Train Radio Detectors, Points of Interest Notifications, Local Guide Hotline, and Unbiased AI News

I'm Scott. I'm Russell. And I'm Leo. This is Spitball.

Welcome to Spitball, where three terminal tinkerers and a guest empty our heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.

Anything that we say is yours to keep.

And we have a friend this week of all three of ours.

Scott, who did you bring along with us?

I brought our good friend, Brandon.

Brandon is a community builder for a local K-12 school,

a world traveler, audiophile,

and probably the only person I know who's met Morgan Freeman.

So welcome, Brandon.

Welcome, Brandon.

Dude, what's that story? I don't know that.

It's unfortunate I won't be able to bring the same vibrato

that he's got to the podcast here.

But actually, it was a high school senior year.

robotics competition. He was at the national championships. Um, I knew he would be there.

And so it was like main incentive to win and get, get to, get to the national levels.

Well, we got to the national level and, uh, sure enough, I found him out by some of the stages and

worked my way down through the crowd. Just like went right up to him. I'm wearing a Burger King

crown. Uh, I, I, uh, I had it cause I was one of the operators of the robot. It said chaos,

because Holland was Team Chaos.

And I walked right up to him.

And you know, you ever hand somebody your camera

and you're like, take a picture.

And of course, this is still quite before

everybody's using cell phones for selfies.

And you're just like, you do that

and you later find out they took the worst picture ever.

Well, I handed this person the camera

and I said, please take a picture.

And he's like, sure.

So I'm sitting there and I go up to Morgan Freeman.

I'm like, hey, it's nice to meet you.

And he like pulls his hand back a little bit.

And he goes, why is that?

I'm like, well, you're a smart, like, I don't remember exactly,

but I focused more on like the science and why he was there.

It's kind of when he was doing some of the science work too, I said,

and a great performer.

And he goes, now that's what I want to hear.

And he is cheesing and the Morgan Freeman voice puts his hand out.

Well, the guy handed the camera to caught every moment perfectly.

Like the handshake, the burst into smile.

Like I went back, I went back on my,

my little digital camera and I'm flipping through the buttons

and I'm like, oh my gosh, I got it.

That's awesome.

One of the cool stories of the time,

the voice of God, you know, was talking

and spoke to me. I had no idea

he was a robots guy. That's good to know.

Yeah, it was when

at that time he was doing the

science show where he was

exploring, I think, religion or something.

But he was just doing a lot more of the science work.

And so it was cool to see him there supporting the robots

too. Well, we should have him for a guest

pitch sometime. Yeah, see if you can get him on here.

I'll come up after this.

I'll call him up.

I'll call him up.

Yeah, you've got his number still, I'm sure.

Hey, it's me, Brandon.

You remember?

The Burger King crown.

The Burger King crown.

Oh, man.

Well, this week I thought we'd get us started with another round of Best of AliExpress,

a game that we've played once or twice before.

So in this one, I'm going to go around the circle here and give you three products,

one of which I made up, and the other two are real things that are available on AliExpress,

Wish.com, Teemu, whatever.

So, as always, we're going to start with our guest.

Brandon, I've got to tell you about three things.

Number one.

All right.

The chicken helmet.

A colorful, molded, protective, hard helmet that's slightly larger than a thimble for small pets, such as chickens.

The fake pregnancy belly purse.

A large, fleshy bump that straps to your belly to make it look like you're pregnant.

No more waiting in lines, and it has a small pouch for keys, wallet, or snacks.

Or the urn ring.

A stainless steel jewelry ring with a screw on the side.

unscrew, dump your loved one's ashes inside,

and you can carry them around with you always.

Which of those ones is one that my sadistic mind made up?

I can see the belly pack.

That's got to be a thing.

And you know, people, I like the ones that have these little arms you clip on the chicken, too,

and it looks like the chicken's running around with arms.

So I can believe the hat.

I'm going to go with the urn ring, although it seems pretty compelling.

I'm going to say maybe that one's a stretch.

I'm delighted to inform you that you could indeed purchase an urn ring.

I made up the pregnancy belly thing.

Oh, man.

No way it's the earn ring.

There we go.

Not only that, I don't have a link to a specific product.

It's a category on AliExpress.

Earn rings.

There you go.

AliExpress.com slash W slash wholesale earn rings.

500 for 20 bucks.

We've got our idea for tonight then.

That's how you sneak those movies into the theater.

Grandpa.

No more feeling bad about it.

It's what he would have always wanted.

Hope you tighten that screw down.

Man, that is such a weird idea.

Scott, number one, the AI plant whisperer,

a small solar plastic device that sticks in the soil and claims to, quote,

support 500 languages that send plant thoughts through Android or iPhone.

That is not going to hunt it, okay?

The Boo-T, a butt-themed tea strainer made of silicone.

The bottom part looks like the poop emoji where you place your tea leaves,

and it's attached to a round silicone butt cheeks that float above your cup.

and that makes it easy to grab and remove it.

Or three, the reflective full face visor,

a shiny oil slick style rainbow sunglass lens,

but full mask Daft Punk style.

Only the visor, no helmet.

Which of those three things is something I made up?

