Cordkillers 618: Your Privacy Is on Clearance

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1:01Welcome to Cord Killers. The world of entertainment out there is, well, it's upside down. We're just trying to find out how to watch what we want, where we want, whenever we want, in this post-depocalyptic landscape of entertainment. I'm Tom Merritt with my good friend Brian Brushwood trying to find the good stuff. Yeah, and I don't think we're being too greedy, Tom. All we want is what we want, where we want, where we want, and we want to watch it on whatever device we please. And we'd like to decide how much to pay for it. And we'd like to decide when we want... Wait, we already say when. We want it before it even comes out. Eventually we'll get there. That's right. We don't want to have to even know what we want. We want to just have it appear before us.

2:02That's where we're headed. If we don't want to actually know, but we would like to have the option that will say, I'm sorry, I'm very busy. I don't want to know. Skip to the good part. We'll know it when we see it. That's right. Just like porn. That's what we're looking for. Yes, that's exactly where. I don't do a different name of the show. Well, we're going to talk about something a little more prosaic. Your TV spying on you in the supply run. Supply run, supply run, supply run. Where are the weak? So last week we mentioned that the fine folks at Gamers Nexus had determined that LG was among the smart TVs that was spying on you and they found some things that were beyond what the normal smart TV does when it spies on you. LG since then has denied the constant logging and constant uploading and denies that its TV's record audio well in standby mode.

3:05LG told Tom's hardware, LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held or win a wake word such as high LG is recognized after the user has activated the far field voice recognition feature. That by the way, didn't address the allegation that it kept recording for 15 seconds after all of that had been done. LG also said the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations unless the user is activated the voice functionality by pressing a button or using the wake word, which makes sense. It did confirm that it logs local devices on the network and that it will analyze what content you watch. If you have turned the live plus setting on that's its active content recognition. It does monitor for the wake word, but it does delete any of that data immediately if the wake word is not detected. That's the way any of these voice activated things work and it's often misinterpreted.

4:06But that one, I'll give LG a pass. Like there does need to be a tiny little buffer that's going to do I hear it? No, did I hear it? However, LG is trying to say like look, yeah, do we record all the names of all the devices on your network? Do we record all the Wi-Fi things in your high and your area? Sure. But everybody does it, Brian. Samsung does it too. We're not going to name them by name, but they're all doing it. We're not doing anything worse than everybody else. So it brings me to this question. How much spying on you is okay if your TV is cheap enough? So this is, I'm so, it's so funny when certain things just feel like they're in the air. Because on Friday, on the Weird Things podcast, we were talking about the perennial rumors of an Apple TV. And of course, in a world where displays are very cheap and the competition is, you know, this gigantic wall-sized television I'm looking at right now was only $599.

5:07You know, would you pay for your privacy? And I think that the only way an Apple TV would work would be if it had something outrageous like always on recording, but Apple has a very good reputation for keeping private things private, right? And so in that case, I could picture spending twice, three times this month much and inviting always on spying, actual spying on everything. If I trust that it won't go outside of the confines of where I want it to go, LG is probably a little less transparent about what they do with the data. And I suspect that is now that for the first time, a lot of average Joe's like your boy are for the first time using LLMs to talk to large data sets. For the first time in my lifetime, I have a sense of what my data is good for. Previously, it was just like exhaust. It was just, you know, cruffed. It was dandruff, digital dandruff that I didn't really worry about.

6:07But now that I am looking at the digital dandruff of, for example, I'm going through our patronage people because we're figuring out what we're going to do for the launch. And the more insights I get, number one, it's very helpful because I feel like I'm learning who our bosses are, what they're motivated by. And I'm able to correlate various emails over 17 years. Guys, I think personal data is a big deal. And I think my question. Breaking news. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody who was, what was it? A scoundrel is saved headline. News at 11, right? I think that, I think that separate from the question, I would say my answer to your question, Tom. And I want to hear your take because I know you've already been wise to all this. Is the amount of comfort I have for giving up my data in exchange for a cheaper television is directly proportional to my trust in the institution collecting it. And because of its actions over the years, Apple currently is sitting on trust.

7:11Who knows they can really screw that up anytime they feel like it? I, I feel like, and I have an LG TV, but mine's older, so it doesn't have a lot of the same functionality that these new ones have. So it's not collecting as much data, but it is internet connected. I feel like people are creeped out by the idea of data collection without actually knowing what it's used for. And I'll, I'll push back a little when you're like, I don't know if LG's being transparent. I think they're probably being mostly transparent. If you dig through their terms of service, you can find out that they're like, yes, we take the aggregated data that we get from these fingerprints of all the day, all the devices on your network and what you're watching. And then we sell access to third parties to traffic ads. So the third party comes and says, I want ads for people who love pleuribus and live in Los Angeles. And suddenly that ad shows up on my LG TV, right?

