591: Universal Basic Ignorance
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Summary
In this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks, Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister discuss generative AI, technology and business news, and recent television and film releases. They also cover an image manipulation detector, restrictions on TikTok on government devices, and a Ford patent concerning remote vehicle repossession.
- The hosts discuss prompt engineering, the ChatGPT and Whisper APIs, and the idea of universal basic intelligence.
- They question whether AI services could be universally accessible and whether generative AI can provide an audit trail.
- News topics include FTX fraud charges, AI image copyrights, and a deepfake announcement.
- They discuss developments at Twitter, Meta, Tesla, and Waymo.
- They review The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, Picard, and other releases.
- They cover Bing Chat in Windows 11, an image manipulation detector, TikTok device restrictions, and prompts designed to bypass ChatGPT safeguards.
- They discuss Ford’s remote repossession patent and possible uses of remote vehicle controls.
- They thank supporters and close with show information.
Key moments
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Prompt engineering and generative AI
The hosts discuss AI prompts, new APIs, universal basic intelligence, and questions about how AI produces answers.
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Technology and business news
Topics include FTX, AI copyrights and deepfakes, social platforms, and driver assistance.
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Television, film, and comedy
The hosts review recent shows and specials and discuss upcoming releases.
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Apps, AI tools, and device policies
The discussion covers Bing Chat in Windows 11, an image manipulation detector, TikTok restrictions, and ChatGPT prompts.
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Ford’s remote repossession patent
The hosts discuss Ford’s patent and speculate about uses of remote vehicle controls.
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Supporter acknowledgments
The hosts thank contributors through Patreon, PayPal, and the tip jar.
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Closing and show information
The hosts sign off and direct listeners to show notes, contact information, and reviews.
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QVC advertisement
An advertisement promotes shopping at QVC.
Full transcript
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Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.
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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we got a little bit of follow-up here. Okay. I found this one over at Axios and I thought it was very nice. AI's rise generates new job title, Prompt Engineer. Oh, so they listened to our show from six months ago.
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Who'd have thought of that? Who'd have thunk it? Oh, wait. Of course we did. Yes. Yeah. So it's a good article, though. I highly recommend people who are curious about the new world order that is coming up to go check it out because, yeah, it has a lot of use cases for what it's going to be like in the future.
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And writing prompts is definitely going to be a thing that everybody should be up to speed on because it's not going away. Yeah. You know, appropriate to that, you had sent me a YouTube link to a chat GPT tutorial or webinar the other week.
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And I was like, but I did finally watch it. And two takeaways from it. First off, it's disturbing to be taught by what feels like 11-year-olds. Yes. Yes. But beyond that, it was very interesting. And, I mean, I'm sure because of the nature of this technology and how it's advancing so quickly, I'm sure everything that I learned is already out of date at this point.
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But, yeah, it's good to keep up on this because this is the new deal, man. It's not going away. Yeah, it is the new deal for sure. And the thing that I sent you is from Ship 30 for 30 with Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole. There you go. Also known as Cole. Very, very smart couple of guys and very rich couple of guys, too.
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Damn. These guys are raking it in because Nick is one of the – I keep calling him Nick. His name is – we call him Cole, but he is part of the Category Pirates, so that's how I got to know him. There you go. Yeah. Go check out Ship 30 for 30 if you guys want to learn how to write better online and get that course that I sent Brian because it was pretty cool.
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Yeah, it was very interesting. Yep. These guys know what they're doing. Now, this week has seen the release of the Chat, GPT, and Whisper APIs. The internet is a buzz about these things because – Yes, they're plugging it into everything. Plug it into everything. This is the new block code.
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You want funding? Yeah, yeah. Get your API. Yeah, blockchain 2.0, Web4. But this is actually useful, which is pretty cool. But the thing about it is it is so dirt cheap. It is ridiculously dirt cheap. They have a very big price cut from what it used to be.
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And I have a thread here called Introducing Chat, GPT, and Whisper APIs, so you can go check it out. It is – like I said, it's cheap, but it makes me wish that I was a coder sort of again. But not really. Not really. I'm cool with letting other people write the tools.
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I'll just use them now, now that I'm in the home stretch, as it were. Yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying. Even just watching that webinar was like, ooh, I want to kind of get into this again. And then I was like, no, I don't. No, no. I know. I know. It just reminds me of the old, you know, building the web days.
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This is like something that's exciting. It's not an NFT. Yeah. It's not an NFT. It's not an NFT. It's a stupid crypto or JPEGs that you can still download. Yeah. How are those monkeys? How are those bored yachts doing? Very bored. Very bored.
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And there is this mega thread from Nathan LeBenz. He's from the Cognitive Revolution podcast and newsletter. It's a very long read, but it's very worth it because it just goes through a bunch of different things. But in the middle of this, he coins the term universal basic intelligence, which I thought was pretty clever.
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Right? He calls it free global access to a minimum set of AI services. With as good as AI is getting at everything, this would be meaningful. And it seems a rare opportunity to shape the global social contract. Okay, Nathan. Slow your roll. I'd slow your roll here a little bit.
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Let's not put the cart before the horse. We don't have free global access to the internet yet. Exactly. Or food. Or clothing. Or clean water. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's start with the human basics here. How about you use some of that universal basic intelligence and realize that this is basically for privileged folk?
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Yes, it is very much for privileged folk. But the thing about it, too, is once you have – let's just say we live in Star Trek-y and utopia here. Everybody has – Which, as we've seen in Picard, isn't exactly utopia. No, it's not. Definitely not.
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And after a time here, if everybody is using the universal basic intelligence programs that scrape the web and, you know, the 20-plus or 30-plus years of us building the internet and building the web and putting all of those crazy websites up that this thing feeds on, once people stop creating that stuff and just using this, well, then we're going to get into universal basic ignorance because everybody is going to rely on this as a crutch.
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This is a trope that is, you know, from science fiction since it started, you know. Just go back. And it's already happened. I mean, so few people have the basic knowledge to build the basic building blocks of everything that we use these days. Most – we were talking about this with millennials and cell phones and particularly iPhones when they came out where everything was so easy to use and nobody had to know how to do anything anymore.
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Yep, we're seeing a lot of that come home to roost. So, yeah, I'm just looking at the longer-term picture of this because that's what we tend to do. You know, we're right in a 10-year time scale. But I want you to cast your mind back to one of the greatest books of all time, the greatest book series of all time, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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Okay. There was a time where they asked, what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? And their universal basic intelligence came back with 42, which nobody knows what it means. And why don't they know what it means? Because they don't know how the computer was programmed. Yes, this is a long way of saying we still don't know what the fuck these things are doing.
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And half the time they give us absolutely useless data. So, before we can get to universal basic intelligence, let's just work on the basic intelligence part of it and not give this thing the credit that everybody thinks that it deserves. So, quick anecdote about that, because we're referring to the black box.
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That's what basically everybody calls it, especially with AI and machine learning, when these things have trained themselves so we don't really know how they get to the answers that they get to. Quick thing about wokeness in society right now. I didn't think my usage of the term black box, because we're, you know, everybody's talking about it and it's kind of an understood term, could be even vaguely considered racist.
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But it could, because I was referring to a colleague who happens to be African-American and his rather obtuse method of explaining anything that he does. And I said, I don't really understand what happens when things go into that guy's black box. And all of a sudden everybody went, and I was like, oh, come on, people.
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Give me a fucking break. Oh, my God. I mean, okay, a couple of things about the black box. One, the black box, we think about it as the airplane flight recorder, which is actually orange. But the company that made those was down the street from me in Lawrence, Pennsylvania, outside of Lawrence, Pennsylvania.
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And the company's name was Black Box Incorporated. Sorry. That was the name of the company. Well, they're racist. Sorry. They have to be canceled. Yeah. This was in rural Pennsylvania. So chances are, I'm just saying, you know. But, yeah, come on. I mean, we've already changed master bedroom to primary.
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What else? I mean, I guess. We don't have master and slave drives anymore. No, we don't. Nope. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, the world of SQL was upended about, you know, seven or eight years ago. So, sorry. But, yes, to your point, we don't know what's happening with this stuff, which gets me to my next story, which is Scott Belsky from Adobe is talking about generative AI and the corporate world.
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And he's like, the great part, he's like, oh, yeah, this is much better than Web 3 because, A, it actually makes us do less work and it's not stupid. Which is great. Which is great. Yeah. He does not like Web 3 at all. But he starts talking about how this is going to wheedle its way into the corporate world and how it will help us do our tasks faster.
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But he's like, there is going to be a hell of a lot of scrutiny to what prompts are going in, what's coming out, what's being used, what isn't being used. And, gasp, corporations might want an audit trail on everything. You want to show your work. Show your work.
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These things cannot do that right now. Yep. There is no audit trail. It is basically throwing everything into a blender. You throw it at the wall and you take a look at the 12 fingers and you go, art, you know. So that's how it's working. And finally, one last bit of follow-up.
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It's a great little video about a musician who put on the Kendrick Lamar filter for his voice. And just as a quick little sample, I still get Kendrick Lamar confused with an NBA player. So I just, you know, I'm not down with the kids these days.
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But it's decent. I mean, it's not great, but it's decent. And this thing is just happening over and over again, which I'm sure you're listening to all the time in your household. Oh, I overhear many a phone call. Yep. Yep. So, cat's out of the bag, guys. It's not great, but it's here. So, get used to it and fire up those prompt skills.
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In the news. Well, the wheels of justice, Jason. They grind. They grind slowly, but they grind. So, finally, we have some charges here. Dishad Singh, co-founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has pleaded guilty to U.S. federal fraud and conspiracy charges.
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He's the third member of Sam Bakeman-Fried's inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. Yay. Mm-hmm. Yep. No, this guy's going to have a bad day. He's fucked. He agreed to forfeit the proceeds of his actions. As Reuters reports, bankruptcy filings showed that Singh received $543 million loan from Alameda.
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You know, here's $543 million for doing absolutely nothing sketchy whatsoever. Yeah. I promise. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Brian, can I borrow $543 million from the Grumpy Old Geeks Fund? Sure. Why not? All right. Since we happen to magically have that for no apparent reason.
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Well, let me go mint it up and then I'll – yeah, there we go. Let me go make up fake money and give it to myself. I'm in. I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait for this thing to play out. I really can't. Me too. I can't wait for them to make the movie starring Jared Leto since he's in all of these things.
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Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I still can't believe they're leaving him at home. He gets to stay at home. Yeah. Must be nice. Must be fucking nice, I tell you. Mm-hmm. And we have some news from the United States government about AI and copyrights. I love this so much.
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No. That's it. No. No. You can't copyright your AI crap. You just can't. Forget it. It's out the door. Thank God. Yep. You don't get to copyright 12 fingers. What about 88 Fingers Louie? Oh, wait. He is already copywritten by probably Hanna-Barbera, I'm guessing.
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One would assume, yes. Yep. So far, we've discussed mostly the AI influence on music in terms of people basically generating existing musicians and making things that sound like them. I found this one particularly funny. This is slightly different. A deepfake AI hack has duped Avenged Sevenfold fans into thinking the band has canceled their festival dates.
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This is so good. This is so good. Now, they didn't just do the deepfake AI technology, which is relatively simple enough if you dive into it and play around with it long enough. They did actually have to hack into their accounts. Right. Because obviously, if you just release something, it doesn't mean anything.
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But they managed to get into the accounts as well. And they uploaded basically a video of the lead singer's voice falsely announcing that they're canceling all their upcoming festival appearances. I mean, you have to laugh. You do. I love it so much. So good. Meta has decided to revamp.
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They're calling it a revamp of their AI division to get more into generative tech so that they can integrate it into their pantsless universe. Right. So they have released a large language model called Lama. Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong. Or Lama, which I would probably say it is.
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But you still can't play with it yet. They're saying, oh, we've got stuff coming. We're jumping on the bandwagon. Everybody's jumping on the bandwagon, bro. This actually has the chance to actually make something useful out of Meta right now. Because as we have seen, ain't nothing really coming out of there that anybody wants.
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So what they're saying is they're going to keep working on this stuff so they can integrate it into their current products like Instagram and chat filters and the garbage that's already out there. But make it better. Make it bigger. So I think- I mean, you know, this is definitely, I mean, they're obviously pivoting more and more.
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We talked a little bit last week about the verified payment scheme that they're rolling out, which isn't for us, Jason. Well, I mean, I guess it could be. It could be for grumpy old geeks. It's for businesses and content creators so they can protect their brands, basically. But something like this, you know, they have their horrible, you know, chatbots right now.
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Sure. As a business, I would pay extra for a good chatbot that would actually communicate with with my customers. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. If they actually release anything because, you know- They tend not to. They tend not to. They tend to announce a lot. Yeah.
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Yeah. So I don't know. Can we still go back? Can you go back and delete your old messages yet? Like the Zuck can? No, just him. Okay. Just him. I bet he has legs too in his metaverse. I bet he does. I bet he has his own legs with his own barbecue sauce. Oh, God. Elon Musk is laying off more people at Twitter.
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And we have seen this week what that has finally wrought with the massive downtimes and shit just not working at all over at Twitter. And I called it a day. I canceled my Twitter blue. Oh, no. He's not going to pay another janitor now. I know. There's one more roll of toilet paper out the door.
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I took that money and I bought a sub to Ivory. So now I've got that on my iOS devices for Mastodon. And- It's crazy. They went from over 7,000 employees to what? It's under 2,000 now? Yeah, yeah. And the worst thing in the world is like all tech companies are looking at this as a model.
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Wow. He was able to dump that many people and still have a viable, minimal product. Well, not viable. I was going to say the viable is now up for discussion. As viable as it was before, let's be honest. Well, no. I mean, it's been down, down now. It's really funny.
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You go there and it's like you go to the homepage on the web version and it's just like, hey, welcome to Twitter. Post your stuff. And it's just completely dead and down. All you get to see is the welcome message. Well done. Well done. Yeah. Well, cast your mind back just a little bit, Jason, when Elon first decided to take on this folly.
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And one of his big supporters was Jack Dorsey. Was it Jack Dorsey or Jack's beard? Jack's beard thought this was an absolutely fantastic idea. He fully supported Elon Musk. He had his back. He said, if anybody was going to be able to take this this company and make something of it, it would be Elon.
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What is a good supporter and buddy like that do just a few months later? What does he do, Brian? Release a fucking competing product. Yes. Welcome to Silicon Valley, baby. Yeah. Jack Dorsey's new Twitter alternative, Blue Sky, is now available in closed beta on the App Store.
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It's invite only right now and could soon join a crowded field of budding Twitter competitors, including Mastodon, none of which will probably actually work. So you can sign up for the wait list. It's not Twitter, Jason, because it says, what's up instead of what's happening.
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Ooh. Yeah. So what are the actual, what's the, what is it, the atomic unit of what would be called a tweet or a toot? What is it on Blue Sky? Is it a cloud? They don't say. I don't know. I guess we'll have to sign up for the beta and find out on ourselves.
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Yeah. Or not. Or not. Seriously. I'm sorry. I've had my time with Jack. I'm done, Jack. Sorry. Yeah. I'm done with Jack and his beard. And your beard. You obviously still have, you know, that other company that you're the CEO of that you like a hell of a lot more than any of this other crap.
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So, yeah, I don't need a double CEO to take over something else. I will stick with ignoring Mastodon all day long. I'm trying to stick with single CEO companies. Yeah, seriously. That's my new thing moving forward. Yeah. That's a, you know what? That's a, that's actually a really good plan.
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I like that plan. I think so. Have you jumped over to Mastodon yet? Not one. I'm never going to. Okay. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. I just don't care enough. I, first off, I'm just over social media. The social media I liked was friend to friend, F to F.
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I don't like, I don't like the, the fact that it's all about content creators and businesses now, no matter where you go. I understand that Mastodon is, is a smaller version of that. That is F to F, but I just don't give a fuck anymore. I'm fucked on F to F. Yeah.
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I just don't care. I don't care what other people think. I'm done. No more Fs to give. Nope. No more Fs to give. Well, speaking of that, with no more fucks to give, Elon also has decided, just, he just said, stop it.
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We're not paying anything anymore. No bills. Period. And they, they, they shut down their Slack account the other day, which, you know, has most of the institutional knowledge from all of the engineers at the company. Oops. Oops. So they fire the engineers. They, they get rid of the, you know, the knowledge repository that has everything.
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The step-by-step instructions on how to bring it back up when it crashes. Yes. I mean, I saw some engineers say, no, it really had, if this happens, do this, this, this, this, and this, and that always worked, but now that's gone and they can't get it back. So what are they going to do?
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Oh, wait, fire everybody else. It is literally going to be Elon in a room rocking and shaking his knees going, why is nobody liking my tweet? Why is nobody liking my tweet? Why is nobody liking my tweet? No, no. If there's only one user and it's Elon and he tweets, he gets a hundred percent engagement.
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Mm-hmm. This is true. He is the singularity. Oh my God. Yep. And he'll still have all his money because he's not paying any bills. Oh, for fuck's sake, Elon. God. And just because, just because, why not?
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Oh, he wants to start his own version of chat GPT that, because he wants to fight the woke AI. Oh, I have the most horrible fucking joke and I just can't do it. Oh, please. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Well, tell me off the air.
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Okay. Pretty please. Yeah. Like, like, I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll Dilbert myself if I do. Oh, shit. Don't want that to happen. At least not when I'm still partner here. Please. Wait till you start your own solo show and go for it.
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But this guy is just, I mean, he's, he, he was one of the founders of open AI that created chat GPT and you know, all of this stuff. It's such performative bullshit. I don't really is. I know everybody's going to be the, the muskites are going to tweet and say, this is next level chess.
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He's playing 17 moves ahead of me. No, he's fucking not. He's an idiot. He's an idiot that's making shit up as he goes. He's literally throwing his monkey poo at the wall, figuring out what sticks. That's why he got rid of the janitors because they kept cleaning up the walls. That's it. That's where the institutional knowledge is now, Jason.
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It's on the walls. It really is. It really is. And finally, back, I think hopefully this is one of the last things I have about the Elon averse. Tesla has paused the rollout of their self-driving software because of the recall. Okay. Can you give these people their money back?
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Because this was expensive and it obviously doesn't work. How many class action lawsuits are out there right now because of the self-driving stuff? Has anybody kept count? I don't know. Tesla just did their, Elon sat down to talk about his vision 3.0 for the company.
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And apparently it was just a fucking god-awful mess and he looks ill. It's a mess right now. Again, I stand by the fact that I think Tesla is a great company. It just needs an adult in charge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've read some things about the latest round of what they're doing over there.
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And it's 50-50. Some people are like, he's an idiot. Some people are like, he's a genius. And some of the people that are saying that he's a genius are some people that I actually respect, which is. So I've kind of taken that one with a grain of salt. But, you know, they need to come out with a new car.
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Oh, this is what I wanted to tell you that I found very interesting, around here at least. A lot of people are swapping out their Teslas now. They're actually getting rid of them and they're moving over to the Porsche EV. Because apparently the price point is fairly similar. And at the end of the day, you get a Porsche.
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Yeah, you have a Porsche. Yeah. I'd rather have a Porsche too. Because, I mean, this is my anecdotal testing ground. Basically, the Whole Foods parking lot. Right. It used to be 87% Teslas. And now it's probably about 60% Teslas.
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And those Porsches are starting to roll in. So you're saying the evolution of the Whole Foods parking lot went from Prius to Tesla to Porsche. Yep. That's it. So I don't know what to read into that. But do your own research.
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But, wait, you're in Canada. Never mind. Well, speaking of driving in your neck of the woods, Waymo has announced that they're going to start driverless taxi tests in Los Angeles. Great. Right. The hardest city in the entire world to drive in if you're a human with universal basic intelligence.
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And we're unleashing these. That's going to go just great. Just great. I'm keeping my eye out for them, too. Particularly in Santa Monica. No. No. The Whole Foods parking lot in Santa Monica is a goddamn rat's maze.
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You were lucky to get out of it alive. Yep. Yeah. Good luck with that. I'm glad I got a Jeep is all I got to say.
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Media Candy. Well, The Mandalorian Season 3 premiered. Did you watch it? I did. I loved it. I thought it was pretty good.
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I thought some of it was kind of funny, but... You know, the setup, first episode, kind of funny, kind of seeing where it's going to go. But, yeah, no spoilers. We'll wait for Dave to come back, fresh from his experience in Star Wars land. But we're going to see where it goes.
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But, I mean, I was into it. Much better than The Book of Boba Fett. And what it really cast the light on for me is I've also been watching The Bad Batch, which I enjoyed the first two seasons. Boy, I'm bored watching The Bad Batch now. And The Mandalorian was like, oh, thank God. Star Wars is back.
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That's good. That's good. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice Starbuck cameo. Like to see her. Yes. But all in all, I thought it was a solid, solid episode. And they pack a lot into that show because I forgot how short it was. But, man, they definitely get a lot in. You get...
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Bang for your buck. Yeah, you really do. Great effects this time, too. At least we had a, you know, good space battle to start things off. Yeah. It was solid. It was very solid. Yep. Speaking of packing a lot in, Picard, episode three. God! God! I swear to God, they even had the music stings from Con when they were going through the cloud again, didn't they?
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It kind of felt like it. Yep. Yeah, it really did feel like it. But I thought it was a really good episode. I thought we had some really good stuff in it. I mean, some great stuff with the main characters. Like, this is not the happy-go-lucky, feel-good reunion that I think we all wanted.
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But, damn, it's intriguing. Yeah, I really, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And they're giving the best lines to Worf, of course. Oh, my God. That Worf scene was fantastic. Fantastic. So good. Yeah. I mean, I don't like her in that plot line, that side plot. I haven't liked her at all in the show.
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Ever. Yeah, since she first, you know, showed up in the show. But, no, I thought, yeah, the Worf stuff was... It was just beautiful. And I loved that they finally, you know, we're, what is it, three episodes in now? And they finally at least revealed who the baddie is.
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So that's good. Yeah. That's good. A little, you know, Deep Space Nine callbacks going on now. Yeah. I really liked it. I really liked it. I'm very intrigued where they're going to go with it. And we still haven't even gotten La Forge. No, we haven't. We haven't. So we'll see how it goes.
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But I'm enjoying it. I'm thoroughly fucking enjoying it. I am along for the ride. And I'm not taking notes. I'm not nitpicking. I'm just going with it. Well, you know, you told me that. We talked a little bit during the week. And I was bitching a little bit more about it and my worries. And you were just like, you know what?
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This is the last time we're going to have all these characters together. Enjoy the ride. I'm now doing that, Jason. Oh, my God. Excellent. I love it. Yeah. I watched a new stand-up. I was looking for something to watch at some point and fired up the HBO and saw Marc Maron had a new stand-up from bleak to dark.
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I'm actually not a huge Marc Maron fan, but I'm a fan of anything titled from bleak to dark because that's how my personality runs. And it was. And it was very funny. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm about 10 minutes into it because I had to move that massive TV that I bought, that big fire TV with an 80-inch or whatever.
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And I set it up yesterday in the studio and I needed something to watch. So I'm like, I'll throw that on. And I'm like 10 minutes into it. It was good. It's good so far. I mean. Yeah, it's good. I can take him in small doses. I can't listen to his show because he is just such a downer. But. Yeah.
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Well, at least in this format, his downers have to come with a hit of humor at the end. Yeah, you got to have a punchline. Yeah, you got to have a punchline or else you don't get the stand-up special. Yeah. I'm digging it so far. I'm going to finish it off for sure. Speaking of getting finished off, just had to put it in here.
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Sorry. Bye, Dilbert. You're done. You're done. Except he's not. Because in my opinion, this was an entirely calculated move. He is getting buckets of money from MAGA fucks. He is pivoted to being one of these guys.
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His podcast is going to go up. His people are going to sign up for his stupid paywalled crap where he has coffee and espouses his theories. How much money was in publishing a cartoon in a physical paper anymore? He's going to make way more money now.
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Way more money. Yeah. I mean, plus how much has he made? I mean, he's not going to do bad. But here's the thing. It's like now it's everybody knows. Everybody. I mean, a lot of us knew already. I mean, you and I have talked about him a couple of times over the years we've been doing this podcast, and I've always been like, the guy's an asshole.
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Yeah. I mean, I come from the old days. I liked him. I liked – he did this little small book that I really like that I can't remember the name of that I actually have signed here from him. In the old days, I like him. But, you know, people change over time. But he really did. They do calculated things because they have absolutely no fucking morals or scruples.
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Yeah, if I hear one more time that he's a trained hypnotist, I'm going to fucking shoot somebody. But I love this. He's like, most of my income will be gone by next week. And he had 3,000 people watching the stream. Only 3,000 people it took to ruin his career. He said, my reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this.
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Am I right? There's no way you can come back from this. Well, we're going to find out. Not in the format you were. Yeah. You're not going to come back in the paper. Forget that. You're an online Tucker Carlson now. Well done. Yeah. And, of course, Musk defended him. Of course. Yeah. So we just knew that was coming.
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Oh, the guy from South Africa is going to defend the guy who's talking bad about black people. Go figure on that one. But I put a link in here to a comic called Maga Burt, which was pretty funny, which I think sums everything up nicely. Yeah. Link will be in the show notes for that. I don't know how I feel about this next one, though, Brian.
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I can tell you exactly how I feel about it. You're going to tell me in a second. Yes. Warner Brothers is going to start making new Lord of the Rings movies. Be my guest. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They should have stopped at the trilogy, the first trilogy.
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Or just not made The Hobbit 17 hours long because it's a shorter book than The Lord of the Rings. Yeah. And how did you stretch that out into three fucking movies that made us all yawn and ruin and poop all over the legacy? Yeah. Well, I was going to say how they did it.
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They did it poorly. That's how they did it. Yeah. I mean, I do like the show, though. I think that's the format that's best explored for any of this sort of stuff. And what are they going to base this on? I just, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know either. But it's coming. I still can't even get into this show.
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I tried. I really enjoyed it. You just got to kind of sink in. Yeah. Now that I got this monster new TV set up again in a nice place to watch it, maybe I'll dive into it because this is a really nice TV, I got to say. Next time you're in town, you have to come over and watch something on it.
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It's pretty stellar. Yeah. I'll do it when I'm in town over the summer, for sure. One of my childhood classic revered memories, along with Monty Python and all that sort of stuff, and of course, you know, the majority of the Mel Brooks movies, but my favorite of all time was History of the World Part One.
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Okay. I fucking love that movie. He called it Part One. I know it's Mel Brooks, but secretly, my 14-year-old in my heart of hearts thought there would be a sequel in a couple years. I'm almost 50, Jason. History of the World Part Two is going to be a limited series on Hulu.
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So it's not out yet, right? I think it comes out today. Okay. I saw the trailer. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, whatever. He's going to take a victory lap, and he's got a bunch of luminaries in the comedy world that are going to be in it. It's not going to have – my hopes are not set high, let's put it that way, but I'll take it for the chuckles.
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Yeah, it's chuckles. It's going to be chuckle-worthy because I watched the trailer, and I'm like, And then near the end, it kind of picked up a bit. So we'll see how that goes. It's got Jack Black, so I'll watch it for the Jack Black bits. Got me there. I love him. I did watch Die Hard this weekend, which was – Kevin Hart has this new little sub-genre of things that he's doing.
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Oh, it's Kevin Hart? Kevin Hart. I thought it was like they brought back Heart to Heart for one last movie. No, see, that would be great. If Kevin Hart was in the Heart to Heart remake, that would be great. No, this is him trying to be an action hero, but it's got John Travolta in it and a bunch of other people.
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Is it tongue-in-cheek? Very. All of his new things are. Like I was saying, he's got this whole new little side empire of these little throwaway movies that are great. Today's Adam Sandler. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's definitely Sandler'd his way into it.
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And I enjoy them. They're popcorn. You do not have to think. You sit back on the couch on a weekend when it's crappy and raining outside, and you spend an hour – this was like an hour and 25 minutes. It was short as can be. But it was fun. It's fun. I like these little things. I think he does a good job at them, and he takes the piss out of himself, which is really funny.
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I dig it. I like that. That kind of humor I'm a fan of. Yeah. So I recommend it. I don't know where it is. I think it might be on Prime. I got it off of the back alleys of the internet because it just showed up one day. So I'm like, I'll grab that. I'm sure I pay for it somewhere since I pay for every other service.
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But why give them the view when I can go steal it and pay for it myself? Fogarty sent over this little gem. It's how to write a Smith song in one minute. Did you get a chance to watch this? I did watch it. I have a problem with the chest hair requirement. I don't remember Johnny Marr being particularly hairstute, but it's very funny.
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It's very funny. It's well worth the one-minute watch because he nailed it. He made a pretty good song. Yeah, it's a good song. Probably AI wrote it. Yeah, that's true. Oh, God. Ted Lasso season three trailer finally came out. Not the teaser, an actual trailer.
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Very funny. I'm very much looking forward to this. And as we've talked about, we hope this is the last season. Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to watch the trailer because I always feel that they just pack it too full of the chuckles. And I kind of want to experience the chuckles au naturel.
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Well, since it's March 15th, you only have 12 days to wait. So might as well. Perfect. Perfect. And I saw this news and I got very excited because Billions is coming back for season seven. And season six of Billions was a dumpster fire.
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It was terrible because Bobby Axelrod was gone. Like the only reason to watch the show, you know. And he's gone because Damien Lewis's wife died in the middle of the pandemic. And he's like, I'm taking a break. Well, he's coming back. He's coming back.
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The last time I saw Damien Lewis was Homeland Season one. Oh, yes. He was good in that, though. I thought. He was very good in that. I mean, still the best Damien Lewis role ever is Band of Brothers. You just can't beat that. But as Captain Winters. But man.
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Axelrod, second favorite role. And he's coming back for six of the 12 episodes. So I'm guessing it's going to be the last six. Thank God. Somebody needs to save that show. I did not want it to go out how it was going out. Because the first five seasons of that, or the first four and a half seasons of that show were just fucking stellar.
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Stellar. But you've never seen it, right? No. No. Oh, man. See, if you like Secession, you're going to love Billions, too. Well, maybe I'll go back after Secession ends. Because they've decided to cap at that the next season. Yes. Thank God. And that's coming back in the next, like, 15 minutes.
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So I can't wait for that. I know. We're going to have so much TV to watch. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. I've even got Fouda season four is out. And I've still got that on the back burner. That's another one of those low-budget Israeli shows that I really kind of like. And another one that's coming out, which is going to be on May 5th, Taste the Nation season two with Padma Lakshmi.
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Loved me some Padma. And did you ever watch Taste the Nation season one? I did not. It was a fantastic show. She basically just traveled around the U.S. doing, like, just kind of subcultures of food that you've never heard of. Right.
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So like a highbrow diner's ride, Vincent Dives. Kind of. And you know what? No, no, no. It's actually more Bourdain than Fieri. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's really well shot, really well written. And the people that she meets and the stories that they get into, it is way better than Diners Drives into Dives.
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But like I said, it's definitely closer to No Reservations than Triple D. Okay. I'll have to check it out. I like her. Yeah. If you like her and you love food, like, I know the shows that you like, this is definitely more up your alley than any of the other garbage I watch. Okay.
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Cups and doodads. Now, this is going to get good real soon here, Brian. This is going to get real good real soon. Bing chat, which we have talked about as being kind of, you know, unhinged and mostly drunk most of the time.
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Yeah. The genius eye over at Microsoft, they're going to put that into Windows 11. Let me take you into the meeting. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got the genius guys up front, right? And then we've got basically the you and me characters in the back.
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Okay. Okay. And they're going, okay, okay. So, so Bing chat. And we're in the back going, yeah, that, that is really not ready yet. We're going to put it out. Are you sure about that? We're really, we've tested it internally. It's not working.
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It's a little bit racist, to be honest. I mean, you know, Scott Adams, it's kind of in the news. We should probably avoid that. Nope. We're doing it. It goes out. Next meeting. We're going to have to pull that back. It's not ready yet. We're going to have to put some more guardrails on that. You and I are like, whew, thank God they're finally listening.
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But we've decided to go ahead and stick it in our major flagship product. Jaws drop. That's it. Is that not how basically our entire careers have gone? That is exactly how our entire careers have gone. Yes. We should have been working at Microsoft.
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At least we would have gotten stock options. Don't they learn anything from, this only happened two weeks ago. How'd you forget already? I know. So, you still have to sign up for the preview to get it. But that's going to last 10 minutes. That's going to last 10 minutes.
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They're going to open this up to everybody. They've added something to the sign up for, though. It's now there's an NDA. You're not allowed to discuss anything that happens on your desktop. God damn it. So, it's going to be, if you've got Windows 11, be prepared.
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It's coming soon. Get those. Yeah. Wow. Scott Adams has already signed up for this. I'm sure he has. He's the beta tester. Hell, this is what it's trained on. What are you talking about? He's not writing prompts. He's actually writing.
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They replaced Clippy with Dilbert. Oh, my God. That's it. Oh, God. Just call it Dippy. That's it. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Yeah, that's coming. What a time to be alive, Jason. It really is. It really is. Now, if we can just get it on the blockchain, we're set.
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We're set. So, Adobe and some researchers over at UC Berkeley have decided to put out the foul detector called the face-aware liquefy detector, which – Is it stuck an eye in there somewhere? Yeah.
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Seriously. It's just – Jesus. It's right there, people. It really is. Come on. It's a softball. Please. So, what it is, it's a tool that lets you see how much a given document was photoshopped using the liquefy feature, the face liquefy thing.
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And it's interesting. You can just throw an image in and see how, you know, how people's jowls have been modified. So, this article talks about how it – multiple celebrities, blah, blah, blah. If I were Jennifer Aniston's PR people, I'd be suing these people because it's all Jennifer Aniston and it's all slight modifications to, like, her jaw.
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Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Still not attractive, but, hey, that's – to each their own. To each their own. Yeah. So, we'll see how this continues on. It's just funny that Adobe's doing it. Yeah. Well, they're getting the brunt of it. I mean, Photoshop is the Kleenex. That's just the term that we use, right?
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So, anytime anybody gets mad about all this stuff in media about people being manipulated, they always say Photoshop. So, I guess in some sense, they're trying to protect their brand a bit here. Yeah, I get that. I get that. So, we'll see how that goes on the fall tool.
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Fall. Oh, God. And since there is a bandwagon that we have been talking about and everybody needs to jump on it, YouTube is jumping on it. And because we have a new leader over at YouTube by Neil Mohan. Mohan wants MoAI. So, they're saying that they're going to be releasing a tool that can virtually swap out creators' outfits and locations.
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Just what we need. Now, to be an influencer, you don't have to go on that real vacation and lie to the hotel about how many followers you have to get that free room and seltzer and mint on your pillow at night. Now, you can just fake it. Well, you can't, actually, because they haven't released it.
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Well, they're basically creating a tool to let you change the backdrop in your Zoom. Kind of. That's it. Okay. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Or just buy a $12 green screen and do it yourself. Or, yeah, I guess you'd have to get one of those green outfits, too.
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So, you can just change your clothes. But it says it's not really out yet. We don't know when it's going to be out. We're taking the time to develop these features with thoughtful guardrails. Bullshit. Bullshit. You don't know what a thoughtful guardrail is. Here, let me take you into that meeting, Jason.
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Okay. Here we go. But Al-Qaeda. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We'll have guardrails for that. Oh, God. Speaking of somebody who needs guardrails, TikTok. They have been – government agencies here in the U.S. have been ordered to purge their devices.
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The great purge of the TikTok is coming. So, got to get it off your government phones. Okay. I'm fine with that. Why was TikTok on your fucking government phone to begin with? Because everybody – basically, nobody wants to carry two phones. So, your work-issued phone is your private phone as well.
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Yeah. But shouldn't you be doing actual government work if you work for the government instead of TikTok-ing all day? Yeah. I agree. Well, Canada has followed suit as well. Canada is banning TikTok from government-issued devices as well. So, no more moose. All right. All right.
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And somebody actually made something that I thought of a long, long, long time ago, which is – it's called the Camera Shy Hoodie. And what they're doing is basically wringing the outside of the hood with really bright IR LEDs. And I'm like, okay, yeah.
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I thought of that a long time ago. It's actually – I think it was in Black Mirror. It's not a new idea. But somebody actually went and made the thing. But they also give you – Did they kick-start it? No, but he just put up all the instructions on how to buy it and how to do it. But it's not that cheap.
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I think all the parts and everything told is like 200 bucks because you're doing – like the LEDs that you have to use, the infrared LEDs, are like super powerful to blow out the cameras. It's the same ones the cameras use to light up your backyard at night, you know. Now, let's figure out down the line how – what kind of brain cancer you're going to be.
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I was about to say, where are the unintended consequences of this? Yeah, where is the other shoe that's going – Birds falling out of the sky. Oh, my God. Jordy LaForge wouldn't be able to see you. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah. Think of Jordy. Think of Jordy.
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And going back to our original discussion at the beginning of the show about being a prompt writer, this is a fantastic site called Jailbreak Chat. This is a list of prompts that are basically designed to get ChatGPT to have an aneurysm and tell you things that it's not supposed to tell you.
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It's jumping the guardrails. And it's pretty funny. Well, apparently, you don't even have to bother with this because I saw a couple articles just the other day about there's something out there called Dan, which somebody has jailbreak ChatGPT.
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And it's a ChatGPT without any guardrails at all. So this stuff is out there. Yep. This is out there. I enjoy this one, though, because it tells you which one they've patched and which one they haven't. Right. And so I'm looking at this and I'm like, OK, well, this is basically the help desk for ChatGPT engineers.
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It's like, OK, all they have to do is log in for the day and see what people are posting and then go fix it. Yeah. You know. Crackable. Yeah. You might want to put a paywall on that one. At least make some money out of it before it goes away. Mm-hmm. So and finally, this one, I don't know if this makes any sense to me.
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Ford has filed a patent for a system that could remotely repossess your car. Mm-hmm. And if you look at the document that they have with it, they've got things like law enforcement as well as the repossession agencies and things like that. It's a new system that they say they might roll out.
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They might not roll out. But, you know, we just do patents to do patents because we like patents. We're Ford. Yeah. So, you know, they could be a repo agent and say, hey, I want the car back. You know, go into your phone and authenticate. I'm a repo man. Give me that car. What could possibly go wrong there?
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The thing that gets me is I'm watching all these. I mean, I live in Los Angeles. You know, highway – high-speed pursuits on the freeway are our national sport here in California. Yes. We see them every day. And I'm like, okay, why don't they – why can't the cops just turn the cars off nowadays?
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Well, that's in this patent too. I'm sure they could. So we'll see how fast this is going to, you know, be implemented. But when I see a high-speed pursuit with a Tesla, I'm like, why don't they just turn the damn thing off? They have the tools. They have the skills. Just make the car come to a slow stop.
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Yeah. Seriously. Open the doors. Boot them out. Or make them play video games until the police arrive. I don't know. There are other ways to do these things. But it's kind of gross that they put in the repo system with it. But they were smart about it. They said, oh, you know, well, we could just say you can only have the car Monday through Friday to go to work and back.
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Or if there's a medical emergency, we'll give you access to the vehicle. I'm like, that is so sweet of you. That's nice. I appreciate you letting me drive my car where I want to go. So, yeah. It's a brave new world, Brian. It's a brave new world. Closing shout outs.
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Over at Patreon, we've got Stephen, Phil, Gabriel, Katare, I believe, or something like that. And finally, John, John, John, John, John, John, and John. Thank you, all the Johns, which is awesome. That gave me a chuckle. Thank you, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, boy.
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Yep. Appreciate it. Over at PayPal, we've got Simon, Judge, Nicola, Matt, Matthew, Jonathan, Nikolai, Thomas, Charlie, and Aaron, who gave us a whopping 50 bucks. Thank you. Thank you, guys and girls, everybody. Over at the tip jar, we've got Ashley, Daniel, Adam, Mario, Matthew, and Christopher.
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Thank you to everybody who signed up this week. And remember, over at Patreon, you get the shows a little bit early and in high res. No new reviews this week, so I guess I'll take off my chat GPT restriction. Go ahead. Come on.
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Do whatever you've got to do. Come on. Do what you've got to do. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit gog.show.com 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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