Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello greetings salutations oh that yeah that that yeah yes many many salutations i.
|
Ivan:
[0:11]
| Don't take that messages is crashing on your computer as a positive sign at this moment.
|
Sam:
[0:19]
| I i did not reboot i probably should have but i was running late so i didn't but we'll see i.
|
Ivan:
[0:27]
| I okay can i I.
|
Sam:
[0:29]
| A couple of episodes ago, like I, like I had to make a couple edits because like it just missed a couple seconds.
|
Ivan:
[0:38]
| Okay. Yes. It's a point of point of parliamentary. Yes.
|
Sam:
[0:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:44]
| Point of parliamentary procedure. Yes. I'm going to vote. I'm going to make a motion that you reboot.
|
Sam:
[0:51]
| Okay. I will reboot right now.
|
Ivan:
[0:53]
| That can't be because if that's where we're starting off, that can't be a good sign. So let's, let's reboot.
|
Sam:
[0:58]
| Reboot okay i i will reboot i will reconnect here as soon as it's back bye okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:07]
| All right sounds good okay.
|
Sam:
[1:09]
| Excellent you can hear me i can hear you blah blah blah it says it's recording.
|
Ivan:
[1:20]
| I hear you.
|
Sam:
[1:23]
| Hear me we're in a something tree thing yeah that, okay shall we go now yes here to yeah here go thing, wait wait wait I didn't put it on live mode here we go live We'll do it live.
|
Ivan:
[1:50]
| We'll do it live.
|
Sam:
[2:11]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, May 4th, 2024. It's 3-2-1-0 UTC, as I started to say that phrase.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:26]
| It's now 3-2-1-1-7. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Whatever. And it's May the 4th, so May the 4th be with you, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:37]
| Can I just say this is one of the fucking dumbest things? i mean this is one of the fucking dumbest fucking things period you.
|
Sam:
[2:50]
| You do not get into the the star wars day or whatever it is.
|
Ivan:
[2:55]
| And i like star wars okay so it's not that i don't like star wars it's that i find this whole thing dumb but i like star wars it.
|
Sam:
[3:07]
| Is dumb but you know No, it's dumb fun, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[3:11]
| Okay, all right. There are certain... Okay, I will admit there are certain dumb, fun things that I get into. I'm always just like, I hear people made a fourth be with you, and I'm like, I want to tell them, go fuck yourselves. Probably not the nicest response.
|
Sam:
[3:31]
| Well, yeah, yeah. But, you know... You should do like, fuck yourself, you must, or something like in Yoda speak.
|
Ivan:
[3:43]
| And so it's kind of Yoda speak. Oh God. You say? No. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[3:50]
| Okay. Anyway, we're going to do our usual. We're going to do a, but first segment with some non newsy stuff, and then we'll do two newsy segments. Yvonne will pick topics for the first one. I will pick topics for the second one. That's our plan. It's very exciting. very very exciting and as usual like i'm still catching up on movies and books and tv and stuff as i probably will be for the rest of my life and i will do a movie for mine but yvonne first, what is your non-newsy thingy bop a doodle to talk about thingy.
|
Ivan:
[4:26]
| Bop a doodle thingy bop a doodle.
|
Sam:
[4:28]
| Bop of the doodle bop of the doodle a.
|
Ivan:
[4:32]
| Non-newsy non-newsy i was i was debating about what to talk about had a couple.
|
Sam:
[4:36]
| Of things that.
|
Ivan:
[4:37]
| Uh let me talk about i'll go with the with a funnier one okay.
|
Sam:
[4:42]
| Okay funny funny's good okay.
|
Ivan:
[4:44]
| So i've gotten youtube tv last year.
|
Sam:
[4:49]
| Okay now the.
|
Ivan:
[4:52]
| Thing is why did I get YouTube TV? Because I have another.
|
Sam:
[4:57]
| You got it for sports. If I remember.
|
Ivan:
[5:00]
| I got it specifically. Yes, I got it specifically because they offered. I mean, I have a package from our internet provider with streaming TV, which is through a TiVo app. And it works pretty well. But there are certain things I will say that between the TiVo streaming app and the YouTube app. I will say that on balance, the TiVo one is better, but the YouTube one does do certain things that the TiVo one doesn't. And it's things that I like, OK, which is which is a thing, which is why it's not just because it's a nuisance, because both of them have features that are missing on one or the other. okay okay uh so for example youtube tv which seems to be like something stupidly simple but i don't know why streaming operators don't do this more very simply for sports has these easy to have multi views just to have picture in a picture multiple things at the same time you know there are three or four games going on it's.
|
Sam:
[6:16]
| A relatively new addition that they added in the last year i I use it for news, and I'm very excited about it.
|
Ivan:
[6:22]
| But, Sam, it is so ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[6:26]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[6:27]
| That this is like an innovation now. I had a picture. I had a TV with picture in a picture that could put two programs on it back in the 90s.
|
Sam:
[6:40]
| Yeah, decades and decades ago. Yeah. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[6:43]
| I don't understand why it's been such a problem for any of these to just go and just do it. It baffles me. I mean, from your Comcast box, from any of these boxes, you know, DirecTV did offer a lot of multi-views. Okay. All right. They did do that when I had DirecTV. TV. They would allow you to view multiple games at the same time. They would allow you to build sometimes multiple views. They had a multiple... They actually had this with the news multi-view and that kind of stuff. It's actually on there. They still have it. So Direct TV does have it. It's a little bit clunkier than... Well, it was. Direct TV does have a new stream product, which is different. I haven't looked at it there. But the older... But the one that was the satellite one does have all of those.
|
Sam:
[7:38]
| But.
|
Ivan:
[7:40]
| But being that this is digital, I I'm just like, why the fuck can't you just let me stream four programs at the same time? Just let me.
|
Sam:
[7:49]
| Well, and I know that, and they're still actually in the process of rolling it out. Like I, like I said, I also have YouTube TV. I, my normal, at this point, when I watch news on YouTube TV, I use the four up view that has Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and BBC World on at the same time whenever possible. And I say whenever possible because it's on their Apple TV app, it's on their iOS app, but if you're accessing it through the web, they have not yet added that feature.
|
Ivan:
[8:22]
| Oh, that's right. It's not on the fucking website. That's right. Which, explain to me, okay, again, how is this so hard to put on a fucking browser? I'm sorry. there this is this is the shit that makes no earthly sense presumably.
|
Sam:
[8:40]
| It's just prioritization amongst other things it's not that it's that.
|
Ivan:
[8:43]
| Hard oh it's bullshit come on give me a fucking break you know okay well let me explain the biggest beef i had so the one thing is that on the their program guide okay i i i was trying to see is there a way for me to filter these Is there a way we need to do something?
|
Sam:
[9:04]
| Okay, wait, wait, wait.
|
Ivan:
[9:06]
| Hold on, hold on. So I kept trying to fidget on the fucking TV app. I'm like, motherfucker, there's no way for me to pick favorites. What the fuck? And I will admit that I didn't fidget with it a lot because I tried to see, is there a way for me to make these recommendations go away? why why are you recommending me shit that i've never watched or shit that given my viewing you should know i never want to watch this shit okay why the fuck was the app recommending me every damn time i turned it on jesse waters, letters laura ingraham from.
|
Sam:
[9:53]
| Both from fox.
|
Ivan:
[9:54]
| I mean but sam it was consistent every fucking time i go into the app it's like oh do you want to watch some asshole from fox news and i'm like no ask no why you know what well so then i think wait wait well let me let me walk you through yes my my but how I process, okay? So I went and I go to the website itself where you can watch the programs. And I realized that there they allowed you to say, hey, I'm not interested in this. Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[10:29]
| Now, they don't allow it on the fucking app on the TV, but they allow it on the website. I'm like, why the fuck would you not build that into the fucking TV app? Why do I have to go to your website? And then I finally, because I've honestly, I've not given it a lot of time. Okay, because I'm like, I think I went into the settings. I didn't find a quick and easy way to pick like on your, because on DirecTV, on your your channel guides or some of the other apps you can pick your favorites and i'm like hey just show me my fucking favorites don't show me this shit okay uh and and by the way tivo knows what i watch okay yeah and then when i log onto my tivo it's not recommending me fox news it's showing me you know what it's it's recommending my my my hit list okay basically some sports law and order okay and air disasters it knows it knows its guy and my wife watches a lot of home and garden tv some of these reno shows and it's showing those across the board it's not trying to fucking pump down my throat jesse waters right and i'm like okay google you have a search engine ai all of this bullshit are you telling me you cannot make a fucking tv app that figures out that i don't want I don't want to watch any of this shit.
|
Ivan:
[11:54]
| You know everything I search for. How in God's name could you think I want to watch any of this garbage? Okay? And so, but I did finally...
|
Ivan:
[12:05]
| So I decided today, okay, there's got to be a way to modify. Let me go to the set. I did a search. Okay. How do I filter channels so I can get, I could have like my favorites.
|
Sam:
[12:15]
| Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:16]
| And, and then it said, go to your settings and then you can go to guide and then you can do that stuff. I went on the, on the TV and it said, oh no, that could only be done from the website. website and i'm like again what the what the fuck is wrong with you people why can't i do it on the fucking tv why do i have to go to the website i mean what year is this damn it so okay so i go to their damn website and i did go there and i did find out and i found out that i could mute all these fucking channels that i don't want to watch and like make an actual top priority list of the The ones that I wanted to recommend shit to me, which is basically all the sports channels, wherever the fuck Law & Order plays and Air Disasters.
|
Sam:
[13:07]
| So I'll tell you a couple things in terms of how I use it. One, you mentioned like recommendations and I'm like, oh, it has recommendations? I completely hadn't noticed.
|
Ivan:
[13:19]
| When you go in, it shows up.
|
Sam:
[13:21]
| No, I know.
|
Ivan:
[13:22]
| I mean, what are you, blind?
|
Sam:
[13:23]
| Well, yes, because I always do 99.9% of the time, I open it up and I just go down, down, down, down, down until I see my four up news and then I hit the button. I don't even recognize what I see on the way there because I just automatically ignore it.
|
Ivan:
[13:45]
| Okay. But it's not because I want the recommendations. I have to say that because I despise Fox news.
|
Sam:
[13:51]
| No, I know.
|
Ivan:
[13:51]
| It's a visceral thing. It's the problem is that me logging into the stupid thing. And the first thing I see is fucking Fox news.
|
Sam:
[13:58]
| Right. And I'm just like, I hear you. It's just, I sort of, I mentally tune out all of that stuff. And I guess I'm pretty good at it because I don't even, I could not tell you what its recommendations are for me because I don't look at them. But the other thing is that on the rare occasions where I want to do something other than look at the four up news, I just go to the live listing. And one of the options there, you know, without setting up favorites and everything you did, one of the options is to sort by most watched. And so it just automatically the top.
|
Ivan:
[14:38]
| No, no, no, but not most watched by you.
|
Sam:
[14:40]
| Yes, most watched by me. so so like the top four or five on my list are just the ones i watch all the time and so where.
|
Ivan:
[14:52]
| I don't see any okay i'm on live where the hell are you there's oh oh there's this little sword thing okay custom most watched okay there it is okay.
|
Sam:
[15:04]
| And then i have.
|
Ivan:
[15:05]
| The custom one now.