8:12It's not that they're telling the third party who I am. They're saying, we know who those people are. We'll put your ad in front of them. To me, that's creepy, but it's along the same ik line of, I dropped a piece of bread on the floor, picked it up and ate it. Some people know way you drop that piece of bread on the floor. You can't idea that's disgusting. Other people like, I probably shouldn't do that, but whatever like you do you, and the truth of the matter is, it's a little risky to do that. But most of the time people aren't going to get sick from eating the bread on the floor. And I feel the same way about the third party tracking like, yeah, it's a little risky to let them track it because maybe they'll use it for something I don't want them to. But mostly they're just going to use it to put an ad on the LG TV in front of me. And I therefore got to pay less for my LG TV. I'm not seeing the horrible crime there that what I am not comfortable with is not having

9:19control over my data. I would like to have control over it. I would like to decide who gets to give me better ads and who doesn't. And that's where I usually get upset is like, yeah, LG's doing this. And I know they're doing it. And I guess I'm agreeing to it, but I don't have much of a choice, right? I can keep my TV off the internet entirely, or I can let them have my data is basically my two choices. Yeah. Well, and I guess to be clear when I was saying not listen, transparent. I didn't mean on the, they're very transparent about the collection. And in fact, they're going out of their way. Their announcement probably is costing them some amount of sales to say what they just said. So they're being transparent on the collection. But when we get all the way in the weeds, it is in their interest. And if they were a client of mine, I would advise them to not engage with questions of hypotheticals of if somebody wanted to buy this or use it for that or whatever. Like that's the part like who all their customers are. Correct. Yeah. There's actually more transparency around that than you might think.

10:21Oh, but you're right. You're not going, you're going to get categories like we do not sell your third party data to these kinds of businesses, but they aren't going to name names. I think you're absolutely right about that. Yeah. Well, and along those lines, it's really interesting. And you have to believe them too, right? Like a lot of people are just like, yeah, they say that. But Dr. Well, and I think the part that's remarkable to me is that us, the consumer are essentially the final arbiters of whether or not we care about things and where the ones holding the dollars. And strangely, I just really astonished at how poorly informed we are and I'm putting myself in that category. I just haven't really thought of like, I guess the things that we should be worried about are possibly things that haven't been invented yet. Uses of our data that haven't even been created. But now we're going through a reckoning where, for example, facial recognition software when somebody attended a political rally 40 years ago, they probably didn't worry at all about their face getting photographed in the crowd or whatever.

11:24And yet now retroactively, you could go back in time and figure out, oh, Hillary Clinton was at this rally at this so and so and back in the day. There's going to be a fair bit of that coming. And we haven't even gotten to the digital dandruff of our habits and our likes and the ones that sort of reveal a psychographic profile of who we are. Yeah. And I think that's where it does get extra creepy is right now it's, we will use your data to target you with third party software. And the way it works most of the time, there isn't a person sitting at the ad agency going, wow, Brian really likes hen tie a lot. Yeah. All right. Well, it's like, you know, mostly they're saying that because, you know, you know, because Brian famously hates hen tie, but, you know, there's not a person sitting there looking at like, oh, Tom launches a lot of K dramas. There is a third party saying we want to hit this kind of person and LG going great.

12:26We know who those people are, send it out there. Now somebody in LG could look at their data set and pull that out and go, oh, Brian does like K dramas. He says he does it or whatever, but they don't use it that way right now. They often get in trouble when that has happened and it comes out because people in the companies tend to not like that and leak it out to the press, but you're right. That data set's sitting there and eventually some agent's going to come along and access it and then start processing it and a lot of that stuff could come out. So there is a little bit of future proofing you in doing this, which again leads me back to we actually need a policy on how our personal data is managed. And we don't have the will as a society to do it. Yeah. I don't know what the German word for it is, but it is another example of I say a lot of complaining things out loud, but I act in a very different way when it's not me talking.

13:27I don't do what I say I want to happen. So Tom, here's a sentence that I never thought I would be saying on the air, on the record. I am more sympathetic than I've ever been to the European unions right to be forgotten laws because I don't want to expect to buy one either. I because of the negative externality of fine, you don't want you don't like the LG TVs. Don't buy the edge. Let's let's imagine evil LG, so my call LG, even more evil, right? Nobody has an eGTV and they're free. In fact, they pay you. One thing is that just the mics on all the time, that's fine for you in your house and your consumer, but I just came by to say hello and that we live in a reality now where my voice has a very particular fingerprint. And you will know that I was there. It's a little bit like the experiment where there's one university professor who tried

