Tech News Weekly Episode 217 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jason Howell and I talk to David Ruddock of Esper about that Google and Sonos battle. Well, it's not so much a battle anymore because there is a ruling and we need an explanation for what's going on between these smart speaker makers. Then James Thomson, the creator of PCalc stops by to talk about dealing with clones in the app store and a little bit about that whole world clone situation. Before we round things out with our stories of the week. First is Jason who talks about messaging with Google's, SMS, MMS, and RCS, and Apple's iMessage. What do we do about green bubble and blue bubble texting? And then I talk a little bit about disinformation and misinformation and a few open letters from fact checkers and experts around the world who say enough is enough Spotify and YouTube. We need to do something about this. Stay tuned, cuz this is a great episode of Tech News Weekly.

Speaker 2 (00:01:06):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:01:26):
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 217 recorded Thursday, January 13th, 2022. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by BetterHelp join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting better help.com/tnw.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:46):
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Jason Howell (00:02:06):
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Mikah Sargent (00:02:26):
Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly. The show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent.

Jason Howell (00:02:36):
I'm the other guy, Jason, how good to see you, Mikah. Good to see you. Good to see you. Even though my fingertips feel like they're gonna fall off. They're so freaking cold. Show me your fingers. You, you wear something to protect.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:46):
Yeah, I've got compression gloves on. I can actually feel the tips of my fingers. That must be nice. We both have that issue with our long limbs. It does, does give us trouble.

Jason Howell (00:02:59):
It feels it's nice to be seen like that. It's nice to be understood. Let's get into some non fingerless glove tech news Google and Sonos have been duking it out for at least a couple years. Now there's been a patent case going on. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe haven't it's been happening and we've finally have kind of the resolution. Let's just say Google at this point is eating some Crow, but what exactly does it mean for it's hardware division going forward, where that's what we're gonna talk about with David rudock editor inchi at Esther. Welcome back to the show, David and happy to here. Thanks

David Ruddock (00:03:34):
For having me. I'm always excited to be here, Jason. It's my favorite place to be.

Jason Howell (00:03:39):
Excellent! Your favorite place? Okay. Well then I guess every single week we're gonna have to, no, I won't do that to yeah every other week.

David Ruddock (00:03:44):
I mean, on the internet, not, you know, this show specifically. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:03:46):
Right, right. <Laugh> well, thanks, man. It's always great to get to talk to you. And this case is interesting, I think for the implications of, of some of the devices that we already have in our home and for the future, but let's kind of take a little bit of a step back and and by the way, like I, I just saw your musings on Twitter. That's why I reached out to you and I love your perspective on everything Android, but I saw what you were, what you were tweeting out about this. And so that's the reason that I pulled you on is to talk a little bit about what what's behind this case. What was Sonos charging initially a couple of years ago when they, when they said, Hey, Google's, infring on our patents, like, do we have any clarity? At this point, especially about what that impact actually was on Sonos.

David Ruddock (00:04:34):
So, I mean, in terms of the impact on Sonos, their position is of course that they've lost market opportunity. Because Google has introduced products that use features that utilize. So intellectual property and Sonos has lost sales. And that's generally how you approach an intellectual property case like this. And I will just say, I'm not a lawyer, but in terms of tech IP, that's what you're looking at usually is Sonos is saying we could have sold more speakers. If not for Google taking this piece of intellectual property, that makes what Sonos is special. And in this case, a lot of that came down to these patents that were before the ITC that relate to really group volume control of all things. So that is really where Sonos decided to focus in on this case. Now, if you wanna zoom out though, outside those specific patents for Sonos, this is really an outpouring of basically the fact that they worked with Google a long time ago to ensure interoperability of products. And they feel that Google took advantage of that cooperation to then recreate Sonos features on its own products.

Jason Howell (00:05:41):
So then would you say that a, a ruling of, of this kind where the, where the us international trade commission has basically said, all right, we rule that Google is, is guilty of infringing on these patents. Is that also in, in some way, a affirmation that Google actually did, <laugh> have this meeting with Sono, Sono shows them some of the stuff that they're working on, then Google says, oh, we're gonna use it. And we're not gonna, you know, pay you for it or, or rope you into a deal. Or this is just specifically about the patent saying, Hey, Sonos had a great idea and you, and you also did that great idea. We have no clarity around that. Do we?