|
Sam:
[15:06]
| Okay yeah you have the custom one now but most watch just automatically sorts okay and it's it's based i I can't tell like what the timeframe is, but I think it must be like most watched over the last like two or three weeks or something. And so like, it always has like the news channels. And then like, you know, every once in a while, once in a while I'll watch like one of the local stations or PBS or something and they'll pop up into there and then everything else is just down below it. So I never have to scroll down to find anything. I actually want to.
|
Ivan:
[15:34]
| But you see, here's the thing. I get that. I mean, my whole point is, I'm saying, I hear it's just, why the hell are you recommending these shit that I don't, that there, I've never, you, you should know by now. I don't have the intention to watch. Why the fuck is that stupid application? Not as smart as a fucking.
|
Sam:
[15:55]
| Can I just say.
|
Ivan:
[15:57]
| Can I just say TiVo has not like one, one hundredth of a percentage point of the resources that Google has. Yes.
|
Sam:
[16:06]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:07]
| And I'm sorry. they should be able to if you build a fucking tv app that it should know that hell it makes better recommendation youtube has way better recommendations than their stupid tv app i don't understand why the fuck if your damn video streaming one can do that why the hell is the other one i mean literally sam every fucking time i turn it on it's just trying it just notice the next time it's just trying to jam fucking jesse waters down well and on my throat and i am like i want to fucking punch the tv and every time i see that asshole it's the problem i mean that's the problem i know you're putting you're putting these guys that i despise i turn on my tv and i see an asshole i really if they were in front of me somebody might have to hold me back so i don't punch them and get arrested now.
|
Sam:
[17:00]
| I i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna open mine up on the browser on a different browser than I'm using to record the show. But, you know, because Alex came in here and stole my phone a few minutes ago. So I'll tell you, like, I don't look at these, but like I immediately come up on my homepage. The recommendations are an MSNBC top picks for you. An MSNBC show, a CNN show, a BBC show, then Fox, then another BBC, then Jeopardy. then Family Feud, which I've never watched. All of the rest so far, other than the Fox one, are okay. But then after Family Feud, a hockey game, Dallas Stars versus the Golden Knights.
|
Ivan:
[17:49]
| You're going to be cool. Robbie, man, with your sports watching, I'm sure that it should be there in the top 10.
|
Sam:
[17:59]
| Oh, yeah, yeah. And then something from Cheddar. What the hell is Cheddar anyway?
|
Ivan:
[18:03]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[18:03]
| And then something from the Food Network about drive-ins and diners.
|
Ivan:
[18:09]
| Oh, and I'm sure you're consuming Food Network. Like, you know, you're snorting that shit.
|
Sam:
[18:14]
| Okay, then Penn & Teller. Yeah, I like Penn & Teller. They're okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:17]
| Yeah, but it's like 10 deep.
|
Sam:
[18:20]
| And then Oxygen True Crime. I'm not a true crime person. I don't like those. They just never get me. Anyway, you get the idea. But, like, I normally just tune these out. and let's see in the library section it's just got new stuff.
|
Ivan:
[18:35]
| From my library listen sam the fact that the fourth on the top five recommendations you got there is not just fox but no it's a fucking hockey game why the hell are they wrecked up and listen you haven't watched a microsecond of sports on that thing unless it was by accident that.
|
Sam:
[18:56]
| That is true that is true the the other the The, the, the, I had another thing to say, but I've already, my mind has like gone blank.
|
Ivan:
[19:06]
| Oh, that's the age.
|
Sam:
[19:07]
| Yeah. That's, that's the age. Oh, I know what I was going to say. You know, it's probably just really bad granularity on the recommendations. Like it's probably just like, for instance, I can't explain the sports for me, but on why Fox would show up, it's probably just like, oh, you like news shows.
|
Ivan:
[19:26]
| But I don't watch any news.
|
Sam:
[19:28]
| That's right. You don't. I do, but you don't.
|
Ivan:
[19:30]
| I don't watch any news. And I don't know why it insists on the first three to show me is fucking Fox over and over and over. And I don't want, I mean, I've never watched them. I mean, I've not watched any news on it. Because I do, I mean, the only news that I consume for the most part that are video is Bloomberg. And right now I'm basically watching it on YouTube.
|
Sam:
[19:56]
| Right. Not for YouTube TV.
|
Ivan:
[19:59]
| No, not through YouTube, because they moved for whatever reason. They did a reorg at YouTube, I mean, at Bloomberg, where they are now pushing a lot of their content through YouTube. And so I'm watching them on YouTube live. They've got live streams of their shows there. And they have, like, now, this is the other weird thing. They have, like, two competing morning shows. shows one's a radio focused show and, The other one's a TV product, okay? I guess Michael Bloomberg has a lot of money to spend on this shit. Okay, so one is the radio one, where the radio one, it's a radio studio. They have cameras for the people, but it's not a slick produced TV product.
|
Sam:
[20:53]
| Right, it's a radio show with a camera pointed out.
|
Ivan:
[20:56]
| It's correct, okay? OK, and like they have that one.
|
Sam:
[20:59]
| We if we actually released the video of us recording, it would be like basic.
|
Ivan:
[21:04]
| It's just basically exactly. That's exactly what that that would be. And then there is a TV one that they have. And the thing is that I guess, you know, and they and they shifted my favorite host from the TV one to the radio one. So I'm on the radio one.
|
Sam:
[21:20]
| Right. One other thing I wanted to mention before we move off YouTube TV is I did notice that recently, I think they rolled it out for sports first. So you might've seen this a while ago, but they just rolled it out for the news one. You can customize your four up now. And oh yeah, now, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[21:39]
| They've been doing that for the game. So I've got, I've got different choices of what I, what I can see. Yes. Yeah. Like, so I, and I.
|
Sam:
[21:46]
| Have not changed my default for because those are the big four news networks i know there is like a 24 hour like abc or some some other crap but like these are the big.
|
Ivan:
[22:00]
| Four so like if i want to keep once again once again yes why should there be a limit on what the fuck you should just be able to put why can't i put law and order in one corner an nhl game on one the news on one and the weather on the other one right just because that's what i want yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:23]
| No absolutely or or have more than four if you want like do.
|
Ivan:
[22:28]
| A nine up do a nine up i mean well the direct tv used to do an eight up for the football games on sunday for example they would show you eight games at the same time I mean, it was with HD, thank God. I mean, the screens were a little bit, but they had like the score around it and the thing, and you could flip from audio from each one to pick which audio feed you were listening to. So, I mean, I'm like, if you could do that 20 years ago, why the fuck? you to do that.
|
Sam:
[22:57]
| Well the one thing i notice and then we should move on i'm at the live guide right now on the browser and as you you know scroll down and it tells you what's on now what's on in half an hour what's on in an hour etc the usual like grid view of what's on but also the, next to the channel icon is actual like live preview of what's on yeah yeah that okay now Now, here's the best. I noticed that.
|
Ivan:
[23:25]
| But you know what? Why the hell can't they have that on the fucking TV? What on the TV? That actually looks cool.
|
Sam:
[23:33]
| Yeah. And so you can just scroll up and down and see what's on every channel.
|
Ivan:
[23:37]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[23:38]
| You know, that's kind of cool. I like that.
|
Ivan:
[23:41]
| Yeah. They should have that on the fucking TV.
|
Sam:
[23:43]
| But they should add so that if you mouse over it, you get the audio, too. Yeah. At least when you're on the computer, you know? Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[23:50]
| Anyway.
|
Sam:
[23:51]
| Anyway. So anyway. So I'm going to quit this extra browser before my computer, like, make sure I'm quitting the right browser, not the one that we're recording.
|
Ivan:
[23:59]
| Good idea.
|
Sam:
[24:01]
| And, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:02]
| I keep doing this thing in my car right now where I hate when buttons have multiple functions. When I get on a call, the button that I use to pull up information on my display turns into the button to hang up on a call. And occasionally I'm like, I go and I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, oh, damn it. Nope, sorry. I hung up on you. I'm sorry. So. Right.
|
Sam:
[24:23]
| Yeah. So anyway, it's time for my movie. My movie.
|
Ivan:
[24:27]
| The movie. Yes. We get another movie. Woo.
|
Sam:
[24:32]
| We are up to November now. November 23rd. We watched.
|
Ivan:
[24:38]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[24:39]
| 2023. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[24:40]
| It's just double checking.
|
Sam:
[24:41]
| Double checking, you know, but November 23rd, 2023, I watched Gremlins 2, the new batch from 1990.
|
Ivan:
[24:52]
| I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[24:55]
| Do you remember gremlins too? Like, obviously like, okay.
|
Ivan:
[24:59]
| Look, I didn't. Okay. I, I, I didn't watch. I think I may have watched some minutes of gremlins and the original. This is too. Yes. So the first one decided this is idiotic. I don't ever want to watch another minute.
|
Sam:
[25:15]
| So I gather you haven't watched the sequel either. I have.
|
Ivan:
[25:18]
| Yeah. And I have no clue. Yeah. But, but I despised whatever... amount of time i spent watching the first one.
|
Sam:
[25:29]
| Huh interesting like this is one of those like well that was.
|
Ivan:
[25:33]
| Very popular but it was.
|
Sam:
[25:34]
| A very popular movie.
|
Ivan:
[25:35]
| That i recall so therefore this i'm in the minority opinion.
|
Sam:
[25:38]
| Yeah like i i like the original gremlins now it is one of the ones where i'd say like it hasn't held up that well you know okay but it was it was okay and like Like earlier, I'm talking about Gremlins 2 now, but like a little bit earlier, like a year or two earlier, I had rewatched the original Gremlins. And I think I don't remember what rating I gave it, but bottom line is it does not hold up that well, but it's not horrible. You.
|
Ivan:
[26:11]
| Know, I just realized.
|
Sam:
[26:12]
| I should like archive like and have a little web page with all the ratings and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:18]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[26:19]
| I mean, I have a webpage with all the list of things I've watched, but I have not added my ratings.
|
Ivan:
[26:24]
| You should add the ratings.
|
Sam:
[26:27]
| Maybe I'll start doing that going forward.
|
Ivan:
[26:29]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[26:31]
| But I'm not going to go back and try to find all my old ratings. That would just be too much work.
|
Ivan:
[26:38]
| Maybe when you retire.
|
Sam:
[26:39]
| Yeah, sure.
|
Ivan:
[26:41]
| Add that to the list of projects.
|
Sam:
[26:42]
| Yeah, I'll add that. I'll get right on.
|
Ivan:
[26:45]
| Put that on the list of projects.
|
Sam:
[26:48]
| Anyway i think the original gremlins i my bottom line was it was still okay, but i there were a variety of things that felt like like the special effects really seemed dated like it wasn't no well you know you don't say well sometimes they're movies from that era that the way they use the special effects still doesn't look bad you know it's not distracting it's.
|
Ivan:
[27:14]
| It's It's true. It's true. You're absolutely right.
|
Sam:
[27:17]
| Because technology has advanced and things aren't going to look like they were made today, but sometimes it doesn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[27:24]
| Look, some old special effects are still amazing, like, you know, the way that they look. I mean, I mean, I'm always amazed, you know, when I've I think, you know, I know I watched again 2001 A Space Odyssey in the last four or five years and I was watching it and I'm like realizing, damn, this is.
|
Sam:
[27:39]
| I mean.
|
Ivan:
[27:40]
| I know that sometimes some things are that this is amazing considering when it was done.
