586: GOGPT

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, the podcast where we channel our inner curmudgeon and discuss all things tech and pop culture. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister and I'm wondering if ChatGPT did a rewrite of our intro. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. They did that last week when Dave was here. Okay, I didn't listen to that one. And I liked it so much I kept it. Nice. I thought it was pretty good. Very good, very good.

We got a little follow-up here from Kristen. I used to listen to your podcast within the Missouri Correction Systems, whereas I became a huge fan. However, my question is, why isn't your particular show available on Pandora Radio's podcast feature? I would assume your crowd base would grow significantly since it's one of the highest music platforms.

I just like having to download other software to listen to you guys, and I really do miss your show greatly. Thank you for all the laughter and updated tech news. Well, thank you for listening, Kristen. And two things. One, Pandora is quite possibly the least listened to app that's out there.

So, we're definitely not going to grow significantly. But I thought we were on there. So, I went ahead and I submitted our show last night, and we are now on Pandora. It re-put us on Stitcher as well. Stitcher actually has all of the episodes, but for some reason, Pandora, which is probably why it is not the biggest listener out there, only cherry-picked like 470 a few of our episodes.

And so, the latest ones aren't out there. So, if you'd like to, Kristen, please write to Pandora and say, hey, go get the rest of the episodes, because they got our RSS feed. They should be able to get it. So, I did my due diligence. You're welcome. That's all I can do. I've done what I can.

All right. Good for us. Yeah. I can't wait to see our numbers skyrocket. I know. I know. We're going to be pulling people away from Spotify. All 12 of them. And since we have been, since you've been gone, we've been talking about a lot of AI stuff. This morning, everybody's talking about the Drake AI.

We'll take your – you put in a suggestion. It will use chat GPT or GPT-3 to make some song lyrics. And then it will use another system to actually create a song. And then it makes a video for you. So, we do have the Grumpy Old Geeks song, which I will plug in here right now.

We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. We do have the Grumpy Old Geeks. Okay, that was pretty awful.

What do you think, Brian? Do you think that we can take this on the road with us? No. I think that they have captured Drake's lyrical ability perfectly. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, it's not good.

It's not good. Yeah, somewhere like a couple weeks ago, somewhere on our Discord, I had had JatGPT write a song about Grumpy Old Geeks. The lyrics are posted in there somewhere. It was much better than this. Sorry, Drake. In the news. Brian, Section 230 is going up to the Supreme Court next month.

Okay. I don't know. Their track record lately has not been good. So I'm kind of worried about how this is going to play out. Because if they do anything significant to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the internet could change fundamentally for, I don't know if it's going to be for the better for the worst because it could take down basically...

Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, it could completely destroy social media. But that might be good. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah, this is one of those ones that I'm so torn on because you can see, I can see it going either way, really.

It all depends on the interpretation and then what's done with it and what laws get passed subsequently. So it's just so open to interpretation right now. And that's the real worry because I don't want this particular Supreme Court doing that interpretation. No shit.

That's why I'm like, either way, it's going to be interesting. It is going to be interesting because... Something we'll be following, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as this thing starts to roll through the courts, I'm sure everybody on the planet is going to be covering it because it's going to affect everybody on the planet.

But I do have a bit of good tech news or interesting tech news, I should say. This comes in the way of a thing called gravity batteries. What they're proposing is using basically gravity and inertia in old mineshafts to create, to generate electricity.

So you basically drop a big heavy object down a mineshaft, that rope that is, you know, holding the thing gets to turn a turbine and the gravity from dropping the big heavy thing generates electricity. Okay. We've got lots of mineshafts.

We've got lots of rocks. So kind of makes sense that you would want to do that. And it seems to be fairly cost effective. And they do believe that there's enough potential energy with the mines and the rocks that we can drop down them to literally power the planet, which I know is a very large, you know, statement, but it would take a very long time to get into place.

But it seems like turning that kinetic energy from gravity, since we've already dug the holes, why not? I think that might be a good thing. I like good news like this. I think this sounds great. Let's keep researching this. Let's do a test. Let's spin up a test, people. Let's get going.

Time's ticking. We do have the counter news that I saw in the news last night out of China where they have figured out how to make liquid metal robots. So Terminator 2 is coming very soon. That's what we need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. Well, speaking on batteries, Tesla, the often maligned company right now because the CEO is a fucking asshat, which we can all agree about, but still a pretty good company and one that's supposedly in lots of trouble.

But they are spending $3.6 billion to build a semi and a battery factory in its Nevada complex, which is great. It's a lot of money being spent and two new factories that will be hiring over 3,000 additional workers. They will be manufacturing the 4680 type batteries, while the other will be Tesla's first factory to mass produce the semi, which a lot of people don't talk about.

They've delivered those first production semis to Pepsi in December 2022, five years after it first showed off the electric rig and following several delays, but they're rolling out now. These trucks use less than two kilowatts of energy per mile and go between 300 and 500 miles on a single charge.

That is a lot of gasoline that's going to be saved by long haul truckers. Yeah. Yeah. So. Any news about the Cybertruck? No. Well, the Cybertruck was always a sideshow for the fucking Musk freaks. So this is the real stuff. This is the stuff that's going to save this company's stock price.

This is insane. Yeah, definitely. They're claiming owners will enjoy an estimated fuel savings of up to $200,000 within the first three years. I mean, this is what this stuff is for. Let's do it. Go Tesla. Okay. Well, I heard the stock did pop a little bit after that.

Yeah, it's popping a bit. So. Yep. Spotify is going to cut about 6% of their jobs. They got rid of Don Ostroff. Joe Rogan won it? No, sadly. Well, he's coming up. His contract is coming up at the end of the year. So we'll see what they're going to do with the old roguemeister.

But Don Ostroff, their chief content and advertising business officer is leaving, which is interesting. I think Don is probably the one that made that Joe Rogan deal. So maybe, I don't know. But, yep, shares are up there because, you know, nothing makes the stock pop like making people's lives worse.

So I guess that's what Spotify is in the business of, especially if you're a musician. Why just fuck the musicians? Yeah, why not? Of course. Let's fuck everybody. Let's expand our repertoire. Yeah. Vox Media is also laying off 7% of their staff, which, okay.

I mean, they've got The Verge, The Dodo, and New York Magazine is part of their thing. Maybe that 7% is getting kicked out because of good old chat GPT. Who knows? Who knows? I mean, we've been talking about all these layoffs in the tech sector for quite some time.

Some of it is AI, I'm sure, because you can do more with less people. Some of it is what we've been discussing for a long time, the advertising model as tanked and crashed. And if you're not making the money, you can't keep the people employed. And that's a big part of it, ad revenues down across the board.

While simultaneously, the Justice Department is suing Google to break up its floundering ad business as well right now, which this is not surprising. Day late and a dollar is short. It could have done this a couple of years ago, and maybe the ad market wouldn't be in the toilet like it is now.

But we'll see what happens. I mean, they're basically saying that Google has pushed everybody else out of the place, and they're the number one people, and they're using anti-competitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.