David Ruddock (00:06:20):
No, not really. And I don't know that we ever will. That's the kind of thing you're gonna see in emails between product managers and execs and, you know, talking about what they're doing. You know, there's all those classic Microsoft emails back in the day, right of them just saying we should steal this. <Laugh>, you know, I don't, I don't necessarily think Google is quite so brazen, but I imagine this is political. It's philosophical too. These two companies have very different views on what protected intellectual property in this cons in this con in this particular situation is Google's view to me is very similar to the stance it took with Oracle back day when Oracle was suing to essentially stop Android. Oracle wanted royalties on every piece of Android and Google said, no, we believe that in spirit, the spirit of the law says we are not violating the law. Even if you technically may have something of a case here. And they won the Supreme court, agreed with them and said that Google, they created new law. Now sauna's case is different because they're before the ITC, you can't appeal the ITCs ruling to the Supreme court. At least as far as I understand outside a few very specific areas where the Supreme court might have jurisdiction on such a thing. But in general, you have the president to appeal to in this case. And I don't think he's gonna be doing anything about that.

Jason Howell (00:07:39):
<Laugh> yeah, probably not top of mind right now. Oh yeah. You're right. Those speakers should have group volume changing. You're right. Let's get right on this. One thing that came up on all about Android, we talked about this on Tuesday was just the idea that like, there are certain patents that, like, I can't remember the, the phrasing of it, but right. Like a, like a patent is protectable. If it's like a very unique idea. And to me, it's not very unique to think that if I have a stereo pair of speakers that both of the volume on both of those speakers should be controllable with a single slider, but maybe that's just obvious because somebody created that innovation and now it just feels obvious. I Don I, I'm curious to know your take on that because I don't know what the, I mean, what is the alternative that every single speaker that we control and, and what I'm talking about by the way is kind of some of the direct impact that we're gonna see on, on these speakers that we already have. And the speakers that are shipping out in the future is that all of the independent volumes have to be controlled individually. That just kind of breaks down for me when you're talking about a stereo pair. And I don't know if I'm looking too deeply into it, but what do you think?

David Ruddock (00:08:45):
I think that for Sonos, the issue for them is just like how Google did it. And they looked at the implementation, how did and said did, okay. They feel, this feels a lot like what we do. And they probably then started to take it apart and do some opposition research and figure out, okay, how did they create this? And at that point, that's probably when legal got involved, because somebody probably flagged it and said, Hey, this feels like somebody could have taken this from us. And I think that in tech, that is what gets so blurry things very much look and feel like they were taken from another product or service, but you can arrive at the same solution using the same tools or similar tools to the same problem. And in that case, you know, you can say it's coincidence, but if you're before a court, you have to be able to convince them that not only is it co essentially that you serendipitously arrived at a similar solution but that there was no way they could have influenced you.

David Ruddock (00:09:42):
And that there are, there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that like you, or really there's good evidence to suggest you created this in a vacuum. If Google had created this functionality in a total clean room kind of development environment, and they could prove that they'd have a better case probably, but they didn't mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they won't be able to prove that because tech is messy, people move between companies, they take ideas and ways of thinking with them. And that to me is why all of this is so confusing and why I think you don't see a lot of people taking SOS or Google side you, because it's complicated. And it's not really clear that one of them has a moral high ground, or one of them has a practical or technical high ground that's better for development or the community. This is very much, like I said, it's philosophical. It's about what they believe,

Jason Howell (00:10:31):
Some of what you tweeted about in, in the thread that I read, had to do with the import to devices versus the, you know, if the devices were manufactured in the us, would there be a difference, like, is this specific to devices being imported Google's own devices being imported, cuz they they're manufactured outside of the United States. Would it be different if they were manufacturing these devices in the us? Would that be an easy fix or does that not happen? It

