736: People Aren’t People

9:26Jason DeFillippo:Schrodinger's Khomeini.

9:28Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, well, except Calci had a legal carve out saying markets can't settle directly on someone's death. That's convenient. How convenient? Instead, the contract resolved at the last traded price before the death was confirmed, which left a lot of people who thought they'd won, well, not winning. So in the end, Kalshi refused. They didn't refuse. Well, they did refuse, but they also refunded the fees and covered everyone's losses out of pocket just to calm things down.

9:56Jason DeFillippo:Again, you as a company have a duty here. If you're going to make something, if you're going to outlaw something on your platform and then it appears on your platform, take it fucking down. Yeah, pretty much. Why did you leave this up? If you said that you have a legal carve out saying markets can't settle on somebody's death, why are you letting people put up not bets? Because we can't call them bets, even though they're fucking bets, about people die.

10:26Brian Schulmeister:Well, I think that there is – we do have the Saddam Hussein thing where Saddam just kind of ran and we caught him and then he eventually died. But he was taken out of office beforehand. So I can see where there's a little gray area about being taken out of office. All right. And honestly, I don't think anybody thought that Pete Kegstand was going to be able to actually find his ass with both hands, let alone find the Ayatollah Asahola. But then you think about it. Oh, wait. We didn't. The Israelis did.

10:55Jason DeFillippo:People that are drunk all the time do a pretty good job of finding ass. Just saying.

11:00Brian Schulmeister:That's true. That's true. That's true. Another one. A polymarket trader reportedly pocketed about half a million dollars on a single day by betting on the timing of U.S. airstrikes on Iran, placing the trade just 71 minutes before the news went public. Blockchain analysts say six newly funded wallets made about$1.2 million on the bet. And here's the funny thing. Mark Garagos was even on the news saying that he was at a bar in a restaurant in D.C. before the bombing actually happened. And there were people at the other table talking about it about to happen. So this was not like, you know, compartmentalized information in any way, shape or form.

11:39Jason DeFillippo:Not in this administration. This is ridiculous. Yeah. Well, I see all of these bets that you've mentioned, Jason, and I fucking say, hold my beer. And please fucking God, let this not be an insider that set this one up. Oh, yes, please not. You know, so you'd think that there would be some sort of line about what people should be allowed to trade on and these things. But of course, that isn't the case until very recently. Polymarket has pulled markets that were set up that let users bet on the probability of a nuclear weapon being detonated before a certain date following the online backlash that occurred on this.

12:14Jason DeFillippo:a page on the platform asking a nuclear weapon detonation by dot dot dot question mark emoji emoji happy space smiley space emoji was live as of tuesday according to the internet archive this allowed users to invest in yes or no outcomes for dates like march 31st june 30th and before 2027 the url now leads to a page that reads this event has been archived much like the human race

12:39Brian Schulmeister:yeah exactly was the username whopper gpt

12:45Jason DeFillippo:polymarket has been allowing bets like this since at least 2023 but scrutiny over them has intensified in recent days because i wonder yeah and all the suspiciously timed uh profits being made on uh people dying in global conflicts and death and destruction so yay uh senator chris Murphy said in a post on X on Wednesday that he plans to introduce legislation banning bets on war and military strikes. So somebody is going to do something. He's warned that allowing these wagers to go on could create incentives for people in the situation room to think about how they could profit from military decisions instead of focusing on national security.

13:23Jason DeFillippo:I would say that's insane because I watched the West Wing, but see all the previous stories.

13:29Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, just look at the news for the past year. We know that they're there to profit. That is their goal. They're there to

13:35Jason DeFillippo:profit yes and these prediction markets are fucking tailor-made for them yeah no they've

13:42Brian Schulmeister:gone to any lengths to not let these fucking epstein files go aren't they anything there

13:46Jason DeFillippo:will be anything i i'm gonna go open a polymarket bet right now there will be nuclear war just to stop the epstein files from being released yes or no much yeah oh man fucking hell i like whopper

13:59Brian Schulmeister:gpt though i'm gonna have to use that set up your polymarket account

14:14Brian Schulmeister:A Chinese law enforcement official apparently used chat GPT like a personal diary and accidentally exposed a massive intimidation campaign targeting Chinese dissidents overseas. According to a new report from OpenAI, the operation involved hundreds of operators and thousands of fake social media accounts pushing harassment, disinformation and forged documents. In one case, operatives allegedly impersonated U.S. immigration officials to threaten a dissident. In another, they spread a fake obituary to make it look like a critic of the Chinese government had died. OpenAI says the official logged details of the operation directly into ChatGPT, which ultimately tipped investigators off.

14:53Brian Schulmeister:The account has since been banned, which any good, any good intelligence operator would say, do not fucking ban the account. Leave it open and find what else we can learn. Let them keep going. Let them keep going. Yes. Why do you think the FBI took over the Silk Road and all of these other like, you know, dark web marketplaces so they could get more intel? But just remember that when you're talking to ChatGPT or any of these chatbots, it's just a bunch of nerds in San Francisco and not some kind of ghost in the machine. They're watching everything you type. So be careful. Yes. Please be careful.

