Faraday Cage Log Cabin

[JM]: I saw this month that the Internet Archive at archive.org announced that they have archived the trillionth web page.

[JM]: So from the first web page that was created in 1991, up until today, they've now archived 1 trillion pages.

[JM]: So they are celebrating that this month with a bunch of events.

[JM]: And you can check them out at blog.archive.org/trillion.

[JM]: And this is cool.

[JM]: I have long been a fan of archive.org and the Wayback Machine and all of the other excellent knowledge archival efforts that they undertake.

[JM]: And this is an exciting milestone to see.

[DJ]: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Internet Archive also.

[DJ]: In fact, I donate money to them every month because I really think they perform a crucial and maybe if not unsung, mostly unsung service.

[DJ]: That is to say, probably most people that use the Internet don't know that the Internet Archive exists.

[DJ]: And one of my biggest problems with the nature of the web is how much of it seems to disappear so quickly.

[DJ]: Like, people post things online, and within just a couple of years, they just aren't there anymore.

[DJ]: And I think a lot of the time, that's kind of unfortunate.

[DJ]: So I really like the work that the Internet Archive does, and they do a bunch of other cool stuff in addition to...

[DJ]: archiving web pages.

[DJ]: They perform a lot of the other functions of a library for the entire digital world.

[DJ]: So go to that site and check out.

[DJ]: If you've never looked at archive.org before, do it and see what they're doing to celebrate their trillionth archival.

[JM]: I noticed that one of the events on October 9th is going to be a conversation with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Brewster Kahle.

[JM]: I don't know how to pronounce the last name, but they're going to talk about the rise of the internet, its continuing and explosive impact on society, the importance of the internet archive and other developing issues and the growth and use of the internet.

[JM]: And this episode will probably be published the same day.

[JM]: So if you are hearing this on the day that we publish it, then later in the day, check out this conversation, which is in person in San Francisco.

[JM]: And there are also tickets to see it virtually via streaming, I imagine.

[DJ]: That's cool.

[DJ]: I'll definitely check that out because Sir Tim Berners-Lee is often mentioned as being essentially the inventor of the World Wide Web, and I've been seeing him mentioned in online media a fair bit lately, which is really cool for a guy who could probably justly be retired and resting on his laurels, but he seems to be doing a lot of work right now around the free and open internet.

[DJ]: So I'm excited to see it, and I'd like to hear that conversation.

[JM]: And be sure to check out the other events via the link we'll put in the show notes so you can see some of the other things they are doing to celebrate this very significant milestone.

[JM]: Okay, moving on.

[JM]: In a previous episode, we talked a bit about... chicken.

[JM]: We talked about ordering mid-chicken at Bojangles, which was a story about a chicken purveyor chain that has been experimenting with generative software powered takeout ordering processes.

[JM]: And the article in question really just pointed out how mundane it is, that it's fine, that it worked well, and that it will soon become the new normal.

[JM]: And in other news, it seems that Taco Bell has experimented with this.

[JM]: And I'm not sure it's going quite as well as the author of the aforementioned article made it sound.

[JM]: The Taco Bell chief digital and technology officer said, quote, we're learning a lot.

[JM]: I'm going to be honest with you.

[JM]: I think like everybody, sometimes it lets me down.

[JM]: But sometimes it really surprises me.

[DJ]: What isn't clear to me about that statement is, is he saying that everyone is let down by AI sometimes?

[DJ]: Or is he saying that everyone lets him down sometimes?

[DJ]: Because he says, it seems like, like everybody, this too has disappointed me.

[DJ]: But I'm not sure that's actually what he's saying.

[DJ]: I would love it if this quote was like, it seems like my family and my children, in whom I invested so many hopes, our AI drive-thrus are also disappointing.

[DJ]: Thank you.

[JM]: I'm going to be charitable here and assume he means that generative software is letting him down sometimes, just like it lets everyone down sometimes, but you can make your own interpretation of what he meant by that.

[JM]: It seems that Wendy's is also experimenting with this and that it has expanded its generative software powered drive-thrus to 500 additional locations.

[JM]: I don't know how many they had before, but it sounds like they're expanding to

[JM]: a very significant number of locations, even though it previously admitted its system required human intervention 14% of the time, which doesn't really sound bad, right?

[JM]: Like it sounds reasonably successful.

[DJ]: We're not going to quote the entire article that we're pulling this from, right?

