717: Quantum of Nope

In short

Podcast Notes: Grumpy Old Geeks - Episode 717: Quantum of Nope

Overview In this episode of *Grumpy Old Geeks*, hosts Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo delve into the chaotic world of recent tech news, featuring significant updates from Meta, OpenAI, and more. The episode features a mix of humor, critique, and commentary on the latest developments in technology and media.

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Key Topics Discussed

Meta and Social Media Censorship

Dutch Court Ruling: A Dutch court instructed Meta to cease its algorithmic approach to user timelines on Facebook and Instagram, aiming to allow users to see posts from actual friends again.
Critique: The hosts agree that this is a necessary move against algorithmic manipulation dominating social media.

OpenAI's Sora 2 Rollout

Initial Chaos: OpenAI's Sora 2 rollout has been chaotic, leading to issues reminiscent of a "deepfake meltdown."
Discussion: The hosts critique the ambitious nature of the AI's capabilities and the implications of copyright issues.

Apple and Surveillance

App Store Controversy: Apple banned the ICEBlock app, which tracked ICE agents, following pressure from law enforcement. Critics argue this capitulates to authoritarian demands.
ICE's New Initiative: ICE is looking to establish a surveillance team to track leads on social media, raising concerns about overreach and privacy violations.

Tesla's Insurance Woes

California's Investigation: California regulators are penalizing Tesla for mishandling insurance claims, further dimming the company's reputation.

AI in Entertainment and Marketing

AI Musicians: AI-generated musicians are starting to sign record deals, raising ethical questions about creativity in the music industry.
Taylor Swift Controversy: Swift faced backlash for using AI-generated content in her promotional materials for her new album, criticized as "AI slop."

Media Insights

Media Candy: The hosts discuss upcoming shows and movies, highlighting the unexpected renewal of *The Diplomat* for a third season and the unique pitch for *The Long Walk* blending themes from *Stand By Me* and *Squid Game*.

Gadgets and Apps

Jony Ive and OpenAI Device Delay: The anticipated AI device from Jony Ive and OpenAI faces delays due to technical issues.
Spotify and ChatGPT Partnership: Spotify is collaborating with ChatGPT to offer personalized music recommendations, further integrating AI into user experiences.

Controversial Youth Behavior

Florida Teen Arrest: A 13-year-old was arrested for asking ChatGPT about harming a friend, prompting discussions about AI monitoring in classrooms.

Cybercrime Investigations

Apple's Siri Probe: Apple is under investigation in France for previous practices involving unauthorized recording of Siri interactions.

Book Recommendations

New Reads: The hosts review *Dark Beauty: First Contact* and *Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It*, offering critiques on their thematic relevance and execution.

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Key Takeaways

The episode highlights the complexities of modern technology, including algorithmic control, AI rollouts, and ethical dilemmas surrounding surveillance.
The hosts maintain a humorous yet critical tone, addressing the absurdities and challenges within the tech landscape.
There is a continual call for accountability from tech giants, emphasizing the need for regulation and user-friendly policies.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:02Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing with finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

0:16Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason Filippo. Bonjour. I'm Brian Schulmeister. Oh, vous devez. Going to go get some croissant. Un beer, s 'il vous plaît. The only thing I remember from my trips to Paris. So are you ready to rock? Mostly. It's funny. I'm a procrastinator in absolutely no area of my life whatsoever, except for two specific occasions, Jason. One is if somebody is giving me a hard time about doing something, then I will procrastinate the fuck out of it. Yes. And the other is packing. So almost ready. Okay. Five minutes before the Uber gets there. Yeah, throw in a few t-shirts and off we go.

0:56Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that one. On the just wait to the last second, throw it in a bag. I do that with moving too. Like most of my move is meticulous and the beautiful boxes. But at the very end, it's every grocery store plastic bag that I could find and just shoving crap in. Like rabid raccoons running around. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. Well, I am glad you're going to go take a break in Gay Paris and have a nice time. You're just going to Paris, right? London, Paris. London, Paris. Oh, OK. Never missed the opportunity to go to London. Yes. We all love it as a family. I've loved London my entire life.

1:31I lived there for two years. Yeah, I love London. I haven't been there in like 30 years. Sad. You can do it, Jason. No, I can't. No, I can't. I don't know if you've noticed, but yeah, you're not here anymore, so you wouldn't have noticed. Do you know how much my DWP bill was this week? No, no idea, but I heard everything is really bad right now. Take a guess. A couple hundred bucks. $2 ,000. What? $2 ,000 was our DWP bill. So, no, I'm not going to London. No, I'm probably not going to pay for my health insurance this week either. So, yes. Well, I also heard health insurance premiums have at least doubled.

2:10Thanks, Trump. No, everything is well and truly fucked, as they say. And sorry if you hear some noise in the background. It is garbage day because we're recording this on Thursday. How much do you pay for your garbage pickup? Yeah, a lot. A lot. But so I was looking at the job numbers this morning because since we don't have a real government right now, the job numbers have been coming in from external sources like B of A and other consultancies and things like that. And, yeah, it's not pretty out there. It's not pretty. It's not. No. But next week we are going to have a special guest host, Brian, because we can't afford to take a week off, which is what that whole setup was for.

2:52Who's hosting? It's like, toeing around the elbow to get to the asshole. Who'd you strong arm into this? Donovan Adkisson is going to be coming with us next week. You can find him as Southern Geek on our Discord channel. Okay. So, yeah, Donovan has graciously accepted my offer to step in. So we'll welcome in a grumpy old geek's fashion. I look forward to listening to it on my flight back. Yes, yes. Now, Donovan's an IT pro from the southern eastern coast of the United States. So it should be a fun discussion. Okay. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. Well, we got a bit of follow-up, and maybe you'll be chiming in on this if anything else comes out about this.

3:33But a court in the Netherlands has ordered meta to change Facebook and Instagram's timelines after finding the element ran afoul of the European Union's Digital Services Act. As reported by Reuters, the Dutch court said the company needs to provide users with simpler options, namely ones that don't rely on an algorithm. them so this is uh on the heels of the uk basically getting the pay for a straight up uh non-algorithmic timeline if you want uh now the netherlands is basically saying you got to do it for free okay and this is all any of us want so anyways uh the case was brought by the bits of freedom a dutch digital rights group good name actually yeah and they point out something it is unacceptable that a few american tech billionaires can determine how we view the world said the group spokesperson.

