659: Shark or Not

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From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Welcome back to the West Coast, Brian. How do you like it? It's the best coast. I'm not going to lie. The West Coast is the best coast. Fucking hot, ain't it? It's hot, but it was hot in Toronto, too. And at least it's a dry heat here, as they say.

Although I'm looking outside and it might be starting to rain in a few minutes. I was going to say, it's cloudy and humid as hell here in the valley, so it ain't that dry. Yeah, no, it's good being back. I mean, you know, kid's happy, happy to be with his grandmother. And I'm happy to get basically 24-7 babysitting services, which is pretty great.

So stay. Fuck Canada. Stay. You know, we got an election to get through that might determine some things first. Yeah, well, I think that one's pretty much sewn up, so we're good. I don't think so. It's all over the place. We'll see what happens. But yeah. Who knows? You know, I had my In-N-Out burger. I'm happy. I'm a happy guy.

Funny, I moved back four years ago and I still haven't gone to In-N-Out. It's the first thing we do, man. It's land and go to In-N-Out. I know I'm going to feel crappy after I eat it. That five minutes while you're eating it is the most glorious time on the planet. And then that, like, two hours after, you're just like, oh, I feel terrible.

It's not so bad. You know what the secret is, is as we've gotten older, is to downgrade. You don't get the double animal style. You just get a single animal style. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. It's just as good and a little bit less self-hate later. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm glad you're back, even if it's just for a little while. So that's good. I want to run through a quick state of the AI union because there was a lot of news this week. And I just kind of want to do a quick wrap up on the things that I've seen.

Okay. So this first one's from The Atlantic. Tech companies are betting big on AI with spending in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. Just that alone. Just that alone is just so mind-bogglingly stupid. But lest we forget, remember when we spent tens of billions of dollars on the metaverse? And then remember when we spent tens of billions of dollars on the blockchain?

No, no, no. Brian, but that wasn't a we. The metaverse was just Zuckerberg. All right? That was just Mark. Let's just be honest there. You know, that was just Mark doing his thing. Bitcoin, I don't even know if they spent tens of... I guess they spent a lot of money, but they made money, fake money. But anyway.

All right. All this spending is driven by the belief that bigger and better AI models will revolutionize industries. And the immense investment likened to funding moon missions is raising questions about its profitability. We could have gone to the moon, Mars, and back again by what they've spent so far.

Now here, OpenAI could lose up to $5 billion this year. The fact that they have $5 billion to lose is still mind-boggling. You know? Oh, we're just going to lose a cool five bill. Yep. So everybody's starting to get their panties in a bunch, though, that there's not going to be the returns, hence the stock market going, excuse me, this week?

So despite advancement in areas like drug development and video creation and generative AI's profitable applications remain unclear. Critics argue that the productivity gains expected from AI might be overestimated and premature. However, tech giants continue investing heavily, driven by a mix of unwavering belief and fear of missing out, hoping AI's potential will eventually justify the costs.

Has anybody heard the frame sunken cost fallacy? Yes, yes. Now, you see, in the dot-com boom, we spent this kind of stupid money, but we spent it on infrastructure, like cables and pipes and things like that, that when everything collapsed, we still had infrastructure left.

All we're going to have now is a bunch of GPUs sitting around in dead server farms. But I guess then they could be turned into Bitcoin machines. Woo! I don't know. So a quick aside, this week I was tasked with trying to figure out for some friends on how to create a recommendation engine chatbot using AI.

So they've got these books, and they wanted to be able to have the books recommended with a link to the book. This is the important part, a link back to where you can find the book. Right. Well, Brian, you know how AI works. You take a bunch of words, and you dump it in a bucket, and you shake it up, and you spit it back out.

You can't direct that towards anything because it's all pulled together from different sources. I got close. I got very, very close using some clever tricks with metadata and just crafting how the AIs were told what to do.

I got it to 80% where it would actually put the link, the correct link, and link the title of the book when you asked for the return. Here's where it gets funny. It's that other 20%. So a URL is made up of words, right?

Yep. Well, somebody never told the AI, even if you tell the AI, it still doesn't believe you and still does this, will end up doing word replacement in your URLs. One thing that it's very keen on, I found, is taking Arabic numerals and replacing them with Roman numerals.

Go figure. Now, I tried this across a multitude of LLMs. OpenAI, the 4.0, not 4.0, 4.0, got closest. Arabic decided to just throw away my URLs and go out and fetch brand new Amazon URLs that had nothing to do with the books that I was actually trying to link to.

And it just got funnier from there. So, yeah, applications remain unclear, Brian. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I took a class on this. I took a class on AI because I thought, maybe I'm missing something here, Jason. Maybe there's something to this I'm just not seeing.

And I finished the class and I went, nope, nope. Not missing anything. I'm seeing the whole picture here. Not missing a thing. Not missing a thing. Unfortunately, we got to put the project on ice because you can do the same thing with a database, you know?

Yes. Like the old ways, in the old days. Yes. AI does not need to be put into everything. Some things work just fine without it. In fact, better. See, the cool thing is, though, you can use AI to actually help you tag and create metadata for the things that you're trying to search that you can then put into an old-fashioned SQL database, believe it or not.

That part actually helps. So, anyway, moving on. Microsoft spent $19 billion on AI in the quarter ending in June. $19 billion in a quarter. So, that's a lot of money. A lot of scratch. It is, but it is, to your point earlier, it was spent primarily on data centers and equipment, which can probably still be repurposed for the things that Microsoft actually does and makes money on.

Yes. Correct. And despite earning $36.8 billion in cloud revenue last quarter, the profits from AI remain elusive, as they say. Now, here's a fun one. Gartner, a leading global research and advisory firm, predicts that by 2025, 30% of Gen AI projects will be abandoned after the proof of concept stage.

I would say that that number is amazingly low. I'd say 30% have been abandoned already. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that number is very low. Yeah. And Rita Salam from Gartner highlights that the cost and strategic – me talk pretty – the cost and strategic impacts of Gen AI vary significantly, making financial planning challenging.