David Ruddock (00:10:56):
It would. So it would be an easy

Jason Howell (00:10:58):
An easy by the way in, in air quotes, right? Like that wouldn't be easy at all, but anyways,

David Ruddock (00:11:04):
It would be easy in the sense that Sonos would have to sue them in a US District Court or the Federal Circuit of appeals. So, or the Federal District Circuit Court, excuse me, because they can hear these novel IP cases at that appeals level. So it's not really a question of, I mean, Sonos for its part has an advantage with the ITC in the sense that the ITC is not answerable to a higher judicial body once their decision is rendered. It's answerable to the executive branch because it's a function of the executive branch. So if Sonos had been forced to bring the say to the Eastern district of Texas, the rocket docket district where you see all of these tech lawsuits filed they would then have to get the judgment and then there would be an appeals process and you would appeal to the Federal Circuit of appeals and then it probably would or could go to the Supreme court and Google would be able to keep delaying them essentially. So the ITC is a really quick way to create a really actionable decision. Now, if you lose, you're kind of stuck, right? Like you can, you can't really go back to another court and say, well, the, ITC didn't want to give us an injunction. Will you? Um that court's gonna say, well, probably not. They looked at this. So if Google manufactured products in the us, the jurisdiction and venue would change, but in terms of the outcome, it's really hard to say.

Jason Howell (00:12:28):
Yeah, yeah. Super hard to say, what do you think this has to do from a broader per perspective? Is there any tie in here with this and you know, we're gonna talk later in the show, as far as the kind of the, the messaging story from this year as far or from this week sometimes feels like a year. <Laugh> if not beyond, when you're talking about Google messaging anyways, about like RCS and everything, but about leadership in, and the fact that, you know, just yesterday on this week in Google, Mike ELGAN was on and Mike ELGAN in many shows over the past few years, I would say keeps kind of pointing back to Sunar Pacha and saying, you know what, like time and time again, there are these examples of Google, Google faltering on pretty major ways, you know, with its hardware to be vision, you know, in, in all different directions. And it really all points back to a lack of strong leadership from Sunar Shire or maybe that happens to be Rick Olo, cuz he's the one that heads up the the hardware department at Google. But how do you feel about that? Is, is something like this evidence of, of that point or that's kind of that's island

David Ruddock (00:13:33):
That's difficult for me to say because you, the other thing to remember is that in any legal dispute like this, Google has the world's biggest target painted on its back, right? They are the one of the deepest pockets you could possibly reach into and that's the same reason Oracle chased them so long about the J the Java virtual machine in Android. Even though that case wasn't very strong, particularly I think that for Google, it's not necessarily a leadership issue in my mind. It's more that Google, I think has kind of a friendlier way of looking at, you know, product creation, development, and competition and cooperation. They want to be friends with everyone. They want products to work together well. And I think they do that well sometimes, but the double edge sword there is really Google is always looking at what's happening out in the ecosystem because they have so many partners out there and they're getting inspiration and so inspiration.

David Ruddock (00:14:26):
Yeah. And you know, unwanted appropriation is a massive gray area. So it may be that Google said, you know, Sonos is doing something really cool here. We like the idea. We think we can do it better. And we think we can build it across a whole ecosystem of products, which, what customer wouldn't want that. And so I think that you can have product get out ahead there because I mean, realistically, it's not like every time Googled sites, we're going to build a software feature or a software product, they send it up to legal and say, Hey, can you guys sign off on this and do a full brief and make sure it's okay to build? That's just not how the world works.

Jason Howell (00:15:03):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting stuff. And I, I will say, you know, when, when those features came out on, on, particularly on Google home devices, like that was top of mind for me, it was like, oh, usually you'd have to spend multiple hundreds of dollars to get this functionality. Now I just need to get a couple of these little pucks and I could do it. And it's, it's just as good. So I mean, there's obviously overlap there. That's obviously why why this case even, even, you know, saw the light of day. So David Roddick always appreciate your time and your insight, of course, eser.io. Tell us a little bit about it and where people can find you. Yeah. And

David Ruddock (00:15:39):
Actually we'll have a post up about this tomorrow on the SPER blog and how Google's changed Android to respond to this dispute because they have, they've made some platform level changes. So if you go to blog.sper.io you can see our content there. You can also check out Esther, if you're interested in building an Android device we can help you out.