[DJ]: But there is a certain tone in it of like, can you believe these stupid companies doing this stupid thing even though it's stupid?

[DJ]: But at the same time, there is an important point underneath this, and I'll try to dig it out.

[DJ]: The way this is phrased, Wendy's announced that it's expanding its AI-powered drive-throughs

[DJ]: even though it previously admitted that its system requires human intervention 14% of the time.

[DJ]: The way this is structured, Wendy's is rolling out a thing to more locations, even though it's a colossal disaster and the executives in charge of this company should be fired and possibly also chased by alligators.

[DJ]: But if you just reverse the mathematics briefly, which I've conveniently done on this chart over here,

[DJ]: Basically what they're saying is they've automated their drive-through and that automation works 86% of the time.

[DJ]: So yeah, of course they're expanding it because it's successful.

[DJ]: And I think the thing underlying this particular article and a lot of the discourse on this is one end of the spectrum, it might not be a spectrum, it's just two poles actually, of this sort of insanity about AI that has gripped our culture.

[DJ]: And on the one side, you've got the hype cycle, which is like a whole other conversation that we could have and what its implications for the economy might be, which basically says like, at last, our machine god is come.

[DJ]: We must redirect all of the resources of humanity into perfecting it.

[DJ]: But on the other side, you've got this like, can you believe how stupid and useless this stupid useless thing that works 86% of the time is?

[DJ]: It's so stupid and useless.

[DJ]: And it's like, wait, I believe perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

[DJ]: I do think that both takes are kind of a product of the insane hype around this technology.

[DJ]: Because if the current technological capability of large language model powered software, because as we keep pointing out, that is what people mean right now when they refer to AI, at least that's usually what they mean.

[DJ]: If that hype wasn't so crazy...

[DJ]: then you would imagine that these companies that operate drive-throughs would be slowly, quietly testing out automation and seeing what happened and being like, okay, this is not providing a very good experience.

[DJ]: Maybe this needs to sit on the shelf.

[DJ]: Like, yo, Anthropic, call us back in six months when you've got a new model or whatever.

[DJ]: But instead, because the hype is there, these companies like Wendy's and Taco Bell...

[DJ]: have to see i only get stuff right 86 of the time too justin companies like wendy's and taco bell have to like trumpet that they're using ai in their drive-thrus and then people quite naturally drive through the thing and go dude i told it to order 18 000 bottles of water

[DJ]: And actually that there's no end to that anecdote in this article.

[DJ]: I really wanted to know what happened when someone ordered 18,000 cups of water at a drive-thru.

[DJ]: But the problem is that like this technology isn't allowed to just be boring.

[DJ]: It was called something like the future is ordering mid chicken at Bojangles, the future of AI, because it would be like if, if some company was going on and on and on about how they 20 years ago are like connecting their point of sale terminals at their fast food locations to the internet.

[DJ]: Right?

[DJ]: Like, of course they're connected to the internet.

[DJ]: So what?

[DJ]: As I think I've remarked before, I kind of wish AI would reach that point.

[DJ]: It might not, if it turns out the entire survival of the entire economy depends on us being insane about it, but...

[DJ]: I kind of hope it does, because I find the takes on both of these extremes very silly.

[JM]: The flip side of this is, I don't know what the interaction looked like the 14% of the time where the system required human intervention, right?

[JM]: Like, how frustrating was it for those 14% of customers?

[JM]: You propose it may not have degraded gracefully?

[JM]: You can imagine how that might have gone, right?

[JM]: Where you have a question or you order something and the response comes back just total confabulated gibberish as these generative software systems are want to do.

[JM]: And I just wonder like,

[JM]: What was that experience like for these customers who had to escalate it?

[JM]: And what does that escalation process even look like?

[JM]: Like, does the software just kind of give up at some point?

[JM]: And it says, oh, you know, I think I'm having trouble here.

[JM]: Let me get a human for you.

[JM]: I would love to know the details about what is this failure mode and how does it work?

[JM]: Did the customer have to say, I want to speak to a human, like we sometimes do when we're dealing with these call center systems that just fail miserably?

[JM]: I really am curious.

[DJ]: I mean, I do drive up to fast food drive-thrus and yell, I want to speak to a human, but it's just because I'm lonely.

[JM]: There might be other ways for you to get your human interaction quota for the day, but hey, you know, whatever works for you.

[DJ]: I'm going to have to find them because they're automating all the drive-thrus.