That's right. What I thought was going to end up costing me just a few bucks ended up costing me well over $100 just for training. You know? The stuff grows pretty quick. So, I think Gartner is shooting low on that one. I think they're shooting very, very low at 30%.

Now, back to the other issues. Generative AI is straining the U.S. power grid. Rapid construction of data centers to support AI growth has led to significant power and water consumption, which we've talked about many times on the show. For instance, a single chat GPT query uses nearly 10 times more energy than a Google search.

Now, is that an old Google search or is that the new Google AI searches? Exactly. Is that a Gemini search or how does that work? Yes. So, that's the other thing that they're not quite factoring into it. But also, I think you're comparing apples and oranges there because a straight Google search is just searching the web.

A chat GPT request could be, summarize this book for me and spit out 10 relevant points. There's a lot more going on than just querying a highly optimized Google database. So, there's a little apple and oranges. But until you get to Gemini, then everything changes.

So, in Kansas City, power needs for an AI-focused data center are delaying the closure of a coal-fired plant. That's right. We're burning more coal so we can get more AI. Data centers are expected to reach 16% of U.S. power consumption by 2030.

Wow. 16%. That's a lot. That's a lot for nothing. Cooling these centers requires billions of cubic meters of water annually, exceeding the total annual water withdrawal of half the U.K. So, yep. Coming along. Coming along. Well, you know, we're not going to be able to drink or have any power in our houses.

But, hey, we're going to be able to make pictures of mice with pointy hats on or whatever the hell people are using Gen AI for these days. Shrimp Jesus. Brian, it's all moved to shrimp Jesus. That's right. Even though the shrimp will be long gone because they'll have no water to live in. The White House has chimed in.

And the White House supports open-source AI technology, stating no need for immediate restrictions. Okay. Alan Davidson of the U.S. Commerce Department emphasized the importance of open systems. This follows an executive order from President Biden asking for recommendations on AI management by July.

He got this one in right under the wire. The report highlights a balanced view on AI safety, recognizing benefits of openness, but urging continued monitoring. So, this is dumb. This is absolutely fucking dumb.

Because, you know, the only difference, right now, Meta has open-sourced their big models. But they're not being, you know, nobody's really keeping an eye on that because it's open-source. And they're going to look at the closed models, even though they're fundamentally the same thing.

You know? Pretty much, yeah. They're fundamentally giant LLMs that can do about the same thing. And it'll look like the benchmarks. You know? The new LLAMA model can almost beat, or actually does beat, GPT-4.0 on several benchmarks. And now you can just go get it for nothing.

And it's open to the world. So, I think that that is very dumb and closed-minded of Alan Davidson over at the U.S. Commerce Department. Sorry, Alan. So, now let's talk about model collapse. We've talked about model collapse. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found that generative AI models need high-quality, human-created training data to maintain performance.

Using AI-generated content for training quickly corrupts the models, leading to nonsensical outputs, which we get anyway half the time. This cannibalistic approach affects both large-language models, like ChatGPT, and AI image generators, such as MidJourney and DALI. So, model collapse coming soon to a theater near you.

Yes, the worm is eating itself now. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny. If you look at some of the examples that they have, you can kind of get an idea of why these things start to collapse. Because when we do – like, say you take a picture of a person. You have continuous skin tone. But as the AI draws skin tone, it's kind of filling it in bit by bit by bit.

And then as it keeps going, when it pulls it back in, then those little wavers tend to accentuate over time. And then you get worm face. It's great. Look at the article. It's great. To take it to an audio analogy, noise keeps being added to the signal.

And then it just keeps getting amplified and amplified and amplified until all you have left is noise. Or we keep screwing our cousins and we just end up with flipper babies. Oh, yeah. Well, there's the royal model approach as well, yes. Yes, there is. All right. Anyway, some non-AI follow-up here as well.

We've been talking a lot about the struggles that people are having keeping kids safe online, particularly on social networks because, you know, they just don't bother, really. But the Senate has just passed two landmark bills aimed at protecting minors online. The kids' online safety act or COSA and the children and teens online privacy protection act, known as COPA 2.0, passed the Senate in a vote of 91 to 13 or something.

There's this T3. I don't know how that happened. That was a terrible Terminator movie. Isn't COSA another Star Wars series? Don't know offhand. COSA. It's probably a character at this point, yes. The bills are heading to the house next, although it's unclear if the measures will have enough support to pass there.

If they do pass, the bills will be the most significant pieces of legislation regulating tech companies in years. So I will throw a party because I like regulation. COSA requires social media companies like Meta to offer controls to disable algorithmic feeds and other addictive features for children under the age of 16.

Personally, I would like that to be a feature for everyone, regardless of age. I would love to get rid of my algorithmic feeds. It also requires companies to provide parental supervision features, safeguard minors from content that promotes eating disorders, self-harm, sexual exploitation, and other harmful content.

The controversial provision in the bill creates what's known as a duty of care. This means platforms are required to prevent or mitigate certain harmful effects of their products, like addictive features or algorithms that promote dangerous content. In other words, do something about the damn content that you're hosting and pushing on to people.

So the FTC would end up being in charge of enforcing that standard. And then COPA 2.0, on the other hand, is less controversial. It just basically expands the, and I can't believe it's this old, 1998 Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act. So basically it's just saying, this law is 30 years old, we need to upgrade it, because they didn't even have MySpace then.

What's so funny, I just, I keep coming back to COPA, because when COPA was passed, I wrote a pearl library that was for, you know, throwing in an age to tell you, tell the program if they were COPA compliant or not. Right. That was 1998.

Oh my God. It was a long time ago. 26 years. So hopefully these things will get passed, because we need to start doing something here. Yeah. For the children, Jason. People born, when I wrote that, are now 26 years old. We old, Jason.

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In the news. Brian, some good news. Woo! A federal court has ruled that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents cannot search smartphones without a warrant. Good.

Finally, this landmark decision, applying only to the Eastern District of New York, may set a privacy precedent. Now, yeah. So if you're really concerned about your safety, you will only fly through New York and then drive everywhere else around the United States. There you go. Well, just don't leave the country then once you're here.