Jason Howell (00:15:58):
Nice. Right on. Thanks for everything you do, David. Appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for having me. Bye-Bye all right. Take care. All right. Up next. You remember word all from just last week, we talked about it on the show. Yeah. So do an impressive amount of copycats. And we're gonna talk all about the, the complicated world of world copycats and more coming up next. But first this episode of tech news weekly is brought to you by better help. Better help is, I mean, it's, it's right there in the title. It's all about helping you through life, right? Because sometimes we just need help to get from point a to point B. Maybe something's preventing you from achieving your goals. Maybe something's interfering with your happiness. And all you have to do is check out better help.com/t N w better.

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Mikah Sargent (00:20:01):
All right. So last week during my story of the week, I brought up the word game Wordle. It is a website you go to powering language co do UK slash Wordle. And the developer of the game made this game for his partner starting out. And then it got very popular. People started playing it. And since then we've seen a lot of people sharing in case you still haven't gotten to the word thing yet. You may have seen a lot of squares showing up on Twitter of different colors. And that was related to this game called Wordle. Shortly after that, I think one of the things that's kind of been an issue is that people are a little cheeky. And so they've been sharing these squares maybe without context. And it's one of those things where it's almost like a social test.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:49):
Can you figure out what everybody's into? Can you go and find it? So people then finally come across Wordle, they type it into their search bar thinking it's an app. And they find this game called the Wordle app in the app store. Turns out that's just a, a copy of the, a game. And this game itself actually had a premium version that you could subscribe to and pay some amount of dollars per year. The person who developed this game was in no way related to had anything to do with the person who made the online game. And there was some kind of conversation about the way that the developer who made the app game handled things, where they were kind of going along and talking about every single step of the process and how much money they were making and how many people were signing up and all in all, it kind of put a bad taste in people's mouths.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:45):
Since that time, the developer of the game has apologized in some ways. And there's also been kind of a mass reduction in the number of Wordle clones on the app store because the developer of the true game, the true original game has not made it an app. It's just an online game. The developer said, Hey, I want this to just be a free thing with no ads, et cetera, et cetera. But there were a whole bunch of copycats that came into the app store. And I imagine that there will continue to be as things go on. So I was sitting there kind of thinking about this, and I thought, I need to talk to somebody who has an app in the app store and has been in the app store for a while, and who could talk about kind of the, the state of the app store a little bit, the, the dealing with clones, et cetera, et cetera. So all of that long introduction to the story is to welcome our guests today, James Thompson maker of P calc the dice app by P calc and a number of other awesome app as well as sort of in apps that exist. James Thompson, welcome back to the show. I believe, I believe you've been on the show definitely on the network before welcome

James Thomson (00:22:56):
James. I've definitely been on the network. It's, it's nice to see you again in person.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:01):
Yes. Good to see you too. So let's start things off with the question that I actually asked you over message about you having an app in the app store. I asked, have you ever dealt with copycats yourself and you had an interesting answer for me?

James Thomson (00:23:20):
Yeah. So there's a couple of things. If you search for pal that will come up. One of them is an app called pal box, which is a, it's basically a fake calculator that you can hide photos in. And I'm sure there's legitimate reasons for hiding photos away, but I can think of certainly some obvious use cases for that. There's another app called pal, which is a basically a tracker for bowel movements and certainly pal box I imagine was named so that when people search for pal a calculator, you know, they'll see that one as well. And I, you know, I'm not overjoyed about it, but it's not the kind of thing where, you know, I'm gonna be reaching for a lawyer. Right. But yeah, I mean the, the stuff with world, I think is a little more blatant than

Mikah Sargent (00:24:18):
That. That's yes. And that's what I wanted to ask you about because we, I think that there's, we kind of have a differentiation because when the app store first came out you know, a hundred different people made their own lighter app. And so you could, you know, flick the lighter and it would just by shaking your phone or by swiping up on the screen. And then there were the people who made the fart apps and there, you know, a dozen different fart apps and then a hundred different fart, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My question for you is, and, and I, I realize that I'm, I'm simplifying things, but that's on purpose because I would like to hear your take as a developer on what makes this particularly egregious in comparison to, you know, 10 different people making Scrabble apps, for example.

James Thomson (00:25:05):
Well, I think the thing with this is that they were using the name, the trademark that Josh waddle had come up with mm-hmm <affirmative> and they were deliberately doing it because there wasn't an app on the store and they thought, get in quick, get an app up. People who hear about world will look for it, they'll find their app and, you know, maybe they'll make some money. And so they're kind of coming at this really with a sort of bad faith approach to it. I mean like the, the developer of the one that we've been talking about kind of became the main character of indie dev Twitter yesterday, because it, you know, it, he subsequently apologized and he said that you wouldn't do anything like this again. But yeah, I think his approach was, well, it's just business, you know, I'm doing this, I'll get in, I'll make some money.

James Thomson (00:25:59):
And I think there's certainly the, the, the more established developers don't like, <affirmative> this kind of thing, you know, because it gives us a bad name, you know, we're, we're trying to make our own original apps. And, you know, I, I don't even like to look at any of the apps by competitors of mine, because I don't wanna see, you know, if somebody's got a great idea, I don't wanna see it and go, oh, well, that's a great idea. I should just put that in my own app. So, you know, I, I try to like do things somewhat in a vacuum and yeah, I mean, I mean, the other thing is I would say that this, there's obviously a spectrum of these things, you know, there's the things mean this was a functional app, you know, you could, you could play the game and it, it wa it's hard, you know, I wouldn't describe it as a scam as such, you know, it's, it's definitely you know, infringing trademarks or, or whatever, but you know, there are things that are just out now, they do nothing. And there's, you know, through various means, you know, you can get these apps in front of people and make money and, and, you know, so, so I think there's lots of different types of problems on the app store. And this is just one of them.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:21):
Yeah. There's almost it violated kind of the spirit of the thing. And it also violated a more, a more kind of obvious rule that exists. And so I think that, that, that was kind of the problem with this one is that multiple there were multiple party fouls, so to speak and kind of what made this stick out, cuz yes, you did see the developer kind of celebrating the money that they were making. They clearly were jumping on something that existed. And if you look at the developer's blog posts in the past and kind of their history on Twitter and elsewhere, you see that this is an individual who tends to be focused on the financial side of things, like get rich quick on this app and then move on to the next thing. And that does feel a little bit outside of the spirit of what a, this game was itself. And then what the, what developers like you are, are putting your stuff out there for it. Does that feel accurate?

James Thomson (00:28:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like there is literally app review guidelines that say, you know, don't copy apps, don't use another app's name and, you know, and apple. So I, I think one of the things that people have said is that you know, apple is offering from all these apps, so they don't have the, you know, impetus to deal with them. You know, there, there was a, there was one going through Twitter last week, I think, which had made like over a million dollars or something, a scam <affirmative>. But you know, I don't think there's, there is like a, this sort of big conspiracy that apple, you know, is just happy to let this stuff live on the store. I don't think apple wants scams really any more than developers do. I think the problem is cracking down on this stuff at scale, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's, there's like literally, I think it's somewhere between four and 5 million apps or on the store currently.

James Thomson (00:29:28):
And you know, it, I think it is gotta be quite difficult dealing with that. And you've got like people say, oh yeah know, apple should just have a special ops team that deals with scams and that's like their entire job. And yeah, that makes sense. And I kind of have to assume that that exists already. And it's really just a problem of resources. And a lot of teams in apple are a lot smaller than you might think they are. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and yeah. So I think it would be good if somebody higher up said, we really need to deal with this stuff. We need to resource a group properly to, to look after this. But you know, I think there are other things that apple could do to, to improve things, but it's a difficult problem.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:15):
It absolutely is. And I mean, this has kind of been the example of that after the one really got, got blasted all over Twitter, then we did see apple moving quickly to remove clones from the app store. And I, I think that this is a good time to talk too about Apple's ad marketplace on the app store, because I'm curious as a developer, you know, if I type in calculator on at me as a non-developer, I go to the up store, I type in calculator, I see P calc. That makes sense. I'm there looking for a calculator, but what if I type in J calc, which I, I don't know that that exists, but let's just say that that was one of your competi, you know, and then in that instance, should P calc come up because I am technically searching for a calculator. Do developers kind of use that as a means to find to, to help get new customers? Are they kind of playing against their opponents in that way? And is that like a or practice?

James Thomson (00:31:24):
So, yeah, this is an interesting question. Very I think when search ADSS were first introduced, they were kind of Apple's way of trying to fix some of the discovery problems with the app store and the idea being that, you know, if you have an app that does X, you just pay for whatever words, and you can try and get it in front of people. The problem is that, you know, this is also a way to get your scammy apps in front of people by paying, but it it's. So if you search for P calc, you'll see a variety of different things. Some are adverts for, you know, other calculators. Obviously what I don't know is how much of that is people explicitly putting P help in as one of the keywords for the thing or this, the the app store mechanisms saying, oh, well, this person's kind of looking for a calculator.

James Thomson (00:32:20):
I can tell that it's got the word calc in it. So I'm gonna show them these, the effects. And I, I am absolutely sure that there is some of the stuff where you search for a very specific app, like, you know, Twitter, if or whatever. And you'll see other, other apps that have probably advertised against that keyword. And it's also like if somebody searches for P calc and it brings up P calc and it doesn't because I don't do adverts. I, I did it initially. And then I decided, I decided it felt like a bit like I was being shaken down <laugh> but back in back then, if somebody searched for P a and then clicked on the advert rather than clicking on the P a that was underneath it, which is the actual entry in the store, I would get charged money.

James Thomson (00:33:10):
And I was getting a lot of people searching for the word P a clicking, the advert, and then it was just costing me money. And yeah, I think like when I was thinking about this, I would say the one thing that I would do is I would get rid of the whole search advertising business, because making discovery on the app store a profit center for apple is definitely not <affirmative> it doesn't like push, push things in the right direction. I mean, app store editorial themselves does great work. And, you know, I say this partially because they have featured pock many times over the years <laugh> but they are also that, you know, it's a small small team again, and you're dealing with, you know, millions of apps but the, the search stuff, it's just like, I think the guy who came up with the, the clone app even said this on Twitter, he was like, you know, I didn't even need, he said he didn't need to make an app called worldly.

James Thomson (00:34:18):
He could have called it something else, but then just the world search term. And that would still get lots of people to, to see, see the app. And it it's difficult because, you know, if you've got a small app, like say there's a young developer starting out and they've got a calculator app, which is better than mine and they wanna get it in front of people, you know, should I be able to say, well, no, <affirmative>, you know, you can't do that. I mean, I don't like the fact that, you know, using a trademark as a search term is a, is a, a, is a thing that apple allows, but that's a thing that kind of Google adverts went through a long time ago and kind of decided that it was a legitimate use. But yeah, it, it rubs me the wrong way and yeah, I've kind of just opted out of all the advertising stuff as much as I possibly can.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:11):
Absolutely. Well, James, I've got one off topic question for you before we let you go. Someone in the chat wants to know if you are going to make a windows version of the P calc at any point.

James Thomson (00:35:24):
So I get this question a lot and I get it for Android too, and Uhhuh the pro the problem is that, like, it's just me writing this stuff. I don't have the, the skills all the time really. I mean, it's enough, it's honestly, it's enough. Just trying to keep up with what apple does on a daily, weekly basis that maintaining and having window stuff is quite, you know, would be an additional, like additional things to learn and look after absolutely and all that. But the other problem is most of my code uses a lot of apple technology, very specifically, you know, it's written in objective C and swift, and it uses apples libraries and engines and stuff. So with any of these apps, I would be starting from scratch and that's a lot to do. <Laugh> so this is a very long-winded way of me justifying the fact that I'm saying, no, it, it is highly unlikely that there's gonna be pal cord dice on any other platforms, other than apples, just because the, the logistics and the technology behind makes it quite

Mikah Sargent (00:36:38):
Hard. That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, James Thompson, thank you so much for providing your perspective here today. Where can folks go if they wanna follow you online and also check out your awesome apps?