All of which is, of course, true. That's called doing business without regulation. So let's regulate. I'm fine with that. Okay. Okay. Also file under No Shit Sherlock. TikTok has confirmed that its own employees can decide what goes viral. Wait, are you saying they've got their finger on the button?

Yes, they do. Are they tilting the deck? Yes, and it's called the heating button. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so the U.S. employees do have the ability to boost videos, and they say that it's in order to introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.

Okay. A.K.A. cheating. Gaming the system. Yep. Mm-hmm. It's their system, so they're allowed to game it, you know? Nobody said life is fair. Ever. Yep. So. Well, in related news over at Twitter, Twitter engineers can still use God Mode to tweet as any account, claims a whistleblower.

So, yeah, they basically said Twitter engineers still have access to an internal program formerly called God Mode that lets them tweet from any account. It remains on the laptop of any engineer who wants it, requiring only a production computer and a simple code change from false to true. Screenshots of the code, including an October complaint filed with the FTC, show a warning to anyone attempting to use it, think before you do this.

Yes, that has stopped many people. Human history is littered with the ability of a saying like that to stop people from doing stupid shit. They also sparked the discovery that engineers could also delete or restore anyone's tweets, which regular Twitter users or Twitter Blue users can.

Can Twitter Blue users restore their deleted tweets? I actually don't know that. No, no. No, I'm a Twitter Blue user still, and you cannot. Yes. But I got my checkmark. Woo! Yay! I saw that. Good for you. Yeah, for a little bit. They are making an update that I actually like.

Twitter is updating its web and mobile apps to default to the timeline tab you last had open. So if you close the app after looking at the chronological following tab, like a sensible human being, you'll see it again when you come back instead of the for you tab, which is so annoying. You mean the way it was a fucking week ago?

Yeah, pretty much. Before they introduced this stupid shit? So they're just, they're reverting to the way it was, which was better. They are throwing shit at the wall, seeing what sticks and what slinks down, like diarrhea. Yeah. A lot of that going on over there.

Since nobody's there to clean it up anymore, thanks firing the janitors. Amazon Web Services is going to spend $35 billion on data centers in Virginia. So that's interesting. That's where, I mean, that's where their biggest data center is already.

So they're just going to be expanding on that, creating at least a thousand jobs. Not bad. Yeah. Hopefully they're going to spread them around a little bit so we don't have that incident like last time when, I think it was like a lightning strike took down the main AWS thing and everything. The internet went down for several hours.

The whole fucking internet. Because everybody's on AWS. Yes. So I know Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are things, but not as big a thing. Come on. We know it. We know it. Yeah.

So in between my flights and travel over the holidays and then my subsequent downtime, which I discuss a bit in Security Ha with Dave, I've had an awful lot of time to catch up on media and watch things.

So here is a list of everything I've seen recently. First up, Easter Sunday, which is a comedy, Joe Coy, who is a very funny comedian. He has been trying to transition from stand-up comedy to, you know, kind of the mainstream success.

I think he had a couple pilots and none of those flew and he got a movie done and it was fine. Oh, damn it. Look, I think if you're Filipino, this might be the most funny movie that's ever been made. But it is a bit too formulaic.

I think that they played it safe way too often. He's a very, very funny stand-up comedian and he's kind of like out there. I wish that this had more out there stuff. I wish it didn't feel so like we need to make a mainstream movie. And it just – it's a mainstream comedy and it shouldn't have been.

If it would have been weird, it would have been great. That's my thought. That's too bad because I saw that you put this in here and I hadn't heard of it and I'm like, oh, let me go check that out. And then I'm like, eh, it's not free yet. I have to pay for it so I'll pass. But I do like – his latest stand-up I thought was fantastic.

I was cracking the fuck up. He's an amazing stand-up. Yeah, absolutely amazing. And I wish there was more of that energy in this, but there's not. Oh, well. Next one. Elvis. Elvis. A fantastic movie. Really good. Really? Okay.

The one thing I will have to say about this is could you have cast anybody else as Colonel Tom Parker besides Tom Hanks? Because you cannot not know it's Tom Hanks. It just drags me out of it every time he's on the screen.

I'm like, it's Tom Hanks. Yeah, he's kind of got that effect now, doesn't he? Yeah, it's just – you can't not think Tom Hanks. Even though they did a really good job with makeup, he did a really good job with the accent and the way he phrased things. It's still – it dragged me out of it.

It's Tom fucking Hanks every single time. But beyond that, the movie is absolutely fantastic. I really do recommend it. It's amazing. Really good stuff. I watched all 7,584 hours of Madoff, The Monster of Wall Street, the Netflix – You mean all four episodes?

Yes. Only four episodes. But they're all – okay, Jason, it could have been one. That's all I'm saying. This could have been a movie, not a miniseries. It was good. But again, it's – I just felt like they kept repeating the same things.

There's not that much there. There's what he did. Could have been a two-hour movie. End of story. Yeah, I got – I watched the first episode, most of the first episode. I will say that they did a pretty good job with the recreations and the transitions.

Yeah, yes. They had a big budget on it, a really big budget. It was very well done. Maybe too much of a budget. That's the problem. I think so. They could have limited it a bit. Yeah. I just – it was very well done, but it did not need to be what – the full runtime ends up being like almost seven hours or something like that.

It didn't need to be that long at all. No, no, no, no, no. But very well done. I watched Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl, the live-action performance of many of the songs from Encanto. Extremely well done. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Would have loved to have taken the kid to that. That would have been awesome. I watched Strange World, which is the new Disney movie.

No, pass. Nope. That's a fail. Okay. Yeah. It wasn't a very intriguing story. Just my kid didn't care after five minutes. I kept watching later just to see because it's Disney and I'll go for it. No good. No bueno. I watched Ralph Breaks the Internet because I had never watched any of those movies.

That was actually hilarious. Really? Okay. Yeah. I mean, cast your mind back 10 years and all the internet jokes slap. Okay. They don't really work anymore, but back then they were damn funny. So, yeah. Okay.

So, pretty good. Pretty good. Lots of internet jokes done through Disney and kind of thoroughly enjoyable. On your recommendation, I watched Slow Horses Season 1. That was phenomenal. Not at all what I was expecting. That's the great part about it. Yeah.

At all. I thought this was going to be kind of like a loser comedy. I did not expect what it actually was and it was phenomenal. Yep. Wait till you see Season 2. Just as good, if not better. Yeah. Going to have to watch that. Yeah. They got picked up for two more seasons. I think Season 3 is in the can and they're going to start Season 4 soon.

So, pretty good. I really enjoyed that. Watched White Lotus Season 2 with the wife. Good. Great. I actually think I liked it better than the first season. I did too. I did too. Yeah. Can I put in a very big spoiler alert here? If you have not seen any of this, skip ahead now.

How do you kill off the only character I cared about? Well, there's a theory going around. The through line for the first two seasons. She is the Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey of this show. For me. I don't know if I'm going to watch without her. There's a theory going around. She's not dead though. Okay.

They showed her floating dead and put her in a body bag. But okay. No, no, no. They didn't say who actually died from the hotel. So they left it open to Marvel Universe. She was floating in the water dead. I know. I'm just saying what I read after it came out from the guy who created it.

So we'll see. Okay. I'm just saying that that might be the end of the show for me. As much as I'm enjoying it, she is the through line that really kills it for me. So that was a little bit too bummer. Anyways, I listened to a semi-podcast.

I don't know. This is actually from BBC Sounds. I think they broadcast it on the radio there. They're pretty short. They're about 14-minute bits. It's by an anthropologist named Ella Al-Shamahi. I found out about her because she guested on No Such Thing as a Fish once and was very funny.

And then I started following her on Twitter. And then she started talking about the show she does. It's called Why Do We Do That? And she investigates the origins of everyday human habits and behavior. Like, why do we do things that are bad for us? Why do we procrastinate? Why do we shake hands? Why can't we all be morning people?

Why do we sit down to pee? All that sort of stuff. So it's great. I thoroughly recommend these. There's seven or eight of them total. They're about 14 minutes each. And good listens. Unfortunately, you can't get them on a podcast player. You have to listen through them through the BBC Sound stuff. So that's kind of a pain.

Bummer. Not worth it. Bummer. Thoroughly enjoyable. That's funny you mentioned No Such Thing as a Fish. I stopped listening to that like a year ago. It just got kind of repetitive. Oh, man. I love it still. Love it. It's my number one listen every week. First thing. As soon as it comes out, that's what I listen to.

You don't re-listen to our show, Brian? That's why our numbers are going down. No, I download it. I download it. Don't worry. I'm getting us our downloads. I'm just not listening. Okay. Making sure. Making sure. Just checking. I download it on all my devices. Yep.

Multiple times. Vote once. Vote often. Vote early. Vote often. Still watching The Last of Us. Season two was out. Or episode two was out. Dig it. It's beautiful. It's well done. Yeah, I'm in.

I'm totally in. Have you got a chance to check it out yet? I have not yet. I've seen endless promos for it, though. It's really good. It's really, really good. I'm digging it. I'll check it out. And check out the podcast that goes along with it, too, because they go hand in hand, and it actually enhances the enjoyment of the show, I do believe.

Now, we did cover the three-body problem on At the Library when it was new and the subsequent books. They did make a Chinese version of it, a very long mini-series version of The Three-Body Problem, which you can now watch on YouTube, subbed in English.

Or if you speak Mandarin, you can actually just watch it. If that's the way you roll, go ahead and just watch it. They're rolling them out one every week. Or you can subscribe and get them all early. I tried. I really tried for, like, eight minutes.

I put eight minutes into this thing. No, I cannot. I cannot. It is incomprehensible. The book was almost impossible. I can't even imagine. I can't imagine a live-action version of this. Well, you don't have to imagine it.

You can go check it out on YouTube. Nah, I'll pass. No imagination required. Right. Hat tip to a friend of the show, Brian Blondell, on this next one. It was an article called, Netflix has created a self-fulfilling cancellation loop with its new shows, which he dubbed the Schulmeister effect.

Okay. Which is basically, people are not watching shows because Netflix cancels them so often that they don't want to get burned by watching a show and having it rug-pulled. Damn right. I want to be on urban whatever. I want this official.

This is the Schulmeister effect. All right. Yep. Everybody over at Urban Dictionary, you know what to do. Go put it in. Yep. Get on it. Yeah. But it's 100% true. You know, I even find myself like kind of trepidatious about going into it until I hear that it's like, you know, gotten massive downloads.

Like Wednesday. I wasn't going to watch Wednesday until I heard that, oh my God, this is so good. Everybody's watching it. I'm like, okay, it'll probably get picked up so I can go watch it, you know. But yeah, for the most part, it's scary to get invested in a show that's going to get pulled. It happened to me way too many times.

That's why I quit. Like, unless it gets to three seasons, fuck it. But I knew Wednesday was going to be fine because, yeah, it got the download numbers. So, yeah, I'm not surprised by this at all. You know, you got to invest in these shows or you can't just keep pulling the rug out from underneath us all the time. It's horrible. Yep.

Mm-hmm. I mean, it's Netflix. They've got the money. I mean, who do they think they are? HBO Max? Jeez. Exactly. So you gave me the Schulmeister effect. I found an article that I call the DeFillippo effect. And this was a short article, kind of an opinion piece over on Slate.

My husband was right about DVDs all along. She wanted to go on a purge. They were about to move. And her goal was to cull as much as possible. She didn't want to pack something, move it 200 miles, unpack it, and never touch it again. She went through books, clothes, kitchen gear, and tchotchkes. And her husband would not let her get near the hundreds of DVDs and Blu-rays, which is something that I did.

I got rid of a lot of those. We almost never use them, she says, thanks to Netflix and Hulu and HBO Max and Amazon Prime and Peacock and Showtime and AMC Plus and Apple TV Plus and PBS Passport, all of which they subscribe to, which is kind of ridiculous. But then she says one or two are probably free through other services, although maybe actually my free year of AMC Plus expired and I'm paying for it now.

I don't really remember anymore because it's all so fucking confusing. Oh, Jesus Christ. Hang on, hang on. That reminds me. I'm still subscribed to AMC Plus because I went and started to watch the Lestat series and I never canceled it. Oh, I'm adding that to my things to-do list right now.

Damn it. Yeah, so, but here's where the DeFillippo effect comes in because I know you hold on to your DVDs and you will never get rid of them. What if streaming goes away, he would say, as I pleaded to donate some, but not all of them. It's never going to go away, I'd say. Maybe they won't have as many options, but we can always rent a movie digitally if you really want to watch it.

He refused, and every time HBO Max yanks another movie or TV show I love from the platform, a thought nags at me. Chris was right. So was Jason. The DeFillippo effect. That's right. Ah! And you are right about that. As we see these rights change and things disappear left, right, and center, we've been trained to now not own things, but then we don't know where they are or if we can even get them and some things are just disappearing now.

Services like Netflix that made original series are ditching their original series, and there's nowhere to get them. They never even put out DVDs. Things are just literally being taken away now. I do a show with Deshaun Wesley. He was the host of the show Legendary on HBO Max.

HBO Max has pulled the show off the air. No notice, no warning, no fucking reason to take it down. They canceled it, but that doesn't mean they still can't keep it up there. No, they just take it down. You can't get it anywhere now, which is really annoying for me because I'm in the middle of doing a show with this guy, and we want to send people to go watch the show, and it's not there.

It is infuriating. And I still don't give a shit about Avatar 2. Who does? Oh, tons of people. I was going to say most of the planet, apparently.

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I went on a bit of a spending spree, thanks to both a good friend who works at Apple, their discount, and being in the States, where prices are cheaper. So I upgraded a couple things that needed some upgrading.

I got an Apple M2 MacBook Air Midnight. This is the best computer I've ever owned. Two questions about it. What were the specs, and how are the fingerprint problems? Well, I didn't go crazy with the specs, because basically I'm a podcaster and a manager.

I don't actually do much anymore. So it's just the 8 gigabyte memory, and I got the 250 gigabyte hard drive. That was a mistake. I should have gotten the bigger hard drive. So the memory has not been a problem at all, but the drive definitely. Like, I've had to pay attention.

I've had to pull things off that I would have left on the internal drive and move them to external drives and all that. Kind of a pain in the butt. Oh, that's not the reason that it's bad to get the lowest one. The lowest one, when you get the lowest hard drive, it's half the speed as if you'd have gotten the 512, because it's only on one chip.

So it is literally half the speed of what it should be. It's still the fastest computer I've ever had, Jason. Oh, I'm sure it is. Yes, yes, of course. I mean, they're phenomenal machines. But yeah, if you'd have spent like a little bit more, you could have had the super duper fastest machine, but 256 is way too small for anything.

Yeah. My phone has a terabyte in it. You know? That's my one regret on the specs. But otherwise, this thing's awesome. The fingerprint problem, are you referring to like on the actual like keyboard and all that? Or are you referring to the outside? No, on the outside. Yeah, it's horrible.

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten midnight. Now I know I'm not going to get midnight again. It's pretty sexy, but the fingerprints are bad. Like it's noticeable. Yeah. Bit of a bummer. I upgraded. Well, I didn't upgrade. I basically finally gave up the ghost and gave my son my old iPad and I got the Apple iPad Air.

Also phenomenal. Great. It's very fast. Very good. Love it. It's fantastic. It's a bit heavier than I thought it would be given the Air designation, but not bad. And I picked up an Apple TV 4K, the one where they finally fixed the remote.

I'm giving it the friend's title that way. It's a wonderful remote control. Yeah, they fixed it like three years ago. So welcome to the party, pal. Yeah. Well, there you go. I haven't. The things are sturdy. They're incredibly well built. There's no reason to upgrade them generally.

In fact, the only reason I got a new one is we're actually adding a third TV to our house up in our loft. So I was like, well, now I need three Apple TVs. Yep. Yeah. Now, the 4Ks are fantastic. And the new remote definitely makes it worth it. It's worth it just for the remote. Honestly. Yeah, the remote's phenomenal. Like, it's so easy to use.

You don't fuck up all the time like you did with those bullshit old ones. Yeah. The one that I always had, I had tape on. I put gaffer's tape on it just so I knew which way was up. Yeah. I put stickers on mine. Yeah. Yeah. So stupid. So stupid. Speaking of stupid, I signed up on Mastodon over at Hackaderm since Dave Bittner said that that's where he signed up.

Because for some reason, the Medium instance has not allowed me in yet, even though I'm a paid Medium member and I couldn't get kicked to the front of the line. So I just went to Hackaderm. I'm just jpdef at Hackaderm.io. There'll be a link in the show notes. Follow me if you want to.

I haven't really posted anything yet because I'm still trying to get the hang of it. And also, yeah, I don't really care about social media that much. Right. But I'm there. Whatever. Microsoft is throwing another bucket of money over at OpenAI.

About $10 billion is the word on the street. They've already put in a billion. There's a lot of talk about it being, quote unquote, open, you know, because it is basically going to end up being just a big commercial entity because all the people that put their money in are going to get that back out first.

Blah, blah, blah. Some kerfuffle about that. But here's the deal. Fine with me. Give them the money. Most of that's going to be in Azure credits is what I hear because they need the horsepower. They need it. Yeah. Yep. It's good. Make it better. I'm fine with that. I am fine with that.

I mentioned this again in security, but I'll cover it real quick here. ChatGPT may be getting a $42 professional plan because that is the answer to the life of the universe and everything. And I'll spend $42 on that. No problem. It is not available for me yet.

I am hoping for it. If you do log into ChatGPT, it may show up in the bottom left side. In the link in the show notes, there's some graphics that show you where it may be if you have it yet. Fingers crossed. I want it. I'll pay you right now.

Let me in, please. Pretty pleased with sugar on chop. On chop. On top. And Google has pressed the code red button. Sundar Pichai does not know what to do. He's running around like a chicken with his head cut off. And he sent out the bat signal. And Larry and Sergey are back in the building.

Oh, that's always a good sign. Oh, yeah. When you have to call mom and dad to come back and fix your problems. Yeah. Google has a ton of AI projects in the pipeline. And it'll be interesting because Google and Meta have been throwing shade at open AI saying, yeah, what they're doing is it's cute.

It's cute. It's not as good as ours. It's no Metaverse. It's no Metaverse. It's no Metaverse. No. ChatGPT doesn't have pants either, motherfucker. So we'll see how this is going to go. Well, look, I mean, it worked for Apple.

They brought Steve Jobs back. Multi-gazillion, biggest company in the world now. So we'll see. Sometimes it works to bring the old guard back. Larry and Sergey are no Steve Jobs. Let's just put that out there. Come on. Yeah. These guys have been gone for long enough where they just don't care anymore.

They're like, really? We got to go back. Like, okay, get the bat plane. Let's go from our secret lairs in New Zealand back to Silicon Valley for a little bit. But it'll be interesting. Like I said, Google's at least taking a measured approach with the rollout.

But maybe some of these lawsuits about them owning the entirety of the ad business might push them over the edge to actually try something new because that might be losing money in the future. We'll see. That's what it would be a good idea. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Now, I don't know if you've noticed, Brian, but since you've left, basically it is the shootout at the OK Corral here every day in the United States.

I've heard it's gotten a little nuts. Yeah. A little bit nuts. And I've talked about Berna in the past. They sell non-lethal, basically paintball guns, you know. But they have – I put this in here because why not? This is the world we live in now.

The Berna Ballista Pack 3A, black, handgun-rated, no molly, $499 ballistic backpack, which has a quick-release Kevlar vest in it. So if the shooting starts, you reach behind your back, you pull it up, and you pull over your bulletproof vest in one go.

That's the world we live in now. The fact that I even thought about it for a second, I'm like, no, no, stop, stop, stop. The old me would have ordered this in a heartbeat. Nowadays, I just don't care. I'm just like, okay, get it over, shoot me, fuck it. But, man, this is the kind of thing your kids are going to be wearing to school.

So we'll see. Not mine. That's why I moved. Yep. But if you were still here, you could be driving them to school in the Rezvani Vengeance. This is a... When a Hummer is just not enough. I know. When a Hummer is just not enough.

This is a tactical urban vehicle. You can get it with bulletproof, basically bulletproof everything, electrified doors, the whole nine yards. This is the South Africa package, basically. This looks like the kind of drawings that an eight-year-old kid would make of his dream car.

It's kind of... Well, it's kind of like RoboCop. Yeah. Because the blue, it's very RoboCopian. I bet they have fingerprint issues with that blue. I'm just saying. Yeah, the military package, bulletproof glass and body armor, underside explosive protection, smoke screens. Woo-hoo! Military robot, thermal night vision.

Don't forget the EMP pulse protection. It's got EMP, yeah, electromagnetic pulse protection, RAM bumpers, bulletproof, electrified door handles, sirens, strobe lights. Woo! For a party if you want to party in your death van. Jesus Christ. And it's got a smoke screen. I love it.

I love it. This thing starts at $285,000 and goes up from there. I'm sure I'm going to see these at fucking Whole Foods next week. I'm sure. I guarantee you one of these is going to roll out to Burning Man this year. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure. But they are real. It is not just a drawing. They do exist. But, yeah. You know, if I was going to go with something like this, I would get the urban assault vehicle from Stripes. Because that is, you know, they took a GMC, you know, motor coach, which was the best motor coach ever made.

Because it was front-wheel drive. Yeah, I think that was front-wheel drive. My friend had one of those, and he tricked it out. I would get that, bulletproof that, because that way you could at least have supplies in it. This, you still have to make a run to the store. As far as I can tell, it does not have a slot to get your drive-through McDonald's and chicken wings, you know, from B-dubs.

But it's, you're going to be driving that, and you're going to be wearing your ballista pack and, yeah. Ask in chat, GPT, what's the safest route to work? Mm-hmm. Good times. I actually even managed to finish a book during my downtime, although concentrating on actually reading as opposed to just watching something was a bit of a different thing.

But I read a book that came up as a recommendation, The World Walker, The World Walker series, book one by Ian W. Sainsbury. Light sci-fi, kind of vaguely magical, well-written. Liked it. I'm up for more.

It was good. It was a quick, easy read, and I needed one of those, so it was perfect. Okay. Two things about your, when you first put this in here, I do have, you know, a problem reading. I'm slightly dyslexic, and I read that as The World Wanker the first time I saw it. I'm like, oh, okay. No, that was one of the things I watched on TV, Jason.

Okay, yeah. And when I saw Ian W. Sainsbury, I'm like, I recognize that name, and for a minute I thought it was Ian Tregellis who did the Milkweed series. Yes. Which obviously it is not. So I went and saw, I'm like, hey, what's Ian Tregellis up to nowadays?

And he wrote a three-book series called The Alchemy, or it's basically called The Alchemy Wars. Did you read that? I couldn't remember if you read it or not. I reviewed two of those books on this very podcast many, many years ago. Did not like them, and I never finished the series because I just couldn't get into it.

Okay, okay. Because I started listening to book one, and I kind of dig it. I kind of dug it. So I might stick it out. I'll give it a shot. I'll see how the rest of book one kind of plays along. But, hmm. Yeah, because Milkweed was okay.

It was good, but it wasn't, you know, fantastic. I couldn't really tell you a lot about it except that it was like an alternate history kind of demon type of thing. That's about all I remember. Yeah, they were Nazis. Yeah, they were Nazis. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Well, maybe I'll just return this one and move on to something else. I got This Naked Mind. Control alcohol. Find freedom. Discover happiness. And change your life by any grace. If you are an actual alcoholic, you are going to hate this book. It is a lot of bullshit in stats that will not do anything for you.

So if you believe you are an actual alcoholic, do not buy this book. If you are a casual drinker who just wants to slow down, sure, it's fine. It's fine. Or buy weed. Or buy weed. There you go. You can just go buy weed. And then I read Recovery, Freedom from Our Addictions by Russell Brand.

Now, I don't know how you feel about Russell Brand. I think I just found out how you feel about Russell Brand. I have complicated feelings about Russell Brand. I do, too. I do, too. Yeah. A lot of him I really like. Me, too. But a lot of them I really hate.

I know. That's the problem. This book, I really loved. I really, really loved this book. Okay. Because he went through the 12-step program, and he's an atheist. And he kind of rejiggers it to work for him, which is something I've been struggling with myself.

So I really, really found this book helpful. And I'm re-listening to it again because it's actually really useful. So The Naked Mind, not so useful. Recovery, Freedom from Our Addictions, quite useful. Okay.

Cool. Yes. If you're in that camp, such as I am, you definitely should pick it up. And I do have another AI thing here. It's called Readow, R-E-A-D-O-W. It is an AI to help you find new books. Yeah. It doesn't.

I tried it. It doesn't. What it is is an AI that could have repopulated my Goodreads because all it did was find every single book I've ever read. Pretty much. Pretty much. It did not kick up a single thing that I hadn't heard of or hadn't read. Yep. The first order of business, I was going to put in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which it doesn't have.

You cannot just put it in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They have The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yes. So it's really stupid when it comes to searching. And yeah, it just gave me back a bunch of Terry Pratchett and all the other stuff that I've already... It's basically everything I've already read.

Nothing... It's pretty simple connections based on sales statistics probably pulled from Amazon or something. So yeah, nothing surprising. No, the one thing about it, it does have a seizure-inducing background when you actually start to search. That's true.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Good God. Yeah. Do not... If you have any problems with flashing lights or just annoying visuals, we'll definitely skip that when you might end up in the hospital. Mm-hmm. We are joined as usual by Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of several podcasts, including the Cyber Wire podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, Caveat with Ben Yellen, and Control Loop. He covers topics such as social engineering, law and policy, surveillance, privacy, industrial control systems, and operational technology.

Woo! Welcome back, Dave. Thanks. Was that written by ChatGPT? Or is that a Jason original? As I mentioned last week, because it was too long, I said, summarize this, and that is the summary. Okay. All right. I can't wait. Pretty soon, it's just going to be Dave's here.

If I keep rolling. Yeah. Actually, pretty soon, it's going to be Dave's not here. ChatGPT did it all. Well, more important than me being here, Brian is back. So welcome back, Brian. We missed you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for stepping in and sorting things out while my butt was being examined repeatedly.

I know I'm about to be the butt of many jokes. And yes, butt, butt, butt. I will do the quick summary of what has happened to me since I have not talked about it yet. I have, or had, we're not sure yet, colon cancer. Yay.

Oh. Yeah. So, you know, it's happening younger and younger. I urge anybody listening to this show that has not done their colonoscopy yet, go do it. There's, it's just, it's happening younger. I think we're finding out what our entire generation being raised on processed foods is, is, is having, those chickens are coming home to roost in our butts, as it were.

Luckily, it was caught very early. I had surgery to remove the offending tumor. I am waiting on the reports on that to see if there need be any follow-up at all. Maybe, you know, potentially, you know, just let's take care of this a couple rounds of chemo or, oh, oh shit, we didn't get it all.

But the surgeon was very confident that he did what needed to be done. So we shall see. Again, very fortunate to have had it caught very early and dealt with it very quickly. And as Jason told me when I first started talking to him about this happening to me, they can fix that shit now.

Yes, they can. That's what they're doing. So, so it is not a death sentence by any means, you know. So hopefully I'm going to be around for many more years until chat GPT takes over for me and I don't need to be here anymore at all. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you're going through that.