[DJ]: You're right though, that like the drive-thru experience doesn't allow for a lot of, there's not a lot of slack in that system, right?

[DJ]: Like you pull up, you pull up to the window and they go like, that's all for free.

And then...

[DJ]: And then you have to tell them what you want to eat right away.

[DJ]: Because by the time you pull up to the window, they've already taken your order and they expect to receive payment.

[DJ]: You can't get to that point and find out that your order is totally wrong and you have to give it over again.

[DJ]: Like that's not a good system.

[DJ]: And at the same time, as I think we've probably remarked before, like one of the real limitations with what we've currently seen from large language model powered software is that it's inherently incapable of noticing when it can't do something.

[DJ]: So I guess you need a human monitoring the drive-thru anyway?

[DJ]: Yeah, I don't really get it.

[DJ]: So I'm hoping we can have someone who designs automated drive-thru ordering systems on our show next time so they can walk us through.

[DJ]: Or maybe we could do like a site visit.

[DJ]: It's like one of those shows where you inspect how various people's jobs work and they could take us through the whole process.

[JM]: Okay, moving on.

[JM]: In a previous episode, we talked about the problem of generated music slop landing on music streaming platforms in general and on Spotify in particular, including folks who had generated music for dead music artists and submitted them as new music from that artist.

[JM]: It seems that Spotify has finally acknowledged the problem

[JM]: and has announced new policies to protect artists against spam impersonation and deception.

[JM]: And from what I can tell, it sounds like their response is that they're going to roll out a new spam filter that can detect common tactics used by spammers to game the system.

[JM]: But from what I understand, just a day after these announcements, it seems that someone uploaded a song for some popular artist, even though that artist had been on hiatus for more than a decade.

[JM]: And the end impression that I get is that the whole response from Spotify, frankly, just is like every other milquetoast response from someone who

[JM]: isn't really sufficiently motivated to deal with the problem in a comprehensive, thoughtful, we actually care about this problem kind of manner.

[JM]: But that was just my take.

[JM]: What do you think?

[DJ]: It does feel to me like Spotify is saying we're deploying bold new initiatives to try to partially address the problems that we were instrumental in creating.

[DJ]: I mean, they didn't put it that way, of course, but that's basically what it comes down to.

[DJ]: I mean, some of the recent controversy around use of so-called AI slop on Spotify had to do with Spotify apparently doing this themselves, like generating a bunch of not real music.

[DJ]: So I don't find their messaging compelling around anything about like, I don't know, protecting creators or whatever.

[DJ]: I mean, this is perhaps a bit cynical, but it's hard not to imagine that essentially

[DJ]: What Spotify cares about are not losing their revenue streams.

[DJ]: Until whatever nonsense is going on on Spotify actually makes their customers stop using Spotify, I have to imagine that they're going to do the minimum viable, yeah, they're going to implement the spam filter.

[DJ]: All right, cool.

[DJ]: But there is, on the other hand, when it comes to all kinds of digital entertainment, this increasing ability to quickly generate relatively low quality music or writing or eventually video pretty soon is coming like it's on the way.

[DJ]: And we're in kind of a strange situation where I don't really even want to say this like where it's almost like we we need gatekeepers again because like one of the things that companies like say Amazon did with publishing and Spotify did with music.

[DJ]: Maybe Amazon, to a greater degree, was democratized a bit.

[DJ]: Anyone can publish a book on Amazon.

[DJ]: You don't have to hire an agent and then shop your work around to one of the five or four, however many it is, remaining big publishing companies in New York City that will...

[DJ]: not buy it from you.

[DJ]: There was a lot of democratization, but now that it's so easy to just generate creative work like this, that democratization also means that real creators of actual work are in danger of being kind of drowned out or pushed aside by people who typed, generate me a song that sounds like metric or something like that.

[DJ]: And what does the world do about it?

[DJ]: I think a big answer is we don't know yet because this technology exists and people are going to use it.

[DJ]: And trying to stop it all at the platform side, right?

[DJ]: Like being like, well, yeah, I mean, we can't stop people from generating all this music.

[DJ]: We just have to make sure that the people who make music accessible to people don't ever let any of it through.

[DJ]: Like that is necessarily going to be a flawed response.

[DJ]: So I guess to some degree, I'm almost talking myself back into some degree of sympathy for Spotify.

[DJ]: I'm not really.

[DJ]: I'm still using QuoBuzz over here.

[DJ]: So I've pretty much given up on Spotify.

[DJ]: But I guess part of it is, to some degree, it's like, what are they supposed to do?

[DJ]: You know, we read this article about Spotify's attempt to fight AI slop falling on its face.

[DJ]: That is a paraphrasing of the article's headline.

[DJ]: Just like Taco Bell's attempt to replace drive-thru employees with AI is not going well.

[DJ]: The bottom line in a lot of this stuff is there are big, hard problems in technology.

[DJ]: And we're super mad that people aren't easily coming up with totally effective solutions to them.

[DJ]: Like, yeah, of course they're not.

[JM]: I think in this case, Spotify has signaled to me at least that they're really not taking this problem particularly seriously.

[JM]: If you look at their response, they're not saying we are going to review our process via which people submit music under the name of a particular artist.

[JM]: That is notably absent from anything that I've seen them say in response to this problem.

[JM]: Instead of what they're saying is we are going to better equip people who are artists or who work with artists to help them stop the attacks at the source instead of Spotify doing it.

[JM]: And they're going to invest more resources into their content mismatch process, which I assume is just they're going to write some generative software to try to detect the generated music.

[JM]: We're just going to use AI to fight AI.

[JM]: And I just don't really see a response that to me signals that they care about the magnitude of the problem and are serious about reviewing the core processes by which people publish music under the name of a particular artist to their platform.

[DJ]: Yeah, I'm not going to argue with you too hard on it because, again, I don't really think Spotify has ever had the best interests of artists at its heart.

[DJ]: Or even if it started out that way, it's just another giant publicly traded technology company.

[DJ]: The only reason it exists is to maximize returns to its investors.

[DJ]: Spotify has just become emblematic, like so many companies have, of people who saw an opportunity, created opportunities for other people, yes, but mostly got super wealthy off of the creative labor of others and now are basically like, hey, you know this problem that we've sort of been a big part of creating?

[DJ]: We're maybe going to try to do something about it, I guess, if we have to.

[DJ]: Not exactly brave, you know, bold behavior that's worth celebrating.

[JM]: Indeed.

[JM]: In other news and continuing with the whole generative software theme for this opening, LinkedIn has joined the loud chorus of companies who are saying, we're going to train our generative software models on your personal data and all the content you create, unless you go to this obscure panel in your settings and opt out of it.

[JM]: So I'm going to put a link to the specific settings panel that you need to go to in order to disable this generative software training on your personal data and content you create.

[JM]: This is something I did the moment I saw this announcement.

[JM]: And if this is something that doesn't sound particularly appetizing to you, then you can follow this link and do the same for yourself and pass on the word to your loved ones so that they can also make this choice for themselves.

[DJ]: I was very pleased when I saw a reference to this the other day to log into LinkedIn and go to these settings and realize I had already opted out of all of them at some point.

[DJ]: I think I did like a privacy settings sweep on LinkedIn a little while ago, which, by the way, is a good idea to do for the various online services that you use is just sometimes go through their settings and turn everything off.

[DJ]: as much as you can, because there's often things about like personalized ads or et cetera.

[DJ]: My 30 seconds of stand up on the LinkedIn thing is that LinkedIn already pushes using AI to compose posts on LinkedIn so heavily that I really wonder if there is any human, like human generated content left for them to train on, on their platform.

[DJ]: Because seriously, LinkedIn is, I mean, LinkedIn has been totally intolerable for years at this point.

[DJ]: It started off as a way to stay connected with, well, basically it was Facebook for business, right?

[DJ]: Like Facebook for business contacts and contacts.

[DJ]: See, again, I'm only, I need human intervention 14% of the time on this show.

Yeah.

[DJ]: LinkedIn was like Facebook except for your business contacts instead of your friends.

[DJ]: And like Facebook, LinkedIn followed the path of eventually turning into this horrible content farm where the only reason it exists is to keep you looking at it for a little bit longer so they can show you sponsored posts and ads and stuff.

[DJ]: And so when I use LinkedIn, which is only in the context of my job,

[DJ]: I avoid that home tab like the plague because it's always just like, hey, your friend posted this.

[DJ]: Do you want to celebrate it?

[DJ]: And then it's like 15 posts about people going on and on about, well, these days, usually about how AI is either creating or destroying their jobs.

[DJ]: And I really am starting to wonder how many of those posts are just generated by the prominent button that they put in the compose a post box anyway.

[DJ]: So I don't know, LinkedIn.

[DJ]: I think you're just going to end up training your model on itself.

[DJ]: And we all know what happens when you do that.

[JM]: I totally agree.

[JM]: It's just going to end up being generated posts consumed by their generative software training to then generate more posts.

[JM]: It's just going to be this slop, vicious cycle feedback loop.

[JM]: And given that the parent company is Microsoft,

[JM]: I guess that all kind of makes sense, right?

[JM]: Like it seems to follow the parent company's strategy and investments in generative software and just seems very par for the course.

[JM]: This news I don't think is going to surprise anyone who remotely pays attention to this kind of thing.

[DJ]: No, it's part of the strange paradox of the technology industry that we currently live in in the year 2025 that there's this never-ending, breathless, crazy hype about AI.

[DJ]: It's all everyone talks about.

[DJ]: And at the same time, everything that actually happens feels so predictable and inevitable.

[DJ]: Like Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world.

[DJ]: They got to grow somehow.

[DJ]: And the only way to do that right now, if you're a technology company, as far as I can tell, is to AI all the things, is to artificial all the intelligence or whatever.

[DJ]: So yeah, of course, every single one of their products has to be packed full of LLM driven features as hard and fast as they can.

[DJ]: So there's this co-pilot thing everywhere.

[DJ]: in Windows and in Office and in GitHub and I assume in LinkedIn too, or maybe it's called something else there.

[DJ]: But like you hear about all that stuff and this is kind of unfortunate as a technology enthusiast.

[DJ]: Instead of it being exciting, my response is always like, uh-huh, right, right, right.

[DJ]: Of course, of course you're doing that.

[DJ]: How do I turn it off?

[DJ]: Oh, I can't.

[JM]: Okay, moving on.

[JM]: I am a big fan of high fidelity audio and have been for a long time.

[JM]: And I have friends that are big high fidelity nerds.

[JM]: And it's always fun to see the latest products come out in terms of

[JM]: integrated audio-visual stereo receivers, speakers, and all the other associated gear.

[JM]: But I'm guessing that most people aren't aware that a lot of these brands are increasingly owned by a smaller and smaller number of corporate parents.

[JM]: The most recent example of this is that brands like Denon, Marantz, Polk, Harman Kardon, Bang & Olufsen, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL, and a bunch more

[JM]: are now owned by a single company, and that company is Samsung.

[DJ]: And this is great news, Justin, because as everyone knows, you are an outspoken fan of Samsung.

[JM]: I don't really know if I've ever given my two cents on Samsung on this show, but...

[JM]: I just get the feeling that you're a big fan.

[JM]: Since you opened the door, let's walk through it, shall we?

[DJ]: Yes, please.

[JM]: I have long, long... What is the opposite of admired?

[JM]: Despised?

[JM]: I think it's despised.

[JM]: I think the thing that really set me off about Samsung and that I just can't get past was when the iPhone came out and the early versions of it started to become more popular.

[JM]: Samsung did everything they could to rip off everything that they could about it.

[JM]: And we all know the adage of good artists copy, great artists steal.

[JM]: But I do think that adage can be taken too far.

[JM]: And I'm not even sure that adage is like a good way to live your life or run your business.

[JM]: But anyway, that's a whole separate thing.

[DJ]: I mean, regardless, I don't think anyone would describe the early Samsung smartphones as great art.

[DJ]: Give me a break.

[DJ]: They were slightly uglier iPhones.

[JM]: They were just shameless about it to the point where people started calling them Samsung, which I thought was a clever enough dig.

[JM]: And so ever since those days, I just lost respect for Samsung.

[JM]: And whenever I'm making a purchase decision, for example, they make very popular and highly regarded solid state drives.

[JM]: I think probably more than any other company, they probably sell the most high-end solid-state drives of any company I'm aware of.

[JM]: But there are other companies that make very fine drives of similar caliber, and I go out of my way to choose those companies' products when I'm buying things because I've just decided that based on past behavior, I just don't really respect Samsung.

[JM]: And keeping with the theme of voting with one's dollars, I've followed that advice or that credo and just decided that

[JM]: I'm not going to give them any more money than they're already making.

[JM]: But in any case, coming back to the topic at hand, you see this kind of behavior in lots of industries, right?

[JM]: Craft beers are increasingly owned by Budweiser and Miller and Coors.