We have Daft Punk that Leo likes.

We have tea that Leo likes.

I don't know about the plant whisperer.

I'm going to go with the boo tea.

I think you made that one up.

The boo tea is unfortunately a real product on Wish.com.

the plant talker the plant talker is not real yet well i'm sure someone's on it honestly surprises

me i know there's ones that are like soil moisture sensors but nothing that uses ai to support 500

plant languages yet russell number one the parted hair wig for cats says what it is on the tin a

small silver hair parted down the middle perfect for your cat or dog number two the dream selection

crystal necklaces, a set of what looks to be 12 crystals on chokers for your neck while

you sleep.

Each color corresponds with dreams that you want to have that night, including food, work

problem, or quote, sexy.

Or three, real starfish curtain ties.

Billed as decorative, these starfish arrived in stank-like shellfish, and a woman cracked

one open to discover there was actually starfish skeletons inside.

Which of these things are a real thing or is not a real thing that you can get on AliExpress?

I'm going to go with the starfish skeleton Russian doll thing, you know?

That's a news headline from The Sun.

That was a real thing that happened.

It's cheaper to get starfish than to get an injection mold.

Yeah.

A woman bought these starfish curtain ties to go on her shower curtain and one crumbled and stunk and all of them were real starfish.

Wow.

I guess it's cheaper to just use real starfish.

I guess so.

Depressing and kind of gross.

All right.

So we're 0 for 0, I think.

One more time through.

Brandon, the facial slimming face bandage, quote, prevent the cheeks sagging with this bright blue and yellow face mask.

It wraps from the top of your head around the chin to hold your face in place.

Number two, running endurance speed training parachute.

A big black parachute that you clip to your waist belt to add resistance while you practice running.

Or three, fingerprint randomizer gloves.

A pair of gloves with a button on the back of the hand that claims to rearrange the capacitive dust on your fingertips.

Which of those is fake?

Can you repeat the first one, please?

Facial slimming face bandage.

Yeah, man, people love beauty gimmicks.

I'm going to go with the third one again.

I'm going to hope it's the third one on this one.

I made that one up.

Isn't that a fun idea?

That would be crazy.

Fingerprint changing.

None of these are claimed to work, Scott.

You know, that's fair.

Products are existent.

Sure.

I remember your lightsaber mouth lady from the first one.

Cleans your teeth.

That's right.

The brush licking cat thing.

Isn't that the one?

Yes.

I think that was a Kickstarter one, but yes, that was a good one too.

Didn't it come in like a multi-pack too?

The licky.

Yeah, fun for the whole family.

Oh, my gosh.

Scott, number one, a clear shower liner for electronics.

A cross between a transparent shower curtain liner and a closet shoe organizer that has pockets all along the outside to put your iPad, phone, baby monitor, et cetera, so you can watch your electronics while in the shower.

Two, the Toast News, a smart toaster with a phone app that can burn your Google Calendar, Apple Reminders, or tasks or weather forecast into your morning toast.

Or three, a wireless Kindle page turner.

A small USB-C rechargeable black plastic clip.

It attaches to the side of your Kindle.

And a clicker remote that presses the button that makes the page turn.

I've started to learn I just need to pick the one that I think Leo would want in life.

And so I'm going to go number two.

The Toast Vernon tells you the weather.

It worked.

That's true.

Everyone needs that.

That would be incredible.

Just printed Jesus every couple of days.

My agenda on my toast.

I know they have a toaster where you can draw on the side.

It's got a screen.

You can draw on the side, and then it burns the image on the toast.

It's a real thing.

Yeah, that's cool.

I haven't seen one that tries to put your morning news on it.

No.

Instead of seize the day, it's like eat the day.

Yeah.

You've got your S&P 500 graph on your first one.

Oh, no.

It's upside down.

Lastly, Russell.

Number one, the heavy workout computer mouse.

What looks to be a dense metal USB-C computer mouse with sticky friction pads on the bottom to, quote, increase arm muscles.

Number two, the banana duck lawn ornament.

Look out, garden gnomes.

This is a foot tall resin banana being peeled.

But the exposed top banana part is a goose or duck neck and head.

Or number three, rechargeable Crocs headlights.

Small battery-powered plastic orb ornaments that snap into the holes in your Crocs and last, quote, 300,000 flashes probably.

Which of those three?

We got workout mouse, banana duck ornament, or Crocs headlights.

They're all ridiculous.

But I think the, like the, okay, the banana one's got to exist because that's just too crazy, Leo.

I hope that didn't come from your own head.

So I'm going to go with the first one.

I made up the first one.

You're absolutely right.

Okay, yeah.

so far that seems like a good kickstart of the workout mouse it seems like something that a

gamer like oh man i just want to make some money for my man that would infuriate me little little

finger treadmill on the tip of your mouse

you guys have my number you didn't get it the first round any of you and all three of you got

one on the second congratulations everybody three-way tie i don't know if that's happened

yet on the show. Well done, everyone. I think that means

Leo has to go first.

Oh, shoot. Yeah!

I will go first.

So, I learned pretty recently

that trains,

just your standard Amtrak

or freight trains

that go through tracks in your town,

have small radio beacon

transmitters. They have one at the head of the train

and one at the end of the train, and distributed

power unit ones, and that's part of

how the conductor system

talks to the rest of the train.

it puts out little beacon flashes for

I'm changing the throttle, I am signaling things

they don't go very far, only a couple of miles

ham radios have studied the exact frequencies

for the head of the train and the end of the train

I originally was wondering, is there a way that we could do

a flight radar 24 or marine traffic type thing

where we could have a map of where all the trains are

because there's no API that I've found, there's no publicly available data

so that we could know, oh man, I've only got a couple minutes

to make that intersection over there.

The city that we live in is like bisected by a train track.

That is the most annoying thing,

and we could rant about that all day.

Yep.

But that doesn't seem practical.

So I've got a practical idea.

Imagine a small radar gun detector

or like garage door opener size thing

that you clip in your car,

and it just tells you signal strength increasing

or decreasing of the head and the tail of the train.

I like that.

So you've got a little thing

that you're looking at near the windshield.

You're already sitting at the train tracks and that first couple go by and you're like, oh, man, is this going to be a 10 second or a 10 minute thing?

That's just ruined my day.

You could look at a little detector and know, OK, two to four miles away is the end or wow, it's coming up quick.

It must be there soon.

I would use that thing constantly.

Right.

So I think this is doable.

You've got just a little SDR like radio receiver and a couple of LEDs and you're golden.

That's the pitch.

I like it today.

Today we were coming back from a field trip from the school,

and just as we were getting about two streets away from the school,

there's a train track, and of course the arms come down,

and I hear the driver go, oh, no.

Well, this train goes by, and it's three cars.

And then I don't think the things even settled,

and they were going back up, and there was no reason to fret.

We were going to be on our way faster than a stoplight,

and that would have told us.

That would have given us the peace of mind.

At the same time, last week, same track,

15-minute coal train just stuck.

Nothing you can do.

I had a pizza in the car with me in the back,

and I couldn't even go back to get it.

I'm just sitting there smelling a pizza.

Yes, Leo, I would love that.

It's so niche, but it perfectly fits our niche.

Is it?

I don't know.

I feel like this is a common thing, at least along the Midwest, right?

It makes me think of the police radar, though,

where people have them in their cars by the windshields,

and then the technology kind of changed so fast

that now they go off when you drive by automatic doors

at stores and stuff, too.

So you got to make sure, how do you prevent that from being interfered by trains, you know, going different ways or stuff too?

Right.

You'd have to, so basically I've been thinking a lot about that.

If you have this signal strength is getting stronger or weaker, going up or going down steadily, because they put out little pings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you have that for the head and that for the end.

I think you'd be able to work out pretty much everything you would care about.

You got two reference points.

So like, oh, wow, they're both really close together.

I'm getting the ping at the same time from the start and the end.

They're both increasing and decreasing at the same time.

That must be a really short train, right?

Or the tail is really far away, but the head's right next to me.

Uh-oh, this is going to be a big one.

You might be able to figure that kind of thing out, I think.

Yeah, especially with, I feel like with enough data, you could really even know how far away that train is coming down the track.

And then, you know, how far away it's gone from you.

The frequencies, the UHF frequencies that it lives in, to spare you the ham radio tech nerd details, are not very good at like penetrating through stuff.

So it's kind of line of sight.

Best case scenario, you're looking at two to four miles away of signal strength if you're like looking straight down the track.

Which is pretty much all that's relevant, right, at a train stop.

Exactly.

So you wouldn't be able to know like, oh, you know, it's a town over or whatever.

It's coming by and you're almost there kind of thing.

Okay, so I feel like your fate is sealed no matter what.

So having this on your car, you're like, damn, I'm screwed anyway.

It's just like, what's my time commitment?

But you know what's a major inconvenience?

It's like when you look at a bus in front of you and you're like, oh, crap, it's going to have to stop at the tracks.

And you're like, oh, now we're going to have this crazy zipper merge.

It's going to come out of nowhere.

Everybody's going to try to pass each other.

I'm not sure if this is possible.

You get these devices on there, and now no buses ever have to stop at a damn train track ever again.

You throw three or four of those bad boys on there because of redundancy, right?

Huge market.

Every single bus on the planet now doesn't have to stop at a light and create chaos for everybody that – for trains that aren't even there.

Gosh.

We've got warning bells.

We've got flashing lights.

We've got gates that lower.

The trains themselves honk.

Do we also really need buses to stop?

It kills me.

See if we get enough of these on there.

We can live triangulate the trains if people are connected to their phone or whatever.

And now we can show the trains on Google Maps.

Show the trains driving around.

I don't know why Amtrak or whoever doesn't just publish that anyway, but that's a story for another day.

Dude, it would be cool if you contributed to the network, right?

Like you had your devices out there and it connected to, you know.

Can I tell you where this started?

The open source API.

I want to have a couple of, this was originally going to be a separate pitch, a couple of solar powered long range radio vibration sensors to stick on the poles near every intersection in my town.

So then I could have like wall art where it's like a map of the roads of town.

And then the intersections have LEDs that light up if they're being vibrated from far away.

I think that'd be cool too, but it wouldn't be like scalable, right?

You kind of have to like sneak it and hope the police don't find the devices you play.

This makes me feel like I feel like it's at least once a week where I think of the Batman movie where they're using this, the cell phones, microphones, cell phone radars.

You know what? Like that at the time that seems so possible, but so far fetched.

And now with the concepts of AI modeling and data, I'm like, wow, it really is super plausible.

They've mapped out our entire houses with our phones and like it no longer seems so possible.

so far fetched. They're mapping it out

and they know exactly what that room

looks like. You're really into

Morgan Freeman.

This is too

powerful for one man to have,

Bruce.

No, I

know exactly what you mean. It'd be great if you could map.

There's other things, I'm sure, in the world that

it'd be great if we could just map.

But yeah, Amtrak,

I know you're listening. Put some

cell radios and

GPS trackers on your dang trains.

Publish that data for people, please.

Maybe they're embarrassed because it's always late.

Then people could mine the data and see like, yep, 70% of the time they are behind schedule.

Dude, that's a great point.

My dad takes the train back and forth in Chicago.

And you don't ever know if that train is going to be five minutes late, sometimes 15.

And you're like, damn, am I just going to sit in this parking lot forever?

And so it would be kind of cool to see, oh, stop at this stop, stop at that stop.

I know where it is, right?

transit is an app that'll do that too it'll kind of crowdsource oh there's some people on this bus

and and we think this is where they are but um it seems like a lot of the municipal people have

like solved this the the chicago trains and stuff they have like on the platform you know three

minutes until this train arrives usually right don't they have little displays yes they do okay

15 minutes late and then it shows up in five minutes and you're like what why do they even

have this yeah really interesting all of it's off you're just nothing matters because i feel like

they're just people that are like oh i'm gonna take my sweet ass time getting off the train and

so let's just ruin the entire you know and every time somebody does that for like 15 stops you're

just and they can never leave early you know they can't leave so yeah oh i had road scouts somehow

i'm still having despite all this technology i'm still having visions of like somebody riding up

on a horse with a lasso getting ready to

hijack the train because they've watched

their little dongle on their horse

telling them, ah, it's a three-car

train. We can round them up,

boys. Circle the wagons.

There's a stretch of four miles of

country that it's about to go through. We saw it

on Google Maps. Get them.

The idea of a cowboy on his

iPhone is lovely.

What's the ham radio say, you know?

that one actually lends itself pretty well to my idea oh perfect um get over to you which

yeah which i have found myself being a traveler well throughout the u.s but in other countries

and i think something i find my a position i find myself in is often like not always remembering

all the stuff I like to do and see in places I like to visit. And I feel like for a long time,

this has been years where I regularly think when I'm when I'm pulling up Google Maps, man,

it would be really nice if I got notifications when I was near the types of things I was

interested in, in such a way that like, like, I wish I could put in thrift stores, if I'm ever

within three miles, and then change the distance. If I'm ever within 10 miles of a thrift store,

I've always wanted to visit an Ikea.

If I'm ever within 60 miles of an Ikea.

And then when I'm out and about, my phone just says, hey, by the way, you're within 60 miles of an Ikea.

And then you can go ahead and either tap, either tap like, okay, great.

Yes, this is a known location.

Or I can't make it there today.

Skip it.

Remind me again.

And for me, that's like, wow, you could put genres.

Dog parks.

I want to know where all the dog parks are in my community when I'm out and about.

I don't want to just stare at the map and, like, study them.

like let me know if I'm ever within a block of a dog park walking my dog because then I can

I can stop and if it's a known or unknown location and I feel like this lends itself really well to

like customizing your genres of places the types of interests or things points of interest parks

that kind of stuff um and then yeah you just go about your day and your phone lets you know

and it's really cool because the idea lends itself to businesses being able to run like coupons or

promotions when you're nearby to you, to your phone. Like it's, it's a great concept. So for

me, like I wish when I was out and about, my phone was like, by the way, here's a thrift store

within your two minute radius or your five block radius. And I'd be like, okay, cool. That's a

known, I know about that one. Thank you. But that would work wherever I go. When I travel across

the States, different countries, I just want to know without always having to stare at my phone

or suit. So are you thinking that it's going to like, am I going to enter ahead of time? Hey,

dog parks and thrift stores or is it just going to be watching you to be like brandon like really

really likes starbucks over here every time i pass a starbucks i gotta let him know suggest yeah

yeah you could you could definitely yeah i think i think if you entered categories like i like

thrift stores dog parks and cafes you can start to you know find fusions or you can have suggestions

as well hey we notice you're really desperate to go to that you know insert obscure store restaurant

you know, you've never been to a Sonic.

Leo, we see you're 300 miles from a micro center.

Yeah, I've always wanted to go.

So it's just an idea that I feel like,

I don't know, I would use it,

I would want to be notified regularly.

Yeah, especially in new towns.

In new towns and traveling.

And every mapping service is like 90%

of the way to building this

and they just need that last little

like one setting screen, yeah.

And it seems like it would provide them

with great information.

You're essentially, instead of being like reviewing a store or restaurant with three or four stars, you're essentially giving them insight into places you might not have even been to before.

And you're giving it like, I'll go 50 miles, 60 miles.

You're giving them great consumer insight into like how desperate you are for that service, that thing.

It's extremely valuable, but somehow I feel like I just get the feeling like it's too cool.

It's just too, it makes too much sense.

They're not going to make it.

So if anybody's out there ready to make that app, I will use it.

You're working on ring urns instead.

I got you.

The Google Maps and Apple Maps of the world are already doing,

we think you're interested in this business,

like recommendations and stuff too.

That part's already even been done.

It's literally just-

Setting radius.

Notify me, please, on category.

Yeah.

Give them the category and give them the radius, and that's it.

It's a straightforward, it's nothing tricky, but I don't know.

I get this disheartened feeling like, I'm not going to see it.

If I was a programmer, I'd make it myself.

Google Maps has location sharing, so you can share with a partner or a friend, like, hey, here's where I'm at, in perpetuity.

And if you do that mode, you can even say on your end, please let me know when the other person enters or exits a defined radius of a place.

And so whenever, for example, my wife goes to hockey, it'll be like, hey, she arrived there safely when I get it.

And she's told that I did that, and I'm told that I did that.

And it's just a cool way to like set up a little, hey, don't worry.

They got home.

Don't worry.

They made it to the airport, whatever.

That is like 98% of the way to what you want.

It's there.

It's mostly there.

It kills me.

But that last like 2% or 3%, that last 2% or 3% is like make or break for me.

I mean, that's what I want.

All this is an open street map too if you wanted to build it yourself.

Dude, this would be awesome.

Like you call it pit stop or something, right?

Or like, you know, you're just like an aimless traveler, right?

And so you just, okay, I'm going to go south.

So me, when I travel to Florida, if I were to drive and I have kids, it would be awesome if there was some cool pit stop three minutes away.

I can set the time distance, right?

How far off your track, yeah.

How far you're willing to drive off your route.

Yeah, I'm willing to drive off my route as long as it's not like 10 minutes out and then I get there and then we're only there for 10 minutes because it sucks.

And then we go back another 10 minutes, right?

Like it'd be awesome if there was just like little happy stops along the way.

Like even a site like along the – I drive to Chicago a bunch and there's like this one path like an overlook.

It's like on top of a dune or something.

I've never gone on that over path.

But I've always thought like, oh, it'd be so cool to see that.

I would be – but like that would be a perfect little stop for like 30 minutes.

All right, we're going to take – get out of the freaking car, you know.

But those like it'd be great for road trips when you're just looking for a little relief from being in the car.

And then, you know, if you set your little let's say your categories or whatever, you can always be skipping over it or you might stop early.

And how if I'm in that business owner, like I want that.

No, I want to advertise for that.

I want to. Yeah.

Every time somebody passes like I am, that's how I make my money.

Right. It's also such a huge pain in the ass.

I don't know why using Google Maps and Apple Maps to just like find a gas station while you're driving.

Absolutely.

Along the route.

Why is this not solved?

It's bizarre.

Get me the best gas station, please.

Like Google, can you figure that out?

Here's 40 gas stations behind you and in front of you that you could totally waste your time looking at dangerously while driving, right?

It's like just the next one, please.

It's especially nice if you have like a loyalty card for a particular gas station.

And you don't just want to Google that gas station.

You just want to know it.

Anytime I'm by a Shell, I'm going to stop at Shell and can use my rewards card.

Oh, that'd be so nice.

Yeah, I never like stopping at BP's just because of that damn oil spill.

We're the same way, same way.

And it's coming since 11.

I'm surprised they're still there.

Who shops at this anymore?

You can do the anti-pit stop.

I do not want to be five miles within.

Take my route all the way around this BP.

Which is cool because it's something,

now this is tangent, but on the same route,

if you could also pick types of routes

that have the map route you based on more,

I want to take a particularly more scenic route

or I want to take,

these are just features I feel like are lacking from maps.

I want to take a route that brings me

by the most national parks.

But I mean, you can sit there and search them,

But it should be a simple, especially with the fusion of AI, I should be able to just type, this is the kind of route I want to take.

And it should give you a route that takes you by the most historic homes, et cetera, without you having to sit there and individually pick them and map it out and reroute them so that it's the most efficient.

I would love to see, hey, I'm at home.

I'm going to Target.

Bring me by as many national parks as possible.

See where it ends up.

You didn't know there was one in your own backyard.

38-hour detour, yeah.

this actually ties in perfectly with my idea excellent if we're willing to i like the fusion

we got going on here yeah i love it yeah we're all tied together all right scott what do you got

i i save this one for you brandon because uh you have traveled more than most people and i know

and my little sister is currently in vietnam right now and i talked to her yesterday she was saying

you know i i don't know anything about this country i'm just here with friends exploring

i just wish i had a local to help me with stuff and this is a similar idea to what russell's had

before but i just want to be able to have an app where where i'm in a new city i can dial a local

or just hit a button and a local will pop up on my phone either through text or video and just

ask them recommendations what is the best place to eat that you like am i getting screwed over by

this guy haggling with me right now like hey is there anything going on in this weekend or whatnot

And that's it. Just a very simple call a local in order to figure out what's going on in this new place I've never been.

And you could have, you know, if you can't find enough people when you're starting out, you could have a AI for the back of end of it.

But eventually you're going to start getting enough people that this could be a legit thing.

Whoa.

I like that. Right when you said that, I'm imagining the, who wants to be a millionaire being like the, being the ringtone when you call in.

And it's like, you've connected to your phone a friend.

These are going to be like vetted people too.

Five star ratings.

We were in the Virgin Islands a couple of weeks ago for an anniversary trip.

And it was lovely.

But one of the evenings we were driving to dinner.

And there was some sort of like fundraiser walk thing that maybe was like a 5K sort of thing.

But it was in the evening.

Everyone had glow sticks.

It looked really interesting.

No information about it anywhere.

No information that looked like the starting or end point.

No website that we could find from cursory Googling.

Our waiter, who was on like way outside of town at the restaurant we ended up at eventually, didn't know what we were talking about.

Would love to like figure out what that was.

I could have called a local right then and been like, right now, what is happening?

Or like you said, what's going on this weekend?

What's the best dive bar?

Not just recommendations for, hey, where should I eat?

But also like the hardcore information.

Yeah, the insight.

Yeah, the insights.

Like, I am at this thing.

What does it mean?

Or things that, yeah, locals would know.

I love that.

Honestly, even logistics too.

You were saying you're in Virgin Islands.

I got to take a ferry from point A to point B.

I've never done this before.

There's like 18 different ferries on different days of the week and hour.

Which one should I do in order to get from here to here?

Who's a local that knows this?

I think it's great for cultural exchange, especially if you're creating profiles and

you're able to catch up with that person later, then you can also share some of your,

you know, in your context, your cultural background and experience, you know, it's a neat way to build connections like that, too.

Love that.

So you know how the meta glasses were, like, all over the Super Bowl this year?

I feel like it would be so perfect.

You buy one of those, immediately connect to somebody, and now they're literally seeing and you're talking to them like that, right?

Where the heck am I?

Oh, you were in a dangerous area.

No, don't go that way.

Get out of there.

Take that headset off.

Yeah, that's a great application, Russell.

Have you done this yet?

So 1-800-CHAT-GPT when you call.

What?

No.

Call GPT?

Hi, I'm ChatGPT, an AI assistant.

Just so you know, our conversation may be reviewed for safety.

Are you kidding?

So how can I help you today?

I'm driving right now on the highway.

I'm on the south side of Grand Rapids on my way to the airport.

And there's this big pyramid building over on the side.

What is that?

Oh, that pyramid building is the Steelcase Pyramid, also known as the Pyramid Camper.

No shit.

It used to be the headquarters for Steelcase, a furniture company.

Now it's home to a data center and various other businesses.

It's a pretty unique landmark, isn't it?

Yeah.

How old is Justin Bieber again?

Justin Bieber was born on March 1st, 1994.

Anyway, yeah.

So I've used that as a party trick a couple of times.

It's free, and you can only do it a few times a month or something per phone number.

But that kind of thing is fun to think like, wow, an AI could do this.

But I feel like they still wouldn't know like, oh, that's the real good noodles place that just opened up or whatever, right?

Like, it's getting closer, and it's a fun party trick.

On that note, I've had multiple of my elderly parents' friends ask me, AI, what is it?

How does it work?

I'm just going to call that number from now on.

Be like, oh, no, you just call this number,

and then you can talk to a robot.

They gave that as a service.

They don't have to log in, obviously, or anything,

right before Christmas, and that was, I think, why.

So that people were going home to their friends and family,

and they could show that off, yeah.

That's so smart.

It's a cool way to demonstrate it,

and if you can come up with some interesting prompts

to show on speakerphone in front of Grandma,

she might be interested.

The concern I think I have for the idea,

the challenge,

the obstacle to overcome is how do you prevent locals from becoming just

career?

I recommend the same four restaurants and they give me all this kickback.

Like how do you prevent that?

That's going to incentivize locals to be the first ones on this for the new

town.

Cause Oh yeah,

you should go to the such and such breakfast and joke.

Cause my brother-in-law owns it.

You know,

we really love subway sandwiches here.

Oh,

this apron.

I bought it at a Goodwill.

That's interesting, though.

How do you make sure that it's an unbiased,

like not even just the local whatever,

but that it's not sponsored results?

Casual Uber five-star rating systems.

That's all you can do.

You go, you get a bad burger,

you rate the person who recommended it poorly.

This guy gave me a bad recommendation.

Yelping on the person who recommended it.

It's like all the people who rated it in Yelp,

but you're rating them.

You know what I mean?

That was a Black Mirror episode, wasn't it?

Yeah, right.

Everyone has a rating.

Or Meow Meow Beans.

yes so like you know i think this would be one amazing for tourism so like i think maybe you

were thinking of this like scott but like every town would want to connect somebody to a local

because that would just mix it up a bit because like whenever you go to a town and you're like

yelp or travel advisor trip advisor you're like is this really the best restaurant locals like

and you're not really sure and then you go you know hang out with your friend months later oh

yeah i was in this little town they're like oh did you go to that restaurant what one the one

that everyone goes to and you're like no i didn't go there so now you're like that's what i i hate

the fomo aspect and so if there was like the local like yeah what options are you looking for

you know you have a true guide like career professional at that i'd be so beneficial

especially for like yeah cities every city would have a you know a 4-1-1 or a you know a whatever

a different one one seven one one for fun seven one one for fun local uh okay wait a second that's

a love corner but scott we'll incorporate that idea so that whenever we'll incorporate with the

maps idea wherever you're walking around with when you're within 10 minutes of one of these

locals that's ready to show you around it lets you know and go up to

You gotta be careful with these locals

Yeah, you're teetering on the edge of the world's oldest profession

Hot local Starbucks in your area

That would be a rom-com though

You just made a rom-com

Just like, oh, I love this tour guide

Helps me all over the place

It's ChatGPT

I just keep calling asking for recommendations

But then I found out he's a robot

Yeah, he's AI the whole time

And then they find love anyway

all right russell yeah i hope you're sticking with the theme

ring that fits perfectly with our other three ideas oh i got something completely different um

okay and it's my first ai idea but i think this is actually a really good one in the swear jar

All right. All right. This is so I so whenever a new news article comes out, right, like some headlines, some huge, big article, I end up trying to read like eight different websites, a version of that same news article.

And it's such a pain. And then I don't know why, but then I end up reading all the comments and seeing what that's going on.

And that's all a whole nightmare, right?

And so what I was thinking about is like, man, if only there was a Wikipedia site for news, like live news.

So a mix of like combining all these news articles, versions together, having people comment.

So comment mimicking Reddit a little bit, but with like live news, you capture history and also what was being said about it, right?

And so what's beneficial with the only reason this would work is because maybe the AI layer would actually read all hundred versions of the news article, synthesize a non-biased, non-political version.

Let's say maybe matter of facts, maybe not factual version of all those articles together.

Create a new article, the Wikipedia page, right?

The true news.

Without all the every second ad that you have to scroll by.

It's not possible to read the news anymore, right?

You know, it's like, I mean, besides all the politics or whatever, right?

It's just more like, I kind of want to see what everybody's saying about it, but I don't have the time to read eight different versions of it, right?

Sure.

I really like this idea.

My background's in journalism.

And one of the websites, man, I don't remember the name offhand.

It's been a while since I looked at it.

But it would send you in an email top news or political points or news things.

And it would literally show you the Democrat viewpoint and the Republican viewpoint in a very short one paragraph version of each and their perspectives.

And I just thought it was always a pretty well balanced.

It just showed you this is what they think, this is what they think.

And it was cool to get that.

So having something that would do that for different news stories and kind of do it like you said live, I think that'd be a really great way to get.

The gist of information without having to sit and parse through piece by piece.

It's ground news.

Open.

I've heard of that.

There's a startup that does that where you'll get the news article with a blue and a red slider and you can kind of adjust.

That's really cool.

That's cool.

And then what would be great is you have the community upvoting different articles that are maybe more factual.

You could have the community upload live true information.

So like, let's say, you know, I was in D.C. when like a plane crashed or whatever.

But like people uploads, they end up what they're doing is they upload all these like legit clips of real things that actually happened.

There's no news media behind it.

You would like these are from people.

Yeah.

I remember finding out about the Boston Marathon like a half hour before it hit the news because it was on the front page of Reddit.

Yeah.

2011, 2012, whatever that was.

Probably some guy was there, had a video going and just uploaded it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Twitter this.

Yeah.

it's like this what do they call it when they there's like a when you're writing a paper or

whatever it's a primary source is that what it is like it's like this is this is that like you have

all the primary sources you have all the news media versions people upvote the ones that are

good that might be bad what's cool is like how we would make money is maybe all these news sources

are trying to up their rating based on the community sentiment or like you can help set

that up and you get analytics to say oh everybody thinks her articles are shit because they're

downvoting the hell out of it every time somebody posts like our link in this you know the the news

page right so there's just like a self-feeding machine i think and it brings power back to the

people who read the news and because of the ai it's a robot in theory if you program the robot

there should be no biases, right?

Right?

I know.

Somebody's got to fix the robot to be unbiased, right?

And maybe people are biased about robots,

but that's on them, right?

I think there's something there

that we can maybe make it not laning in any direction.

And that's where I thought the AI layer is kind of cool.

What I like about this is it invites

a more international perspective

where you can quickly draw from other articles in other languages

and then bring them into English or whatever the target, the end languages.

And you're trying to draw not just from the U.S.,

but literally other news sources and parsing through that.

That's really interesting too.

I know when we talk about travel, we kind of have the travel theme here.

And it still works, Russell.

You're right on board with us here.

It's good. I'm glad.

I was in South Korea.

When I was in South Korea, I visited the border between South Korea and North Korea.

It's called Panmunjom.

It's a joint security zone.

They've technically been at an armistice, a ceasefire, but they've been at war for however many years now, 50 years or something.

I don't remember exactly.

Now, when I went there doing the tour, literally as I'm going there, taking the bus to the joint security zone that's kind of shared between North and South Korea,

The driver was telling us, oh, yeah, just recently, they're giving us history on that zone.

And he said, yeah, just just last week, a soldier got his leg bone off by a landmine.

But he said that these landmines have been there for 30, 40, 50 years.

Right. They've been there for so long and erosion has moved them.

This is what the bus driver says. He's like, it's it's really anybody's guess who that land, you know, who put the landmine there.

And it didn't even matter because it wasn't like it was an intentional attack.

Right. The guards take these routes regularly. The erosion had caused it. Well, it was interesting because they let us then go ahead and tour the joint security zone. Well, about that was when I last that was my last thing there. And about two days later, I'm back in the U.S. Well, that same that same story is like international news here. It was news here for like a month about, wow, is it possible?

Basically, the U.S. was like, did the North Koreans put a mine there to blow up a soldier?

And they made it seem like it was this very recent, relevant mine, like some soldier had put it out there.

And meanwhile, even South Korean soldiers were like, nope, you can still tour.

Don't worry, we've cleared this track route.

So having that sort of international news, drawing it from it, really helps break down those barriers.

I think that's a really cool concept, a great idea.

Oh, yeah, that's super interesting.

I think the BBC articles sometimes are more unbiased than the US ones.

So it's cool.

And it'd be great if people rated, oh, the BBC one's great.

They're so dry.

It's great.

It's just like a list of facts.

A mine was in South Korea.

It roshed up from erosion.

It was detonated.

It's the best.

There's no sensationalism.

I also use the BBC.

No, not at all.

Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation run a Wikinews, like, crowdsourced one page, one wiki thing per news event.

And it's not very popular.

And maybe this is the thing that they need to, like, revitalize it.

I think it's at Wikinews.org, but, yeah, it'd be really cool to, like, have a reason to go there.

Right.

I don't want to be a jerk about it, but, like, I don't, yeah, I don't really visit that as much.

Yeah, Wikinews.org.

I don't really use this much.

And maybe this is the,

the judge that'll get them up and becoming something.

I think this is just like a combination of like reading,

using AI to read every popular news network,

finding the matching stories.

Cause literally they just copy each other anyway.

Right.

And probably write it in AI.

And so you just throw it all together in one spot,

all the things that all these major news outlets or not.

Right.

That's where other people,

the community plugs in and adds more.

You just create like,

even just a hub of this one news story is kind of cool,

like a piece of history.

And yeah,

it's something that Wikipedia can't do.

And I guess I was wondering too,

like maybe,

I don't know how Wikipedia does it well,

but like people are able to just edit their articles and it's somehow like

probably the most factual stuff out there.

Cause the community,

I don't know,

manage it really well.

But if you could apply that to these,

like,

like let's say the,

the source article that the ai generates or whatever be really interesting to see like

you know oh the top comment that gets hundreds of thousands of upvotes gets incorporated into

what the ai puts as news right or like yeah yeah it's bias is weighed on the ones that are the

people agree on um i want this to exist i definitely don't want to run it because i feel

like as soon as i launch something like this i would get targeted by every terrorist i was just

thinking that they would all come for you local or outside of local right um and all the news

sites would hate you too scraping their content but i think this is the perfect startup for like

this is like the unicorn startup that some crazy person could do because it's a perfect mix of

solving the fake news problem and it's ai and it's what people want so i yeah i've been sitting on

that one for a little bit it'd be fun if you could take all these news articles and rewrite it in

your own custom style like make the top three news headlines for today but write them satirical

and funny and exaggerated or write them in a way where they are using analogies like insects because

i'm a i'm a bug scientist or whatever i don't know this is my domain use these kinds of analogies i

Certain fart jokes every two minutes.

Describe the world news as a haiku.

We all have our own version.

A haiku about every, yeah,

every one of you just had your own.

It's like a multiverse.

It's all I get every day is one haiku.

One haiku per news article.

That's fun.

And then burn it onto your toast.

You can see that in like a newspaper.

Yeah, you open up your daily toast

and you know, there it is.

Well, dear listener,

if you're enjoying our podcast

over your morning toast,

thanks for listening.

We hope you enjoyed yourself

And thank you so much, Brandon, for joining us.

This was great.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

It's a delight.

It's a really enjoyable experience.

Get some ideas, the brain juices flowing.

We were on the same page tonight.

It was great.

Yeah.

Our website is Spitball.show.

There you can find links to our YouTube channel, other social media.

We're on bluesky at Spitball.show.

Email us feedback, comments, ideas.

We'd really love to hear from you.

We're [email protected].

And that's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse, such as Mastodon.

We are [email protected].

our subreddit is r slash spitball show, our intro/outro music swingers by bonkers beat club if you wouldn't

mind you know that one friend of yours who's always gone out of the office like how do they

even have this much vacation left up they're just traveling everywhere all the time they need

something to listen to on the plane send them a link to our show we'd love to have them as a

listener uh also please leave us a review apple podcast spotify whatever it is that you're

listening on that really helps people find out about the show new episode is coming out in two

weeks we'll see you then