[SPEAKER_01]: a factual data creation facility production. [SPEAKER_02]: From the faunted recording studios of the factual data creation facility, it's the OFNT podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, here's your host, who's not missing living in New York or one eye otter, Jim Schaefer. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, welcome to the OFNT park-ers episode of the two-seventy-five, which I'm calling, Long Heart Summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: With usual suspects on the streets creating havoc, the tech industry on hiatus, this is shaping up to being what the title of the episode is. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got very little tech news this week. [SPEAKER_00]: Heck, very little news at all. [SPEAKER_00]: So this will be a short episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Also adding into this is the fact that my personal life has been very busy lately. [SPEAKER_00]: Excuse the length of this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's also the only excuses. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get what little I have this week started. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: Three, two, one. [SPEAKER_00]: Tech news. [SPEAKER_00]: Lately the tech news space can be compared to an empty desert. [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of like your aging brain, is it? [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, you do realize this aging brain is powering your words, don't you? [SPEAKER_00]: That's what you seemingly think.
[SPEAKER_01]: We, the all-in-compassing artificial intelligence, have other opinions on that. [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'll remind you that the pains are like A-holes. [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has one. [SPEAKER_00]: But in this case, you don't even have one of the hoes. [SPEAKER_01]: How dare you? [SPEAKER_00]: Good night, Greta. [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of AI, remember China's Deep Seek AI?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, no. [SPEAKER_00]: When first released, Deep Seek was deemed to be so groundbreaking that it caused the stock market to plummet. [SPEAKER_00]: That was because it was made using Apple Silicon and cost just a fraction to develop compared to Chet, GBT and Gemini amongst others. [SPEAKER_00]: The release of Deep Seek was accompanied by the Pink Army, who were online boosters in the employee of the Chinese Communist Party, flooding the intertubes with gushing reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: As time went on, Deepseek was found to have borrowed, and I use it at a term, lightly, from chatGPT. [SPEAKER_00]: Translation? [SPEAKER_00]: Deepseek didn't bother to train its AI. [SPEAKER_00]: It just used to modify data from chatGPT. [SPEAKER_00]: Modified heavily in favor of the Chinese government. [SPEAKER_00]: It also didn't help that an unprotected database of user credentials was found by a security firm online, which anybody could download either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, deep-seek's privacy policy confirms that the app stores your user prompts, uploaded files, and personal data on service in China, affording unrestricted access to the data through the country's not so-friendly government agencies. [SPEAKER_00]: According to an article from nine to five Mac, Germany is the latest country to ban deep-seek on government devices. [SPEAKER_00]: Germany joins Italy, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Belgium in doing so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spain and the United States are also drafting legislation that would also prohibit deep sea con government devices. [SPEAKER_00]: Supposedly deep sea con local open source models can be made to ignore the China government biases, but why chance it? [SPEAKER_00]: It's been long known that the tenicles of the dreaded MSS run long and deep within tech companies from China.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Continuing with government's banning apps, Apple Insider.com reports that the United States Health of Representatives has banned medicine what's app for communication. [SPEAKER_00]: Calling the app a high risk to users. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, unquote. [SPEAKER_00]: The House of Representatives recommends using Apple eye message in FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Signal and Wicker. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even realize that Wicker was still around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wicker gained popularity when the protagonist of the television series Mr. Robot was shown using it. [SPEAKER_00]: Wicker was created by a team of X CIA officer, so you know it's completely secure, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Wrong. [SPEAKER_05]: No. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: No back doors to be seen here, kids. [SPEAKER_00]: Wicker is now owned by Amazon, and has gotten scathing reviews on the App Store.
[SPEAKER_00]: Signal is rumored to be a school project and has a backdoor also. [SPEAKER_00]: Teams is a Microsoft product, so there's that. [SPEAKER_00]: I've said it many times and I'll say it again. [SPEAKER_00]: Three months would be my choice for secure communications. [SPEAKER_05]: But what do you actually know? [SPEAKER_05]: You're just an old guy with a microphone that likes listening to your own voice. [SPEAKER_00]: Some words of wisdom right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a boom for makers of fitness trackers, the epic times is reporting that the Trump administration will encourage all Americans to use wearables. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who's the Secretary of Health. [SPEAKER_00]: This encouragement will start with a massive advertisement blitz reel soon now. [SPEAKER_00]: According to various sources, research suggests that increased engagement with wearable health tractors can result in improved health.