|
Sam:
[27:45]
| Right right so anyway and gremlins 2 i came in like my memory like my vague memory from whenever i last saw it decades ago was that it was like one of those sequels that did not need to be made you know that it was like it didn't really add anything it wasn't like it was just like the The first one was good, but the second one was like, Hey, how do we squeeze more money out of this thing? Right. And it was, and, and it wasn't impressive, but I will say this when I watched it this time, I actually kind of liked it more than the original.
|
Ivan:
[28:25]
| Wow. Look at that.
|
Sam:
[28:27]
| You know, it's, it's still had some of the same issues. Some of the special effects didn't hold up, but like it, I think it had a little bit more humor. I mean, they both had humor, but like this one for, for those who don't remember the original gremlins was set in a small town. Gremlins two was set in New York city. like the the guy who was in gremlins gets a job at like this big mega corporation and which by the way this is another one where i also realized as i was watching this is there any late 80s early 90s movie that does not have a character based on donald trump because the guy who was in charge of the corporation this guy worked at was clearly Clearly a Donald Trump caricature, you know, and so it's like, OK, then.
|
Ivan:
[29:22]
| But he was I mean, he he was he was very in the new popular known in the 80s. And, you know, absolutely. Yes.
|
Sam:
[29:34]
| I mean, it was sort of a mix between Donald Trump and a couple other people. But still, you could see it sort of shining through. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[29:41]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:42]
| And the, but you know, I felt like they had, it was, the scale was a little bit bigger. They had a wider variety of the gremlins that actually had like characters and personalities behind them. Whereas the first one, it was like a bunch of generic gremlins and like one that like you really like, stood out from all the rest this one had several that were sort of like caricatures of different things there was one of them who actually talked and there were a couple other i don't know it just it was stupid it was dumb it did have bad special effects but it it still amused me i still ended up laughing okay so you got it funny okay so you got entertained okay so i got entertained but it it is stupid entertainment to be clear it is not you know there's nothing.
|
Ivan:
[30:34]
| Wrong with stupid entertainment.
|
Sam:
[30:35]
| Exactly like stupid entertainment you know you know last week or a couple weeks ago we did that like see inside movie and that that's like okay serious heavy movie this is the complete opposite it's just stupid humor some of it is so stupid you groan but some of it's just like haha that was cute you know and there's no huge brain power behind this stuff but you know it's fine and also you know it had a few people in it like it that you recognize from other things you know it had Add Christopher Lee in it. Robert Picardo. The love interest is Phoebe Cates. You know? Phoebe! Yeah, so. Anyway, it was fine. Let me do a. And there were.
|
Ivan:
[31:31]
| So you're going to give it a?
|
Sam:
[31:32]
| I'll give it a thumbs up. I mean, it was just like I said, stupid, but fun.
|
Ivan:
[31:37]
| It's the thumbs up. Wow.
|
Sam:
[31:39]
| Oh, and it had cameos from like Leonard Martin. Leonard Moulton. and Hulk Hogan and you know anyway Hulk Hogan good old Hulk Hogan guy that.
|
Ivan:
[31:57]
| Fucked what was it the guy's wife and then he.
|
Sam:
[32:00]
| Was he was in the news this week too like we're i'm sure we'll end up talking about the donald trump stuff if you don't pick it i will and one of the they had this lawyer on who handled the hush money cases for both of trump's women that we're talking about the the playboy model and the porn star he also handled the case with With Hulk Hogan's sex tape, amongst other things.
|
Ivan:
[32:25]
| I mean, okay, this guy, so this is the lawyer Peter Thiel paid for the Hogan thing.
|
Sam:
[32:34]
| I think so. I think so.
|
Ivan:
[32:35]
| Yeah. It must be. Ah, well, scumbags in a world unite. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[32:44]
| Anyway, thumbs up for a dumb, stupid movie. If you're in the mood for a dumb, stupid movie that also has bad old special effects that you can laugh at as well, try out Gremlins 2. But, you know, if you're going to do Gremlins, though, you have to do both of them, right? You don't just start with the sequel. You watch both. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[33:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[33:10]
| Not necessarily back to back. That might be a bit much.
|
Ivan:
[33:13]
| Might be a bit much. Okay.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| But you can watch one and then like the next week, watch the other or something like that. I don't know. But, you know, so. That's my movie for this week. I know everyone is so excited.
|
Ivan:
[33:27]
| Exited.
|
Sam:
[33:28]
| Exited. And speaking of exited, it is time to take a break and then we'll do the newsy subjects.
|
Ivan:
[33:36]
| Newsy.
|
Sam:
[33:37]
| Sound good to you?
|
Ivan:
[33:38]
| Sounds newsy.
|
Sam:
[33:40]
| Okay, here we go. We really have to make more breaks sometime. It's just, you know, when I've got time to sit down and do something, there are other things higher on the list, and I usually don't have time. Anyway, your turn, Yvonne. Your turn. Newsy, newsy, exciting, current events-related stuff.
|
Ivan:
[34:52]
| All right, let me see. how can I avoid anything.
|
Sam:
[35:07]
| Tough call Von stumped.
|
Ivan:
[35:11]
| I am a little bit stumped what is this thing with the stupid AI devices.
|
Sam:
[35:18]
| Okay we're going to do that.
|
Ivan:
[35:19]
| Yeah sure why not Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:22]
| So basically this is about, we've talked about stupid AI in general, like chat GPT and Google and Bing introducing AI into their search engines.
|
Ivan:
[35:34]
| Well, everybody is in a competitive arms race to introduce all.
|
Sam:
[35:37]
| Yeah, because they all think this is the new miracle thing that's going to solve everybody's problems, and everybody's in FOMO mode, that fear of missing out, that if they don't do it, then they're going to get crushed by the people who do do it, and as the technology is developing. And part of the problem that we've seen, and we've talked about on this show many times before, is that there are things that it's great at, but there are things that it's horrible at. and at least for now maybe the technology will develop or as some or a different technology will develop but the thing is they're pushing a lot of the things it's bad at really hard and i'll give you an example first of like stuff it's actually pretty decent at like i i've been using chat gpt just this week you know i've talked before about how i want to like you know on on election graphs, I know the methodology that I want to use to not just have like the odds of winning if the election was today or if the polls don't change at all between now and election day, but also take into account the data of like how over the last cycles that I've done this thing, how much polls have changed over time. So I can say like, Hey, you know.
|
Sam:
[37:00]
| Given the polls look like this, you know, 180 some days from the election, what are the odds? Like, what are the chances of a state where one candidate is ahead by 4%, 180 days out, of them winning or losing, right? And, you know, so there are a bunch of steps I need to do of data transformation and moving things from one place to another and collecting the data and blah, blah, blah. And I know in my head the steps that I want to do.
|
Sam:
[37:34]
| But like actually coding what would be necessary to do that, I know would take me a long time and would be like, you know, sort of painful and I'd do something and it wouldn't work and I'd debug and I'd repeat and blah, blah, blah. And so I've been like just telling ChatGPT what I want. And I'm doing it sort of carefully one step at a time, I'm building up like the simple version, then adding something, then adding something, then adding something, but oh my God, it's saving me so much time.
|
Sam:
[38:04]
| And sometimes what it does isn't perfect, but I can tell it what it got wrong and it corrects it. And it's usually pretty good on the second try, like on a, and I'm, I, I, now I paid up so I can, I get chat GPT four instead of 3.5. And it seems like it's a little bit smarter than 3.5, but like I've, you know, worst case scenario if it's not figuring out what i want i go into the scaffolding it's already created and i've i figure it out and i adjust what i need to and i move on it has still saved me a lot of time and of course for like creative stuff like you know or or summarization like here i have this longer text, give me a shorter summary of it. Or, you know, give me, you know, a sonnet about raindrops or whatever, you know, it can do all that kind of stuff in, in an entertaining way. But then when you ask it, like, really, like, factual questions or stuff like that, that's when it screws up all the freaking time. And the people adding it to like search engines and stuff, You keep seeing examples of ridiculous stuff that it sends out. Now, maybe it's okay 90% of the time. I don't know because it's sucking things in from Wikipedia and stuff and it's just regurgitating it to you.
|
Sam:
[39:29]
| But that 10%, it gets wrong. It gets spectacularly wrong. And it sounds right, but it's wrong. And here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[39:38]
| And this topic was about the stupid devices. Um, right now.
|
Sam:
[39:45]
| You can, you can get interfaces for these. You can get the chat GPT app on your phone and you can play with it. They just released an iOS version of Claude, which is the same thing from another company. There are a variety of these that you can use on your phone and you go in and you type questions, or in some cases you can, you can say the questions out loud and it'll answer back verbally and all this kind of stuff. So you can get this stuff as a smartphone app. And I know there's all kinds of rumors that the next version of iOS is going to have some more of this stuff in it as well. We'll see. But we'll see how much is in there and whether they do it in a good way. But the stupid AI devices, and so far there have been two that have gotten a lot of press. One is the Humane AI pin, and the other is the Rabbit R1. and basically these are attempts to have you buy a separate device that is essentially nothing but an interface to one of these chatbots so.
|
Ivan:
[40:50]
| It's kind of like alexa.
|
Sam:
[40:51]
| Sort of except alexa and siri are both kind of stupid i mean i i yeah you can't do all the same stuff but it but yeah it's it's the same kind of thing but it's what it is i mean but it's the same thing it's.
|
Ivan:
[41:04]
| Just changing right Right. Are you changing the engine on it?
|
Sam:
[41:07]
| And presumably, like, you know, I mean, we talked about, you know, iOS adding more stuff. Presumably, they're going to make Siri smarter and do some other stuff like that. I'm sure they're going to do the same kind of crap with Alexa. No inside knowledge. But with these things, so like the humane pin is like a little pin that you can pin to your shirt. And it's got, it's got a little mini projector so that when it needs to display something visually, it'll, will project onto your hand. You like put your hand in front of it and it'll project like text onto your hand or whatever. But otherwise it gets, it's, it's all verbal. You talk to it and you tell it what you want. And the Marquise Brownlee, who's a big tech reviewer on YouTube, reviewed this thing and And absolutely eviscerated it saying that, you know, it was, it was horrible. It was one of the worst things he's ever reviewed. And like one of the people involved with the company is like, you know, how can you do this to us? And it's like, dude, put out a product that doesn't suck, you know, because like this thing costs like 700 something dollars.
|
Ivan:
[42:20]
| Jesus.
|
Sam:
[42:21]
| And when you talk to it like i've seen some video of people using this thing mark marquez brownlee and some other folks you talk to it and ask a question and it sits there and thinks about it for like 10 or 20 seconds before it comes back with a response and the response has all the same problems as talking to chat gpt in terms of like sometimes it's right sometimes it's wrong You should, supposedly you can like do things with it, like, you know, order an Uber or whatever, all kinds of stuff like that. Sometimes it gets it right. Sometimes it gets it wrong. And it's like, really? And then the, the rabbit is a device that does have a screen. that is a touch screen, but for almost all functions, the touch screen is disabled and, you navigate with a little, a little scroll wheel and, oh, and it's bright fluorescent orange, by the way, that's the color that's available.
|
Ivan:
[43:24]
| Great. Great.
|
Sam:
[43:25]
| You can get a case for it. That's a different color, but the actual device is bright, bright, fluorescent orange plastic.
|
Ivan:
[43:32]
| Well, at least you'll find it.