Just, you know, don't, yeah. It's funny, though. The case involved Kerbin Ali Soltanov, who was indicted after border agents at JFK found child sexual abuse material on his phone during a warrantless search. Soltanov's attempt to suppress the evidence, arguing it was obtained illegally, was denied.

The court found the agents acted in good faith, but emphasized that future phone searches at the border require a warrant. So he's the last guy through. Sucks to be him. Really does for many, many ways. But he gets what he deserves. That's right. Civil rights groups, including Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, welcome the ruling highlighting its importance for the protection under the First Amendment, as well as against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.

Yes. It's a good thing. All right. Yes. Well, the DOJ on Friday night asked the federal court to reject TikTok's bid to have the law that could ban it overturned, citing national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users' views around sensitive topics.

Well, we're starting to see some of the meat in the DOJ's hamburger on their case against the TikTok here. There we go. This comes in response to a petition filed in May by TikTok, an attempt to challenge the law that now requires its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app, or will be banned in the U.S.

In one of the documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Court, the DOJ says a search tool within LARC, which is the web suite system the company employees use to communicate, allows ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user's content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.

Now, why would they be collecting and categorizing that data and making little databases about that sort of stuff? Well, it says that they're allowed, or I mean, that's part of it. They can also, you know, search on your views, including everything else. Yes, yes. This kind of cherry-picked, the one bits that are, you know, important to their case, but the fact that they can do this for every, you know, every vector along the line is, yeah, don't forget that.

But yes, gun control, abortion, and religion are the three things that will probably get their case through and get it banned. But, you know, shoes, shoes would probably not. If you went to the Supreme Court and said, hey, guys. They can search shoes. Yeah, they can tell if you like Jordans or Pumas.

I don't think they would really care. But, you know, gun control, abortion, and religion, hot topics. Let's get it killed. Yeah. Well, and then TikTok, of course, replied to this. Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. Oh. The Constitution only applies to American citizens.

I'm just going to point that out. Yes, Chinese-based companies are not American citizens. They're not people to begin with, and they're not American either way. So, well, in addition, or I guess this makes it worthwhile to give up all this information to this company and let them categorize you down to any particular belief that you may have.

You get SoundSearch from them. They've started rolling out a new feature called SoundSearch that allows you to hum, sing, or play a song. And the platform will show you the tune in videos that use it on TikTok, which means they're probably pirated and not being paid for anyways. Right. Right. So, the last thing is what sets it apart from YouTube, which lets you search for a song in the same way, but doesn't pull up videos that have it.

It's also ahead of the longstanding Shazam, which I can't believe is still out there and exists, which requires you to play the real song rather than hum a few bars to identify it. It does seem to work better when a song is more popular on the app. In other words, basically, you know, it just gets played a lot, so it recognizes it better.

Yeah. There you go. I still can't believe Shazam can't do that. That's just like... Well, the developers, I think, fucking gave up on that app about 10 years ago. Oh, okay. I haven't used it in forever. It neither has anybody else, which is why there's no... It still works. You can still say, hey, Siri, Shazam, and it will, like, pop open and listen for a song, which I think my phone just didn't do that right now.

But, yeah, it just never works anymore, so I can see how that works. How do you do it on YouTube? Is there a easy... Is it part of the app? I have to look into that. I have no idea. I barely ever use YouTube. YouTube is purely, for me, home improvement searches. Oh, see, I'm on it all the time.

But they need to get to the point. We need to work with Neuralink and, you know, that crew over there. Because all I want to do is, you know that song I'm thinking about? That's when I want it to pop up exactly what I'm thinking about. I don't want to hum it. I don't want to... I just want to go, yeah, that song that I'm thinking about from back in my...

When I was a kid. There was an electronic song from 1984, and I believe it had a female drummer. Yeah. What was it? And even if you're completely wrong on all the vectors, I still wanted to return the exact song I'm thinking about in milliseconds. Please, can I get that?

That's what we need this for. Yeah. And in What the Flying Fuck News, and a hat tip to Oh My God, What the Fuck BBQ over on Discord, California's Department of Motor Vehicles has digitized 42 million car titles using blockchain technology to combat fraud and streamline title transfers.

The project, yeah, the project in collaboration with tech company Oxhead Alpha, sounds like a bad video game, like, you know, evil company Oxhead Alpha, and they're on the Avalanche blockchain, marks the first such initiative in the United States.

It will enable California's 39 million residents to claim their vehicle titles through a mobile app, significantly reducing the need for in-person DMV visits. Now, here's the fun part. The next phase involves developing a mobile wallet app, allowing residents to access their digital titles starting early next year.

Cart before the horse. Yeah. This just seems like a massive amount of money. But I mean, I guess it would be nice. But I mean, I've had to go and claim a vehicle title twice in my entire life. It's a pain in the ass. It is a pain in the ass, but it's not something you're doing every day.

No, you're not doing it that often. You're really not doing it that often. But the problem is really, I think it's lien fraud, where people are trying to, and taking loans out on other people's cars and things like that, which is a big thing right here in California right now. It's also a big thing with houses, I found out.

People are doing that shit with houses. I have heard that too, yes. Yeah, it's a thing, and it is a very bad thing. And it's happening a lot more than you can believe, actually. It's nuts. Well, the next story is another one of those great uses of AI that we were talking about in the intro.

Instagram creators can now make AI doppelgangers to chat with their followers. Great. Meta is rolling out its AI studio, a set of tools that allow Instagram creators to create an AI persona that can answer questions and chat with their followers and fans on their behalf. These are meant to address a long-running issue for Instagram users with large followings.

It can be nearly impossible for the services and most popular users to keep up with a flood of messages such as, like, what are you wearing and what do you think of my dick that they receive every day? Now, though, they'll be able to make an AI that functions as an extension of themselves, says Connor Hayes, who is VP of product for AI studios at Meta.