14:29to see how long he could go without touching a single Google product. And the answer was not at all because even if he didn't have a Gmail, even if he didn't have an account, even if he didn't use the browser, sooner or later, he had to email someone whose primary point of contact was a Gmail account. And now his letter is in like Google is still because the digital dandruff able to piece together a profile of him. And so in that case, then all of a sudden, just existing, again, you have enough digital dandruff that the question is, I don't know yet how to say, yo, stop following me because we have that for a human. A human is not allowed to physically stalk you. I think that I can, I can't believe this grizzled old anarcho capitalist is saying this, I can picture a need for a conversation about corporate digital stalking laws. I am going to apologize in advance to everyone who has followed my career from 2005 until

15:36now because I know they've heard me say this before and I'll try to keep it brief. But there is a solution to managing your data. Tim Berners-Lee helped invent it. It's called solid. It is not the only one of its kind. But there are very well designed open source decentralized ways to manage your data where you are in control of your data. You decide who gets to access it when and you can revoke that access and you can even set policies. So you don't have to always be making decisions. You can say these kinds of companies generally get these permissions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then if LG comes along and pisses you off, you can go in and say, hey, revoke all of LG's permissions. I don't want them to have any of that. Nobody is using it yet because there really isn't the public will. Everyone says, I'm tired of all this tracking. I hate all this tracking. People don't stop buying these devices and people don't push for this to happen.

16:39They don't have, there's not enough momentum for it to happen. And I don't know if there is a solution to that or if there has to be some kind of horrible third party data apocalypse happen. I just think people, they say they hate it. But in the end, they convenience trumps the fidelity and they're like, hand, but it is really nice to get that $300 TV. And I'll just make my feel, myself feel better by complaining about it on social media versus actually doing something about it. And I don't know that that's going to change. You know, it's interesting because what we're bumping up against, we've been saying convenience trumps fidelity for 17 years. But that's on the benefit and branding side. Like we'll take the lowest friction way. The reverse of that would be friction trumps motivation on the negative side. So for example, maybe technically they're not following you if you make sure to opt out and do things the hard way, but that negative friction is just going to push you back in

17:42the lane. Tom, it might be that you've mentioned Tim Berners Lee in solid at some point on this shows history, but today's the day I first heard it. This is great. I want to check out is there is there a no little more tech thing about this? Yeah, I did a no little more about solid. And you can just go look up solid inrupt is the four profit arm of solid that's trying to create a business around it as an example of how you can do it for solid. Or anything else like it to catch on though, you're going to have to have a major corporate partner do it. You're going to have to have an apple or a Google or a Facebook or even a proton or somebody like that. Take it up. And until you get someone with enough user scale to take it up, it just really isn't going to catch on. It's one of those chicken and egg things where it will it could be very easy because there would be providers that are trusted just like you have a bank where you keep your money

18:46and you you don't just trust that even though it probably sounds crazy to people from a thousand years ago, like you leave your money in some other place. It's not even in your house. How are you out control over it? You could have a system where you like have trusted providers of your solid data and then it's easy for you to manage it. There's no friction. It's getting it started getting it to scale, getting it used so that enough people go, Oh, I definitely want to sign up for that or I have to sign up for it because I want to use this or that product. And it's just it's something that hasn't got that kind of momentum. So I could picture a grassroots version of this taking off and it might look like the following. Here's Brian's speculative fiction. Let's say in 18 months to two years, let's say we're fast tracking not just the quality of robot agents that do your bidding, but also are trusting them. In the world of organ donation, there's not an official or many states don't have an official state registry like the advertisements that the ad council would put out is like have

19:48a conversation with your family. And eventually we got to a place where there is a way to register of it, but basically you would just sign the back of your license and tell everyone you know and love, yes, I do want to donate my organs. And once you had explicitly opted in, then should something terrible happen. They knew and it didn't need to consult you because you're dead, but they were able to do it. Likewise, I could picture Tom a campaign two years from now, three years from now where you and I are sponsored by the ad council and say, talk to your digital agent about solid and then make your preferences known. And then at that point, you know, headlines start erupting, you know, 20 million people say, yes, to solid, you take the pledge, talk to your robot today. It's just a five minute conversation, guys, make your wishes known. I can see something like that happening. But again, we're in the realm of my speculative fiction. Well, and then you have to have the company's respect it, right? If Facebook isn't respecting solid, then or any or any provider of that data pod, then

20:57you can set it up, but what are you using it for? Right? And it's when you get somebody that big going like, okay, we're going to manage all your third party information through solid that it works. Problem is, they don't even like it when Apple gives you a pop up that says, are you sure you want to give them this information? The idea that you would actually have control and could say no on your own without having to react to a pop up is anathema to most of these companies. So that's the headwinds you're up against. Yeah. And again, if the friction is low enough that people can have that conversation, I could see something happen. We have some good questions. Ronald Leip in the chat asks, do Roku and other streaming boxes do the same thing as LD? Yes. Yes, okay. And the question is, do they do the fingerprinting? I don't know. I don't know if Roku goes that far where they're like logging all of the Wi-Fi devices, but a lot of them do. So whether Roku goes that far or not, they are definitely keeping track of what you watch

