeFillippo:doing this for fun no they're doing it to win it's just an ego thing that's but that's the same thing you know there's there's no but i doubt they're having fun that's that's i don't think that they're having fun i don't think that they're enjoying their lives god i hope not i seriously hope not yeah well in the latest example a big uh big tech kissing the fucking ring and uh blowing dear leader's ass channels once banned by youtube for spreading false information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2020 election may soon have the opportunity to get their channels back in a decision transparently courting conservative voices.

23:40Jason DeFillippo:Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, has sent a letter via counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in which it alleges the company was pressured by the Biden administration to take down misinformation on YouTube related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate the company's existing policies at the time because you're allowed to lie. It now describes the Biden administration's actions as unacceptable and wrong. It also informed the committee that YouTube would be offering a path to reinstatement for creators whose channels were banned for repeatedly violating community guidelines, violating community guidelines on election integrity related content, as well as for COVID-19 related content.

24:18Jason DeFillippo:The guidelines under which those bans were carried out were removed by the company in 2023 and 2024, because God knows we don't need anything about election integrity related content anymore. details on exactly what the path for reinstatement looks like were not shared. So basically, they're just rolling that back and saying, oh, all these people like Steve Bannon's war room, co-deputy director of the FBI Dan Bongino's channel and the channel for children's health defense, which was previously linked with Secretary of Human and Health Services RFK Jr. You guys can have those back now since you're in power.

24:49Jason DeFillippo:Oh, great. YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes these creators of extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse the company wrote the letter was sent in response to subpoenas as part of the house judiciary committee's ongoing investigations into alleged government directed content moderation you know the fucking thing you guys tried to do to give jimmy kimmel yeah yeah you fucking hypocrites fucking cowards fucking cowards well so it's good you know we can't be banned but you guys can yeah in more fun news

25:23Brian Schulmeister:federal authorities are warning of a severe threat to critical infrastructure following the dismantling of a massive cybercrime facility near new york city the u.s secret service has busted what they call a sim farm operation in the tri-state area it's right next to where they make the salsa new york city new york city get a rope the scale of the discovery is staggering agent seized a network of some 300 servers holding over 100 ,000 SIM cards. Experts say that these farms are typically used by cyber criminals to flood phones with spam and carry out fraud or ask for money from your representative.

26:04Jason DeFillippo:Yes, it's the only text I'm getting from Democrats 19 times a day asking for money. And I just continue to respond with tell me what you're going to do and I'll give you money.

26:12Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. However, the sheer size of this particular operation prompted a serious warning from the government. Officials say the network was so vast it could have overwhelmed cell towers capable of essentially disabling the entire cell phone network in New York City. The Secret Service estimates the farm could have sent about 30 million text messages per minute. The investigation was escalated. Sounds like my wife. Seriously. Or that girl I never called back. The investigation was escalated after the farm was linked to swatting attacks targeting U.S. members of Congress around Christmas last year.

26:47Brian Schulmeister:The Secret Service has seized all the equipment, which they say was used by organized crime and other threat actors. But the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made. So apparently you can buy 100 ,000 SIM cards and 300 SIMs or cell servers and just be can get away. Must have used Bitcoin to buy those, I bet. I wonder. Yeah. Well, speaking of, A multi-billion dollar fraud industry has taken root across Southeast Asia, fueled by human trafficking victims. People flying to Thailand for jobs or vacation are being snatched and forced to work as cyber scam slaves in lawless regions of Myanmar.

27:23Brian Schulmeister:We've covered this a little bit because guess who they're using for their Internet service provider now? Elon? Yep, you got it. Shocking. An investigation reveals Thailand is a key transit hub with alleged involvement from purported immigration officials at Thai airports. Victims are met at Bangkok's airport and driven across the border to notorious scam centers in Myanmar, such as the sprawling KK Park. I've seen pictures that like satellite pictures that place fucking massive inside run by Chinese criminal gangs and militias. Thousands work up to 20 hours daily running online scams. Failure to meet financial targets result in brutal punishment, including electric shocks and beatings with bamboo rods.

28:03Brian Schulmeister:The U.N. estimates hundreds of thousands have been trafficked across Southeast Asia. While a recent multinational crackdown freed some victims, thousands remain in these fraud centers. The crisis persists, with Thai authorities denying allegations of official involvement in the trafficking pipeline. Yeesh. Yeah. So that's why they can't catch most of these scammers is because they're sitting in Myanmar on their, you know, SpaceX terminal. What's the damn name? Starlink. Starlink Terminals. Yeah.