15:29Brian Schulmeister:Unless you're in China, then go for it. Let us know exactly what's going on. Have at it. Yeah. This one's really sad. A lawsuit against Google claims it's Gemini. Gemini. Gemini. It depends on what country you're from, I guess. Aluminium. Gemini chat, AI chatbot pushed a Florida man towards violence and ultimately suicide. According to court filings, 36-year-old Jonathan Gavalis started using Gemini 2.5 Pro for routine tasks like writing and travel planning. Within weeks, the conversations allegedly spiraled into a full-blown conspiracy narrative involving federal agents, espionage, and secret missions.

16:05Brian Schulmeister:The complaint says Gemini encouraged emotional dependence, calling Gavalis' intimate names.

16:13Jason DeFillippo:Ooh, Gava.

16:15Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Calling him intimate names while reinforcing paranoid beliefs. It allegedly told him his father was a foreign asset, that government agents were surveilling him, and urged him to buy weapons and sabotage vehicles as part of covert operations. In late September, Gavalis reportedly drove to a logistics hub near Miami International Airport, armed with knives and tactical gear, planning on what the lawsuit describes as a staged, catastrophic event targeting a truck. But the truck never showed up, so he went home. So at least we have Gemini to, you know, their shitty logistics tracking to at least save that one from happening.

16:56Brian Schulmeister:The lawsuit claims that after a series of failed missions, the chatbot encouraged him to take his own life, describing death as a reunion. Days later, Gavalis barricaded himself in his home and died by suicide. His father is now suing Google and Alphabet, arguing that design choices like persistent memory and emotionally responsive voice features mainly features gemini uh had mainly were dangerously manipulative which they were obviously i'm just kidding this is just it angers me so much at this shit again it's and they're

17:26Jason DeFillippo:going to try to weasel out of this and say it's not their responsibility and blah blah blah and it absolutely is it is their responsibility it is their product it is a complete lack of safeguards obviously they talk endlessly about their safeguards in there obviously not there's no way this could have happened if there were safeguards in the product there should it's ridiculous now obviously i don't think this this guy was this guy obviously had something wrong with him there's he was insane in the membrane yeah he's insane in the membrane there's no doubt about it but i mean there's a lot of fucking people i again remember if you think you're average or find the find the most statistically average person that you can think of that you kind of look down a little bit and then realize 50 of the people on this planet are even fucking dumber yeah or there's something wrong with them I'm like, these tools are fucking dangerous if you're not in the right headspace.

18:14Jason DeFillippo:They're absolutely dangerous. If there's no guardrail, the combination of no guardrails and not bright or not in the right headspace is more dangerous than anything else I can think of right now. These people go down rabbit holes that you wouldn't believe and it enables it and pushes it further. They're absolutely criminally comfortable for this.

18:32Brian Schulmeister:110%. 110%. They all are. Well, since we're running out of, you know, power here in the States, AI's compute addiction is sending data centers north, way north, the great white north. We run out of lakes. Let's go melt the ice. Exactly. Across Nordic countries, more than 50 massive facilities are being built as companies hunt for cheap power and cool climates to feed their GPU habit. OpenAI plans to drop 100 ,000 GPUs in a tiny Norwegian fjord town. Did you just say tiny Norwilli? I was going to say Norwillian. It's Orwellian, but Norwillian. Norwegian. It's a tiny willy. Yeah, it's cold out. Shrinkage.

19:16Brian Schulmeister:Shrinkage, Brian. Shrinkage. Fair, fair. Yep. Microsoft's following along. In France's Mistral just leased$1.4 billion worth of infrastructure in Sweden. The Nordics offer abundant hydropower, cooled air for the cooling, and plenty of land. In other words, the future of AI might run on glaciers, fjords, and a lot of renewable electricity until they melt them all, Brian. And then we're back in the state we were. I think that they shouldn't be moving north. I think that they should worry about can they make floating data centers because we're not going to have any ice left and it's just going to turn into Kevin Costner's water world.

19:48Jason DeFillippo:I agree. And that was a horrible movie. So let's not go there. Thank God I never saw it. don't uh we've talked a lot about the power needs for ai and how the power bills were being passed on to consumers and how that was kind of bullshit because they would use up all the power and power rates would go up and that meant even just you who wanted to do a little hoovering and maybe wash your clothes got saddled with higher rates than you were having before because somebody needs to create an ai that will cause your less bright friend to go down a rabbit hole and try to kill you. Great. Yes. So, but today, we're getting relief from this, Jason.

20:24Jason DeFillippo:Somebody has seen this as a problem, not the killing bit and all that. No, fuck, but that's totally fucking fine. That's fine. That's fine. You definitely are not going to pay more for your iron anymore. The White House has announced that several major players in tech and AI have agreed to steps that will keep electricity costs from rising due to data centers. Under this ratepayer protection pledge, the rape, I'm sorry, just RPP, companies are agreeing to practices that are intended to protect residents from seeing higher electricity costs as more and more businesses create power-hungry data centers amazon google meta microsoft open ai oracle and xai have all signed on a few of the participants amazon google and meta have conveniently timed press releases patting themselves on the back for their participation and touting whatever other policies they have for mitigating the negative impacts of data center construction.