Okay, so they're saying there's a problem. I'm not entirely convinced about that. And they're saying that this is the solution. I'm definitely not convinced about that. As the article then points out, it's unclear if Instagram users will be as interested in engaging with AI versions of their favorite creators. Meta has previously experimented with AI chatbots that took on the personalities of actual celebrities, not Instagram celebrities, like Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner.

But those characters proved to be largely underwhelming and uninteresting to users. Yeah, they actually rolled out this week that they're sunsetting those. Well, there you go. Like, nobody wants this stuff. No one. But we're getting it.

I know. And look, man, we were wrong before about who's using, you know, AI boyfriends and girlfriends. So who knows? Maybe the kids these days want to talk to an AI Snoop Diggity Dog. Perhaps they do. Yeah, I don't think so. But, you know, we should ask some kids.

Yes. No, no, because we'll go to jail. Hey, kids. Hey, kids, come here to the back of my van. You want to talk to an AI guy? Hey, at least if we have all those questions and responses in our phone and we fly in from a different country, it can't be searched anymore. We're safe.

Woo-hoo. Meta has agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over the unauthorized use of biometric data from user photos and videos. The lawsuit filed in 2022 accused Meta of illegally storing billions, billions of biometric identifiers via Facebook's tag suggestions feature introduced in 2011.

Despite shutting down its facial recognition system in 2021, Meta now faces a five-year payout plan to Texas. That said, Meta's spokesperson expressed a willingness to invest further in Texas. Meanwhile, Texas continues its legal battle against Alphabet over similar allegations.

So they're pulling in Illinois here. Yep, definitely. Yeah. Good. Yeah, I got like $13 out of that when I lived in Illinois. That was great. That's great. Now, this next one, Brian, this is just for old – this is for the old people in the audience here.

Sybil raises $11 million for its AI assistant that helps salespeople reduce administrative burden. Sybil says what it sets its AI assistant apart – or what sets its AI assistant apart is its ability to track and analyze many call transcripts and emails, which enables it to provide context-driven insights and summaries instead of only providing meeting notes and transcripts of one or two calls.

Not a single founder of this company was born when the TV miniseries Sybil came out, so they must have missed all the social context of trying to build an AI assistant and calling it fucking Sybil. You'd think that one of the VCs might have, like, asked them if the name was a good idea or not.

So I don't know if you remember Sybil, but for the people who don't, Sybil was a TV miniseries in the 70s about a severely abused young woman played by Sally Field whose childhood was so horrifying and harrowing that she developed 16 different personalities.

By the way, it wasn't fiction. It wasn't. None of these people were psychology majors at any point in their lives either because I remember spending at least a semester on Sybil, on studying Sybil, reading books about it, et cetera. So, yeah. Yeah. No, it is a real person.

And so let's take our AI and give it multiple personalities that we don't know who we're going to be dealing with every time we talk to them. Good plan there, guys. Good luck, Sybil. Yeah. In other frustrating news, Grok AI is set to become, quote, the most powerful AI by every metric by December using the world's most powerful training cluster, end quote, according to renowned carny barker Elon Musk.

However, there's a catch. X has automatically opted users into a data sharing feature that helps train Grok using their data. It's a hidden feature that can only be disabled through the website, not the mobile app. So to turn it off, go to settings on the website, then privacy and safety, then data sharing, and then look for Grok at the bottom where you can disable the option.

And there is also an option to delete the chat history, which may or may not do a goddamn thing. So, and a note on this is driving me fucking crazy. This article actually called the website a web app. No, it's a website.

It's a fucking website. Stop trying to wrap app around everything. And it's still software, not a software, you fucking animals. Yeah, and they're, and they're GIFs. Oh, wait, no, they're not. Well, I'm so glad that Grok is about to become the most powerful AI by every metric because Grok's chatbot is misleading voters about the presidential election currently.

Okay. Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that ex-premium chatbot service is passing along erroneous information about deadlines for states' presidential ballots, including Minnesota. When Grok was asked what states' presidential ballot deadlines have passed, Grok claims Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington have passed their presidential ballots.

How many of them have? Zero of them. Not a one. Nay, nay, nay. Also, sequel would have done this perfectly. Grok then sources its information to a post on X published on Sunday by a user and conservative pundit, which does not include a correction or warning about election misinformation.

So, again, absolutely zero is being vetted here. In fun mode, Grok repeats the incorrect information and source with a comment. So, if you're planning on running for president in one of these states, you might want to check if there's a write-in option or, you know, travel back to before the deadline's passed. Ha, ha, ha, Elon.

You're hilarious. Great. Yes. Anyways, it goes on and on and more and more. But, obviously, I mean, Grok is just a pile of shit. All these things are. So, we reached out to X's press email for comment and only received a reply that read, busy now, please check back later.

I guess they disabled the poops. They've upgraded from the poops to actual English. Great. And Elon Musk also shared a doctored Harris campaign video on X without labeling it as fake. As spotted by the New York Times, Elon Musk shared an altered version of Kamala Harris's campaign video on Friday night that uses a deep fake voiceover to say things like, I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire in the VP's voice.

Nowhere does the post alert users to the fact the video has been manipulated and features comments Harris did not actually say. And it's worth pointing out that under X's own policies, users may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm misleading media.

Okay. Do as I say, not as I do. Tesla has also recalled 1.8 million vehicles over risk of detached hoods. Whoopsie! A sizable number even for a company that is no stranger to these turn of events. Yeah, no shit.

Yeah. So it's an over-the-air software update. So I think they all actually, to be fair to Tesla at this point, I think they need a different term than recall when you don't actually have to bring your car anywhere. But I guess you do have to decide to enable auto updates. Yeah, yeah.

Or dad joke. And one last Elon story, a deadly accident in Washington that took the life of a motorcyclist earlier this year was caused by a Tesla vehicle while it was in full self-driving mode. So they basically studied all this.

They went into it. They found out that, yes, it was on autopilot mode. And the NHTSA's report concludes that Tesla's weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for autopilot's permissive operating capabilities and that full self-driving mode does not adequately ensure that drivers maintain their attention on the driving task.

So, yes, it's not full self-driving. It kills people. Yes, which we've known for quite some time. But I'm surprised that this one actually got through because usually right before the person dies, the full self-driving flips off so they can't say that it was on when the person actually died.

So that's been the thing, yeah. That's okay. The Tesla's going to recall their cars to make sure that they do that again. Exactly. They got to fix that. All right. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, has ruled that Amazon is responsible for properly recalling hazardous items sold on its marketplace, even from third-party sellers.

Speaking of recalls, speaking of recalls, this decision follows Amazon's failure to adequately notify the public about over 400,000 recalled products, including faulty carbon monoxide detectors and flammable children's pajamas. Whoops.

Despite Amazon's attempts to alert buyers, the CPSC found these efforts insufficient. Amazon plans to appeal the decision, but must now implement a new plan to notify customers and encourage the return or destruction of these dangerous items, especially the flammable children's pajamas.

Now, unless that's what I bought on purpose, like the title was, Flammable, Instantly Flammable Children for Child Pajamas XYZ, 2Z, double XYZ, black and black and black and blue and purple and blue and blue. By the way, this is flammable. And, you know, then I know what I'm buying.

Yes. If they weren't labeled under kindergarten flambe, then that is not the – Jesus. Wow. Yeah. That's a good name for a restaurant. Oh, yeah, it is, really. Okay. And here we go. Yum Brands is expanding voice AI technology to hundreds of Taco Bell drive-thrus in the U.S. by the end of 2024, aiming to modernize operations and enhance customer experience.

This AI rollout currently in over 100 locations. The company plans to eventually implement this technology globally across its brands, including KFC and Pizza Hut. And I bet they got a deal on all that AI that McDonald's sold after they found out it doesn't fucking work. I would like two gorditas, please.

Three tortillas. Three tortillas. No, two gorditas. Three tortillas. Coming up. No, you have to – they give you back a 12-piece family meal because they're going to be rolling out with KFC2. Perfect. Perfect. Awesome.

Yep. Just what we needed. I'm glad they learned from McDonald's mistakes. Yes. So, and this final one, Cloudflare Application Security Report of 2024 update is out. And the TLDR of the entire thing is 7% of all internet traffic is malicious. And was surprising me because I thought it would have actually been more.

Yeah. Well, I suppose it depends on one's definition of malicious. That's true. That's true. That's true. Because if you round up Facebook X and those, I mean, then, yeah, we're looking at at least half of the traffic on the internet is malicious. Easy.

Well, I flew into L.A. over the weekend, and it was a bright and early flight. So, unfortunately, this is definitely not a drunk on a movie plane reviews. It is completely sober on a plane movie reviews. I had coffee.

Very exciting. Was your phone searched at the border? It was not. Thank God. Because I had a, you know, kindergarten flambe on my phone. First up was Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. There weren't a lot of movie options, so that's what I went with.

I lasted 10 minutes. Okay. You lost me at the title. Oh, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom? You have not heard of this barn buster of the final DC series? No, I have not. I didn't even know that they were still making Aquaman movies. Yeah, I think it's basically the last gasp.

And, you know, before they reboot the DC, this one came out. So, literally got in 10 minutes. It was so fucking boring, I couldn't take it. Like, I was just like, I don't know what's happening here, and I don't care. And I'm just going to turn this off now, or I'll have to open the door and step out of the plane.

One or the other. It's for all the ladies, because it has the Jason Momoa. I guess. And I thought the first Aquaman one was all right. It was kind of funny. It was pretty good, actually. It was fine. This one is not. Okay. Yeah. Then I saw Confessed Fletch was an option.

And I loved the original Fletch movies with Chevy Chase. I mean, they came out at a perfect time when I was a kid. It was the perfect humor for me. You know, and Chevy Chase is a ham. This is a take, a modern take on it with, I can't remember his name, John Ham, speaking of hams, as the lead character.

And it was great. Really? Surprise. Yes. It wasn't like, it wasn't so cheery or cheesy and dorky as the Chevy Chase one was. He plays it a bit straighter. Fun movie. Really enjoyable. Okay. Surprise, surprise. I hope they make more.

Okay. I don't think they will, because this is the first time I've ever heard of it. Yeah. Well, you know, nobody really heard of it either. I remember just seeing an ad or two for it like a while back. And I was like, oh, there it is on my, on my screen is an option. So I watched it and I loved it. I thought it was great.

Okay, cool. So it was a real hoot. Kind of ran out of movies at that point. So I went and watched, they had the Apple TV Plus option. They had obviously made a marketing deal with them on Air Canada. So there was a bunch, they'd put the first three episodes of every show to get you hooked. So I watched Loot, which has Maya Rudolph.

This is horrible. Okay. I, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen in my entire life. It is. I know people keep telling me Maya Rudolph is funny. I've seen her. I've seen her be kind of okay every now and then, but yeah.

You were drunk. No, no, didn't happen. Yeah. This was, this was God awful. Never, ever, ever watch this. So I had to cleanse my palate after that. I had to cleanse my palate after that one. So I watched the first three episodes of Ted Lasso again and man, it hooked me again.

I want to start watching the whole first season again. It is such a wonderful show. Just so well done. I so enjoyed it again. And it's been so long that I didn't really remember all the beats from the first three episodes. Cause that was a long time ago now and I'm totally going to rewatch the show.

And my wife started watching shrinking, which I've talked about on the show before too, that I absolutely loved. And she thinks it's amazing too. So I need to finish that. I never, I started the last episode and never finished it. I should. Second season's coming soon. So yeah, you should finish that up. I'll just wait for that to come.

Then I can watch the last episode and then get up to speed easier. Right. Easy. I found an old show called Battle of the Brothers. This is one of them, they're cooking shows. I found this one on Max and it is brothers Brian and Michael Voltaggio. I love them.

I think they're great chefs because I see them on all the different shows. And this is a very different type of competition show. They each get a team and then they try and do the, you know, the standard competition stuff to try and find a chef who will take over one of their restaurants. The thing about it is the way that it's filmed is not like the frenetic cooking that you see on all of the other shows where it's like, okay, time starts now, go.

And then there's just crazy music and all this stuff. When the time starts and they're cooking, there's no music. It's very slow paced. They spend a lot of time actually watching them cook and talking about the different things that they're doing. And you actually learn some really cool tips and tricks because those two guys are really fucking good in the kitchen.

So, I mean, it's kind of like just watching a master class with the Voltaggio brothers for six episodes. It's not, I don't know, this was 2021. So it's probably never coming back, but I thought it was a great show. Great little show. Yeah. I might check that one out. That sounds pretty good.

Well, I got some good news for you, Jason. I know the boys is one season away from ending, but there's going to be more. Oh, yeah. Of course. So at San Diego Comic-Con, Amazon has announced they will produce a prequel of the superhero show called Voight Rising. This will take place during the 1950s, during the early days of the evil Voight Empire.

And you're also going to get, I don't know, some other stuff. They're basically trying to turn it into Amazon's Game of Thrones, where we're just going to inundate you with boys content. Yeah. Good for you, right? Yeah. No, it sounds good to me. And there's another spinoff already. Gen V was the spinoff that they already did.

Yeah, Gen V, which you like that already. Yeah, I like that a lot. And they started to tie that in a lot in the last episode. And in some parts of last season, they started to weave those two stories together, which was really cool. So I'm looking forward to that. And yeah, if it's the, you know, if they give it the same treatment, it should be pretty good.

It should be pretty good. I mean, it's all that Seth Rogen stuff, you know. So his companies that are doing these comic book adaptations are just phenomenal. Oh, and if you've never seen Preacher, that hits Netflix as part of that AMC Plus deal at the end of August. So Preacher season one through four are pretty good, too.

Highly recommended. So here we have some new Star Wars news. Woo! Jude Law is set to join the Star Wars universe and Disney Plus' new series, Star Wars Skeleton Crew. And they post some pictures today, or not today, this week over on, I think it was on E.

And yeah, it looks like something I'm never, ever going to watch because it's about kids. I'm going to watch it. We'll see. I'll watch it for you and let you know if it appeals to you at all. Okay, I'll let you and Dave hash that one out, and then you can let me know. At least one of the droids is voiced by Nick Frost, who I like.

So that's good. Yes, yeah. That's good. We'll see. Yeah, Disney Plus on December 3rd. Long time away. Yeah. The way this year is going, though, it could be next week. That's true. Yeah. There's a new Star Trek series in the works from Justin Simeon and Tawny Newsome. So this is going to be a comedy, I guess.

It's kind of, this one is going to be weird. It's kind of like, I don't know. It's kind of getting a little too meta meta on this one. This action comedy will focus on Federation outsiders on a resort planet with their exploits broadcast to the quadrant. Inspired by shows like The Office, it promises a fresh take on the Star Trek universe.

So, yeah, I don't know. I'd rather they just kept lower decks going. I know. That's such a, it's such a, like a home run. Just keep that one going. But, yeah. It's the last season. I just feel they're getting rid of lower decks way too soon. And I'm not, I get the feeling that this one isn't going to get past, get past a pilot episode.

I just don't see this working. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. We'll see. And plus they have to, they have to get through the Paramount Plus shenanigans right now. And all the mergers and everything that's happening. Yeah. Project Cots, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of Paramount Plus, Michael C. Hall returns to the Dexter universe with two new series on Paramount Plus.

At Comic-Con, Hall announced Dexter Resurrection set in the present day and Dexter Original Sin, a 90s prequel starring Patrick Gibson. Hall will narrate the inner monologue of young Dexter and Original Sin and Dexter Resurrection premieres summer 2025, while Dexter Original Sin debuts in December 2024.

So, be interesting. We'll see what happens. We'll see. I just know Dexter Newblood sucked. It sucked a lot. I couldn't get past episode three. Yep. But in good news, Steve Zahn is set to join Apple TV Plus' sci-fi series, Silo, for its second season premiering, wait for it, November 15th.

Yes. The 10-episode season will release weekly on Fridays. Who cares who Steve Zahn is? Because nobody really remembers him. He was in White Lotus. Oh, you do? Okay. Oh, yeah. I totally remember Steve Zahn. And I liked White Lotus, too. He was good in it. Oh, I loved White Lotus. So, this season's cast will have Tim Robbins again, Harriet Walter, and Ian Glenn.

So, should be good. All right. And the news that broke the internet last night, Squid Game 2 is coming out on December 26th, which is just what you want right after Christmas. Squid Game. Yeah. Never seen an episode. Don't. Squid Game 3 will be in December 2025.

That will be the final episode, or final leg of the series. All right. Yeah. I would recommend you don't. So. But you will, the main character, Jung Jai Lee, was also Master Soul in The Acolyte, which I was, thank God, I was trying to picture, I was trying to place him the whole damn time.

I'm like, who is this guy? Why do I know him? But I never IMDb'd him until the Squid Game news came up on IMDb. And I'm like, oh, that's the guy. Now I remember him. There you go. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion, to home, culinary, and outdoor living.

Shop now at QVC.com. Ups and doodads. Brian, I got a quick note about Adobe and Photoshop. They raised their prices again?

No, they haven't. I've actually got a hack for you to get a little cheaper pricing. I love Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. But you know what I love about Photoshop? Muscle memory. Remove background and muscle memory. Just that simple, you know, remove background thing.

I have needed it so much this week that I actually had to go back and turn my subscription back on for a little bit. So I'm trying to, you know, cut out a bunch of these portraits that I have and do some stuff with them. And I needed it. I'm just like, I can't do this. It just doesn't work. You know, Photoshop is really good.

So 99% of the time, Affinity Photo does the job just right. So I went back and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to rehab. Give me Photoshop. 32 bucks a month they want for Photoshop. I'm like, I know that there are better deals for that. And if you go and look and you just click the, I want the photo bundle, you can bundle Lightroom and Photoshop for $19.99 a month.

But two apps, less price. Kind of goes back to that same pricing shenanigans that we talked about last week. Yes, dark patterns. Yes. Uh-huh. So if you need to get Photoshop in a pinch, yeah, 20 bucks is what it's going to cost you. Yeah. Can't pirate it like the old days.

Damn it. Can't edit my host file so it doesn't phone home. No, just because I don't trust the actual version that I would get off a BitTorrent because those things are so, so screwed. Anyway, moving on. I love this. Aussie drivers drop a dime via the internet or can drop a dime.

And if they did this in LA, I would buy a dash cam so goddamn fast. In Canberra, Australia, they have a new weapon against bad drivers. Snitches. The Australian Capital Territory Police have created a web portal where users can upload their dash cam footage of traffic violations.

The police review the footage and can assess fines or warnings. The move has already netted significant results. Since the portal opened in May, police have received 132 reports and issued 25 traffic infringements in turn. Now, that would be 132 reports per second in LA.

Yes, it would. Yeah. And the whole thing with traffic tickets here, if you fight it and go to court and the police officer doesn't show up, you win. So I can't even imagine how that would work here. Yeah, I think they have different laws down there. I watched some of the video.

Yeah, I watched some of the video. It's just like, yeah, they deserved it. They deserved it. And if they really want to do it right here in the States, they need to give the tipper a cut. You know, give the person – give that person the money to go to court and then get a kickback out of the fine. But I wish we could do this here.

Oh, my God. Just keep people honest. Just to keep people honest. Yep. This is kind of a follow-up on another story we did. Sharks are congregating at Padaro Beach in California, prompting the launch of Shark Eye by the University of California, Santa Barbara's Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory.

Say that 10 times fast. This initiative uses drones to monitor shark activity, alerting local lifeguards and surf shops when sharks are spotted. Shark Eye is now integrating AI to improve shark detection, addressing the challenge – Shark or not. Is it shark or not? Exactly. The challenge of distinguishing sharks from other objects like paddleboarders and kelp.

Early tests show AI performing well, detecting more sharks than human observers. Okay. This technology aims to enhance beach safety and expand other areas, potentially offering a fully automated shark detection system in the future. And I guess they didn't listen to our episode where we covered the damage the drones do to the local bird populations.

So maybe we can just get some blimps instead. I love a good blimp. Yeah. A dirigible. Come on. They're great. Yeah. I agree. But basically, yes, shark or not. Yes. Well, if you thought that shenanigans with ticketing was a predominantly Ticketmaster thing alone, it is not.

The Washington, D.C. Superior Court has filed a lawsuit against ticket seller StubHub that accuses the company of hiding all kinds of fees from consumers until the very last minute. So this is getting into all the dark arts again, of course, and dark practices and dark blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The suit calls out the deceptive practice of charging hidden junk fees and refers to it as a classic bait and switch scheme.

So if you've ever purchased a ticket via StubHub or any of its rivals, you're probably very familiar with what happens. You see ticket prices for like 20 bucks. And by the time you check out, there's suddenly all of a sudden 90 to 80, you know, 90 to 100 bucks, which is crazy. So they can boost up to over 40% with some of these things.

So finally, they're saying this is a load of bullshit and you guys need to stop this. So we'll see what happens. So more lawsuits, more regulation. This is unfettered capitalism. This is what happens. It is what happens. Thank you, StubHub. Avi Schiffman is developing a new AI company called Friend, designed to be a supportive, validating presence rather than a productivity tool.

And now Avi built a COVID tracking website back in 2020 when he was 17, which is why he's so gosh darn qualified to build an emotional support device, Brian. Right. Tracking and support. I see it. Yeah. Yes. Unlike traditional AI devices, Friend aims to be an ever-present companion, providing intelligent conversation and encouragement.

The device, a round orb worn as a pendant or clipped to close, communicates through text via an app. Well, to be fair, most of my friends communicate with me through text via an app. That's true. That's true. Priced at $99 with no subscription fees.

The first 30,000 units are set to ship in January. And now Schiffman emphasizes that Friend is not meant to replace human interaction, but to enhance companionship, offering a deeper connection than session-based AI like Replica. The project aims to create meaningful relationships with AI, positioning it as a digital relationships company.

No. Go fuck yourself, kid. Sorry. You don't have the qualifications for any of this. No. Well, that hasn't stopped anybody. This is true. This is true. That has not stopped anybody from creating little tiny AI devices that we're supposed to wear before they go out of business.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He saw the other ones and just said, hold my beer. I like this one. I like this one. Neurotech startup Synchron has announced the integration of its brain computer interface with Apple's Vision Pro headset. Okay. This advancement enables patients with limited physical mobility to control the device using only their thoughts.

Synchron's BCI, which assists paralyzed patients in operating smartphones and computers, has been implanted in six patients in the U.S. and four in Australia. Now, Apple's Vision Pro, typically controlled by eye movements, voice commands, and hand gestures, can now be used by those who cannot speak or move their upper limbs, which is very cool.

Synchron CEO Thomas Oxley praised Apple's iOS accessibility platform and hinted at future integrations with other headsets, and Apple has shown strong support for this collaboration. So, this is very cool. They've got one patient with ALS that's been testing the Vision Pro using the Synchron BCI since April.

He said, despite losing muscle control, he can send texts, play games, watch TV, and even create art using the headset. Very cool. Absolutely. No monkeys killed. No. Well, we don't know. Well, that's true. We don't know that. There probably were some dead monkeys along the way.

But, you know, look, I like the neural brain computer interfaces. I just don't like it when he does it. He shall not be named. Well, we haven't done this segment in a little bit, and I've got some books to catch up on.

Last time we talked, I had finished the first book, Joy Division, by Peter Cook, where he wrote about his time there, and wanted to take a break from that and switch back to sci-fi after that. So I went back to my Steady Companion, the first Contact series by Peter Cowderan, and I read the Simulacrum, and that was great.

It was a really good story, totally about, you know, what happens if an AI basically gains, becomes alive by itself, and what happens if it recognizes an alien out there first, and what happens, well, I'm not going to spoil it anywhere beyond there.

It's good. It's good. It's very good. Thoroughly enjoyable one, probably one of my favorites of his series. After I finished that, I went back to the Peter Cook books, because he's written three, and I read the Hacienda, How Not to Run a Club, by Peter Cook, obviously. And this kind of takes place in between the time period of, well, it's post-Joy Division, and it's when New Order was starting up, so they also opened up this club, very famous club, the Hacienda, kind of kick-started the whole Manchester music scene, was the center of it.

This is a tale of, basically, don't run a business if you like drinking and doing drugs all the time. Yeah, I could have told you that. Yeah. Well, in very amusing and gory detail, this gets into it, and it was a hoot to read, even though I don't particularly care about Manchester, nor do I care about the Hacienda, but it was a fun story to read.

And just the shenanigans that they got up to, and how it just basically destroyed the business, and how they were able to keep running the business as long as they did, was amazing. Awesome. So after that, back to First Contact by Peter Cowderan. This guy owes you, like, some serious money.

Come on. He does at this point. I'm paying him and then promoting the crap out of him, because I do enjoy his books. So this one was Galactic Exploration, and this one was about four kind of interconnected stories, you know, basically four, three, or four ships, I can't even remember now at this point, were sent out to do, you know, deep space exploration.

There were generational ships. They went different ways. All of them ran into aliens in one shape or form, different types. Really interesting stuff. I, again, really enjoyed it. It's very quick sci-fi reads, but they're very well thought out, and there's always interesting ideas in them. So, again, can't recommend it enough.

Feel free to send me money, Peter, because I deserve it at this point. Me too, for having to listen to it. You've liked some of the books, I think. I haven't read any of them yet. Okay. So, yeah. So after I finished that, back to Peter Cook, I went. And I read the final book that he has written, Substance, Inside New Order.

Now, I was never a huge New Order fan. Of course, they were inescapable. They were one of the biggest, you know, massive new wave bands, and one of the, you know, they were everywhere on K-Rock when I was growing up. I saw them many, many times live. Peter Cook is on a phenomenal bassist, but this is really about, it's kind of a sad story about how, you know, childhood friends that started one band together and tried to stick with it over decades just fell apart and started to hate each other.

And really good stories in this one as well, but it did just kind of make me sad. And it's like, when you think about, you know, these, these touchstones of our youth, these bands, and you realize they all fucking hate each other. It's unbelievable.

So this one kind of got me down a little bit, but it was still a fun read just about, you know, about the times that they went through and just reminiscing and remembering where I was when I heard those songs and what I was doing in my life when, you know, not Blue Monday, that was a bit before my time, but like True Faith and Technique and all those songs came out.

So, and, you know, even he talked about a couple of the shows that I know I was at and then, you know, he's like, this one was a fucking disaster and I almost killed Barney on stage and all that. So it's really good stuff. It's fun. So, yep, there we go. So I guess back to Peter Cowderan now.

I don't know. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. I read Get Better at Anything, 12 Maxims for Mastery by Scott H. Young. I found out about this one through Cal Newport and it's a fantastic book. There's some really, really good tips and tricks in there about how to learn things.

And it's very, very interesting. It's very well-researched, extremely well-researched. And there's a lot of things that you would think that would help you learn better that actually work completely the opposite way. So the simple one is hearing audio while reading something at the same time is terrible for retention.

Like when somebody gets up and they put a PowerPoint slide on the screen and then read the PowerPoint to you, you will retain almost none of that because you have competing systems going on. So it's just, it's a bunch of that stuff. I highly recommend it because I'm in the middle of, you know, trying to learn piano right now, which is very difficult.

So I'm actually applying that to some of my learning techniques. So it's, it's actually very good. It's a, it's a very good book. Yeah. Highly recommended. Highly, highly recommended. And this one, this is a hat tip to Fogarty on this one. It's a from the Discworld community on Reddit. I was today years old when, and it's a, just a bunch of Easter eggs that I never caught.

I'm sure you looked at these and some of them you had to, some of them you didn't get, I'm sure. Right. Oh yeah, yeah. Some of these I didn't get at all. It's, it's very, very funny stuff. Yeah. Here's, here's the one. Shout out to the one in soul music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster.

It was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked. It was a deaf leopard. It's good stuff. Really good. Really good. So check that one out. Closing shout outs. Over on Patreon, we've got Pallavi, Bradley, and Ramsey.

Lots of E's. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very, very much. Yes. Thank you so much. I am enjoying the uptick in Patreon subscribers we've been having recently. So thank you all very much. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Jonathan, Simon, Judge, Thomas, and Nicola. And over the tip jar, we've got Adam and Matthew.

And to go back to the Patreon thing, for as little as $3 a month, you can get the show early and ad-free and in high definition. So you can obviously give us more if you want, but plans start at $3 a month. We highly, highly appreciate anything that you guys can give.

So go to GOG.showslashdonate. Join us. Keep us on the air. Pretty, pretty, please. The air. Whatever. Whatever. The tubes. Keep us on the tubes. Now, I found this just one video. Kevin Smith details his personal trauma, bullying, and improving mental health.

This is an old video from over a year ago about when he got out of a mental institution that he was at for about a month. It's a half an hour video where he just talks, which is what he's really good at. But I swear this could have been half my story.

I was listening to it. It was one of those watches where I just kind of, it was like a gut punch. The stuff that he went through and that he, that he talked about, it's like very, very similar to my story. And I'm sure similar to a lot of people's stories. So if you're having any trouble with mental health, give it a, give it a watch.

It might give you a little boost and some ideas on how to help. All right. I've always liked Kevin Smith. I met him. I met him a couple of times. He was a really nice guy. The only place I don't like him is Twitter. So, yeah. Well, he's not there anymore. So it's perfect. Now you can run into him where I used to see him all the time was Runyon Canyon out for a walk.

So, but that was back when it was fat Kevin Smith, not, not healthy young Kevin Smith. But anyway, until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for tuning into Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at GOG.show slash 659.

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