654: Life EULA

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.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we are the two luckiest people on the planet Earth right now. Really? Tell me why. We're going to be recording a show while the presidential debate is on so we don't have to watch it. Oh, that's true. I wasn't going to watch it anyways.

I'm not into reruns. I saw this one four years ago. Exactly. So this time we have technology. They found the mute button. We'll see how that works. Yeah. Unless they're in soundproof moves, you know sound travels across the stage.

Yes. The other microphone will pick it up. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. It'll be – we'll catch the reruns later of the reruns. The clips. We'll see what goes viral. After the spin room. Whee! Fucking idiot. So I have a little follow-up, Brian.

Yes. This is on why I rag on ID authentication system so much on the show. Okay. It came up the other day when we were talking about the Pornhub getting pulled out of a few more states because their pullout strategy is solid. I'm just saying. Because they're pulling out because the states are requiring ID services.

So this is a new one and this is – this involves a major security lapse that has been uncovered involving Authentix. Okay. It took me a while to get that name. I was looking. It's AU, the number 10, and T-I-X. I'm like, oh, Authentix.

It's kind of clever. Kind of clever. Do you know, baby, she's so Authentix. So this is an Israel-based company responsible for varying identities for TikTok, Uber, X, which I think is a joke because we know X doesn't actually verify identities unless Authentix is also a credit card company because all you need to get identified as being, you know, a verified person on X is a credit card.

So, yeah. So apparently these credentials or administrative credentials have been available for over a year, over a year, allowing hackers to access sensitive data, including driver's licenses and other personal information, blah, blah, blah.

So, yeah, when you have centralized ID services, bad things can happen. Yes. Exposed data includes names, dates of birth, nationalities, identification numbers, and photos of identity documents. What more does one need, really? Well, here's what's even better. Their clients include Fiverr, who cares, but Coinbase.

Coinbase. Yes. You know, I have never, never, ever, ever done one of these authentications for any site ever. Oh, I have. It's called the IRS. I've had to do it for the IRS. Okay, I've done it for the IRS. That's true. I've had to do that for them, too.

That was, by the way, not a government-run company. That was a third-party vendor, like, gussed up to look like it was a government website. So, they outsourced that shit, too. Yeah. But, I mean, I understand why people don't want to do these things.

I mean, obviously, we, you don't even have to listen to our show to understand that these things get, there's hacks every fucking day. Nothing is safe and secure, and you know what? There are plenty of other places I can go besides Pornhub, and I don't have to upload my driver's license to somebody. Exactly. Exactly.

Because all these, these are government-mandated SPOFs, you know? That's all it is. So, be done with it. Go jerk off elsewhere, I say. Yeah. And God knows it's not like it's difficult to fake an ID. In the news.

Brian, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a teeny tiny toddler was trapped in a Tesla after the 12-volt battery was terminated. Say that 12 times fast. I'll try. Was it Sally who used to live by the seashore? And she sold seashells. Yes, that's right.

This was in 100-degree heat, and it occurred when Renee Sanchez secured her 20-month-old granddaughter in the car and found the doors wouldn't open. Sanchez's phone and card keys failed to unlock the vehicle. She then called 911, and firefighters were eventually able to break a window and got the kid out.

Wow. That is, um, that's some bad design. Yeah, you think? I mean, yeah. A 12-volt battery goes out, and now you can't open your door? Exactly, with the kid inside. No key? The key didn't work.

Yeah, so. I mean, no physical key. No backup option. Anyway, hats it to Daryl for that one. So, thank you, Daryl. But we got a little more Tesla news to go through here. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of course, the only Fort Lauderdale we know, 34 Tesla Cybertrucks worth about $2.7 million collectively were vandalized with graffiti reading, fuck Elon.

I'd pay more for that one. Yeah, that's like the Banksy that got shredded. Just increased the value. Yeah, seriously. Saves me the time and effort of doing it myself. So, a passerby actually filmed the damage going by.

We saw this in the Instagram video, which was pretty funny. Check it in the show notes. Now, local police are investigating. Ooh. I love the speculation about the motive ranges from disgruntled Cybertruck owners to general Musk critics. I would say the general public at this point.

Yeah. There's a lot of people that could be brought in for this. Yeah. Who hasn't wanted to spray paint fuck Elon on things? Well, I'm going to tell you one person that has, since we're on the topic of Tesla. A newly bought Cybertruck crashed into a neighbor's home just four hours after the owner bought it.

Wow. The driver reported the truck's back wheels locked, a known issue that led to a recall in April. So, why is he getting a new truck that hasn't been fixed, you may ask? I'm asking. Yeah, I'm asking too. I bet he's asking for sure. And we have surveillance footage of this actually happening.

It's kind of teeny tiny. You've got to squint, but there is some of that going on. So, here's the deal. The $109,000 vehicle will cost $30,000 to repair and take a year. So, Tesla then sent the driver a sad face and poop emoji and told him to handle the repairs through his insurance company.

Oh, that's that good service that Tesla's known for. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Guy had it for four hours. The thing breaks, and now it's going to take him a year, and he has to go through his insurance agency. That is some top-notch customer service. You know, they should have just handed him one of the ones that said, fuck Elon on the front with some, you know, nail polish remover and said, have at it, bro.

Pretty much. The thing is, there's no physical emergency brake on the Cybertruck. So, you have to find the button on the screen, which I'm sure is super easy to do when you're careening out of control and actually need a fucking emergency brake. Look, I told you. I test drove my friend's Tesla. He has one, and he let me tool around with it.

And I found it so disconcerting that you have to go to a computer screen in the middle of the dash to do anything. Like, again, you could have saw both of these stories if you actually just went with the tried-and-true physical real key as a backup like my BMW has and a real handbrake.

No problems here. Yep, exactly. Yes. It's just crazy. I saw a picture on Instagram this week and say, show this to a millennial and watch their head explode. It is a picture of an old car that had four pedals. It's like, okay. Yes. So, what are all four pedals for, kids?

I don't know. Where's the button? Well, we talked a little bit about some of the other EV companies out there. The one that went out of business the other week, Fusker or Fisker or Disker or whatever the Frisker it was called. Fisker, yes. Yes.

Well, Rivian's got a new lease on life. Volkswagen and the EV company Rivian have entered into a new partnership, and the total price tag for the collaboration could reach an eye-popping $5 billion. Ooh. The TLDR on this is basically Volkswagen's software sucks.

Rivian has good software. Rivian needs money. Volkswagen's got that. They've got that. So, match made in heaven. Yeah. So, that'll be basically that. So, at least Rivian will make it through. And I've got to say, I haven't done a test drive, but I've seen the trucks around, and I do like how they look.

Yeah, they look nice. Ex-guest of the show, Shane Nickerson, got one of the first Rivians to roll off, and he was just raving about it. And that was, like, one of the new ones, like, when they were first new. So, I'm guessing they got better since then. I hope they have physical handbrakes. Yeah. I'm not going to go that far.

No. Me either. You know, Volkswagens do, though. Yes. Yes. And speaking of Elon, deepfakes of Elon Musk are pushing crypto giveaway scams on YouTube Live, a YouTube Live broadcast that ran for five hours. What? Before getting caught, used a deepfake of Elon Musk to push a cryptocurrency scam in the latest of a series of similar bogus streams.

This video, which has since been taken down, thank God, showed a clip of Musk that was meant to look like a live stream from a Tesla event with an AI-generated version of his voice, instructing viewers to visit a website and deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin in order to participate in the giveaway.

This message played on a loop, promised the system would then automatically send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited, because that happens in real life. Yeah, yeah. Over 30,000 viewers, I mean idiots, were tuned into the stream at one point, probably a lot of bots, though, pushing it to the top of YouTube's Live Now recommendations.

And the account masquerading as Tesla at Elon.TeslaStream had the official Artist Channel Verification Badge, so there could be an account hack that actually happened there. But still, come on. Okay. No. Yeah. This is one of those cases of, yeah, if you do it, you deserve it.

So I can't believe anybody this day and age, even the crypto bros would be that dumb. But you know there's going to be a few. But wait, Jason, here's more. Oh, please. Good old Fitty, 50 Cent, and his millions of social media followers were reportedly the targets of a pump-and-dump crypto scam on Friday that resulted in hackers pocketing a good chunk of change before it was all shut down.

The exact amount they made is unclear. The rapper originally wrote on Instagram that whoever did this made $300 million in 30 minutes. Whoops. But the post has since been edited to say $3 million as of this afternoon. Which is still a decent chunk of change. Still a lot. The scammers used 50 Cent's ex-account website, thisis50, to push dollar sign, gun it.

Gun it. Yeah. So Twitter quickly worked to lock my account back down, he said. His ex-account in thisis50.com still appear to be unavailable. So they are locked back down. Way to go, crypto bros. You're still out there. I can't believe it.

Well, we've talked about Julian Assange since the birth of this show. Since the birth of the universe, it fucking feels like. It feels like, feels like, yeah. So he is now a free man after finally pleading guilty to espionage charges in exchange for his release. Yes.

He received a $500,000 Bitcoin donation to cover his private jet flight from the UK to Australia. Did he fly on the space shuttle is what I want to know. That is an awful lot of money. Yeah. For one flight. Yeah.

They've actually raised nearly a million dollars in combined crypto and fiat currencies. But yeah, he spent five years in London's Belmarsh prison and faced up to 170 years here in the US. So that's a pretty good deal to just, you know, take time served, plead guilty and get the hell out of Dodge.

Yeah. I wouldn't push my luck. But knowing him, I bet he will. He did not look good getting off that plane. Like some serious shit went down in that prison. You know, he had that 500 yard stare of, oh my God, I can't believe I'm here. What's going on? He was more worried about having to go home and talk to his wife, Stella, about that whole Pamela Anderson thing.

Oh, zing. I saw this one today and it just drives me crazy. Meta's new AI labels are causing confusion and some anger. Facebook and Instagram are tagging real photos as made with AI, even when AI tools were not used.

See, the AI is already trying to take credit for shit. It really is. It's already stealing people's work. Well, we do know it hallucinates. So there you go. So photographers, including former White House photographer Pete Souza, have reported their images being incorrectly labeled.

Yeah. Meta says it's evaluating its approach to better reflect AI usage. Yeah. Like actual AI usage, aiming to help users know when AI tools were involved. The labels, however, only appear on mobile apps and not the web. You know how 99.99999% of the world uses it.

Yeah. True. Yeah. Well, we've got some new fine news this week. Apple may be facing a mammoth fine after the EU has said it has violated competition rules. We'll see about this. They may be on the hook for a fine of up to 10% of its global annual revenue following a regulatory action from the EU officials.

This is when this stuff starts to get serious. This isn't coffee money anymore. 10% of global annual revenue is a hit if they actually get this. If they got it and if Apple didn't just say, screw you guys, we're going home. Yeah, basically. The block says the company breached the Digital Markets Act, DMA rules, by failing to let Apple store developers freely tell users about alternate payment options away from Apple's ecosystem.

We talked about how people have to be able to go outside of Apple's infrastructure to be able to pay for things so that they can avoid the 30% take that Apple does. So if they are found guilty, they will basically have to spend an awful lot of their money. So we'll find out. And the EU has also found that Microsoft has violated antitrust laws by bundling teams.

I'm not entirely sure why because the one simply just doesn't use it and you tend to use whatever your organization uses, be it Slack or Teams. But they're saying that's bad and not good. See, the thing is, they say they're tying it to Office 365, so it's a standalone thing.

But all they have to do is say, no, it's part of Office 365, you morons. Exactly. It's part of our business suite. See, here's the thing. Last October, they unbundled Teams for users in the EU. So they said that that's insufficient. But still, it's like, what the hell do you want?

Do you want us not to distribute Teams anymore? That seems to be the next step. Yeah, this litigation is sponsored by Slack. Yeah, so they all seem to be part of the same ecosystem. So I don't quite get it because Office 365 is basically built into everything that Microsoft does.

What's next? We can't distribute paint? Exactly. MindSweeper is deemed anti-competitive. Jeez. So this is a really strange one. Google has finally decided to turn off infinite scroll in search results.

They're actually putting back the old pagination at the bottom. Well, if they need any help, I still got an old PHP pagination script sitting around somewhere that I could send them. I think they've got it covered. Okay. I think they've got it covered. I'm really happy about this. Infinite scroll is one of the early, in my opinion, one of the early inshidifications of the internet.

Yeah, you see, the thing is, when it came out, it was neat. It was really neat. Yeah, and then everybody adopted it, whether they should have or not. Yeah, that's the thing. See, now, what they're saying is it's to relieve pressure on their infrastructure because they have to keep doing all of those searches and loading them behind.

I'm like, your infrastructure can handle it, guys. This is not about that. There's some litigation coming about something or other, and you're trying to save face for some shit that's going to happen. Trust me on this one. Not to get all tinfoil hattie, but there's no reason that they would have done this if they didn't have to. I agree.

This has been the way it's been for years for them, and they can handle it. And by the way, it's not like they're just serving up more ads. Here's the interesting thing. What I think is what they're going to try and show is there's so many ads at the top of the page now, and there's got to be some litigation coming from all the sponsored posts, which take up more than half of the first page of results now.

And so they're going to have to break them up or do something there because somebody is going to say that, no, with infinite scroll, you can say on a typical SERP page, then you're going to have X percentage of the thing that's ads. With infinite scroll, you can take that number down drastically, and I'm sure somebody found a way to litigate around that and say, no, look at this.

There's so many ads on here that we can't even see the results anymore, which is really screwing with everybody else. There's something. Or they just found out another way to make more money. That's the other possibility. That is the other most likely possibility there.

Yeah. There's definitely something there. There's some shenanigans going on there. And I'm sure we'll find out in the next couple of episodes. Yeah, when the lawsuits actually hit. Well, we managed to make it about almost 20 minutes in without talking about AI, so let's get to it.

Here we go. Time has joined a growing number of publications that have signed a licensing deal with OpenAI. The chat GPT creator will now legally be able to train its large language models on 101 years' worth of the storied publication's journalism. They will also have access to real-time content from Time, hence the name Time, with the apparent aim of answering user queries about breaking news.

In return, OpenAI will cite Time and link back to source material on the publication's website. Bullshit. Which, yeah, they may do for like a week. Have they stopped looking yet? All right, turn that off. Well, we'll get to my next story in a second. But yes, continue on. Perhaps Time will get a monetary kickback, too, like other publishers that have shuffled over to OpenAI with a ragged cap in hand and an eye on one new revenue source for struggling media companies.

Time says the agreement builds on its commitment to expand global access to accurate and trusted information. It dropped its website paywall last year for the same reason, or that nobody paid for it. Nobody paid for it. It was costing more for the keep the developers on staff to maintain it, probably.

So, referencing that previous story, here's one I found. Generative AI can't cite its sources. This comes from The Atlantic, because I cited it, not AI. OpenAI and other tech companies have signed deals with major publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Time now.

To use their content. And the partnerships aim to improve AI-generated responses, but they do say that there are significant issues. Because despite promises of increased readership and accurate citations, AI models like ChatGPT and Perplexity often fail to credit original sources reliably.

Now, here's the thing. I was trying to explain this to somebody else today who wanted the same kind of thing done. It's like, oh, we've got our content. We want to have it searchable with AI, but we want it to cite back to the exact sources and where it comes from. The problem with this is, is if you read about how AI works, this generative AI, they take all the words from all of the sources and pour them into a bucket and mix it all up.

And they see which match more often with the other ones. Exactly. And then they spit some shit back out. So, they don't know if the word and comes from this article, this article, this article, or this article. So, you can't really trace back to a source because a sentence might come from 18 different sources at the same time.

So, only if there was some sort of site that linked back to original sources. Maybe we could call it some sort of Wikipedia. Oh, something like that. Or something like that. Yes. Or just search engines that used to… Used to link back to sources.

Used to… And used to give you accurate results. Instead, it wants you to put glue in pizza sauce now. So, yes. So, it is a fundamental problem with the technology to get accurate attribution. So, you know, that whole thing about…

That's why I was laughing about time. Saying that, oh, we're going to get backlinks to the stories. It's like, no, you're not. No, you're not. No, it's going to break the fundamental rule of what it's trying to do. So, we'll see if they fix that problem. This is a current problem. And current problems tend to not be future problems. I know.

So, we'll see how it happens. Well, the smiling front face of AI has just had some good publicity talking about all the wonderful people that they're paying for to get some content. While the evil, backstabbing side of AI is continuing to do what they were doing in the first place. AI companies are reportedly still scraping websites despite protocols meant to block them.

Perplexity, the company that describes its product as a free AI search engine, has been under fire over the past few days. Shortly after Forbes accused it of stealing its story and republishing it across multiple platforms, Wired also reported that Perplexity had been ignoring the robots exclusion protocol or robots.txt that you put on your website to say, hey, don't scrape my data.

And have been scraping websites and other Condé Nast publications technology website. The shortcut also accused the company of scraping its articles. So, basically, they're just going around and ignoring this and scraping everybody's articles. Correct. And Reuters is reporting that Perplexity is not the only AI company that's doing this.

Many of them are. They say they saw a letter addressed to publishers from Tolbit, a startup that pairs them with AI firms so they can reach licensing deals, warning them that AI agents from multiple sources, not just one company, are opting to bypass the robots.txt protocol to retrieve content from sites.

They didn't name any companies, but Business Insider said it has also learned that OpenAI and Anthropic, the creators of ChatGPT and Claude, are also bypassing robots.txt signals. So, basically, they're all doing it. Mm-hmm. Yep. Now, robots.txt, it is optional.

Yes. And so, I love this one. Perplexity's CEO of Aravind Srinivas, I hope I got that right, told the publication that his company is decidedly not doing this. But even if we did, it's not illegal. Correct.

And from robots.txt.org, I have a quote here. There is no law stating that a robots.txt must be obeyed, nor does it constitute a binding contract between site owner and user. But having a robots.txt file can be relevant in legal cases.

So, bring on the legal cases. Exactly. It is free to scrape. You can scrape anybody. It's just, you know, they don't want you to. And they can block you by IP address if they find you are doing it. But the thing is, what they do with the data that they get is where the rubber meets the road.

Yes. When all of a sudden you're one of the biggest multi-gazillion dollar company in the world, people start to have problems with that. Exactly. They want their cut. They want their cut. So, which is fair. Which is fair. That's all we've ever said is we just want it to be fair. Please. Pretty pleased with sugar on top.

Whatever's fair in big tech. Nothing. And Reddit has also had a warning for AI companies and other scrapers. Play by our rules or get blocked. The company sent an update. It plans to update its robot's exclusion protocol, which will allow it to block automated scraping of its platform, except for all of the information that we just talked about.

Which means it means absolutely nothing unless you're ready to sue. So, get those lawyers fired up, Reddit. Otherwise, anything you're doing isn't going to matter at all. Nope. Okay, here we go. I think my final bit of AI news for the news.

I'm sure we'll have some more later. OpenAI's CTO, Mira Mirati, has stepped in shit again by suggesting that creative jobs lost to AI, quote, shouldn't have been there in the first place, end quote. This is a bit like the CEO from Spotify basically saying that the cost of making music is zero.

Exactly. Nice work, guys. Everybody loves you. You're doing the Lord's work. Mm-hmm. Speaking at Dartmouth University, Mirati claimed some creative jobs might disappear, but she implied that these roles were unnecessary. She also predicted that AI would mostly eliminate repetitive jobs, echoing economists' warnings of a jobs apocalypse.

Now, you see, those creative jobs are what fuel what you built. Yes. See, if it didn't, why are you scraping the entire internet for it? Yes. That's all I'm saying. You're taking everybody's creative work and making a tool that will now get us all fired.

But kudos for saying the quiet part out loud, Mirati. Yeah. Seriously. Oh, I love this. These remarks show a severe lack of empathy for the people affected. No shit. I have a couple quotes here that I thought were relevant. The first one comes from Dave Chappelle.

Taking a man's livelihood away from him is akin to killing him. And then we have another one from Risky Business. In a sluggish economy, never, ever fuck with another man's livelihood. And we have the final one from Balthasar Gracian in the 1600s. Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.

So, watch your fucking back, Mira. You know, when I scanned the notes, I thought that was Battlestar Galactica. I know you did. I did, too. Like, I don't remember that quote. Must have been in the final because I was too drunk to watch that thing.

Media candy. Brian, Dave is gone for two weeks, so we got to talk about that last episode of The Acolyte. Now, please. It was great. Spoiler alert, everybody. Go ahead and skip ahead or pause or skip ahead for a little bit. Skip ahead. Boop-a-doop-a-doop-a-doop-a-doop.

Yep. There you go. It's definitely an eight-part. Once, once, one-go series. Because they fucking killed everyone. It was fantastic. Fucking massacre. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yep. I got to say, Daphne Keene for the win, though.

Man, she was good. She was so good. She was good. Yeah. That action sequence might be probably the best lightsaber battle we've had in Star Wars so far. Ever. Out of all of them. No, it was fantastic. For all the fucking people complaining about the show online, take that.

That episode was awesome. And you know what? We talked about the edit break on the last episode and how that one was really short. I think that served two very good purposes. One, it was the perfect edit point where that show needed to stop before this episode. Also, it left us wanting a hell of a lot more.

You know? Yeah. I was, like, excited because I'm like, oh, man, I got shortchanged on that last episode on four. Yeah. Because you kind of knew shit was going to go down and you were waiting for it. Yeah. And I called it on who the bad guy was. So, yeah. Yep. Yep. I thought that might be a red herring, but they did not hair the red.

No, they didn't. And he was good. He was really good. Good and evil. I loved it. There was nothing bad about that episode as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure there's some lore out there and people are going to be like, but in book 47, chapter 2, page 3, fuck off. The one time I made the mistake of opening up Facebook since that episode aired, it was just like 7,000 comic book nerds screaming into the void.

I know. I did pretty good on spoilers, like missing the spoilers, though. I just – I saw the word acolyte and closed my eyes and scrolled as fast as I could. Oh, see, I don't get any spoilers because it literally – it comes out at 9 p.m. on Tuesday here. Kids in bed, I start the show.

Oh, you get it early. I have to wait until Wednesday night to watch it. So there's a full 24 hours then before I can get it. Oh, wow. Yeah. So – but anyway, yeah. Good shit. Good shit. All right. Back to AI. Okay. Music industry giants, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records have filed lawsuits against AI firms Udeo and Suno, accusing them of mass copyright infringement.

Surprise. Yeah, here's the way it works now. We make a deal with you or we sue you. Yeah. It's one or the other. Yeah. Because, yeah, basically, never forget the music industry are gangsters in suits. That's all they are. They'll break your kneecaps as soon as they can.

So you give them their money in the paper bag at the end of every week and you're fine. If you don't, you got a problem. They release Brian's wife on you and you're fucked. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. The lawsuits allege that these companies use copyrighted recordings to train their AI models, which generate new music based on text descriptions, which we've tried.

It is pretty good. It's really good. So there's no way they didn't use copyright. Exactly. To do that. I cannot ask something to do something thinly veiled in the style of unless you've trained that thing on the style of. Yeah. And those are all owned by somebody.

Yeah. Like, make me a Green Day song about this. And they're like, okay. Sure, no problem. How did you know? We've never listened to American Idiot. Yeah. Yeah. So the labels are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per song allegedly used in the AI training, which means that this is – they're just going after the jugular on this one.

They're not fucking around. This is over. Oh, yeah. Yes. And as soon as YouTube saw that, they immediately reached out to Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records. Yep. And they are all reportedly in talks with the Google-owned platform. However, it's unlikely the companies will get the last words.

It would reportedly be up to each artist whether they participate. So YouTube kind of looked at these lawsuits and said, I guess we'll come to the table with the gangsters. Yep. You go, yeah, man. Got to pick a side. Let's pick the side with the guns, you know? Yep. Yeah. Moving on to some Paramount news.

I got two stories here. Paramount Global is facing significant profit challenges, prompting a major restructuring initiative as outlined by the company's trio of co-CEOs during a town hall in Los Angeles. It takes three people to fuck up that company apparently. So wait, hold on a second.

Elon Musk can be the sole CEO of three different companies, but Paramount needs three CEOs for one? Yes. We have a Cerberus over at Paramount right now. So here's the deal. They plan to cut costs by $500 million annually because they had a 61% drop in profits over five years, despite 13% revenue growth from 2018 to 2023.

Okay. Here's the deal. They are going to be selling off things like BET and other regular TV networks. They've already sold off Simon & Schuster. Why did they own Simon & Schuster to begin with? Oh, to rape the coffers of all the writers out there and get the scripts for cheaper, I'm guessing.

Possibly. I guess. Yeah. Here's the deal, though. This dovetails directly into my next story, which is Paramount has completely erased the MTV.com website, including over 20 years of music and cultural journey. Journalism. That sucks. That sucks.

Okay. Yes. It definitely sucks to people our age. Yes. To people younger, they don't know and don't care and don't really want to watch Kurt Loder. I do wonder, is this a preemptive mood to stop it from getting scraped? To say, we have this and we will sell this to you.

That's possible. They are trying to get more money. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I bet it's probably a little too late, though. We're calling it deletion, but that just means visibility is set to zero. That's true. Yeah. It says, some articles were saved on the Wayback Machine, but the bulk of MTV's cultural history is gone, which I don't think anybody was reading anyway.

Well, that's the thing. How many people were going back and looking at this? Now, if you're a cost cutter and you don't care about culture or anything and you're just looking at numbers and you're going, what the hell is this massive website storage bill which has five views a month?

Yeah. What are we doing with this? Yeah. Because don't forget, studio heads are also gangsters in suits. They're cut from the same cloth as music execs. So, yeah. They go by the numbers. Everything is about the numbers. Just look at WB and the discovery thing.

That whole thing is driven by a spreadsheet. Let's kill everything and take it as a write-off if we can. So, basically, here's what I really love. So, now the homepage is just basically a list of TV shows. It's like a bunch of thumbnails.

And if you look, you can find the TV schedule button. And the homepage has probably 50 different shows on it, none of which I've ever heard of. So, I click on the thing because MTV has been known as the Ridiculousness channel for quite some time. But they've upped their game. There are three shows now on MTV that run all day.

Teen Mom, Catfish, and Ridiculousness. So, they've expanded. So, you've got to get Paramount Plus if you want the bulk of the shitty programming that they offer. Yeah, great. Just what I wanted. Well, speaking of Paramount being about the numbers, Paramount Plus is raising its prices again.

Oh, great. So, this will bring the price of Paramount Plus with Showtime plan to $13 a month, up from $12. And the Bare Bones Paramount Plus Essential plan to $8 a month, which is an increase from $6. The increase takes effect on April or August 20th for new customers, though pre-existing users will have until around September 20th.

There is a silver lining. Pre-existing customers who subscribe to the Essential plan will avoid a price increase for now. Remember how I said streaming is just the cable model again now? Yeah. Their pricing now reflects it because it's all confusing as fuck. Yep, exactly. Anyways.

So, then I was basically thinking, okay, I subscribe to Paramount Plus. But I'm there basically entirely for Star Trek. Yeah, exactly. If you were somebody like that as well, might as well hit the cancel button because Star Trek Lower Decks, not expected until late 2024.

So, you have a couple months. Star Trek Strange New Worlds, not until 2025. What? Star Trek Discovery is thankfully over. Yay! Star Trek Prodigy is now on Netflix because... Why not? Why not? Sure, it's Star Trek. We're the home of Star Trek, except for that one.

Star Trek Section 31, we have no idea when that's coming out. It's already been downgraded to a movie. It's not a series anymore. Star Trek Starfleet Academy hasn't even cast its cast yet. So, looks like time to drop Paramount for a while. Yeah. I do need to double-check soccer offerings because they carry Champions League, but that's over until next year.

But the real thing that's going to get everybody, not you, Jason, but a lot of people, the fractured nature of sports over streaming is a stranglehold most services are trying to get over us on for sure. And I guarantee you in 20 years, there's going to be some sort of fucking lawsuit about how they were all in collusion about spreading this shit around.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. So, yeah. I canceled that quite some time ago because I didn't want to watch Discovery and don't have to. I'm really bummed about Strange New Worlds not coming out until next year, though. That really bums me.

They're going to let Lower Decks run, you know, so they'll do it after. Plus, they still have to do all the visual effects. They just stopped shooting, like, last month, I think. Yeah. Oh, well. Bummer. I started watching the movie The YouTube Effect by William S. Preston Esquire.

I mean, I'm sorry, Alex Winter. Another one of his documentaries. And it's good, but it's depressing. It's depressing. Yeah. It kind of seems to be his jam right now. Yeah, it really is. Not really that. I don't know if I'll finish it.

It's well done. I mean, his documentaries are always really well done, but it's just like they're into the part now where the algorithm is taken over and, you know, there's nothing you can really do about it. You will be radicalized in some way, shape, or form if you watch YouTube enough.

It's just a math game. You're going to be screwed. Yeah. Same with X now. Yeah. God. Same with all of them. All of them. Yeah. I saw this one. I just had to laugh. Flat Earthers is a forthcoming reality TV game show featuring, yep, people who insist that the earth is flat.

The show is in production by The Network, which is a new streaming service. Good luck, guys. Why would you launch a streaming service right now? Jesus. The show pits five families of Flat Earthers against a formidable panel comprising scientists, theologians, and cartographers.

Okay. The families are each given $50,000 as a, quote, research budget to conduct experiments that they expect to prove that science is wrong because $50,000 will prove science is wrong. And if they can sway the majority of the panel, they'll walk away with a big cash prize.

I can't wait. I don't know. I will never see it because it's on the network, but I might find it on the YouTube sometime in the future. Yeah. It'll be edited to show that the earth is flat because you'll have gone down the rabbit hole. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. If you watch it on YouTube long enough, you will believe the earth is flat too.

Yes. Finally, in AI media news, Toys R Us is the first company to put out a film, a quote unquote film, made using OpenAI's Sora technology. I watched a little bit of the trailer. You have to go to ToysRUs.com to go see the whole thing, which is about a minute long.

The trailer looks just like any standard run-of-the-mill CGI thing, you know? Yeah. Except Jeffrey has 17 toes. Wait, giraffes aren't supposed to have 17 toes? I thought that that was true. Brian, go do your own research. I saw it on YouTube.

So, I don't know how I found this one. Oh, the algorithm gave it to me. It's a video from Marquise Brownlee, also known as MKBHD. It's about the new Prius, and it's called The New Prius is Sick?

Question mark, exclamation point. Yeah. I've seen the new Prius around town, and it's actually not bad looking, I gotta say. It's good looking, I would actually say.

Yeah. I was like, all right. It's a good looking car. I'm not mad at that, is kind of what I was saying. And the whole, like, sunroof is a solar panel? Yeah. Genius. Yeah. It doesn't do a lot, but it does some. Well, think about it.

If you're in California, if you're parking outside all day. Well, he did this. He parked it and left it for, like, three days, and it got about 12% charge. Okay. In direct sunlight in three days. But, you know, it's something. It's something. That's 12% less gas or electricity you just paid for.

Yeah. And it's got a pretty good range, and it looks not bad. It doesn't look bad at all. I gotta be honest. I never in my life thought I'd own a Prius, because I hated round one. Yeah. This is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to buy one, because I don't like cars.

But if I had to get a hybrid, and Jeep went out of business, then I would actually seriously consider this. If I had these limited options, then I would take this one. Yes. Right now, I'm still running on liquid dinosaurs, and I will keep it going that way for just a bit longer, I think.

My roommate almost got the new electric Hummer, and it took me about 10 minutes to talk her out of it. I'm like, no. Anyway, last week we ran into some complications, as it were, with the recording, which were mind-bendingly annoying.

Turns out, if you are running Loopback from Rogue Amoeba, and I know a lot of people who actually listen to the show that do run Loopback from Rogue Amoeba, and if you upgraded to the 2.4 version, good luck. Good luck. I know that Dave Bittner had problems with it, and then the next day, I spent like half my day on the phone with Jordan Harbinger, both of us trying to figure this damn thing out.

So it turns out we finally got a version from Rogue Amoeba that we could roll back to that you have to get from Support. You can't get it on their website. Support was helpful. Yeah, but fuck you in the eye holes, Rogue Amoeba, for actually releasing this thing that broke everybody.

Yeah, that was a fun day. Yeah, real fun. And the next day, and the next day. So the old version seems to be working now. So if you see the, should I upgrade to version 2.4? No. No. Well, we'll talk a little bit about Rabbit R1 for what I hope is the last time.

The team behind Rabbit2D, the community-formed reverse engineering project for the Rabbit R1, has revealed finding a security issue with the company's code that leaves user-sensitive information accessible to everyone. In an update posted on their website, the team said it had gained access to the Rabbit code base and found several critical hard-coded API keys.

You morons. These keys allow anybody to read every single response the R1-A1 device has ever given, including those containing the user's personal information. Oh, God. Luckily, that's about five. Five. Exactly. Exactly. They could also be used to brick R1 devices, which one could argue they already are bricked since they can't do anything, alter R1's responses, and replace the device's voice.

So, yeah, and the Rabbit basically said, we've only been made aware of this alleged data breach. Our security team immediately began investigating it, and as of right now, we're not aware of any customer data being leaked or any compromises to our systems.

Because we didn't have a security team, and we're trying to hire one right now on Indeed. Yes, pretty much. So, yeah, that's great. These guys did a bang-up job. Yeah, they're winning. They're winning. Winning. So, do you remember the name Noland Arbaugh?

Yes. Okay, yes. He was the first guy to receive the Neuralink brain computer implant. For those who don't remember the name Noland Arbaugh, I'm very surprised. Oh, you knew it because you can read it in the damn notes. What am I saying here? We only talked about it a couple months ago. I remember the guy's name.

Oh, I never. I was just like, that guy? I'm like, who would do that? Oh, yeah. So, he was apparently on the Joe Rogan experience because, you know, when you go to Elon's company, you get a free – it comes with a brain implant and a free ticket to the Joe Rogan experience.

That's how he comes. And a flamethrower. And a flamethrower. And a flamethrower. And a flamethrower. Yep. And a free tunnel drive over to Joe's house. So, the thing that he is most excited about is what the brain implant has done is given him superhuman gaming abilities. So, he basically has an aimbot installed in his brain now.

So, if any old Quake 3 players out there, this is the railgun machine if you ever really needed one. We're going to have to start calling this guy Murderbot in future stories. Nolan, the Murderbot, Auburn, today won the Cyber Game Championship again.

So, yeah. I'm sure a lot of gamers are lining up right now at the Neuralink offices saying, can I get one too, please? Christ. At least there's some good that came out of this. I suppose. It works. It apparently works.

So, that's good. Okay. Yeah. I can't walk, but I can play video games really well. Okay. Take what you can get. You know? That's right. Yeah. Well, I'm not a big eBay guy, but I've heard you can find all kinds of stuff on there. Basically, almost everything, including, apparently, this came up this week, a used police Harris Stingray that can allow you to intercept cellular traffic of your friends and enemies.

And if you do that, please let them know about our show. Sharing is caring. Sharing is caring. The Stingray is a widely used law enforcement tool that allows police to intercept cell phone signals and data, known technically as an IMSI catcher or cell site simulator. It essentially conducts a man-in-the-middle attack, emulating the signals of a cell phone tower and draining and unsuspecting mobile traffic.

If you haven't gathered yet from that description, they are very much illegal for regular people to have. Yes, they are. And there are other versions that aren't just the Stingrays out there. I talked to a cop one day, and he's like, oh, yeah, everybody's got those things now. Well, one was up on eBay briefly for $100,000.

Yes. Which is a lot of money, but actually well within the approximate price realm of what these devices sell for. Yep. And then immediately after this story went live, eBay has removed the listing for the Stingray because it violated the platform's policy on not selling electronic surveillance equipment.

Yes. And remember, we are every company's personal security systems these days because they don't do anything until we tell them that it exists on their sites because they don't care. Yep. They don't care. And they don't have any people to do it for them if they did care. Yes. Well, Jason, as you know, I've had a little bit more spare time than I had before recently because of my work situation.

I decided I need to go take a course again. I should go look into this AI thing from the bottom and just kind of get a real education on it as opposed to just kind of what we've learned doing the show and all that sort of stuff and playing around with it. So I will go take a course.

And I found one called AI for Everyone over on Coursera. It's taught by some guy who's intimately involved with Amazon's systems and with a couple other places. They say he's from Stanford. Like, guy knows what he's talking about. Been there at the beginning of AI. I'm going to sign up and I'm going to take it.

And I've started it and it's pretty good. However, I want to point out this is not the first time I've taken a course from Coursera. I took one a while back about ethics, digital ethics and all that sort of stuff. I don't remember being told that I was making and clicking off on a statement prior to signing up for the class.

Okay. My commitment. I'm beginning my learning in AI for everyone. I know learning can be hard, but I have the patience, determination and discipline to reach my goals. When I'm stuck, I'll find a solution like take a breath, break it down, ask for help, research, stay positive or talk through it.

So this is AI for everyone by Jack Handy. I'm starting to understand everybody that hates this woke fucking bullshit. What the fuck is this? That's how you get through life nowadays, Brian. That's it. You sign up for the class and you fucking take it.

Yeah. But it could be hard, Brian. That's it. It can be hard. But you must have patience. Patience and determination, Brian. Well, I'm glad I agreed to my life's EULA. Okay. Let me know how that course is going there.

It's actually pretty good. Okay. All right. That all said, course is pretty good. And I finally have this last link from The Atlantic. Attribution. Brought to you by people. By the way, attribution for all of our stories is in our show notes.

Yes. GOG.show slash 654. Whatever episode we're on. I'm hallucinating. It's hot in the air. What are you going to say? I found this over at The Atlantic by Ian Bogost. It is an article called How the Owner's Guide Became a Rare Book.

And if you've ever listened to this show, you've probably heard us bitch and moan that there are no manuals anymore. So I just put this here for your reading pleasure. It's a short read and very good. Yes. I agree. At the library.

I have a great little short audio book out there for Neil Gaiman fans. Unfortunately, it's an older short story that I didn't know existed. It's called How the Marquis Got His Coat Back. It is a Neverwhere story, which I'm a huge fan of Neverwhere because I think it's his best book personally.

And it was read on Audible by Patterson Joseph. Who played the Marquis de Carabas in the Neverwhere BBC miniseries. So fantastic little mini book. It was only like an hour long. I think it cost me like three bucks or four bucks. Well worth it. Oh, right.

Well worth it for the time. I was thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great story. Highly, highly recommended. If you've never seen the Neverwhere BBC miniseries, there's a link in the show notes. And according to Neil, there will be a Neverwhere sequel. And he was asked, I think, on Blue Sky, because he's over at Blue Sky with Scalzi, the two guys that run the place, I guess.

They asked him when the Neverwhere sequel will be done. He says probably 18 months after he turns in the final draft of the Good Omens three scripts. So who knows? Quite some time. Hopefully I'll still be alive to read it.

So we'll see. Well, I was looking for a new book to break up my sci-fi patterns recently, mainly because I was really upset with the SEO naming of books on Amazon, Hard Sci-Fi and all that other stuff. And I remember that I really kind of enjoyed going back and reading a lot of memoirs from musicians that I listened to when I was a teen.

I'd really enjoyed like the David Jay book from Bauhaus and the Steve Kilby book from the church and all that sort of stuff. And my friend had been telling me that the Peter Hook books that he had written are really good. Peter Hook was the bassist for Joy Division and then New Order. And then he left New Order and he started his own band called Peter Hook and the Light.

And he's still touring, doing Joy Division songs and New Order songs and all that sort of stuff. And he's written three books. He's written a book about his time in Joy Division. He's written a book about the club, the Hacienda in Manchester that basically kicked off, you know, Manchester and Stone Roses and all that sort of kind of music.

And then he's also written a book about his time in New Order. So I figured I'd start with the first one. And I read Unknown Pleasures, Inside Joy Division by Peter Hook. And it was great. Like this guy is like a salt of the earth guy. Like he's just, you know, I'm here for the drugs and the drinking and the girls and the music's pretty good too.

Salt of the earth. Exactly. Yeah, it's good. It's good stuff. Salt of the earth. Salt of the earth is like I wake up, I go to work, I come home and I take care of my kids. That's salt of the earth. Not I'm going to go do a couple of rails off a hooker's asshole, you know. Come on. Okay, salt of the musician's earth.

How's that? Yeah, let's recalibrate our expectations for salt of the earth on that one. I guess I do live in a different world most of my life. Yeah, I was going to say. Anyways, it was an awesome read. I really enjoyed it so much so that I got the second one, which is about the Hacienda.

So I've started that one already, too. If you were a big Joy Division fan, I think you're going to really enjoy it, obviously. So well worth a read. Fun times. All right. Going on to your hard sci-fi mention. Dan writes this in regarding sci-fi crap.

Amazon is filled with bullshit GPT-aided slot for tech books, too. You'll find authors crapping out a book per month on a wide variety of topics, from Active Directory to Ruby to machine learning to whatever the hell else. No one is an expert in as many topics as some of these jokers. They're all self-published.

I never thought I'd have to check for a real publisher or an author's bona fides to confirm that a book isn't spam. Those with positive reviews are not from verified purchasers, and those with reviews from verified purchasers do not have positive reviews. So there we go. Thanks, Dan.

Yeah, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of the AI books, especially in programming out there. They're all over the place. Yep. Well, speaking of AI and publishing, acclaimed sci-fi author and lord of blue sky, John Scalzi, discovered that AI-generated art made its way onto the cover of his book, Starter Villain, but specifically the Italian edition.

Because it's basically a cat in a suit. And I saw it on the original. I'm like, oh, that's cute. I couldn't care less if it's AI or not. But he made sure that his version, the canonical starter villain, was made by a human. And I looked at the Italian version.

It wasn't much different. But he basically said that there's a lot of ways that this could have gone wrong. But at the end of the day, it's his responsibility, and he takes the blame. And the only reason this matters is because he wrote a really long blog post in December 2022 saying that everything would require human-created art, even if stock elements were involved.

So, you know, he put it out there, so he had to own it. That's true. And it only took 7,000 threads on blue sky for him to get that off his chest. And at the end of the day, nobody gives a fuck. Nobody gives a fuck. It's a cat in a suit. Who cares if it's AI? I mean, how many people actually even saw the cover, except for when they purchased it, their digital version to download and read?

Yeah, exactly. It was on the thumbnail for two seconds on Amazon before you bought it. By the way, great book. I loved it. I liked it, too. It was a good book. I enjoyed it. Closing shout-outs! Over on Patreon, we've got Allsy and Angel of Cake.

Now, I tried to run Angel of Cake through ChatGPT and give me an Angel of Death parody song that I could sing, but it didn't really come out that well. So, I tried. I really tried. I guess you have some time on your hands, too. Yeah, the curse of the unemployed.

Thank you. Thank you, Angel of Cake and Allsy, for helping out in my time of despair. All right. I'm waiting for you to sign up, Devil's Food. Get on it. Over at PayPal, we've got David, Charlie, Arcadio, and Jason, who sent us $42. The answer to everything.

It coincidentally matches the ASCII table for asterisk, meaning it is a wild card to be whatever you want it to be. Deliveroo! And Susan gave us $50. Thank you so much. Yep. Susan is eight times better than this question of life, universe, and everything.

She's got eight extra answers. She does have... She's like ChatGPT. Seriously. Thank you all who gave in. Oh, wait, wait. We've got some more. Daryl and Josh over at the tip jar. Yes. Thank you, everybody. And just a quick reminder, over at Patreon, if you sign up for $3 or more, or more, you can get the episode early, ad-free, and in high resolution, high definition.

The bases are deeper. The highs are higher. And we're happier. So get on it, folks. Okay. It's late, man. We're not usually recording on Thursdays. It is late. I love it. I thought you preferred this, but you're being... I do. I do. I'm caffeinated. I'm caffeinated. I love it.

And we're missing the debate. Go back to episodes 200 through 300. Yeah. And we're missing the debate, which I'm probably still going along. So why don't we make up some more shit? Let's not ChatGPT fill in some stories here. No. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at GOG. dot show slash six, five, four. See, I got it right that time. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG. dot show slash donate. Every bit helps.

And spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll be forever grateful. Head over to GOG. dot show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans. Got something to say? Send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to GOG.

dot show slash contact. And show us some love. Leave a review at GOG. dot show slash. review. A five-star rating will get your review read on the air. Even a one-star will. Stay grumpy. And since I haven't done it in a while, too, deliver it all. That felt good.

I've done it for a while. I realized you should have read that anyways, not me. That's your jam. I do shh. talking. That's right. That's right.