That’s google with a lowercase G. As more people—Geoff included—abandon various tech giants, Georgie recalls a time almost a decade ago when she foresaw the privacy issues with google.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode on our website.
That’s google with a lowercase G. As more people—Geoff included—abandon various tech giants, Georgie recalls a time almost a decade ago when she foresaw the privacy issues with google.
Email us: toastroastpod@pm.me
Geoff 0:00
Hi. And welcome back to another episode of Toast &. Roast. I'm your co host Jeff and I like a histology.
Georgie 0:16
I'm here, I'm here. I listened to a talk this morning, actually, by Golden Krishna. He wrote something about the best UI is no UI, and he was talking so fast. Another talk. I was like, oh my god, I think it's because he was reading a passage from his book. But he talked with such speed that I thought, can you just like pace yourself?
Geoff 0:37
Yes. You could just maybe do 0.5 times speed?
Georgie 0:43
Oh, no way. No, I will speed everyone up to two. Excellent. You ever watch these? Like? What do they call training videos? training videos? Like for work? Do you get any? Oh,
Geoff 0:54
that's once No, we don't have this. Very trained.
Georgie 1:00
These are just like a round, like, anti harassment. thing. And it's annoying because a couple? Yeah, very cool for it. Some of them, you can't speed up. And it's very frustrating. And also, they have ones where it's like, you got to read some texts like some, it's almost like a PDF of like, some boring policy. And you may actually read it, even if it's boring. But then I'll say you haven't, like, looked at this for the minimum of the minimum seven minutes. And it's like, bro, I read this in three minutes flat. Am I can you just like leaving the window open and shit like that?
Geoff 1:47
Yeah, I think the last one I did was like, trying to get us to, you know, fishing and yeah, strong password and things like that. I kind of like sped around that. And then I tried to answer all of the questions at the end of it, because I should know, like, you shouldn't have these. But yeah, one or two slip ups. And they were just like, No, go read the material. And then did speed me up because I only had to read up on two sections.
Georgie 2:21
When did they tell you what you got to pick? They wanted?
Geoff 2:25
So they have four answers. And then they picked the wrong one. So they they wanted a really specific, really specific scenario with a really specific answer. And I'm like, Okay, I'll read up for the keywords and give you the specific answer.
Georgie 2:39
Right, because in one of ours, it didn't tell you which ones you got wrong. So if you didn't get the minimum amount, correct. We're in a little bit of trouble.
Geoff 2:51
Yeah. Yeah, there's just so many systems for this. But that's not what we're here to talk about today.
Georgie 2:59
So you said Gmail,
Geoff 3:03
Gmail. Yeah. I mean, I was trying to think of, like, consolidating my services in general. Like, I pay for iCloud I pay for like, ExpressVPN.
Georgie 3:19
So buy services? You mean like, do you mean like digital online? Kind of like things you use for digital? Like maintenance? And
Geoff 3:26
yeah, well, just generally, because I'm going to leave the streaming services aside, but essentially, like, like storing storing my files in the cloud, and the, like, generating like my password manager, and the VPN, which I barely use, but I paid like a tonne for of like, the last year.
Georgie 3:55
So does this exclude anything you have to do as part of your employment?
Geoff 3:59
Yes, yeah, exclude as part of my employment. So I pay for these three things. I'm like okay, so this has been kind of circling in my head and I sold my expiry date for the VPN come up, and I saw how much I was paying for close to $200 a year and I was thinking well that's pretty expensive. But also the the there was a YouTube video that was like titled, like D googling my life. Oh, part one degree really your life pot one. Recent that video was like last like month. Okay,
Georgie 4:39
so very recent, because like I basically D Googled my life like 12 years ago because it's not a bit
Geoff 4:47
but it's like I also don't want to use like like iCloud either.
Georgie 4:52
You don't want to use so you don't use Cloud. Is that kind of the goal. Like you're not really
Geoff 4:56
we have to have Cloud for very like specific students situations because you want to three like 3x backup, right you want on device on a server that you locally own, and that you didn't want to use iCloud. Yeah, because I have so you don't
Georgie 5:13
want to use Google's like Google's cloud shit and you don't want use Apple's cloud shit. Yeah,
Geoff 5:18
not not anything that the that’s Anything wrong with Apple. Like I said the initial ideas to that consolidates Yeah, to reduce the amount of of services I'm paying for it in general. Cool. So then they the video came up, which is d googling my life or to googling your life. And then they mentioned a couple of services that were not part of Google. And then I found proton mail.
Georgie 5:48
Oh yeah, I use Bahnsen I've been using not using but I knew of them ages.
Geoff 5:55
Yeah, I think I even heard about them when their Kickstarter. But I didn't actually use them because I didn't want to pay for email at that time. There was like, it was 10 years ago, when the Kickstarter. They didn't offer the Kickstarter.
Georgie 6:11
Yeah, I was in it so early that I'm just everyone's gonna spam me. I got my name. Yeah.
Geoff 6:18
Oh, wow. I got Georgie. So in any case,
Georgie 6:24
and then I start getting spam. Because you know how like the nature of like, sometimes email addresses just suddenly become like, all the people used it thinking it's there. Other people called George used to think don't sign me up to random shit to our five listeners.
Geoff 6:40
Yeah, so apparently protonmail has expanded have, like, expanded their services in terms of not just mail.
Georgie 6:51
So you've looked into it, because I know of it but haven't looked in. Yeah.
Geoff 6:54
So per protonmail is essentially a more secure Google. Yeah, like, I'm not gonna like it's end to end encrypted email, only if you're emailing another proton address. But so there's a cat. There's caveats to all of this, because I'm trying to balance convenience to like security. Because if you have everything super secure, just FYI, then it's gonna get like increasingly harder to use the service just by nature,
Georgie 7:31
Apple fit or not fit into this.
Geoff 7:34
So Apple is because I am paying the subscription fee for extra iCloud storage. And I have a server that essentially can provide me the exact same number of same storage, if not more, and proton services have has a car drive, which is infinitely worse than Apple Cup drive. What Apple Cup, yeah, independently. Wow.
