Hello, I had to re -record due to technical difficulties.
But stuff still happens. So what's up? Alright,
hi. Yeah, I had to re -record. I recorded the
entire episode already and went to go edit it,
only to learn that the audio was fucked up. This
is my fault for trying to produce a show. But
I'm gonna record again and frankly, I'm very
exhausted from all of this. So I'm going to try
to record and get as much information across
as I can, but it's gonna be shorter than usual.
So... With that out of the way, we're at war
again with Iran. I made a whole video about this
separately from this recording. If you want to
go see more of my thoughts on this, you can check
it out. It's on YouTube. I can't include all
of that information in this as well. The situation
is changing too quickly and there's not really
a whole lot that I can say that won't just be
irrelevant in like three hours. But for my general
thoughts on that, I put up a video on YouTube
yesterday, so go check that out. Let's instead
talk about the Department of Artificial Defense.
There are three key players in this story, the
Department of Defense, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
The Department of Defense, the DOD, or what Pete
Hegseth wants to call the Department of War.
They like to have contracts with private companies.
You know how we dump untold billions of dollars
into the DOD and often can't account for it?
That money is going to contractors, privately
owned corporations that just suckle at the teeth
of taxpayer dollars. It is not going well for
me today, y 'all. That's a power outage. That's
a power outage. I'm still recording. I'm gonna
go, I'm gonna, like, ugh. I'm still recording
and I'm gonna go see if I can flip the switch,
get the breaker, going down some stairs. See,
this is, this is, again, it's my fault for trying
to produce a show. This is genuinely ridiculous.
I'm actively, oh my god. Not a particularly easy
breaker to get to. Let's see. Did that work?
I think so. As I was saying, I'm on my way back
now, but we can use this time still. As I was
saying, so the DOD, they like to pay private
companies by way of contracts to spend all of
our money to do like... Contracty stuff for the
government, you know, building planes and shit,
stuff that bombs children, stuff like that. All
that good shit. And so they were having a contract
with Anthropic, right? Anthropic makes Claude.
Claude is a competitor to ChatGPT, which is made
by OpenAI. My background lights have changed.
Let me fix that. Good enough. So the DoD, they
want to be able to use Anthropic's Claude to
do military shit, but also they want to be able
to use it... to spy on American civilians. This
has been made clear because Anthropic was like,
we're not gonna allow Claude to be used to spy
on American citizens. And the DoD was like, that's
a problem. Anthropic is known for having more
safeguards in place than most other AI companies.
They're not... good. They're still a massive
tech company making an AI and all that stuff,
but like, they're... trying to make Claude be
slightly more ethical. At least they have stated
boundaries of what they don't want it to be used
for, and up until recently, they were planning
to not train the AI past a level that they felt
that they could control. Uh... Uh... No, yeah,
they're still pretty bad. But Anthropic said
no. They said no to the DOD. We don't want Claude
to be used for surveilling citizens and also
for use on autonomous weapons. The DOD got big
mad and labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk.
That is a designation usually meant for companies
that are in adversarial countries so that we
don't depend on them during wartime. It's not
really meant for like an American company. So
now we have the White House trying to strong
arm an American company to just do whatever they
say. Trump actually went as far as to complain
that the US government had to adhere to terms
of service instead of the Constitution. Holy
shit. While all this is going on, OpenAI is like,
hey guys, we also signed a contract with the
DOD. Here's the details. In their details, they're
like, yeah, no, they're safeguards. They can
only use ChatGPT for things that the US government
says is legal. That's some real safeguards, my
guys. So where we're at is that Anthropic is
saying they're going to fight this designation
and we are in uncharted territory. This is, again,
the White House saying, hey, massive tech company,
do what we say or we're going to cut you out
of the entire government. Being labeled as a
supply chain risk means it can't be used by the
government or other contractors. It's a huge
loss. Ultimately, this could lead to a court
case that decides a lot about the future of the
relationship between the U .S. government and
private corporations. And of course, it's happening
under a Republican administration. I'll end this
by saying that literally hours after the White
House was like, no more Anthropic! They used
Anthropic stuff in the attack on Iran. Make of
that what you will. Let's talk about Netflix
and Paramount's heated rivalry. See what I did?
Setting the stage, we've got Warner Bros. Warner
Bros. wants to be purchased because they're failing
and they want to be bought by anyone. They don't
really care who. Netflix swooped in and was like,
we want it. We'll take that. And after they did
that, Paramount was like, but we wanted it! So
Netflix and Warner Bros have been working towards
an acquisition agreement, and Paramount has been
trying to outbid Netflix this whole time. Paramount
is run by the son of Larry Ellison, who owns
Oracle. Well, owns. He's at the head of Oracle.
Larry Ellison is in Trump's circle, hyper conservative,
oligarch at the head of a tech company. He's
exactly that kind of guy. And as a reminder,
the Ellison family either owns or has direct
influence over CBS, Paramount, and TikTok, among
a whole lot of other things. And now they've
come in and successfully pushed out Netflix from
this deal. It now looks like Paramount is going
to be getting Warner Bros. If this goes through,
one family would have sway over CNN, HBO, CBS,
Showtime, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central, and
Viacom, just to name a few. All the while, Netflix
shareholders are actually pretty happy about
this. There was a lot of concern about all the
problems that Netflix would have to go through
with regulatory hearings and stuff. So after
the deal broke, Netflix stock skyrocketed. What's
more is there was a clause in the contract between
Netflix and Warner Bros that if they went back
on the deal, Warner Bros would have to pay Netflix
nearly three billion dollars. as a breakup fee.
I feel I'm owed three billion dollars as a breakup
fee for several breakups. But Paramount, being
this level of thirsty, offered to pay that money.
So Paramount paid Netflix the breakup fee to
get away from Warner Bros, which means that essentially
Netflix was just like, we'll buy Warner Bros,
and then didn't buy Warner Bros and got three
billion dollars and a stock price increase. So
well played, except for the whole Ellison family
owning everything ever. Draft Kings. I only fuck
with Wraith Kings. I have no idea if Wraith King
is meta or not these days, I haven't played since
2018. Valve Software, the company that makes
Steam, which is the biggest gaming platform on
the planet, is being sued by the New York Attorney
General. Letitia James, you may have heard that
name before, is suing Valve over loot boxes,
citing that it is a gambling practice targeting
teens and children. For the non -gamers out there,
allow me to explain loot boxes real quick. Loot
boxes are a general concept in gaming where you
get an in -game item that's a locked chest, and
you can only open it with a key. Keys usually
cost real -world money. Not a whole lot, but
a couple bucks maybe. With a key, you open the
box, and inside the box is some kind of in -game
item, usually a thing that gives a different
look to something in the game, often called a
cosmetic. In gamer terms, they're called hats.
And the output of these boxes is randomized and
usually weighted, so there's stuff that's more
common and stuff that's more rare. And so this
creates a bit of a market because you can usually
trade these items between people. Now this gets
really messy because it's not super cut and dry,
but when you have a system that can peg sort
of an input currency by way of keys to real -world
money and then have a market where things have
values and can be potentially gotten like a slot
machine and then traded for real -world money,
it gets wacky. It's also hard to say that this
wasn't in some way intentional when Valve has
a long history of hiring world -class economists
to plan out in -game markets. Do I think that
Valve is intentionally being nefarious and evil
and is trying to do gambling? Not necessarily,
and they've made some concessions and they've
changed some things over time, like whether or
not you're able to purchase and trade keys. So
while it's pretty easy to portray this as not
much different than opening up like a booster
pack of a trading card game, some other countries
have already labeled it gambling. Belgium and
the Netherlands already call loot boxes to be
gambling, and Dutch players of Valve's game Dota
2, they're able to actually see what item will
be in the box before they open it. That said,
if you don't like what item is in the box, you
can't get a new box unless you buy it. So you
still have to buy the box to see what the next
item will be. So it's not great. Ultimately there
do exist platforms where people do like underground
trades on all this stuff and you can make quite
a bit of money. I've had a pretty valuable Steam
item in my account inventory for years and I'm
constantly getting people trying to scam me out
of it. So are loot boxes gambling? Probably not.
Are they are they a good consumer friendly thing?
No, definitely not. Is there regulation for it?
Not really. Should there be regulation? Probably.
What kind of regulation will we likely get? Probably
something along the lines of like, you must take
a picture of your genitals and send it to Jeffrey
Epstein before you can open loot boxes. That's
probably what we'll get. Lightning round! Last
week I talked about how the DoD shot down a party
balloon. Well, this week they shot down a drone
operated by her own Border Patrol. The first
ever fiber optic undersea communications cable
is being retired after 37 years. They're yanking
it up from the floor. The ocean floor. According
to the Wall Street Journal, U .S. citizens have
left the country in record numbers over the past
year. Tech company Block, which is owned by Jack
Dorsey, the guy that made Twitter originally,
and they run Square, they are laying off about
half their workforce, 4 ,000 people. I just want
to say that Jack Dorsey has a long history of
maintaining his aesthetic, and part of that is
not capitalizing letters in written messages.
And that includes the letter laying off thousands
of employees. I'm not one to get hung up on these
kinds of semantics, but holy shit, that is insulting.
And finally for today, an anonymous donor in
Osaka sent a whole bunch of gold bars worth about
3 .6 million dollars to the city with a note
saying, fix the pipes. Fucking legend shit. Thank
you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh .news for
sources, bonus content, and Hopefully an improved
power grid next time. My name is Endeavorance.
We'll talk again soon. Take care and be well.