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Joined tonight by Kyle.
Yes, hello.
Hi.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Hello.
Good evening.
It's a steamy evening in New York City.
It's raining in some places.
So, be prepared for all kinds of mayhem that might leak out onto the air.
We have some interesting developments that have happened in the last week.
Kind of a funny development, I guess.
Let's get this out of the way right away.
Eric Schmidt, the ex-Google CEO, failed to read the room on AI and got booed into oblivion.
That's according to Gizmodo.
I think they really capture it better than anyone else could.
So, I'm going to read the opening paragraph.
In fairness, the speaker, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was at least trying to thread the needle, vaguely empathizing with students.
He said, there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.
That's a little too much exposition there for the crowd, I guess.
But as in the case of real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, whose pro-AI speech one week ago triggered an almost identical reaction, it's easy to see how Schmidt's words could be perceived as arrogant to a crowd that had heard the AI inevitability message before a million times.
He can be heard telling the crowd of young people that they will help shape artificial intelligence, and that if you don't care about science, that's okay, because AI is going to touch everything else as well.
Yeah, probably not the best way to phrase it, but let's have a listen to what that sounded like.
It was the architects of artificial intelligence.
Interesting.
The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.
We do not know.
We do not know.
The precise contours of what this...
If you'd let me make this point, please.
Yeah.
When you get to the stage where you have to ask the audience to let you speak, yeah, I think you've lost at that point.
I don't know, guys, can you read that room?
Or actually, it was outside, but what do you think of that particular graduation presentation?
It wouldn't be as funny if it hadn't happened like four or five times in the last week, including another one today.
Oh, wow.
I missed that one.
Scott Borchetta, who is the CEO of Big Machine Records, got booed off the stage at Middle Tennessee State University on May 10th.
No one is reading any room, and the kids who are graduating college now, correct me if I'm wrong, were born in the financial crisis of 2008, graduated high school in the pandemic.
Now they're graduating college and are convinced there are no jobs anywhere because AI, AI, AI.
I would boo, too.
And while it's raining all this crap on them, the people up there telling them how great everything's going to be are the zillionaires who are standing to make the most money from the AI hype bubble.
Yeah, you know, maybe Eric Schmidt wasn't the best choice to give that particular talk to that particular crowd.
Yeah, they've been through a lot, and it doesn't look much better in the future, especially with all these developments.
All you have to do, you know, in a room like that is just say AI, the booze will begin.
So, with that knowledge, see if you can do better and win the crowd over to at least see what you're trying to put forth.
But it's a tough sell.
It is really a tough sell because there are so many tech bros out there that just simply do not hear what the people are saying.
Alex, it looks like you have something.
Go ahead.
Oh, and then Rob.
Yeah, I mean, it really is tone deaf in so many ways, right?
I mean, he's trying to empathize with the students, right?
And you have these tens of thousands of students, perhaps, to whom he's speaking over there.
And he's trying to say to them, well, hey, look, I feel your pain here.
But he's a tech billionaire, and he's talking to a whole bunch of unemployed students here
and basically telling them to grab some kind of seat on this AI rocket ship
and that their jobs are going to be obsolete.
But, hey, maybe they can help choose which jobs get made obsolete first.
Doesn't that sound like fun?
I mean, it's just kind of unbelievable.
I wouldn't be surprised if he fudged this because he used AI to generate the actual commencement speech itself.
You think he used AI to make that?
Come on, you can't blame AI for this.
This is human-generated.
No, this is human-generated.
I don't know.
I don't know about that.
I think it's very easy to use AI.
Not to be an AI proponent, but I think AI would have caught this.
But, see, I don't think so.
I don't think so at all.
I think it can generate a wonderful commencement speech if you ask it to do it.
But the thing that it doesn't have that it will never be able to replace is human judgment and reading the room like that.
That's why I think this is possibly an AI gaffe itself.
This may be a meta-AI gaffe.
How thick would you have to be to be a said billionaire and know as much as you do about AI to use AI to write a speech that, you know, the things you just said.
He would know as well that AI can't read a room and, you know, it's going to basically be kind of clueless on certain things.
I don't know.
Do you really think he would do that?
I think he's smart.
I do think, well, he's certainly smart.
But, look, one thing that happens to billionaires is they get used to people doing their jobs for them.
Now, you don't have to do everything yourself when you're a billionaire.
You don't have to move your own boxes, write your own speeches, respond to your own emails, et cetera.
I could very much see that he might have used AI to generate this particular type of script.
And there's a way to check.
I mean, there are lots of originality checkers out there for AI.
Yeah, you know who runs those originality checkers?
AI.
AI runs them.
Yeah, I know.
In fact, I was playing with one the other day and I, you know, I put a couple of paragraphs in one.
100% AI.
The other one, 0% AI.
What am I supposed to do now?
Who do I believe?
Which AI do I have more faith in?
You know, it all depends on how you program them and some things will be caught, some things won't be caught.
I know.
And, look, as a professor, you know, who has students handing in written materials all the time, I use some of these checkers and they're woefully inconsistent.
They very much are.
I don't think they can be trusted because they're also trying to sell you something as well.
Alex, it's not enough that you're a lawyer and now you're a professor as well.
You just make us all feel so small.
Well, you know, somebody's got to do the real work around here.
All right, Rob, I believe you're up next for the human perspective here.
Well, as Alex was saying about how insulated someone like Eric Schmidt is, not only do they, you know, have everyone around, you know, they're used to everyone around them doing the hard work, but they're also used to everyone around them telling them how brilliant they are.
You know, you get to that point and everyone around you is trying to butter you up, trying to ingratiate themselves to you.
No one is going to tell you, hey, you're being an idiot right now.
And so that results in going out and making a speech like this with such a failure to read the room.
Young people today have been living in the age of the ill effects of AI for, you know, these kids were dealing with that for their years in college.
I saw a post go by yesterday where which mentioned that that's AI is now slang among lots of younger kids in, you know, in context of calling something out, calling out the bull crap, like saying something is completely not true.
Just saying that's AI.
So this is where it is in the cultural discussion.
So that replaces that's dead, I guess.
And that replaced that's mid.
OK, you know, I just have to keep making notes.
But OK, can we think of a single billionaire that would take somebody going up to him and saying, hey, you're being an idiot right now.
That would take that.
Well, I was single.
Can you do that?
Can you even reach him?
We'll call him right now and say you're being an idiot, except he really should say something first.
Look, I recognize it's a little bit of hometown pride, but yeah, like you see Warren Buffett around town.
Warren Buffett, by all accounts, is more or less as regular dude you can be in that situation.
But that is a billionaire.
I think you could say that, too.
Other than that, no.
I also don't think Warren Buffett is on the AI train in the same way.
You know, what's interesting about this story that I'm perusing right now on Gizmodo, it doesn't mention what campus Eric Schmidt was talking to.
Do you guys know this?
It doesn't say it anywhere in the story.
Arizona, University of Arizona.
Was it Arizona State University or?
University of Arizona.
OK, I can't tell them.
One is one is a digital college, right?
One that isn't real.
No, that's you're thinking of the University of Phoenix, which is in Arizona.
Phoenix is in Arizona.
So, yeah.
So there's University of Arizona.
There's Arizona State University.
And then there's the University of Phoenix, which is a private, for-profit, completely unrelated entity.
And not real in the physical sense.
No.
And I wonder if you...
I mean, the reason they're not real is because they spend so much money on ad buys.
All right.
But is the Phoenix even supposed to be in Arizona?
Or is it the rising Phoenix, you know, of mythology?
I would assume it's the rising Phoenix of mythology.
I didn't know that.
I thought it was part of Phoenix, the city.
Boy, Phoenix must be upset.
I would be if there was a fake university using my name.
Anyway.
The University of Arizona is in Tucson.
OK.
Well, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Also, sorry.
The University of Phoenix is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
OK, there.
So I wasn't too wrong.
100 plus online programs.
Uh-huh.
And a great football team.
All right.
Moving on.
We talked a lot last week about Canvas and the hack from hell and the payout.
And what was that noise?
Sorry.
It's thunder and lightning here.
OK.
No, we're getting thunder and lightning here as well.
So I'm sure we'll hear that in about 30 seconds.
Um, so last week we talked about how, um, a ransom was paid, uh, to, um, the, um, quote
unquote hackers who, uh, were behind the Canvas hack.
And basically, uh, for the payout, they, they proved that they deleted the data.
And I don't know how you do that exactly, how you prove that you didn't copy it someplace
else.
A Hong Kong's privacy watchdog has warned against paying ransoms to hackers after education
management platform Canvas was targeted in a global cyber attack.
Uh, in fact, we're seeing a lot of stories like this where, um, uh, security experts are
saying, boy, that was a, that was a really bad idea.
Uh, privacy commissioner Ada Chung said, if it's the case that a ransom was paid, that
is a practice that we would condemn, uh, in structure, the developer of Canvas said
it had reached an agreement with hacker group Shiny Hunters.
Uh, you know, I really wish we'd stop calling them hacker groups.
This is not hacking.
This is, it's kidnapping of data, I guess, if, if you can call that a crime, which I think
you can, uh, it's, um, you know, extortion.
Um, and there might be some hacking involved in, in, in compromising the data.
Great.
But, uh, what they do after that is certainly not part of the hacker values.
Um, the group demanded that Instructure pay a ransom or it would publicly leak the information.
And, and somehow everyone can agree not to disclose the amount of the ransom.
I'm not sure who gets pissed off if someone does, uh, will they release, they can't release.
They said they deleted the data.
So, so why doesn't Instructure just tell everybody how much they, they had to pay?
And, um, why won't Shiny Hunters tell people what they got for their cleverness?
Uh, anyway, um, this, uh, this case involves, uh, hacking, which is illegal, said Chung.
Resources should not be given to the hackers, but should instead be invested in cybersecurity.
Well, I agree with the statement.
If you take away the word hackers and replace it with criminals, um, yes, resources should not
be given to them.
Uh, she added that paying the ransom could not guarantee the data would not be leaked
and that the hackers might have other plans.
It could even signal to other hackers, you are willing to pay the ransom.
So we will come after you, which carries significant risks.
You know, none of this seems like something they wouldn't have known.
The people at infrastructure, uh, would not have known.
Um, and I'm probably saying that word wrong because it's not a real word was in structure
in, we had, see, we got our thunder.
I told you that would happen.
Um, yeah, in structure.
So, you know, they, they can't be that clueless to not know that this is encouraging other
groups, other people to do exactly the same thing.
Any thoughts?
Yeah.
Well, to go to the original question that you asked Emmanuel, which is about the, how
do you prove that some third party deleted the data?
Well, I've worked on a number of ransomware incidents over the last several years, and
this comes up all the time.
And it's, it's kind of funny how, how threat actor groups, criminal enterprise groups, not
hacker groups here, we're not talking about hackers here.
We're talking about people who might use hacker techniques to do something that is very
obviously criminal.
It's, it's extortion and there's several levels of extortion that go on in these ransomware
events.
But what they do is they send you essentially a text file and the text file is, has a tree
in it of the directory structure of the data that they had stolen, the data that they had exfiltrated.
And it essentially, it's supposed to indicate that they executed this command and generated
this tree that shows the delete, deletion of the recursive directories, the directories
and the subdirectories of everything that they stole.
But you have no idea whether or not that that's actually real.