Georgie 8:04
It's the cost is like,
Geoff 8:07
it's not, it's not like, it doesn't have that seamlessness like, like with any other like with any non Apple service, it does. It's not seamless, like if you like you have some files on your phone, it's going to backup and sync to the cloud. And then you can access it on pretty much all your Apple devices. But the UI is really confusing for Drive. I'm not entirely sure what I synced, or not synced. It's it's not the so with iCloud Drive, you can actually put your files on there and not have any files on your phone and only download them as needed. Yeah,
Georgie 8:50
I've done a lot of theatre or whatever. Yeah, a lot of
Geoff 8:53
the other drives like Google Drive Dropbox, they need all the files to be on your computer and just sync, sync it up to the cloud. It's literally a one to one backup. But it's not going to remove the files from your computer and just have the have the Cloud Storage. So it's not going to free up space. I don't know if this is like a coming soon thing, but they only released proton drive in the last year, so it's probably gonna get better fresh. Anyways. So my idea is that I'm going to backup my phone to mine. So looks like server local server at home. And then that one is going to backup to the cloud. So it's going to it's not even going to go via it's not going to go directly from my phone to the proton drive anyways. So this is my backup plan. And I only need it there to be a cloud storage with like that has files, I don't need to interact with it. I don't need to do anything on daily basis, right. It's just cold storage. Essentially, if my server fails for some reason, I can get those bots back. And that's the Only thing I did it for. So I thought, hey, this whole package is costing is will cost me less than the VPN that I was paying for. So I just said, Hey, if everything works fine and I only need it for these things, then I can consolidate all of it under one subscription. And forget about all the other services. Yep, yes. Simplify My Life. Of course, this is one entry data entry.
Georgie 10:26
This is so funny. It's so funny because I feel like this is something I thought about back when I was like abandoning Google like, way before shit like social media and streaming services existed. I was there it was about like, maybe 2010 2020 12 or something like that. And I was like, Yeah, simplify all the things.
Geoff 10:50
The other feature of iCloud that's really handy is hide my address. Oh, yeah. If you've used it, I've
Georgie 10:56
used it but not frequently. Yeah, like So firstly, for like, semi dodgy sites, you know, because then I've realised that in other cases, like I'm like, I actually kind of needs my real one for some reason. Yeah. Like it just kind of got in the way for some things that I was using.
Geoff 11:15
Yeah, so for those who don't know hide my address is really handy at like for generating an email address a unique one that will forward to your main one. And I caught is really had a good at doing this for get me not surprising Safari only. So you know what's
Georgie 11:36
funny is before this feature existed, I was doing this myself, it's like a catch all with my fucking domain. Jeff is a loser at my domain and you just send to me and then I would just block any the image late like became victim. Yes, ma'am. Yeah,
Geoff 11:51
so you did it manually. And yeah. I just met, just nerds. But I think I think people should really consider hide my address more often. Because I'm a, it can it help. It helps you like x any email addresses that you don't want spam from? It helps you identify who it was to identify who it was. Okay, you foodora Yeah, exactly. I know. And hacks are getting like data leaks are getting more and more frequent. Like you don't want your personal email going out and then being sold and then you getting being targeted for ads, and then you having to, like somehow, like, scrub that because it's probably not possible. Or delete your email, like, which the worst case is anyways.
Georgie 12:49
I just like some part of me still thinks that email is so ephemeral that like, this is why I'm Inbox Zero girl, by the way. Yeah. Like I delete anything that I will not need. Like, it was just like, hey, there's a sale on it. But I'm like, okay, cool. I don't need to know. I'm done. Yeah. And then like any, anything that I would need in the near far future, that's
Geoff 13:10
my kind of next thing because I usually when when inbox when Inbox by Google came out, it was very much like swiping to archive. And then I just had that habit of swiping to archive or archiving all my emails. So I've got like, I don't know how I don't even, like, Yeah, you should delete certain things
Georgie 13:32
that used to be like, important conversations about like dealing someone like, you know, what we do, for example, right? We did code bar, and if I was emailing someone about the meetup or whatever, like, yeah, as if I'm gonna go back and look at stuff from like, six years ago, it's there. But realistically, like, in the world of email, I feel like,
Geoff 13:51
just like 90% of things you don't need unless you're actually selling your your apartment and, and, or, like
Georgie 13:58
important shit, right? Like, I will save or whatever, like putting everything else just gets
Geoff 14:03
the touch, like I Taurus for searching my email for attachments that I actually need, and not actually saving those attachments in a file folder. I
Georgie 14:15
say, I do save. Like when there's an attachment I need I save it, like immediately.
Geoff 14:21
I need the context sometimes. Anyways, so it's like Instagram, I do the memories from Instagram, like, oh, did I go to that place? So just like search, like in my memory?
Georgie 14:32
I do that with my photos. Like photos. Yeah.
Geoff 14:36
I remember when I was first. First, having conversations with my partner early on. I was like, Oh, I think I did that. I looked at my Instagram and I sent it to the photo. Oh, yeah, I had actually gone yeah, I had the photos my memory. My second memory bank.
Georgie 14:59
Do you use searched the photos to look for specific things. Yeah,
Geoff 15:02
I do. Yeah, I
Georgie 15:03
did that. And on occasion photos on occasion it's impressed people. They were like, how did you find that so fast that I'm like over in San Diego and the thing and it's got the location? Yeah.
Geoff 15:15
Actually, look, I got I got rid of my iCloud Photos as well, which,
Georgie 15:22
yeah, I am I am like you I'm just like, so much with that, because I have so many photos.
Geoff 15:28
Yeah, and and like, it's only gonna get more expensive. So the price of my hard drives is just like, two to three years worth of subscription fee. That's, that's like, really cheap that we need this for 10 plus years. We have a we're going to how old? How are we going to go till 40 plus years? So I think I have enough storage space for 40 plus years of photos. But so
Georgie 15:57
anyway, how do you how do you how do you do the photo part.
Geoff 16:01
So my, my storage solution comes with apps that basically do the same thing as the Apple apps, they scan your photos, recent photos and upload it, they scan your recent files, and they upload it. So it's all
Georgie 16:18
here. So you still have it on your phone? Yeah,
Geoff 16:21
in a timeline in exactly the same format as photos. So the great thing was actually they it renames it for you, it renames it to the year and date, like year, month day of the photo being taken. So it's all in proper folders now. And and I that was like really shitting me off with Apple photos because it couldn't get the metadata correct. And it sometimes like misstated things. Yeah. So yeah, it just like its date is as of date you uploaded it. So anything that's what it is encoded in is Fuck yeah. I'd spent so much time reading things. I don't even know why. So yeah, I think it's been working out so far. They start free, like you said, so I basically made a new email and then started porting everything of one by one until the free thing was like, You know what I would I need the other features. Anyways, back to the hide my email. So I've been using hide my email for like since they released it. And the problem is, of course, the only save it only generates it in Safari. And it only generates and saves in iCloud. So my password manager has no idea. So I use that one. Yeah. So so because that is why kept disconnected. Yeah, one password. I mean, to be fair proton doesn't do this well, either. But both the password manager and the email can hide your address. So if I want to sign up for something, then my password manager can generate the email and store the same password. And then my, my email also knows that the this is a generated email and can also like feed them for me. I was found that weird in because I don't use Apple. Apple keychain. Yeah. But it makes sense that the email client knows that this is like this is a generated email to forward to forward to your main email, do settings.
Georgie 18:53
Like you know, when you get to code like a text verification or an email verification code off, you try and log in. And then like Apple knows, and it's like, fill in number four or five for from messages or from mail, and then it even knows to delete the text message. Yeah,
Geoff 19:11
that's a recent feature. I was like, pretty impressed on like,
Georgie 19:14
that reason. But yeah,
Geoff 19:17
I think it was the last major one. But yeah, it did. Yeah. Apple deletes your one time passwords. So I think it's working out pretty good. I have gotten rid of Google search engine by paying for search. Yeah, I've paid for my email now. And but the email is a bundle do for all the other three services for services I need. So that's like to subscribe search engine. Yeah, the search engine is one subscription. And then the emails, one subscription, but also the email, the email, VPN, and whatever else I need is one subscription. So subscriptions I'm thinking I'm saving money. I think
Georgie 20:02
you're saving money. And I'm here I am going wait, hang on. Use iCloud for everything.
Geoff 20:07
Yeah, but you have to infinitely scale your
Georgie 20:11
my photos. Yeah,
Geoff 20:14
like your storage, you have to like say you've already paid 30 bucks for your apple subscription right now.
Georgie 20:20
I don't know how much it is. But it's stupid because I have so many photos and I willing to bet I take what first and you because I take photos, all my outfits and of myself.
Geoff 20:32
I suppose I would have a problem. We have family telling drive, when per turn drive runs out because I'm very minimal. Like I have 3030 gig, maybe 33 gigs of photos and even less of files.
Georgie 20:50
The files, right? Like, yeah, I can probably delete How much do you How much do you actually need cloud? For files? Like what do you have there that you need cloud for? That?
Geoff 21:02
Yeah, have you thought about it? I, when I looked at all my files that I put it over, I'm probably I was like thinking I need to clean this shit up. Right? Yeah.
Georgie 21:15
Because like the other day, I was looking for something on my old hard drive, which just has a lot of like concert photos and things like that. And like, I don't need that around in the like, it's not in the cloud. But I'm like shit like that, where I'm like, what else do I have on my computer and shit? I can just move to a hard drive because I don't fucking Yeah, important is
Geoff 21:34
you know why, you know, what you need is to is to like, I think the way that you can probably do this is cut down on how many photos you need in the cloud, specifically, and how many photos you need to be in cold storage.
Georgie 21:53
Because he's gonna have on my phone, it's like the it optimises the storage somehow, but it's still criminal. Compared to probably
Geoff 22:00
what Yeah, but I mean, like, if you if you had like a home storage, you wouldn't need to pay 30 bucks, but
Georgie 22:07
you have no idea. Like, I actually went on my phone, and I got a picture from 20. I have pictures back to 2012 on my phone. And I do occasionally scroll back to them and share either share that with people or laugh about. So I do look. I
Geoff 22:22
mean, does. But it doesn't need to be in the cloud. Because if you lost all of them. I mean, God forbid you lose all your photos. Yeah. You only have two levels of backup, by the way, so you can find your third one. Yes. You really care about your photos. Yeah.
Georgie 22:45
Well, I do right. But it was fun. It's fun. It's so funny how much of this stuff we're talking about that I actually used to do. Before cloud was a thing. Every time I got a new phone, or every couple of times when I got a new iPhone. I didn't put the stuff the data back on. Like I just saved the photos put on
Geoff 23:02
your computer, and then I stopped
Georgie 23:04
the phone fresh. They fucked us like
Geoff 23:11
yeah, true, because we didn't have enough space on our phones to keep everything so it goes to the hard drive. But now that our phones have infinite, like, seemingly infinite space, we don't bother backing up anymore.
Georgie 23:27
This is worse than than points, points hacking.
Geoff 23:31
So I think I mean, I don't know how well you can automate, like, Oh, this is a favourite photo. So please back this up in the cloud, like so you can keep a minimal cloud presence, but also keep the maximum on storage on your hard drive instead.
Georgie 23:47
I think it does it by just like age of the thing. Like would it be good if you could just be like, hey, these albums that I made also I know not everyone makes albums so just that hear me? I had to
Geoff 23:59
delete all my albums because I moved off I like photos
Georgie 24:03
well actually did make albums for like certain trips because like sometimes you can I would like share an album and then we want to like because sometimes his family wanted to see like holiday pics.
Geoff 24:11
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I tried that whole like shared album thing. It's it's it's, it's still fucking messy. It's
Georgie 24:20
so shit. Yeah.
Geoff 24:22
So AirDrop, everybody,
Georgie 24:24
all the pics in the split. Cool.
Geoff 24:27
Well, right now, my partner and I share most of our photos of a telegram. So like, we keep everything
Georgie 24:37
Hey, Telegram
Geoff 24:40
messages, like if you were to just go, Oh, these are the messages. You just send it on messages and photos, you send our messages. It stays there. That's the group album.
Georgie 24:52
But then like, over here, this goes into another like thing of messaging apps right which is like a second thing A lot of the pain of the internet would
Geoff 25:02
you use iPhoto? So I photos is actually has albums with shed was shared with you, and it's gathered from iMessages. So you really don't have them. Oh, yeah,
Georgie 25:12
that's right. Yeah.
Geoff 25:14
Yeah, so you can just instal it
Georgie 25:17
since they come up in your in your recent stuff as well like,
Geoff 25:20
Yeah, that's really annoying.
Georgie 25:25
I'm like, ignore because it's like, so funny because like, Nick's parents said, like pictures from their like, whatever. staycations. And she like I thought one not bad. I mean, for some people, yeah.
Geoff 25:43
Yeah, I mean, to be to be honest, like, my family isn't on the whole apple train. So if they were, I'd probably reconsider shifting off photos, but they are Google Photos, people. So I tend to make the albums on Google Photos and
Georgie 26:00
shit. I look down on people who use Google. Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 26:03
I mean, you're giving
Georgie 26:05
your photos to Google. I don't know what to say about that.
Geoff 26:08
Yeah, if you're worried about, like, all the chat, GPT stuff and mid journey AI and all like, hey, you know what that photo looks kind of familiar. It's your photos. Your photo. So speaking of that, did you hear about the Scarlett Johansson thing?
Georgie 26:29
I think you told me about it.
Geoff 26:33
Did I GBT stole the voice of Scarlett Johansson. Oh, well,
Georgie 26:39
they didn't they Oh, she's she was and she. She had every right to voice that pretty much was based off her voice and she was like, fuck you.
Geoff 26:51
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Okay. Anyways, that's that's the
Georgie 26:58
Gmail like, what are we doing with our Gmail? Oh, yeah. So.
Geoff 27:02
So I think we can make a proton mail board, right now
Georgie 27:07
do it lie. Because then like, you have to do the admin of like,
Geoff 27:13
change? Well, you have to, you can you can have an email for, for to both via emails and things like that. So you can create a free account, and we won't have to do Gmail anymore. Because even the Gmail, we have to both know the password to get into it. And I guess we need to both know the password to get into this one too. So I've no idea what the like, I don't know what else to say. We just don't, we just don't wanna get protonmail was the free one. Anyways, we can we'll set up a proton mail and have all the Gmail things forward to it. Make it use useless? I can't even I swear there was a free
Georgie 28:01
account save 0%? Can you see that the Save 0% kills? create
Geoff 28:06
a free account? I swear this had a free option. I use the free option for a bit. Yeah. Whereas is protonmail I create a free can i Yes, you can. Oh my god, this is even on desktop. What are they doing? They're just selling the selling there. Get a free create a free account and then that I create a free account and then get male breasts. Oh, you know why? They think they they in there. I'm logged in. So I need to protect private window. Yeah, yeah. Private window. Anyways, we'll kind of ditch our Gmail. And yeah, good. protonmail Happy Days. Any case.
Georgie 29:01
What was the request?
Geoff 29:04
Oh, yes. Right. So we have a listener request for the last 10 minutes. I you know, what would
Georgie 29:09
you say for the last all philosophers have arrived in the last 10 minutes? Yeah. So.
Geoff 29:14
So let me preface this. Because so Ty has sent me this link. And I essentially didn't read the title. So no idea what this link is
Georgie 29:27
what he just sent me just the link and you saw the link. Oh, he
Geoff 29:31
said, this is a topic for your next podcast episode.
Georgie 29:35
There was a link. Yeah. No, he didn't say preview or
Geoff 29:38
I saw the preview. And I probably read I've probably skimmed the title, but I don't know what it is about right now. Because I completely forgot. Okay, so we're doing this in real time. We're doing this realise like, okay, all right. What is the car app and why are artists deleting Instagram for Oh no. I recommend this is an ad. What do you hold?
Georgie 30:02
Some artists and jumping ship for the anti AI portfolio up often meta began using Instagram content to train its AI models. So what is Cora? Wait?
Geoff 30:12
One, one second one second. Have you seen the meme pictures or not even the main pictures of Google AI recommendations? No. Okay, you don't use Google right? So you don't use Google to search even. Anyways, so Google, Google has like a search, like when you search for something, Google will have an API response at the top of the page. And so you can
Georgie 30:40
question around us like Instagram says, asked meta AI, this is new I sort of
Geoff 30:46
it's different because this AI is trying to attempt to answer your question. Without without needing to, like actually link into anything.
Georgie 30:57
Okay, so is it similar to like, when you write some images, it's, what's the code? It just takes all the information from webpages to show you the answer on Google without leaving the well,
Geoff 31:07
it's even worse. Okay. Yeah, it's because, because it that, that, like, curates a bunch of links, and then like, gives you the answer. But this is seemingly says, so a lot of people. One of the things I remember is like, Hey, can you put Can you eat likes? How many stones can you eat? Like, oh, it's probably easy to Google this. But yeah, how how many stones is healthy for you to eat? Or whatever, start Rice, rice, like rocks, it would say it would say it would say five, like that
Georgie 31:47
in the thing. And it just gives you five in the in the
Geoff 31:51
AI was like, hey, like five, five? The amount of stones that is healthy is like you can consume Five Stones a day to be healthy. And so
Georgie 32:02
it gives you that before you've even quote unquote, searched?
Geoff 32:05
No, like you hit search, asking the question, and then it will give you an answer. And the answer is like, obviously, wrong because you can't eat stones, or you shouldn't eat stones. So they actually making a suggestion that it's healthy to eat, like five stones or rocks, that's very problematic. So it's very problematic. And how it got that answer is like, like a Reddit post made by some seven year old that's like bubbled up to the top, which is obviously a troll. But because it was super popular at the time that the AI had picked it up as the correct answer, like people because people had given a positive sentiment that it was the correct answer. So it really didn't understand the context and not give you the super incorrect answer. Anyways, so that's like a, like a I think if you troll LinkedIn long enough, you'll see you'll see. You'll definitely see some people trolling. Anyways, car app. In the last few months, meta started sneakily sneakily trained a generative AI tool on Instagram posts. Of course, now some artists are jumping ship to a lesser known portfolio app Cara to protect their work from Ai data scrapers. The app is you know what, instead of us trying to read this,
Georgie 33:32
are you gonna hold this in chat?
Geoff 33:33
I'm gonna make I'm gonna make the can I sum like this summary thing
Georgie 33:42
here at some point? Kagi.
Geoff 33:45
No, in Ark, again, another anti Google thing that I've had to summarise page. How To summarise page your yak shaving at this point are my yak yak shaving
Georgie 34:00
for people who don't know yak shaving is the sort of phenomenon where you're trying to do one task but you kind of keep having to do roundabout tasks in order to.
Geoff 34:11
Alright, Command F. Oh, whoops. I'm not. I'm not on Windows. I'm on Windows Control. summarise Oh, they don't have the feature on this. Okay. Okay, well, I'm gonna just have to read it, I guess. Oh Kagi summarised Here we go. You can't summarise a lot. Okay, alright, nevermind.
Georgie 34:40
I can't do that anyway, because I think just sharing a different screen.
Geoff 34:43
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna try this one last time.
Georgie 34:48
Do you think we could have read the article?
Geoff 34:50
A few minutes
here we go. The car app is a Social Security Plus main reason why blah, blah, blah. consents of a meta AI freezone. For artists it's automatically implement as the automatic inference no AI tags on all posts to prevent AI scraping. This is seen as a way to protect artists trained with AI have a some have expressed concerns that car could become hyper censored and overly restrictive. noted that car is more focused on portfolio and art jobs rather than reaching mainstream audience. Yeah, I
Georgie 35:34
thought like it after reading the title and the subtitle, it's like, it seems like it's focused on creatives and like work, which is kinda like, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here we can discuss isn't this basically Deviant Art? Oh, app version of Deviant Art? Am I allowed to say that? Like, what is the like, what?
Geoff 35:57
Yeah, I suppose. I suppose Deviant Art is like an, like a really dumbed down. Like, at its core, that's just the portfolio. What
Georgie 36:08
is it like these days even. But I remember like using it because you just see really cool stuff on Deviant Art. And you get to discover artists and it was kind of like community ish. I think people made friends and shit. Yeah. It's like the oh my god, it looks completely different to what it did 10 years ago, but of course it does.
Geoff 36:26
Ayar Here we go. Ai art is honestly getting really easy to pick. Like, if you if you feel that the Oh. So there was a YouTube video This guy made who's a pretty well renowned photographer on it’s, Instagram and YouTube. But essentially, Instagram is going to start tagging photos that that are made with AI with the actual tag made with AI.
Georgie 37:04
So trying to identify those and yeah, so I'd hate it if you didn't want my photos myself. Well,
Geoff 37:13
that's the thing, right? The The rules are, if you don't Photoshop it in any way, that would not trigger the tag. So if you just put like copy paste in your photo, basically no filters. Yeah. But if you use Photoshop to say remove trash out of your photo that would be considered made with AI. That's not AI. Yeah. So that basically blanket tagging anything that has modifications to be made with AI.
Georgie 37:49
That's why can't they just say retouched like, it's, that's true.
Geoff 37:52
So no matter how small or how big the changes, if the sky was overcast that day, and you just like made a I generate a sky for you, then you could probably argue that it's made with AI. But again, you took the photo original photo, but you modified it with AI it's consider it
Georgie 38:11
but this thing or how does it know?
Geoff 38:15
So how the
Georgie 38:18
how to remove a trash can, for example, I
Geoff 38:22
think there's some metadata, but also the rules are if it's unlikely to be if it's unlikely to be real, is essentially right.
Georgie 38:36
Okay, now we'll hang away before before you continue. I now see a problem with that when you said that. I know that potentially a lot of AI models probably don't have a lot of learning around people with disabilities. And they might think that someone was like a limb difference is not real, just because they don't have a hand
Geoff 39:00
like normative kind of idea
Georgie 39:03
like Yeah. So
Geoff 39:05
when may How does AI labelling work in Instagram? Content is created or edited using metters AI tools share to Instagram a person bla bla bla labelled AI, or in some cases imagined with AI. Meaning generated from a prompt like yeah, I don't know, purple people are facing. content that is detected to have industry standard signals indicating that it is generated by AI will be labelled as made with AI. This includes content that is created or edited using third party AI tools also includes content that is created using Metis edit download. Signals are not detected by Instagram, you may need to label the content in yourself, not all content that is generated by AI will have a label.
Georgie 40:08
So, there are penalties if you do not label content as required. What are the penalties take the post down or something
Geoff 40:14
digitally created content that requires a label a video that appears real estate of a group of people walking around an outdoor market. Okay,
Georgie 40:25
so it's digitally created, but it looks real. Okay. audio
Geoff 40:30
file, two people talking a song credit using AI generated vocals are real narrated with a realistic edge and narrative was ever. That does not recur. Video of an outdoor landscape created in a style resembling a cartoon. Okay.
Georgie 40:51
This is weirdly specific and weird. So
Geoff 40:57
like, on one hand, you could say this is good, because we need to understand what is real and what's not real. Like if you have I don't know, your president, like doing something bad? You probably not sure. But is the actual president. But on the other hand, yeah, it seems like it's really vague on its roles.
Georgie 41:20
It's not written not that it's not ready for this, but I feel like we don't have enough. Like, aren't we as humans gonna know better? Like, hey, that might be AI? Then fucking AI labelling shit that's made with AI? Like, what do they use it? Like? I don't know, do they have a team of people looking at this shit? How are they doing that?
Geoff 41:45
So the reason why this YouTuber brought it up was to, like have that question. But also, because there are there's a super rare film, I can't remember what it's called. But it it's it's infrared film. Yeah, that was infrared film. And taking anything in that on that film would turn green into a really vibrant hue of pink. But keep all the detail of the photo. Like it's changed the hue is unreal what the film naturally does when it's exposed to light. And he's like thinking sounds
Georgie 42:27
like because it's a chemical reaction or something. It's like well, yeah, okay. Yeah.
Geoff 42:30
So he was posing this question is like, I just took an awesome photo with this. Like this rare super rare film. And I'm going to be tagged with AI probably tagged with AI because it is generally photo unrealistic to have trees this pink Yeah, even even though he took it and did no filtering. So that is where it kind of gets murky. People can do cool shit like with natural photos but the AI is going to be like this is not natural and they're going to be knocked for it so yeah, like
Georgie 43:10
how will they know it's like a long exposure for certain like pictures and not Yeah, that's fucking folk.
Geoff 43:16
Yeah, yeah. But I think because his his situation is super rare. Like that is like maybe 10 roles 10 roles, because AI won't be able to discern that like hey, you know what this photo have long exposure. There's millions of them out there so you're
Georgie 43:35
probably Yeah, whereas like yeah, whereas if you have a huge pictures of trees and shit, like all the model knows that trees are green green. Yes. sees one that's not so what is that?
Geoff 43:46
Yeah, you probably generated with AI. But hang on.
Georgie 43:49
There's some there's some places in the world including I think that place in Australia where the water in the lake is pink.
Geoff 43:55
Yeah, I think it's wa Yeah, that's a pink lake river.
Georgie 44:01
I think it's just I think it's really still problematic because and again, like with people disabilities and stuff like that, like, how, how can you trust or know that this is even accurate that it thinks that things are made with AI?
Geoff 44:16
What What if a colorblind person was colour correcting their photo? And then like, just like, hey, these colours look correct to me, but then uploads it. And then they get tagged with made with AI because they do anything normative?
Georgie 44:35
Yeah,
Geoff 44:36
this is crazy. started this crazy times, I think. Yeah. Did you hear about this analysis?
Georgie 44:43
Of like, Mount Fuji?
Geoff 44:47
Yeah. Did you hear about the story of of these photos though? No, I
Georgie 44:53
didn't. So apparently,
Geoff 44:56
someone on Tik Tok or whatever. Found this Molson that had Mount Fuji behind it, obviously. And it got so many views of how awesome it is that
Georgie 45:09
this is something juxtaposition of like a convenience store with the most majestic, like
Geoff 45:13
not that deep. They just took a photo or did it tick tock in this location and people like shed it like, like went viral? Because it was it was a pretty good photo of clear, clear photo of Mount Fuji. So guess what, guess what the internet does? Hundreds of 1000s of people went to that same location.
Georgie 45:35
And of course this happened. Yeah.
Geoff 45:39
And, and that Lawson had to erect a barricade. And block Mount Fuji from viewing from view of their like, from the street view of their Lawson's Do you know,
Georgie 45:54
can you look up what does it look like now? Yeah,
Geoff 45:57
um, Mount Fuji,
Georgie 46:01
have
Geoff 46:02
recently was released like Molson.
Georgie 46:05
I haven't. Yeah.
Geoff 46:12
Yeah. banned tourists cause chaos. So how does it look now?
Images it's sort of like, black. Yeah, they've got this black tarp.
Georgie 46:35
Oh, my God. That's socks. Yeah.
Geoff 46:38
Yeah. And they found tourists from Yeah, taking photos their page not found great. Oh.
Georgie 46:51
So wow, I didn't know. Well, that's a fun fact.
Geoff 46:55
So So basically, they've got the band tours from the Lawson's about the taking photos, and like covering Mount Fuji. The most funny thing about this is that they can go down the road and take the exact same photo of Mount Fuji without Lawson's in front of it. Like, that's the most ridiculous part. Why wouldn't you want Mount Fuji without Lawson's? Well,
Georgie 47:22
it's like I was saying maybe there's something arty about the fact that it's a convenience store with some majestic mountain in the background. Yeah.
Geoff 47:28
And there's, like this, there's a family mod down the road with the same view. But no one went, went there and took photos. Like,
Georgie 47:39
I don't know, it's kind of like people. I don't know what this phenomenon is called. But like, you see something on social media and you kind of walk people want to take the exact same picture. But I do wonder like, why wouldn't you want to think you know, when you go to like a touristy like a tourist attraction, everyone's taking photos in one way. And you're like, fuck you. I'm gonna take phone in the other direction or like something different. You're all getting the same pick?
Geoff 48:03
Yeah, I tend I think I tend. Yeah, I do think about that a lot, actually, like, I will. If I can Google the photo readily, then it's no point in me taking that further. Especially back in my, like, mirrorless DSLR days where it's like, actually travelling with a camera. Like, okay, there's got to be a different take to this photo. Because yeah, like,
Georgie 48:28
my opinion is that if you're a photographer, even like amateur hobbyist photographer, if you're a good one, you will look for a way to make capture, like, photos differently to the way literally fucking every other person does it. Yeah. And so I remember when I had a camera, I was like, okay, everyone's taking photos like that. I'm gonna try something a bit different. Yeah,
Geoff 48:51
it's almost like well, it's not just for the sake of also not for the sake of being different. But also, like, you got to find something that's more interesting to you then taking the same photo everyone else is taking. Yeah, but that's a more artsy take on it. So yeah, this is a thing
Georgie 49:14
I can't believe
Geoff 49:16
like, I mean, yeah. Yeah,
Georgie 49:20
like you're saying like, why wouldn't you just go like near that loss and somewhere and then get a clearer picture of Mount Fuji without? Yeah,
Geoff 49:28
I do you realise that like, you kind of want to take the take a photo of Mount Fuji, a clear photo of Mount Fuji just just for the sake of taking the Mount Fuji photo, but also do other things like
Georgie 49:45
like take a photo through the top
Geoff 49:49
at the top Oh, yeah, here we go. This is nice. This is a nice top photo.
Georgie 49:58
So yeah, really is like the highest Like to people,
Geoff 50:00
tourists tourists for everything. And yeah, Japan's like putting a limitation on all the tourists nowadays. I think someone also said in a real or something like that, or I think read it. But essentially, it's gotten so bad that like, even even though you're lining up for something that you've seen on, on on YouTube, like or Instagram or something like that, like down the road is an equally good, like ramen shop, but you don't have to line up hours for subject everybody lining up for the sake of going to the exact same spot that their favourite, like influencer has said it's good. And then
Georgie 50:53
just because they said it's good doesn't mean actually is good. Like you see them and you're just like, Wait, I've been there and it's shit. Like, I've seen a couple where I'm like, I know that place. It's not that good.
Geoff 51:02
There's, there's one that that my my partner is kind of like, what been watching recently where
Georgie 51:11
Michelin starred, like, ramen place a new one. Oh,
Geoff 51:15
not really. It's just the it's just a random YouTuber, okay? But essentially, she goes to a place, tries a bunch of things, and then records a voiceover. And she says this thing I tasted was super delicious. Nice and soft, fluffy, perfect. Six out of 10. Like, her scoring system doesn't match how she describes it. And I'm like, this is really like a disconnect for me. If you're, if you're describing something so delicious. And you're like, scored six out of 10. How do I trust?
Georgie 51:54
Yeah, it depends on your skill. Yeah, I guess it depends. But it's gonna be fucking amazing. blow your socks off
Geoff 52:02
the gateway. Have
Georgie 52:03
you ever had anything that is like 10 out of 10? You know what I mean? Like, if you've had in your life,
Geoff 52:09
we will wing those Smashburger things amazing. But then, then you get into the whole like reviewers and knowing what the reviewers think is good. And understanding that that's their benchmark and knowing that you don't like the same things. But you can trust her viewer to be consistent. And if they say they liked something about it, you know that you will hate it. Like that's like
Georgie 52:36
Yeah, cuz it's not your what you're saying or not your jam. Yeah, it's,
Geoff 52:40
it's like, hey, you know what that YouTuber really loves? I don't know grammar is on the phone. Super sharp, but you just don't give a shit about that. But they they like say it's okay.
Georgie 52:52
They think it's good to be listening to like theme park reviews. I don't care what your rating is. Cuz I never go to it.
Geoff 52:59
Yeah. So yeah. That that that's the fun bit of news. Probably old by the time this episode comes out when it comes down
Georgie 53:12
to the car. I mean, I didn't know if I had any other. Any other thoughts? Like, there's
Geoff 53:19
been other things like 500 pixel, for instance?
Georgie 53:23
Oh, what we like Oh, Jay on that I was OG on that.
Geoff 53:26
I think. I think I was also a little bit edgy on that one. Recently, I think I took another look at it. Um, circa five, six years ago, it was like, yeah, just as like a photography portfolio. People can make money off it. It'd be great for if like someone just by chance purchases most of my photos. But
Georgie 53:53
yeah, I think I did that. When I had pictures on my blog. I was like, Cool. Go printer. 50 cents. Yeah, that I think I ended up deleting my account.
Geoff 54:01
Yeah. All right. Anything. Anything important?
Georgie 54:08
I don't know. Like, I'm not an artist, right? And like, sure what I post on Instagram is like, my life or like outfits and shit. So this doesn't seem like it's I'm the audience for this app.
Geoff 54:21
Yeah. Kara has a LinkedIn s job tab to help companies discover artists and vice versa.
Georgie 54:28
Yeah, I reckon if you're an artist of any kind and you post your work on Yeah, Instagram then I think this is nice. Yeah, it's like it's specific. Right? Like yeah, Instagram is such a shit fire. Whatever. dumpster fire random stuff that I feel like it. I don't know. It's like honest.
Geoff 54:51
It's like if you took Facebook posts and removed all the texts and just like had it as a as a feed of Yes. It's a lot of
Georgie 55:01
there's just so much stuff on Instagram. And I always want to say like, if you're an artist, you deserve a nice place to post your shit. That's not like some social media like. Yeah, super broad, massive things. Because
Geoff 55:21
you have to play to the algorithm if you want to get noticed on those things. And if your fuck that, yeah, if you're an artist and you just like posting whatever you like to like, like to create or make specialty, then yeah, I think I think this is more of a appropriate place. Like hey, and
Georgie 55:42
in all honesty, I have followed some like photography or art accounts, and not to follow the artist at all, but I they feel out of place. Yeah, like, they feel like shit that you know what this is like, Tumblr. Feel like, Oh, that's a fucking cute artwork with a quote written mom. I'm gonna screenshot that and then fucking repost on my fucking multi slide. And I'm gonna post it on my story. And then and then. Yeah, it's got that vibe about it. When when I see art accounts on Instagram.
Geoff 56:15
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the shit fire hose has out balanced the the artists that used to use Instagram as a way
Georgie 56:27
oh my god, I forget that like how good it was. Like, it was just different. Post arty things, even if you you
Geoff 56:38
post a photo of something that you taken intentionally because I used to have the square format, and yada yada, yada. And I liked the square format. And when they introduce rectangles, I knew it was over. And you knew I knew the whole like, is restriction was that you had to fit whatever you needed in that square. And that was like, the, the heart the heart the hard part, right? The artful part. And then, you know, when it went rectangular, I'm like, That's it. Now people can just post regular photos without any effort. And selfies and like lavish lifestyles,
Georgie 57:20
I don't know which one came first like that all the stories. But when the stories came, I was like half pockets at all.
Geoff 57:26
Yeah, I think I think the rectangular thing came before the stories because they wanted to test if people were were using it right? Well, you were using rectangular photos.
Georgie 57:38
Did a couple but like you still like it's small. It's always the same with. So like I do the portrait, like, yeah, orientation, sometimes if I want more of a picture in there, because it's more impact. But whatever. I'm just another one of those users who has it was a victim to whatever has changed.
Geoff 57:59
And then now if you even try and create a new platform that does something similar as Instagram, but not as good, and then you're like, oh, it but it doesn't have any of the AI shit. And then. But it's too niche now, like, you're almost like, how do you make money? And you just don't want to advertise things like but how do you make money to keep this running? And there's probably very few options other than making people pay for it. And like, why did why pay for it? If I can just go to Instagram? Like protonmail is literally paying for your email that you could get for free. Besides the free plan that protonmail provides, but yeah, yes. Like, I'm paying for search now. Who knew I would pay for why? Yeah, we have to pay for the default privacy that we used to have for free. So yeah. Yeah, what a world we live in. Oh,
Georgie 59:01
I had a post go viral on mastodon. Oh, really?
Geoff 59:06
Yeah. Wait, I just repost my Tumblr like Tumblr, viral Tableau photos on mastodon.
Georgie 59:15
Okay, so I wrote. Oops, that's the wrong one. I have so making me download your fucking app just to look at something I should be able to see in a browser 1202 favourites
Geoff 59:29
and 691 boosts? Damn. Well,
Georgie 59:33
yeah. And like because all right, normally I don't have notifications on for stuff other than like text and phone calls. Yeah, but because I rarely use like, Master and I was like, Whatever, I'll leave the notifications on. And then I just, I think I was out for dinner with my parents. And I just kept getting buzzed like so many times because so many people were like liking anything. I'm like, oh, no, this is this is what Twitter was like before I turned notifications of LinkedIn easier.
Geoff 1:00:00
Yeah, I think I have some spicy takes on design systems nowadays that I feel like I'm lost without Twitter to post them too. And maybe I'll find the courage to go into design systems Mastodon and just post some spicy takes. Yeah,
Georgie 1:00:20
that's what I've been using the master. Okay, we're finally talking about it a little bit. The way I've been using it is like kind of the way I was using Twitter back in early days. Like, here's my hot take or here's my like, you're dumping my thoughts. Yeah, don't give a shit. Unfiltered thoughts. So I posted some random stuff on Mastodon and then the usual like, I have a new blog post, Link. And yeah, I noticed I think it's been almost a solid year that I've not posted anything on Twitter slash ex. I think I replied to a couple of people because I got mentioned after writing an article about avatars and that science system. Oh, yeah. Did you see that make the rounds because that made the rounds went on, like some newsletters of shit. Because Chris submitted it to like, newsletter and then I think I posted it on LinkedIn or whatever.
Geoff 1:01:13
Yeah, yeah. Like,
Georgie 1:01:15
I've been wondering, like, Am I really gonna get any benefit from posting on exactly like, I know, some people who still use it.
Geoff 1:01:25
There was barely any benefit from posting on Twitter. Like so. So a lot of your spicy hot take, like, my bar for me. It's not
Georgie 1:01:33
spicy hot. Like, for me Twitter was like, I had a lot of had, like, over 2000 followers. And when I posted blog posts, it was mostly like, people's eyes went on it.
Geoff 1:01:44
Okay.
Georgie 1:01:46
So self promotion type? Literally, I use the floor though. Yeah,
Geoff 1:01:50
I've the slack. Where for design systems, I think you might be on it. I doubt
Georgie 1:01:56
it. But maybe I join and never sign.
Geoff 1:02:00
But now that I have like some spicy takes, I'm looking through the channels and I have I have nowhere to go because the topic is like support is hyper focus on topics around design systems. Not general. Like what do you mean system ecosystem and I'm like,
Georgie 1:02:19
sounds like you need to sign up to master. So mastodon.
Geoff 1:02:23
I'll do the maths, I'd probably do the mastodon. I'm really curious. I'm really curious if anybody has come to the same conclusions as I as I have about design systems. And I just want to validate this, these, these these thoughts in a in a way? Because they're basically the silo? Oh, yeah, that's, I think once I get maybe, yeah, but
Georgie 1:02:53
it's so funny how we have these different like, ways of like posting stuff online. And then some of them are more daunting to some people than others.
Geoff 1:02:59
So much effort, I have to actually put some thought into it, and not just making
Georgie 1:03:05
some effort and like blinking to this AI Z, right? And to your like, and like what are we doing about auto I was looking at pay for?
Geoff 1:03:16
Oh, man, I don't know if we can get some way of easily doing transcripts.
Georgie 1:03:23
So that's the other thing. Because I, I messaged you and I said there is a couple of other services, not Simplecast, which I think are they don't do it automatically, though. Anyway, I have pretty much decided I don't want to, I don't want to edit the transcripts. Like to make them all perfect and shit. It's not. It's not that I don't care about, like, accessibility. It's, it's like at some point, because like other podcasts or this other thing I've realised as well, is other podcasts. There are some low budget ones like ours, which, and they're fine with it. And they still like gain popularity. We're not saying we're getting gained popularity, but a lot of them don't even have transcripts. And I'm like the fact that we have like auto generated ones, even if they're not highly accurate, I think is is good. Yeah. Better than like nothing. Yeah, just takes a lot of time. Like, like, I'm editing. I'm listening to myself talk.
Geoff 1:04:25
Yeah, I think that's fair at scale. In any case, this podcast has gone this has gone on too long. So you can follow us on know where we're probably going to launch a new email. So stay tuned.
Georgie 1:04:45
It will probably be made by the time this episode
Geoff 1:04:48
goes out probably.
Georgie 1:04:51
You can find our podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts and the big departure of From Google products,
Geoff 1:05:02
yes. I mean, I didn't even explain why Google products are bad, but people kind of know they kind of know. And so these episodes every week
every Monday, so see you next week. Bye.