28:37Jason DeFillippo:Media candy. I've been consuming an awful lot of media recently, Jason, probably just to try to escape the hellscape that is normal life. So we watched Elio, which is the latest Pixar thing that's come out on Disney Plus. Now that I can continue to subscribe to that since they reinstated Jimmy Kimmel. So I don't feel so bad. It was fine. This is one of those Pixar movies. Normally, I would say Pixar movies are for the whole family, and they throw in a lot of an adult humor, and they make the story complex enough that you can really enjoy it as an adult. In fact, I would say 99 % of the Pixar movies I've been able to watch, and I would even recommend you without a child to watch because they're really good movies.

29:20Jason DeFillippo:This one, not so much. This is for kids. I feel like they really dropped the ball on making it a multi-level movie this time around. So my kid enjoyed it. This is their biggest flop in like decades? kids yeah and i think it's entirely because of that like it just it had nothing for adults at all my wife and i were just zoning out while it was on it was very well done for for a kid but they didn't have the multi-level enjoyment that most of their movies do got it all right i finally was able to watch superman once i was able to start to use your max account again because they're cracking down on shared households so thank you for that uh highly enjoyable movie nice message i i think that they tried to cram a lot in and i think it would have been a better intro to the new dc universe if they just would have focused on superman and not had mr terrific and and fucking the best green lantern i've ever seen in my life i've seen that guy was hilarious i love nathan fillion so but overall heartwarming uh exactly what you want a superman to be you know you get a bit of hope and faith in humanity which immediately gets crushed as

30:27Brian Schulmeister:soon as the movie's over yeah yeah i mean it was it was fine that's how i put it was fine yeah it

30:35Jason DeFillippo:was fine you know i liked it i liked it uh and then finally i well not finally but there's a new series it's been out on the bbc for a little bit uh it is now airing for free on pbs and nova you can watch it on youtube or through the pbs app this is ella al shamira um who i've talked about before because she's been a guest on the no such thing as a fish podcast and she's an anthropologist and she's very clever and she's had her own podcast that I've talked about on the show as well. She is hosting a series about human origins, humanity. And the first two of five have now dropped on PBS and Nova.

31:10Jason DeFillippo:And I watched both of them. Human Origins is the first one and Human Journeys is the second one. This is fantastic. This is wonderful stuff that traces humanity's origins and talks about the different subspecies that were around back in the day, which is phenomenal. I mean, you learn about the Hobbits. I didn't even know that these existed. It was amazing. It's well worth it. It's incredibly well produced, as you would expect from the BBC or anything that PBS is throwing money behind as well. She's fantastic in it, explains things wonderfully well, beautifully shot. I mean, all the things that you would want out of a high-quality science broadcast.

31:48Brian Schulmeister:Sounds good. Definitely worth watching. I like the free part. I'm down with free. And free. Absolutely free.

31:55Jason DeFillippo:No need for me to go jason can you send me that code exactly uh something that wasn't free definitely was alien

32:03Brian Schulmeister:earth on hulu uh it finally finished up and uh fucking 10 points for the landing that is all

32:11Jason DeFillippo:i've seen online is people are saying that they nailed it so i'm gonna watch this it's so fucking

32:15Brian Schulmeister:good i can't wait five more years till the next episode comes out it's gonna be great but oh yeah yeah and you know i mean my biggest issue with all of the alien movies you just never really get to see the alien that much yeah oh you do here oh you do good and they did a great job with it i mean stan winston would be proud it's so good it's so good uh the traders ireland finished up this week so thanks again vinnie all 12 episodes have aired i'm so glad i didn't look at the actual article that vinnie sent because it was full of spoilers and would have ruined half the show for me so So thanks. But yeah, no, it was a good one.

32:53Brian Schulmeister:I'm highly happy that I watched it, keeping my streak of watching every episode of every trader's English language that you can possibly find. Now I'm on a desperate hunt. If somebody can send me a torrent where I can find Trader's Mumbai, it's apparently a barn burner, but I can't. Nobody's posting it anywhere. It's driving me crazy. I tried VPNing to Amazon Prime India, and they're saying, no, you cannot watch it here. Go back home. So I'm going to get canceled for that. Fuck. Anyway, yeah, I love the traders. I still love the traders. What can I say? All right. Speaking of going back to Hulu and Disney Plus, yes, just because they didn't step on their dick enough times last week, they figured, oh, oh, God, we just lost$3.8 billion in market cap because we said something stupid and did something stupid.

33:39Brian Schulmeister:Let's raise the price. Idiots. Stupid motherfuckers.

33:44Jason DeFillippo:Like, wait, wait, wait until January, February. What the hell, man?

33:49Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but it was already in buffer, so it was going out. Yeah, nobody wanted to go in and, like, remove it from the queue for posting. The interns were going to a music fest, and they couldn't be bothered to take it out. So, yeah, effective October 21st. There's a range. It's going anywhere up from$1 or$2 to$3, depending on which package you have. It's not much, really.

34:10Jason DeFillippo:Like, it's not a huge increase, but it is a monumentally bad timing.