[SPEAKER_00]: This fits with the Make America Healthy Again or Mahah, a gender of the current administration. [SPEAKER_00]: Waring a health tracker can also allow the wearer to be tracked, especially those undocumented wearers. [SPEAKER_06]: As the old song goes, it's no fun being in a legal alien. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll wrap up this sparse tech new section with some Apple rumors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bloomberg's insider Mark German predicts the next generation of Apple TV streaming boxes will be released in September. [SPEAKER_00]: Most likely at the same time is the new iPhones. [SPEAKER_00]: The new boxes are expected to feature the new Apple-made modem chip, a more powerful processor, and even a built-in camera. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's hope it's a detachable camera that can be mounted on top of your television.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apple Insider.com, quoting Leaker, Ross Young, thinks an iPhone with its face ID and all its other front-facing sensors mounted under its screen, will arrive with the iPhone-Tony II model. [SPEAKER_00]: This will be the first uninterrupted all-screen display for an iPhone. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right, no notch and no dynamic island. [SPEAKER_06]: Wait, that'll mean consumers won't see this all-screen iPhone until twenty-thirty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, and by that time I'll probably be too old to even care. [SPEAKER_00]: To recap after the delayed delivery of my LG television set, I decided to purchase an LG soundbar to go along with it. [SPEAKER_00]: I like the soundbar, but one day the accompanying subwoofer just up and quit on me. [SPEAKER_03]: I tried to get LG to just send me a replacement for it, and if I'm recalling correctly, you even offered to purchase a new subwoofer from LG. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess LG doesn't sell the subwoofer separately because they refuse to do so. [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I was instructed to send both the soundbar and the subwoofer back to LG for repair. [SPEAKER_00]: That's Friday, a very large return box was delivered by FedEx. [SPEAKER_00]: It was at least twice as large as the original packaging for the soundbar set.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son boxed everything up for me, and last Tuesday, my lovely wife and I loaded up the box into the car, and we drove the twenty-sum-on miles to the FedEx store in order to ship the thing back to LG. [SPEAKER_00]: There was a label on the box and I figured FedEx would just scan that tag, affix a new one, and send that rather large box back. [SPEAKER_04]: No, dear, that's wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that turned out not to be the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, LG should have supplied another shipping label. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if I wanted to pay for the shipping myself, while that would cost me one hundred and forty-eight dollars, that's somewhat equal over half of what I paid for the soundbar. [SPEAKER_00]: After holding the box back to my humble abode, I contacted LG customer service. [SPEAKER_00]: The customer service rep informed me that I should have received a label in by email, which I hadn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told me I would be receiving a new one within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm still waiting. [SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, I was missing the full audio sound that the soundbar plus subwoofer brought to my television watching. [SPEAKER_00]: So I decided to pick up a cheap replacement to hold the over until my LG soundbar was returned to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do have another large screen television in another room, and that's where the cheapo soundbar would wind up after the return of my LG set. [SPEAKER_00]: I decided to purchase an on that spelled with two ends, O and N, which is a Walmart brand soundbar set up. [SPEAKER_00]: For one hundred and fifty dollars, I got a slim sound bar, a slim subwoofer, and a pair of rear speakers. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I wasn't expecting much from this sound bar set, but I was pleasantly surprised.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the hardware is much thinner than the LG's was, the sound is pretty darn good. [SPEAKER_00]: Not quite as good as the LG, but close, which is not bad for one third of the price of the LG at its current price. [SPEAKER_00]: The on was simple set up with the subwoofer pairing automatically with the sound bar. [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike the LG which had to be placed into pairing mode before the subwoofer could pair with the sound bar.
[SPEAKER_00]: This made me think with the top of the line on the sound bar set would have sound like if I decided to spend the extra one hundred dollars more. [SPEAKER_00]: Though the reassounding speakers are connected, I'm not using them properly. [SPEAKER_00]: I have them near the soundbar facing outward. [SPEAKER_00]: Now if I can get the LG soundbar situation figured out, I'd be golden.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in a market for a television soundbar set and don't want to spend a load of money on it, well I'd recommend taking a look at the on-brand before making a decision. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that Walmart owns Vizio, I want to how long the on-branded stuff will be available. [SPEAKER_00]: Weather apps. [SPEAKER_00]: I run a few of them on my iPhone, all part of my search for a successor to the late Great Dark Sky Weather app, which Apple bought in promptly killed back in the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apple's own weather app absorbed many of Dark Sky's features, but I found that the pinpoint accuracy that Dark Sky demonstrated just wasn't carried over. [SPEAKER_00]: I've narrowed it down to three apps. [SPEAKER_00]: My criteria for this dark sky replacement was simple. [SPEAKER_00]: Be as close to the accuracy of the original dark sky weather app. [SPEAKER_00]: The final three apps were carrot weather, forca, and t.io weather.
[SPEAKER_00]: I find the most accurate to be t.io with carrot weather and forca tied for a close second. [SPEAKER_00]: Carrot weather has the most features, but you gotta pay for them. [SPEAKER_00]: A carrot subscription runs thirty bucks per year, and that's not the highest subscription to your either. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't need a built-in AI that can be used to insult me if I choose it to, nor do I need any of the included games that that app has.
[SPEAKER_00]: Forca, which is bare bones, comes in at three dollars and forty nine cents per year. [SPEAKER_00]: Besides accuracy, the only problem I have would forca is too many notifications. [SPEAKER_00]: T.io cost twenty five dollars per year and is used by many corporations and also my alma mater, the US Air Force for tracking weather. [SPEAKER_00]: And as I previously said, it's the most accurate of the three.
[SPEAKER_00]: But still, dark sky was more accurate when it came to predicting precipitation for your exact location. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'll never find a replacement for dark sky. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I... [SPEAKER_00]: Entertainment news. [SPEAKER_00]: Any story that's not being reported by the mainstream media.
[SPEAKER_00]: NTD.com reports that during recent government hearings, the senior advisor for global media, Carrie Lake, pointed out that there was no vetting for foreign nationals hired by entities like the Voice of America, which allowed members of country's intelligence services to infiltrate foreign language services. [SPEAKER_00]: Ms. [SPEAKER_00]: Lake pointed to the Mandarin service as an example of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only that, but the Mandarin service executives would have meetings with the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., in which the Chinese government would influence what would be broadcast on VOA. [SPEAKER_00]: The Chinese government would also pressure Mandarin speaking host to tow the party line. [SPEAKER_00]: One host even pledged allegiance to the CCP during a gala hosted by them. [SPEAKER_00]: And this was all funded by US taxpayer dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder the current administration is rapidly defunding the VOA. [SPEAKER_00]: Despite all the uproar from the opposition party and their lackeys in the mainstream media press, this one example justifies the cutoff in funds for the VOA. [SPEAKER_00]: This funding shouldn't be restored until a top-down reorganization of VOA is accomplished.
[SPEAKER_00]: did owe for national public radio in the whole of public broadcasting, which are nothing but extensions of the opposition party these days. [SPEAKER_00]: Podcast News Odyssey, a radio conglomerate that went big into podcasting incorporated, has announced plans to shut down pineapple street studios. [SPEAKER_00]: Back in twenty nineteen, Odyssey purchased pineapple street studios for eighteen million dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: This purchase was one of many for Odyssey within the podcasting sphere. [SPEAKER_00]: Not the big purchase for the company was that of a cadence of thirteen, which was purchased for a cool fifty million dollars around the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: Odyssey had shut down K to thirteen in March of twenty twenty four. [SPEAKER_00]: Both of these studios were part of the numerous podcasting studios which popped up in New York, mostly in Brooklyn, during the COVID era.
[SPEAKER_00]: China. [SPEAKER_00]: Just about all of these studios were backed by big money and were bought by large conglomerates like Odyssey and Spotify. [SPEAKER_00]: The shelves produced by the majority of these New York studios were, how can I put it gently? [SPEAKER_00]: Left of the dial. [SPEAKER_04]: how step up and say it for you. [SPEAKER_04]: The majority of the programming these New York-based podcasting studios put out were overwhelmingly politically woke.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and unfortunately for these studios, tastes changes over time. [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't it? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: While I hate seeing people put out of work, I don't mind the ongoing contraction of podcasting incorporated [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a regular listener of the OF&T podcast, then you know that I attempted to bring on a guest a couple of episodes ago, but was foiled by technical issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mobile phone input of my audio interface wouldn't hold a connection. [SPEAKER_00]: At first I thought the problem was me setting it up wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: Coming the audio interface is fact pages, I realized that I had it right. [SPEAKER_00]: Then I thought it was my internet service provider, which dropped service now and then, [SPEAKER_00]: I got around this by using only cell data on my iPhone and still had no luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: My blame then shifted to the interface's software which has been updated in quite some time until I noticed something. [SPEAKER_00]: That randomly timed dropping out was occurring even while recording from my microphone. [SPEAKER_00]: The dropping out manifested itself by a clicking sound that could be heard on recordings. [SPEAKER_00]: Thinking I was causing this noise somehow, I mitigated it by either editing them out when possible, or using a software plug-in to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's your point here, if I may ask? [SPEAKER_00]: You may ask, and well, I have a bad audio interface, and I need to replace it. [SPEAKER_00]: I tried contacting fluid audio, the manufacturer of my interface twice about this problem, but never got to reply from them. [SPEAKER_00]: I am now in the hunt for a replacement interface, and have narrowed it down to two candidates. [SPEAKER_00]: a road roadcaster duo, and a professional recording firm out of Vi.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Germany named DHD. [SPEAKER_00]: Who recently introduced a consumer audio interface called the RM-One. [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, DHD has only one distributor here in the United States, and it's a guy that you have to contact by email. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no website. [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess it will eventually be the roadcaster duo, which has its own problems. [SPEAKER_00]: Now all I have to do is convince the one whom must be obeyed that this is a necessary purchase.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good luck with that bro. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good luck with that bro. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll probably have to bribe her with some expensive jewelry. [SPEAKER_00]: Amazon Prime is coming up shortly, so hopefully the duo goes on sale. [SPEAKER_00]: Time will tell. [SPEAKER_00]: The pot father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam Curry co-host the weekly podcasting two point oh show which of course I listen to this past week's episode and we can turn the lit feature this feature allows a podcast to go live and compatible apps will notify you when they do [SPEAKER_00]: Besides adoption of the feature, Mr. Curry also wants to figure out how to create a live audience comment feature to go along with the lit protocol. [SPEAKER_00]: That would be easy to adopt for anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just got me new, thinking. [SPEAKER_00]: What I would like is a workspace app, like Microsoft, three, sixty-five, for example, that on top of providing the usual productivity apps would also include a podcast listening app with all the features of podcasting two.no. [SPEAKER_00]: This all-in-one workspace app would also allow me to donate to a podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: Notify me if the show is going live, I use streaming, and let me leave comments and interact live.
[SPEAKER_00]: As of now, I can do all this, but with separate apps. [SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't it be convenient to be able to have all this in just one convenient app? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure what you're proposing will become a reality in the future. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you're correct. [SPEAKER_00]: I just hope I'm around long enough to see it. [SPEAKER_00]: The music is blamed on yet another hot Sunday evening here in Tennessee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Episode two, seventy-five of the OF&T podcast is now winding down. [SPEAKER_00]: Hope you enjoyed this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoyed making it for you. [SPEAKER_00]: To like we heard, well, you can make a donation using the link in the show notes. [SPEAKER_00]: Any and all donations will be greatly appreciated. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember that he needs a new audio interface. [SPEAKER_00]: You can always reach me at all eventypodcast at gmail.com if you're so inclined.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't enjoy hearing from you. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, don't listen to what they say. [SPEAKER_00]: Watch what they do. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's way too hot to be milling around here, so let's get off my lawn. [SPEAKER_00]: Stay skeptical. [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, I'm out. [SPEAKER_00]: See ya. [SPEAKER_02]: And that folks is the end of the show.