The Chaser Report - Kill Your Selfie

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Have you ever accidentally died while taking a selfie? As Dom reports, it's more common than you think. Meanwhile Apple is under fire for an awkward technical glitch that puts the "politically correct" into "autocorrect". Plus Charles has discovered the utopia of possibilities when you don't use your phone for 24/7 a day.Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enWish our producer a happy birthday here:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, I've got some prime tech news for you, a couple of fascinating stories about the world we live in now. Ah, yes. When I pitched them to you, you pointed out they're a couple of days old. But I'm going to put them out there anyway, because Apple News served them up in my feed, and let's just say, just more proof of what's wrong with technology. Some amazing stories here

One of them A very embarrassing bug for Apple In the Trump era Selfies are apparently Causing a wave of deaths There's 480 deaths now That have been attributable to selfies What really?

Yep And finally Is doing some good in the world Get rid of the narcissism One selfie at a time Survival of the fittest Slash least vein And then finally

North Korea has pulled off The World's Biggest Ever Heist Guess for how much money? 1.6 billion. It's been in the news for a better week. All right. All right. All right.

God. Why am I bothering? We'll find it after this. So let's start with this bug. I mean, this has been around for a while. But I didn't know whether to believe it. But ABC 10 News in America says that it's true. So we'll just roll this clip.

Oh, yeah. It claims Apple's voice to text function on some iPhones replace the word racist with the word Trump, and it is true. Yesterday, some iPhone users reported when they spoke the word racist, the automatic dictation system typed Trump before quickly correcting the word to racist. Apple is blaming it on a glitch that happened with words that contained an R-continent. The company didn't specify.

That is the least plausible justification. I mean, that basically, my iPhone, when I type in Apple using voice text, it does bullshit. Yeah, yeah. I can imagine the marketing gurus How can we justify this as not being Because one of our programmers thinks that Donald Trump is a racist It's a classic plot line for optics Like it just totally

It's a crisis PR That's true actually What like Trump What do you reckon happen I assume they've got AI On their voice detection nowadays And it just sort of made that association On its own didn't it?

Oh you think it's It's an example of sentience. It just, well, it just statistically correlated. No, no, because the thing about AI is it's not sentient. It's just... The next most likely aren't the word. Well, it just seems like it's in the same way that we are not necessarily sentient. Like, if you boil it down, it's very hard to define what sentience is.

And so it's just the statistical probability of what is the most likely thing. No, it's not... Because the way it works is it literally, you say the word racist and it displays Trump for a, like, a fraction of second and then it writes racist i'll see if it works on my phone hang on racist no it doesn't say it i might do it online but i'm in i'm in the i'm in australian english so i'm going to switch it to u.s english while we do this and it's clearly someone with a sense of humor making a joke let's just try let's try other words stupid that's his dom oh no it's stupid and let's do another one devilishly good

looking oh it's his charles it's amazing What incredible technology. Is it seriously good-looking Charles? Yeah, because you said seriously good-looking Charles. English, US, let's see. Well, this is making my phone American. Siri's going to turn all-American? I don't want that.

Yeah, look up the Gulf of Mexico. Oh, that's a very good point. Okay, so let's see. Now that I'm in American English, let's see. And look, when you turn your iPhone to American, there's no Ukraine anymore. It's just Russia. It's just all Russia. It's just West Russia.

Oh, right. In Apple Maps. Life of Maps has always been so accurate. So let's just try this. I've now set my phone to American. Racist? Racist. Nah, they've fixed it.

Or have they? Maybe there's a different glitch in there. Nevertheless, I mean, what would be the Australian version of that? What would you get if you started putting in, what words would trigger Australian politicians? Well, let's just see what happens when I go, ineffective, which says elbow. That's not an error at all. Let's try another one. Potato Head.

Oh, it just is potato head. This is clearly biased. Always right about everything. No, no, it comes up with Ed and Bair. It's perfect. All right, let's move on. So the next story I want to talk to you about, and this is exciting stuff,

back in the world of tech and AI. Let's just try one more. Obes Australian mining magnate. Oh, it gives you a drop-down menu. Okay, so the amazing news is that, According to Wikipedia, which I have no reason to doubt, because when I say Wikipedia into my iPhone, it says reliable. Oh, right. Apparently, 480 people by the end of 2024 have died from taking selfies.

By contrast, sharks only cause five to six deaths per year. So taking a selfie is more dangerous than swimming near shark. What about that person who took a selfie with a shark and got eaten? Amazing. So to give you an example of the sort of thing. As I said in the introduction, I think this is. only a good thing like what like let's just imagine the type of person who puts themselves in

life-threatening position to take a selfie like they're the sort of people who go to cliff's edges aren't they yes they are and they're the sort of people who in the small japanese city of otaru uh go for an amazing um shot of themselves which is like a famous movie particularly people from mainland china yeah the only slight problem we're taking selfies in this lovely city is that they walk they wander onto a train track and are so busy taking a selfie that I don't hear the train coming. But other than that, it's a, it's a really

an idea. And apparently, look, if you look at the Wikipedia selfie-related death page, which is extensive, it includes accidental shootings, drownings, and even death by hand grenade. So, I'm not sure if someone took a selfie. Oh, I'm taking the pin out of the hand grenade. Don't do that. That's a very bad idea.

But no, you're right. It's cliffs during cyclones, all kinds of things. Oh, does it yield good photos? I suppose that's the main question. Well, is it worth it? Yeah, like, is the penultimate photo? Like, I presume the, like, do they actually, is it, you know, like, wouldn't you be frustrated if you missed the shot? Yes.

Like, and the selfie with the train coming behind you would be, I mean, very, very sad, but it would be a merrimable photo. Amazing photo. Good, you'd go viral. You'd get a lot of life. So the good news is in Japan, they have hired security guards to stop people from wandering onto the train tracks. So, creating work. But apparently there were 54 deaths in India in a two-year period from selfies. They've started going around and putting barricades across danger zones.

I feel like that's not necessary. I feel like if that's how you live your life, what about freedom? What about the freedom to kill yourself with a selfie? Kill your selfie. Kill your selfie. You think there should be no barriers, let people ride free? I kind of feel with that category of death. Yeah, that's sort of...

Nanny State getting involved in preventing fatalities. I know. This reminds me of in the dictionary terrible ideas in that book that I did. There are a couple of things that I found that were like this. Oh, yeah. One of them is base jumping where the sheer number of people who've died doing base jumping is quite extraordinary. Is it like most of them? I think I worked out the odds.

It's something like one in 50 or something. It's below one in 100 that you have a chance of dying when you do base jumping. But also playing Pokemon Go because a lot of people wandered off cliff swamps. playing Pokemon Go and things like that. But the saddest one was someone who's playing Pokemon Go and happened to stumble across when a drug deal was being done. And you know when you play Pokemon Go, you want to get the karma. You're going to collect them all.

Yeah. No, but you're holding your phone up. So you look like you're videoing. Oh, no. So they thought it was some sort of a witness. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So Pikachu then murdered the poor Pokemon Go play.

Well, I don't think he got Pikachu. He wouldn't be able to collect Pikachu in time. I don't think. So yeah, so basically doing anything involving your phone. Outdoors is a bad idea. That's what we've learned from all this. In a moment, this is the final text story I want to mention. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust.

My kids will be very happy with that news. Yeah, I've been hearing kids are not looking at phones so much anymore. My nephew's just fishing now. He just goes outdoors and does fishing for a large amount of time. Did you see the latest stats from coming out of South Australia today? No. That essentially, Utopia has been reintroduced into Adelaide for school students. Oh, yeah.

Because it's the one-year anniversary of their mobile phone band down there. And all the statistics are massively improved. Like, 70%, teachers report 70% greater satisfaction with teaching, better concentration. Playground activities, lots of clubs have started as a result of kids wanting to do. things in the playground and talking to each other and sharing their interests and nightmare exactly i wouldn't agree that at all i didn't back then um it is funny it's cool but it's amazing how just a simple rule of like because i opposed it at the time but the simple rule of we did there was an episode where you were very eloquent about what a bad

idea it was yeah put down your phone just actually completely worse like the rest of us should just do it we should just have a law against mobile phones here's the question or as when you say into Apple and you say a law against mobile phones it says a happy great panacea but there's one school in Sydney that actually has written to parents saying there's been such a success we think you should not have mobile phones for kids at all yeah so they can't even use the phones outside of school I think it's a primary school private primary school in Mossman yeah so the parents have plenty of money to buy multiple phones for their for their kids but yeah it's an interesting idea like is this such a good

idea that maybe all kids should have phone-free childhoods and indeed maybe yeah we should all give them give them away i'd love to because i've been i've been leaving my phone downstairs to try and go to sleep oh that's it's genuinely good idea it just immediately worked like the first night i did it it was like a much better night's sleep i should try that and then i know and then and then i did it for about a week and then just last weekend i stopped doing it and my sleep immediately collapsed again And you're just going, why did I do that? We're so addicted. Devices that glow at us before we go to bed.

I still remember during the pandemic, just how obsessed with COVID I got and staying up doom scrolling. And like every single, I just want to know every single scientific development towards getting a vaccine, everywhere there was an outbreak. I just wanted to make sure. In hindsight, that was a deeply unhealthy time. For me, not just, you know, the whole pandemic, but there was also a mental health pandemic going around the world.

So, yeah, probably I should get rid of my phone. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about, Charles, the state-backed Korean hackers and you're, the North Korean hackers, and you're across this story, I mean, you've got to say, 1.5 billion US dollars worth of crypto, it's the largest theft of anything ever in the whole of human history, as far as we know. And this is agents, basically, you know, state hackers, able to log into buy a bit, which is an exchange in Dubai, and they stole Ethereum. And, yeah, I mean, last year, in the whole year, they only stole, I mean, 1.3 billion all up.

And then it's one heist, yeah, they did it. They beat the total records by Saddam Hussein when he took a billion dollars out of the Iraqi central bank. Before the invasion of Iraq by America in 2003. So here I was saying that Bitcoin was good for nothing. Crypto is, you know, a scam and basically a Ponzi scheme. and a money laundering, you know, way to destroy the world by, you know, have a currency that actually requires energy to keep existing, which means that it's always going backwards, no matter what. And it becomes harder and harder to mine over time. So it requires more and more, this is Bitcoin anyway, it requires more and more energy just to get one.

It's a hideous thing, but no, because it can set world records. It can. That's a good part of it. I mean, yes, part of me goes, what a terrible thing to happen, particularly since, presumably the agents who did the stealing, they maybe got one extra ration of style bread or something. And the billion dollars went straight to Kim Jong. And of course.

But yeah, you've got a hand to them. That's pretty ingenious. What if they actually put that ingenuity to, I don't know, growing food for North Korea? I once talked to a diplomat who was an expert on sort of, you know, cybercrime. and he said well more than 50% of cyber crime across the world is states. It makes sense.

China, Russia, North Korea all have arms. Like the PLA has a cyber hacking arm where they just make good foreign currency out of hacking adversaries. Yeah. And doing things like... I mean, it's a fantastic business model. And what it does, Charles, and this is the thing, is it was so many years, everyone's been like, oh, crypto is going to destroy. the nation state.

It's kind of, you know, all individuals are just going to be able to do whatever they want. And all the libertarians think it's amazing. It's going to save the world. Clearly, this is the opposite. Nation states with, you know, fanatical control over their citizenry are very good at hacking crypto. But the other consequence of that hack was the crypto market has fallen about 20%. The price of Bitcoin has fallen 20% since that hack happened about a week ago. Well, that's quite interesting, isn't it?

He does raise the terrible possibility that Donald Trump, who has his own Bitcoin, he does. Well, he's got his own coin, yeah. Trump coin, which is a special type of coin. I don't quite understand how it works, but basically it's a sort of one-way coin. It's a certificate that's not really redeemable or something like that. Oh, so you're parted and you can't sell it? Yeah, well, you can sell it, but essentially Trump gets to sort of, like, Trump gets the advantage

of anything that you buy. Like, I don't quite understand. We should look at more of this in detail. But somebody was actually saying that the point is it's almost like a Swiss bank account number direct to Trump, where you can just anonymously donate, like criminals and nation states around the world can donate to Trump by buying this crypto currency, pumping it up, increasing Trump's wealth. And then if they need to.

to turn around and prove how loyal they've been to Trump, they can just show that they've got some Trump coin. So much easier than having to open a whole hotel in Washington, D.C., to take payments from foreign governments. And that's the thing. Crypto is sort of, you know, it's just made corruption and money laundering way more efficient. While we're on Trump, by the way, I don't know if you saw this news. This is slightly later news of the other news we've discussed.

Today, earlier today, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stop all offensive operations against Russia. Yes. So stop trying to detect Russian hacking, you know, elections and so on. Yes. And stop developing capabilities to get into Russian systems. Yes. So that's a positive development.

Yeah, I mean, America's always been good towards their allies. So it makes sense that they would stand down against Russia. I just want to know when can I buy a Putin coin? That thing would be valuable. We're part of the Iconicless network. See you tomorrow.