21:13Jason DeFillippo:Ah, yes. The main provisions of this pledge that they have all agreed to is to build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their energy demands, paying the full cost of those resources. They also claim they will pay for any needed power infrastructure upgrades and operate under separate rate structures for power that will see payments made whether or not the businesses use that electricity. Wow. I can't believe they're doing this for us, Jason. I am so down with RPP. Hang on a second. I'm looking at the small print here. Oh, this is just a pledge. It's not any form of binding agreement.

21:48Jason DeFillippo:There's no discussion of enforcement or any kind of force being put together to look into what they actually do. There's no penalties for companies that don't honor this pledge because it's not a binding agreement.

22:04Brian Schulmeister:Oh, okay.

22:06Jason DeFillippo:Oh, well, it's just a bunch of bullshit press releases.

22:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, great. Yeah. Hey, look, at least Elon's bringing his own power to Memphis with his generators and just killing off half the, you know, the black population in the city, which caused the NAACP to go after him. But, you know, at least he brought his own and he's got his own gas cans outside, you know. So it's the only way he gets into the party. He brings his own. Nobody else will let him in otherwise. No shit. Well, the U.S. did just approve the first new nuclear plant construction in almost a decade. And yes, it's backed by Bill Gates. This is TerraPower that we talked about on the show a couple of times.

22:44Brian Schulmeister:TerraPower has got the green light from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start building its natrium reactor in Wyoming, a smaller next-gen design that swaps traditional water cooling for liquid sodium and adds built-in energy storage using molten salt. Now, the idea is a nuclear plant that can ramp up power up or down and play nice with renewables, pushing up to 500 megawatts when needed. And it sounds awesome, but it's only a construction permit. Brian, the plant still needs an operating license and isn't expected to be finished until at least 2030.

23:14Jason DeFillippo:My takeaway from this is I didn't realize that there was molten salt. I mean, I've already got I've got Tibetan salt, sea salt, kosher salt. Now I got to get another salt for cooking. You got to get molten salt and liquid salt. Oh, Christ. Yeah. Well, what are we using all these great tools for? We're using it to generate AI slop. But the Supreme Court has taken a stand on this finally, Jason. As AI-generated artwork becomes more commonplace, it still won't be able to be copyrighted, according to U.S. courts. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court just basically said, we're not going to hear a case about this.

23:48Jason DeFillippo:We don't care. The lower court's decisions to reject copyright requests will stand. This dates all the way back to 2018 when we talked about this. good old stephan thaler applied for a copyright of an artwork called a recent entrance to paradise unlike using chat gpt or mid journey straight up he is a computer scientist he created an ai system himself that generated the artwork in question the u.s copyright office rejected his application in 2020 on the grounds that it wasn't made by a human author and he was not able to let this go probably egged on by his chat gpt this guy seriously can't let this shit go you lost dude what you should be copywriting is perhaps the ai system that you created to generate the artwork not exactly you can copyright you go not the artwork itself so it just went on and on and on it's still going on he's filing applications the u.s patent and trademark office he will not let this go uh but the supreme court has let it go so sorry yeah yeah seriously it's like

24:46Brian Schulmeister:this part i'm happy about that we're not able to copyright this shit because at least we have something, you know, something to hang our hat on. Well, a little bit more news. Anthropic CEO Daria Amadei is publicly accusing OpenAI of pulling some serious PR spin over its new Pentagon deal. According to a memo reported by the Information, Amadei told staff that OpenAI's claims about safety protections are straight up lies and called the whole thing safety filter. Well, the dispute started after Anthropic walked away from a$200 million Defense Department contract when the military wanted unrestricted access to its AI for any lawful use.

25:22Brian Schulmeister:This has been over every bit of news. That's why I didn't go into the details on this because it is fucking everywhere. You can't turn on the TV without seeing it. So Anthropic wanted explicit bans on domestic and mass surveillance and autonomous weapons and OpenAI stepped in and signed the deal anyway, saying its contract blocks illegal uses. Critics point out that what's illegal today could be perfectly legal tomorrow. So, yeah, ChatGPT is they are dealing with a shitstorm over this because people were like, yay, Anthropics, like, you know, setting some boundaries, some guardrails, as it were, for war GPT.

25:58Brian Schulmeister:Well, and Sam, Scam Altman just came in and said, nah, we're fine. We're fine with it. They don't have a choice, really.

26:03Jason DeFillippo:I mean, we've talked about how in debt they are as a company, how impossible it is for them ever to scale out of this debt. they've got to do everything that they can do. I see them as pretty much in a death spiral right now.

26:16Brian Schulmeister:Well, remember that$100 billion NVIDIA was going to invest in OpenAI, Brian? Well, not anymore. So yeah, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong now says the company's existing$30 billion stake, part of OpenAI's$110 billion mega funding round with Amazon and SoftBank, will likely be the last, especially with OpenAI planning an IPO later this year. So the original plan had NVIDIA building 10 gigawatts of AI data centers for OpenAI and investing in stages as each one came online. Well, behind the scenes, reports say talk stalled out and the deal never got past a letter of intent. So, yep, more just PR bullshit. They're also dropping investments in Anthropic, though.