|
Sam:
[43:33]
| I guess so. And you can scroll and pick things. Remember the very first iPod with the little scroll wheel to pick things? And that was pretty cool. But this is more like a thumb wheel. Anyway, I guess you pick the functions through the crappy little UI and the scroll wheel. But then it has all the exact same problems I mentioned before. And somebody reverse engineered it and figured out that it is just an Android device with an older version of Android. And so there's absolutely nothing there. Nothing. There's nothing that you couldn't just use as an app on your Android, on your Android phone or whatever. Now, the CEO came out and said, no, no, no. It's like, you know, it's custom proprietary and you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. but what he said boiled down to it won't work on a regular android phone because we inserted protections to make sure it'll only run on this device nice but otherwise it would you know and so the thing with both of these well think about it.
|
Ivan:
[44:46]
| Eight hundred dollars for that.
|
Sam:
[44:47]
| Oh and the second one the rabbit's only like 200 but the first one still even.
|
Ivan:
[44:52]
| 200 look i i can get a damn google nest hub.
|
Sam:
[44:55]
| For about.
|
Ivan:
[44:56]
| A hundred bucks. And if they just add, I mean, you could just add that shit but that's it.
|
Sam:
[45:02]
| Yeah. Well, these are portable. You can carry them around, blah, blah, blah. People also complained about the battery to life of these things as well. And the point, though, I think in the end.
|
Ivan:
[45:12]
| What point is you going to have it on your fucking it should be just on your fucking phone. Just no point of this thing.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| These are phone apps. There's no like you. Everybody. Not everybody. You know what I mean? But like at this point, penetration of smartphones, certainly in the US, but practically.
|
Ivan:
[45:33]
| It's like, listen, listen, I don't think you understand. Petrified smartphones globally and where even I mean, even in the poorest is high is incredibly high. I mean, it's amazing how they will have almost nothing, but they will have some cheap smartphone.
|
Sam:
[45:49]
| Yeah, no, absolutely. And like because it's it's it's a much cheaper gateway to the Internet than buying like a full laptop or something. And it's more practical because you can carry it around and go around. And like lots of countries, lots of developing countries have, you know, bypassed landline, internet, phone, whatever entirely.
|
Ivan:
[46:11]
| Sure, go straight into wireless, of course.
|
Sam:
[46:14]
| Go straight to wireless because it just makes sense. So like smartphone penetration is insanely high. Why would you get another device to carry around that is essentially doing something you could be doing on your phone, not doing it better in any way? Also, I forget which one. It's the Humane, in addition to the $700 upfront price, also has a subscription in order to subscribe to the service. And the Rabbit, I don't think, has a subscription. but either way they're dependent on cloud services, right? So if these companies go out of business, you just have a lump, you know, this thing immediately is useless. Right. And, and.
|
Ivan:
[47:02]
| Well, it's like it's almost the same thing as a couple of years ago. I was making fun of these people that came out with this thing called the mirror. And the mirror was this thing that supposedly when you turned it off, it was a mirror. But then when you turn it on, it was like a TV. You were supposed to use it for exercise.
|
Sam:
[47:18]
| I remember this thing.
|
Ivan:
[47:20]
| And it would show you routines of workout. And this thing was expensive. Yeah. I mean, this thing is very expensive. And when I saw it, I said, who the fuck's going to buy this? This is insane. and look eventually lululemon went and paid for this company a bunch of money bought it okay they threw in the towel right it was five by the way they paid 500 million dollars for this damn thing okay and basically my whole thing that what i saw it was why the fuck isn't this an app that just works on Roku, Apple TV, whatever the fuck, on any dumb TV. I don't need to buy what basically is another fucking TV and spend all this money on it because what's the value of it turning into a mirror when I turn it off? What the fuck do I need that for?
|
Sam:
[48:13]
| You probably have a mirror already.
|
Ivan:
[48:15]
| Right! And I don't want a fucking TV where I have to think mirror anyway. Right.
|
Sam:
[48:20]
| I mean, all of these things like, you know, every once in a while you see this image come around that shows like all of these devices from the eighties filling up a desk and all the space around the desk. And then them pointing out that absolutely every device on that picture has been replaced by your phone. And like, there are very few things where I want to go the opposite direction. interaction. Like, I mean, even a few years ago, like I, for a while, like I had the first few Kindle devices. I got them for my wife and I got one for me too. Like, and I was like, oh, I'll read this, use this to read my book, blah, blah, blah. But then now, and very quickly, I wouldn't carry that thing around because I had the app on my phone too. So if I wanted to read something, I'd read it on my damn phone. You know, it's like, why do you need a separate device? And there are a few advantages to the standalone devices, but they just weren't meaningful to me. Like, I know people talked about what, like, well, the E-ink screen is better for your eyes than looking at a light and, you know, longer battery life, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[49:30]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, whatever.
|
Sam:
[49:31]
| But, you know, if your phone, if your phone can do it, why do you need the other thing? You know, and look.
|
Ivan:
[49:38]
| I mean, that's what it's come down.
|
Sam:
[49:39]
| And I understand, like.
|
Ivan:
[49:41]
| I've read entire books on my phone already.
|
Sam:
[49:44]
| Right oh yeah like that that's the only place i read books at this point but like the and i can understand to some degree why like okay for some things you might want an ipad instead of a phone yeah for some things you might actually need a laptop form factor or maybe even a desktop you want like your big screen and all that i can see that kind of stuff but like for the most part that's just a screen size issue. Like the...
|
Ivan:
[50:15]
| Well, it's, it's more, I mean, I.
|
Sam:
[50:17]
| Know there's some power differences depending on what you're doing and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[50:20]
| I mean, I'm doing a whole bunch, you know, like the other day I was talking about how many fucking windows I, I had open and stuff or whatever on my fucking computer. I mean, I had, I mean, I had so, and I was like, well, why is my, why is my laptop running slow when I've got, I don't know, 10 PowerPoint presentations going 30 tabs. I, you know, I, you know, I'm sorry, I've, I've, I've done some stuff with Excel and PowerPoint on my phone, but I can't do a real stretch. I can't, I can't put together a customer presentation.
|
Sam:
[50:51]
| But, but, but, but frankly, like the, there are some power differences, but you know, my, my, my wife has like her current laptop is a low end MacBook air. her phone is more powerful than that computer, if you just had the right if you had it set up in such a way that you could just attach it to a bigger screen and a keyboard you could do a bunch of stuff the point though is just like, We used to live in a world where the normal person would have all of these different devices. You'd have your camera, you'd have your phone, you'd have your, your book reader, you'd have this, you'd have that.
|
Ivan:
[51:40]
| You'd have whatever.
|
Sam:
[51:41]
| For, for most personal uses.
|
Ivan:
[51:44]
| I had a, I had a, I had one of those.
|
Sam:
[51:46]
| You just need the phone.
|
Ivan:
[51:47]
| Had those damn pocket PC things.
|
Sam:
[51:51]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[51:51]
| The little like handhelds ones.
|
Sam:
[51:53]
| I remember that.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| I had a few of those.
|
Sam:
[51:57]
| And and i.
|
Ivan:
[51:58]
| Had i had the pocket pc and i had the phone.
|
Sam:
[52:00]
| And for the most part like you you can just use your phone for this and now let's talk about the ai stuff specifically again because in this case it's like there you know i mentioned like the e-ink readers you can list some benefits that that has over doing it on your phone or your ipad or whatever now they don't apply to me but for For some people, they might be important for these AI devices. As far as I can tell, there's not a single reason that using this device would be better than using the same program on the phone. And you've got the issues of the AI still being half baked. So it's not really super useful anyway.
|
Ivan:
[52:42]
| But let's add to the fact that take the current, you know, like the top end iPhone right now. Now, I am sure that whatever processor this has is better than whatever shit processor they put in that damn thing anyway.
|
Sam:
[52:59]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[53:00]
| So what's the I mean, there's no advantage.
|
Sam:
[53:03]
| Well, because because all they're doing like again, like these are all cloud dependent. Right. So it's it's basically just gets your input, sends it up to the cloud, gets the answer and then reads it back to you or whatever. You don't need a lot of processing power for that. It's not like it's doing the AI on device. um, So I don't know. It's just, and these are both like companies that have all kinds of venture funding and blah, blah, blah. And there are a whole bunch of others that are trying to basically just put some sort of new, unique interface on top or in front of chat GPT or similar systems. And it's like, why, what is the actual benefit you are trying to bring here? and you know i think it's especially clear with these devices but in all kinds of these other use cases i think you you still have people not thinking through that question either where the results that these things are putting out for a lot of these use cases is not better than sort of the simpler existing alternative. And I know the bet is maybe it's not better now, but at the rate the technology has been improving, wait six months or a year, and it's going to be amazing. But the problem is in that scenario, people are going to get this thing and judge it by what it is now.
|
Sam:
[54:33]
| Right. You know, and, and that's, it's not going to help. Like if, if it's not fully baked for another year, or two years or whatever, trying to sell it off this like crap version that's available now is not helping you. Like, and again, I understand the whole fear of missing out, especially like, you know, all the big companies that are throwing this stuff on their website, using it in various ways. They're sort of like, we have to get ahead of the curve and blah, blah, blah, or somebody else is going to do this. You know, I don't begrudge the idea of building this technology and testing it internally, but you shouldn't be forcing it on your customers until it's actually good. You know, once it's good, a whole other story.
|
Ivan:
[55:23]
| Well, look, we are right now in a, in a place in technology where a lot of people leaders in tech are okay with basically making everybody beta testers again. And, and, and, you know, a long time ago, I, I think you too, at first when tech was coming out.
|
Sam:
[55:50]
| We were, we were like, we'll get the betas as soon as they come out. Hell, sometimes alphas alpha.
|
Ivan:
[55:56]
| Sometimes alphas, they were crashing or whatever. and then at some point i was like okay i don't want to try another fucking beta again they're so buggy they're so crashy i don't want another fucking beta i'm done yeah okay i i did i did that.
|
Sam:
[56:08]
| A long time unless it's something i'm really desperate for and that hasn't happened for years i'm not doing the well i guess i did betas of ivory for the mastodon client not that long.
|
Ivan:
[56:18]
| Okay so that so that's one that.
|
Sam:
[56:20]
| Was like rare that was like for the most part.
|
Ivan:
[56:23]
| I'm like i'm done with it it was like rare when back then I think we'd have everything in fucking beta.
|
Sam:
[56:28]
| Oh yeah. I was running the Mac OS public beta Mac OS X public beta months before the real thing was announced when they were warning that it was unstable and I was running it as my primary goddamn system, you know, and, and taking the risk that, that happened with that. And it's so, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:49]
| But not anymore. And I'm like, you know, and we've got, and I also.
|
Sam:
[56:53]
| I also wanted to, like, I was happy with things that had like thousands of configuration options and I'd go through and mess with all of them. Now I'm like, just give me reasonable defaults and leave me alone. I mean, I'll still go in and modify some things to my preferences, but like, I don't want to tinker. You know, I wanted to just work reasonably out of the box. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:16]
| But look, when you go do it, you see, you're going to feed it all this stuff so it learns. Yeah. And so that way, they get better and they can make more money.
|
Sam:
[57:25]
| That is true. I understand one of the reasons for putting it out into the public is that that is a way of getting more data and doing the feedback loop to try to do improvement that you wouldn't get with internal only testing.
|
Ivan:
[57:39]
| And basically, we're just doing their job for free.