[JM]: And most people have no idea.

[JM]: They go to their little corner store and they buy what they think is some artisanal craft beer that's owned by one of the largest beer producers in the world.

[JM]: It happens with box of crackers, personal care products.

[JM]: Every product category has, I think, this kind of development where...

[JM]: The niche artisanal thing you think you're buying is actually produced by some very large corporate parent that if their label was on the thing you were buying, you probably wouldn't be buying it.

[JM]: And I feel very confident that most people who are shopping for high fidelity products who by and large are probably like us, the type of people who are really nerd out and research these things.

[JM]: But I imagine a lot of them don't even know that all of these brands that I just mentioned are now owned by Samsung.

[JM]: And it concerns me because there aren't lots of other companies that make certain kinds of products.

[JM]: If you're in the market for speakers, okay, speakers are relatively easy to make.

[JM]: And you can find lots of speaker producers that are not owned by Samsung, if that's something you care about.

[JM]: Yet.

[JM]: Yet.

[JM]: But things like generally available amplifiers and integrated audio, video, stereo systems and receivers, those things are generally harder to find.

[JM]: Because Denon and Marantz, for example, own a significant amount of that market share.

[JM]: Yeah, there are others, you can get them from Yamaha and others, but

[JM]: That's a consolidating area.

[JM]: And it just concerns me to see so much of these brands now being owned by one single company.

[JM]: And it's a company that once again, I don't respect very much.

[JM]: So I was a little sad to see this.

[DJ]: I hear that.

[DJ]: But then the next news that we have about Samsung, I think, probably turns you right around on that feeling.

[JM]: Absolutely.

[JM]: Because there's nothing better than spending upwards of $2,000 on a high-end Samsung refrigerator, only to find that when you go to grab your milk in the morning...

[JM]: a bunch of ads on the outside of your refrigerator because it seems that on these refrigerators that again, you're spending a huge amount of money on that ads will be displayed on the outside of them when the exterior screen is idle for a certain period of time.

[JM]: And as a sidebar, but if you like the implicit contract is you either pay for something, or you get something for free or heavily discounted, and you get ads, but the increasing trend toward Oh, no, this really expensive thing that you paid for.

[JM]: Yeah, you're also going to get ads on it.

[JM]: That just seems to be the new normal.

[JM]: It's not like the old model where you got to choose, well, okay, I don't want ads, so I'm going to pay more or I'm fine with ads, so I'm going to pay less.

[JM]: No, no, no.

[JM]: Now you just get both.

[JM]: You get the higher price and the ads.

[DJ]: Yeah, right.

[DJ]: Or I mean, there were things where like the only the advertising model worked, right?

[DJ]: Like newspapers, famously, like newspapers were subsidized by ads, and newspapers probably wouldn't have ever existed in the way that they did without that model.

[DJ]: And that was probably a net good for people, even though advertising is annoying.

[DJ]: but you're right like now i don't know i'm sorry like get samsung's accountancy department over here and have them prove to me how they just can't like sell these smart fridges unless they start showing advertising on them incidentally like they're starting to do this which means they were selling smart fridges without advertising and now they've decided oh no the advertising's there it's like okay are you guys going to go out of business if you don't show ads on your internet connected fridges or is this just a way to squeeze you know some extra profit out by as you say kind of

[DJ]: violating that bargain of like, wait, I wanted to buy the premium product and part of that premium experience is not being exposed to advertising.

[DJ]: Well, too bad.

[JM]: And from what I gather, this is being foisted on customers who did not make this bargain when they bought it.

[JM]: So it's not like they're announcing, okay, after this date, anyone who buys one is going to get ads.

[JM]: I think it's retroactive.

[JM]: So if you bought one of these fancy generative software powered so-called smart fridges, some software update is going to occur.

[JM]: You're going to be forced to accept the terms and conditions that appear on your fridge when you're just trying to get ads.

[JM]: Some ketchup for your sandwich.

[JM]: Oh, for God's sake.

[DJ]: I remember when I was a child, kneeling at the side of my bed and praying, praying to any God who would listen, that I would go through the whole rest of my life never having to hear the phrase, except the terms and conditions of your fridge.

[DJ]: But those prayers have not been answered.

[JM]: And after being forced to accept said terms and conditions, you will then get ads on this wildly expensive refrigerator that you unfortunately decided to buy.

[DJ]: If you say no to the terms and conditions, does your refrigerator stop cooling your food?

[DJ]: Like if you get this update to your Samsung fridge and you click no, reject the terms and conditions, and then you're like...

[DJ]: All right, everyone, get your cooler bags together because this food's only going to stay good for another eight hours.

[DJ]: We got to get another fridge in here, stat.

[JM]: If experience with these kinds of things is any guide, what happens is you don't get to use the screen on your device at all until you accept it.

[JM]: That's usually how that works.

[JM]: I have been able to defer the screen when it appears on my car for a short period of time, but it will just come up every single time you go to use it.

[JM]: So I'm pretty sure it'll just be the same thing.

[JM]: They'll just nag you and nag you endlessly until you accept it.

[DJ]: I know this has been a topic, perhaps even a perennial topic for us, but I've never felt more convinced of the rightness of my notion that lots and lots of the things in our lives should not be connected to the internet because the downsides outweigh the upsides.

[DJ]: I'm sorry if this makes me some kind of crotchety old Luddite or something like that, but I am

[DJ]: Cannot readily imagine the explanation that would convince me that I need, what did you say, generative software-powered features in my refrigerator?

[DJ]: What would those be exactly?

[DJ]: What I need from my refrigerator is a large enough space that is kept at a temperature of somewhere between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius at all times.

[JM]: I imagine like all of the other internet connected and now generative software powered devices, the main function of said features is to track what you do and make money off of your personal behavior and data.

[JM]: That's the other part of this, right?

[JM]: You mentioned newspapers.

[JM]: Well, those ads, they were just ads.

[JM]: They weren't targeted at you, the person who bought a 25 cent newspaper at a newsstand on the corner before you went home.

[JM]: But now these ads that you're going to see on your refrigerator, you can bet they are targeted at you and your behavior and the things you are doing with your fridge.

[JM]: And God knows what other information it's able to collect about you.

[JM]: And that's not great.

[DJ]: Yeah, I don't love it.

[DJ]: It fits in this theme of how often technological advancements are used not to really provide value to the end user of the object, but instead are basically used to provide value to the maker of the thing.

[DJ]: And as the end user of the object, I don't like it.

[DJ]: and I don't want it.

[DJ]: You have regaled us with tales of your kettle that can receive firmware updates despite having no clear reason why it should need to do so, you know, and also in your car where the software gets updated and they change the user interface on you.

[DJ]: As the person using these things, this stuff isn't good.

[DJ]: No one gets in their car to go somewhere, turns on the screen and goes, oh, thank goodness they moved the climate controls around.

[DJ]: No, that doesn't happen.

[DJ]: And likewise with your fridge.

[DJ]: I mean, maybe people who have smart fridges these days can tell me why they just couldn't go back to the old way.

[DJ]: But a big part of me wants to go back to the old way or stick with the old way since I do not have a smart fridge.

[JM]: I think my advice to someone who is contemplating buying a smart fridge that's connected to the internet and has a big screen on it and that is sold by a company with the track record of Samsung is, and I think the expression goes, do not let the camel's nose into the tent if you do not want the camel's ass in the tent.

[JM]: Because guess what?

[JM]: That whole camel is in your tent now.

[DJ]: An unexpected desert-based metaphor.

[DJ]: The slightly more prosaic version of that expression is something like, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

[JM]: Yeah, or the concept of a Trojan horse, like you've let them in your house and connected it to the internet, and it has the ability to observe certain behavior in your household via who knows what means.

[JM]: So don't be surprised when it decides to relieve itself all over your kitchen floor.

[DJ]: Yeah, I wasn't very happy when Samsung added that feature to their fridges either.

[DJ]: The thing I hope is that there will remain alternatives, right?

[DJ]: Like one of the frustrating things about developments like this is when you want to replace your car and it turns out that there are like no cars on the market after the model year of say 2022 that don't receive over-the-air software updates or something.

[DJ]: Like you just have no alternative because there aren't that many companies that make cars.

[DJ]: So there might not be an alternative.

[DJ]: And there are certain types of product.

[DJ]: Like I have a smart TV.

[DJ]: It has never been connected to the internet ever because I don't want a smart TV.

[DJ]: I want a stupid TV.

[DJ]: I want a TV that just shows me the video output of the things I plug into it.

[DJ]: And that's all please.

[DJ]: So I'm kind of able to use this TV that way.

[DJ]: But again, going back to like the car example, like if you buy one of these cars, as you pointed out before, like it's not even like connect me to Wi-Fi and you can be like, no, like they have built in cellular modems with paid up phone plans or however that works.

[DJ]: And so the car is just going to change your climate control layout and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

[DJ]: Except, yeah, vote with your wallet, buy an alternative unless there aren't any alternatives.

[DJ]: This is a prayer to some brave appliance maker out there to continue making dumb appliances for those of us who are not super enamored of the large language models showing us ads in our refrigerators.

[JM]: I also hope that there will continue to be alternatives to products like this in the future.

[JM]: I'm not particularly optimistic about that, if I'm being fully honest, just because the incentives all are pointing in that direction.

[JM]: Why would you leave the money on the table when you can charge excessive or not excessive, you can charge high prices, and also

[JM]: collect lots of data and sell it and serve ads in the screen on the device.

[JM]: There's just so many incentives to do this kind of thing.

[JM]: And you're right that the only thing you can do in a world in which there are no alternatives and everyone is doing this, the only thing you can do is not connect it to the internet ever until such time as we surmise before that cellular modems become cheap enough to install and

[JM]: operate in terms of whatever connectivity costs there are, that it just is baked into all of the things we buy.

[JM]: And it's just connecting all the time without our knowledge.

[JM]: And that's just not a great timeline to be on if it happens.

[DJ]: No, indeed.

[DJ]: I might finally decide to become some kind of log cabin in the woods person at that point, as much as I've been a city boy for my whole life.

[DJ]: But at some point when I move into an apartment where they're like, good news, we have mesh internet networks in the walls.

[DJ]: Oh, and what's with all these video cameras that are in my apartment?

[DJ]: Oh, that's for security.

[DJ]: Oh, are they on all the time?

[DJ]: Of course, you can't turn them off.

[DJ]: It's like, okay, what about this one in the bathroom though?

[DJ]: Like, yeah, I, I, I will say like what, what does frustrate me until we reach this terrible world that we've just described is the way that people opt in to these things.

[DJ]: Like when I see people who have these like, like video camera doorbells on their houses and,

[DJ]: I'm just like, OK, that's cool that now you're just, you know, essentially letting some tech company surveil your neighborhood basically in return for what exactly?

[DJ]: What like what is this giving you?

[DJ]: It's like, oh, I can see who's at the door without going and peeking through that tiny window installed next to my door.

[DJ]: Yeah.

[DJ]: Again, there are some things where there's a high degree of utility to an internet connection or a large language model, but then there's these other things where, oh, I would just really like to encourage people to question, is it worth it?

[DJ]: Are the downsides of this thing, and I think part of the problem is people aren't really aware of or don't care about the downsides, but are they worth whatever slight level of convenience you get from having that?

[JM]: Yeah, and that's a good point.

[JM]: I think while we still have alternatives, that's probably the best thing we can do is to reward those companies with our money and purchases and say, these are the kinds of products I want to buy this other class of product I'm not interested in supporting.

[JM]: And maybe just maybe enough people do that to keep those alternatives around.

[JM]: And that would be nice.

[JM]: And if that doesn't happen, then I'm with you.

[JM]: I think I'm just going to build a Faraday cage log cabin in the woods.

[JM]: And that way it won't matter how many cellular powered devices I bring into it because they'll just bounce off the mesh interior that I've woven into the log cabin that prevents any signals from escaping.

[DJ]: Your big spooky beard will keep the unwanted wireless signals away.

[DJ]: What's the most funny slash sad about what we're saying right now is that I've always sort of thought the so-called tinfoil hat notion of electromagnetic signals and things like that being harmful to one's health.

[DJ]: I've never really seen any evidence to suggest that that's true.

[DJ]: And so I've been rather skeptical of people who go to great lengths to try to avoid exposure to like wireless signals.

[DJ]: But now I'm basically talking about wanting to avoid that exposure, not because of its organic health damage, but because of this obnoxious tendency for all of these things that connect to the Internet to do semi-nefarious things with that capability.

[JM]: It is a whole new threat model that we didn't have to think about until not that long ago.

[JM]: All right, everybody.

[JM]: Thanks for listening.

[JM]: We hope you enjoyed the show.

[JM]: You can reach me on the web at justinmayer.com and you can reach Dan on the web at danj.ca.

[JM]: Please reach out with your thoughts about this episode via the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.