34:16Brian Schulmeister:Oh, monumentally bad. The funny thing is, the only one that I get, mine doesn't go up, I think, because I've got the...

34:26Jason DeFillippo:I'm grandfathered into some weird old package that isn't going up either, but on the negative side of that is I don't even know how I could upgrade to get Hulu if I wanted to. Like, I press the button to try to find out, and it just shits out on me. yeah it says you're in canada go fuck yourself no i'm using the vpn it says oh okay oh that's

34:44Brian Schulmeister:weird then yeah i got i've got hulu and disney plus with no ads and it says hulu with no ads is staying the same but i gotta go look um i mean i because i'm probably gonna end up keeping i canceled it but then i redid it after they brought him back and now i'm just all confused because now i'm just like mad and i should cancel anyway because alien earth was honestly the only thing left that i watched on hulu so it's so difficult brian it's so difficult i miss cable i know i miss cable too it was cheaper it was cheaper less headache yeah less headache cheaper unbelievable

35:19Jason DeFillippo:i probably should have saved this one for uh for our dave segment but i'm going to put it in here now anyways the wicked for good final trailer has dropped now you and dave are are the musical guys I, you know, I was never a really big musical guy. I know my music nerds from high school and, and beyond, you know, so I lay everybody was wearing the Les Mis shirts, and then everybody was wearing the Phantom of the Opera shirts, and then everybody was wearing the Cats shirts, and then everybody was wearing all that stuff. And then Wicked came along, and it's, it was a really big musical and everybody loved it.

35:51Jason DeFillippo:Now, you know, I watched Wizard of Oz, the original, I watched The Wiz. So I was familiar enough with the story. My wife finally wanted to watch the the first installment of Wicked with a kid a couple of weeks back. I found myself really enjoying it. I watched this trailer. I'm really definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the story. And, you know, I just think that that shot of our wizard lies is so telling for this current time.

36:18Brian Schulmeister:Yep, that kind of is.

36:19Jason DeFillippo:But unfortunately, we know how the story ends, and the wizard wins, and everybody gets crushed. Well, you haven't seen Wicked before, so. No, I have not. Again, for me, this is all new, so I'm very excited.

36:30Brian Schulmeister:excited to see the rest of it and i watched the trailer to see how if they did a decent job they completely protected all of the ending stuff in the trailer so if you've never seen it it's still safe to to go watch the movie because it's a it's a three-minute trailer and i'm like oh my god they're gonna blow everything they blew nothing so it's great they just they just pimped all the songs and yeah no i mean i've seen wicked on stage a couple times and i'm looking forward to this because i thought that i thought the the first part of the the the um the series was good i

36:58Jason DeFillippo:thought it was really good i thoroughly enjoyed it yeah me too i mean i am i am primed to dislike

37:04Brian Schulmeister:ariana grande with every fiber of my being but she was great yeah no she was great so yeah and uh i

37:11Jason DeFillippo:i did watch lilith fair building a mystery because right after talking about it it basically dropped on disney plus and uh it is a great music documentary it is fantastic i loved seeing all the backstories i like seeing how much fun that they had doing it i like seeing the blowback that they had to put up with, and I like seeing how they handled it. Highly recommend it. If you like your music documentaries, and if also you're of a certain vintage, like us, all this footage from the 90s, phenomenal.

37:39Brian Schulmeister:Okay, cool. I've been meaning to get to the Devo documentary as well, but...

37:45Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I keep meaning to get to that one too, and I haven't yet, so maybe this week. The Tron Aries soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails has dropped. It dropped right before we went and recorded last week, but I hadn't listened to it yet. I went and listened to it now. It's curious that they decided to go with the branding of Nine Inch Nails. I mean, I think, you know, the filmmakers wanted it. It fits with Tron. And I guess he sings for the first time on a soundtrack, which Trent Reznor has never done before. So I guess that's why they decided to brand it as Nine Inch Nails. They gave him a bucket of money.

38:18Jason DeFillippo:Is it a Nine Inch Nails album? Absolutely not. Not even close. Is it okay? It's fine. It's okay. It's not great. No, it's not great. But then again, And I haven't really thought his Nine Inch Nails albums have been that great for the past decade. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

38:32Brian Schulmeister:No, I was going to make a mention a couple weeks ago because the new administration, there's a beautiful Nine Inch Nails song with the refrain, broken, bruised, forgotten, sore, too fucked up to care anymore. That's how I wake up in the morning when I read the news.

38:46Jason DeFillippo:Boy, when we felt that so strongly back in the 90s, we had no idea what was coming later in our lives.

38:52Brian Schulmeister:No, no. God. That was just like a general hangover day. Yeah. Now it's just like, oh, this is existential dread involved. Shit.