I mean, you could just generate a text file of the recursive directory structure and, and
then say, hey, I deleted this data.
But if they did that, and they didn't delete the data, and they, and it somehow surfaced
somewhere later on the internet, like, let's say, maybe someplace like distributed denial
of secrets or something like that.
Well, then their reputation would be destroyed because that, that would discourage any other
victim.
They're kidnappers.
They're, they're holding things for ransom.
What kind of reputation are they trying to protect?
They, they live and die by their reputation.
And, and honestly, it, it's what, it's really what matters here.
If that data surfaces anywhere, then no other victim that they have in the future is ever
going to pay the ransom because you can't trust that the data has been deleted.
But don't, don't the, the, the people on the other side of this, I guess the victims,
although I think they're kind of thick because they, they left things out to be easily
accessed, don't they realize by helping the, the image, you know, the reputation of these
people that they're ensuring there will be more such attacks in the future?
Aren't they complicit in that?
Well, and, and that's what about, that, that's really, you know, what paying the ransom is
all about too.
And the, and the arguments for many years now have been, look, you're, you're just supporting
this type of criminal enterprise infrastructure by paying this ransom.
And, and, and, and there has been a lot of discussion about whether to make paying ransomware extortion demands actually illegal.
And a lot of insurance companies will only cover up to a certain amount of the ransomware demand that's paid.
And they want you to, they actively want people to not pay these types of things as well.
So I can understand though, from the perspective of the victim, if you're the CISO of a victim
company or the CEO, and you have to make a call and you are operationally crippled at that
particular moment, you know, you, you can't just sit around in, in your boardroom eating
stinky cheese and drinking wine and hoping for the best here.
Now you have to make sure that the company gets back to work.
And in most instances, companies are going to elect to pay the ransom rather than try
to recover by themselves.
I mean, look what happened with, I think it was the city of Atlanta a couple of years ago
where they decided to be tough and not pay the ransom.
And, uh, and it really kind of bit them in the butt there because they were crippled for,
for such a long period of time.
Yeah.
But you know what they, when they did put things back together, they knew that the data was,
was, uh, it had integrity because you're getting the data back from the people who held it for
ransom and you don't know what they did to the data.
There could be all kinds of malware in there or the data itself could just be, uh, altered
in little tiny ways that you might not notice right away, but a few years down the road,
all of a sudden things don't make sense anymore.
So, um, you know, anytime that you completely lose access to your data and your backup system
are a bunch of, uh, of, uh, people holding it for ransom, that's not a good backup system.
You have to have your own backup system.
If you don't have that, you got to start over.
All right.
You know, trusting these people is not the way to do it.
It's stupid.
Maybe we should start thinking about these types of, um, ransomware events differently.
Maybe we shouldn't call them, you know, hacks or ransomware events.
We'll just think of them as, you know, unscheduled backups to the cloud.
Right.
Well, yeah, you could do that, I suppose.
But you know, how about this?
Since, since insurance companies are involved in this now, why don't we just have, if, you
know, if somebody does this, there's a, there's a, um, a flat rate that they get, uh, for,
for doing it in the first place.
We make it something that's positive.
So, okay.
You, you figured out how to, how to hack canvas and, and take over all this academic material.
Um, that's a hundred thousand dollars.
There you go.
Give it back.
And if you don't do that, then, uh, you know, you're, you are a bona fide criminal, but you
know, the advantage is that you're considered somebody performing a service because you're
showing a problem.
I mean, yeah, I know this is done.
This is what a lot of people actually have, have livelihoods doing.
But if we formalize it just a little bit more, maybe it won't be so out of control like it
is right now.
Because really, uh, I, I've never seen anything so badly managed from, from start to, well,
the finish is nowhere near.
It's still going on.
Rob, you had something.
Go ahead.
Yeah, this is, uh, I mean, I'm fascinated by the idea of just, uh, you know, shaking hands
with the organized criminals and trusting them to no longer have your data.
Because as we've established, as we know, there is no way to prove you've deleted your
only copy of something.
Um, I, I do wonder, you know, even if you go through the motions and they say, okay, you know,
we've got, we've got rid of your data, what stops some other person from saying, okay,
I'm not, uh, you know, the, the shiny, happy people.
I'm, I'm this other hacker group and I have your data.
Now you've got to pay me using the same, you know, payload of data.
This is, uh, it's, it reminds me of nothing so much as there, there is a fantasy author.
There was a fantasy author named Terry Pratchett and his, uh, novel series took place in this
fictional city, um, where the government had solved the problem of a petty crime by bringing
it above board.
There is a thieves guild and like you get mugged on the street, but the mugger will give you
a receipt for your stuff.
And then later, if someone else tries to mug you, you go, oh no, I've already had my mugging.
You show the receipt.
Everything's cool.
You're not going to get mugged anymore.
Um, it's, it's, uh, it's a great fantasy comedy series.
Uh, disc world fans know what I'm talking about, but, uh, you know, this, I, I am so fascinated
by yes, organized criminals.
I'm just going to take you at your word and here's a big pile of monies and everything's cool.
Now, I mean, you know, if you look at back into history, we do tend to trust kidnappers
that they're going to, you know, bring back the person they took if you give them a lot
of money, but I wouldn't say that they're, you know, upstanding, uh, members of the community
concerned about their reputation.
But in that case, you are getting the person back.
If you get the person back and they're not dead, you know, you, you count that as a win
and you know that, uh, you know, they don't still have a copy of that person that they're
going to use to extort someone else or extort you again later.
That you know of, yes.
Alex, did you have something else before we move on?
Yeah.
I just think we have to be careful too, about victimizing the victim here again, because
these companies are, are in a really such a tough spot when a ransomware event happens.
I mean, and it, and it is very much like a mugging, I think to Rob's point.
Um, and I, I think it's a great analogy though, but you can't blame these companies for poning
up the ransom any more than you can blame somebody who has held it knife.
I can blame them for that.
I can blame them for having lousy security.
I can blame them for their whole damn structure in the first place where they, they basically
convince all these institutions that their services are needed so that they're all victimized
when their lousy security comes to the forefront.
So yeah, I can blame them.
This, this is something they set up and we should have no sympathy for them and we should
do everything we can to prevent them from falling into this again with their lousy practices.
But we're, we're operating here under the assumption that any one individual company
is wholly in charge of all of the data of their entire IT estate.
And that's just not the reality of the world anymore.
There are so many external contingencies, so many third parties that can be popped that
can then lead them to some kind of, of way of getting a foothold within another organization.
And then therefore another way to exfiltrate or steal data and then, uh, engage in some
kind of encryption event that would initiate a ransomware incident.
And where are the backups?
I mean, come on, how do they not keep backups?
How do they not have access to backups?
I dealt with the ransomware incident just a couple of years ago and there are, and, and
hot live backups, you know, are, are ways that you can mitigate the risk of a ransomware
incident.
And this, this was a company in, in the UK, it was, um, it was a, it was a company on which
a good amount of the public relied for critical things like money.
I can't talk about who it was because thankfully this was all kept out of the, uh, the papers.
But, um, if this company could not recover its data, a lot of people were going to be affected
very negatively and families might not have been able to put food on the table.
And so they had to make a decision about, all right, do we pay this ransom or not?
But first and foremost, they had a hot backup system that was, that was live.
And, and so the, the CTO said, well, I think we can get out of this pretty easily because
we do have a hot backup.
In fact, I've never heard the phrase hot backup this many times.
And when you say it's live, what exactly does that mean?
I mean, it's, it's, the, the data is, is copied over, not in real time, but it's, you know,
like every hour or something like that.
Is it accessible to the same people who compromise the system itself?
Because if it is, it's stored by in a third party system.
Um, I can't remember the name of, I think rubric is one of these companies that does this
type of like, uh, you know, live hot backup type of thing that, that a lot of, that a
lot of people will still use that now hot back yet again.
Okay.
Good.
Yeah.
I can, I can keep saying this.
It's like Trump saying we're the hottest country on earth now or something.
Well, it does feel like it because my air conditioner is off for the sake of our listeners
here.
The, uh, so what, what was my point here?
Oh yes.
So the point was that everything, this company did everything right.
However, they had recently moved to a new data center.
And when they moved over to the new data center, one of the people that worked in the ID department
was responsible for making sure that the backup system was operating effectively and did not
tell the CTO that it was failing for the last month because the, they couldn't figure out
that there was a port that was closed that was preventing the data from going over to
the rubric system.
So they thought they had the system.
They did everything right, but it completely failed.
And then they found themselves in a situation where they had to make a decision about paying
the ransom.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
So how long did they know about this problem?
It was about a month.
About a month.
Okay.
So why not go back, go back to the annual backup that you kept a year before that?
Yeah.
You lose a year's worth of data, but you don't lose everything.
What would have been useless though, because of the nature of the company.
Yeah.
It would not have worked, but, but think about this.
It's not, it's not just one level of extortion that you're facing from these threat actors,
from these criminals anymore, not having access to your data.
Well, they know that people have these, and I'll say it again, these hot backups for systems
like rubric or whatever, right?
So, so they have another level of extortion and they say, look, sure, you may be able
to get your data back and you may become operational, but we still got your data and we're going
to release it to the public.
All your emails, all your documents, financial plans, trade secrets, et cetera, that we've
been able to exfiltrate.
We'll release them to the public if you don't pay.
And if companies say, well, uh, screw you, we don't care.
Um, I don't know everything.
We're, we're an open book.
Uh, go ahead and release it.
Then there's another third level of extortion, which I find really fascinating that these
threat actors will use.
And they say, well, fine, we'll report you to the government.
We'll report you to a data protection authority.
We'll report you to the SEC, to the securities and exchange.
That's my absolute favorite, just for the chutzpah of it.
I just love that they were reporting them to the government after breaking in and stealing
the data.
That's great.
Absolutely.
And, and they know that the maximum amount of pain they can inflict on this company involves
bureaucrats from the government and hounding them about their inadequate cybersecurity practices.
So, I mean, you have to hand it to them.
They've really innovated in the space.
It's not just about data anymore.
Okay.
Well, you know, um, it's, it's, it's tough.
It's, uh, it's a challenge.
There's no question about that.
Um, and there, there are no easy solutions, but there are many practices that, uh, people,
companies can engage in to at least keep their data from completely vanishing.
Uh, and, uh, what a, what a nightmare this is, but, uh, continuing, uh, we have a related
story, uh, concerning, uh, and this is something I believe, Gila, you found, uh, something called,
uh, Frankensteinian AI courses, uh, that, um, um, canvas was, uh, basically encouraging.
Uh, in fact, if we, Arizona State University, again, wow, they're part of this story as well.
Every academic story has to do with ASU.
Uh, well, they soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, anyone for $5 a month
to create an apparently unlimited number of customized learning modules using artificial
intelligence.
Boy, there's so much wrong in that one sentence.
Uh, the, um, the AI chat bot, uh, which is called Atom, A-T-O-M, uh, uses online instructional
materials from ASU professors to create a course that's tailored to the goals, interest, and skill
level of the user.
After asking a handful of questions and, um, processing for about five minutes, Adam debuts
a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes, and videos, videos from a half dozen
experts at ASU.
Uh, several professors whose content, uh, content, uh, Adam pulls from were surprised to learn
that their materials, including video lectures, slide decks, and online assignments were being
perused, clipped, and repackaged for these short online course modules.
The faculty wasn't told anything about the app.
Uh, uh, Chris Hanlon, a literature professor at ASU, said, I was really taken aback to see
my face looking back at me a few moments later.
Uh, he, uh, prompted the AI after learning about it to, uh, create a module on the history
of literary critique, something he knew a lot about.
He called the result Frankensteinian.
Uh, Gila, what, tell, tell us more about this.
So, I was fascinated by it because this actually, uh, the story's from the end of April.
So, this all happened right before the Canvas incident.
And it's very, I was fascinated by it because part of the question we didn't even get to talk
about last week was, where does this stuff live?
And yes, if you create curriculum for a school, then theoretically it belongs to the school.
But who's giving permission for this kind of thing to happen?
And apparently the president of the university was not aware, um, or at least was confused
by it, um, an experiment, it's early stages, it, the whole thing is, is fascinating.
And I mean, I guess the question is, is someone, is this an official thing?
Is this coming from the university?
Is it coming from Canvas?
Or is it somebody who was like, hey, this will be fun.
And the idea of, I'm going to pitch it and then I'm going to give it to you and you're
going to pay me for it.
I'm just guessing.
Uh, and again, what, what it means.
And if you're saying, oh, this can automatically create educational content for me, but we know
the AI gets it wrong.
This is not good pedagogy.
This is not good.
I mean, Alex, would you do this sort of thing to prepare for a lecture?
I absolutely would not.
And it, it infuriates me to, to even think about, uh, King's college in London, which
is where I teach.
Uh, if they were to do something like this, I, I don't know what I do.
I have to really seriously reconsider continuing to teach there as well, because I, I, I see
it as an infringement on my own thoughts and materials.
I mean, I, I prepare these things for the benefit of my students.
I will maybe put these, these lectures, slides, and various things like that, uh, online in
our key system for the benefit of my specific students, not for the entire university, uh,
not for the entire college to have access to.
And certainly not as data from which the university can pull to generate content for some kind of
nonsensical AI slop to which the public can subscribe.
I'd be really concerned about my words being used in, in a context in which I did not intend
them to be used, uh, number one, and that the, the, the materials, you know, are just not
going to be fit for purpose and may be attributed to me or to my name or to my research in ways
that denigrate my background and my integrity as well.
So I, I would be absolutely furious.
And I think that the, the professors over at ASU, again, are rightly angered.
Um, and I think there are also a lot of various piece, you know, sometimes I say that the,
the scariest thing or the most dangerous thing in the world, someone with a little bit of
information and this can go so awry, um, later in the article that I sent from inside higher
ed, um, they're talking about, there's this whole sub industry of doxing professors that
people think are on the wrong side of the culture wars and they're too woke.
And a lot of the faculty members are now worried that especially people who teach on things like
race and gender and sexuality could get doxed in this way, or somehow also negatively impacted.
And, you know, could then people take a course, provide instructor feedback on the course, and
then the university would take that with as much in, with as much weight as they would an actual
class, um, evaluation.
And another part of this is, um, you know, when, when you sign up to work for a university, um,
I'm sure as an academic, as faculty, you sign all manner of things that say, you know, research,
here's research that I'm going to do that belongs to the, to the university. Here's, you know, the,
the educational materials that I create belong to the university in those existing contracts.
Is there a clause saying, yes, we can also use it to feed the slot machine, or is this something new?
And is this something that people signing, uh, contracts now and in future are going to have to,
uh, make a decision on whether or not they want to sign this particular right away to their material,
to their face, to their, you know, voice, their aspect, um, and all of this.
I want to read you the, uh, the words of Michael Osling. He's a religious studies professor,
uh, over at Arizona State University. Um, he said it would be, it would just be amazingly easy,
I think, for a bad actor to get an atomic account, ask for a course and get a whole bunch of material
from classes on conflict in the Middle East or classes on race and gender and get what looks like
evidence of various professors teaching terrible things. But that evidence would be false because
we teach carefully, we teach in context, we frame, we do all the things that teachers are supposed to do
to help our students understand what we're teaching and why. Removed from those frameworks,
it can look pretty weird and could be potentially really damaging. Yeah, that, that says it. And I think,
you know, uh, that's the first thought many of us had when we heard about this, that, yeah,
this can be distorted and used to, um, to suit any number of agendas.
And, and more fundamentally, I think what's, what's just so offensive about it is that it's a,
it's a monetization of the professor's own work product in a way that doesn't involve them,
doesn't obtain their consent and, and doesn't provide any kind of context whatsoever for that
type of academic thought or, um, or work product. And, and, and it's just this, it seems just really
like an unseemly way of trying to make money. It's a money grab and it's part and parcel of this
culture of AI slop that we are trying to actively discourage. I mean, we're, if, if we're going to,
to keep this planet as something that's human dominated, we really need to focus on teaching
people how to think and generating AI slop and calling it education is the absolute wrong way
of going about that. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Uh, Gila, closing words on this.
Uh, it's actually not about this. It's about something else. So come back to me in a second.
No, go ahead. We're done. Okay. So it's another higher education AI issue in Arizona from this
week. Oh, please. Really? Why is it always Arizona? I don't know. Let's get it over with. Okay. So now
we've covered the university of Arizona. We've covered Arizona state university. And now let's talk
about Glendale community college in Phoenix, Arizona. It's more university than I thought Arizona had,
but okay, sure. At Glendale community college in Phoenix, Arizona, they outsourced everything for
graduation to an app called Tassel. Tassel will make your announcements and it will order your
regalia. And if you want it to, it will read the names of your graduates as they cross the stage.
You know what AI can't do? Tell us. Read the room and adjust. So it cannot adjust to the timing
as people walk across the stage. A bunch of graduates got their names messed up or skipped
entirely. So they had to restage graduation with an actual human person reading the names because
Tassel messed up so badly. I don't understand who needed this. I mean, you know, it's the simplest
job in the world to read a bunch of names on graduation day. One day. Who is complaining about
that? You get, you get all the features, you pay for all the features. You're going to want to use
all the features. Come on. It just makes sense. Boy, we're going a little AI happy here. And this
has got to be one of the dumbest uses I've ever heard. So I thought, you know, just in terms of
keeping with our theme of higher education in Arizona. And here's another thing that I will say
as a person whose first middle and last names are all complicated to pronounce. When I graduated
from high school, I chatted with the vice principal who was going to be announcing all the names at
graduation. I gave him phonetic pronunciation for all of my names. We practiced it together.
It was great. We were ready. And then apparently he lost the notes between rehearsal and actual
graduation. So I'm standing there and he mispronounced each of the three words that
comprised my name. So I didn't cross the stage because I thought he was talking about someone
else. And then he called it again. And I said, Oh, he means me. And, but even then I would much
rather a human being stumble than AI with the, the perfection of an AI voice. I'm, I hope you heard
the air quotes around perfection. I think that so much of what we're discussing, I think is so
antithetical to the, the concept of education. And if we're outsourcing so many of these things and
you can't take this human moment of celebration and celebrate it with a human, then what are we
doing? What is the point of education if we're removing the humanity from it?
Yeah. Fair question. I'm asking Gemini right now.
And while I wait for the answer, uh, here's a letter from what I assume is a human listener named
Frank. Um, I am hoping you have all heard about the, uh, recent release of claims signed by acting
attorney general, Todd Blanche. I'm, I'm wishing I didn't, but, uh, we certainly did hear about this.
Um, and, um, basically, uh, Frank wants to know what Alex's take on this is, uh, for those who
don't know, um, the, um, the $10 billion lawsuit that, um, Donald Trump pulled out of his ass and,
uh, uh, uh, threw at the IRS on, um, sometime in January, uh, was settled or one could say one by
Trump who basically said, give me 1.8 trillion, uh, trillion, not yet, but it's getting there.
1.8 billion dollars to give to my friends. That's pretty much almost literally what he said.
Uh, and, um, he, he runs the justice department. He runs the IRS. He can just do this every single
day if he wants, apparently, because that now is the country that we live in. But in addition to that,
there was a, a one page addendum that was issued yesterday. Um, and I want to read, uh, the, the
third paragraph of it, um, because it's just, it's, it's such a joy to read. It concerns investigating
Trump in the future. The United States releases, waves, acquits, and forever discharges. And all those
words are in caps. It's like reading a Trump tweet, uh, forever discharges each of the plaintiffs
from, and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims,
counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief,
monetary relief, damages, examinations, or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs,
attorney's fees, expenses, and, or interest, whether presently known or unknown that as of the effective
date of the settlement agreement, May 19th, have been, or could have been asserted by defendants
against any of the plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals, including without limitation,
family or others filing jointly, or parties, including trusts, parent, sister, or, or related,
related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries by reason of, with respect to, in connection with,
or which arise out of, one, any matters that were raised or could have been raised in the case
or the pending agency claims, two, lawfare and or weaponization, or three, any matters currently
pending or that, uh, could be pending, including tax returns filed before the effective date before
defendants or other agencies or departments. I believe there was a sentence in a Victor Hugo novel
that was, uh, the longest sentence ever written, and I think we just beat that here. Um, Alex, yeah,
I'd love your take on this, but basically it sounds to me, my very uninformed opinion, that this is a big
get-out-of-jail-free card for, um, uh, Trump and his, his kind, uh, now and forever. Is, is that at least
the intent of it? I, I'm frankly mystified by this whole thing, and I, I think it really has to be
unpacked and, and, and examined for, for, for all of the legal consequences of this particular type
of language. This, this type of release of claims language is fairly standard type of stuff when
you're settling some kind of lawsuit such that you want to be extremely careful that nothing can ever
be brought again in the future, and so you do have these really long-winded sentences, but it,
it seems like, well, how the hell can somebody drop a lawsuit and then get, you know, a 1.8 billion
dollar settlement, uh, this whole thing and, and the waiver of the future claims, it seems like it's
whitewashing any kind of, uh, inquiry, any type of transparency. Well, can I just explain what,
what actually happened? There was a lawsuit. If the lawsuit had, had, uh, gone before a judge,
the judge was indicating that, uh, this is absurd and he wasn't going to play ball. So instead what
they did was drop the lawsuit, Trump controls justice, Trump controls IRS. They made this
agreement, give me 1.8 billion dollars and, uh, we just move on. That's, that's what happened. That is
the country we're in right now. This is, this is like Nicolae Cisescu material here from, from 1980s
Romania. You know, this is as corrupt as, as it can get right now. Uh, who knows what'll happen next
week. But the fact that this is being taken seriously, the fact that there aren't people,
uh, mobbing the streets right now, because this guy, this, our money, that's, that's taxpayer money
is being stolen from us. And we need to be a whole lot more outraged or it's just going to keep
happening. And we're going to find ourselves living in complete squalor and poverty while, uh,
a certain other people are, are, are having the time of their lives and, and basically
stealing everything. Yeah. And what, what's amazing to me about this is it's being done
under the color of law through the department of justice by people who, who obviously have
more devotion to the president himself than they do to the rule of law, to democracy or to
the proper use of, of taxpayer funds. I mean, none of this makes any sense if we are to believe
that we live in a real constitutional democracy. Stop believing that Alex, stop believing that
because it's not true. I agree. It's not, if it ever was true, it's not true. Now we've gotten to
that point. I, I, I tend to agree. The question is, what do we do now? You know, because this is out of
control. They can do whatever they want and they are doing whatever they want. And, uh, it just doesn't
seem like there's a plan. Yeah. You know, we can be surprised that there are these people that don't
care about democracy that will do whatever he says. Every country, every regime always has people
like that. You're just seeing them swarm now because, you know, somebody kicked over the ant's
nest and they're all figuring out what to do next. It's, it's disgusting, but it's real. And we need
a plan. We need a plan. And obviously voting is, is part of that plan, voting on mass, because, uh,
what they've tried to do is make voting, uh, completely useless and it's going to be harder.
But if people show up in great numbers, greater than, than anyone was ever imagining, that's how
you fix this. That's really the only way to fix this at this stage. And the ways of fixing it beyond
that are very, very unpleasant. Well, and, and to that as well, Manuel, I think, you know,
in tying this up and before I know we have to run in a minute or two, but I think there are other
measures of accountability as well. And that the institutions that we have trusted for so many
years have been so denigrated and so chipped away at during the first Trump administration.
And now again, during the second administration that we, the public has really lost trust in,
and faith in a lot of them, but they need to work better at rebuilding those foundations and holding
these types of officials accountable. And, and we have, uh, bar admissions bodies. We have ethical
requirements as lawyers. And when Todd Blanche is acting with the United States government as his
client in a manner that seems to be consistent entirely only with fealty to the president,
that's wrong. It's unethical.
It's almost like somebody has had access to the source code of this country,
has studied it for a long, long time, and has figured out all the vulnerabilities and has now
sprung into action and is taking advantage of all those vulnerabilities. And we are just surprised
that somebody did that. And we're not prepared to, uh, to figure out how to protect ourselves,
how to fight back, how to, how to, uh, make the regime, the country, the democracy safe and secure.
So, you know, consider this, uh, a vulnerable OS that needs to be, um, um, um, fixed and needs to
be taken seriously. All right. We are out of time. Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com and join us on
overtime starting at eight o'clock on YouTube channel 2600. We will see you there. Good night.
Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again because a vision softly
creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains within the sound of silence. In restless dreams, I walked alone, narrow streets of
cobblestone. Neath the halo of a street lamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp. When my eyes
were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, it split the night and touched the sound of silence. And in the
naked light, I saw 10,000 people, maybe more people talking without speaking, people hearing
without listening. People writing songs that voices never shared. No one did disturb the sound of
silence. Fools said, I do not know. Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words.
Take my arms that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you. But my words, like silent
And the raindrops bell
It echoed the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
Tenement halls
Whispered in the sounds of silence


And hello, everybody, and welcome to YouTube. God help us. It's over time.
Emmanuel here, Kyle, over on YouTube land, and Alex, Gila, and Rob. We all make it okay?
We did.
We are here.
And we're on YouTube?
Still waiting for us to catch up with the delay. I will keep you posted.
Now, YouTube is always behind the rest of the world.
Okay, there we are.
All right. It's raining. It's raining for everybody? I think it's raining for everybody in the area right now.
During the radio hour, it started torrentially raining here really heavy, which was welcome because I've been in this apartment all day.
It's been over 90 degrees in this apartment all day because our AC is broken down.
So I was enjoying the brief respite.
Wait, you have broken air conditioning right now during this heat wave?
But Gila, it looks like you have a Popsicle.
We both do.
Okay, so what are you complaining about? I don't have a Popsicle.
So Rob, very kindly, at the end of his remote work day, went and got us Popsicles.
And they're not all the same. Rob has a white Popsicle. You have a dark Popsicle.
Well, that's correct. Mine is grape.
Yeah, mine is pina colada.
Wow.
And we're caught in the rain now, so here we are.
Other than those exciting updates, any addition to our conversation, which took a bit of a turn at the end there.
But boy, we're living through some crazy times.
And we'd be remiss not to comment on them, not to take note of them.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I just, a couple of hours ago, got back from London.
So I was kept all over the UK over the last week.
So I flew into London.
And then the next day, I took the train up to Edinburgh.
And I was in Edinburgh for the weekend last weekend for the DNS OR conference.
And then back to London, then down to the Isle of Wight, then back to London, and then today back to New York.
So I'm on London time at the moment, right, after having been there for weeks.
It's one in the morning.
So excuse a little bit of my incoherence here.
But, you know, I stay at the Chelsea Arts Club when I'm in London.
And when you get up in the morning, I think one of the best things about this arts club is the breakfast in the morning.
When you get up in the morning, amazing breakfast is put out for you in the dining room.
You order whatever you want.
And everybody just sits down and talks with each other.
I even wrote an article for the magazine about this.
You remember, Emmanuel, of course, about that breakfast table.
And it was called Disconnection as Being, where you actually talk with people.
And it's amazing to me that in a place that is entirely disconnected, where you're not allowed to use your phone, I have not been at the breakfast table once.
I would say in the last month that I've gone back and forth to London, where I don't have a discussion about AI with all these artists at the table.
It's just on the top of everybody's mind.
And what always comes to mind is the topic of another article that I wrote for the column that I write for 2600, which has to deal with this model autophagy disorder that affects AI systems or MAD.
And you probably remember this article, but for those who didn't read my column, there is something that plagues LLMs and models that is very similar to MAD cow's disease.
And so what I argued in the column was that at this very moment in history, it's possible that we could be living through the golden era of AI.
Because it has ingested thousands of years of human knowledge and its belly is extremely full.
And just like MAD cow's disease occurs when you begin feeding cows to other cows and they go crazy and they don't like that.
This thing called MAD or model autophagy disorder that plagues LLMs occurs when the output of a large language model becomes its input or the output of another AI becomes the input or the training data on which an AI begins to learn.
And if that happens, these LLMs begin to lose their spark, they lose their diversity, they lose their ability to create, and they lose their ability to continue to be coherent as well.
So think about what happens here, because this is a very different business model that we're talking about from surveillance capitalism.
This isn't the Web 2 world of Facebook monetizing our actions.
This is a different business model that is entirely based on dependency.
These systems and companies that are generating revenue from LLMs want us to be dependent on AI for intelligence.
They want us to get used to using this, and they want us to essentially have it as a perpetual crutch underneath our arm that we continue to pay for every single day.
So a couple of things could happen here.
If we continue to outsource all of our thought, all of our thinking, all of our writing, all of our goddamn graduation speeches,
and I do think a lot of that graduation speech from Eric Schmidt was AI generated, I'll go back to that for a moment.
If we do that, and at the same time, we begin to lose our ability to organize our thoughts, to write for ourselves, to engineer, to problem solve,
all these things that we're inherently human that we have trained machines to do,
if those models start failing at the same time that we are over-reliant on them, well, then what happens to society?
Well, I can say what will happen now on YouTube, we'd be fucked.
We'd be totally fucked if that happened, right?
Now, the other situation, a corollary of this, that is somewhat terrifying as well,
and I talked about this in the article, which is that because there is something ineffable,
because there is something inherently unique about what human beings create that machines don't have.
There's a spark of something that exists in any kind of content that a human being creates without the assistance of AI
that can help these models continue to grow and to create and to be coherent and active.
Well, there may be this really dystopian situation later on in life where these machines that we have developed to ease our burdens as human beings
could end up becoming our burdens, and we may be forced to create certain content and art
and various things that human beings can do uniquely just so these machines can keep running and keep our society afloat.
So, in a sense, there's a possibility that if these models do topple over,
we could end up becoming slaves to these machines that were supposed to ease our very burdens from the outset.
Wouldn't that be ironic?
So, not to start this overtime off on an entirely dystopian note, but something to think about,
and I really think that more research has to be done on the viability,
the long-term viability of these types of models.
My God, we're a stupid race.
I mean, every science fiction story from the 1940s on has been warning us about this,
and here we are just taking the plunge, saying, oh, it can't be that bad.
Oh, my fucking God.
All right, well, it'll be interesting to see if we live long enough to experience it.
But, you know, maybe there's hope, as the saboteurs that we are,
of completely screwing up the system enough so that it doesn't succeed.
I mean, you know, I'm not afraid to throw a crowbar into the works, you know, if necessary.
In New York, lawmakers, advocates, community leaders rallied in Albany a week ago to push for a proposal
that would put a three-year moratorium on the construction of new data centers across the state.
Yeah.
You want billionaires to come back to New York City to increase the tax base?
Stop giving tax incentives to billionaires to pollute our communities.
That's according to Cheryl Cordes, who is one of nearly 100 people who demonstrated for the passage of proposed legislation
with sponsors in both the Assembly and State Senate.
And maybe somebody could look it up to see if it went anywhere in the last week.
Supporters say enforcing a moratorium would allow the Department of Environmental Conservation
and the Public Service Commission to study the impacts the centers would have on their surrounding communities and the environment.
I can cut to the chase there.
It's not good.
It's definitely not good for the communities.
Cordes lives in Alabama, New York.
Yes, Alabama, New York.
We have to go.
We just have to go to Alabama, New York.
Just to say, we're in Alabama, New York.
The town is the site of a proposed massive 19.4 billion, 2.2 million square foot stream data center.
It's facing, I'm sorry, 19.4 billion dollar, 2.2 million square foot stream data center.
Yeah.
It's facing strong opposition due to environmental and energy concerns from some residents.
Apparently there are some residents who are not having a problem with that.
I'm concerned, I keep quoting one person.
I'm concerned about infrasound and infrasound in the scientific community concerning data centers is considered obnoxious noise.
And I don't think I've ever said the word infrasound before.
It's detrimental to your health.
Democratic Senator Kristen Gonzalez said, I don't think every New Yorker necessarily is going to live in a community that is going to be cited by a hyperscale data center.
This fight is bigger than just individual data centers.
It's literally a fight with big tech because they have been defining and setting the rules for how they operate and how they profit.
And we have been living with the consequences.
Gonzalez is chair of the state Senate's Internet and Technology Committee.
We should have a hotline to them.
And they're co-sponsoring the legislation in her chamber.
One of the proposal's key points is that data center electricity usage is projected to increase by more than 9,000 megawatts, which is approximately double the electricity use of all New York households combined.
The idea that we can bring on hyperscale data centers, the biggest energy facilities aren't what normal companies are using, but really are for the big tech companies using it for large language models.
It's a direct threat to our ability to continue keeping up and serving New Yorkers.
So if AI didn't scare the crap out of you, this really should be of concern because it's destroying the environment and using up all the power.
And for what?
For something we're going to be the victims of?
Well, the data center coalition doesn't agree.
We've got to find out who these people are.
Saying studies have shown some of these concerns are unfounded.
Some of these concerns are unfounded.
Okay, but some are founded, apparently.
When it comes to energy, we are seeing that energy costs are rising because of a variety of reasons, said Kara Bonder, director of state policy at the data center coalition.
I want to know everything about them.
Stat.
On it.
Okay, thank you.
Looking at research that's coming out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, they've attributed these rising costs to a myriad of factors.
And that includes the need to update and harden the grid due to extreme weather events.
Okay.
Bonder also says a three-year moratorium is a long time.
How long exactly?
Nobody knows.
But it's a long time.
It could signal to data centers that, get ready, they're not welcome in New York State.
Can we signal faster?
I would like to do that.
If they're not getting the message, we need to, like, really broadcast it, you know, and maybe use some megawatts to get the message through to them.
No, you're not welcome in New York.
Not my New York.
And what have you guys found out?
Okay.
So the data center coalition is the industry membership organization, functionally a lobbying organization.
Board member affiliations include...
Eric Schmidt, I'll bet.
The chair is the vice president of AWS Public Policy for the Americas.
So we've got people from Amazon, Cyrus One, Cloud HQ, Stack Infrastructure, CoLogix...
Wait, does Cyrus run a company or a member, like a robot or something?
Say that again, I'm sorry?
Cyrus One, is that a member of the board or is that a company?
Probably is.
That is a company.
Okay.
We're just going with company affiliations right now.
Okay, for now, that's a company.
All right.
Uh, Collogix, Compass Data Centers, CoreSight, Google, um, Iron Mountain, Microsoft, QTS Data Centers, Stream Data Centers, Switch, Vantage Data Centers, Aligned Data Centers, an organization called Crusoe, Digital Realty, Edge Connect, Edge Connects.
I hate the world.
They have lousy names.
They really do.
Edge Core Digital Infrastructure, Equinix, Meta, Opidian, Prologis, Prologis.
I don't fucking know.
And T5, Data Centers.
I, look, it's hot in here, but I really need to take a shower after this.
Wow.
But, Emmanuel, to your point, I did find out about a fascinating project today.
Um, this, someone named, uh, Julian Oliver is doing a project called Science is Poetry, which is feeding nonsense to AI text scrapers.
Oh, yeah.
I love that.
I love that.
And actually, I saw something on Mastodon earlier today that if you have a URL that you're not doing anything with right now, they would be happy to incorporate it into the project.
Um, because the more they can, the more, uh, garbage that's out there to feed to the slop robots, the more the slop robots will kind of get stuck in a garbage loop and leave the rest of the world alone.
Um, so if you want to learn more about that, you can go to sciencespoetry.net, um, is where the, um, the project lives.
Um, I, I think it's very, very cool.
Um, and yeah, lots of links, lots of really fun stuff.
I will also pop that link in the chat because I can do that even though no one else can.
Well, you know, I, I'm all for this if it's effective.
You know, I don't want to just be, uh, wasting time feeling good, uh, and not getting anything done.
If, if it actually does screw them up enough to make them less, uh, appealing to people, then that's a worthy topic, I think a worthy goal.
Uh, I found that the, uh, Senate bill is called Senate bill S nine one four four a and poses a moratorium on data center permit issuance and relates to data center data center, uh, rate impacts.
And, um, I guess, uh, it was from last year, really is what started last year.
From what I understand, uh, Kristen Gonzalez, April Baskin, uh, Joseph Adabo Jr.
And Jabari Brisport are all sponsors, all Democrats.
And, uh, hang on, see if we can find any additional co-sponsors.
There's a whole bunch of them.
I'm not going to read all these names, but it looks like every single one of them is a Democrat.
What the hell Republican?
I know you're evil as fuck, but God's sake, how evil do you have to get?
This is, this is, you know, like late night, second rate, 1990s TV, evil villain, uh, uh, episode type of, uh, of evil.
Come on, at least, uh, at least be intelligent.
And this is, this is just sad, but hopefully, hopefully you can get some, um, some support, some enthusiasm because boy, we don't need this.
Um, Emmanuel, I, I want to point out that we have almost 50, we have about 50 people with us right now, um, which is great.
And hello, everybody.
Um, JBMS bot or JBMSB ought, I don't know, uh, says Alabama, New York is near Niagara Falls, which Tesla made into a huge power generator.
So electricity is cheap there.
Niagara Falls.
Slowly I turn.
Wow.
Okay.
That's, that's handy knowledge to know.
Although that person might be a bot based on the way you said the name.
Potentially.
Or maybe they're operating in overtime.
Um, Rob.
Yes.
You can't push that to the chat.
You have to send it to me.
Oh, yes.
There are rules.
They're not my rules.
These are YouTube's rules.
I think the rain is kicking up again, by the way.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Uh, okay.
There's another story here, uh, related to this.
Um, a residential area in, uh, um, Lake Tahoe, uh, must scramble to find a new energy supplier by May of next year.
Uh, that's a situation that stems in part from a Nevada utility company devoting more power capacity to new data centers.
The energy crisis impacts 49,000 California residents who live near Lake Tahoe, uh, nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the border between California and Nevada.
Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe's local electricity provider, California-based Liberty Utilities, has been obtaining 75% of its power from the Nevada-based company, NV Energy.
Their latest agreement covering the Lake Tahoe region could see NV Energy pull out by May 2027, according to extensive reporting by Fortune.
However, I don't know why they had to say it that way.
However, an NV Energy spokesperson has told Ars Technica, uh, that there is no scenario where Liberty customers will be left without service as a result of this transition.
So, uh, okay, your lights won't go out.
They just might get dim or expensive.
Nevada's fast-growing data center development was one of the main reasons given by NV Energy for ending its energy supply agreement with Liberty, according to a Liberty filing with California regulators.
Fortune highlighted data from NV Energy's own planning documents showing that a dozen data center projects in northern Nevada could drive 5,900 megawatts of new demand by 2033.
Uh, uh, stories like this are, are going on all over the world.
You know, I have a, I have a solution for these guys.
If they can't, um, uh, if they can't cut down on their enthusiasm for all this, build your damn data centers, build them on the moon.
Take your, take your SpaceX or whatever, go to the moon, stay there, build data centers, do whatever the fuck you want, leave us alone.
That's, that's not too hostile, right?
I mean, trying to give them what they want, trying to get us what we need.
You know, and, and, and, and get rid of some of the, uh, worst people on earth.
Really.
They'll be the worst people on the moon then.
We could hook up a generator to a treadmill and, uh, you know, they can use all that enthusiasm to run on this treadmill and power their own data centers.
Have you seen them?
They're not going to do that.
It'd be good for everyone.
Well, it would be one thing if we were genuinely creating great stuff and advancing humanity through the use of artificial intelligence.
But we seem to be focusing on the generation of non-consensual pornography, you know, through Grok on X, idiotic commencement speeches, AI slop, crappy images.
I mean, we're just generating a bunch of shit through these data centers.
We're not really advancing humanity.
There's like, given the promise of AI, if we were using AI in some kind of really productive capacity, I could see a justification for some environmental damage and some kind of environmental catastrophe.
Even if we were advancing humanity, it's such a clip that maybe we became some kind of interplanetary species once, once we destroyed this planet, but no, we're, we're using it for base idiotic purposes.
Um, and I don't see that really changing very much.
Um, but to go back to the crux of the issue here with respect to local politics and data centers, there's, there's a big divergence between the local.
Republican basis of these particular constituencies in these states and the Republicans at the federal level.
You have Trump on the one hand saying, build baby, build and giving carte blanche to all of these AI companies to do whatever the hell they want.
And basically trying to mandate that states do not have the authority to do whatever they want with respect to the regulation of AI.
And as a local level, you have Republicans and Democrats coming together and saying, no, we won't have it.
Um, so there's a single Republican saying that for this.
Well, I think you do.
I don't.
There's not a single one.
I looked at all the co-sponsors there.
There's like 30 Democrats, but I'm talking about the state legislatures, the state legislatures that are pushing back on this, those local politicians.
I think there are lots of Republicans that realize that their constituents don't want data centers there and they are not telling the line.
Well, I'd like to hear the name of one of them by the end of this show, if that's possible.
But let me also push back on something else about shit.
Shit sells, Alex.
I look around.
It really does.
And, you know, it doesn't matter how crappy something is, you know, people are going to want it for some crazy reason.
So, yeah, unfortunately.
And, you know, I also want to say that there can be good in AI if used responsibly.
AI can find things that humans won't find for a very, very long time.
Absolutely.
There are good uses.
But what we're doing now is so typical of what we do when we find some shiny new toy is we just devote all of our attention to it.
We overdose on it.
You know, it's the same thing with social media.
There is good that can come out of social media, but there is so much bad and evil.
And we just seem to gravitate towards that first.
We're making the same mistake here.
Gila.
Gila, you are muted.
Thank you.
A plan to create a new center of a new source of power for Microsoft with an agreement with Constellation Energy in Pennsylvania.
They're reopening Three Mile Island.
Yeah, I heard that.
Microsoft, right?
Yeah.
I.
Oh, and.
They want 73 million gallons of water a day.
For it.
Well, I hope they have a lot of urine built up because that's really the only way I can see as fair for them to get that.
It's this information given to us by Tim in Connecticut in the chat.
We appreciate you, Tim in Connecticut, but oh my God, stop the world.
I want to get off.
This is just, I'm done.
We are really being cheerful tonight.
That's, must be the heat.
All right.
Well, shall we open up phone lines and get some cheery phone calls?
Yes, we need your help, listeners.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Yeah, I was going to say the phone is open.
So as soon as it's turned on, people can call.
It's on.
I'll put up the numbers while I'm on the screen.
It is on.
I just think this conversation's, it is grim.
And I think there's a super, there's like an acceleration part of this.
And I didn't get to say this on the show earlier, but I felt like, yeah, that commencement speech sounded dated.
And it was a lot of stuff that, um, you're hearing people talk about in like damage control, uh, for, uh, for PR and that's not the audience.
And I think that was really well expressed in that conversation that, that, um, you know, the grad graduates, they've heard it all.
They understand like the technology and the perils and you're talking to them like a hype man.
And I, I think that, um, capitalism itself is sort of a AI, like this whole like personhood for firms and stuff like that.
And they become these like headless things and branding can be in there too, because then you have like mergers and things being acquired and even like a company that has a real history becomes sort of totally amnesic about their, their, um, institutional memory and like what their purpose is.
And that's why you get these zombie companies and, um, um, that have totally different practices and customer service or, you know, uh, standards of, of quality.
They're just riding on like the legacy of a brand image.
So, um, I think this, this whole environment, when you understand, like we're in the formative or like train, we're training a lot of these things.
That's a word that's being used there operating as corporations.
And that was the subject of that big lawsuit that Elon Musk, uh, lost this week, I believe lost, um, where open AI was forming as just like nonprofit sort of like, Oh no, we're going to like, you know, maybe they're like pantomiming safe AI kind of what anthropic is actually appears to be a little more serious about, uh, in the way they're
situating themselves as a firm.
My point on all this is that they're all different, um, entities working in this sort of capitalists, this market-based system that, um, is going to, that makes it competitive.
And so in that, and, and I think this is a mistake or something we can learn from the web 2.0 mistakes with platforms is not to let these firms abuse customers.
Like I, I rail on this.
It's all I've ever, it's, it's where I've ended up with all the conversation around like software and, and electronics and stuff.
And, uh, I'll get in, I can speak a little bit about the data center thing too, um, because I think that's a manifestation of how so much around this tech industry, which is where these AI companies are coming from.
They get hyped and stuff like that, and they are establishing these brands.
And so we're all supposed to be exalting the wonders of AI in like organizing our spice cabinet or something.
And they're telling us, well, it's just going to get better and better and it's all so good.
And that's why you have to like, give up Ram for all the, you know, like all of the like sacrifice that is inherent in that is, is for this ultimate good.
And then, okay, so what's the manifestation of that is massive layoffs.
So he, so they cut labor right away because I have to reinvest under this sort of fake competition.
Some of that's been used and leveraged as like a nationalist thing in, um, competition with AI, which sure, probably has some truth that, that nations are going to rival one another and compete.
Um, to dominate in this field, but, um, I guess where I'm going with it is that, um, we gotta do the things like you're saying, like disrupt it, poison some of the training if, if possible, do all of those things, but also put in policy, put in, you know, consumer protections, ban them outright.
If that's the kind of development that the state really is just not interested in these like really massive footprints that gobble, like just gorge themselves on, on power and water and stuff.
That to me is where these companies sort of lose sight of, they, they think everything there that is their field of interest is, um, is, um, benevolent, I guess is what I want to say.
I like can't be questioned.
So therefore the, yes, it's a massive data center.
People are displaced and poisoned and, you know, the sound is disrupting their lives, but that's the recklessness of it.
The, the, the, without guardrails part.
And I think they've fooled themselves.
They fool politicians and they're trying to fool the public.
And I don't think the public sledding them.
That's where I'll end it.
We have a call.
Uh, we do.
Uh, we didn't go out to fund them.
Yes.
Let's do that.
Um, 802-321-4225 is our phone number.
Um, yes, Alex.
I want to read you a quote from somebody here to go back to an earlier query of yours.
And this is a quote says, I think people have very legitimate concerns.
And that is who's going to pay the bill for the additional energy that's demanded from this.
They go, my power bill has gone up because somebody down the road is building a data center, right?
That was from Republican, uh, Rob Whitman, who is a, uh, member of the house in Virginia as well.
And so there, there are a bunch of Republicans out there that are, um, that are concerned about this.
Well, they seem to only be concerned about the bill and not the, uh, effects on the environment and on the power consumption and all that.
Here's a, here's another one for you.
One of the versions of the big, beautiful bill had something very troubling in there that would, uh, that said it would override even local zoning decisions for data centers.
And that was representative Thomas Massey, who is a Republican.
Well, look what happened to him yesterday.
I know.
Yeah.
I understand that.
This, this is where the Republican party is now.
If you, if you criticize in any way, even the most minimal amount, you're purged.
It's, it's Soviet era.
Yeah.
Well, look what he said.
The next thing he said was it's a state and local issue.
And I think if we try to override their ability to regulate that stuff, it's very dangerous.
That's what he said, that this is a local issue.
Well, there you have it.
He was nuked yesterday by the local people.
Kyle, you had something else.
Go ahead.
Oh yeah.
I would just, um, say that like the, the, um, physical demands of these things, like, yeah, we, we have to put the brakes on them and that those are good.
Um, I guess, uh, things they'll point out, but they are narrow in focus because I think for the most part, it's self-preservation.
I think Massey is the, the example that, you know, he said what he said, but it was too far.
These lobbying, the, the course of the lobbying entity that has captured the current administration has set priorities and he became a threat.
He made himself a threat to that.
So out he goes.
Yeah.
Free thinking people are the threat.
But I think we need to also like, uh, this has been pointed out.
I think EFF has pointed this out a lot, but these are massive surveillance entities.
After all, we're training these things.
Right.
Um, and they're going to need people to continually like retrain them and stuff and, um, correct things.
And people don't really want to do that work.
I don't think it's, it's, it's not, um, we already trained it.
It's, it's been trained on all of us.
So, um, anyway, let's go to this call.
I was waiting for a call.
You didn't tell me we had a call.
Yeah, I did.
I didn't hear the phone ring.
Is the ringer on?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going.
I have a question though.
Go ahead quickly.
Did we announce the number?
Yes, we did.
Okay.
I don't remember that.
It was just a couple of minutes ago.
I even said we haven't said the number.
And then I said the number.
Okay.
Okay.
No one hears me.
No one hears me.
Um, but you know, just.
So yeah, the important thing is just.
Please.
I want to get this one thing out.
Why aren't they even paying for it?
So, well, you know, rates are going up for people who live in the neighborhood.
If, if they were paying everybody $10,000, I would still be against it because it's,
it's bad.
It's bad for the environment.
It's bad for power consumption.
Do you know, near these things, you hear a buzzing all the time.
That's that infrasound, I believe.
Who wants to live like that?
It's like low frequency noise.
Put that in your damn neighborhood.
You know, don't subject us to it.
There are many ills and these, these facilities are massive.
And instead of it being coordinated, it's competitive.
So they all have to have their own.
So they have to control all their own stuff.
Power your own AI, get a, get a stationary bicycle and use that to power your local AI
in your house.
And that's.
Yeah.
Giant hamster wheel.
All right.
Let's take this phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Yes, Emmanuel.
I use AI to answer questions.
Of course you do.
Yes.
Because you're not concerned about the right answers.
No, I mean, like when I ask, um, why, well, what is the difference between pseudo app update
and pseudo app upgrade?
It just says you do pseudo app update first, then you do pseudo app upgrade, right?
Well, it's, it's, it's getting that information from material that's already out there that
humans have written.
Right.
That's what it's good for.
Like searching.
Yeah, it's good for that.
It's not good for tearing down society and making our lives miserable.
That it's not good for.
Well, actually it's good at it, but it's not, it's not good for us.
Right.
Um, let's say, oh, um, how does, well, I asked AI this too, but maybe I like to ask you instead
of AI because sometimes it's not always accurate, but, um, serial ports in parallel, serial ports
of where you connect the modems and to, uh, like mainframes to a personal computer.
We're going back a few decades here.
Right.
But parallel ports for like printers and things.
Yeah.
I remember this.
I do.
Uh-huh.
RS232, all that.
Yeah, it's, uh, quite a trip down memory lane.
Now, you can hook up a PC and hook it up to a mainframe.
Like, uh, you'd have to have software, like, right?
You'd have to have a mainframe too.
Well, no, like, let's say an IBM mainframe or a deck mainframe, if you had a, uh, Windows
PC back, like, back in the nineties or whatever, you'd, you'd hook it up by the serial port.
Instead of having a modem, I mean, it's not like calling in to the mainframe.
But, like, having, uh...
Being a terminal on the mainframe.
Yeah, you could do things like that.
Sure.
Yeah.
And if you had, I guess you had, I've had...
Do you have a mainframe that you're trying to do this with right now?
No, no, no.
I'm just saying maybe, maybe we could do this at Hope or something.
Oh, a card in a mainframe?
Yeah, let's do that.
No, a mini computer.
Okay.
All right.
Might have to leave it out in the street, but, uh, we'll, we'll figure something out.
No, you'd get, like a, you know, like a, uh, uh, uh, like a, uh, IBM AS400 or a Microvax
or something like that.
Um, um, um, now you, you had, like, WinSac.
What is, um, uh, TCP man and WinSac, what were that again?
That was for, uh, dial-up modems, right?
I believe, yeah, you're testing my memory here, Kyle, and you might have an answer even
though it was before your time, I think.
Uh, I believe it was Transmission Control Protocol.
That's all I know about TCP, but it was, uh, early part of, uh, that networking layer of
the internet.
Look at that.
Alex ran away.
He's afraid of 1990s technology, apparently.
Is that all?
What about WinSac?
WinSac was the Windows Sockets API.
It was an application programming interface, um, which Windows used to, uh, control how
different applications would access, um, the network.
I hope that answers your question.
You get one more question, then we're moving on.
Okay.
Is it like dial-up?
Like when you use dial-up modem, that's what WinSac was?
And that was the question.
Go ahead, Rob.
And...
Yeah.
Yeah.
WinSac would basically be how Windows knew what to do with the connection that was going
on on the modem and, uh, hand out, uh, you know, access to it to the various
programs on Windows that you wanted to search the information superhighway.
You're asking more questions than you're allocated.
I'll give you one more question, then we have to go to another call.
So could that apply to a, to a serial port?
Like, instead of a dial-up modem, can it apply to a serial port?
It would apply to however your computer was accessing something over a network, whether
that was a modem, whether that was a local network, whether that was, uh, whatever.
It's just however you were connected to a network, whether it was a serial connection,
a parallel connection, a psychic connection, whatever.
WinSac would, uh, would be how Windows, uh, knows what to do with the fact that it's
connected.
Yes, exactly.
Rebel, thank you for your call, uh, and, uh, have a pleasant week and we will, uh, probably
talk to you next week.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Let's try to get a few calls in this week.
So we, uh, give people a chance to say whatever is on their mind and let's try to make the calls
as, uh, as, uh, quick as, and, and as pertinent as possible so that, uh, we all get things
said and done.
Yes, Alex.
Well, while we're on the subject of this, uh, do any of you, I'm, I'm going to guess the
answer is yes to this.
Yes.
Yeah.
Probably going to be Rob, most likely here.
But, uh, you know, we're all familiar with two cows, the registrar right now.
Do any of you remember what two cows as in T-U-C-O-W-S actually stood for back in the
nineties?
Well, it didn't have anything to do with cows.
No, it didn't have any.
That was my guess.
Yeah.
It didn't have any.
Okay.
Oh, I'm amazed.
Wow.
We stopped even Rob.
Is the T-U-C somehow related to Tucson?
That's bringing us back to the Arizona of it all this evening.
No, that would, that would be something.
Maybe we can figure it out.
Um, okay.
So look, we, was, was the C capitalized?
Uh, they're all capitalized.
What do you mean?
That's all caps?
The corporation is all caps?
It's T-U-C-O-W-S.
I know what the letters are, but is the C capitalized, you know, like, uh, you know,
McNulty with the, the N would be capitalized.
Do you understand?
No, no.
So it's just T-U-C-O-W-S capital T, everything else, lowercase.
Yeah.
All right.
No, I, I don't know.
Like that doesn't give me much to work with.
Interestingly enough.
So two cows started out in the nineties as a shareware distribution site and it was,
you know, free software that was distributed and it stood for the ultimate collection of
Winsock software.
And it was basically all types of shareware that, that, that involved, uh, data being transmitted
over the internet because Winsock.dll was the dynamically linked library that involved
TCP IP connections as Rob was indicating.
That is awesome.
Today I learned.
There you go.
So two things, uh, number one, um, Tim in Connecticut.
Thank you very much.
You did jump in with that piece of information as Alex was speaking to us, which means it
had not hit the stream yet.
So way to pick up on that, Tim in Connecticut.
And I have a question about acronyms versus initialisms for the panel.
Uh-huh.
We're a panel.
I know we were a panel.
Okay.
Yeah, sure.
Go ahead.
Most things are initialisms and they're mislabeled as acronyms.
Exactly.
So, you know, the, uh, MTA related entity that was on strike till Monday night.
L I double R.
And that's the only way to say it.
I, I'm so pissed off at that New York times article that said there's people walking around
saying lure.
Nobody says lure.
Jesus Christ.
So we're reading that article.
It's hotter than Hades in our apartment.
Why am I trying to keep it clean?
It was hot as fuck in here.
And we're, I'm reading this and like yelling.
I'm like, lure.
Who the fuck says lure?
No one in my Queens says lure.
Yeah.
According to the article, people in Queens say lure.
We're reading this in Queens and bullshit.
So I, I just wanted to put it to basically everyone and chatters.
If you have opinions as well.
Yeah.
I say L I R R.
Yeah.
I grew up on that.
I don't like it, but you can do that.
All right.
As long as you don't say lure.
That is stupid.
I grew up on Long Island.
I had a family member who worked for the railroad and we generally called it the railroad.
But when we use the initials, it was either L I R R, which is awkward to say, or L I double
R, which flows nicely when you're saying it.
It flows so nicely.
The thing is what's a little bit weird is that railroad is one word yet.
It gets two initials, but I'm willing to overlook that because, you know, it's, it's, it's kind
of charming, Alex.
I think L I double R is, is very inefficient though, because L I double R that's five syllables.
If you're in a race.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, just say the train.
I don't know.
L I R R is four syllables.
So you're, you're trying to shorten something and making it longer.
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with things being longer?
Why are we so opposed to this?
There's a strange vocal pause between R R, um, that just doesn't flow nicely when you're
saying it.
Yeah.
It sounds awkward.
Yeah.
Well, I double R coughing up a hairball.
No, it doesn't work.
It's the same thing with GWB, right?
People to say GWB instead of George Washington bridge.
It's the same amount of syllables because W is a sink is a letter that has three syllables
and it's kind of unbelievable when you think about the goal to save time and every, I was
just new speak.
We have to like make things really, really quick all the time.
Well, it's about efficiency, isn't it?
How is that efficient?
What's efficient about, about saying something quicker?
We have more time to stare at each other and not say anything.
It's the ratio of graphemes to phonemes that by which you can judge the efficiency of the
language.
I used to live right by the George Washington bridge.
I lived in Washington Heights and people called it the GWB, the GW bridge or the bridge.
So I'm just, I wanted to see if any of anybody on anybody here says, lure, we did have one
reader chime in, one listener chime in and say, I say lure.
And I immediately said, oh, with your whole chest.
Look, I cannot blame people who are not local for getting it wrong.
All right.
They don't know better.
But if you continue to push that as correct, then we're going to have a problem.
I don't think anybody's pushing it.
All right.
As correct.
I was getting so mad.
I was talking about it at work on Tuesday and I was like, who fucking says lure?
Nobody says lure.
I got so mad too.
I don't know why I'm getting so angry at this, but it really is pissing me off.
Seriously.
And then I like the person who said, okay, lie is faster than LIE.
But would you say, oh, we're going to take the lie?
No.
No.
So until you say lie, don't say lure.
Oh, that's an excellent point.
That's an excellent point.
I've taken a credit for it.
I just read it.
But now here's, here's another one.
Actually two more.
Northern state parkway.
What do you say?
The Northern state, the Northern state.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You don't say, I can't even do it.
NSP, right?
That's what it is.
It doesn't, it doesn't work.
Metro North.
What do you call that?
You call it Metro North.
You don't call it MNR?
MN?
Metro North Rail?
Is that what it is?
Right.
I did suggest to some of my colleagues that we could start calling it Menomina.
We have a phone call.
Let's do a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Speak up.
Hey, why'd you hang up on me earlier?
I didn't do anything.
Why'd you hang up on me earlier?
I did not do a damn thing.
What?
It was the other guy.
What's this?
You're on now.
I don't think anyone, the ringer was off.
I don't think people knew the phone was even ringing.
What's on your mind?
What do you think about that guy who was on top of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge
in D.C.?
You know, he was on there from May 1st, May Day, for six days.
And what was he up there for?
Well, I mean, why else would you be up there?
I don't know.
Why would you be up there in the first place?
He had to have a reason.
It's a protest, goddammit.
Of what?
That's what I'm asking.
A protest for what?
Everything that's bad.
Okay, that's pretty general, but all right.
So, is he still up there or did he come down?
He came down six days later.
Okay.
And what happened when he came down?
Let's see.
He's been charged with crowding, obstructing, or incomoding.
Crowding?
Unlawful entry and failing.
What is crowding?
Well, obviously, he's crowding all the other people who want to clamber up there, too.
Is there a line of people trying to get up to the top of the bridge?
Wow.
Yes, I'm sure it's a very popular tourist attraction.
It's got no guardrails or anything around it.
Damn.
Well, you know, this guy gave a job doing that kind of thing,
because there are people that have to get up to the top of the bridge
to replace a light bulb or something.
Yeah, well, no.
He's just speaking down about AI and the president
and all these useless Trump wars.
So, you probably know what spin it is by now.
Well, there's not much asking you about it if you didn't already know.
No, I mean, I heard something vague about somebody on top of a bridge,
but honestly, I heard Washington.
They didn't even say Washington, D.C. or Washington State,
so I had no clue.
Oh.
Oh, well.
Well, goodbye.
Bye.
That was an abrupt call.
Go ahead.
So, I looked him up because Rob found this person's name,
which is fascinating because his name is Guido Reichstatter.
So, is it Italian?
Is it German?
Is it a little mix of everything?
I don't know.
Whose name is this?
The guy on the bridge.
Oh, okay.
And this is not the first time he did it.
In 2022, he spent 24 hours on the bridge to protest the overturning of Rovue Wade.
What I'd like to know is, he climbs the top of this bridge.
How do people know he's there?
He tweeted about it.
He tweets about it.
Hang on.
I could tweet that I'm on top of a bridge.
Is everybody going to freak out about that when I'm home?
No, he tweeted a photo taken from up there, which is quite a nice photo.
Good composition.
Well, I'm sure that will mean a lot to him, Rob.
Thank you for the compliment.
Okay.
Well, you know, there are other ways of protesting, too.
I'm not saying this is a bad way, but it's not what I was expecting to talk about.
Okay.
We have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hello, guys.
How are you today?
Hey, and let me say hello to Alex, and thank you, Alex, for two weeks ago on BAI.
Pretty good shout-out to my dog.
Absolutely.
Anytime, my friend.
Thank you.
Yeah, I didn't realize you were sitting across to me, because I know we're talking to Rob.
Were you the one sitting across to me when I was eating?
That was me.
That was me, buddy, back at the screening of the Joy Bubbles movie.
That was a great show.
What did you think of it?
It was very good.
I talked about it on this program afterward, and, yeah, it was a lovely movie, a good piece
of work, a good info about a really fascinating figure in phone freak history and phone history.
The movie is called Joy Bubbles.
Look it up if you haven't seen it.
It's during the rounds of festivals and things.
It was very touching.
That's all I could say.
It was also funny, and I had a couple good laughs, but seriously, yeah, I spoke to him once or twice,
and he was a hell of a guy.
I think there's an interview with him on Off the Hook.
Did we do an interview with Joy Bubbles?
I think we did.
I can look it up.
Yeah, yeah, a long time ago, before my time on the program, and I think before all of
our time on the program, except for you, Emanuel.
But, yeah, it definitely happened.
It's on our archive on 2600.com.
You can find it there.
Okay, I just want to say a shout-out to Rob.
Rob, thanks for the help.
You went beyond the call to do any help for me to get around.
I appreciate that.
That was good.
It was a good hang.
Thank you.
I want to talk about two things.
L-I-R-R.
You could say L-I squared R, just like you would say T squared L.
You could double the R by squaring it.
Wow.
That wasn't in the article.
Yeah.
By the way, talking about Grok, have you seen Grok is really messing up and it pissing
off a lot of people because people are paying and it's not working right?
It's keep having a lot of app issues?
Wow.
Can't say I'm surprised.
I like using AI when it works, honestly.
Like to show it a bottle and ask to tell me what it is.
And then tell you what kind of medicine.
It was pretty good in those cases.
But Grok has a couple of problems.
One, it does hallucinate.
I've asked it a couple of technical questions on transistor circuits.
And I've seen it make mistakes, obvious mistakes.
Like saying, oh, you could use a PNP in place of an MPN and you can't do that without redoing
the circuit.
Wow.
When it gets things wrong, it kind of doubles down and insists that it's right when it's
definitely not right.
And that's where you see the real potential disadvantage with AI and large language models.
Yeah, well, I don't understand.
Why can't they probably double check?
I just don't understand that.
That's one thing.
If you don't realize what the problems are, somebody who would just take it for gospel
to be let down the wrong tree.
I've asked the questions like, let's say, you know, even a technical question like about
hacking or telephones.
And it gets it totally wrong.
And if you keep telling it, it just says, I'm sorry.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Do you have a situation where it keeps bringing up things you've asked in the past?
Like on this program, you know, months ago, I had a tooth work done and I was asking AI
about this.
And it kept bringing up the status of my teeth with every question I asked.
And that went on for months.
And if you ask it other questions, it'll keep bringing and regurgitating that.
And I can imagine.
I haven't noticed that.
It's not supposed to remember stuff.
But what I've had seen it happen right now, if you ask it, if you talk to it for more than
a minute or two, it keeps flipping back from received to transmit.
And it also says you hit a limit.
But another thing, I like to do vampire stories.
And it keeps saying to me, oh, I can't help you with that.
That's too much sex involved.
Really?
Roll something.
So, you know, they really tied it up on that.
And I keep saying to Drunk, this ain't graphic.
You're not trying to get a video.
It's just doing a conversation.
And it says, oh, you might hurt yourself if you think you're a vampire.
Wow.
It's great getting into arguments with it.
It really is.
And they keep asking me, do I want to sign up for the $30 or the $300?
And I keep saying, not if you keep hallucinating.
I'm not going to pay for you.
Wow.
Well, stand up for us humans.
We need the help.
You know, I ain't going to sign up.
But once you sign up, trying to get your credit card company to stop paying them will be a hassle.
I ain't going to do that.
I would love to sign up for a service because I've asked it some questions like how to get somewhere.
Sometimes it will give you the right answers.
I've also asked to, you know, show the picture of something like outside.
It will tell you like what kind of a store it is.
So it can be helpful.
But you've got to double check.
Because I see they make mistakes on that.
I showed a box of cereal.
It told me that it was something completely different.
And I said, no, you've got to be wrong.
And I asked someone, I said, you're right.
You're not getting the right information from Grock.
And it will apologize.
But then it will keep doing it.
Yeah, I know.
I keep telling it.
But listen, they have to do a better programming of it.
But seriously, Grock is having a lot of issues.
And if you go on Reddit or other places, everybody's complaining.
A lot of people are trying to cancel their $300 service at Grocks.
And they're telling people, oh, just stay with us.
It will be fixed within a month or two.
And they haven't fixed it.
It's been going on since the beginning of February.
They're having a lot of issues.
That's something.
But again, guys, it was really nice seeing both of you.
And I didn't realize that it was you, Alex, across from me.
Because I never said hello to you.
I think it was Rob that was across from you, right?
Yeah, it was me.
And it was another friend of ours from the 2600 meetings, the New York 2600 meetings.
Alex wasn't there.
But I was.
And it was a good time, a good movie.
It was also, I mentioned this on the show, it was interesting watching the movie because it had open audio descriptions.
And so those of us who were sighted got a chance to experience what it might be like to watch a movie when you don't have vision.
And so I don't know if I told you this, but during part of the movie, I shut my eyes for a bit.
And just, you know, experienced it like that.
And it was an interesting experience.
And it was a good movie.
And, yeah, the filmmaker should be very proud of it.
I know that their visual explanation, that was very good.
And it really was just the way it should be done, you know, but, you know, it should be done for the blind people when they listen to it on a separate channel.
That was really, really good.
And, by the way, a service animal.
Big problem we're having, just to say this, that people with fake animals are causing a problem with fake dogs, like on airplanes.
Now we have to go through all this government red tape just to fly.
What do you mean, fake dogs?
What's a fake dog?
Well, fake dogs, not a fake dog, where someone says, my dog is a service animal.
If you notice, my dog didn't react to all the noise around us.
It just laid there.
But a lot of times you go on airplanes, dogs are jumping up on people.
And now everybody's paying for it.
Because if I want to fly, I have to fill out form three days in advance saying that I certify as a dog and I've got to answer all these questions.
It's crazy.
If I want to fly, I'm being discriminated based on that.
Well, I've got to say, your dog is a true professional.
You know, I've encountered many dogs, and that dog keeps their cool.
Well, I'm trained that way.
Anything I do, my dog ain't that fantastic.
Your dog just disconnected you, I think.
Wow.
That's a powerful dog.
Don't cross the dog.
It definitely wasn't us.
We didn't do that.
We did not hang up at all.
But I can say that the interview with Joy Bubbles was on November 20th, 1991, and it's online.
So go to the Off the Hook Archive on 2600.com, and you can listen to an interview from 1991.
Actually, Emanuel, about five minutes ago, I dropped that link in the chat.
Someone did mention that, you know, they had Googled it, and the AI overview suggested November 20th, 1991.
So I went to confirm.
You used AI to get an answer?
I just did this myself.
I looked on our own site.
So I saw that that date has been suggested.
So I went back and looked at the November 1991 archives.
Yeah.
Do you know what I did?
I went to 2600.com and typed in the little search engine window there, Joy Bubbles.
And it came back immediately with November, whatever the hell I just said, 1991.
Yeah, that'll do it.
Yeah.
All right.
802-3214.
Someone beat me to it.
802-3214-225 is our phone number for future reference.
We're going to take one, maybe two more calls.
So let's start with this one.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Me again.
I don't know what happened.
We just got disconnected.
We think your dog did it because you were saying something critical of your dog.
But we also gave out the date of the Joy Bubbles interview on Off the Hook.
It's November 1991.
Yeah, let me be real quick and I'll get off.
I don't want to be like Rebel.
I'm not apologizing the whole time.
But seriously.
No, I was saying that any service animal is going to be well trained.
And I was saying to you before I got disconnected, if any of you guys ever want to do something good, be a puppy racer.
That means the school's always looking for people who will take a dog at eight weeks old, keep it for about a year and a half.
That's the hardest thing to give them up.
And you train the dog or teach the dog how to socialize.
You don't teach the dog how to do things like cross streets.
That's up to the school.
But basically, you take the dog everywhere to restaurants, to your businesses.
And the whole idea is to teach the dog and socialize the dog.
So how does that work in restaurants?
Because it's a sighted person walking with a seeing eye dog.
Do they have a special, like, vest or something that identifies?
They have a vest as dog in training.
Okay.
And legally, in some states you have a right to do it.
In other states you don't.
Basically, a dog doesn't have the right to be in a restaurant.
I have the right to have the dog company.
It's not the dog having the right.
It's I, as a disabled person, have the right to have a service animal.
But you need to, you know, somebody's got to train these dogs.
Yeah.
And you've got to train them not to bark.
You never hear the dog bark.
I only heard my dog bark twice in her whole life.
Really?
And did she have good reason to bark?
Yeah, she was brand new.
She was in the house and something startled her.
She gave one bark and then I think I heard another bark and that was it.
Wow.
The only time they will bark if there's a fire or something and they want to try to look
you to that there's something that has to be dealt with.
But other than that, in almost eight and a half years with her, because she'll be ten pretty
soon, I've never heard a bark.
Wow.
And that's a training.
And you see the difference between a dog that's being passed off as a service animal
when they're just a pet, it's bad for the dog because a pet's going to get stressed out
in an airplane.
Right.
These dogs have been put on trains in their training.
They've been taken to places like getting on a ferry or something.
So they know what it's like to be on all these different conveyances and they know how to
just sit there.
When I give her the command to sit, she'll sit in that one place for the whole movie.
Maybe she'll move once or twice because someone brushes her, she's getting out of the way
or she wants to move.
It's like you wouldn't want to move your legs.
Other than that, she's not going to move.
Uh-huh.
Like I said, true professional.
Yeah, thank you very much.
I appreciate you guys, you know, giving a shout out to her.
That just means that she's doing her job.
Cool.
I'm going to let you guys go.
I don't want to be a rebel, but just saying that Crockett's got a whole bunch of little
issues.
Yes.
All right.
Thanks for the call and best of luck.
We're going to try and take one more, 802-321-4225.
You know, I was in a coffee shop yesterday and there was a dog in there that was definitely
not a professional dog.
It was just yapping and barking and just being extremely rude the whole damn time.
It was a puppy.
It was a puppy.
Okay, fine.
I appreciate that.
But, you know, the thing that was even worse about that, and I couldn't even see the dog.
I was in a different part of the coffee shop.
It was so loud.
I could hear it like it was next to me.
Then I hear the guy who owns the dog talking about the dog, explaining all about the dog,
you know, the history in a really loud voice that was louder than the dog.
And I was so happy when the two of them left.
And another dog came in too.
And that caused all kinds of turmoil.
So don't short sell the advantages of a dog who is trained to be professional and polite
and all that.
Not that dogs shouldn't have fun.
You know, dogs should also be able to unleash.
But, you know, not on airplanes, not in coffee shops.
No, in the dog park.
There, gosh, six years ago, seven years ago now, there was this amazing footage of some
service dogs that were being trained in Canada.
And they, 12 dogs, went to see a performance of Billy Elliot, the musical, because they
needed to learn how to sit in the theater.
And there's this amazing picture of 12 dogs sitting in the auditorium, very politely watching
this musical.
And they put on the whole show for the dogs.
Yeah.
How did the performers feel about having all these dogs watching them?
Um, apparently they did very well.
It was part of the, um, the American, excuse me, let me try that again.
This is part of the Ontario, the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
Um, I've been to Stratford, Ontario.
So, yeah.
Um, and the dogs were incredibly well behaved.
It's part of their two year training.
Um, and yeah, apparently at the Stratford Festival, there are a lot of people who are
service dogs who accompany their owners.
So they were more than happy to do this kind of training.
And it was a relaxed performance for audiences sensitive to light, sound, and noise.
We, uh, Kyle, we celebrated, uh, Canadian Thanksgiving in Stratford, Ontario.
But yes, we did.
We discovered that nobody else was celebrating it.
At least not where we were.
We were touring.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was kind of cool.
There's a phone call.
There's a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hello there.
Hey, how's it going?
I, uh, I wanted to follow up on the guy who called, um, with the guy protesting on the
bridge.
Okay.
And I, I have to, um, I have to, um, what do I have to do?
Yeah.
What do you have to do?
I'm at a loss for work.
Well, I have to basically say bad, bad, bad, because, uh, he was on, um, Democracy Now!
I mean, Emmy Goodman interviewed him.
Oh, I thought you meant the guy who called in was on Democracy Now!
It would be a weird thing to be on Democracy Now!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The guy who was on the bridge.
Okay.
And, uh, he was very cohesive and he basically said what, you know, seems to be one of the,
uh, shared tenets of off the hook as well.
That is, keep protesting.
Don't, don't take it laying down and, um, raise your voice, raise your head, uh, raise your
bridge or whatever.
I think the guy who called was a little dismayed by your, um, lack of, uh, responsiveness.
Well, I can't know about everything.
You know, no, I understand.
I keep track of the bridges around me.
If I see people on top of those bridges, I'll know about that.
But this, I didn't even know where this bridge was because none of the reports said where
it was.
Hmm.
Hmm.
I did know it was in the Washington DC area.
Um, but you know, without even paying much attention, I guess, I don't know.
It is true that, you know, as you know, well, uh, the mainstream media, when there is a
story that even vents or points to a different point of view, they try to ignore it.
So it might've not just, uh, been a non-story by, uh, accident.
Well, it was a non-story here.
You know, I, I saw maybe one newspaper report.
Hmm.
No, I saw several and believe me, I wasn't looking for it, you know, it was, uh, but
okay.
That, uh, that was one thing.
Um, another thing, Gila said, stop the world.
I want to get off.
I think that's a shared, uh, uh, feeling by a lot of people.
How do we do that?
Uh, if you find out, let me know.
Well, you can get off the world easier than you can stop the world.
I know that much.
Uh, believe me, it's not that easy.
Well, no, but you can do it.
People have gotten off the world, but nobody has stopped the world.
That is true.
It's something we'll all do someday.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Getting off the world is something we're all going to do someday.
Um, right.
That's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, and, uh, yeah, I, I knew somebody, somebody's therapist told him.
Why are you in such a hurry?
It's going to happen anyway.
It's just a matter of being patient.
Well, we started on a bad note.
We can end on a bad note too.
Okay.
Well, laughter is, uh, you know, laughter will bury all the world's troubles.
Good.
Keep up the good work.
And, um, thank you.
Thank you for your call.
All the best.
And that's going to, uh, do it for calls tonight, uh, because, uh, we've been at this
a long time and we're tired and, and we're overheated.
And, uh, yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty much all I can even say at the moment.
I think the rain stopped.
So it's still going on out here.
So, um, plenty of rain, plenty of rain.
It has stopped here.
It has stopped.
So we, we've been broadcasting on the radio and online for the, for longer than the rain
storm was happening.
And I should point out, it's not going to be warm anymore for a few days.
So, uh, no, it is not.
I so excited.
I said to some people this morning that, um, you know, the high fifties and rainy on
Saturday, I was like, I live in hope.
That is what it's keeping me going right now.
All right.
Well, thanks everybody for listening.
Uh, please keep updated on the, um, upcoming hope conference.
We do have the, um, final deadline for speakers and for workshops, which is June 1st.
You still have a little bit of time.
Not, not that much time though.
Uh, we got a whole shit ton of, um, of, of talks submitted before the early April 30th,
um, deadline, but the final deadline, June 1st, if you didn't get it in by, um, by the
first deadline, you definitely need to get it in by this deadline.
Uh, there's going to be all kinds of updates and, um, uh, new things on the website, hope.net.
So keep checking that.
Uh, and don't forget to get your hotel room as well, because, uh, it's not sold out at the
moment.
It was sold out and we added some more rooms.
And that's going to sell out at some point.
And we'll probably add more rooms after that, but, uh, it's advisable to, um, get them as
quickly as possible.
So you're not left out.
Yeah.
We can't guarantee how long they may be able to keep adding rooms on.
Definitely true.
Definitely true.
Uh, we'll be talking about that a lot more, uh, and, um, announcing our, um, some of our
speakers.
We have some really, really, really good speakers, uh, that we're going to be, uh, spreading
the word about.
And, um, uh, that's going to keep growing.
It's going to keep growing over the next couple of months as, uh, August approaches.
So that's where we stand.
All right.
As you can see, we're all bursting with excitement.
This is the energy of somebody who's been in, uh, temperatures above 90 for most of today.
Uh-huh.
So.
Yes.
And yes.
Write to us.
O-T-H at 2600.com.
Do try and put a little zip in your words to wake us up a little bit.
And, uh, we'll, uh, maybe read, uh, what you have to say over the air if we are so inclined.
Uh, until next week when we will be on WBAI at 7 p.m.
And, oh, shit, do we, is next week a, uh, no, it's not, okay, in two weeks we do a call
and show on BAI, I think.
So next week is another overtime.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
We can do that.
We'll see you then.
Good night.