|
Sam:
[57:41]
| Yeah. And it's just like, but some of these things. And again, like there are some uses that are great and fun and interesting. And now there's still the issue that's going to work its way through the courts on like, are they properly compensating people for using their stuff as training data and all this kind of stuff. But in the meantime, like there are good uses. There are uses that make sense that like I mentioned, the little scripting examples I was talking about, it's saving me tons of time. like i would eventually be able to do the same thing but doing it this way is absolutely faster, but there's so much that it's bad at and like let's say it's 90 accurate and only 10 hallucinations i have no idea what the real numbers are but let's say it's let's say it's 90 10 hell let's say it's 99.1 you know is there any other product that you'd accept error rates that high on a regular basis without saying this shit is crap and moving on.
|
Ivan:
[58:49]
| Uh no not really that's the problem and i mean and that's it's yeah yeah that's that's the problem it's just yeah i think that Yet the thing is positioning it as you had mentioned when you're using chat GPT right now that it built that it that you have to people want to oversell what it could do. And it's like when you were using it the way you described that allowed you to do your work. It gave you a foundation for you to be able to do what you were doing quicker. Yeah. But you still had to go through it and fix it and correct. And I, and I think that's the, that's the, the key where it's something that might in certain cases, depending on the use cases, there are a whole bunch of use cases I've seen helps. Okay. But you got to use it right. Otherwise, you wind up with, for example, Bob shared with us on our Slack a while back, having, I can't remember which one, to describe a politician as me.
|
Sam:
[59:56]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[59:56]
| And let's just say it failed.
|
Sam:
[59:59]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:01]
| Miserably. You know, it said, let's be clear, the one thing where it failed, not one single curse word.
|
Sam:
[1:00:11]
| Right. Well, I was impressed it even had an idea of who you might be, but, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:17]
| It had an idea, why, yeah, but let's just say that it says something about, I have a, let's see.
|
Sam:
[1:00:23]
| This started, by the way, when I asked it something about the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner or whatever, And it talked and it gave a summary of like Yvonne and Sam. And it said Ed sometimes co-hosts and Sam's wife, Brandy, sometimes co-hosts. So it actually knew some stuff about this podcast.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:40]
| It knew some stuff. It knew some stuff. Picture this. Ivan Moe clad in a cravat that defies the laws of geometry. I love the word cravat. Fantastic. Purchase upon a rickety stool his mustache. What fucking mustache? Oh, that must be a mustache curls like a question mark, pondering the mysteries of existence. And there, my friends, begins the bow to full girder. Oh, this is great. It's a bow isms. Now, I will say one thing about this. I said this to a friend of mine in high school is hilarious because they made fun that everything they were taught, they would talk about the bow ism. Right. And they talked about it. They did. So that that one was hilarious. So, yeah. But it is in his political commentary that Bowe truly shines. He dissects politicians like a botanist examining a carnivorous plants. Senator Bluster, he intones. I'd say Senator Motherfucker, not Senator Bluster. But anyway, is a human filibuster? No, I'd say he's a human bag of shit. A verbal hurricane in a teacup? No, a human bag of shit. Dude, get it right, okay? And we not again. So anyway. anyway like.
|
Sam:
[1:01:55]
| This like it may not have nailed your personality and your methods of speaking but.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:01]
| It's fun it did a hey you know what i could have sold that as something i mean i did hey you know what listen if i want to do cheap pr i could have just done that who gives a fuck anyway i'm not fact checking this thing i need to put some hey let's say i need we need to build a new cremations quarter websites let's build let's just build everything out of whatever the fuck chat you can see things about our show yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:02:24]
| And it's funny you know it produced.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:26]
| Like a funny.
|
Sam:
[1:02:27]
| Paragraph that you could share and talk to people about that like and.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:31]
| And your biography by biography everything yeah it'd be great and.
|
Sam:
[1:02:35]
| You know that kind of thing again like where where factual accuracy doesn't matter and you just want to form have it look like something you know have it rhyme in a certain way whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:46]
| How it looks like something that's sentences that have you know a complete sentence right that have descriptions no matter if they're accurate but whatever yeah don't fuck it whatever it's bullshitting our way through most shit anyway so why not have it right on bullshit it's.
|
Sam:
[1:03:00]
| It's fun on those kinds of things and and honestly there are ways like you could you could actually train one of these specifically on a bunch of our transcripts and it probably would get our styles a little bit better you know somebody go do that that would be fun but But yeah, and like on the example I was giving for chat GPT, like I couldn't, If I just tried to tell it the entirety of what I wanted my project to do in its final form, it would undoubtedly flail and do it horribly.
|
Sam:
[1:03:34]
| But doing it sort of one step at a time, you know, do this first step and then, okay, change it and now add this. Okay, change it and now add this. Oh, I just tried that and it did it wrong in this way. How do you fix that? And then do that.
|
Sam:
[1:03:52]
| Building it up that way, it seems to be pretty fine. Now, I will say on my little scripting example, it worked fine. My son, Alex, has been trying to get me to do some game development in Unity, which he's been using this to build his knowledge so that he can now do all kinds of things in Unity that I have absolutely no idea what he's doing or how he's doing. And he's learning from it and actually knows what's going on. I tried to do this stuff and I know so little that even following the things instructions is difficult and, and it, and I get all kinds of weird errors and I'm having trouble with it, getting it to like, tell me how to fix it. So, you know, look, it's again, sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. And your own knowledge is important there. Like the difference between these two things is like for the script I want to build. I know the programming language I'm asking it to do it in. And I know exactly what I want it to do. And it's simple data manipulation and moving things around and reformatting them and doing math and stuff. So I know what to do and I can check it. And like, if it's doing something wrong, I know what it is. In the other, I have zero idea. I don't know what I'm doing at all. And so like the results are much more limited. So it's still sort of this hybrid of, you know, the AI and what you put into it.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:20]
| Well, I think one thing that today, and it goes back, I was watching, you know, as I usually do an episode of air disasters. Okay. And one of the things that they were, they were, it was an accident that one of the problems that they discovered was that this, this is a captain at an airline in Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia airways, which is from Korea. and they had a 777 that crashed at San Francisco many years back. It's the first 777 accident that resulted in any deaths ever. And one of the things that happened was that the ILS wasn't working. Okay. The ILS wasn't working and they needed to actually do a, to hand fly the plane and land it. Well, this captain had 11,000 hours of flying and he had never done such a landing. and that's why they crashed because he basically was doing this for the first fucking time.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:25]
| And in, I mean, I mean, a captain with 11,000 hours is a lot of experience and he had not ever hand flown to triple seven landing. And so it, it, it came to that point where he actually needed to fucking fly the plane. He couldn't do it and be crashed. And.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:44]
| You know, most U.S. airlines actually make their pilots do actual landings on a regular basis in order to hone skills and whatnot and in practice and in the simulator, even if they use a lot of automation to help them with the stuff, you still do that. But I think it's one of those things I was thinking today about what I'm doing as my job right now, which is an individual contributor and not as an executive. And I remember that one of the things I remembered about many of my managers when I came into work was that they didn't have the skills to do my job.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| They had, if they really, you set them down and you had to use the tools that we had to do as an individual computer to do whatever, they couldn't do it. They didn't know how. They just couldn't do it. and one thing that i that i did through through my career was actually make sure that i always knew what the fuck my you know i i wanted to make sure that i knew i'm sending an employee out to do something i want to know what the hell they're you know i want to be able to know what the hell they're doing even though i'm not doing it frequently but at least that i know okay and many times that i knew it well okay and i think that's the thing with this where because it is Is it because it can't do everything for you? And I don't think that I don't foresee it. My it might be certain this is all for you, but especially when you're coding and doing certain things, you know, you're building certain complicated things. You still have to know how the fuck it works.
|
Sam:
[1:08:24]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:25]
| For the foreseeable future. Because otherwise you're just going to, you're going to be like that pilot that this thing builds it wrong. You have no idea what the fuck it did and you can't go in and fix it.
|
Sam:
[1:08:38]
| Okay. Let's wrap this up just by returning really briefly to the devices. And I'll just say this.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:46]
| Oh, we were on a tangent?
|
Sam:
[1:08:47]
| Surprise. Whether it's a device or, or even an app or a program or, or any kind of service, one One of the fundamental questions you should always ask is, what can this do better than the existing alternatives? And if the answer to that question is nothing, it's just a cool use of a new technology, maybe you don't have a real product yet. You have to have something that you can say, using this thing is going to help you in a a way that existing alternatives will not do. It has to be better in some way.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:31]
| My final example of this, they are in our IT help desks, and I know they're doing this also in order to have the tools learn. They've put this generative AI on our Slack that takes your IT calls in order to try to triage it and figure out what it is.
|
Sam:
[1:09:51]
| Just real quick, that that like just a huge motivation behind this is if we can get the AI to do this kind of support, we don't have to hire people to do it. Yeah. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:03]
| Just, well, but, but the problem is that triaging, here's what happens. The triaging is, is very, usually you don't have skilled people doing the triaging. You're really just throwing, doing cannon fodder at this. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:21]
| People are running through scripts and stuff. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:23]
| And it's really, you know, it's, it's not great. Okay. All right. Really, if you could do something.
|
Sam:
[1:10:29]
| It's not great with the humans either. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:30]
| Because it's not great with the humans.
|
Sam:
[1:10:32]
| Your, your first level support, they don't know anything. They're just reading a script. You have to get elevated to the people who actually know what they're doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:42]
| Right. And, and so that's why you're, we're trying to teach these tools because really, I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not very helpful to have, to have these people really triaging it. It's really a messy process.
|
Sam:
[1:10:54]
| Well, here's the thing though.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:55]
| Like, but, but right now, what I will say is that right now, listen, during the learning process, a couple of things that I threw at it, it couldn't figure out. Okay. So, okay. When I couldn't figure out, you would tell it no. Okay. Okay, and then you tell it what the heck it is, and then it starts writing the ticket. But that's the way that they start learning. And so I'm okay with them throwing it at me.
|
Sam:
[1:11:15]
| No, I understand. Because I know what we're trying to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:17]
| In that case, I'm like, okay, look, I know. We're trying to make this work. Look, yes, throw it at me. We got to build it somewhere.
|
Sam:
[1:11:26]
| It's just different cases where I'm just like, no. It's like for that particular use case, though, I mean, there have been automated scripts that ask people standard questions and route them the right place going back decades.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:36]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:05]
| Simpler technology you could do for the simple triage and route use case.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:11]
| Well, I think the technology is just, I mean, it's just in its infancy right now.
|
Sam:
[1:12:15]
| Yeah. Well, and again, this comes back to me saying, like, I understand the technology is young. But, like, this is the whole, like, using your customers as guinea pig stuff. Like, the right time to put it in front of real customers is once you've proven it's better than the old.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:33]
| But, like I said, I'm okay with it being thrown at me as an employee.
|
Sam:
[1:12:36]
| An employee.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:36]
| I can see. Of a tech company. I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm the employee of a tech company.
|
Sam:
[1:12:44]
| You're using the internal development thing, blah, blah, blah. But I think that's very different than just throwing it on external customers. Like we had those.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:52]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:53]
| We had those examples of like those car dealerships with chatbots that were selling cars for $1. You know? I love that.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:00]
| Well, that's great.
|
Sam:
[1:13:02]
| That's great for the customer. Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:04]
| I mean, so, you know, great for, I mean, the customers were happy.
|
Sam:
[1:13:08]
| Well we had that new york city chat bot that was telling people that it was fine to break the law and regulate health health health regulations oh it's fine to ignore those don't worry about that.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:23]
| I still remember who was the first one one of the first ones that became public at microsoft what they put in that conference and they and in a while they started people started started fucking with it and it just started you know just spitting out like just you know anti-semitic racist shit like.
|
Sam:
[1:13:40]
| In a few hours yep there have been several at this point that they've had to shut off for just turning racist right away all right anyway okay we have gone on way too long about this let's take a break and then it'll be my turn and as i previewed and as everyone Everyone expects at this point, it's going to be the weather. It's going to be the weather.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:07]
| Okay, great. I'm ready for it.
|
Sam:
[1:14:09]
| We will be back right after this with the weather. Okay, as we are recording here in Everett, Washington, it is 58 degrees and cloudy, high 69, low 40. Tomorrow, Saturday, a 60% chance of rain expected, low 49, high 57. A sunrise will be at 5.45 a.m. and sunset at 8.27 p.m. tomorrow. Winds are currently three miles per hour to the northeast. East humidity, 60% visibility, 14 miles, no precipitation in the last 24 hours. And you know, there, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:29]
| You know that Al Roker is only 69 years old.
|
Sam:
[1:15:32]
| That's all. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:33]
| That's it. I thought it would be older by now.
|
Sam:
[1:15:37]
| Willard Scott is dead though.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:39]
| Yeah. Willard Scott's dead. I wish I could figure out a way to get, you know, chat TPT to tell me the weather and Al Roker.
|
Sam:
[1:15:47]
| And Al Roker's voice. I'm sure it could.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:49]
| Yeah. Well, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:15:51]
| Well, maybe not that GPT specifically, but you could use these technologies to do this. The voice cloning thing is like completely out there. I saw we're about to talk about the voice cloning.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:02]
| We're making fake nudes. We're making, I don't know. We're doing.
|
Sam:
[1:16:05]
| So speaking of devices like that use AI that you could just use your phone for or whatever, somebody made a digital camera that embedded AI technology. technology so every picture you took.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:19]
| It would automatically.
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| Remove the clothes of anybody you.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:22]
| Took a picture that's this was not.
|
Sam:
[1:16:27]
| Productized this was somebody made it as a demo i think but.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:31]
| Oh as a demo oh okay yeah this is yeah i want to go to a conference room when i get the guy that's showing me the fucking like camera that makes everybody look naked i'm like okay here There we go.
|
Sam:
[1:16:46]
| But we're about to talk Donald Trump. And one of the things that I saw somebody make commentary on today.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:52]
| Well, he was delivering pizzas.
|
Sam:
[1:16:54]
| Yes, he was delivering pizzas. But specifically, there was testimony today about the impact of the Access Hollywood tape from 2016. And someone pointed out, and I think this is absolutely true, if this happened again today, he would completely deny it. Say it was an AI fake. and all this kind of stuff in the actual situation way back when he was forced to sort of admit, okay, this was me. I was sorry, blah, blah, blah. There's no way that would happen again today. It was all, it would all be fake, fake, fake.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:27]
| I don't know what you're talking about. Listen, like right now, Eddie, listen, I don't know. It seems like, well, at least to his supporters, they, they'll eat it up. They'll love it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:41]
| Yeah. Anyway. So, so, Donald Trump stuff this week. The New York trial continues. He was held. He was held in contempt for his initial set of statements violating the, the, I was going to say bag order, but it's a gag or gag order. And it would be an interesting.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:08]
| It's a bag order.
|
Sam:
[1:18:09]
| So I was, he has to wear a bag over his head.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:12]
| Is that, that would be nice.
|
Sam:
[1:18:14]
| But there were 10 instances that the prosecution had asked him to be held in contempt for. The judge decided that nine of them were worthy. He fined him the maximum statutory $1,000 per, so $9,000, which Donald Trump has paid as of a few hours ago as we're recording this. and there was there's another hearing on an additional four examples that the judge hasn't ruled on yet probably soon but when he ruled on the first set of nine he explicitly said hey i would love to be able to find you a lot more because you're rich and you will barely even know you won't notice the nine thousand dollars you know it's meaningless to you i would love to be able to escalate this and charge you, you know, a hundred thousand dollars per instant or something like that. But I can't because the New York statute says the maximum is a thousand dollars per. So my, my other choice, if you keep doing this is, is going to be jail.
|
Sam:
[1:19:21]
| Now I've heard some people say there, there might be some other alternatives. Like first, First of all, he could say jail, but not until after the trial is over to keep from disrupting it. But I've heard other people say there could be other things like just requiring that your lawyer approve all public statements in advance or something like that. The Trump lawyers tried to get the judge to agree to vet things. They brought up a question of like, he would like to post this. Would that be okay? And the judge was like, I'm not doing that. You know, just I'm not getting into that business. If you have any doubt, don't post it, you know, basically.
|
Sam:
[1:20:04]
| And yeah, so we'll see. But I have noticed in general, Donald Trump has seemingly been mostly, with one big exception, mostly better since the judge said, essentially, he said next time might be jailed. There have been times where Donald Trump has been asked questions about witnesses or the jury and explicitly said, I can't answer you because of the gag order. He'll then complain about the gag order, but he'll say, I can't answer you. Whereas a week ago, he would have been answering those questions and would have been answering them in a way that was negative towards the witnesses or the jury or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| There is one instance though, where since that threat from the judge, he posted a link to a video of somebody interviewing Andrew, Andrew Giuliani. So Rudy's son, where, where the son was repeating all the same stuff about the judge's daughter and all this kind of stuff, which is off limits.
|
Sam:
[1:21:20]
| So it does appear that he's violated it again, at least once, but it seems to be being more careful than he was. And in fact, at one point he said, I won't even be able to testify because I'm under a gag order. And the judge actually, the first thing in court on Friday was like, no, this, this is about your, what you can do outside of court if you you have an absolute right to testify in court and when you testify in court you can you know you have to answer the questions and stuff but you you you you're not restricted in that environment by this gag order the gag order only applies to extrajudicial communications safe okay and and so whatever it we'll see i mean if he has he has such a problem keeping his mouth shut i mean he's still talking about eugene carroll for god's sake he took he he repeated stuff against her as recently as this week and i said you know i've said before there's no way this guy will spend a single day in jail but i've sometimes added the caveat unless he can't fucking behave in court you know right or or he violates these kinds of gag orders well.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:43]
| He's falling asleep most of the time so.
|
Sam:
[1:22:45]
| He he is doing that he he claims he's not falling asleep that that's fake news as well what.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:53]
| What is he doing sam.
|
Sam:
[1:22:54]
| Oh he's just closing his eyes he's resting He's resting. Well, no, no. He's meditating. He's meditating. He's praying. He's just closing his eyes. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:03]
| Oh, he's praying. He's praying.
|
Sam:
[1:23:04]
| He's a very religious man, Ivar.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:07]
| Ah.
|
Sam:
[1:23:08]
| Very devout. Anyway, we'll see what happens with the gag order. I think that's an interesting thing to watch. I suspect if this one thing with the link to the Andrew Giuliani video is the only thing, the judge will probably just give another warning. But if Donald Trump keeps at it otherwise, he's got to do something, you know? We'll see. anyway the other major thing was we had more testimony you know in the last segment we mentioned that lawyer that worked for all kinds of hollywood people arranging their hush money for the various people they needed hush money against and all of that kind of stuff and basically he came off as a complete and total scumbag but his main testimony was about basically like yes Yes, it was all about the election. It wasn't about Melania. Confirmed sort of various things about the arrangement. Again, like we said last week, I don't think there's any really stunning new things that we expect here. It's just lots and lots and lots of detail and proof around the things we had already heard about.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:27]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:24:28]
| And then most recently on Thursday and Friday, or was it only Friday? We had Hope Hicks.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:37]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:38]
| Who has been very close to Donald Trump for a long time as one of the people that moved from the Trump organization to the White House. And.
|
Sam:
[1:24:50]
| She started out her testimony saying how nervous she was to be there and with a whole bunch of sort of complimentary things about Donald Trump. She, by the way, is there under subpoena. She does not want to testify. She talked about how nervous she was, and then she said all sorts of complimentary things about Donald Trump and how much he paid attention to things and how good he was at multitasking and all kinds of things like that. which of course in this case isn't necessarily positive for him because everybody has sort of so far described him as a micromanager that like he wants to approve every little detail of things and part of his defense here is like potentially like oh cohen just did it i didn't know anything thing about it. And that's contrary to the description of his behavior.
|
Sam:
[1:25:46]
| But sort of the key moment in the Hope Hicks testimony was when she was asked about an interaction with Donald Trump once they were in the White House, when they were actually, the reports of Cohen paying off this amount to Stormy Daniels finally were hitting the press. And Donald Trump talks to and says something like, you know, it was very nice of Michael to pay that for me. He must have done it out of the goodness of his heart. And she talked about how she didn't really believe that, that Michael Cohen wasn't that kind of person who would just do stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:26:27]
| And then Donald Trump saying that it's much better that this comes out now than if it had come out before the election. And this is key because a big part of the defense here is that Donald Trump's defense has a couple different areas that they've been working on. One is that he really thought it was just legal fees for Michael Cohen and it wasn't a reimbursement for this specific thing. Hope Hicks' testimony shows specifically that he knew exactly what the payment was.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:09]
| Exactly what it was for. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:27:11]
| And also, several people have now talked about this, but Hope Hicks is the one who specifically noted Donald Trump saying it. It was about the election.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:21]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:27:22]
| Maybe there was some concern about Melania and Hopix indicated that there was some concern about this because apparently Donald Trump asked that newspapers not be delivered to the residents that day. So she wouldn't find out about this. And apparently from other people who knew Melania at the time, she didn't read paper newspapers anyway. Like most of the rest of us, she reads her news online. line. Like apparently Melania is actually a news junkie and like we are and reads lots of news, but not paper newspapers. And Donald Trump was like, don't let the paper go upstairs. We're not, we're not going to do that. Like she won't find out really.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:03]
| No, she wasn't going to find out. She was going to, she was going to have her phone disconnected.
|
Sam:
[1:28:07]
| But anyway, there's, so there's some component of that, but she quoted, Hopix quoted Donald Trump saying specifically it was about the election, that what his first thought was, thank goodness this didn't come out before the election. And that's a key part of what makes this related to a campaign finance crime, which is what makes it a felony, which is what makes this whole case work. Right. And so that was the very last question the prosecutors had for her. They sort of asked her that question. She answered and they're like, Mike, drop. We're out.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:47]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| On cross examination. The first thing that Trump's lawyers asked her was to sort of recount all of the things that Donald Trump had done for her over her career. career and it's then that she like broke down crying and they had to take a 15 minute break because she lost it emotionally because you know basically she was and like she realized but, Well, yes, but here's the thing. Like she still likes Donald Trump. She is still a Trumpy, you know, and sure. But but she and it is true. Like Donald Trump picked her out of some random agency and she ended up at the White House. Yeah. Her career was made by Donald Trump. Yeah. And and apparently she was really close. people say that i i know what you're gonna say about trump and attractive young women but people say that she was treated essentially as another one of his children she was that close to the family oh because he has shown.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:57]
| No he has shown no interest in wanting to fuck his children oh.
|
Sam:
[1:30:00]
| Oh oh oh yes of.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:03]
| Course i forgot that's right he has not been a creep creepy and talked about out his daughter's body and.
|
Sam:
[1:30:13]
| Breasts.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:13]
| And all those.
|
Sam:
[1:30:15]
| Things. Well, apparently both Stormy Daniels and what was the other one's name? The Playmate.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:22]
| Whatever, doesn't matter.
|
Sam:
[1:30:23]
| But apparently both of them say that when he was doing things with them, he compared them to Ivanka.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:30]
| Yeah, okay, so spare me, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:30:34]
| Anyway, but anyway, the point is, though, she realized very much she was telling the truth she was telling the truth like she had to do or she'd get in trouble herself but she realized what she said was incredibly damaging to any defense he has and not like his case hasn't been like his whole problem is like on the law and the the facts this case is fairly straightforward it's fairly open and shut this is why his whole thing like but but is try to get one juror okay sam.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:14]
| But here's my full fucking problem the test okay that cross has nothing to do with like trying to to poke holes into the case i don't understand i mean it's again listen trump being lawyer.
|
Sam:
[1:31:30]
| Yes the.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:32]
| The reports the last few days has been that trump has been railing against his people so i am 100 sure that he told them to go and fucking make her remember who's your daddy.
|
Sam:
[1:31:46]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:48]
| And that's not a legal strategy, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:31:52]
| Yeah. I mean, after that, after they brought her back, they did ask a bunch of other questions, but you are absolutely right. Even on the lawyer we were talking about before who did all the NDAs for all of these other people, one of the, several of the talking head legal commentators I heard basically said, look, if I was cross-examining this guy, I would ask him, did you ever meet or talk to Donald Trump directly?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:17]
| Exactly. Those things. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:32:21]
| He would say no, and then you sit down. Then you're done. Or you're nearly done. Maybe a couple more things. Because the main point that one of the defenses they want to try...
|
Ivan:
[1:32:32]
| You have to poke holes at what she said.
|
Sam:
[1:32:35]
| Well, one of the defenses the Trump team wants to do is this is just Cohen going rogue. Trump had nothing to do with this. And so when you're cross-examining the lawyer that dealt with Cohen, trying to show that, hey, you never had any interaction with Trump, you only ever talked to Cohen, is perhaps relevant to that defense. But instead, when they went after that lawyer, they basically just tried to make him look like a scumbag by bringing up all of his other clients, bringing up all of the other people he'd done this for.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:12]
| Again, not again, that that that I mean, yeah, they're.
|
Sam:
[1:33:17]
| And basically, again, matching what you said, the word on the street is Donald Trump told them to be super aggressive. That's what I want. on. I want you to be super aggressive. Like Roy Cohn.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:31]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:33:32]
| And, and like, that's not the smart legal strategy necessary, but necessarily, but Donald Trump just wants them to be aggressive. And like, and I think you're absolutely right on whole picks. It's remember who's your daddy.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:48]
| Yeah. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:49]
| Basically, you know, it's, it's like, you should feel bad about what you've done. And she felt bad. She started crying, you know? And, and yes, they asked a few other questions, but nothing that did anything about her testimony. Like the bottom line is every single one of these witnesses so far, the main witnesses anyway, have just.
|
Sam:
[1:34:16]
| Shown, have been devastating. And the cross-examination has not been able to do jack. I mean, we'll see when the defense puts on their case later on. But so far, witness after witness after witness has been just boom, boom, boom. Here's all the prosecution case and the defense cross-exam hasn't been able to poke any significant holes in it. the other thing i will mention they they have also had to do a whole bunch of witnesses that they call custodial witnesses to basically prove that evidence they're bringing in like records of tweets that donald trump made or documents or whatever they've had to bring in witnesses to basically vouch for the veracity of these things and these are things that normally Normally, in most cases, the defense would just stipulate to that, like, okay, yeah, we agree. That's the real document. Yeah, we agree. Those are the real texts. Yeah, we agree. This really is a video from C-SPAN. They brought in the goddamn archivist from C-SPAN to testify that video of a Donald Trump speech was really a video of a Donald Trump speech.
|
Sam:
[1:35:29]
| Because in all of these cases, with I think the exception of one, the Trump defense team has refused to stipulate anything. They've made the prosecution drag out these witnesses to say, yes, we got this document under subpoena. Here's the chain of custody. Yes, we can verify that this really was a document, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's complaining about how long this takes, but this makes it take longer. Anyway, go ahead. You're talking about Donald Trump lawyering.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:05]
| Well, no. I mean, it's just... It... I haven't seen yet any strategy, basically, how to address this other than to say it's all fake. That's it. And I don't expect any different. I mean, based on the comments that we've heard and what he's done in every other case, it's why, how did he get crushed in the Eugene Carroll case? Basically, he had no defense. He went to fucking trial because his only strategy has always been delay, delay, delay. Delay, delay, delay, delay, not actually prepare for our fucking trial.
|
Sam:
[1:36:44]
| And when the delays actually end.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:47]
| There's no, there's no trial prep. And then he wants to steer, then he wants to steer what the lawyers do. Yeah. Which usually is all the wrong things that you want to do in a trial.
|
Sam:
[1:37:00]
| In some of his other cases, we've heard like some really subpar lawyers. Apparently the lawyers in the room for this all had had past tense, really good reputations coming into this trial, but they're getting trashed. Their reputations are getting trashed by the way they're doing this because they have this client who's making them do stupid things.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:25]
| But that's the problem. It's like when you have a client that's forcing you to do stupid things. I mean, usually, you know, I have seen situations where this happens with other attorneys. I'm not going to name names. Yeah. But there was a case, a very, it was a pretty public case that I was privy of that resulted in a conviction of an executive, of a corporate executive. He had a top-notch attorney group representing him, people that have been involved in TV, even some that have been to TV cases and whatever. And the one problem was he had an issue similar to what Trump has right now where the evidence is, I mean, look, you've got no good argument. You don't have a good defense.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:28]
| And they had repeatedly pleaded to him to make a plea. He said no, no, no, no. Fuck, he lost and he wound up going to jail for several years. and it's this thing that happens where you wind up as an attorney getting dragged into a situation where you're telling your damn story, client, listen, your defense sucks. Let's make a deal. I could go out there and sing and dance.
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| Because frankly, you're guilty.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:01]
| It's not even about that. It's not even about that. It's that, look, I don't have a way to disprove what they're showing. Period.
|
Sam:
[1:39:10]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:11]
| You know, the facts that they've got arrayed with the evidence they've got, I don't have a way to build a defense that's going to get you out of jail. You need to make a deal. And if they go and they don't listen, then this is where they wind up. Look, I've been in complicated cases where, look, attorney told me, hey, this is the best we're going to get. This is the best we're going to get. And I'm like, okay, you know, ask around. I'm like, look, I got to go with the experts because I'm like, I've been through this a whole bunch of times. This is why you're paying them, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of dollars an hour. and when you're paying some guy a couple of thousand bucks an hour which I'm sure these guys are charging him and then you're not listening to anything that you're saying, and I'm like look, the problem is of course also that, He decided to go. This is the one thing going back. Typically a case like this, 99% of the people wouldn't have fucking gone to trial.
|
Sam:
[1:40:15]
| Yeah. They would have settled a long time ago. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:18]
| Made a plea deal.
|
Sam:
[1:40:19]
| Yeah. Settled in the civil cases, made a plea deal in this case. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:23]
| Yeah. They would have made a plea deal. And we're in here with no defense, basically just going straight to fucking straight to hell because they've got, they don't seem to have any fucking defense whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[1:40:35]
| Well, Well, and whatever defenses they might theoretically have, Donald Trump is sabotaging himself by making them do it, doing stupid things on.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:43]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:40:44]
| And with his like violating the gag order left and right, hell, doing the stuff that required the gag order in the first place, right? Like.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:53]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:40:54]
| Donald Trump is self-sabotaging at every step. You're absolutely right. If he had come in for this New York case in particular, if he had come in on day one and And said, I'll plead to the misdemeanor.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:06]
| Yeah. Done.
|
Sam:
[1:41:09]
| Done.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:10]
| We're out of here.
|
Sam:
[1:41:11]
| It would have been over. Yeah. Maybe the DA, if they were wanting to be aggressive, would push a little bit. But frankly, probably it would be done.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:20]
| No, it would probably be done.
|
Sam:
[1:41:22]
| You know? And, you know, we've talked about the other cases, right? In Florida, all he had to do was give the damn documents back.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:29]
| Documents back.
|
Sam:
[1:41:30]
| The first time he was asked, give the documents back. Nothing would have happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:34]
| Yep. And he's like, I'm untouchable. I can't lose. Going all the way.
|
Sam:
[1:41:42]
| And of course, I guess in the Georgia and D.C. cases, it's a little bit more complicated. It's except you lost the election.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:51]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:53]
| And walk away nicely, you know, but Donald Trump isn't capable of that. And in terms of the lawyers, he always thinks he's the smartest person there.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:04]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:42:05]
| And so like, no, no, I know best. I know the right strategy here. Here's what we're going to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:10]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:42:12]
| And the lawyers can tell them that's a bad idea. If the lawyer tells them it's a bad idea too many times, they're fired.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:18]
| I mean, I guarantee you that it may be that one of these guys gets fired before the end of this case.
|
Sam:
[1:42:24]
| Oh, very. But I bet I bet half of them hope they get fired by the end of the case.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:30]
| But.
|
Sam:
[1:42:34]
| Anyway. Yeah. So. It's it's looking bad for Don. on he he's every day this trial goes on looks worse for him in terms of like we predicted we predicted odds for various outcomes last week i'm not going to change anything about what we predicted because here's the thing donald trump's hopes here do not rest on an acquittal donald trump donald trump's hopes rely on at.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:07]
| A hung jury that's.
|
Sam:
[1:43:08]
| It but and more specifically on the hung jury. It's not necessarily convincing somebody on the facts or the law or anything else. It's, did we manage to get somebody on the jury who's a Trump supporter and doesn't care about the facts and will vote not guilty, vote not guilty, no matter what. That's what he's really hoping for Now, or, or, or, or, just like, look, their best case, their best case is to convince at least one juror of one of two things. A, this may have happened, but it's not a big deal. And at worst, it should have been the misdemeanor. And the whole felony thing is bullshit. That's one option. The other is to convince one juror that there is reasonable doubt that Donald Trump actually knew all the details of this and that maybe it really was Cohen going rogue and anything that Donald Trump did know about it really was about Melania. It wasn't about the campaign at all, but there's so much evidence that's already been introduced that proves that Donald Trump knew, proves that it wasn't about Melania, it was about the campaign. So you really need somebody- I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:34]
| Everything shows that when you're looking at this, any of the benign explanations for it are all undercut by all the information available.
|
Sam:
[1:44:49]
| So he really needs one juror who doesn't care, who's going to vote not guilty anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:58]
| You know, you do realize that that doesn't happen very often, right?
|
Sam:
[1:45:02]
| Oh, no, it's rare. It's definitely rare. I mean, it does happen sometimes, but it's definitely rare.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:08]
| But it's very rare. I mean, like, it happened, look, I will agree, it happened in the John Edwards case. However, the prosecutors did a really bad job in the John Edwards case. The fucking prosecutors deserve to be punched in the face.
|
Sam:
[1:45:25]
| They really- You like to punch people in the face. You use that phrase a lot.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:30]
| I will say that when I was younger, I will admit that during a time period, I spent a lot of time punching people in the face.
|
Sam:
[1:45:40]
| Okay. That's the core of truth. When you say you want to punch someone in the face, you really want to punch them in the face.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:50]
| I did. And I, yeah, it's not, it's not a lie. Look, I wind up getting into some serious fistfights, real punches. I mean, you know, I'm talking, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:46:01]
| And so you've learned over the years to hold the desire back, but the desire is real.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:06]
| The desire is real. I've learned to hold it back, but the desire is real. Yes. Okay. Okay. I mean, yes, that is a truth. And I mean, I want to, but no, no, no. I've learned it's, it's, it's a bad, I, I understand it's a bad strategy, but it's not Not because I don't want to do it.
|
Sam:
[1:46:25]
| Right. Okay. So you were saying the John Edwards did have a hung jury. Hung juries do happen, but they are rare.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:32]
| Yeah. But in that prosecution, I mean, I don't remember exactly what they fucked up. But look, everybody that looked at it agrees that the prosecutors completely bungled the case, that it should have been a slam dunk. I mean, John Edwards should have been in jail. I mean, it was pretty clear cut that the million dollars that he had to procure in order to fucking pay off, you know, the girl, he got pregnant, blah, blah, blah. The whole damn thing was an entire fucking campaign violation. He knew about it. He knew that it was a campaign violation, the whole damn thing. But it was just it was just a fuck up. So. John Edwards is still alive, right?
|
Sam:
[1:47:15]
| Yeah, I think so. So, oh, and here, here, here's an interesting factoid in case you don't remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:23]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:24]
| Who was the prosecutor in the John Edwards case?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:27]
| Fuck. I don't remember. Who?
|
Sam:
[1:47:29]
| Jack Smith, the special counsel that's going after Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:33]
| Get out of here. Really? It's the same guy.
|
Sam:
[1:47:36]
| Same guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:38]
| Yeah. Well, don't fuck up again.
|
Sam:
[1:47:43]
| Oh, and, and, and by the way, no. You are wrong about John Edwards. It was not a hung jury. It was an outright acquittal.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:51]
| No, it was a hung jury. There was one count that he got acquitted. The rest of hurry jury hung and they decided not to retry, but there was only one count.
|
Sam:
[1:48:03]
| It was a prosecution. It was a prosecution. Smith decisively lost. Jurors voted to acquit Edwards of several felony violations. The core issue, blah, blah, blah. They may have hung on some, but they acquitted.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:14]
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, they, okay, I'm sorry. That's not, I had looked this up recently.
|
Sam:
[1:48:20]
| Okay, I've got an article in front of me too.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:22]
| Okay, there was only one count that they acquitted. The rest, they went and they hung on. Okay, I looked it up last week, just in case. So now I got to look it up again. Fuck. Okay, here we go.
|
Sam:
[1:48:44]
| As you look it up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:49]
| Acquitting Edwards of one count and failing to come to a verdict on five others. Damn it. Okay. I fucking researched this one before.
|
Sam:
[1:49:02]
| Well, he was acquitted on one.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:04]
| What? Out of six. Give me a break. Okay? No. No, it was basically you got six counts. You only acquitted one, whatever. You basically hung. Look, the jury hung.
|
Sam:
[1:49:16]
| It was majority hung.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:17]
| It was majority hung. This is from the Washington Post. But by the way, OK, so not so. So, yeah. So but yeah, it was basically I mean, and they decided that they just they'd spent so much time doing that that they decided that they weren't going to. They didn't want to go through it again. Yeah. So, but they, I don't, the one thing that I don't recall was what the, what the, what the big mistake that they did during the prosecution, if I remember correctly, had something to do with the. with the witnesses themselves?
|
Sam:
[1:49:56]
| Well, recent conversations about this that I've heard indicate it's actually exactly what Trump's partial defense here is, is they weren't able to make the case that it was more about the election than it was about hiding it from his family.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:14]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:15]
| Like there was reasonable doubt that his primary motivation might've been hiding it from his family.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:21]
| But the thing is, the first thing that Hope Hicks showed up is basically say, oh, it's all about the fucking election. Just completely blew that out of the water.
|
Sam:
[1:50:29]
| And several other people have said that, too, as witnesses so far. The publisher of the National Enquirer and that lawyer were both, yeah, it's all about the election.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:40]
| So. So we'll see. It will continue this coming week. You know? I don't know. i mean we've we've still we're still working up to cohen who's presumably going to be the last person they put on one thing the defense has tried to do is every single person who comes on, they try to get them to talk about how much of a scumbag and liar cohen is and they all agree cohen is a scumbag and liar i.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:14]
| Mean it's the same fucking strategy again forget Everyone.
|
Sam:
[1:51:16]
| Knows that. The prosecution knows that. And the key to what the prosecution is doing is basically every single thing that Cohen is probably going to say, they're having two or three other people come in with the same facts, saying the same thing, showing the same story, plus documentation in writing, making the same conclusions before Cohen even gets there. So Cohen ends up being the icing on the cake that sort of confirms everything, but there won't be anything that relies only on Cohen's word.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:52]
| So, well, so yeah, you have to have whatever he says corroborated by other evidence. Otherwise nobody's going to believe it. Now I get that. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:52:00]
| So we're going to have that. And then of course, uh, the defense gets to potentially put on a case. Tom, Donald Trump still says he wants to testify, but that would be the stupidest fucking thing in the world. And I, on any, on any normal case, you'd say there's no freaking way, but since it's Donald Trump, who knows? He may decide he just wants to. But the one thing we all know is if he actually does decide to testify, then any slim chance he has here just drops to zero because like he's only going to hurt himself. You know, he is not going to help his own case. So, which is, of course, why no sane lawyer.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:42]
| Would allow him on the stand.
|
Sam:
[1:52:43]
| Yeah, every single lawyer on his team is going to be doing everything they possibly can to make sure he does not go on the stand.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:53]
| And listen, you want to see the biggest collection of people going, you know, hitting their heads like with their face palming and like burying their hands between between, you know, burying their head between their hands as their client just goes and completely torpedoes himself. That's good. I mean, if we had live video that that would be great. OK, to see that happen live, because you'd see the bunch of people are going home. My fucking God. what the hell is he doing just shut up shut up objection no it's your own witness no fuck no.
|
Sam:
[1:53:32]
| Okay I think we're done here Yvonne I.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:36]
| Think we are.
|
Sam:
[1:53:38]
| Do you want to do those stuff at the end instead of me?
|
Ivan:
[1:53:41]
| No, it's your job. I got to go find it. I got to find it. I got to find the damn thing, which I've been looking for.
|
Sam:
[1:53:50]
| You're going to find the highlight from the Slack. Okay. Yes. So while you're doing that, I'll give the other stuff. Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. There, you will find the archive of our shows going back to the beginning, except the college show. That's not on there because I still haven't found those tapes and probably never will until I retire and blah, blah, blah. And maybe even not then, because maybe they've disappeared over the years. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:14]
| Then it will take for me to retire and go up there and have the fucking time to find a goddamn tapes. But anyway, OK, I digress.
|
Sam:
[1:54:21]
| Anyway, for the last almost year, the transcripts are on the site, too. And I fixed those transcripts. So they now show up. And and by the way, I most of that I did by hand. I only use chat GPT to help with one little thing where like it was a, a more complicated text transform than a simple find and replace. Cause you had to like get these two parts and put them back in. And anyway, I had chat GPT help with that, but the transcripts are back working and also on there, all the ways to contact us, email, Facebook, Mastodon, and a link to our Patreon where you can give us cash money at various levels. We will make you. make you, we'll make you a sandwich. No, no, not that. We will ring a bell. We will mention you on the show. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff at different levels. And very importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just contact us and ask, we will invite you to the curmudgeon's course.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:26]
| You know, it doesn't even have to be nicely.
|
Sam:
[1:55:28]
| Yeah. And, and, you know, that completely like takes away the incentive for somebody to actually donate to our patreon they can get on the slack for free right but you know that that's why we only make 15 bucks a month from the patreon but yeah obviously we're not we're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:45]
| We're not we're not rolling in the dust.
|
Sam:
[1:55:47]
| Obviously if we weren't giving away things for free we'd have thousands of dollars a month coming from the patreon but if we can get.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:55]
| Your one million dollar donation.
|
Sam:
[1:55:57]
| Yes we.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:58]
| Would be very happy.
|
Sam:
[1:55:59]
| Anyway for you just ask us we'll invite you to the slack that's where yvonne and i and other people are just going in and chatting throughout the week and sharing links and talking about news stories talking about not news stories talking about fun stuff talking about serious stuff it's a lot of fun the more the merrier please join us okay so yvonne what is is your highlighted story of the week from the curmudgeon's corner slack.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:26]
| So there's been quite a lot of jokes about Christine Noem and her dog shooting story.
|
Sam:
[1:56:34]
| Oh God. Yes. Yeah. We, we, we mentioned her shooting the dog on last week's show. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:39]
| We did mention that this week, a bill crystal made a great, make, make great joke, but it's shared on the, on the slack where he says, uh, sources close to Noem. Tell me that the next, that next up, she has her eye on her kid's pet bunny that lazy ass big eared welfare case just sits around in wood chips eating carrots all day buck tooth loser which is why Christy might have to put a slug in it and so that's been Christy Noem's week where she has spent basically trying to, Just talk about how, hey, it's the right thing to do. Still fully expecting her literally to shoot another animal just to prove her point.
|
Sam:
[1:57:22]
| Maybe. One of the headlines this week was Kristi Noem's chances of being vice president are now as dead as her dog.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:33]
| Poor doggies.
|
Sam:
[1:57:34]
| However, there was also an analysis done of polling on this issue where Republicans are actually split on whether this is a bad thing or no, not not Republican Trump voters, Trump voters, Trump voters are split. everybody is.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:50]
| Appalled except trump voters that are like maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:57:53]
| It's okay it's fine you know whatever you know and her excuses by the way have changed over the course of the last week as well like the way she's explaining it but she's basically double doubling down on it she's just very i.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:09]
| Mean just digging her digging herself in deeper it's fine.
|
Sam:
[1:58:12]
| Yeah so and you know trump may pick her anywhere i.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:18]
| Mean i mean look and that's what i'm saying i'm gonna guess to get back into good graces she's gonna shoot some other animal.
|
Sam:
[1:58:25]
| On fifth avenue on.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:27]
| Fifth avenue yes.
|
Sam:
[1:58:28]
| Yeah that'll.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:30]
| Be a story.
|
Sam:
[1:58:31]
| She's gonna shoot the judge's dog.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:37]
| Yeah, that won't cause any problems.
|
Sam:
[1:58:38]
| No? Yeah. No, I don't know. But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:45]
| That'll go over well.
|
Sam:
[1:58:46]
| You know, and there have been pictures of this poor dog cricket. You know, I just feel bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:51]
| I feel bad for it. It's crazy.
|
Sam:
[1:58:55]
| Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, she says the dog was terrorizing everybody and was a danger. And look, there are dogs that are dangerous. dangerous there are other ways to deal with it.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:08]
| There are a lot of.
|
Sam:
[1:59:10]
| Other ways.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:10]
| To deal with it.
|
Sam:
[1:59:12]
| Yes okay are we done yes it's okay as usual everybody have a great week have fun stay safe all that stuff and if all goes well if all goes as expected we will be back to talk to you again next week with all the latest developments from everywhere so goodbye bye, Okay, I'm hitting stop.
|