39:01Jason DeFillippo:Exactly. Then I saw this bit of news and it kind of made me go, oh boy, here we go. Human lyricist Talisha Jones and her AI artist Zania Monet have together signed a multi-million dollar record deal, according to Billboard. Jones released the Zania Monet album unfolded on August 8th. And since then, the TikTok earnest power ballad, How Was I Supposed to Know, has racked up 5 million streams across YouTube and Spotify. Jones claims to have written all the lyrics. I'm sure chat GPT helped. She used the AI platform Suno to transform the words into full songs. The deal is reportedly worth 3 million and comes from Halwood Media, best known for representing chart-topping producers like Murda Beats and Soundwave.

39:43Jason DeFillippo:So, yeah. Apparently, the AI voice sounds an awful lot like Beyonce. So, opening up themselves to a bit of a lawsuit there. Beyonce-ish. YouTube comments suggest that many fans didn't realize Zania Monet is an AI creation, which could lead to backlash as news trickles out. Obviously, there's a lot of litigation going on right now. Platformers from ChatGPT to Suno were trained on copyrighted materials such as Beyonce in a way that some have argued is illegal. Just yesterday, record labels escalated a lawsuit against Suno, claiming that the platform was trained on songs ripped from YouTube. even if Suno doesn't get sued into oblivion copyright law could prevent Halwood from monetizing Xavier Monet the US Copyright Office sanctions humans using AI as an assistive tool but has said that they would not grant copyrights where expressive elements are determined by a machine if you cannot get a copyright on your on your product you cannot monetize it and get paid for it while Talisha Jones providing the lyrics but AI handling the composition of vocal performance the Copyright Office has its were cut out for it, trying to figure out what to do here.

40:50Jason DeFillippo:AI songs have had success with play with playlist placement and TikTok. But so far, there's little evidence that generated music capitalize on viral moments. If you remember back in June, the AI band, the Velvet Sundown, which we talked about, made waves for getting over 500 ,000 monthly Spotify listens. But just a few months later, they've basically forgotten about nobody gives a shit. It seems difficult to maintain an audience, let alone grow it when the artists in the pictures can't interact with fans. Of course, that's just being lazy. We all know you can use AI to interact. Somebody just has to get on it and actually do the work, which nobody seems to be doing yet.

41:27Brian Schulmeister:Yep. So I should go use Suno while I still can. Yeah. It's not going to be around much longer. No, it's not. Well, didn't Universal Music make a deal with them? I can't talk about that yet. I thought they talked about that. I thought you talked about that on the show already. I thought that was an old deal. Things have changed. Oh, okay. Well, yes. Zip it. Mum's a word. I do want to follow up with a little bit of Lionsgate news. Lionsgate thought it had cracked the future of filmmaking with artificial intelligence, but reality's a bit less Hollywood, more blooper real. So what it turns out is that they were going to train their AI from runway with all of the movies from Lionsgate's back catalog.

42:07Brian Schulmeister:And, well, turns out that there's not enough data. So that whole thing has kind of fallen apart. So there you go. OK. Finally, the last thing I got is there's an article by my friend's wife, Meryl Marco, that hit Rolling Stone this week called Jimmy Kimmel may be back. Trump's attacks on the First Amendment aren't over by Meryl Marco. It's about how the movie network is kind of paralleling what's going on in reality right now. It's a great read. She's awesome. Go have a go have a look. The link is in the show notes.

42:39Jason DeFillippo:i also put the link in the show notes for the 30 minute plus monologue that jimmy kimmel did his first show back the first time i've watched jimmy kimmel in decades unless one of the bands unless one of the bands i was working on was performing there and i was actually there um he did a very good job it was excellent he nailed it i thought i agree

43:05Brian Schulmeister:the dark side with dave welcome to the dark side with dave hello dave hi you never know what we're gonna get long intro or short it keeps it interesting right variety is the spice of life yeah we got more room for goodness today all right so i we you and i I both talked about how our AirPod 3s were in the post and coming on the same day. I got mine like right after we hung up last time. Yes. And did you get yours? I did. What do you think? I am impressed. I'm blown away. I guess I'm ordering today. So, you know, I got them. I unboxed them. I put one of them in my ear. I put the other one in my ear.