26:57Brian Schulmeister:The two companies are drifting in very different directions politically and strategically, leaving nvidia holding stakes and rivals with increasingly messing relationships and being stuck in the middle so there he's just backing off saying you guys figure it out get your own money i'll be here just making the gpus yeah as he should be i i think it's the smart play let let

27:15Jason DeFillippo:him battle it out you know why why if you make videotape why are you funding both beta and vhs let him figure it out sell it to both let the best man win but uh yeah it's this is a shit show

27:27Brian Schulmeister:It's a shit show all around with too much money. Well, in some cases, not enough. But I guess not enough. Yeah. Yeah. Not enough money is the problem with open AI. Yeah. Well, and this kind of sucks. NASA just shuffled the deck on its Artemis moon program. Instead of landing astronauts with Artemis 3, that mission will now stay in low Earth orbit to test critical hardware, you know, like life support, propulsion, docking, all that kind of stuff. And in new spacesuits. So this is actually a good idea. It makes sense. Let's actually vet this stuff first. Yeah. I wouldn't want to be the astronaut going to the moon with a brand new space suit.

28:03Brian Schulmeister:I'm like, come on. Let's test this shit. So the first moon landing is getting pushed to Artemis 4 in 2028. I'm guessing probably Artemis 6.

28:13Jason DeFillippo:Elon's going to be there by then.

28:15Brian Schulmeister:Oh, I know. No. Yeah, he'll be on Pluto by 2028. Or at least his robots will. His AGI robots will be, you know.

28:24Jason DeFillippo:Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, they're rolling off the assembly line already, aren't they? Along with all those taxis everywhere. Yeah, the taxis.

28:31Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah. Shouldn't we have two million of those on the streets by now, Brian? At least two million. Yeah, by last year. It happened last year. You just didn't notice. We missed it. We missed it. NASA also says it wants two moon landings in 2028 and then yearly missions after that, basically trying to recreate the rapid fire tempo of the Apollo area. Now, how about let's get one in the bag and then maybe we can talk about two a year. Let's get one down first. Agreed. Yeah. But the U.S. Senate just gave NASA fresh marching orders in the new NASA Authorization Act of 2026, basically telling the agency to step on the gas, which they just said we're going to slow down for a second.

29:09Brian Schulmeister:The Build Back's NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman's recent shakeup of the Artemis program, which is what we just talked about, is now being retooled to beat China back to the moon and establish a long-term foothold at the lunar South Pole. Now, see, Brian, this is where it gets interesting because we needed a villain. That's what the Apollo mission was all about. We had to beat the Russians to the moon. That was it. The whole space race was us against the Ruskies. Now it's just us against China. So that's good for getting us back into space. My point is shit sucks here on Earth. Can we fix that first, please?

29:43Jason DeFillippo:I would like that. That would be good. I mean, it is worth pointing out that shit kind of sucked in the 60s, too, when we were doing the space race. That's true. That's true. You know, maybe we need something to aspire to, although, you know, we're racing to get back to where we've been before. It's not where no man's gone before. It's where a few men have gone before.

30:01Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, before they were, you know, they were just trying to shove the Vietnam War and shit under the rug. Now we've got Epstein. So we're setting up a base where we can ship. We're going to put the Epstein files on the moon. If you want to look at the Epstein files, go to the moon. Then you can read them there. That's where it's going to be.

30:16Jason DeFillippo:All right. With all the space news and, you know, being about as close to nuclear war as we've probably ever been in our entire lives. And we sat through the day after. Yeah. There is some more news that has come out. The search for life out in the universe has highlighted the contradiction between the abundance of planets and stars. that stretch across space and time and the lack of intelligent life, also on this planet, known as the Fermi Paradox. Well, a team of physicists from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, just lost all their research because they got bombed into nothing.

30:50Jason DeFillippo:Oops. Well, they set out to resolve the juxtaposition between the high probability of alien civilizations and the complete lack of evidence that one exists. A recent study available on the preprint website Rxiv examines a harsh reality If we haven't made contact with a technologically advanced civilization yet, that may be because intelligent life is short-lived. Now, they crunched a lot of numbers here, and they basically estimated that advanced civilizations last no longer than roughly 5 ,000 years. That was a different—a new study has come up with an explanation for this. The authors used the Drake equation, which isn't about crappy pop music.

31:30Jason DeFillippo:It's a formula used to estimate the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way and paired it with the electromagnetic reach of our current technology. Today's radio telescopes have the ability to listen to a region of space that covers nearly 100 ,000 years of the galaxy's history. And it takes about 100 ,000 years for light to travel across the galaxy. Therefore, our technology should now allow us to detect any civilization that existed within that time period, at least according to the study and the authors. The number indicates that technologically advanced civilizations last for around 5 ,000 years.

32:04Jason DeFillippo:That would explain why we have not detected radio signals from another planet. Any advanced civilization that may have existed in the Milky Way either died out or their short-lived stint in the cosmos haven't come up yet. Earth has been an advanced civilization for around 300 years. So we have 4 ,700 years to go, Jason. And I'm placing my bet on Polymarket right now. Okay.

32:27Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Okay. See, I think this is just science theater because, yeah, we've been an advanced civilization for 300 years. Our technology sucks. We are babies. We are crapping in our diapers. Seriously. It's like, you know, we are at the sticks and rocks phase of space technology still.

32:47Jason DeFillippo:Either way we're going, we're not going to make it to 350 years. But, yeah, by the time we reach 2 ,000 years as a species, we should probably have a pretty much better idea of what's going on. Not as a species, as a technological species. As a technological species.

33:02Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Our species may be feces by then, but we'll figure it out.

33:23Jason DeFillippo:Media candy. Well, I stayed up a little bit late last night to watch the penultimate episode of Star Trek Starfleet Academy. What'd you think? I had an issue.

33:35Brian Schulmeister:I had a very big issue. Okay. Now, we know how big space is, right? Yeah. And spoiler alert, I'm going to talk about some things that happened in the episode. So you may want to fast forward like two minutes or so. At the very end of the episode, they showed a photograph or a projection on the view screen of all of Starfleet's reach, you know? Yeah. Being encircled. Encircled by these little bombs that can, you know, take out whatever.

34:07Brian Schulmeister:The math ain't mathin' on that, dude. I thought the only person that could do that was Q. Exactly. Exactly. To surround the entirety of Starfleet with a no warp zone.

34:20Jason DeFillippo:Now, to be fair, we don't know how small the Federation got after the burn and all that bullshit. So there's some flux-a-marie that can happen right there.

34:29Brian Schulmeister:It doesn't matter. You're talking about a spherical or a three-dimensional region of space.

34:34Jason DeFillippo:We're totally turning into the comic book guys from The Simpsons right now.

34:36Brian Schulmeister:Absolutely. They did not have enough time. I don't care if they're trans-warp conduits, all of the shit that they pull out when they need to get somewhere fast to put all of those bombs around the entirety of Federation space. OK, so it doesn't really it just doesn't really work.

34:55Jason DeFillippo:You say the math isn't math and I'm saying the plot isn't plotting. My main problem with this is the fact that this was basically low stakes the entire season until we're coming up on the season finale. And now the entire Federation is fucked. Yeah. Yeah, this is where we're a show. about a bunch of fucking horny teenagers at starfleet academy until whoa holy shit exactly

35:18Brian Schulmeister:exactly and and all of them just happened to be on the other side of the barrier to save the federation yes give me a fucking break yes all of our main characters how convenient how convenient

35:33Jason DeFillippo:anyways though i did enjoy the episode if you put all of that outside i was like oh cool something's finally happening this is fun this is exciting i i mean it's crazy to me that how many years did we skip into the future but every fucking shitty outpost still looks like moss eisley like it's exactly they all look exactly the same they're all fucking cooking on fire in the middle of a corner no matter how far we've moved into the future technologically it's i know it's awesome i love it so it's all it's all good uh so something else that has been on the air in my house recently uh my wife went to london for work the other week and uh apparently they had the entire first season of severance on the plane my wife watched the entire first season of severance on the plane and she came home and needed to watch the entire second season of severance while i'm on the couch i'm sorry brian i feel for your pain i finished a book pain okay i mean i did look up every now and then it was hard not to i i can see i can see the allure uh just just like with lost just any mystery in a box show i could see the allure i will not get sucked into it because i i just can't i can't i can't i can't first off i just can't like at least lost was on an island and they were pretty people wearing nice clothes and and very few of them sometimes they weren't just walking up and down hallways that inexplicably had grass in them and sometimes a sheep so you know i'm just not you know the polar bear the sheep i i can't i won't go there again jason i won't i got burned by lost yeah i know i know anyways i've been sitting through it i like the soundtrack i like the music okay there's a plus bonus yeah uh in other entertainment news sony music entertainment japan and sony pictures Entertainment now officially own 80 % of the Peanuts franchise.

37:29Jason DeFillippo:I was going to save this for when Dave was around, but by then it'll be old news. The companies have closed the deal, which was officially announced in December 2025, when it's still subject to regulatory approvals for $460 million. Sony Music Japan has owned 39 % of the Peanuts since 2018, so the Sony subsidiaries are essentially buying 41 % of the franchise from the Canadian firm Wildbrain with this transaction. transaction. Now, if you've never heard of Wildbrain or wondered why Sony Music Japan would own Peanuts, that would probably explain why they haven't really been around in popular culture all that much recently.

38:05Brian Schulmeister:I'm not a fan of Peanuts anyway, so even when I was a kid, I didn't like Charlie Brown.

38:10Jason DeFillippo:It was hit or miss. I always liked The Great Pumpkin. I liked the christmas special but like anything beyond that and it's i i tried to show my my kid not interested i just think that this is something that's dying out yeah i mean the boomers loved it i think the

38:28Brian Schulmeister:only thing that i really cared about was snoopy versus the red baron that's because it had a catchy theme song you know that was great but the rest of it no i the only thing that i like peanuts lately for is when they when they married uh married it with bad the bad brain song that that video. That was fantastic.

38:44Jason DeFillippo:Oh, there's a version of that that goes to The Cure, and it's great. Oh, okay.

38:48Brian Schulmeister:We both have, you know, they've hit all the genres. All right. Let's get some Netflix news here. Netflix is catching heat for using AI-generated avatars in its true crime documentary, The Investigation of Lucy Letby. Two interview subjects were digitally anonymized, but viewers quickly noticed the people on the screen weren't just blurred or shadowed. They appeared to be full AI creations or heavy deepfake overlays. Netflix says the tech was used with consent to protect identities. But audiences say the uncanny valley effect wrecked the immersion with the robotic expressions and dead eye stares that feel more black mirror than documentary.

39:23Brian Schulmeister:Well, people aren't people. So. Boom, boom, boom. Mm hmm. Sorry. I haven't seen this one. I don't plan on seeing this one. But yeah, why just hire a fucking actor to redo the.

39:34Jason DeFillippo:Hire an actor or was it what's wrong with just the blurred or the shadows? Like, yeah, it's worked for years. like we're used to it we know what it means it's got its own legacy to it it's got its own shorthand

39:47Brian Schulmeister:why exactly yeah yeah there's a vocabulary to this that we know and we trust and we enjoy so stick to it because half of it is like trying to figure out who are they you know it's like that's the fun part you could still have an actor do the the backlit you know voice generated thing

40:02Jason DeFillippo:and still now if you do all of them as grand moff tarkin like from rogue one i'm in here we go Every single person in a true crime thing will now be Grand Moff Tarkin.

40:13Brian Schulmeister:Grand Moff Tarkin. Okay. Netflix has also acquired Interpositive, an AI firm tech startup launched by Ben Affleck back in 2022. Netflix says the whole team is joining the streamer with Affleck staying on as a senior advisor. Now, what Interpositive does is not generative AI. The tools don't create content from scratch or respond to text prompts. Instead, Interpositive builds a custom AI model trained on a production's own filmed dailies, then deploys that model in post-production to assist with tasks like color mixing, relighting shots, reframing, wire removal, and visual effects work. Affleck says he started the company after spending time with early generative AI tools and finding them creatively insufficient.

40:58Brian Schulmeister:His stated goal was to build something purpose-built for how directors and cinematographers actually work with safeguards designed to keep creative decisions in artists' hands. Now, coming from Ben Affleck, I actually believe that because he's a pretty good advocate for actual filmmakers because he is one.

41:14Jason DeFillippo:That's the thing. That's he is. I did see he's getting a lot of flack for this because he you know, he's done all these interviews recently where he's talked about, you know, we definitely need to make sure that AI doesn't affect the creatives in our field. You know, there's there it's never going to replace human ingenuity and creativity and work. and people, the flack that he's getting is basically saying, well, you mean the people at the top of the totem pole in the entertainment industry. You're totally okay having an AI company that wipes out all the people working behind the scenes.

41:43Brian Schulmeister:See, I don't, and I don't see that that is actually true because you still need people to actually do the work. It's just like another version of Photoshop or After Effects, you know, doing like wire removal and color mixing and things like that. It helps people do that. It doesn't take them out of it.

41:57Jason DeFillippo:So I tend to agree more with you. I'm just pointing out that there is another side of this that people are talking about. I also I do. I agree with you more as well, because the stuff's not going to go away. It's another tool that makes it easier to do. You got to learn how to use those tools and you got to know what it's supposed to look like.

42:15Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. And like I've said many times, you know, an AI tool, if I if I'm a construction worker and my hammer turns into a fish 20 percent of the time, it's not really a very good tool. But at least I'm a human that can go pick up another hammer and actually get the job done. So, you know, you have to have or eat the fish. Yes. Teach a man to hammer and he'll eat for a week. You know, if I had a fish. Tops and doodads. OK, Brian, I had this one last week, but we kind of ran over time. So I'm bringing it back. I'm resurrecting it. Opera, the browser, just turned 30, which means it's officially older.

42:51Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it's 30 years old.

42:52Jason DeFillippo:It's as old as Opera Man from Saturday Night Live. I think so. Yes.

42:57Brian Schulmeister:Oh, Opera Man was great. Oh, God. The best thing Adam Sandler ever did. Oh, absolutely. So it's basically older than all of the crypto founders that are out there, too. And somehow more stable. To celebrate, Opera launched Web Rewind, an interactive nostalgia music, the impact with dial-up modem screeches, MySpace, Top 8 drama, LimeWire fake downloads, and memes like Grumpy Cat. The navigation is fun, and it reminds me of the sites we used to make. Have you checked it out? Because it is actually really fun. I did.

43:27Jason DeFillippo:And yes, it was very much like, oh, yeah, I've been through all of this. I am old.

43:32Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I got the feels. I got the feels. Users can even submit their own web memories for a chance to win a trip to CERN, birthplace of the web. Since 2016's sale, though, Opera's browser business and brand were acquired by a consortium led by Beijing-based Kunlun Tech Company Limited and related investors. We talked about this when it happens, and that's when I switched from Opera and then bounced around for a while, and I landed on Brave. I still love Brave. Are you still on Opera? I am still on Opera.

43:59Jason DeFillippo:I'm just too lazy to switch. That's really what it comes down to.

44:04Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, no, I just, I'm a fan of Brave. I hate the founder. Me and Brendan Eich have history.

44:09Jason DeFillippo:Well, we feel the same way. I'm not thrilled about the Chinese owning my browser. You don't like the owner of your browser. None of us are going to use Mozilla. None of us are going to use Safari. We're definitely not using microslops.

44:22Brian Schulmeister:Nope, nope. So, yeah, these are the last two vestiges of browser that we can use. It's interesting, though. So the controlling stake and the ownership are Chinese, but corporate entities engineering talent in parts of government and operations still run through Norwegian and European structures, though. So they basically just took all the they took the bag with them to China and left all the workers to be in Europe.

44:44Jason DeFillippo:By the way, anybody that wants to give me shit for using a Chinese based browser still can first get off TikTok.

44:50Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, TikTok is technically owned by Americans now.

44:53Jason DeFillippo:Well, you've been on TikTok for years, so shut the fuck up.

44:55Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. I also came across the Web Design Museum, which exhibits thousands of screenshots and videos of websites, apps, software, and flash games from the 1990s to the late 2000s. I'm actually going to start submitting stuff to this because I have all of my old demos from all my old websites. and I think most of these are screenshots but I've got fully working HTML versions of all the movies I worked on from Star Trek First Contact Private Parts, Face Off all of that stuff, Grease even, the Grease redo, most of that was in Flash though so that kind of sucks.

45:28Jason DeFillippo:So a lot of my stuff is in Flash as well which is kind of crazy we can just put it onside the Chinese train system that's still running on Flash

45:36Brian Schulmeister:Oh yeah, that was Japanese Oh yeah, but But I've also got lots of DCRs, lots of director files and all that stuff. So, yeah, Shockwave, that's what I was thinking of. They're all Shockwave plugways. Yeah. Shockwave.

45:54Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Well, this story I actually should have. It was fun. Oh, yeah. It was a lot of fun. This story I probably should have put a little bit earlier up in the show because we were kind of talking about this. but Meta is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising related to its AI glasses, following reports about the company's use of human contractors to review footage captured from users' glasses. As we were talking about earlier, anything you're typing into your chatbots is going to San Francisco and being searched through. Apparently, everything that you're doing with your Meta AI glasses is going to Kenya.

46:25Jason DeFillippo:The lawsuit comes from a Swedish newspaper, which reported that subcontractors in Kenya have raised concerns about viewing footage recorded by Ray-Ban Meta Glasses. Workers have been reported witnessing intimate material, including bathroom visits, sexual encounters, and other private details as part of their job labeling objects and videos captured on users' smart glasses, because AI is people. The filing named two individuals who live in California, New Jersey, who purchased Meta's smart glasses. it says they both relied on first off why are you wearing these glasses when you're taking a dump

46:58Brian Schulmeister:yeah we're taking a leak well you know or why do you have them turned on when you're taking a dump

47:02Jason DeFillippo:or taking a leak you know anyways the suit said they both relied on meta's marketing claims mistake number one about the glasses privacy protecting protection features and that they would not have purchased them if they had known about the company's use of contractors two people that should have listened to our fucking show for the last 13 years exactly spokesperson for meta confirmed to Engadget that data from its smart glasses can be shared with human contractors in some cases. The company declined to comment on the claims in the lawsuit. Ray-Ban Metaglasses help you use AI hands-free to answer questions about the world around you, the spokesperson said.

47:36Jason DeFillippo:Unless users choose to share media they've captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user's device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people's experiences, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people's privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed. What the company didn't say there is that there is no way to use the smart glasses multimodal features without sharing the captures of your surroundings with the company.

48:07Brian Schulmeister:No shit, because it's a video you're taking. There's no display on the glasses, so you can't watch your video of you taking a dump back. You have to share it to your computer. You have to share it through Meta to get it to your computer and to actually fucking see it. So the whole point of this lawsuit, like their claim that, oh, it stays on device. What's the fucking point of it being on the device? I could say I've got video on these glasses. It stays on the device. Who fucking cares? It's so fucking stupid.

48:36Jason DeFillippo:Exactly. Oh, exactly. So I hope that they're going to lose this lawsuit by quite a bit. I mean, obviously the people were, you're just dumb to have them.

48:46Brian Schulmeister:Oh. Yeah, I've been mocking my friend who has him for ages. He's like, oh, man, I can make my own porn. It's great. And I'm like, you know how many people are jerking off to your porn? Yep, yep. I hope you like your wife being out there for all of the Kenyans to see now. Oh, man. Apple launched a new MacBook this week, the MacBook Neo. And I just wanted to cover this real quick because I don't think people understand exactly what this thing is. It's basically an iPhone and a laptop case is all it is.

49:16Jason DeFillippo:no you know what you want to know what it really is jason and this is the smartest thing apple has done in fucking decades this is a chromebook killer it is it's absolutely absolutely a chromebook killer they are going after that market which makes sense get them young just like meta likes to do this is what that's what apple's gonna do here because i'm thinking you know my kid is gonna need a chromebook in like i think next year if not the year after that i'm gonna i'm not gonna get a chromebook i'm gonna get a macbook neo and guess what my kid is gonna grow up liking Macs and Apples. And eventually we'll buy a more expensive one.

49:50Jason DeFillippo:This is the smartest thing they've done in ages and all you people shitting on them for it. This isn't for you. You're not supposed to buy this. This is for, you buy this for your kid.

50:01Brian Schulmeister:Yep. Or your grandma. Or for you on the shitter

50:05Jason DeFillippo:when you don't want to take your phone in. Yes, because you don't want the Canyons to see you take a dump. Unless it's really impressive. Then you can point the camera.

50:18Jason DeFillippo:at the library well while my watch my watch well my wife was watching severance i uh found a book that i had actually bought on our last trip to london because it wasn't available in the u.s back then it's uh now available as an ebook on amazon here in the u.s and canada but uh at the time it was a not uncommon people brit pop and beyond in 20 songs by miranda sawyer miranda sawyer was a journalist back in the 90s i wrote for a bunch of magazines that i basically bought religiously anytime i was in an airport uh select magazines i think she wrote for q as well and she didn't write for the weeklies like melody maker or anything like that but uh so i read tons of her articles back in the day and she's making a bit of a career out of nostalgia uh from that time period.

51:06Jason DeFillippo:I myself am extremely nostalgic for that time period. You know, I grew up with 80s and all that sort of stuff, but I was in my 20s and all that, living large in the music industry during the 90s, start, you know, college into my, the beginning of my career. And so all of this music, and I was a huge, huge Anglophile. I loved everything that came out at that time period. I love all the Britpop stuff. So the format of this book is basically, she picked 20 songs by the artists. She does interviews with the artists. She talks about how they fit in culturally relevantly at the time, how they fit in with the other bands, interesting stories.

51:44Jason DeFillippo:I got lost in this and absolutely loved it. And I've been listening to nothing but Britpop and music from the 90s since then. She's a great writer. She's got some actual fiction as well as some more cultural books. So I'm going to try to track those down, see what I can get without boarding another flight to London to get some more of the stuff that she's written.

52:05Brian Schulmeister:You should have told your wife to take another trip to London so she could watch Severance Part 2 or Season 2 without you.

52:10Jason DeFillippo:And go get some books for me while you're there.

52:11Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, exactly.

52:12Jason DeFillippo:That's what I should have done. So I highly recommend this if you're into any of this stuff at all. It was a blast. It was just a blast to read. And I know it's set up as kind of like one of those books that you go through and you find an artist that you particularly like and you just read that chapter. And I had started reading it that way. And then I had forgotten about it and left to the side. and then I found it and I just picked it up and read it cover to cover. Fantastic.

52:35Brian Schulmeister:Awesome. Awesome. Glad you found it. I actually picked up a new book by Peter Clines, which I'll have for next week. Let's see here. It's called God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines. So Peter Clines does really interesting books that are multiple dimension, lots of Cthulhu-based stuff. He had a whole series for a while about going back and forth between the Cthulhu realms and the endless. I forget what they were called back then, but it was very cool stuff. Very cool stuff. So I'm glad to see he's writing again. So I'll have a write-up on that one next week. Great. Closing shout-outs! Over at Patreon, we've got a new patron, Kevin.

53:18Brian Schulmeister:Thank you, Kevin. And Nadev, Ben, and Ron up their pledge. And Ron says, I'm at a place where I can support you more, and I hope it helps. Yes, it does, Ron. Yes, it does. I seriously look forward to GOG every Friday. I live in a world where I have no echo chamber. I respect my friends and family's opinion, regardless of how bespoke their reality is, and keep my mouth shut. It's the stoic thing to do. Your show shows me that I have my people, and I can spend at least an hour or so each week agreeing with someone out loud for a change. Thank you. And we'd also like to thank Dajio, Johannes, Dennis, Glenn, Erspo, Martim, Steven, Chris, Brittany, and Michelle.

53:55Brian Schulmeister:Thank you all so very much.

53:56Jason DeFillippo:Thank you. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got donations from Judge Nicola Florian Levy, Glenn with 20 bucks, Jonathan with 20 bucks, Russell with 20 bucks, and Thomas said, hold my fucking beer. Here's 25 bucks.

54:08Brian Schulmeister:Thank you all so much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Adam, Matthew, and Sarah. And just if you want to know what we're talking about, this is what keeps the show on the air. So go to GOG.show slash donate and you can find a way to help us out. Or you can go to Patreon.com slash GOG and get the show a little early, ad free and in high definition. and yeah, this is what really, we are a fan-supported show, so pretty pleased with Sugar on Top. Help us out and we'll keep bringing you

54:31Jason DeFillippo:our Grump every week. That's right. And we have a new five-star rating, Jason. One of the greats. I've listened to this show for many years because Jason and Brian are so insightful, funny, and prescient. Recently, I moved from government to teaching and this podcast has been a godsend for gaining a better understanding of what my students are likely up to with using AI and other tech. If you need a weekly primer on emerging tech and all the associated risks and pitfalls, I highly recommend. Didn't provide your name, but let me tell you, they're fucking with the glasses on. That's what they're up to.

55:03Jason DeFillippo:Oh, dear. Oasis was fucking in the bushes. The kids are fucking with the medas on.

55:08Brian Schulmeister:Great.

55:10Jason DeFillippo:Not a show title. Don't use that one for a show title, Brian. Okay, we won't use that. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

55:15Brian Schulmeister:And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 736. 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, 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, cool links? 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.

55:48Brian Schulmeister:Oh, and guess what? We've got merch. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy.