Pokémon Go To Langley (Premium E269)

You guys should make this episode public at some point. It's so insane

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this info has been out there for so long!

Kinda conspiratorial episode, led to me coming to the comments to say "huh?" I'm not sure what information they think Pokemon go is collecting that Google and Apple aren't harvesting already. The game doesn't record audio or video unless you use the opt-in AR feature that sucks anyway. I'm not sure what people thought Niantic were going to do with a buttload of panorama pictures of real locations, if not to build models of real world locations from pictures. Not exactly a revelation.

Interesting that everyone just mainlined the "spoopy ai generates invisible side shit" when that is more likely to just be a really good geolocation tool with an integrated streetview database, which while creepy as fuck is only a tool to make operations smoother. Now what is really fucking wild is that what if they drop that rare pokemon not to "gather information" (they already have satalites, planes and network backdoors for that) but to run riot or unrest simulations where they can get movement data from all the participants. I think that one is a much spicier outcome of all this.

Great episode team...and great work uncovering Mr. Hanky's first name and shady recent activities.

I feel bad this made me redownload the game, but it wasn't my old character and i'd have to start all over again. I really had a great time and made friends with that dumb spying game.

You'd think Miles O'Brien would use a phased tachyon scan to get his topography?

PLEASE make this public, perfect ep to trick normie friends and family into giving QAA a try. The Octopus tentacles are real!

Is there any plans to make this public at some point? I want to assign this to my social media students

Christ this is dismal

Great episode topic. But Julian, ur one of the funniest people on the planet, but you’re also beginning to sound more and more like a violent Antifa extremist in the making. Sending love and moderate vibes. Everything will be ok, no need for immediate Marxist class uprising or to wanna go all Luigi Mangione so often. Any way this is by far my favorite podcast and the only one I subscribe to so don’t ban me please 🙏

"why doesn't the CIA just build it itself" Jake. That word you keep misusing "neoliberalism" that's why buddy. That's why.

I've known about this for awhile but the way you put this together is top tier as usual. You also brought up some things that I didn't know.

I’d take a Jake vaccine

Probably the best tech episode you have made. For it not being a field any of you are particularly familiar with your guesses and assumptions have been getting a lot better and obviously more informed as you've done more of these types of episodes.

So in some ways you can say not only did ash Ketchum catch them all, but he also melted steel beams

Treatlerian Jihad

Chinpokomon Go! Destroy the Evil Power!!

I remember this whole damn thing! What I remember being reported on were people falling off cliffs… not Google as evil empire 🤣 excellent report Travis-truly eye opening. This is why I listen to this. Podcast and even talked about QAA at Thanksgiving lol

I used to work in a start up in spain funded by an university and a really big tech company developing an open source training enviroment for self driving car's AIs. A year after I left, DARPA bought the company and started outsourcing most of the work to India. In fact, I think not even one of my corworkers at the time remains there. Sooo yep, it's pretty common for DARPA to buy any kind of tech company that they find interesting for their means

Do we need to have a conversation about those AI glasses? Surely those are huge privacy concerns?

Let’s be clear, Pokémon go was awesome and fun. Summer 2016 was so sick.

i can't believe they are training AI geoguessr guy... geoguessr guy i will always respect your craft more than the work of any machine 🫡

Well when you put it like that, 9/11 lead to gamifying mass surveillance, it's sounds very reasonable, doesn't it?

Feeling so Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace rn 🥰

this pod is by far my fav parasocial relationship lol

'Santa with Muscles' is a great film 👌

Someone should do a wellness check on Julian after this ep

23:23 (lucky!) Julian asks Xi to carpet bomb us

I used to play so much Ingress. Traveled up and down the west coast for events, even. I made a lot of friends I still keep to this day. When PoGo came out, it split our player numbers and a lot of people were never seen again. When PoGo took our most visited portals, one of them ended up being Club Z, with its great description, "Seattle's only 24/7 mirrored glory hole maze!"

Thoughts and prayers for Julian's brain during Santa With Muscles

The way the scanning feature works does make sense that it would be the bread and butter of how they train the AI. What it has you do is go to a very specific spot and stand with your camera open slowly panning across an area like you’re making a panoramic photo. The nice thing is pretty much everyone I’ve met who plays the game does not use the feature because it’s annoying, an obvious creepy spy activity, and makes it harder to sync up the quests you get with your friends. They are lying about the scanning quests being the only thing they are using though because the AR mechanic for taking photos of buddy Pokemon or wild Pokemon would collect the same data just not targeted at a specific location. It’s another feature that no one uses because it’s disruptive to gameplay. Probably the reason they added the scanning quests that force you to use AR.

Someone needs to put a PoGo gym at Julian’s house lol.

I thank you so much for telling me like it is.

This game did fix my blood pressure and playing as I am listening. And yeah I mean no one uses the AR function to catch anymore, but kinda to make new stops and trails. And such. And I have trespassed to get a rare Pokémon back in the day. But generally it is like elderly retired people who only play now or parents to distract their kids.

Travis has a daughter??

Too early to say fuck UHC CEO?

Yeah I just finished this episode and this was a frustrating one for me. Niantic has been an independent company since before Pokémon Go came out so I’m not sure why half the episode was devoted to Google’s bad shit Also why is Julian convinced that they’re intentionally spawning rare pokemon on military bases? For an anti QAnon podcast there wasn’t a lot of critical thinking done here

i can’t find anything at all about this online… does anyone know of any sources or articles or anything?

Liv-agar-mon Go

I’m sorry I’m less than 2 minutes in and this episode is already inaccurate and it’s pissing me off. I’ve played the game for 5+ years and I’ve never once “pointed the camera in the physical world to capture a digital pokemon”. You click on the pokemon on your phone and it appears on your phone. The only real world aspect is the GPS function

Bruh

This now makes me wonder about all of the other GPS-based games and Apps that I've used like Geocaching/Adventure Labs etc.

So that’s why they are always hosting big events in Taiwan 👀

Julian really is the Nostalgia Critic of the podcast by how he screeches. Credit: Oscar Lama for that comparison I saw on Twitter

I'm pretty sure I've mapped most of North Texas for them

I'm POKEMON GOing to kill myself.

I know Ingress was only a blurb in the episode, but it's legitimately my favorite game of all time. I don't recommend getting into it because if it hooks you you'll get sucked in and waste so much time and money on it, but working with your local teammates to create large-scale "fields" is such a joy. I once was part of a highly coordinated "operation" in the game that involved over 400 people working together performing certain assigned actions within a half hour all across the United States and Canada. It was insanely fun.

Gimme a supercut of Travis saying “Pokeemon”

When it comes to the stuff we don't yet know about, can I suggest the likelihood of the Call of Duty videogame franchise? They've already been clocked doing pretty much everything else to fluff USA foreign policy PR, and their publisher corporation Activision is legitimately one of the worst examples of hyper-capitalist rot within the industry too. Just try looking up Bobby Kotick pics without finding devil horns edited onto him lol! ------- We do have weaknesses as a species, for as long as humans have desires and needs, those DnNs will be exploited against them (uhh, us...i meant us!) by those who've hoarded - or imply/claim access to - the resources generally believed necessary to meet or fulfill them.

This is reminding me of the articles a few years ago about how a jogging app was revealing locations of secret military and spying installations

Julian picking on Jake less has lead to me picking out the moments where, he used to jump on some minor flub and eviscerate him brutally. I’m half way through the episode and so far I count two: • google earth cars weren’t self driving • the saying is “drop in the bucket” not hat. Anyone else find themselves waiting for Julian to swoop in with a cackle and feel a weird combo of relieved and disappointed when it doesn’t come?

Great episode! Neolibberal governments are outwardly critical of Chinese government mass surveillance while quietly taking notes and implementing similar infrastructure but piecemeal and via private companies, Google, meta etc. and presented as voluntary

There is/was an actual Ghostbusters augmented reality game, so…

liv agar

Man, I never thought Miles O'Brien would side with the Cardassians like this.

OK, I'm convinced Jake is a result of a DARPA project code named Deep War. Liv is his handler. Your secret is out, but you're among friends you two. I bow to your zirconium magnificence. Cool episode.

You fuckers are trying to depress me personally, aren't you? I'm a 54-year-old man who got addicted to Pokémon Go in 2022, so this is just what the most self-loathing parts of my mind wanted to hear.

Liv agar

Really loved this. I have been telling friends and colleagues not to “play” this game for what feels like ages. “Augmented reality” is a very basic scam, but an especially nasty one. It’s not fundamentally different than most media, but is part of an effort to link mass media to military weapons systems and policing systems, which makes it particularly distasteful.

Agree with sentiment of allowing the episode to be public, there's a lot of people no doubt still in need of informing

This was a great episode. Really cooked my brain. This one should be made public, in my opinion.

OMG, this episode cooked me more than any in quite a while. I have a 14-year-old who's obsessed with that game. I've been raising a spy!

More like 'Peek at you' ... Amirite? 👀

I remember doing this in San Francisco and it was really fun

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What, livs back on pogo?

Praise be

Gotta catch em all?