21:58on the Roku platform and keeping data on you so they can target ads to you. Pretty much assume if you're looking at a thing that has ads as part of its platform, like Roku, like Fire TV, like LG, like Samsung, it's tracking you. Yeah. And W. Scottus one says, just choose another TV manufacturer, but most TVs are smart specifically because they make money by tracking. That's why they're smart. Yeah, which what that opened up in my mind, Tom, is can you picture kind of a best practice like if you buy a laptop from somebody on Craigslist, the first thing you're going to do is a very robust scrubbing of everything. And again, now that more people than ever are digital wizards, you can just tell your helpful agent, I just bought this TV, make a USB that will wipe the firmware and make it into a monitor. Of course, now we're introducing friction and we have a case of does the friction this way defeat it. I mean, the easy solution is by a smart TV, never connected to the internet.

22:59And by the way, we say never, we mean never because never if it's seven years for now, it's got seven years of psychographic profiling ready to upload. Where that becomes a problem is when you need a firmware update because it's buggy or there's a problem, you know, there's a thing that isn't working and you want to fix it or it's running slow and a firmware update would make it faster. In which case, you're going to have to download the firmware, put it on a USB stick, take the USB stick, put the USB stick in the TV if you want to keep it off the internet. But that's your option. The market has chosen cheap smart TVs that spy on you. If they're and you may be like, oh, that's because they cornered the market. I mean, if someone thought they could make a lot of money selling you a TV that didn't spy on you, they would do it in a heartbeat. And in fact, a few people have tried and just not enough people wanted to buy it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what people do want to buy though, Brian? Our affection.

24:00Our love. Exactly. Love. You know what? There is real estate. People say that there's not real estate left. They're not making any more of it. You know what they are. It's called in our dreams. Every night, Tom and I go to sleep and we invent new lands. Here's the problem. You're not in them. I mean, some of you are a select few. We called them bosses. Tom. Yeah, Brian. That was me tossing you. Yeah, I was going to have you explain the radical new technology that Patreon invented. Ah, yes. It's called, well, I call it the love pipeline. Yes. Patreon calls it supporting creators, but whatever you call it, it's a way for you to take dirty, filthy money. Yeah. That you don't even have in your house, as I mentioned earlier, it's so filthy. You won't even keep it in your house and it gets rid of it. Yeah. And what you get in return is satisfaction that you are supporting independent, creative

25:04analysis of the things you love. And then it becomes one of the things you love. It's a virtuous cycle. Yep. Look, we're in the money laundering business by which we mean we take your filthy, dirty money that you would never put in the mouth of a baby. Instead you would put a mother's loving kiss on the mouth of a baby. That's what we do. You give us your filthy money. We convert them into loving mother's kisses. The math is complicated, but it checks out. Yeah. Patreon. Here's the challenge. Here's the challenge. If you have a $5 bill, make a choice. Would you stick it in your baby's mouth? Gross. Or would you give it to us at patreon.com slash cord killers? Save your choices. Money, disposal. That's the cord killers guarantee. Indeed. And now we will search for new things to watch in the search party. The best time to recommit to your gut health goals? Right now. Take charge of your gut with nature made. Our clinically studied ingredients support digestive health.

26:05Digestive enzymes break down nutrients, probiotic and prebiotic fiber nourish good gut bacteria and supergreens with probiotics in power daily digestive health. Try the full lineup of gut health support from nature made. The number one pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying. Athlete, creator and YouTube Maxor. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad free videos, background play and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. I know a lot of you have watched hacks already, but Gene Smart won big at the Emmys and

27:15so did Apple TV. Apple TV got eight prime time Emmy awards last night, six for Widows Bay. That might be one to add to your list. And two for pleuribus, HBO one, five prime time Emmys, mostly for that pit and hacks. And Netflix took home three pretty much for the diplomat. Gene Smart alone though earned her fifth consecutive outstanding lead actress in a comedy series when for the fifth and final season of the HBO Max show hacks. That is a record. Smart also tied Julia Louis, Drifus and Chloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever buy a performer with eight. She had two as a guest actress in the comedy series Frazier, one as a supporting actress in a comedy series for Samantha, who and then the rest, uh, those five for hacks. So well done, Gene Smart. There's always something to when somebody's cast so perfectly for a role, you know, Gene Smart's character in hacks is somebody who really deserved recognition and, you know, she's

28:19made of talented stuff and then eventually gets it and then drama happens. It's red when that is reflected in actual recognition for somebody talented who popped onto our radar, radar, a scant six years ago. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that the Emmys talk has gone from the top of the show to the later in the show to now like, Hey, you know, here's some things you might want to watch. If you haven't checked out Widow's Bay. Apparently it's very good. I know nothing about Widow's Bay. Do you know the elevator pitch on that? Well, there's a widow who owns a Bay. Yeah. His name is Matthew Reese, who also set a record because he won Emmys in two for two different shows. And I think his wife, Carrie is really upset that the diplomat didn't win an Emmy for her acting performance and therefore he keeps his Emmys in the basement. Is that really the story? All of that's true. I did none of it has to do with the show Widow's Bay's plot.

29:21That's right, though. That alone is enough to get me to watch. Yeah. I, what is Widow's Bay about? Maybe we should actually tell somebody in case they're really wondering. He's set in a fictional New England island town, which is afflicted with a century's old curse. Okay. You know what? I was like, what is this? Steven Ke, oh, it is. It is exactly that domestic ticket pre sales for Avengers Doomsday crossed $50 million with three months to go before it hits theaters December 18th. So if you are somebody who is have vested interest in the success of Avengers Doomsday, it's looking good. Oh, man. Way to have vested interests for anybody who's new here, somebody out there, it's your very first episode of cord killers. There's a thing we used to do called the summer and winter movie draft where we did kind of sports team picking and so on. It was a blast and then an apocalypse happened and we're hoping the blockbusters are back. I'd love to bring the game back so I could have a vested interest in Doomsday.

30:25$50 million pre sales, even with Doomsday coming out on the same day. Not bad. Paramount and Netflix are ending an agreement that placed some of Skydance animation movies on Netflix. Paramount will continue to license other series to Netflix. So this isn't the end of their relationship, but Paramount going to keep its Skydance animation stuff for Paramount Plus. Seems like. Yeah. That makes sense. Netflix's NFL opener in Australia drew 18.5 million viewers, which is about even with last year's Brazil game. That one was on YouTube, not Netflix, but it was essentially at the same time a year and the foreign game that kicked off the season. The league's opening night game on Wednesday fell 11% from last year. Part of that is because it was on a Wednesday, usually the opening night game is on a Thursday. It averaged 25.1 million viewers, but the fact that Netflix was even and the fact that the opener was down has raised a few eyebrows about the cash cow that is the NFL. So man, quick question.

31:26Here's the thing I don't ask very often. Who won that game, Tom? Which game? The Rams and the Giants, because I believe it was a great night bonus episode discussion that Justin told me that one of them came like a week before Ann to get acclimatized to the, to the, the Giants won that. The Giants were the one that came a week ahead and the Rams showed up and just stayed on Pacific time and lost. Okay. I guess boy, what a coup for the Rams. It would have been just just to shrug it, yolo it and win. I mean, it was a close game. It wasn't like a blowout or anything. So I don't think anyway. I don't, I don't know. I made a fantasy football league with Justin. Oh, but I haven't really been. Yeah. I've been watching baseball every night, which is exceptionally vexing for Justin who just got eliminated in the first week of the league. He set up. Oh, no. Yeah. Let's talk instead about something more fun. Our buried treasure.

32:26Yes. Well, see, I know, and suddenly got rich buried treasure. Buried treasure is the point in the show where we talk about something we've been watching that maybe you would like to add to your to watch list. In fact, if any of you actually have a to watch list, you know, maybe you keep it on track or something, let us know. Court killers of Gmail.com Brian, what you got? You know what? Continuing to plow through the pit, I'm rounding out the end of season two. That means you're watching the show, the pit, not that you're literally inside of a pit plow. You know what? Only one way to find out. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. How is it going? How you liking the pit? It's great. It's great. I mean, it is kind of hilarious that an awful lot happens at a 14 hour day. I like the little mini game that I'll check in with is we're as 24 really tried to get

33:28everything real time or whatever. They will take what clearly would be hours and hours and condensate into seven real-time minutes in hour 14. But the characters are deep. It's a good, it's a good fractal and they spend, I don't think it's a spoiler, they spend the bulk of season two teasing the question of what would the pit look like without its star, Dr. Robbie, because he for reasons wants to not be there. And then they did, you know, I don't know how it's going to go, but it makes it entertaining in a world where ER went through a lot of different doctors to wonder what the pit would look like doing a similar thing is interesting. Yeah. I'm going to have to watch the pit. I don't know how or when or why or with, did you keep up with lanterns? I haven't watched the second episode yet. Okay. It did not compel me that much. Got very close a couple of times. I did watch a Rick and Morty from the last season.

34:29Yeah. Finally, like, which are not one of those. The first episode. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. It was fine. And it was exactly what you said at the time, which was like, if you like Rick and Morty, flavored things and you're in the mood for a Rick and Morty flavored thing, it's a really good Rick and Morty flavored thing, which was exactly true. It's hard when you get that far down the road with something to continually reinvent and stun and surprise. And to be honest, you kind of don't want to when you're at this phase of the Rick and Morty arc. It's sort of like the, the Jameson blended whiskey phase where it's now, it's job is to show up and be exactly what you would hope and expected it to be consistent. Yeah. What we had been watching is blossoms of power, a Chinese drama on Vicky about a woman who is assassinated by, I'm sorry, her entire family is assassinated by her husband at the

35:31order of the emperor. But she, he spares her and it turns out she hated her husband. So she poisons herself to get back at him because he will get in trouble for not sparing her. That's, that's the way it was set up is like, yes, we'll let you spare her. You have to kill everybody else, but you, you should spare her because that, that way we're going to keep the family from being entirely eliminated. And she's like, haha, fool you. I'm going to kill myself and then you're in trouble, which, which does happen. And she immediately gets reincarnated into the body of a woman who got pushed into a lake. So there's a whole cosmic explanation of like the moon came out and then our spirit was put in here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But she realizes who she is and starts plotting vengeance against her now ex husband and trying to figure out why this happened, et cetera, et cetera. There's another love interest with the crown prince who was poisoned as a young child

36:35and is trying to find out who poisoned him and why his father has kept him as the crown prince, even though he's weak, although he's not as weak as he pretends to be because that's an advantage. Um, what I love though is instead of doing the obvious thing and being like, well, one of the things she's going to have to get over is how does she act like the person whose body she's in now? They're just immediately like, nope, she has all her memories. She knows who everybody is. She can remember all the things that happened to the person who had the body before her. So now she can just get to plotting the revenge. I was like, that's kind of a relief. We didn't need that kind of attention. Well, anyway, I'm almost hesitant to say which Stephen King property it is, but that was a conceit in a Stephen King very large set of books that we've read where it's just like, it was like somebody else's rolodex that you could riffle through and find what it is. Yeah. Okay. I know who this is. And I can say like, oh, remember when we were kids, we used to do this and all that. So no one suspects that she has taken over the body except the guy who was trying to spare

37:39her and killed her whole family starts to notice little things and all of that as you might expect. These Chinese dramas are fun for me in multiple ways. It those are, they have really crazy like sci fi things that they usually pull out of these ebooks that people do on places like Wattpad. There's also the fun little game of like, how did they get around the sensors? Where did they have to say? Would you hear me describe it? If you told me that plot and then had me pick all the countries of origin, even knowing how much you enjoy the content on Vicky, China would have been maybe dead last. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's really interesting to see the little dance. Really, Xi Jinping really loves traditional dances. So one trick that they do is they put a lot of traditional dances. This one was filled with them. We're like, whoa, Xi's go really like this one. It's got like dozens of traditional dances. So they're that and they're just beautiful.

38:39They're really, really, really, the cinematography is, is really good. So it's just, if you want a like medieval moon light thing to look at, like it's, it's good for that alone, if not for anything else. So that one's called Blossom's of power available on Vicky. If you got something we should be on the look at for, please email us. Let us know. A cord killers at gmail.com. Brian, I know that Justin has tempted you into enjoying sports by getting you into the bedding side of things. Yeah. And I know that you, you, you, you like to like head to the bar and just kind of be like, oh, the sports is on. I can, but what if for five minutes a day, you could actually know what happened in sports and be able to just throw out those little factoids without having to spend a bunch of time learning it. Tom, what you're describing is about my budget of time for this, especially if I could

39:42annoy Justin by faking like I know what's going on with sports too bad. Nobody offers that sports for the non sports person. I've got it. I've got it for you. Daily sports headlines. Wait a minute. Did you do another thing? Daily sports headlines at daily sports headlines.com or just type it into your pod catcher is five minutes a day, seven days a week of here are the important things that happened in the world of sports yesterday. You don't have to keep track of it all. They're keeping track. If you have a favorite sport, that's fine. It's probably going to be in there, but if you're like, yeah, but I can't keep track of all the sports anymore. This is perfect for you too. You're going to tell you like, oh, NHL is about to start. Oh, the NFL just started here. The important things the one what's going on with major league baseball playoffs. And then for five after five minutes, you'll be able to be like, oh, yeah, I heard that the Yankees and Dodgers clinch last night. You know, oh, and I heard the Canadians just signed a new head coach. That's all going to be in your head for just five minutes if you subscribe to daily sports

40:45headlines. That's great. You know what it is. Remember, remember when you're watching like, save in private Ryan and somebody stumbles upon someone and they say, flash, you know what it says, thunder or whatever. It's like, that's what I want. I just want to be able to hear the giants and they're like, they lost, you know, and then. That's exactly what you want through enemy lines. Right. That when you asked me earlier, if the Rams or the Giants one, it took me a second to access like, oh, right. On daily sports headlines, I heard also the question I asked you was that you should have shot me on site because apparently it was the 49ers, not the 49ers. Yeah, I probably should have done that. So there you go. It won't fix everything, but at least you'll know who won or at least in this case, we lost. Daily sports headlines go look it up wherever fine podcasts are vended. Now let's scan the horizon to see what else is out there on the post apocalyptic landscape. Tender scanning the war. Scanning the horizon.

41:47Amazon Netflix and YouTube have formed the streaming access and choice alliance. Brian, they're lobbyists who ray, question mark. I've lost many sleepless nights worrying about whether or not the interests of these mega Giants was being represented in the Hallowed halls of Congress. Those three big streamers have thrown their support behind TechNet. TechNet is a tech lobbyist that really works for like tech independence and net neutrality and things like that. So TechNet is going to lead this to push for and I quote technology, neutral policies that let streaming services invest in many kinds of programming, including live sports and we'll advocate for wider consumer access to content and for consumer choice. I look, I don't ever want to be defending lobbyists except in so far as it is an expression of free speech.

42:47It is. If you don't have, if you are not a person who can physically show up, you have to pay a representative to go and speak your interests and so on. It tells me that we already knew streaming has arrived. More evidence that streaming is here to stay. Streaming is now the incumbent. It's the winner. It is the industry. It had to create a joint. These are all three of these companies have been lobbying on their own, but they decided, you know what? We need to have a lobby cartel and who better than TechNet to outsource that to. One of the reasons you don't see more multi-view streams available on streaming is you have to stream the full video for each stream, which can be a lot of bandwidth. There are ways around that where you don't have to do it, but it's difficult. It's technologically complex. AWS, Amazon's cloud services division is launching a new service that will let streamers deliver up to 10 feeds in a single personalized channel.

43:48This is going to allow things like India's geo hot star to give you cricket in multi-view. In fact, they're already doing it to present quad view features for the Indian Premier League cricket matches, but it's a way to make it less bandwidth intensive and less complex for the streamer to be able to say, oh, yeah, no, you want multiple streams of once. Here you go. Not a problem. Yeah. How wild that something ridiculous sounding like a 360-P stream. Why would you make a 360-P version of it? It makes no sense at all unless you picture 12 boxes on the screen at the exact same time. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Right now, I'm going to way over simplify this. Andy Beach, when you're listening, I know we talked about having you talk about this with us. Please send your gentle corrections. You can imagine a choice between like, okay, I want to have four streams on stream. I've got four, four K streams. Well, I can't. That's way too much. Let me down to 1080.

44:49Well, now I've got four 1080 stream streams. I want them to be able to switch back and forth. So I guess I got to keep all 1080 in there because if I doubt, but I don't even have a 380 stream. So how do I do AWS covers all of that? It's like, no, no, no, we'll make it so that that is not a complex thing that you have to worry about. Yeah. Apple announced a foldable phone coming in October called the iPhone Duo and Netflix is among a handful of pre-release partners who have been working with Apple to redesign their iOS apps for that larger screen real estate so that you can be watching Netflix when it's closed, open it up and it just fills up the screen without any hitches. Finally, Tom, the delightful, powerful, much heralded return of Pandan Scan television. I thought of quibi actually. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I, one of my favorite, we got to eat croes as much as we enjoyed dunking on quibi. Now I'm enjoying eating cro that quibi was right the entire time. Yeah. Delicious, delicious quibi cro. IMDB is adding digital creator as a new professional category on both IMDB and IMDB Pro.

45:55The category includes sub-proessions to further specify your work. So streamer, vlogger, video, essayist, video creator, gaming creator, even influencer. You don't need any existing film or TV credits to establish a profile as a digital creator. The option is available as a professional category for IMDB Pro Premium Members. Yeah. That's really interesting. I, I, I, I, well, I don't know. I have a complicated relationship with IMDB. It's sort of like, it's vaguely prestigious and I definitely got a thrill to, to see myself in it. And then I'm reminded that it's, it's just, you know, it's a wiki, a fan run. So it's a wikia just with extra steps. And so there's part of me that loves the egalitarian nature of making available to everyone. But there's also a part of me that knows that they're eroding the prestige along with that. Before they implement this, I just want you to know that Tom Merritt was born in Greenville,

46:57Illinois is a producer and actor known for the screen savers unscrewed with Martin Sargent and the fakest one last day. The fakest. That's great. So yeah, you could get in there even before. But now that I guess they made it easier. Netflix says it will report box office gross receipts publicly for its upcoming slate of six movies. Can prize winner LeBola Negra, David Fincher's the further misadventures of Cliff Booth, which is the ones upon a time in Hollywood sequel. Peter Berg's mosquito bowl, Danny Boyle's ink, Greta Gerwig's Narnia, the magician's nephew and the animated Charlie and the chocolate factory. That's one more way that Netflix is playing nice with the theaters. Yeah. And I guess also it seems like they're this all would have been super, super important if they had actually purchased WB. But given that they didn't this away for them to kind of keep their seat warm in Hollywood, you could kind of get the universe next door. Some of this is an outcome of them flirting with the idea of purchasing Warner Brothers.

48:01Some of it is just them wanting to continue to evolve their relationship. Some of it might be like, Hey, Paramount hasn't bought him yet. I mean, I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to say it. Paramount's threatening to leave California, which is silly. They will not leave. They won't like close down the Paramount lot, but they're talking about moving their headquarters out of California and trying to put as much of their business outside of California as possible because of a whole wealth tax thing. But is it a funny tom that that part of the lore of Hollywood is that the reason they went to California was so that they could run south of the border to record without paying the Edison patents. And now what? Oh, what a scoundrel is group of rap scalars leaving in order to save money. Indeed. And it's a little bit about the lawsuit that's trying to they're like, Look, if you keep this lawsuit up, we're going to leave California. You might want to settle out of court with us. So we'll see if any of that works. And peer analysis says Amazon spends $3.8 billion a year on sports rights.

49:05That is the most spent on sports rights of any of the streamers. Does zone is next, which is an exclusively sports oriented service followed by YouTube TV because they have the big NFL Sunday ticket. And then Paramount Plus is right after YouTube TV because they have a bunch of sports related stuff with CBS. And Netflix is next after Paramount Plus. Peacock doesn't spend that much on sports for streamer anyway. Interesting. Engagget has been posting more evergreen how-to articles lately and won the cup. My eye was called why your roco, roco keeps randomly turning off and how to fix it. It's not news. TLDR. It's probably the auto power saving feature. But I just thought some people might be interested in that. Like somebody out there has been like, Yeah, my roco just keeps turns it turning itself off. And that's the reason. Don't you get this article? If this PSA just reached out of the void and attacked you, then you may be entitled to

50:05compensation. Write us a court killer's a Gmail. All right, hold please for the chatter. Every house has a beginning. Our starts with a rebellion. This is not just fashion. This is freedom worn out loud. A place where individuality isn't a look. It's a law. Perfect is boring. The algorithm doesn't know you. You do. A look is never just a look. It's a declaration. It's time to step out and into somewhere new. Step into the house of Burl and find a burling to near you. This is Angus Maximus. This barber has one pound of a pound of hot. She'll see cooked to water and just speak. It's more face than a quarter pounder. The panel is closed. And for only $5.99, even regular juice can afford it. Like that guy. Give me that big old burger. Yeah. The whole Angus Maximus.

51:05For the $5.99, it's whole senior. A bill for a limited time of participating restaurants, tax on included, not valid for use within a combo or in combination with any other offer or discount. You got mail. It looks like a new get smart feature is in the works rights, David. And he's right. Hollywood reporter has a story saying John Mulaney is reportedly considering taking the role of Maxwell smart in an upcoming movie reboot. Seth Graham Smith who wrote, now you see me now you don't is apparently attached to write the screenplay. Uh, yeah. Thank you. We got a couple of emails on that. Yeah. Thank you, David and everybody else who wrote it on that. John Mulaney. Hmm. He's a little, he's a little too clever. Steve Carell was a good choice. That was the 2009ish reboot because Steve Carell plays that sort of like, and he's

52:08accidentally smart dumb guy on the office. John Mulaney is always kind of a clever guy though. Well, and unfortunately I never saw the Steve Carell version of get smart, although we do have a get smart movie, we'll be discussing in our extra bonus episode of the full experience. And then the most important letter we may have ever gotten in our lives, Kim wrote, I'd love to pay $60 a year. I'm still at a dollar of creation. Like yeah, well, good. Well, we looked forward, you know what? We bravely are going to rise to this challenge and we intend to make an honest person out of you. We will give you that option as soon as we figure out how to give you that option. We're working on the technical, which will be in the next month. Thank you, Kim. And thank you, everybody who supports us in all the various ways you can. Our website is cordkillers.com. Our email address is cordkillers.com. And we are live at twitch.tv slash night attack and youtube.com slash modern rogue Tuesdays

53:11at 5.30 p.m. Eastern 2.30 p.m. Pacific. I reckon we'll talk to you next time. Yeah. While every other channel is fighting for your customers attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears. And when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. Acast gives you that trust at scale. Precision, host read authenticity and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast. Learn more by visiting Acast.com slash Advertise.