I saw, I saw your Twitter poll. I did. I was actually contemplating. I enjoyed the break so much, not having to look at depressing tech news and all of a sudden having all this extra free time to be spent in pain downing Tylenol that I was like, oh, should I even come back at all or should Dave take over?

And it was 89% to 11% for me to come back, unfortunately. So here I am. Oh, phew. But you got 11%, Dave. That's strong showing. Yeah, well. That's more than I thought. That would have been awkward. That would have been awkward. I don't know. I was kind of hoping.

That's not going to lie. Well, you could just pull an Elon and say, fuck it and not pay attention to it, you know. That was my follow-up on that, which got almost more likes than the poll. I was like, I will follow this poll, the poll results just like Elon does. Oh, goodness.

So let me ask you this, Brian. Did you have any indication that anything was amiss or had you just gone in for a routine colonoscopy and this is what they found? I will say I had felt like I had had vaguely IBS symptoms for one or two years.

And I'd gone to doctors to talk about it. And again, as we've talked about many times on this show, you must be your own advocate. Do not rely on a doctor because doctors are just like, yeah, okay, vague IBS stuff, eat more fiber. And that was about the extent of that.

So I did go and do the colonoscopy probably, well, not earlier than they used to ask us to do it. You're supposed to start doing that around 50. I did, you know, just October of last year when I was still, I'm still 49. Um, now they say 45, uh, and I, I would say you should do that definitely.

So, yeah. Um, you know, some, something wasn't right, but I didn't think it was anything too extreme. Uh, I didn't have any of the symptoms like rapid weight loss and all that sort of stuff. You know, all the things that you hear about and there was no pain, there was no nothing. It was just, you know, my, my, my bowels and my stomach were kind of not the best.

Yeah. And I just thought it was some sort of IBS thing. So. Hmm. Well, thank goodness you went in and hopefully the folks who are listening, you'll take that as a, yet another reminder, uh, to go in and do it. It's, I, it's, I, I got mine done at age 52, I guess, last year.

And, um, you know, the prep is unpleasant, but the procedure is, is really, I describe it as the best nap you'll ever take. Yeah. The procedure is absolutely nothing. And, uh, I didn't even, I didn't find the prep too horrible. Like you, you basically fasting and you're drinking a really sweet Gatorade and you poop a lot and you know, you lose a couple of pounds and there you go.

Yeah. It wasn't too bad. Uh, I'm glad I don't mind it too much because having had this now I have, uh, I will be on the, like at least every other year, if not every year colonoscopy schedule for the rest of my life. So. Interesting. See, when I went in and had mine done, which, and was clear, um, I don't have to go in for another decade and I'm starting to second think that, you know, like, like why, why not go in in five years?

You know, what, what's the downside? I don't think there, there is a downside. Yeah, exactly. I, I, I would, uh, I would recommend one do so, particularly if you just feel like something's a little bit off. I, I, this, it's definitely been a bit of a wake up call in terms of, uh, how I treat my health and, and paying attention to my own body and being aware of things that are a little bit off.

You know, we're not 20 anymore and can't write it up to just being a hangover or whatever it is, or, you know, sort itself out in the long run, uh, cause it doesn't anymore. We're old. So being preventative is a very good thing. Yeah. They keep sending me tubes to poop in every year. They're like, here, poop in a tube.

And we'll tell you if you need to come in for a colonoscopy. And they, they keep saying, nope, you're all good. But I'm wondering if they, I think I might just go get one done now. Just, I think you should go get one. I've heard, I've heard different things. Uh, the doctor, the surgeon that I had in particular, really, uh, here comes the puns, poo-pooed the poo-poo test and said that they're, they're, they're iffy.

They're not, they're not terribly spot on. So, yeah, my roommate did one of those, came back positive, made her go get a colonoscopy and the colonoscopy was like, they're like, you have the cleanest bowels we've ever seen. We don't know why it came back positive. So I was going to get it done. I could use a nap.

I can definitely get to nap. Yeah. I mean, the procedure itself is, is a nothing burger. It completely is. So do not be afraid of it. Go get it. If you're over 45, just go get it. I had a stroke. I'm not afraid of them sticking something up my butt. Come on.

And it's funny, you know, it was also one of those, like, uh, my iPhone is listening to me things. Cause as soon as I got the kind of diagnosis, you've got a growth, could be a tumor. We're not sure. We're going to have to start doing all these tests and all that sort of stuff. Um, colon cancer was just everywhere in my feed, in the news, you know, Pele died from it.

Christy Alley died from it. You started to hear about ups, ticks in it. And I just saw it everywhere. You know, obviously that's, that's my brain making the selection, but it was everywhere. Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so go do it. Now moving off my butt, Dave, I have some very important news for you.

Yes, please. I went to Los Angeles during the Christmas break and we finally took my son to Disneyland and Star Wars land. Oh my God. It is so awesome. Go on.

It is so well done. Talk dirty to me, Brian. Come on, let's go, man. I want to hear it. Don't leave out any details. Tell me everything, man. As you well know, Disney is, is, is they're very good at what they do. Their, their theme parks are above and beyond anybody else's theme park, their attention to detail and everything that they do.

Uh, no expense was spared in Star Wars land, which is probably why there are only two rides. The one downside to Star Wars land is there, there's not much to it. Um, it's big. You can tell that they're going to expand it. There's, there's basically empty areas everywhere. Um, but the design is gorgeous.

You, you feel like you're on some planet from Star Wars and then you've got the people walking around and they stay in character. Chewbacca came up to Lucas. Kylo Ren came up to Lucas and asked him to join the dark side. And my kid said, yep. Which I think surprised Kylo Ren a bit. Uh, he was all in.

I'm like, there goes that start saving that therapy money again. Um, yeah. And, uh, the rides are, were pretty phenomenal. Um, the lines to get on them are huge, but just being able to do that. Being in the land, walking around, um, you know, they've merchandised the fuck out of it.

I mean, you can spend thousands of dollars in five minutes there. Uh, the food's great. The restaurants are great. The drinks are great. I mean, everything is just run, do not walk, get there. Well, I'm going there the first week of March. Uh, I'm actually getting, we're heading down to Florida, um, uh, to spend a week at Disney world and the whole family's going.

So this will be my first time in star Wars land. And, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm really looking forward to it. What I'm, I'm wondering specifically having not been there. Um, I am one of those people who, when I go to Disney world or Disneyland and I might make my way under the berm, you know, under the train tracks over to main street.

And I look down main street and I see the castle. I always get a little misty, um, just seeing the castle. And what I'm wondering is, did you have any of that when you first saw the Millennium Falcon? Yes.

Yes. It's stunning. Like, it's just like, why did this not happen when I was a kid? Why was there not a fall to your knees and weep openly? Yes. It's, it's stunning. It just, I walk, I turned a corner and I'm like, oh my God, it's the fucking Millennium Falcon.

Life size as it were, as if it's a real thing that could be life size, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So let me ask you this. Did you ride the new Star Tours? I didn't do the new Star Tours because we didn't get back around to that. We're, we're going to go back again over the summer and we're going to do like the two day pass and spend a lot more time there.

My, my kid wanted to be on the Haunted Mansion. We went on it like three times and, you know, it was, we did as much as we could and, and the lines for Star Tours were pretty spectacular. So we decided we'll punt that one to next time. But yeah, I got my fix just being in Star Wars land. It was, it was amazing. What was it like being there, you know, the place that you grew up with and being there with your son?

Amazing. It actually really was. It was, seeing it through his eyes was amazing. And, and, you know, just because I knew the park so well, it was, I got to like, you know, show him little things that people probably don't notice or realize. And it was a lot of fun imparting my, my own particular experience to him and like going, I used to work here.

You worked there? Yep. I sure did. I, you know, I avoided things like, and then I made out with a tourist over there. Right. Yeah. So, you know, skip, skip those kind of, yeah. Oh, let me tell you what I used to get up to on the Haunted Mansion, son.

Right. No, it was, it was an amazing experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm so glad that, that we did it and I'm looking forward to going back with him. So, yeah. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, after that little trip down memory lane, we've got a little bit of follow-up from Stuart over on Patreon.

This goes back to what you and I were talking about last week, Dave. It was actually used in an episode of the original Star Trek, Mudd's Women, when Kirk and company are trapped on a planet of androids who want to keep them prisoner, but they turn them off by making increasingly bizarre statements.

The Liar's Paradox breaks the androids, this being the original Star Trek, most of the androids are hot women. Hell yeah! Fembots, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I've been trying, I've been trying to break GPT all day, but it keeps coming back with answers for me.

So, I have not been able to replicate it falling apart, unfortunately. Yeah. And I suppose it's just going to keep getting better. I mean, you know, because it feeds back on itself. So, you know, we're not quite at Skynet, but hold on to the bar.

Yeah, I didn't get this in the show notes, but I did see that a couple of different news stories about how it passed, like, an entrance exam to a college and it passed, like, a law school entrance exam. Like, not with Stellar, like, it wasn't the best score ever, but it fucking passed. Right.

Yeah, it got a C on the law exam and a B, B-plus on the, I think it was Wharton, the Wharton exam for economics. I mean, better than most, right? I know a lot of people that didn't pass their law exam, so, yeah, doing better than my loser friends, I guess.

Yeah. I saw an interesting write-up last week from someone who was teaching, I think it was, like, a cybersecurity class with the SANS Institute. So, fairly high-level sort of thing. And they came at it as asking all the students to have ChatGPT open and active during the class.

And they said it was really – that experience and having it available really enhanced the experience for everyone because if you were someone in the class who had a question about something or didn't quite understand something, you could ask ChatGPT about it.

And odds are it would give you a good explanation so you weren't left behind. You also didn't bring the class to a screeching halt by asking the question. Right. And it was so much faster and more efficient than trying to do a Google search for the same thing.

I mean, isn't this already – I see the parallel between when, you know, the first handheld calculators started to pop up in schools and everybody freaked out about it and said, you can't have a calculator in class, you have to learn the math. Isn't it just another tool that we're going to start using that's just going to become commonplace?

That helps us. I think so. Yeah. And I think if you – I mean, certainly in our era of coming up in school, there were some teachers who embraced the use of the calculator and others who absolutely forbade it. Yeah. And I think we're going to see the same thing, and that in itself is an interesting little social experiment.

Yep. Well, since we're on the topic, we've got a little bit more follow-up here. Reluctant Bookie writes in, I decided to ask ChatGPT about the GOG podcast, and it told me that the show was very popular and ended in 2020 after eight years of episodes. I had a good laugh.

We do need those fact checkers. So I asked it the same thing, and here's what I got back. It said the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast is a weekly podcast that focuses on technology and pop culture. The show is hosted by Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister, who are both experienced technology professionals and self-described geeks.

The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including the latest tech news trends and podcasts, as well as broader cultural and societal issues related to technology. The show often features guest appearances from industry experts, authors, and other notable figures. The GOG podcast began in 2014 and is available on various podcast platforms, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher, which is still wrong, because we published our first episode on March 25th, 2013.

So, yes, we need the fact checkers. It may be wrong a little bit, Jason, but it's also a better write-up than you and I have ever done about our show. Oh, they're all better, yes. Oh, absolutely. And let me just say my favorite segment of Grumpy Old Geeks is Author's Corner, where you sit down and speak with notable authors about their books.

That's one of my favorite features of the show. Well, we did used to have New York Times bestselling writer Tim Ferriss on here for three years in a row at Thanksgiving. So, technically, we did have that at a time, you know? Okay. I withdraw my snark.

Yeah. It does cherry pick. And, yeah, I mean, again, it illustrates the point that this is a tool. It's not the be-all, end-all. It may get there eventually. But it's something you, again, even at my job, I've basically encouraged, we have people that write newsletters for different artists.

I've encouraged them, use it. Use it first to do a draft and then go in and edit it. That's it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. I'm using it everywhere now. It's great. It's great. I'm waiting. There's a, I think I put this in another part of the show, but I'll pull it back in here, too.

There is a pro version coming for $49 a month. I keep checking to see if it's available to me, but it is not yet. I will give them the money right away because apparently you get, you know, front-of-the-line access in probably a different segment of the infrastructure.

So it's not down for you every time you want to need it, when you need it now, which I didn't need three weeks ago because I'd never heard of it. And now I need it every second of every day. But isn't that interesting how quickly we've acclimated to it, right? People that are using it, like, rely on it now.

It's something that we want in our lives, that we need, that we use. It's just, it's a very effective tool. It'd be like being a mathematician now and writing things out long form versus using your scientific calculator. Why wouldn't you use it? Yep.

I agree. I agree. So speaking of using it, I wanted to answer the age-old question that we've had here on the show. Hey, ChatGPT, what's the difference between AI and ML? And here's what we got back. Wind up for this one.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, and machine learning, ML, are related but distinct fields. AI is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing objects and images, and making decisions.

ML, on the other hand, is a specific method for achieving AI. It is a method of teaching computers to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. In other words, ML is a technique for achieving AI. In simple terms, AI is the concept.

ML is the method to implement the AI concept. Examples of AI include self-driving cars, which don't fucking exist, intelligent personal assistants, and image recognition software. Examples of ML include decision tree algorithms, neural networks, and clustering algorithms.

Well, thank you, ChatGPT. That was very informative. Hmm. I like it. I mean, the thing is, so this is a perfect example. Like, because I have, I guess, above average knowledge of this, but still only adjacent knowledge to this, this sounds very convincing to me.

But I'm not entirely sure it's true. Right. It sounds convincing. It's totally bullshit. But I don't think it's, it sounds good, but I don't think it's correct. I disagree with a couple different things here, because we've argued about it so many times on the show, right? Yep. That's that, well, that is the trap of this stuff, right?

Because it spits out things that are so convincing. You really have to look at it, and you have to, you have to use your intelligence, your human intelligence, to figure out, is it bullshit or not? Right. Yeah. Right. Yep. So, and I'm just hearing other people who have only read headlines about it, who think the world is, like the robots are coming for them now.

It's like, they think that this is the, you know, this is the end. This is the end. The machines are coming for their jobs. And I'm like, so how much do you really know about this? Like, well, I heard it on the radio. I'm like, well, where did they, well, they were reading an article that they found online. And I'm like, okay, so we're playing telephone. Yeah, we're playing, we're playing, yeah, serious telephone here.

And just read the articles, people. Well, I mean, for some, for some people, this is the end of their, their business. There's no doubt about that. When you look at BuzzFeed is basically firing a ton of writers, and they're just going to use this stuff to generate crap, you know, you know, just the clickbait articles.

If you're writing clickbait, you're out of a job, end of story. If you're a low-level copywriter, you're probably out of a job. But what you can do is retrain yourself to become a higher-level editor of these sorts of things. That's the thing. That's the shift. It's just like if you coded HTML by hand 20 years ago, writing was on the wall, you're going to be out of a job.

Train on. Interesting thing, too, is we've discussed, you and I have, Dave, the Adobe Podcast's AI enhanced features. I have been using it quite a bit, but I tell you what, it definitely still, I kind of clocked how much time it has saved me, and I thought it was going to save me a lot of time.

It saves me about 20% of my normal time because it still needs cleaning. So you still have to have that human touch go in there and re-EQ things because it definitely screws up the EQ on the people's voices.

So I have to take a master EQ, transpose that EQ onto the Adobe enhanced stuff. So there's still, you know, I ain't going away anytime soon, which is fine. But, you know, and it's saving me a little bit of time, but I'm still billing full rate. So, hey, I'll take it.

Yeah. Okay. It is a tool. It is a tool that helps, but it does not replace a human. I did an experiment with it yesterday where I was curious what it would do to the audio of a phone call. You know, so an old analog, you know, record me dialing in with a phone number, that kind of sound, what would it do with it?

And it did not do very well. I was surprised how poorly it cleaned it up. Yes. I wonder if it's because so much of the spectrum is actually missing from those recordings, right? Like it has less data and information to work with.

Yep. Yeah. I think that may be it. But it was surprising to me because of how well it does with so many awful things that what I would consider to be kind of a basic thing, you know, had nothing to do with like the clarity of the call. All the words are clear and you can understand everything that's being said.

There wasn't a whole lot of noise in the background or anything. It's just a phone call. Yeah. But it did not turn it into the beautiful studio sounding audio that it does with so many other things. And but like you said, Brian, yet. Yeah. Yeah. Do me a favor, Dave.

Send that to me. We're going to have an AI off. I want to see what I can do to that file. And then we'll play them side by side next week. All right. Yep. You got it. Because, Brian, you hit on something that is really key there. There's not a lot of information in those in those phone calls and audio files.

Some of my tools that I use. Big parts of the spectrum. Yeah. I have a tool called Spectral Recovery that will actually take those and will build up, you know, the missing spectrum. And it works really, really well. Well, now you've done it, Jason. The AI is going to listen to this podcast, realize what it's missing and plug itself into it.

It's going to buy itself a copy. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to go buy a copy of RX10 Advanced and go ahead and run that. But I'm just curious to see if I can do better. But if I can't, then that segment may go away and this might be edited out. Then you won't be hearing that next week.

Right. Right. Anyway, I think we've had enough for today. Forget this security crap. There's some security crap, but who cares? Oh, Dave, you've got a couple of tools in here that would be interesting. If you want the security crap, listen to the Cyber Wire.

Yeah, yeah. Go to one of those shows. But you actually put in a couple of handy-looking tools in here that look pretty good. Yeah. So in the past week, I stumbled across a couple of, I guess, tools I would describe as being just front ends for some other utility projects.

One of them is called MacGPT, and basically this puts chat GPT in your menu bar. Very handy. I'm sure you could make use of that, Jason. Yeah. And then the other one, same developer, it's called MacWhisper, and it's using OpenAI's transcription technology, which is called Whisper.

Same sort of thing. It just puts a Mac front end on Whisper, which if you haven't used Whisper, it is remarkably good and lightning fast. I've got to start using this because, you know, one of the things that drives me nuts about the internet, because I'm old and yelling at clouds, is everybody has transitioned because they've been forced to or told to by social media to making video instead of just posting, instead of just typing up their thoughts.

I hate watching videos. I don't want the sound on my phone. I don't want to listen to something. But if I can just quickly transcribe it and then read it, that would make me very happy. Yeah. Well, this will do it. And it's super fast, so it will save you time. Excellent. And Whisper is open source.

You'd actually download that and install it on your computer, right? Because I was looking at the MacWhisper utility that you posted here, and it said nothing leaves your computer. So you actually have to download and compile Whisper, I believe, right? No, I don't believe I did that.

No, I don't think so. It was hitting something. I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I only played with it a little bit, and I didn't dig that deeply into it. So you might be right, but I don't know. Okay, because when I was looking at it, there was a link to GitHub with the source code, so I thought maybe that was the same thing.

We'll dig into that because that will save me a little bit of money because we use Otter for transcribing for most of my show stuff, and it's not great. It's not great at all. Yeah. Whisper is pretty darn good. Pretty darn good. So check it out.

I'm interested to see what you think about it. The last thing I put in here was a link to a YouTube video. I did not know that I needed a 25-minute video explaining the musical complexity of the safety dance, but here it is, and it's quite entertaining.

Turns out that the safety dance is a more complex song than you would think it is at first blush. I guess that's not surprising in retrospect because it is such a catchy song. It's so simple, and yet it sticks with you.

And I think we all still have great affection for it, which to me— By far one of the best one-hit wonders of all time. Right. No doubt about it. Yeah. Right. Yep. And this video breaks that down and describes what makes it so interesting. This person also has a style of presentation that's pretty fun.

He does little cartoons while he's talking, and some of the little cartoons are actually funny little jokes as you listen along. So it's entertaining. I enjoyed this video, and of course, when I was done, I was dancing around to safety dance in my little studio here. So you will probably do the same.

Shout out! Over at Patreon, we've got Jeremy. Welcome, Jeremy. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got John, Andre, Tom, Joseph, Humphrey, Mark, and Charlie. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Daryl, Ashley, and Nick.

Woo! Thank you, everybody. Thank you. And we have a new five-star review. It says, you complete me. And this is from ChattyG33K. ChattyGeek. ChattyGeek. In Australia. I just had to download Apple Music UGG to be able to post a review.

These guys keep putting out great content, and Dave Bittner, I really like his perspective in security. Ha! Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And welcome back, Brian. It's good to have you. I'm glad the poll went in our favor. Well, I was tempted to ignore the poll, just like Elon, but here I am.

So, happy to be back, and we'll be back here next week. Yay. All right. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies.

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