4:19And I kind of agree with that. I think it's unacceptable even in America. Here's the thing. You don't have to use it. That's their point. That's true. I guess you don't, but good luck with that. Yeah. See, we keep saying that, you know, that's all we ever wanted was a non-algorithmic timeline. That's what we wanted a decade ago. I know. It's too late now. Yeah. The horse is burned up inside the barn and has collapsed on the farmhand that was trying to put it out with a thimble full of water. It's over. We now have to add, we want a non-algorithmically driven timeline that is also free of bots.

4:56Yeah. And Mark Zuckerberg and surveillance capitalism and everything that goes along with it. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Sora 2, we talked about it last week and the FU to copyright that they just were going to die on that hill. Well, it turns out they did. And they turned around and said, OK, we'll turn on some copyright protection. But the thing is, the thing is, they kind of turned the knob all the way in the other direction. So it was almost impossible to get anything made. So I got an invite from Morgan. Thank you very much, Morgan. And I dove in and was like, oh, let's see what I can make. And I got there probably about three minutes, I think, after they turned off the or turned on the copyright knob.

5:44because I couldn't do a damn thing. I mean, I did finally get it to do a video of Bruce Lee fighting Mother Teresa. That was horrible. I did one with Bruce Lee fighting a beluga whale, also horrible. And then I looked at the, you know, the scrolling timeline of what people were making and posting up there. For every one of those videos, there's probably 20 of them that did not work. And those things take a long time to make it a lot of compute. We are burning down the earth at a phenomenal rate. Phenomenal. Just to make these horrible videos. And here's the deal. Sora 2 kind of sucks. It's not that great.

6:27It's like, oh, this is the new. Those demos are so cherry picked from the luckiest of the luckiest of generations. It's not good, Brian. It's not good. Well, I have to say, I did not really get into it. I didn't look around at it. I certainly didn't try it. But I have a very narrow view of Sora, too, which came almost entirely from friend of the show, Tara Tiger Brown's feed. She got into it. OK, but what she did is she didn't try to use anything copyrighted at all. She did it probably in the way that Sora actually wishes people would use it. She did a bunch of stuff for herself, her family, her brother.

7:04You know, she just put herself and her family in different situations like skiing, surfing and all that sort of stuff. and i mean i couldn't i'm friends with her on social so i couldn't get away from this i just kept seeing because she was posting tons and tons of them and they all looked really pretty good there's a bit of uncanny valley in there just a bit and it's mostly in the motion you can tell that like there's something there's your mind goes there's something wrong with this camera yeah the camera's not quite right it's weird it's getting weird angles it's a little bit off so it's a little uncanny valley but god it's really i this stuff without guardrails is fucking frightening like yeah i mean i was watching these videos that she did and i was like whoa well this could be really bad for an awful lot of people but uh yeah so i mean look i'm not surprised that they if these companies actually turn the dial to full like we're going to pay attention to all copyright and this is entirely forgetting about the fact that they broke all copyrights to train the models yeah exactly let's leave that out completely let's just just shoot that elephant we'll just pretend that part doesn't exist just like they do if you just dial it so you can't break copyright to make videos of course it's practically unusable because that's all people want to do is is make stuff using copyrighted material in general and i think even tara got a little bored with making these videos after a while it's like fun for a day or two and you show your friends and then everybody kind of goes yeah okay and yeah and now what the hundreds of millions of dollars of compute that was just spent to do all that and what do we have at the end of it a couple shrugs and that was cute yeah at least with bitcoin you know there's at least criminal money you know for all of the for all of the baby seals we're killing but jesus yeah and i also don't know if you've noticed brian but for all of the different models that i'm using across the across the board from Claude to Gemini to OpenAI and ChatGPT, they're slowing down considerably.

9:10I did notice it yesterday because all I really use any of these models for anymore is to write promos for our podcast. Yeah. That's it. And so I was trying to get a little bit ahead of the game, obviously, because I'm traveling. So I went through our notes and it's what I normally do is I kind of chunk all the stories into chat GPT and say, you know, write me a snappy and kind of witty and snarky update less than 24, you know, 240 characters that I can use across social media. And I've been doing that for quite a few months. And obviously I edit it because it's not always that great. And this is some stuff that I know we said.

9:46It's funny. But it was always pretty quick. And yesterday it was glacial. Yeah. Just like the glaciers they removed. Seriously. Seriously. Have you played with the personalization settings in ChatGPT yet? Are you a paid member? That's the first question. Here's the thing. No, I'm not a paid member and I refuse to sign in. Okay. Yeah. No, in the personalization settings, you can do some pretty interesting things where you give it your occupation more about you, how it manages stuff. And there's also personalities that you can select now. You have default, which is cheerful and adaptive. You have cynic, which is critical and sarcastic.

10:27Robot, efficient and blunt. Listener, thoughtful and supportive. Or nerd, exploratory and enthusiastic. I've been using the nerd for a while, and it's just boring as fuck. Nerds. Yeah, then I flipped it to cynic, and I haven't really seen much of a difference. But what I have seen is the slowdown is insane. Yeah, it is a lot slower. It is a lot slower. You know, I just don't want to sign in because I don't want it. I don't want to track to me. I don't want this history because we don't know what they're doing with it. And I just don't. We absolutely do. We absolutely do know what we're doing with it.

11:02And that's the thing. I don't want to feed the beast. I mean, I am doing it anyways, semi-anominously. I just don't want to track. And also, like, I guess I've written a really good prompt to basically get the voice pretty fucking close to our snark anyways. So I don't need their personality. Yeah, I see. I like it. I like the history because it starts to realize who I am and what I'm actually trying to do when I put in something. It's like, oh, it's you again. We're going to write it like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. The one thing I will say with Gemini, because I'm a paid member of Gemini too, because I get the two terabytes of Google Drive storage, which I need for my backups and moving files around.

11:44Anyway, so I was paying for that no matter what. But it comes with the Gemini I plan what they've got a million token input thing now. So I can literally drag in a pod, like a full audio of any podcast and it'll use about 150 ,000 tokens on that podcast to just, just rip the audio and pull out the context of it and then work directly on that. I don't have to put anything else in. It's really handy and it's, it's not great. So you take that output, then you pop it over to your other AI and you say, punch it up over here. And then you take it into BBEdit and then you punch it up yourself. By the end of it, you probably could have done the same thing yourself.

12:31Yeah, I was about to say, you probably could just do it yourself at about the same amount of time without destroying the environment. Yeah, but what fun is that? I guess none.

12:47in the news

12:53well apple has removed ice block the app which allowed users to put a pin on a map to show where ice agents have recently been spotted from the app store it has also pulled other apps that served a similar purpose according to fox business attorney general pam bondy she had a week oh did Did she ever? Demanded their takedown, telling Apple that the apps were designed to put ICE agents at risk for just doing their jobs. Apparently, if you just say where they are, that puts them at risk. Yeah. I went out of terror last night on Instagram. And just every video that was fed to me through my algorithmic timeline of people harassing ICE, I'm just like, oh, fuck it.

13:31Add to the story. Add to the story. Add to the story. Why not? There's enough of them now. It's just fun. Here's the thing about ICE block. yeah it can be an app but just make it a web app then you don't have to deal with these assholes and it can just stay up forever yeah the problem is no the kids these days don't use the web everything all they do is use apps so i agree with you but i think the usage will go down tremendously instead of just going to iceblock.app or whatever instead of going and going to the app store i mean it's six in one half dozen of the other i'm just saying i know whatever And by the way, I used IceBlock a lot.

14:10I never once saw ice in my neighborhood, and I know they were doing raids in my neighborhood. So, yeah, I don't think it actually worked that well. It's user-generated content. It just meant nobody in your neighborhood was on the app reporting it. Everybody was running. That's the problem. That's why they needed to be an app. They don't have time to pull up a web page, Jason. They don't have time to pull up a web app. They're running. Jesus. Yeah. Undelay. Yeah. Yeah. So Joshua Aaron, the apps developer, told Fox Business he was incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move, he said.

14:42Apple has claimed that they received information from law enforcement that ice blocks serve to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false. It had climbed to the top of the app store charts in July after administration officials slammed it, the Barbra Streisand effect. Yep. Making more people aware of its existence. At the time, the officials warned Aaron that they were looking at him and he better watch out because that's what regular governments do. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. He's just like, bring it on, bitch. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons that we probably need these sorts of apps, and I guess what's good for you is not necessarily good for us.

15:19ICE is planning to create their own surveillance team that hunts for leads on social media now. Yeah, okay. They have plans to build out a 24-7, 365-day-a-week surveillance team that focuses on scouring social media for case leads. As revealed in documents first discovered by Wired, according to public records, they have put out a request for information. which allows the agency to detail its preliminary scope of work. The details uses social media platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube develop leads on wanted individuals for urgent cases. The team is expected to work on leads with ISIS top 10 most wanted within a 30 minute timeframe, but the breadth of work ranges all the way to low priority cases like everyone.

16:00Yeah. Like those involving someone convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor or has no convictions, but has a significant arrest history with a more generous eight-hour window to generate leads. According to the documents, ICE wanted at least 12 full-time staff to work at the National Criminal Analysis Targeting Center in Vermont, which will require three staffers on duty at all times. You're going to monitor the entirety of the internet with three people. Well, we finally got the internet police, Jason. That's the internet police that we deserve, I guess. now on the other side of the country so jason you might want to fire up that jeep and if you need some work ice is looking for a minimum staff of 16 full-time contractors for its pacific enforcement response center it's down in santa anna so you don't have a bit of a drive but yeah so they need a duty rotation of at least two staffers on for after hour requirements and emergency situations there you go you wouldn't be in traffic jason you'd work after hours so Oh, great.

16:57You can just go monitor the internet for ICE. I am kind of broke, so maybe. I'm just saying. You can be the enemy within that they keep talking about, Jason. Sabotage. I can be le saboteur. Yes. Bring me back a beret, Brian. Speaking of sabotage, OpenAI has disrupted more Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to create social media surveillance tools. The very tools that ICE would like to have. Yeah. That would be worth pointing out. so open ai has disclosed that a now banned account originating in china was using chat gpt to help design promotional material and project plans for a social media listening tool this work was purportedly done for a government client it was a probe that could crawl social media sites like x facebook instagram reddit tiktok and youtube oh that seems very similar to that roi from ice wait wait wait nobody mentioned truth social in any of these well you know because only only only only truthers yeah yeah the good things on truth so they also disrupted similar efforts earlier this year so china has long been accused of alleged human rights abuses against uger muslims in the country and they were developing tools using chat gpt to track them uh the company also caught russian korean and chinese speaking developers using chat gpt to refine malware as well as entire networks in cambodia minamar i always have problems saying that one And Nigeria.

18:20Yes, that. Using the chat BGPT to help create scams and attempt to defraud people. Interestingly enough, our current administration is not listed in here, but we know they're doing it, too. Yeah. You know what's funny? Speaking of Truth Social yesterday, I got a notice. I got like a text message notice, you know, like a an alert type of thing, a notification notification, as it were, from Truth Social saying that, oh, they arrested somebody for the Pacific Palisades fire. Oh, I heard that, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's the point. I uninstalled the Truth Social app about 10 seconds after I installed it, and I never gave them my phone number, and they're still pinging me with shit.

18:58So, fuck you. Interesting. Yeah, that's very interesting, I thought. Like, if we were in Europe, I would be suing you right now. That's true, but you're not. I'm not. Sadly, sadly, sadly. Well, you were in California and California regulators are threatening Tesla yet again. I didn't even know that Tesla launched its own auto insurance options for California customers back in 2019. And if I did know that, I would have told everybody far and wide to never, ever sign up for that because that would be stupid. They turn it off right before you have a crash. But some people apparently, yeah, they do.

19:35Yeah. Some people apparently did do that. the California Department of Insurance has issued enforcement actions against Tesla Insurance, which acts as an agent for State National Insurance Company. They claim that Tesla Insurance and State National saw repeated failures to comply with longstanding claims handling laws. That's not the Tesla I know.

19:57They also accused Tesla Insurance of egregious delays when responding to its customers' claims. Again, not the Tesla I know. poop emoji responses and not conducting thorough, fair, and objective investigations of claims. Again, not the Tesla. I know. Yeah. So they're probably going to be run out of the insurance business as well they should be. Yep. Yep. If we can get them out of the diner business now, too, that'd be great. That would be awesome. I've heard that place has turned into a dump. Well, it's a dump because it's always packed with Elon stands and baseball be-hatted, you know, Cybertruck drivers.

20:36I saw another Cybertruck yesterday with new dealer plates, and I'm just scratching my head. I'm like, I guess. And there's one in the neighborhood. I mentioned it before, but it sounds like the Sanford and Son truck when it's driving down the street. It's like, actually, it's like Hong Kong phoo.

20:54And my roommate heard it yesterday, and I'm just like, do you hear it? Do you hear it? She's like, oh, my God, what a piece of shit. Yep. Well, OpenAI just struck another massive deal, this time with AMD. The chat GPT maker is buying six gigawatts worth of AMD's latest Instinct AI chips in a multi-billion dollar agreement to power its next generation infrastructure. How many gigawatts did Doc Brown need to send us back to the future? 1.21 gigawatts. Wow. What's a gigawatt? the rollout starts in 2026 and as part of the deal open ai could end up with a 10 stake in amd through 160 million dollars shares priced at just one cent each now there's a lot of caveats to this thing going through amd stock i think has to hit 600 a share or some shit like that and then if you remember nvidia just got some of open ai this is all just this massively creative accounting like it's it's this kite remember kiting check kiting back in the 80s that finally became a felony where you could write a check and then pay the other check with the other check and keep your balance up by writing checks and it's all just floating in the air until like you know gravity hits and everybody lands that's what's going on here with open ai nvidia amd oracle all of these fucking people microsoft i mean they're all parts of each other it's a it's a big fucking octopus of hell.

22:20And they're selling, they're lending or leasing chips to, like, Nvidia is going to be leasing the chips to OpenAI for hundreds of billions of dollars and all this other shit. It's all fucking monopoly money and accounting tricks to keep this fucking ball in the air. And if somebody blinks and this ball hits the ground. Bye-bye economy. Yeah, it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. So, I mean, but there are so many people that are like under the balloon blowing to keep it in the air right now that i think this is going to go for a while and because i mean nobody wants this thing to crash at this point because it's it's it's not just this stupid ai shit that's too big to fail it will take down the united states economy at this point and it's like we're fucked we're fucked so everybody go on sora make some stupid home videos keep this thing going because we're fucked if we don't again you know Well, fuck the planet.

23:16We got to keep the economy up. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. What a fucking world. Oh, this is all in like the last four years. I know. It's insane. We thought it was bad when we started this podcast. It's just so much worse. It's so much worse. Well, Deloitte is paying back$291 ,000 to Australia's federal government after its, quote, independent assurance review was found to include AI-generated errors. That's because Antouche wasn't involved. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations says the repayment covers the final installment of a contract to review a system that automates penalties for welfare recipients who miss mutual obligations.

23:57The report contained multiple mistakes, including references to nonexistent citations, which are classic AI hallucinations. A University of Sydney lecturer who flagged the issue says Deloitte's updated version swapped fake citations for clusters of new ones, suggesting the original claims lacked a solid evidentiary basis. Now, Deloitte says that they did use chat GPT-4 or GPT-4-0 via Azure to produce the results, but they insist their findings and recommendations stand. Well, Australia says, oi, mate, give us our money. And so that's what's going on in Australia. And then, so we know that they used OpenAI's GPT-40.

24:40So Deloitte says, hold my beer. Anthropic just landed its biggest enterprise deal yet, and it's a massive one. Deloitte announced it's rolling out Anthropic's AI assistant, Claude, to more than 470 ,000 employees across 150 countries. Let's double down. Look, we changed the model. We capitulated. We apologize. We'll give you a few hundred thousand dollars back. It's nothing. We're Deloitte. We are huge. We are huge. This version will be different. This will be different. Claude is nicer and better. So we're going to give you Claude instead of Sam Altman. So, yeah. All right. God damn it. Well, a 13-year-old in Dell in Florida has been arrested after asking ChatGPT how to kill his friend during class.

25:32The disturbing query triggered an alert from Gaggle, a surveillance company that monitors school-issued computers for violent or self-harm language. Police were notified immediately and questioned the student who claimed he was just trolling a friend who annoyed him. The Volusia County Sheriff's Office wasn't amused, calling it another joke that created an emergency on campus. Well, the teen was booked into juvenile detention, though charges haven't been disclosed. Well, Gaggle markets itself as a K-12 safety service that monitors emails, documents, and now even AI chats for troubling behavior.

26:03But critics say it's turning classrooms into miniature surveillance states. Well, this is... I'm okay with that. I'm fine. This is school. They should be. That's A-okay. It's not their computers. It's not this is the same thing as being in a workplace. And if you're using a workplace computer, the workplace can do whatever the fuck they want. Exactly. Now, what I would like to point out about this article here is Gaggle is reporting them to the police. Chat GPT did fuck all. Probably gave a really fucked up answer about sticking a pencil in his ear or some shit like that. So just a platform, Jason.

26:36Just a platform. Taylor Swift is under fire from fans for allegedly using what they call AI slop to promote her new album, Life of a Showgirl. As part of a global scavenger hunt, Swift invited fans to scan QR codes linked to short promotional videos, but viewers quickly noticed telltale AI errors. One clip featured warped backgrounds and a bartender whose hand blended into a napkin. Another showed gym equipment with misaligned weights. Well, the backlash also reignited debate over AI's role in replacing human creativity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Online reactions summed it up bluntly.

27:10She's too rich to be this cheap. Well, she's cheap, and that's why she's rich. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, they usually go hand in hand. I actually don't think it was a monetary issue. I think it was a time issue. Time issue. She just ended her tour. She got engaged, and she tried to push out an album and get all this video stuff done. So you want to do it quick? You can have it. You can have it. Good. Or you can have it quick. Yeah. So and I'm sure she hired his firm to do that. She didn't. She wasn't sitting there on a computer herself. She's not editing it. Yes. Yeah. She's not doing the fucking thing.

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27:43I mean, I mean, the funny part is like, yeah, they're bitching about the AI, but they're bitching more about the album being shitty, which is even funnier. They're like, yeah, also written really quickly, I'm sure. So, yeah, yeah. You can you can let this one bake a little longer to their take. Get your last bit of money before you pop out some kids. That's what she's going to do anyways. Last hurrah. Yep. Well, Apple's Find My feature is immensely useful. If you've ever been out for a wild night of drinking and wake up the next morning without your phone, Find My is there. If you're in a hurry and dash out of your Uber only to later feel a suspicious absence in your pocket, Find My is there.

28:16And if your British law enforcement team conducting a probe into a massive iPhone smuggling ring in the heart of London, Find My is also there. the BBC reports the UK cops recently broke up a phone smuggling ring involving tens of thousands of devices it was actually on Christmas even a victim electronically tracked their stolen iPhone to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport the security there was eager to help out and they found the phone was in a box along with another 894 phones which then they started tracking and yes and they started watching the warehouse and they ended up busting another 2 ,000 stolen phones and a number of arrests came out of that cool so there you go and this is all going to china where the phones sell for quite a price crooks in britain may have even begun to pivot away from selling drugs to selling stolen phones we're hearing that some criminals are stopping dealing drugs and moving on to the phone business because it's more lucrative so yeah yeah makes sense yeah it makes total sense and it's got my wife in a tizzy because she's been on all these travel groups like she likes to do and everybody's saying you got to be careful with your phone there's plenty of people stealing your phones don't don't hold your phone i'm like okay just yeah stop stop that shit will be all right

29:39media candy brian i was i was i was shocked i was shook i tell you when i was scrolling through netflix trying to figure out what to add to the queue. And I saw The Diplomat season three is coming October 16th. I'm like, but it hasn't been four years. I know. I'm just like, wait a minute. I still kind of remember what happened in the last season of The Diplomat. That shouldn't happen. I should completely forget the show even existed by the time season three comes out. What the fuck? That is shocking. I'm very excited. I love the show. It's great. I am. CJ Craig took over as president and we're ready to we're ready to kick shit off.

30:16You know why we have this show so quickly? why these are older actors and actresses that have been around forever and understand doing a 74 episode season turning around and doing another one the next fucking year with a goddamn christmas special just saying so i'm looking forward to it me too i'm looking forward to it and uh you know you know my my love hate relationship with stephen king i like his mostly hate mostly hate i i love his non you know horror stuff for the most part so the long walk was a movie that I was intrigued by. I'm going to watch The Long Walk. And I did. And it's kind of like Stand By Me, but with a lot more murder.

30:56So, you know, it's a bunch of guys who are getting to know each other and it's, you know, social dynamics and things like that. And then every, you know, three minutes, somebody gets shot in the head. It's kind of like, yeah, it's kind of like Stand By Me meets Squid Game. That's about what it's like. It's fun. Can I say it's fun? It's a fun romp. You're the only person that has used fun to describe this movie. Mark Hamill is great in it. I just thought it was a fine movie. I give it a B plus. I think children being shot in the head every three minutes is fun. They're not children. They're young adults.

31:32They're young adults. They're at least 18. Okay. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So plus plus on the Stephen King non-horror checklist. Okay. Fair enough. Well, good news for you in California. California has passed a new law to ban loud commercials on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu. This is great news for people who don't want to wake up the neighborhood when a streaming show suddenly turns into an aggressively loud ad for migraine medication. Newsom signed the law. The ban goes into effect July 1st, 2026. On that day, streaming services won't be allowed to transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.

32:11Okay. So this is good because apparently I thought we had these kind of legislations, but it was only for broadcast TV, not for streaming. We had to make a separate fucking law for it. Oh, yeah, completely. Took long enough. The thing is, I don't think that there's any audio police either because regular TV does this shit all the fucking time. They're still blasting out my speakers in between episodes, like in the commercial breaks. It's ridiculous. It's gotten actually really bad on regular TV. And I don't actually pay for – or I pay so I don't have commercials on streaming platforms anymore.

32:51So except for Amazon, I've refused to give that motherfucker a goddamn dime. No, we're already paying a ton of money for that. Yeah. But for Hulu, I pop out the three or four bucks. All right. Actually, no. I take that back. I don't even do that anymore because I canceled Hulu thanks to Jimmy Kimmel. So thanks, Jimmy Kimmel. Well, speaking of Amazon, now that Amazon owns James Bond outright after its deal with producers, the Broccoli's and all those people, people have been bracing for just what they might have planned for the character beyond Dennis Villeneuve, new movie, endless spinoffs for Prime Video, or movie posters where the gun-toting spy has had his license to kill revoked by Photoshop.

33:30That's exactly what happened. Yeah. At least for Prime Video in the UK. I don't know. I tried to check here and I didn't see any of that. So they may have pulled him already. I think they flipped him back already. Yeah. Yeah, but they began updating all their assets for the films with new posters, each depicting the relevant Bond posed on a generic colored background with the 007 logo behind it and their respective titles, which is all well and fine until you look closer and realize that they had also altered some of them to remove Bond's gun. Yeah. And it didn't look good. No, it looked really bad.

34:02Roger Moore's arms were lengthened on the poster for a view to kill, so his weapon holding hand was erased from sight and others' guns were simply airbrushed out of Bond's hands. leaving the awkward imagery of Bond seemingly gripping something that wasn't there anymore, or in the case of Pierce Brosnan on GoldenEye poster, looking like he's in the middle of making a rude gesture at you. This is, of course, ridiculous given that Bond is a character known for using a gun and has a license to kill. So here we go. I don't know what we're trying to do. Now, of course, they've tried to downplay aspects of the character over the years, like drinking, smoking, womanizing, all that sort of stuff.

34:36It's James Bond! It's a feature, not a bug! Bond, yes. And they're not the only people that has done this. Disney brought Thunderbolts to Disney Plus over the summer. It advertised the movie's arrival with a poster that edited the team's guns and the character of Taskmaster entirely out of their hands, leaving them all weirdly pointing trigger fingers at each other. Okay. So personal. Next, they're going to be airbrushing out, like, wands from Harry Potter movies. I know. no no ones in the posters anymore ridiculous stupid uh speaking of ridiculous bleeding verse an ai band with nearly a million monthly listeners has a new creative deal with a company called halwood media the product of neil jacobson who used to be an executive at geffen records uh we talked a little bit about this last week because i was talking about the zannie m monet ai generated person that has a real person behind them that actually theoretically wrote the lyrics, but then used AI for music and the singing.

35:37But they're all getting deals. It's the same company. And then there's another artist in quotes called I'm Oliver. He's not actually an Oliver. I'm a liver. That's what I heard that is. I'm a liver. There's a pre-safe campaign for an upcoming song entitled Bury Me With My Phone. I'm sure that's going to be awesome. It is also a product of generative AI program Suno, which lest we forget is being pseudo by the major labels. So we'll see what happens, but there's definitely one guy in a company out there willing to start signing up all these things and push this crap out there. Yeah, you know, get ahead of it while you can.

36:16Well, some AI shit that nobody wants. Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Robin Williams, is asking people to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father. In a blunt Instagram post, she said, please just stop sending me AI videos of dad. It's dumb. It's a waste of time and it's not what he'd want. Well, she's now a filmmaker and has long criticized attempt to digitally recreate her father's voice or likeness. She says these AI, quote, resurrections turn real human legacies into over-processed hot dogs of recycled content, comparing the phenomenon to grotesque human centipede films. Yeah, that's true.

36:51Yeah, it's not cool. Stop it. Leave her alone. Maybe, you know, dial up those copyright infringement dials and then we wouldn't be getting those. would we? Because I'm sure he didn't, the state is obviously not given the right to use Robin Williams in these things. Ups and doodads. OpenAI and Johnny Ive could still have some serious loose ends to tie up before releasing their not very highly anticipated AI device. I'm not sure why the article says highly anticipated. Who's anticipating this? They are. They are. Yeah. According to the Financial Times report, the partnership is still struggling with some technical issues that could ultimately end up pushing back the device's release date, which is expected to be sometime in 2026.

37:36One of those lingering dilemmas involves figuring out the AI's assistant's voice and mannerisms. The AI device is meant to be a friend who's a computer and who isn't your weird AI girlfriend. Okay. So beyond landing on a personality and having to probably pay for it, OpenAI and Ive are still figuring out potential privacy concerns stemming from a device that's always listening. Yeah, that's a pickle, isn't it, guys? Yeah, no shit. On top of that, the budget could reportedly be a challenge due to increased computing power necessary to run these mass-produced AI devices. Outside of these latest struggles, we still know very little about the upcoming product, probably because they keep running into all those roadblocks.

38:16Like, what are we going to make, dude? I don't know. Does anybody want it? Not really. What about privacy? Fuck them. Yeah. Copyright? There are still plenty of questions about what OpenAI's first hardware project will amount to, but the company could be exercising more caution since similar devices like the Humane AI pin crashed and fucking burned. Yep. There's a couple other ones out there that are just having the same exact problems. Like, nobody wants it. Nobody wants this. Nope. But something that people do want is CarPlay. Rivian CEO RJ Skarange is doubling down on the company's controversial decision not to support Apple CarPlay.

38:54In a new interview on the Decoder podcast, Skarange said Rivian's goal is to create, quote, a seamless digital experience, end quote, without forcing drivers to switch between Apple's interface and Rivian's own. You know what's a seamless digital experience in my car, Jason? CarPlay. When CarPlay turns on automatically and just goes. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. He argued that the decision is all about the future of AI. Skarin said Rivian's in-car software, already supporting services like YouTube, Apple Music, and Google Maps, will soon use artificial intelligence to connect apps, predict driver preferences, and make real-time decisions based on the vehicle's state and conditions.

39:32Like, oh, there's an in-and-out and it's open, let's pull in. No, thank you. In his words, understanding everything from driving history to weather outside will allow Rivian to deliver a richer, better experience. No, it won't. And CarPlay already does that. He insists that in time, customers will come to appreciate the choice to skip CarPlay. No, they won't. Well, unless they have an Android phone. But Skarange added that Rivian still has a great relationship with Apple, teasing upcoming integrations like digital car key support and messaging features. Just turn on the fucking CarPlay. You can still have your little Rivian shit that nobody wants.

40:12Because, you know, car companies are so well known for great user interfaces. But they're going to be different because AI, Jason. Because of AI. Yeah, that's what I want. I want you, like, following every bit of my driving. No thank you. Yet more AI going into places we don't actually want it. Spotify is partnering with OpenAI's large language model, ChatGPT, to suggest even more personalized music and podcast recommendations. Recommend us, please. Yes, please. Although I'll do a shit on you. As of October 6th, Spotify Premium and Free Users will be able to link their accounts to ChatGPT, allowing the AI chatbot to assist in finding new artists, songs, playlists, albums, or podcast episodes.

40:54Some of the prompt examples that Spotify highlighted in its press release include, Make a playlist with some Latin artists that are on my heavy rotation. And are there any podcasts you'd recommend if I want to go deeper into science and innovation? Okay. Addressing potential concerns from artists and creators, Spotify has clarified that no audio or video content will be shared with OpenAI for training purposes. That's bullshit. They have it already. The feature is also entirely optional, so good on you there, requiring users to opt in and allowing them to disconnect at any time. It's a fucking miracle.

41:26Well, this is one of those things where you actually have to go into ChatGPT. There's a new panel. Yeah, there's a new panel for apps and connections. And you can go there and they've got a bunch of different connections right now. And oh, there's Spotify. Yep, I can connect to Spotify. Maybe I'll just fuck around with that later because I really don't care because I barely use Spotify. Let's see what it does. Okay. Yeah. Review coming next week. Amazon has announced two new Echo Show devices during its fall hardware event. Now, as listeners know, I have a bunch of Echoes around the house. I basically just use them as a music player and video call for my mom.

42:02Kitchen timer? Oh, you don't need a kitchen timer anymore because you have the Apple Watch. Yeah, sometimes I do it just because it's easy. So a timer, that's about it, really. But from the stage, Amazon execs repeatedly use the phrase blend into the background. Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay told a personal story recounting how Alexa Plus was able to shift the balance at his dinner table, supplying his family with facts to settle their mealtime debates. No phones required. He praised the fact that Alexa Plus can help without distracting you or taking away from what's most important. Okay. Then I read this fantastic article.

42:34You probably should have reached out to Amy Skorheim, who wrote it, because she would make a good guest host on our show. And she shits all over it. Okay. Because what happens now is ads, ads, and ads. So if the folks at Amazon really believe Alexa-enabled tech should fade into the background, they may agree that while I'm in my kitchen slicing an apple for my kid and I glance up at my Echo Show cycling through family photos, it's really fucking distracting when the shot of the forested field just outside my old house is replaced by a full-blown advertisement for DeWalt Grillbits. My Echo Show does not fade into the background.

43:08It sticks ads in my face. I don't remember it always being this way. I can recall a time maybe a year or so ago when my Echo Show 15 happily cycled through photos with no billboard pop-ups. An Amazon rep I spoke with assured me that we've always been fucking with you. Yeah. Do you get them? Do you get ads on yours? I don't, but I don't use photo carousels. I meticulously go in and turn off all the stuff on the main screen. And again, all I really do is play music or make video calls or set timers. but apparently people on reddit and amazon's help pages are flooding it as of one or two years ago saying that there's just ads constantly and that's not what you pay for and that's not what you want sitting there for your entire family when you're there and if i find that this is starting to happen these things are going to go away and i'll figure out something else yeah i i tell you it's it's gotten really bad when i turn on i told you well you know i've got the fire tv when i turn it on it's just ads yeah it's like it's just a giant screen of fucking ads this whole thing i mean we're just they just they start small and it just starts to fucking spiral and it's ridiculous if you're paying for a fucking product you shouldn't be getting ads with it if you're paying for a streaming service you shouldn't be getting fucking ads with it offer free fine you want to give me an echo show at half price like they do with the kindle okay i'll take it and then I'll take the ads.

44:33But if I'm paying full freight for your fucking device, you better not be shoving me ads. Yep. More about that in the next segment at the library. Well, Apple is in hot water again over Siri in France. Prosecutors in Paris have opened a cybercrime investigation into how Apple captured and reviewed users' voice recordings to improve Siri's accuracy. The probe stems from a complaint by L 'Uglie de Trois-les-les-les-les-hommes, a French human rights group over revelations dating back to 2019. That's when a Guardian report exposed that Apple had hired third-party contractors to listen to snippets of Siri interactions without users' knowledge.

45:12Those recordings sometimes included sensitive moments from confidential medical discussions to, well, private encounters. That's what we call filching. After the backlash, Apple suspended the program, then relaunched it as an explicit opt-in, meaning Siri recordings aren't analyzed unless users consent. So the company also settled a class action lawsuit over the practice. Still, France's office for combating cybercrime, easier to say than the force of the do, much easier, is now reviewing whether the earlier data collection violated privacy or surveillance laws. Apple hasn't commented, of course.

45:51so they had to throw out like this massive data set because it was just a bunch of mimes

45:59i don't know why i always associate mimes with france i just do yeah well marcel marceau yeah yeah uh i found we got shit from that whole fucking set man all i hear is some wind oh he's in a box oh uh last night i was i was looking around for i got on some old kick about quake 3 arena because i was talking to a friend about it oh man and uh i love playing that with you guys that was fun yeah yeah there's a there's a port out called io quake 3 which is a free and open source software first person shooter engine based on the quake 3 arena and quake 3 team arena source code so what they did was id a long time ago open sourced the engine so these guys went and said okay well we can make the app just fine the problem is you still have to own the game to play it so you take our app and you drop it in the folder with all the maps and all of the the configs and stuff like that and it works problem right now is it's hard for me to find a copy of io or of quake 3 arena that I can buy while I'm on a Mac.

47:08Everything is fucking PC based and it's 15 bucks. The actual GOG, GOG.com people, you can buy it there. You can buy it at Steam, but it's PC based and I'm having a problem. I'm sorry. We're the actual GOG people. Yeah, I know. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys. So hopefully I'll be able to get a copy of it. I found an old torrent, but it wasn't new enough. They're like, well, you need the latest and greatest. 1.3.2 or some shit like that. So, well, I'm sure it'll pop up on our discord after people hear this episode. Yeah, man, my our our fans are the master torrenters. I bowed out. I thought I was good.

47:47I know podcast has better criminal friends. Oh, my God. We are the bestest. We are the fucking bestest. I do have like five PCs. I got those little like puck PCs. Yeah. Remember back when I was mining Chia? Yes. I bought two of those little puck PCs. They've got Windows 11 on them or Windows 10. I should fire one of those up and buy it. That might be the easiest way to do it. Because I really want to play Quake 3 Arena again. Because there's actually a lot of people that have servers out there that still play. Amazing. I love that game. Well, Rocket Arena was my jam. So hopefully some people have ported Rocket Arena and I'll be able to play that.

48:25I hated that one because as soon as I stepped in, your regs just blew the shit out of me. You never played Rocket Arena. No, you just played, yeah, it was regular Quake 3 Arena. We blew this shit out of you. Yeah, I sucked.

48:46At the library. Well, Jason, I think it was a week or two ago you reached out to me asking me if I had read a particular First Contact book by Peter Cowderan called Dark Beauty. and interestingly enough and fortuitously i had downloaded it just the week prior to try to read it uh this is uh well as let's backtrack a little bit the the first contact series by peter cowdron has been pretty phenomenal it's a lot of hits a couple of me and i think there was one miss so far this was the other miss okay uh it's a tribute to kurt vonnegut's slaughterhouse five it's been written in his style with anecdotes from his life like in his classic work and incorporates actual events into a fictional setting it actually kind of started apparently i read up a little bit further about it he'd started as almost a rewrite of a slaughterhouse five and therein lies the rub and the problem i love kurt vonnegut i don't want an imitation i don't want a i don't i don't want a tribute i don't want anything i want vonnegut all this book made me do was want to read slaughterhouse five i got like 20 pages into it and went nope i'm out so yeah same same here The thing is, I'm not a fan.

49:59I love Kurt Vonnegut, but I'm not a fan of Slaughterhouse-Five. Yeah, it's not one of his best works. It's an entry book. It's an entry book. I get it. I get why a lot of people start with Slaughterhouse-Five, but I have everything by Kurt Vonnegut. I've read them multiple times in my life. Everything else is so much better. Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Well, to hearken back to our conversation about the Amazon Alexa in the previous segment, I started listening to InShittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow. I bought the audio book on his Kickstarter.

50:34And thank God, thank God it wasn't read by Will fucking Wheaton. Cory reads this one himself, which is perfect. Will Wheaton, the InShittifier of the audio book world. Yes, he has InShittified my Audible stream. So, yeah, it breaks down exactly. You were asking questions about why they do this. Read the book. It tells you exactly why they do it. And it's a beautiful book. I have nothing bad to say about InShittification. Well, InShittification, the book. InShittification in general sucks, but it's happening everywhere. Well, since you have nothing bad to say about it, let me. Okay. I have not listened to or read in shitification yet, but I will shit on Cory Doctorow.

51:17What I can't stand about Cory Doctorow, and it's not technically his fault, but it's why I have a hard time reading his stuff, is yes, he gets everything right about what's wrong. He points it out meticulously, he breaks it down, and he provides solutions that will never, ever, ever happen. Kind of like we do. Yeah, pretty much. What's your point? Are you just jealous? I guess so. No, I mean, Corey's nonfiction I love. Corey's fiction just bugs me because it just gets a little off the rails and too deep into the nerdy stuff. I am loving his new series, though. I forget the guy's name. But he's working on this trilogy that the first one was fantastic.

52:00The second one was okay. And I'm waiting for the final of the trilogy. But they're actually pretty good. He kind of tones back his nerdiness. The second one, he kind of goes a little over-indexes on it, but the picks and shovels one, he over-indexes on nerd shit like way too much. But this book is exactly on point. The simple way to fix my issue with Cory Doctorow is if they just rewrite the promo a little bit. Because right now, it's like for all of his books, it's very similar. But for the unshittification, it's not just you. The internet sucks now. Here's why. And here's how we can de-unshittify it.

52:34Now, he just needs to add something at the very end of that, but it'll never happen. Yeah. And then I'm totally OK. Yeah. It's basically what it breaks down to is regulation and what competition and getting rid of monopolies, you know. Bring back bring back good old competition and it will it will kind of fix that. But monopolies are ruining everything. Mm-hmm. Closing shout-outs! Well, we're going to cut this one short, Brian, so you can get on your plane and go shove a bagel up your, shove a baguette up your ass and do whatever you're going to do over there. It's not a bagel. I'm not going to New York City.

53:15New York City? New York City. Over at Patreon, we've got a new patron, SVS. Thank you, SVS. And Martin upped his pledge, and thank you very much for that. And we've got Cal, Ray, Martin, Derek, Colin, Jeremy, Ernesto, Kevin, Meda, and Aaron from the continuing to patronize our patronage Patreon. Wow. List. Fuck it early. It's Thursday. I'm not supposed to be doing this on Thursday. Shut up. All right. One day. All right. Over at PayPal, we got Florian and Ralph. Thank you. Yeah. And we got nobody from the tip jar because we're a day off and I think they all ping. A lot of stuff usually comes in Thursday nights.

53:58Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. So next week we'll be loaded up on the tip jar. No merch. We're still working on that. They actually discontinued some of the stuff and finally sent me an email this week saying, Hey, a lot of the stuff you have on your store was discontinued because we can't ship it from there anymore. So you might want to go fix that. I'm like, thanks for telling me. Thanks for the heads up. biggest shopping cart store front in the world well that that's not that's it's printful the the print on demand provider not that not shopify okay um shopify has just got it stuck in there because they didn't tell shopify either shopify still got it so i gotta go fix some stuff but i got a couple new designs that are going to come out next week too that are going to be pretty fun awesome and no reviews what the hell and nobody died this is what happens when we record on thursday all the good shit happens like later today Yeah, but you know what?

54:51Not by going to be dying. You get Friday to yourself. Hey, but Diddy got four years, so we missed that last week. So that was good. Good. Yay. And Dolly Parton's alive, even though our sister scared the shit out of the entire world. I missed that. Thank God. Yeah. Now, so I think, you know, we have the app that was pulled from the store to where to find ICE agents. Maybe they can go rewrite it now to find the Epstein files. Good luck.

55:20I know where the Epstein files are. They're on fucking Mars with Elon. I wish. I wish. Okay. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 717. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans.

55:55Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And Vinny, sorry, man. We've tried to get through your 15 emails this week, and it was a really good one, but there were so many to go through, I forgot about the one that was really good that I wanted to post about Korea. But sorry, man. Keep them coming. Oh, he will. Yeah. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the show. Oh, and guess what? We've got GOG merch. Snap your grumpy gear. We're working on it. We'll fix this shit eventually. We're not the global supply chain.

56:29It's not our fucking fault. Fucking tariffs. I got a shirt coming from Italy right now. It's taking three weeks. I don't know if I'm ever going to get it. But hey. Our new shirt design should be, I finally got my shirt. Fucking tariffs. Yep. Well, you can go to shop.gog.show and try your luck. Stay grumpy.

From the publisher

The Dutch courts finally did something useful: they told Meta to quit force-feeding algorithmic slop to everyone, so Facebook and Instagram users might actually see posts from friends again—if they can remember who those are. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sora 2 rollout is the kind of chaos that makes you wonder if the company replaced QA with a TikTok filter, as outrage videos flood the internet faster than you can say “deepfake meltdown.” Apple banned ICEBlock for being too effective while ICE now wants its own social media surveillance tool—one that OpenAI shut down when Chinese accounts tried to build it. California’s hammering Tesla for its abysmal insurance claims handling, OpenAI is gobbling up chunks of AMD, and consultants got caught using ChatGPT to fake reports before proudly partnering with Anthropic, who just landed Deloitte as its latest “enterprise AI” victim. Elsewhere in this circus: a Florida teen asked ChatGPT how to kill his friend, Taylor Swift fans are furious her new promo video used AI slop (“too rich to be this cheap”), and Apple’s “Find My” led cops to a mountain of smuggled iPhones.

In Media Candy, Brian’s stunned The Diplomat scored a third season, The Long Walk is being pitched as Stand By Me meets Squid Game, California finally bans loud streaming commercials, and Amazon censored Bond posters to remove guns because apparently irony is dead. AI “musicians” are signing record deals while Zelda Williams begs people to stop resurrecting her dad with deepfake garbage. In Apps & Doodads, Jony Ive’s OpenAI gadget is delayed (good), Rivian insists we’ll “appreciate” not having CarPlay (we won’t), Spotify and ChatGPT are teaming up to read your soul through playlists, and Jason warns everyone that the Echo Show is basically an ad-spewing parasite. Apple’s now facing a cybercrime probe in France for Siri’s wiretapping habits, and if you’re nostalgic for simpler times, ioquake3 will let you relive Quake III Arena glory on a modern rig. At the Library, Peter Cawdron’s Dark Beauty: First Contact belly-flops as a Slaughterhouse-Five tribute, while Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification nails exactly why everything sucks—even if his fixes are pure science fiction.

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