43:57Brian Schulmeister:I'm glad you chose that orifice. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, there's still time. But and the room fell silent. It went away. The world went away. And that was actually a little disconcerting. Right. Yeah. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. This is really quiet. And they said in the promotions for these things that they had twice the noise canceling of the previous generation and i figured that's marketing fluff but no it's it's real yeah they're amazing they are really amazing now i was expecting like a you know a small incremental jump from the twos to the threes but it's a big jump i i mean i had to i had to find i had to go down a size on the the nubs the little foam nubs yeah because the ones that came where they i put them in and they just fell right out so i didn't go down a size i must have bigger ear holes than you yeah must be um and uh it yeah it just went right away i haven't here's the irony behind this whole thing i really want to try out the translation but since uh ice has taken over

45:10Jason DeFillippo:los angeles i can't find any spanish speakers to talk to me anymore so i don't know you can pull up

45:19Brian Schulmeister:a foreign language channel on youtube and that's that is fun i'm waiting for them to do farsi because I do live in like little Persia and there's a lot of Farsi speakers around here, but they haven't released that language yet. So it must be some French Canadians up Brian's way. No, I actually do. My friend, my friend, Jean Viev, she speaks French Canadian. I could, she calls it like the Newarkese of French. Well, that's the, that's the thing though.

45:43Jason DeFillippo:They have French in there. They don't have French Canadian and so insanely different. Like French, actual French speakers just really go, what the fuck are you saying?

45:52Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that the AirPods still may be Apple's best product in terms of just a –

46:03Jason DeFillippo:You're on the Galloway train. He thinks that too, yeah.

46:06Brian Schulmeister:Well, I think it's just – it's everything that Apple excels at. It's a design – it's impossible design. It does what it says it's going to do. It's aesthetically pleasing. Frictionless. Yeah, frictionless, expensive. But I love them. It is among my favorite devices, gadgets that I own. And it's nice that I just don't have to think about them. They just work. Except for when they don't. That is so incredibly rare. I guess. out of all the tools that i've had the airpods are the ones that don't work the least yeah i agree

46:55Jason DeFillippo:with that but but when i'm like out walking and i haven't put them in my ear yet then i throw them in and i want to start my podcast and all of a sudden i have to like turn off bluetooth and turn it back on again it's really annoying but again it's really annoying because they always

47:08Brian Schulmeister:just work yeah yeah that's the edge case you know yeah yeah i'd say i i've rarely had that happen I'm sure it's happened, but not enough that I remember it being a thing. But yeah, just a big fan. And these are also waterproof compared to the last ones. So this is the other thing.

47:29Jason DeFillippo:So you can throw them in the laundry by accident and not have to buy a new pair like I did with my first gen.

47:34Brian Schulmeister:Well, I was wearing them in my hot tub. I was wearing them in my hot tub.

47:39Jason DeFillippo:With a bunch of French Canadian chicks. Yeah, that's right.

47:43Brian Schulmeister:Basically, it looked like an episode of the Benny Hill show. And, again, the sound of the jets and the bubbling water and everything just went away.

47:54Jason DeFillippo:That's amazing.

47:56Brian Schulmeister:I got to try that because when I get in my hot tub, my Apple Watch Ultra 2 tells me that the noise level is too high and that I should run for the hills because it's over the decibel range. And if I'm there for more than half an hour, I could incur hearing loss. I get that every time I take a shower. My watch tells me it's too loud. Yes. Yeah. Somehow water pressure and air pressure are not the same thing, I guess. Yeah. But I got to say, yeah, between the AirPods and my Apple Watch, those are my two favorite Apple devices. I care less about the rest. But those two, I can't live without. Unfortunately, that means I have to have a phone, too.

48:34Brian Schulmeister:But I could honestly do without the phone anymore. They could just make it a computing puck that sticks in my pocket because I do everything else from all the other devices. I don't have any social media on my phone anymore. I guess the camera I use, but still, the rest of it's kind of overkill. I'm just happy that there was a piece of consumer electronics that delighted me. Yeah. I still had the capability to delight unexpectedly. I'll take it. Well, if you want some undelightful consumer tech, Meta's Ray-Ban glasses have come out. And of course, we had to tie it in with Disney. Disney is testing out a futuristic way to guide visitors around its theme parks, smart glasses.

49:14Brian Schulmeister:The company's Imagineering team has built a prototype app for Meta's Ray-Ban glasses that acts as a personal AI tour guide. In a demo, the glasses answered questions about rides, food, and merchandise, and even alerted a guest about short wait times or nearby characters like Winnie the Pooh. The technology relies on Meta's new wearables device access toolkit announced at its developer conference. Disney calls it an experiment with no word yet on whether it will actually roll out in the parks. Now, this is actually good use technology.

49:43Jason DeFillippo:technology but this will not roll out in the parks purely because of cost it's going to be too expensive to either if you're if they're going to pass out the glasses it's only going to be like one of those private super expensive uh you get the personal tour guide experience for super rich people and super rich people are going to want the actual person who can get them on the rides without waiting in line not glasses that just tell them where to get a good cheeseburger and if it's going to be one of those things where you have to have your own meta ray-ban glasses and we'll just provide you with an app.

50:14Jason DeFillippo:It's going to cost too much for them to develop the interface and the app for the limited number of people that are actually going to use it. So it's not going to happen. I get experimenting with it. Of course, they're going to experiment with it because maybe someday down the road, this technology will be cheap enough that they could implement it in the park. But it's not going to come anytime soon.

50:32Brian Schulmeister:But what about this, Brian? What if Facebook actually subsidizes it and pays for it? Or I'm sorry, Meta pays for it because it'd be a loss leader for them to actually get their technology out there. like like i'm sure apple pays you know disney extra perks to for them to make their movies

50:47Jason DeFillippo:compatible with their vision pros well i mean maybe that disney has a long history of doing that at the parks uh you don't see a lot of corporate sponsorship anymore but if you go back and back into the day in like the 50s 60s 70s even some of the 80s a lot of the rides were sponsored by various you know goodyear sponsored stuff and all kinds of stuff so maybe although at At this point in time, Disney is doing a delicate dance of trying to retain their reputation along with Walt Disney's values. And making a partnership with Meta would not be a step in the right direction.

51:18Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, but they also just raised the price of Disney Plus by three fucking bucks at the same time where they just cost$3.8 billion in market share.

51:25Jason DeFillippo:So who knows if anybody's actually thinking over there right now? They are making some strange decisions. But, yeah, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

51:33Brian Schulmeister:The other thing I'll add that contrary to what you're proposing here, Brian, is that years ago, I don't know if you're familiar with the – they had like a Perry the Platypus, like Phineas and Ferb thing at Epcot where you went around to the different countries and special things, secret things would happen.

51:56Jason DeFillippo:No, I mean because I haven't been to Disney World since I was like in my 20s. So it's been a long time. Okay.

52:02Brian Schulmeister:So at Epcot, they had a thing and it was originally, I think it was Kim Possible was where it originally started. And then they converted it to a Phineas and Ferb thing. And they handed out little Android devices, like little phone size, basically like iPod. What's the iPod that's just that looks like the phone, that sort of thing. In other words, a phone without a phone. But it was really fun. And you would go around from place to place and it would give you clues and you'd have to do things. You'd have to ask certain people for things and do certain things and put in code words. And things would happen behind the scenes that if you weren't playing this game, you'd have no idea that there was anything there to happen.

52:56Brian Schulmeister:And it was really, really fun. Like Pokemon Go. Oh, yeah. But then eventually they just rolled it into an app that you can now use on your mobile device.

53:07Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Shifting it to your own stuff so they don't have to pay for the tech.

53:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, exactly. But it still works. In fact, we did it last time we were there. My youngest son was playing with it. And so the things are still in there. They still work. So what struck me about that the first time we did it, when they handed out the Android devices, was they just had a little cart set up and it said, hey, play the Phineas and Ferb thing. And it was like, oh, would you just take this device? And they were like, yep. And it was like, do I have to sign anything? Nope.

53:36Jason DeFillippo:Well, but to my point, those Android devices were basically throwaway technology and incredibly cheap, unlike Meta's Ray-Ban glasses.

53:45Brian Schulmeister:True. Yeah. There was no motivation to try to sneak it out of the park. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point.

53:53Jason DeFillippo:And just a tangent really quickly. Phineas and Ferb. My son has just discovered that. Delightful show. Yeah. It's a lot of fun.

54:00Brian Schulmeister:It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Doofenshmirtz is just - Oh, I love Dr. Doofenshmirtz. He's so funny. So good. So funny. Yeah. Really good.

54:10Jason DeFillippo:And related to what we were just talking about, a new documentary has dropped on Disney+. I guess this was an ABC special, The Happiest Story on Earth, 70 Years of Disneyland. Dave, you are probably have seen almost all of this footage before as have i there's some new stuff in it which makes it interesting and it was put together really really well and you can see some of the sponsored stuff from back of the day in this documentary as well but you know it's a disney

54:34Brian Schulmeister:documentary why wouldn't you watch it yeah i'll check it out yep and the mandalorian and grogu

54:40Jason DeFillippo:official trailer has dropped uh almost a year away from when we're actually going to get the movie week so thanks for that right right but it looks nice it looks fun i'm looking forward to it it's great to see sigourney weaver that was pretty cool yeah yeah yeah i i saw i saw you guys uh i was

54:59Brian Schulmeister:looking at the rundown for the show i saw you guys also mentioned that they dropped the wicked trailer yes this week as well so i'm looking forward to that yeah and it was good to see a buff hut a buff hut a buff hut a strange turn of phrase a buff hut hey it sounds like a diagnosis oh the test results came back and unfortunately I have to break the news to you that you have a buff hut I'm going to have to go watch this now don't take Tylenol for that no no I saw I saw the somebody posted it and I saw it on the thing and I looked at the screenshot. I'm like, well, that helmet's wrong. So maybe this is just some AI slop that somebody threw out there.

55:45Brian Schulmeister:And then Brian put it in and it was too late for me to go watch. I got to go watch it later today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking forward to it and we'll go see it. It'll be interesting. My son pointed out, like, how are they going to differentiate this as a movie versus the TV show? How do they up their game cinematically when so much of the TV show looks so good?

56:09Jason DeFillippo:I just feel like it's going to feel like a long episode. That's about it. Yeah, I suspect that's, yeah. Maybe higher stakes. We'll see. But that's assuming you're going to see this movie, Dave, because I'm not sure you're going to have any money left after the next thing that Jason's going to tell you about.

56:25Brian Schulmeister:You mean the auction? Oh, yeah. That one. Yeah, I actually put this in here. Oh, you put it in. Yeah, yeah. So Jim Henson Company is having a 70th anniversary auction. It looks to me like they like, I don't know, Brian Henson said, why are we paying all this money for storage? Yeah, that's by the way, how that's that's why all the Farscape masters got burned, because he's like, I don't feel like paying for storage for this. Let's burn them instead. Yeah, I think we lost decades of Johnny Carson's Tonight Shows because of that sort of thing. Nobody wanted to store the quad reels that they were all on.

57:04Brian Schulmeister:But this auction, details are sparse so far. They have not published the catalog. There's going to be a coffee table version of the catalog, which I will be buying to go into my collection. But I don't know. We'll see. I mean, the thing is, the Muppets themselves that are going to be selling are going to be five figures at least, probably. Oh, yeah. At least. So, you know, too rich for my blood for something like that. But maybe I can get something. I don't know. We'll see. Yep. Looks cool. I will definitely check it out. Yeah. And there are Farscape props there as well. So, you know. What am I talking about?

57:48Brian Schulmeister:I can't afford anything. I'm buying anything from this fucking thing.

57:52Jason DeFillippo:No, but it'll be fun to look at. We'll see what's in there.

57:55Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

57:56Jason DeFillippo:Bad news for one of your other favorite things, Dave. The Security and Exchange Commission alleged this week that retail e-commerce ventures, the company that bought Radio Shack out of bankruptcy in 2020 has been basically just been running a Ponzi scheme and defrauded investors out of$112 million.

58:12Brian Schulmeister:Didn't we say that they were going to do that when they bought the damn thing? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. Well, it wasn't the Radio Shack Battery of the Month Club basically a Ponzi scheme. True. I don't know. Yeah, this is sad. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

58:30Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. I mean, it's sad.

58:32Brian Schulmeister:It's a zombie brand.

58:34Jason DeFillippo:It was weird to see all the other big stores that were kind of wrapped up in there, like Linen and Things and Pier 1 Imports, which I – Pier 1 Imports was like my entire design scheme in college and post-college. Those fucking rattan chairs. Yeah. And the lamp, the lamp that everybody had.

58:55Brian Schulmeister:I think our flatware, like our plates and bowls are all from Pier 1. Pretty sure. Yeah. So I saw again earlier in the show that you all were talking about Amazon settlement with the FTC.

59:09Jason DeFillippo:Yes.

59:10Brian Schulmeister:There are$2.5 billion, a billion of which is a fine and$1.5 billion is refunds to Amazon folks. I just wanted to add a little, a few details about this that are relevant to past conversations we've had. Because we often complain about how no one ever goes to jail. And evidently, that was one of the things that led Amazon to settle quickly. There were only a few days into their trial that they decided to settle that a couple of their executives were in peril of personal liability for this. So the scuttlebutt is that that could be why they settled so quickly. Yeah.

59:51Jason DeFillippo:Unfortunately, I would have preferred jail time, but I understand not wanting to pass up a billion dollar fine, especially with this administration.

59:59Brian Schulmeister:Right, right. And the other someone else I saw did the math and two point five billion dollars is less than a single month's worth of Amazon Prime subscription revenue. So, yeah, it's couch cushion money.

1:00:15Jason DeFillippo:Yep, pretty much. It's like we say, it's coffee budget. tops. So what does it say here? It says Amazon, the company, takes in around$2.5 billion in sales every 33 hours. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:32Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Bring back consequences. Bring back real consequences. This is what happens. These companies get beyond human scale and there's not a whole lot we can do.

1:00:41Jason DeFillippo:There's nothing you can do to them. They are legitimately too big to fail.

1:00:45Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. uh finally uh this uh story that came by uh i saw on reddit or did i

1:00:57Brian Schulmeister:it is a reddit thread about furries riding the dc metro this is an event uh is their second or third time third time that they did a furry ride on the dc metro there are pictures and sure enough there are there you are how do you know that's just it we bought the mask that's true damn i have receipts yeah i do love thinking about the absolute delight

1:01:31Jason DeFillippo:such a small segment of our listening audience has every time we bring up furries

1:01:37Brian Schulmeister:i'm thinking about people who are just minding their own business on the metro right i think you see weirder things on the metro in dc you do that's more disturbing too that's true yes yes that's true uh but i don't know i thought this was great fun and uh you know

1:01:56Jason DeFillippo:you never know maybe i was there maybe i never know where dave might pop up you never know where

1:02:01Brian Schulmeister:i might be hiding inside of a furry suit you just never know anywhere yes all right well that's what i've got hang in there gentlemen uh we'll try i hope next week we're just going to be dissecting

1:02:15Jason DeFillippo:the entire jim henson auction that's that's just my fine with me yeah i i don't know okay did you

1:02:20Brian Schulmeister:guys mention uh next week's uh big uh uh secretary of defense i'm sorry secretary of war uh calling everyone home for the big military meeting next week yeah we'll see if there's a show next week

1:02:35Jason DeFillippo:we didn't mention it but uh could be the start of who knows it's a bit weird uh it is very weird uh what's the mood like there after that got announced it's well it's just so weird like why would you be calling all of your top military people from their very important jobs all over the

1:02:56Brian Schulmeister:world and insist that they be there in person allegiance push-up contest ice cream social right and obviously you know there are many many conspiracy theories for what this could be about but the the thing i'm having trouble imagining is what the non-conspiratorial reason for a gathering like this would be and i that i do not have an answer yet i don't think it's just them getting together to you know hey everybody we bought pizza and it's a bob's birthday

1:03:29Jason DeFillippo:we all got to sign the card yeah yeah no it's why would you make it public uh well why would you let anybody know i have so many questions about so many things that are done on a daily

1:03:41Brian Schulmeister:basis jason i would want to be as far away from that meeting as possible preferably under about 800 feet of concrete yeah i mean and and to to your point i mean it's a security risk

1:03:53Jason DeFillippo:yeah absolutely but we've had so many of those we we just at the what was it at the charlie kirk thing it was the president the vice president and like three levels down the chain of command

1:04:03Brian Schulmeister:all in the same place that's not supposed to happen yeah yeah well at least it was a dignified affair oh yes of course yeah i bought the merch spark machines and so on and so forth yeah you know it was going to be private but he just posted it to telegram and just everybody found out well it's a big enough meeting that there's no way it's not going to leak whatever is going on in there but um i don't know i'm i have to admit i'm a bit anxious about what it could possibly be and uh hopefully i'm overthinking it and turns out to be nothing but um it's just so weird that's the thing it's just so weird so welcome to 2025 i know it's just so weird that's right that's right all right well thanks gents i will see you next time hopefully yeah

1:04:59Brian Schulmeister:Over at Patreon, we've got new patron Christina. Thank you very much. And Count Squeakula up their pledge. Appreciate that. And also, we'd like to thank Ashley, Matthew, Edgar, Hillary, Mattintosh, Ray, Matt, Mark, Jess, and Lon. Thank you all so much.

1:05:17Jason DeFillippo:Thank you. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Tom, Joseph, Jen's, Dennis with a$25 contribution and Juergen throwing us the big 50 bucks.

1:05:26Brian Schulmeister:Woohoo. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Ross and Jennifer. And as our standard begging you, pleading you for anything that you can empty your pockets with, please go to GOG.show slash donate to send us whatever you can. And if you go to Patreon.com slash GOG, you can sign up to help the show out for as little as$3 a month to get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And if you sign up for the whole year, you get a discount. And somebody asked us on email this week, whose money that comes out of if you pay for the whole year? Well, ours. Patreon just said, yeah, we're going to give you a discount, but it's coming out of your cut.

1:06:02Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

1:06:03Jason DeFillippo:Patreon doesn't take the shave.

1:06:05Brian Schulmeister:We do. No, no, no. We do. But that's fine. But you know what? We take it. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I don't care if it's easier for you. We appreciate it. And you can even go up to gold monkey level and beyond. That is to get the show early, ad free, and like I said, high definition. So no merch sales this week. we're still kind of hammering out that problem with pesky tariffs and international shipping and stuff like that. So that should be fixed by the time this air. So go buy a t-shirt or a mug.

1:06:30Jason DeFillippo:I'm pretty sure Palantir sorted that problem out. Although I doubt anybody out of the US is buying their gear. Yeah.

1:06:39Jason DeFillippo:Great. And we did get a lovely note from Gerald that I'm not going to read, but thank you so much for writing in. Appreciate it. I'm glad you enjoyed the show.

1:06:46Brian Schulmeister:So I'm very glad you enjoyed the show. Thank you much, Gerald. And that's all I got. That's really it.

1:06:52Jason DeFillippo:So until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

1:06:54Brian Schulmeister:I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 715. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. And we mean that from the bottom of our hearts. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends and foes and everyone in between. and we'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, and cool links?

1:07:22Brian Schulmeister:Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what? We've got that aforementioned merch. Stag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy.