663: Habsburg AI

Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Oh, coffee. Blessed be. Do your work. 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. And I am back in Canada land, Jason. Ooh, good for you. Yeah, that's great. You like it up there. Yeah, well, you know, winter is coming, but all that. Yeah, but ketchup chips and make-ball cookies. Come on.

I don't like ketchup chips. Oh, well. They're disgusting. But everybody else in this family likes them, so whatever. I love them. Yeah, in retrospect, you know, four or five months ago when we decided to schedule like every doctor's appointment known to man this first week that we were back because kids' school starts next week, not a good idea.

Oh. I'm so exhausted and there's piles of crap everywhere and we're just running around like crazy. There's been a bit of discussion recently about healthcare in our Discord, and I'm not going to weigh into that debate right now of Canada versus U.S. But I do want to point out one thing that is the same no matter what country you're in, the complete inefficiency and clusterfuckery of government construction.

Okay. How does that tie into healthcare? Well, you know, the debate was between Canadian and socialist healthcare systems versus the U.S. and all that sort of thing. But one thing that is the same is this construction process. If you recall, Jason, before I even left Canada and I was gone for over a month, they are working on our street.

They had replaced our sidewalks and the curbs and all that sort of thing. Oh, yes. And we figured, okay, well, we're going to be gone for a month. Surely they will have the street done in that time. Don't call me Shirley. They hadn't even started. Oh, my God. Not a bit of work until yesterday.

And of course, today, it's one of those things where we have the car parked outside just because it's quick and easy to get going. 9.30, some guy rolls up, knocks on my door and says, your car needs to be gone within the next 15 minutes. I'm like, if we had normal jobs, none of us would be here.

Why couldn't you have pulled us yesterday when we were all walking around and you had people up and down the street? It's just a mess. Anyway, so if there's loud noise today, it's going to be what it's going to be. Yeah. Well, it's 6.30 in the morning here on Garbage Day because of your kids' aforementioned health care visit.

So it is 6.30 a.m. here in lovely Los Angeles, which is Garbage Day. And so there might be some banging around here, too. But it's 6.30 in the morning. And for me, I always wake up with some song stuck in my head. I get an earworm every day. I don't know what it is.

And today it was the theme song from The Monkees. Hey, hey, we're the monkeys. That one? Yep. Yep. That's the one. Couldn't get rid of it. And I mean, the monkeys had some bangers, man. They were a good, good band. I mean, a great band in my opinion. So then I got Last Train to Clarksville stuck in my head.

And then I just started to think about, there's a note in here about us being old, and we'll get to that shortly. And I was just thinking about, man, I remember when, you know, just to date us, I remember when we found out about new music from Dead Tree magazines that would come out once a month.

And thinking about kids nowadays and how they find new music, oh, it's just pushed directly to their ear holes from AI notifications from their, you know, bots that run the internet and the TikToks and all that shit. Like, we had to wait a month just to see pictures of a band we couldn't listen to.

Yeah. I mean, there was a lot to be said about the mystery. I definitely think that that was a big part of it. Like, I love all that stuff. And yeah, man, Select Magazine, Q Magazine, all the English magazines that I would have to find, like the import newsstand agents that you could find somewhere.

Occasionally, Barnes & Noble would have them. And I'd remember that and go back to that Barnes & Noble all the time. I'm sure you're familiar with this place. The newsstand over in Beverly Drive. You know, we've all been there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, don't forget that secret sash of tiger beats you used to keep under your bed.

That was my sister. I'm sure you peaked. Well, you know, got to see what the kids are up to even then. Yeah. Yeah. So I put a monkey's playlist in the show notes over at Spotify if you want to go get your nostalgia on. All right. And yeah, I'm a believer in Last Train to Clarksville.

If you don't know who the monkeys are, start with those two. They're great songs. You know, to tie this into sci-fi geekery, that Chekhov's character was based on Davy Jones, the look. Yes. Yeah. And the reason they actually cast him and put him into the show was to catch the young monkey's loving crowd. Yeah.

I remember that. Chekhov. He's still around. He's still around. Yes, he is. All right. We got some Waymo follow up from friend of the show, Chen. So she was I'm going to read this verbatim. She texted me the other day was just listening to GOG and heard something about Waymo.

I've taken it maybe five times already with different friends and fam visiting SF. All five rides were surprisingly smooth, gentle on the brakes, and were able to respond to unexpected cars and peds very well. Very impressed. I must say they are everywhere in SF now, like one in every seven cars in the city.

I had no idea, Brian, that they were that ubiquitous. That's crazy. They cost a little more than Lyft and Uber, but not by much. Still seeing a car drive by itself is freaky as fuck for sure. Now, to be fair, there has been a great exodus of San Francisco. So that's true.

That's true. A lot of the normal traffic is long gone. Yes. She continues. I was very scared during my first ride, then really got used to it afterwards. David was super impressed, too. David being Dr. Teeter, friend of the show and previous guest. And people who ride it regularly say they enjoy not having to interact with the driver.

Oh, yeah. It lets you pick music, too. Would love for you to try it when you're in town. Oh, and you get to ride in the front, too. So now I totally didn't even think about the introvert aspect of the fact that there is no driver that you have to talk to. I'm like, sign me up right now. This is why I am desperately waiting for my robot hairdresser.

Ah, yes. Oh, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If I have to listen to one more hairdresser, tell me that they love Joe Rogan. After they find out I'm a podcaster. Well, don't tell them anything, Jason. I don't have anything else to say because I don't do anything else. So she says, once the car shows up, you unlock the door with your phone.

The entire experience, at least for my five rides, was pretty seamless. So I asked her what the turnaround time was from the call to the pickup. And she says it's relatively quick. And they have recently added more cars to San Francisco, too. But before, one needed to be on the waiting list for Waymo. Now you can just download the app and hail the ride right away.

And I did see this morning in my news feeds that they are testing Waymos on the highways in San Francisco. So she said she still can't go any more than five miles from, you know, where she's going to go because it's still kind of trippy. But, yeah, they're testing it with employees right now.

So, you know, I think San Francisco might actually be the perfect place just because of, as you mentioned, Brian, the aforementioned Exodus. Yeah. Yeah. Especially downtown. Like, downtown's a ghost town. Perfect place to try to test these things out. Yeah. On their employees. I'm sure, and I'm sure the Waymos have manpoo detection.

Yeah. Well, you definitely, just be careful. Yeah. I'm going to try one when I get to San Francisco, or not San Francisco, because I don't know when I'll get to San Francisco, but they have them in Santa Monica now. So I might, next time I'm over there, I might try one just for shits and giggles, you know? What's the worst? They could drive me into the ocean. Yeah.

Well, it cleans off the manpoo from the tires. It definitely does. And there is manpoo in Santa Monica. And I have seen the Mythbusters episode of how to get out of a car that goes into the water. So I should be okay. I think, maybe. Now, here's something that's not being covered in the news, and I don't know, I know I wasn't hallucinating, but I came out of my office the other day, and cruising down Ventura Boulevard was an LAPD fucking Cybertruck.

I'm not surprised. But it's not in the news anywhere. Right. LAPD has not acknowledged it. There's no pictures of it anywhere. And then I got to thinking, maybe, just maybe, it was a movie prop, because there's an abandoned mall right up the street from me, and that's where they film a shit ton of the TV show SWAT.

So they may have dolled one up for SWAT, I think. That is the only thing that I could think of, because it is nowhere in the news. But this was straight up an LAPD Cybertruck. My jaw hit the floor, and I couldn't get my phone out fast enough to get a picture. I was so bummed.

I'd have had a scoop. Brian, a scoop. Right. A scoop. Yep. Just one quick thing on the Cybertruck. Burglars now discover that you can peel the Cybertruck windows just to get in the inside without setting off the alarm. I saw this video, and my jaw dropped.

Seems like a bit of an oversight. A little bit, especially since they claim that those windows are just, you know, bomb-proof. You know, you can drop a JDAM on the Cybertruck. They stop bullets, but you can peel them off. Actually, handy if you're in a firefight, because you can just peel off the thing and then use it as a shield as you try to get to a different location.

Ah, that's true. That's true. It is mobile. It's a feature, not a bug, Jason. So, yeah, this guy just cracked the window, which shattered it, you know, because it's tempered glass, and then he just literally peeled it down, jumped in, and grabbed the backpack that was in the passenger seat.

So, I have to say to all my Cybertruck listeners out there, always keep your junk in the frunk. Fair. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. And Tesla is back in the news because they have deleted all their blog posts from previously to 2019.

Apparently, the Warner Brothers, let's delete everything bug has caught them, too. Well, this includes a blog post from 2016 stating that all Tesla cars being produced had full self-driving hardware. So, they're just, basically, they're trying to bury the bodies and cover up the evidence at this point.

Don't, I don't think that they anticipated we have this thing called the Wayback Machine. Well, what do you think Elon's purchasing next, Jason? That's true. It could be buying the Wayback Machine. Archive.org is next. But don't tell them. You can actually get your website out of the Wayback Machine by just putting in a simple robots.txt exclusion.

They actually do do that, which pisses me off because all my old sites that got bought by domain squatters use the robots.txt file. And so, I can't get to any of the old stuff from Spew. You can't get to any of it because now that there's a robots file on there now, even though there wasn't one then, they go with what is there now, which really just bums me out.

Don't you have an archive on a CD somewhere that probably won't work anymore? See, that's the problem. I did have a bunch of archives and the CDs failed. Then I got, whatever I had, I put into some tar balls and then, and back those up. And then when I tried to untar them, half of them came back with nothing in them.

So I might have a copy of my stuff from Spew on a zip drive somewhere. Yeah, maybe. Maybe a SyQuest. You got to find a drive. Yeah, I got to, I do have, I did have some SyQuests back in the day with some Spew stuff on them, but I do have your stuff actually, if you ever want to read it, which I don't recommend.

Probably not, no. No, I read some of my stuff from back then too. And it's like, oh God, that's right. I was in my early twenties. You don't want to read that stuff. Can run it through chat GPT and make it better. One quick note I had on the Riverside Affiliate Program. This has pissed me off so much this week.

Riverside is the technology that we use to record this program. And since 2021, I've been a Riverside Affiliate. And so I, I send people their way, not many, uh, because which will become very apparent right now. Turns out I, I, they got a notice of like, Hey, you got another affiliate payout for $22.

So I went to, they're like, go check your dashboard. And I'm like, okay. I just assumed that they would PayPal me the money like they'd been doing forever. So I click on the dashboard and I've, turns out they've never PayPal'd me a cent because there's a minimum $200 payout on their affiliate marketing program, which is unheard of.

I mean, most of them, you have a slider you can, you can set. So you don't get multiple payouts. If you're getting a lot of volume, you know, 25, 50, a hundred dollars, never seen $200 in that pull down. And I've never had an affiliate program. Keep my money for more than one calendar year. They always pay out by the end of the fiscal year.

Yeah. Usually you want it off the books. Nope. These guys have kept my cash since 2021. So they owe me $115 and 20 cents, which I desperately need. So I just got in touch with the Riverside affiliate program and they're run by a third party company. And they say, Hey, ho, ho, ho.

It's not up to us. Why don't you talk to Riverside? So I sent it over to Riverside and Riverside just sent me back a blog post that said, Hey, here's the terms. You have to reach a minimum of $200. And there's no date on that post, by the way. So I don't know if that was there in the beginning or not. I may have missed it, which would have been on me, but I let them know.

I'm like, you know what? This is a really stupid fucking policy. And you might guys want to change your, your payout thresholds. And they're like, yeah, we'll think about it. Poop emoji. Have a nice day. Have a nice day. So if you're, if you're going to sign up for any affiliate programs, make sure you read the fine print or you could be stuck with them having your money for quite some time.

Yeah. It's like working for the music industry. Yeah. Shit. I'll gladly pay you 25 years from now for work done today. Yep. Yep. It's funny. My, my roommate has a call with a, a royalty extraction specialist. Who goes out and finds owed royalties from artists who have had a legacy, legacy music.

Yep. Makes sense. Yep. Yeah. We've got some friends who have got some money stashed away that the labels won't give them. So how timely of that, Brian. And I wanted to follow up a little bit more on our t-shirt experiment, which is coming very soon because I finally cracked all of the codes to make a t-shirt store, which actually is not as easy as you'd think it would be, Brian.

No, it does get complicated, doesn't it? Extremely fucking complicated. So I have, I have my first shirt store is online. It's at soberoutfitters.com. You can get some clever shirts about recovery if you're into those sorts of things, which I highly recommend it if you are, because there's some, some bangers for your next meeting in there.

Highly recommend go checking those out and picking up a shirt from me. I could really use it since Riverside isn't paying me anymore. Did you check the threshold on the payouts? Yes, I did. Okay. Yes, I did. I've actually, I sold four shirts already and I got paid out in 72 hours. Nice. Okay. Yep.

So that brings us to the point, Brian, that hopefully by the next episode, we should have a shirt store up. Oh, right. Great. Yeah. Now that, now that I've cracked the code and I can do this without the three weeks and four weeks of sitting there going back and forth between Printful and Shopify and all the other shit that I have to go back and forth with.

But now that, now that I got it down, it's actually really fun making shirts. I'm enjoying it. Not terribly profitable, but fun. Yes. No. Yeah. And I, I use a design tool for some of them called Kittle, K-I-T-T-L.com. Brian, this thing is amazing. It is all web-based, all vector-based.

And it is like, you just got to see it to believe it. It was created by the people who made heritage type typography company. And I saw it a long time ago and I'm just like, oh, this is just, nah, this isn't for me. And then I, it has been growing since then. And I went back and checked it out because I was trying to find one of the fonts that I bought from them.

And I had a trial going. So I just tried it. And I was just like, holy shit, you can do the whole process there. It's great. They've got templates for creating shirts from all of the different print on demand services. So you just pick your template and then just start dragging shit around, hit export and boom, Bob's your uncle. It's great.

Excellent. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. I'll put a link in the show notes. All right. We'll go buy some shirts, everybody. And Mark wrote in, sigh. There are not many days that I feel old. Hearing that Lucas was turning eight was one of those. Considering that I started listening before Jason moved to Chicago, I would say which time.

At which time. And when you started talking about some of my favorite places in Santa Monica, I've been listening and supporting for a while. The realization of life's passing was a shock. Regardless, thank you for the many, many years of joy. Yeah. This was a mirrored a bit on our discord as well. People talking about, oh my God, how is, how is Brian's kid eight years old already?

You think you guys are shocked? Try being me. Yeah. Yeah. Just saying. I was talking to my dad on my, my birthday this year and I turned 53 and I'm like, God, I can't believe I'm 53. And he's like, you can't believe you're 53. I can't believe I have a 53 year old son.

So. So.

Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports, most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren, the gorilla tail goes to war with Cuban powerhouse, Yoel, soldier of God, Romero. Plus the bare knuckle middleweight championship of the world is on the line when the reigning champ, Dave, the redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger, Jack, the meat pleaver colon BKFC 94 till verse Romero.

Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at the zone.com. QVC fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place.

Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead with brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.

In the news. Well, the big news in tech this week is Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, who was arrested in an airport near Paris on Saturday as part of a preliminary investigation into the app's lax approach to moderation and failure to curb criminal activities, according to Reuters, which cited the French news outlet BFM TV and TF1.

They are also reportedly being accused, well, the company is reportedly being accused of not cooperating with police. They released a statement. Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act. Its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving, it said. So, yeah.

This came out and everybody was kind of like, well, what the actual F? And then on Sunday afternoon, Telegram posted a statement to its official news channel and on X stating that CEO Durov has nothing to hide and that it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owners are responsible for abuse of that platform.

Now, if there's one thing I've learned, Jason, is when an entity releases a statement saying that they have nothing to hide, they have something to hide. They've got stuff to hide. So we've had learned a little bit more since then. The French authorities have shared the reason why behind the arrest at this point.

And it's not good. Twelve charges in total, including money laundering, drug trafficking, fraud, running an online platform that allows legal transactions and possessing child pornography. Now, there's a lot of back and forth about this. There's a lot of outcry.

And I was kind of there initially as well. I was like, I don't know how you hold the CEO personally responsible for a company. If anything, you fine the company. Lots of money, not just coffee money. This is the way you go about it. But when you get into he himself actually had child pornography, that's when it becomes a problem.

And now I'm like, OK, arresting him seems OK to me now. Yeah, they actually filed the charges on him yesterday. So he is he's out on bail. 500,000 euros. Can't leave France. He can't leave France. Tough, tough life. You can't take his underpants out of France.

So it's going to be interesting to see what they what they do with them, because interesting. Yeah. I mean, again, I agree with a lot of the people that are that were very upset about this saying, you know, you can't hold the CEO responsible for what a company does. You have to go after the company.

And I do agree with that. But apparently, you know, obviously there might be stuff that he himself has done that is very not cool. So I'm not a hashtag free Pavel along with everybody else these days. So, yeah, hashtag let's let's let let's let the process run and see what this guy has done, if anything.

Yeah. And this this was a ticking time bomb on him, even if he didn't have the CSAM thing going on. The fact that it is such a wild west, you know, it's a Russian thing. So it's yeah, it is very popular in Russia. And so the thing about it is, it's like if if France didn't get him, somebody was going to, you know.

Yeah. I mean, you just have to look at like the Bitcoin exchanges, the cryptocurrency exchanges and all of that, too. So what is the intention of your product? And if you are aware of the fact that is basically being used for illegal activities, do you have culpability?

And at some point, I think you do so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they've got their own cryptocurrency back end for, you know, buying things on the platform. And then then you can take that out and, you know, move it to a different exchange and change it for actual real money, not the fake money.

So it's there's a lot of things going on there that even if they weren't illegal, they were sus. And like I said, this was going to happen at some point. They were going to Snowden, Assange him at some point. He was not going to he wasn't getting out unscathed. And of course, who's defending him?

Snowden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Indeed. Indeed. Zuckerberg is in the news recently. This is a head shaker. He wrote a letter to basically a congressman saying that, hey, you know, we're trying to be nice over here.

And the Biden administration was mean to us and they tried to censor us. And yeah, it's just it's uncool, bro. Trying to figure out like what he's really trying to play at is a head scratcher. So he wrote this to Jim Jordan, who's a Republican from Ohio, trying to, you know, basically curry favor with the Republicans.

Don't know why. Haven't figured that one out yet because the Republicans are against regulation. End of story. Yeah. Well, some of them just it's mostly about money, Jason. That's it. Oh, it's always about money.

It just trying to just trying to follow the money on this one is what's really weird because it totally backfired because the people that hate Zuckerberg hate him more and the people who didn't hate Zuckerberg hate him more now. So this made no no sense. And the thing is, he was saying the government tried to censor them, which they really weren't.

They were asking him because it is a private company and they didn't censor him. They asked him nicely. Maybe not so nicely. And he even says, ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take down content. And it was his decision. So he's bitching about it, you know, in this open letter saying that, well, we were censored.

We were censored. No, you weren't. You did it yourself. So shut the fuck up and go back to being an asshole like you already were. I love the fact that it's basically, oh, we're going to stay neutral this election. But I'm going to write a Republican senator in an open letter saying that Democrats suck.

Exactly. What exactly is your point here? That seems pretty neutral to me. They had to have had meetings, Brian. Zuckerberg didn't just go into a ketamine-fueled rage and write this. That would be Elon. No, we have no idea why. Zuckerberg actually talks to his lawyers first, unlike Musk.

Yeah, I'm curious, like, you know, since Sheryl Sandberg is gone, like, what's really going on over there now? Because she was his guardrail and his, you know, yeah. She was his Dick Cheney, you know? So who's pulling the strings over there now?

Yes, she kept his Dick chained. Oh, nice one. Nice one. Thank you. Moving on. Moving on. Uber has received its largest fine to date with the Dutch Data Protection Agency, issuing a £290 million or about $324 million penalty to the rideshare company. They found that Uber took account details, taxi licenses, location data, photos, payment details, identity documents, and more from European drivers and transferred them to servers at their U.S. headquarters for over two years.

They didn't use any transfer tools. One would assume they, what, just emailed them? I don't know. A decision that Dutch DPA has deemed caused inefficient protection. So GDPR protects the fundamental rights of people by requiring businesses and governments to handle personal data with due care, which would not include emailing them.

Uber does not meet the requirements of the GDPR to ensure the level of protection to the data with regard to transfers to the U.S., and that is very serious, said in a Dutch accent. Gasp. Gasp. That's a big fine. That's not coffee money. No, especially for Uber.

Yeah. You know, it's not like they're profitable or anything. Well, they had that one quarter, Jason. They had that one quarter. That one quarter. Yep. I just want to know where they're still getting all this money from. I don't know anymore. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah. They, you know, they stocked up quite a bit.

Yeah, that's true. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes. The NTSB has sent a team to investigate a California crash involving a Tesla Semi. Hat tip to Mike on this one. I have not seen a Tesla Semi on the road. Have you? No, I have not.

I've known just the Cybertrucks. Yeah, you would know a Tesla Semi. They're very distinct looking. But they are on the road, and they've been on the road for quite a while now. And I did some investigating into the Tesla Semi. I was going to say the Cyber Semi, but it's not that.

So basically the long and the short of this one is there was on August 19th near Immigrant Gap, northeast of Sacramento, one of the semis went off the road, hit some trees, and caused the battery to go boom. The fire reached 1,000 degrees, emitting toxic fumes, and continued to burn until the late afternoon, forcing firefighters to basically wait till it burned itself out.

Wow. Yeah. These things get hot. So the NTSB is involved in this because they're trying to figure out how they can fix this in the future for firefighters. And they've made statements in the past to manufacturers of high-voltage electric vehicles with these batteries and said that, hey, you guys need to give us some instructions on how to put this shit out.

And basically Tesla's PR department just said they should pour a bucket of poop emojis on the fire and leave them the hell alone. But because there's really no way to deal with these things at this point. Yeah. Which is exactly why they didn't want all those hovercraft, those hoverboards on airplanes for a while.

Oh, yeah. Those things were popping like it's hot, you know? So I did look at, like I said, I looked into these Tesla semis. They're actually kind of cool because the driver's seat is in the center of the truck. So God forbid, if you want a passenger, pick up a prostitute at the truck stop at four in the morning.

It self-drives, man. You're just laying back. It doesn't self-drive though, Brian. But all Teslas, according to that blog post. I think Tesla cars. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't, there's no, there's no mention of self-driving capabilities on the website.

There is lane keeping and, you know, adaptive cruise control and things like that. But they go out of their way, not to say that they're self-driving into these, in these semis. Because I think that would open up a much bigger can of worms. Yes, because there are a lot more regulations on trucks and shipping.

Yes, there are. Yes, there are. But it's kind of cool because the cockpit looks literally like a cockpit. You got the big, the big screens up on either side with blind spot cameras. Which, you know, if I was driving next to a Tesla semi, I would actually feel a little safer than just a regular. Yeah.

Because, you know, but definitely not driving. I'd feel safer next to a semi, a Tesla semi than I would next to a Cybertruck. Let's just say that. Agreed. Well, I was catching back up on some Canadian news as I'm back here. And if I wanted to snap up a Chinese EV, not that I would want to, because I don't trust their batteries.

I trust them even less than Tesla's batteries. But nope, not going to be happening. I have until October 1st, basically. And then the Canada will impose a hundred percent tariff on electric vehicles built in China, which is basically identical to the one the White House established in the US earlier this year.

The surtax applies to electric cars, trucks, buses, and delivery vans, as well as some hybrid models. Canada will also charge a 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum starting on October 15th. So you're welcome, Mr. Musk. There you go. Yeah, seriously.

I have not seen, I don't know of any Chinese EVs that come to mind. Well, that's because. Because they're too expensive to get in. Yeah. Well, they were just starting to, like, get ready to ship them out, right? Apparently, they're all pretty good. Like, if you do Google some reviews and stuff, and you'll see, like, people going through these EVs, and they're made cheaper, they cost a lot less, and they're pretty efficient.

Now, God knows what the batteries are like. And again, regulations on building things and all that sort of stuff. So there could be very good reasons for these tariffs and attempts to kind of keep them out of the marketplaces over here for now. But, you know, it's basically, there's a reason Tesla has not done well in the Asian market.

Right. Probably because we're, you know, this tariff is like, we're trying to repatriate the funds because all of these Chinese EVs were basically, probably our designs stolen, yes, from corporate espionage, and they're making the good stuff over there and trying to sell it back to us.

So that seems like it's more plausible than anything else. So we're seeing, we're basically seeing, they're selling the next-gen Teslas that Tesla hasn't been able to make yet because of the regulations here. So this is, NFTs are starting to really hit the news this week, which is very interesting.

Well, Trump released a new one, right? That was, yeah. So you've got to fleece these people a bit more because it doesn't look like you're going to win the election. Get some money now. See, I wasn't even going with him, but thanks for reminding me that he's back on the NFT trail. Great.

Another reason not to buy any. Jonathan Mann, who's a musician known for creating a new song daily since 2013, is actually suing the US Securities and Exchanges Commission over their approach to NFTs. So basically, the SEC has been going after NFT providers saying that they're unsecured or unregulated securities, mostly because of the stupid games that people were trying to make out of it.

You know, all of them. I was going to name a few, but let's just say all of them. Jonathan is very upset because his music keeps getting kind of looped into this as part of part of the problem. And he's saying, look, this is one of the ways that I can actually make money as an artist selling to fans that can give me money.

And taking that off the table for me sucks. Honestly, it just sucks because we're not trying to do anything out of bounds. We're not making any stupid, you know, cat things or shit like that. He's like, I'm selling you an NFT, a limited edition NFT of my song. We're not saying it's going to go up or down in value.

It's just a way for fans to own a piece of my music and do whatever. I'm like, okay, that's, that sounds fine to me. I see no problem with that. Me either. So, you know, he's, he's, he filed suit. So they've got 60 days to respond to the lawsuit and we'll see how that goes.

But the SEC is kind of busy right now because this morning I came across my newsfeed that, remember our favorite, our favorite place to buy NFTs, Brian? OpenSea. OpenSea, yes.

Yes, OpenSea is basically, they're going after, the SEC is going after OpenSea. They have issued a Wells notice to OpenSea and there's a lot going on over there right now. So this is, this is opening old wounds.

You know, I would be shocked to find out that OpenSea's business wasn't on the up and up. Well, it turns out. Hey, Mark, are you about to shock me, Jason? I wasn't about to shock you. I was just going to say it's, yeah, it, it comes down to everything we've always talked about, about NFTs, BitBros and the entire quote unquote industry behind it.

Yeah, they're just not very good people and they do really shady shit. So OpenSea CEO, Devin Finzer wrote in a post that the company was shocked the SS, shocked, shocked the SEC would make such a sweeping move against creators and artists, but they are ready to stand up to the fight.

So yeah, a Wells notice is typically one of the final steps before the SEC issues formal charges. So it lays out the framework and the regulatory arguments against them. Well, twist my britches, Jason. I do declare. I am surprised. Yeah, there's going to be more on this next episode, I'm sure, but this is just the first shot across the bow towards OpenSea.

So I don't know if Jonathan has really poor timing or really great timing. We're going to see how this kind of plays out. But NFTs are back, baby. Just not the way that most people want them to be, who still probably are hodling their NFTs. Hat tip to Vinny on this next one.

I just got a chuckle out of this. Google Ireland, yes, South Dublin County Council has denied Google Ireland planning permission for a new data center at Grange Castle Business Park, citing insufficient capacity in the electricity grid and a lack of on-site renewable energy.

So Brian, it turns out the United States isn't the only third world, first world country. So the proposed development, which would have been the third phase of Google's data center including a 72,000 square meter facility with eight data halls and was expected to create 800 construction jobs and 50 operational jobs.

72,000 square meters of data center. They're only going to have 50 people running it. Well, let me tell you a little something about Ireland and tech companies, Jason. The reason that tech companies like to go to Ireland is because of the advantageous tax advantages that one gets in Ireland, basically not paying very much tax at all.

However, as part of the requirement for that, you have to jump through many Irish hoops, some of which include a certain percentage of actual Irish employees and 50 probably being the absolute minimum required for Google to have this operational center and get their tax benefits.

All right. What was the... There was a tech company that was above the Guinness Brewery. I think it was Creative Labs. Oh, it might have been, yeah. For some reason. I haven't heard the name Creative Labs in years. Well, that's because back then we were, you know, we had a lot of rewritable CDs and they wrote some of the first CDR writing software, I believe, if memory serves.

Yeah. I think. Well, they also did some of the first sound bars and all... Or not sound bars, but sound cards and all that sort of stuff. That's it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Used to buy them all the time, put them in my PC. Yeah. Well, let me tell you something that Google might want to look into, although I'm not sure how much it's going to help in Ireland, which is perpetually rainy and cloudy.

But if you have sun, this would be a good thing. And mark my words, the next time I fly over into Los Angeles, coming back from Toronto, given the sheer number of actual self-storage places there are in Los Angeles and the, you know, ever-present sun, if I do not see gazillions, gazillions of solar panels winking off of every single public storage as I fly into Los Angeles, I'm going to be pissed.

So this is pretty cool. A company, Electric, or sorry, Electric, I guess, is the trade agency, is reporting that a solar energy company is renting 8.5 million square feet of roof space from the National Storage Affiliate Trust, conveniently called the NSA, buildings for its newest solar panel project.

So they own a whole bunch of storage facilities. And basically, this company is going, all right, we'll rent your roof space. We want to stick solar panels across all of them. This is across 42 states and Puerto Rico, and it's expected to produce at least 100 megawatts of solar capacity.

Pretty fucking great idea. I like this a lot. So they will not just generate power for the facilities themselves. The panels will also provide clean power to nearby businesses and homes at a discounted price. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned. Look, there's 450 self-storage places within a 12-square block radius of my home.

And the sun basically sits right atop Woodland Hills. Yes. And do you know what my, do you know what our electricity bill was last month? Our last electricity bill, Brian? Take a guess. It's got to be massive because you've got to have the AC on 24-7. Take a guess. 500 bucks.

$1,700. Jesus H. Christ. That's why I need Riverside to send me my fucking payout. You also need this, you need this company to put solar panels on the, on the storage place right next to your house so you can get it cheaper. That's why I'm saying, that's what I'm saying, Brian.

Come on, people. Let's get to it. Let's get moving on this. This is a no-brainer, people. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day.

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Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line.

When the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the meat pleaver colon BKFC 94 Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media candy. Brian, your talk about Ted Lasso in the last couple weeks has been, they've been listening. It's fortuitous. They've heard. They've heard the cry, Brian. Apparently, I got the soccer ball rolling. Yeah. Season four might be coming back.

Now, this is still a might because everybody's reporting Ted Lasso season four is happening. It's not happening yet. What they're doing is they're tapping all of the cast that, you know, still they still have some contracts with and some they don't. They're trying to put the pieces together to put season four together.

Surprisingly, though, Jason Sudeikis has not said anything yet. So and he's the linchpin, but he must have given some kind of nod because they wouldn't be doing this without it. But we are going to see if this comes to fruition. Unfortunately, Jamie will not be. Yes. Phil Dunster, who played Jamie Tartt, will not be able to come back.

He's already committed to other shows. But some cameos. He might do some cameos. I have mixed feelings about this, having just rewatched the entire three seasons of season three. Yeah, it was fine.

But there's no like season one and two. They caught some lightning in a bottle there. And I don't know about this. I can't possibly see it being as good. I just can't. This is one of those ones where I think I would if I were if I were them, if I were Brett or if I were Jason Sudeikis, I would I would take the wind, take the bow and walk away.

Well, what they're speculating is it's going to be more about the side characters and not so much about Ted. So, yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about that either. You know, that was part of the big problem was season three. There was that whole really was a whole arc that had nothing to do with the soccer team or Ted that just failed miserably.

And yeah, I don't know. No, yeah. I would rather they didn't do this personally. And it's kind of like it's kind of like saying, hey, would you like another another season of Game of Thrones? No, I wouldn't. No, no, no, no, I don't. Speaking of things that I'd rather people wouldn't do, the Gallagher brothers have finally gotten back together.

It is definitely not a maybe. Oasis are reuniting for a UK and Ireland tour that could be one of the most lucrative ever with tickets being hyped as the hottest of the decade. Yes, old people are getting their Taylor Swift. OK, I never liked Oasis. I'm not a big fan either.

It is my wife's favorite band. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going to be we're going to be spending so much fucking money. It's going to be sick. One question people are asking is why the most obvious motivation is money, which will be coming out of my pocket and into the Gallagher brothers.

They have had somewhat successful solo careers. I mean, they're just they can't do no wrong in England anyways. So, you know, whatever. But Birmingham City University estimate that the initial 14 dates announced could bring 400 million pounds in ticket sales and other add ons with Liam and Noel, both in line to net 50 million pounds each.

They monetize that nostalgia on the scale. He added, they'll probably make more money from these gigs than they did in the entire 90s. And I would like to remind everybody in the 1990s, we bought CDs for 1995. Yeah, no shit. And they made a lot of money. So I'm guessing they're not on Universal.

You can't get free tickets. They are not on Universal. Oh, yes, we have we we she has signed up for the ticket lottery. We are up at 3 a.m. on Friday evening when tickets go on. Oh, my God. You guys have to do it like the unwashed masses.

How sad. It's so demeaning. All that all that music industry juice. You got to get up like the rest of us. We have as much music industry experience as this podcast has tech experience in combined years and we're fucked.

Oh, we get nothing. Nothing. Well, people that do know how to call it quits, the Grand Tour has reached the end of the road. September 13th, we'll see the final episode of the Grand Tour. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

One last time. I will watch it just out of nostalgia. And for many fans, the time spent watching the trio goes back to the early 2000s. This is when we start to feel really old, Jason, when they formerly hosted Top Gear. Like the year 2000s still feels like five years ago to me, but okay.

Yeah, it does. It really does. So they've been hosting car shows together for a period spanning 22 years. The final episode of the Grand Tour starring the trio will be streamed on September 13th. It will be a one-off special and there is a teaser trailer out now. It doesn't look great, but whatever.

I'll watch the last one because I love Top Gear. Never really cared much. The first Grand Tours were okay-ish. I don't know. I tell you what, it peaked at the intro for the first Grand Tour. When they were in the desert and all the people and everything, a little tear fell up at your eye.

Like, they're back! And then they failed miserably. I think when they gave up on the show format and they did the first of the big specials, the first one or two of those were pretty good, but then it was diminishing returns. So, the same joke over and over again was the problem.

Yeah, it really is. So, I found that Clarkson's Farm was much more engaging than any of the stuff. I never got into the other two shows. Richard Hammond has The Great Escapist with him and Tony Bellici from Mythbusters. Yeah, the most unloved Mythbuster. And James May has Our Man in, a travel show, but James May by himself is very boring.

So, yeah. He really is that boring. It was, I watched like one episode of him in Japan and I was just like... You made Japan boring. How do you do that? How do you do that? I'm like, that's one country I always wanted to go to and now you've sullied the whole thing.

Oh, yeah. This will be interesting. This will be interesting. They worked together for 22 years. Brian, you and I have worked together for 11 and we have had nowhere near the success. I don't know what it is. We started with our Grand Tour phase. We're hoping to get to our Top Tour phase, Jason.

Oh, that's shit. Yeah. God damn it. We never had a Stig. We never had a Stig. We need a Stig. Isn't Bittner our Stig? Kind of, I guess. Where is he? He's not here today. I don't know. Damn it. Had tip to Barrett on this one because he was the first person to send this to me out of the several thousand that followed.

Martin Shkreli is back in the news and he must surrender his Wu-Tang Clan album copies. Yes. Former pharma exec and still one of the most loathsome humans to be shat into existence, Martin Shkreli, must surrender his copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin that he made when he wasn't supposed to illegally following a federal judge's injunction.

The NFT collective, hey, and more NFT news, Pleaser Dow, Pleaser Dow, great name, current owners of the album sued Shkreli, alleging he kept unauthorized copies and planned to release them, violating court orders. So, yes, he has been known to play little bits here and there on his Discord channel or his Twitch channel or whatever channel he's on this day.

So, he finally got busted. So, he's got until August 30th to declare he's handed over all copies and until September 30th to disclose any distribution details and profits. So, there you go. Let's see if he does it. He's such a twat.

I don't know if he will or not. He is. Just take a job with X and call it a day. Seriously. Seriously. All right. I've got an early morning on a plane edition of Media Candy for me flying back from Los Angeles to Toronto. I watched Wonka.

And? And it was surprisingly good. Oh, okay. It took me a long time to kind of get over Timothee Chalamet. I don't like the guy. Hashtag not my Paul Atreides. Hashtag not my Willy Wonka. But once I was able to kind of...

Meled into it. And I have to admit, he did a phenomenal job. He personified it. There were some definite like... Yeah. I actually teared up a couple points. It was good. Oh, my God. It was really good. Oh, my God. I liked it.

I did like it a lot. And I've got to say, Hugh Grant, as the grumpy Oompa Loompa, fucking chef's kiss. It was awesome. Okay. I might have to check it out. Yeah. It's worth the watch. It's surprising. I was surprised. I was legitimately surprised.

I went into it expecting to hate it. And I came out of it actually quite enjoying it. So. All right. Then I went back to the Apple TV plus Air Canada crossover event that's going on where they stream the first three episodes of all their shows that they've got going on because it was slim pickings.

I watched Palm Royale because it looked somewhat interesting. It's about Palm Beach High Society. It's got an amazing cast. Like, these women are all phenomenal. Not for me. Okay. Not for you. It seemed like a poor man's white lotus. Less interesting than that.

I mean, it's all... This is made for women, for sure. Oh, there you go. My wife might really enjoy this. I do not. But Allison Janney does... I mean, she's the star of this, for sure. She's the star of everything that she's in. Yeah. I was going to say, she just has to show up. She's fine. She shows up and she's amazing.

And she was amazing in this. But it's just not enough for me to watch any more of that. And then I watched Steve Martin, a documentary in two pieces. Now, this ends up being almost like four hours long. So, I watched a bit of it on the plane and I finished it at home. Steve Martin is a compelling, interesting, strange man.

And this documentary is well worth the watch. It's really interesting. He's just... He's a national treasure in his own weird-ass fucking way. Yeah. I really like Steve. His autobiography was awesome. I just still can't watch Only Murders in the Building.

But I like Steve. Yeah. Yeah. So, a great documentary. Well worth watching. Yep. We've got some Starfleet Academy news. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're in production. They had their first table read. And there is a picture over on X. So, there's a link to that in the show notes. Mm-hmm.

And they're saying it's... I mean, it looks pretty good. And here's the fun part. I didn't realize that Robert Picardo was back in the show. I must have missed the news or I forgot that we covered it. Right. But, you know, he was the doctor on Voyager. Yeah. I don't know how his...

You know, he was a hologram. I don't know. Hologram doctor. Teaching. Yeah. But he aged since then. So... Learned professor style. Yeah. I guess so. I guess they will age his avatar as well. Either way. Or maybe they'll play him as the actual person it was based on.

But no, they can't do that because the timeline wouldn't work. No. It would not. No. It would not work at all. So, and speaking of Robert Picardo, he just won the day because Elon Musk twatted out or shat it out or whatever you call it now. He said, let's make Starfleet Academy real. And Robert Picardo writes back, first step, support a leader that embodies Starfleet values like diversity, inclusion, and ethical behavior.

Mic drop. Boom. Bazing. Bazinga, as it were. Yes. That was very good. Yeah. So, unfortunately, to find this, I went back to go get my own screenshot up to make sure it was real because somebody sent a screenshot. And I'm like, okay, is that real? I had to go through some of Elon Musk's tweets and I read them, but I didn't read the tweet so much as I read the actual replies from the people who follow him.

Now, Brian, I do believe that Elon has been indoctrinated and radicalized by his own platform. Oh, of course. Because the shit that these people are fucking saying to him, if that's your world, if that's what you're seeing on a day-to-day basis and just that, you think that you are the king of the world.

Yes. It is insane. Yes. People are nuts. Have you read any of these? It's one of the reasons I don't do X anymore. It is just a fucking shitstorm of Elon sucking. But I had no idea it was that bad. Oh, it's horrible. Oh, my God.

Yeah. No wonder he's insane. There's literally no wonder that he's insane now. Well, this is why he bought it. This is the only reason. It's a pure ego stroke. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, moving on. Yeah. Moving on. This is good news. By the time you hear this, Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power, one of the most confusing titles known to man, will have returned to Amazon.

It returns Thursday, August 29th. And there is a link in the show notes to a Gizmodo recap, everything to remember before Rings of Power returns. I enjoyed the first season. I highly recommend reading this because I forgot absolutely everything that happened. Okay.

I was waiting for this season to come out before I watched season one because I got like two episodes into season one. Yeah. And then I was just like, eh. Because, you know, everybody did say it was kind of slow. So. It was, but, you know, it looks beautiful and, you know, it's.

Yeah. I liked it. Okay. I heard this season's kind of slow too, though. So that's not, that doesn't bode well. You know, it looks beautiful. I do. I do watch TV right before I go to bed. So maybe it will be, maybe it'll help put me to sleep. There you go. All right.

I saw a trailer this week for Superman, the Christopher Reeve story. Now, if you want a good cry in the middle of the day, just watch this trailer. I still think it's too soon. I know. I know. It feels like yesterday. Yeah. I don't know if anyone later than Gen X.

Gen X is going to be affected as much as, you know, we would. No, probably not. But yeah. Yeah. Because you didn't know him. He wasn't your Superman. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, it was. It was a rough watch. Yeah. It was really rough. I had to turn it off like a like before the end because I'm going to watch it when it comes out.

But right now it's only in theaters on September 21st and September 25th. But we'll definitely watch this when it comes out. And oh, my God, will I buy a lot of tissues before I start? Yeah, I'll watch this when it comes out on streaming as well. Hashtag always my Superman. Hashtag Henry Cavill was pretty good, too.

Yeah. You're decent. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Now, here's just a little bit more fun old news. Gary Newman is actually 13 days older than Gary Oldman. That meme has been bouncing around forever. And every time I see it, every time I see it, it makes me laugh. Yeah.

I've never seen it before. So I actually I did that. I did the fact checking to make sure it's like, yep, it really is. Two of my favorite people. Cups and doodads. Oh, for fuck's sake, Brian. I think you and I were in a rush to get this one in the notes.

You fucking beat me. Yeah, I know. As soon as it popped up on my feeder, I'm like, gotcha. Slammed it in here. Plaud. There's a company called Plaud to start with. P-L-A-U-D. They're introducing a new AI-powered note pin.

Yes. Another thing that you stick on your lapel that records everything. The company's CEO, Nathan Su, envisions using the gathered data from the pin to create digital twins of users in the future, capturing personality and preferences over time. Okay, yeah.

It's another fucking pin. Yeah. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah. Good luck. This one will cost you $169 and it records up to 300 minutes of audio per month. To record more than that, you can pay a $79 annual fee for the pro plan that gets you 1,200 minutes per month and additional features like labels that identify different speakers in a transcription.

Critics argue that AI systems like this may not yet match the accuracy and effectiveness of existing tools or that it's another fucking dumbass idea. Yeah, you know you're in trouble when every single review of your new product basically says, but you can already do this with things you already have in your pocket.

Yeah, which I would like to point out here. On my watch, I have an app called Just Press Record. It costs $4.99 and works extraordinarily well even from the watch to record a conversation with anybody that is in the room. The microphones on the Apple Watch are really good.

So you take Just Press Record and it will do a transcription in the app for you. This costs $4.99 and there's no time limit on how much you can do. And there you go. And if you don't like the transcriptions on it, go get a free copy of Mac Whisper, if you have a Mac, and you can run it through any of the large language model transcription services, or not services, but transcriptions, and get a much better one for free.

So there. Yeah. There you have it. So yeah, just get those if you want something that honestly doesn't make you look like a twat because you've already got an Apple Watch. So, you know, everybody's got those. You can blend into the crowd. And Just Press Record just works and there's no big bright light saying it's working.

So it just sits in the background. If you want a spy tool, just make sure that you know your local laws because recording people without their knowledge in some states, like California, is a felony. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Make sure your state is a one-party state.

In two-party states, you can get in trouble. Does it – is it consent if you look at it and you can see it and you know it? No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. Same thing with the Google glasses. That was part of the problem. I think that might be because there was a red light on the glasses.

I don't know. I'm not sure. But you were just a twat if you wore Google glasses. Nobody would talk to you anyways. Yeah. We didn't get to that part. We didn't get to the litigation phase of that. The public humiliation did its job. All right. AI corner. AI corner for this week, Brian.

We've got an article from Stephen Wolfram called What's Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models by Stephen Wolfram. Now, this article discusses the inner workings of machine learning by examining simple models to better understand how neural networks function.

This is a very long article. It takes you about a half an hour to read it. You're telling me Stephen Wolfram wrote a long article, Jason? Yeah. Seriously. Might as well be Neil Stevenson. Oh, my God. Yeah, it is – if you want to feel dumb, if you want to feel dumb, then check this article out.

It is fascinating from what I could understand. Right. I tried to understand it. I felt like I was smarter when I was done. I couldn't tell you anything that I learned from it. But, you know, I felt superior. Okay. Because I read a Stephen Wolfram article. If you're feeling masochistic, you can read What is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work?

A follow-on article, which will take you around 75 minutes to read. But, yeah, if you really want to kind of try and understand how these things work, what you do learn from these is that it doesn't work the way you think it works and it is not actually intelligent in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah, which is – I took a course to try to figure all that out and that's kind of what I came away with as well. Yeah, yeah. And there's a bunch of articles going around this week too that kind of – it seems to be like a tipping point where people are finally coming out and saying in the media that, yeah, these things aren't really good.

They aren't really that smart. Yeah. It is what it is. Now, Andy Jassy – I love this. One of the most tedious but critical tasks for software development teams is updating foundational software. It's not new feature work and it doesn't feel like you're moving the experience forward.

As a result, this work is either dreaded or put off for more exciting work or both. Amazon Q, our Gen AI assistant for software development, is trying to bring some light to this heaviness. We have a new code transformation capability and here's what we found when we integrated it into our internal systems and applied it to our needed Java upgrades.

Here's what he says. The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from what's typically 50 developer days to just a few hours. Okay. Now, remember that. We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer years of work.

Yes, that number is crazy but really says. In under six months, we've been able to upgrade more than 50% of our production Java systems to modernized Java versions at a fraction of the usual time and effort. And our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes.

The benefits go beyond how much effort we've saved developers. The upgrades have enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs, providing an estimated $260 million in annualized efficiency gains. Okay. So, he's saying that they have a new tool that will upgrade old shit.

Yes. Okay. And he says, this is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q. It's been a game changer for us and not only do our Amazon teams plan to use this transformation capability but more. But our Q team plans to add more transformations for developers to leverage.

Okay. Great. Now, the next article I have is, do users write more insecure code with AI assistance? The answer is, absolutely. So, coming on the heels of this, we have Andy Jassy saying that Amazon Q, their tool writes more secure code and saves you a bunch of time.

And Stanford University, where I'm guessing most of the engineers that work on Amazon Q came out of, says that, overall, we find that having access to the AI assistant often results in more security vulnerabilities across multiple questions.

The AI assistant often does not use safe libraries, uses libraries properly, understand the edge cases of interacting with external entities such as a file system or a database, and here's importantly, it does not correctly sanitize user input, which is the cornerstone of any web-facing application, is sanitizing user input.

Very important. Very important. Very, very important. So, we have Andy, you go rah, rah, rah. We're doing really good here. And we have Stanford saying, hold it up there, real there, cowboy.

So, I'm sure that a lot of these things are pretty easy to, you know, to have a transformation from an old version to a new version because it's just, a lot of times it's just, you know, switching functions and parameters and things like that and just, you know, keeping track of what's doing what.

So, I can see how that can be a boon in some places, but you still have to go through every single line of code to make sure the damn thing still works. You know, is it writing its own unit tests and running those unit tests? Possibly. I don't know. I haven't checked out Amazon Q. I don't plan on checking out Amazon Q because I don't like Java.

Never like Java. Did you ever write Java? It sucks. Hell no. It's horrible. It's a terrible language. Terrible. Terrible. It's a terrible language. Now, another report from the University of Pennsylvania reveals that most AI text detectors aren't as reliable as advertised.

No shit, Sherlock. Yes, we've talked about this. This is part of the problems with copywriting systems and all of that. You can jig the system. Yeah, yeah. A couple of quick find and replaces and you're off to the races. Researchers found that simple tricks like inserting unusual symbols can fool these systems.

Some detectors excel in specific content types such as student essays but struggle with others like news articles. Of course, AI detectors can even mistakenly identify human written text as AI generated. Of course it can because it's trained on human written text. So they're trying to come up with new benchmarks for it but all in all, yeah, no.

And another thing in the news this week is model collapse. We've talked about it. There are a couple different names for it. One is model autophagy disorder. Which is a mouthful and obviously written by somebody who's never had any marketing experience. Now, this other researcher, Jathan Sadowski, he dubbed the phenomenon, which is better, Hasberg AI, a reference to the Europe's famously inbred royal family.

There you go. That guy's got class. There you go. I like that guy. I love that. Yeah. Yep. So there's a bunch of articles we linked in the show notes that talk about basically model collapse and how it is coming faster than we thought. That is the long and the short of it is.

We knew it was going to be here because these things use the web to train themselves. But people have embraced AI technology so quickly that they're just pushing this shit out hand over fist and it is pissing in the well. And now it's just, you know, there's going to be problems.

We've got an AI centipede. Mm-hmm. Yes, we do. Now, I have two final articles that you're going to have to go click on to check out because they're both visual. But this is what AI, as far as I can tell, is good for. The first one is Marty McFly goes back to the time of Jesus to warn him of what's about to happen to him.

Great Scott. You have to watch the whole thread because it is fucking hilarious. Seriously, just go check it out. It's a Reddit thread and it is beautiful. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. And the second is what could be – hat tipped to Fogarty on that one.

He sent that over to me. And the next one, hat tipped Marc Andre. He was the first out of millions to send this one over. What could be better? Muppets, Mad Max, and AI. This is a short Furiosa-inspired Muppets AI movie that is disconcerting and reminds me to never take acid again.

Yes, I agree. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Gilbert. Welcome back, Gilbert. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie and Simon. And over at the tip jar, we've got Adam. So it's a light week.

So just a quick reminder, over at Patreon, if you sign up for just $3 a month, you can give us more if you want. But minimum $3 a month. You can get every episode of the show a little bit early. Since we're recording at 6.30 in the morning, the day before we usually do it, it's probably really early this time. And ad-free and in high res.

There you go. Woo-hoo. Yep. And no reviews this week, Brian. We haven't had a review in a while. That's a bit of it. Yeah. Got some spam. Some spam came through in our reviews. Yeah. Some ad for something or other. Differential transmission spam or something like that.

Jim wrote in, though, fellow grumpy old geek here, IT since 88, just had to share that at least some of the public school cybersecurity education is working. I was listening to your show in the car the other day with my 13-year-old son in the front seat. He saw your cover art on the podcast player, pointed at it, and said, that's not secure.

I said, what? He said, HTTP. They should be using HTTPS. Ah, grump on. So he's referring to the fact that for some reason last week, our podcast host did not pick up the show art that I so lovingly uploaded.

I went back and fixed it. But originally, when the show went out, it got the stock Grumpy Old Geeks show art, which actually has our URL at the bottom. And in the old days, when I made that, like seven or eight years ago, it was before HTTPS everywhere, I used HTTP colon slash slash GOG.show.

Yes, it used to not matter if you weren't taking money. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll get on that. Thanks for the heads up. Yeah, we'll fix that old show artwork from seven years ago any day now. Yeah, I'm going to get right on it. And this final one that I just love this, NSA releases copies of internal lecture delivered by computing giant, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.

It's like a two hour or hour and a half speech that she did in 1982 called Captain Grace Hopper, back when she was a captain, Grace Hopper on future possibilities, data, hardware, software, and people. It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool.

She was one of the early developers of COBOL and one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer. She's very smart and very cool. Yep. So go check that out. One of the legends in computing. And just a quick reminder, go to SoberOutfitters.com if you have anybody in recovery or if you're in recovery and go buy a shirt, please, or five.

I need it because Riverside isn't paying out and you heard about my electric bill. God damn it. Go buy something. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmester. Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at GOG.show slash 663.

Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate. Every bit helps. Spread the grumpiness. There's a share button in every podcast player out there, including Overcast. I checked. Use it to share the show with friends, foes, and everyone in between and we'll be forever grateful.

Head over to GOG.show to find the link to our Discord channel and chat with us and other show fans. If you've got something to say, send your feedback, comments, or awesome links to HTTPS slash colon. Wait. I can't even do a URL anymore. Jesus. It's been a long time.

GOG.show slash contact. Show us some love. Leave it for you at GOG.show slash review. A five-star rating might just get your review right on the air. Stay grumpy and pedantic about URLs. Saturday, September 26th.

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