James Thomson (00:36:51):
Best place to find me myself on Twitter. It's James Thompson and that's James that's Thompson without a P and p.com has linked to all, all my apps.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:05):
Awesome. Thank you so much, James.

James Thomson (00:37:08):
Anytime.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:10):
All righty. That brings an end to that part of the show up next by blue bubbles, green bubbles, RCS, MMS, and SMS. Look, there's a lot to talk about, but first this episode of tech news weekly is brought to you by streak as a startup founder or entrepreneur. You know what it's like running your business from your inbox, whether you're tracking sales, fundraising, hiring, or working on support is a CRM that will help you stay on top of all of your processes directly inside Gmail use. Streak's free email tools to check if your emails have been opened and send bulk emails with automated follow up emails to improve your response rates. Since streak is built inside of Gmail, it's part of your everyday workflow. You can see details about your leads, customers and investors alongside your email. So there's no more switching between Gmail and other tools, whether you're prospecting for new customers, raising a fundraising round, growing your team, or managing support tickets, you can use streak pipelines to track all your processes directly from Gmail.

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Jason Howell (00:39:43):
Oh, you set it up perfectly green, bubbles, blue bubbles, RCS, MMS, SMS, all sorts of letters and complicated, weird things. Shouldn't have to be complicated, but apparently it is. And in 20 20, 22, I think it's probably pretty safe to say if it wasn't already apple has won the messaging wars, at least as far as, you know, the platform kind of specific messaging, at least in the us. Anyways, a lot of people outside of the us would be like, you know, what are you talking about? You know, way more hand Android devices, everybody's using WhatsApp, whatever the case may be. But in the us, apple is really reigning Supreme when it comes to messaging. And there's a few things at play right now, as far as why we're talking about it right now, there was a wall street journal article that reported on the pressures impacting school, age children, which really goes hand in hand with a lot of what we've been seeing in recent months, you know, a lot of reporting done around kind of the impact of big tech on children, you know, Instagram and body issues in teenagers, that sort of stuff.

Jason Howell (00:40:48):
I think this article kind of falls falls into that, that bucket, that category as well. But the article itself concludes that messaging within iMessage, ultimately it creates an us versus them mentality that in, you know, they, they spell out some examples that ostracizes certain Android users some of its youngest users IMEs, you know of course has a lot of features that SMS doesn't support, right? It has things like read receipts has typing indicate eight has you know, the, the MI emojis, the stickers, the gifs, that sort of stuff, all that, all that kind of stuff that at least with SMS is not used very much. And again, here in the us, like every, I hear all the time from people, cuz we talk about this on all about Android from time to time, people outside of the us are like, yeah, well why, why are you still using U SMS?

Jason Howell (00:41:38):
No one here uses SMS anymore. Everyone's using WhatsApp or whatever, but I don't know what to tell you here in the us. Maybe, you know, maybe we're just slow to the uptick or whatever, but there are a lot of people still using SMS. It's kind of like the it's, it's kind of the, no, like you always know that's gonna reach someone here in the us, you know, whether no matter what messaging platform they happen to be on while iMessage integrates into it, like integrates SMS into its experience. So if you happen to have an iPhone and you're chatting with someone else who has an iPhone iMessage recognizes it, it enables all these extra features. If that doesn't happen, of course it still passes over through SMS, but what do IMS iMessage and iPhone users see they see the green bubble versus the blue bubble that they see when they're connected to another iPhone.

Jason Howell (00:42:25):
And you know, the, the piece really goes into details as far as stating the increase in desire among young user is to use the service and the fact that when they're not using an iPhone and they're messaging, you know, they feel there, there was one team that reported, they they said, quote, they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. Another person that was interviewed said, people don't seem to like green text bubbles that much and seem to have this visceral ne reaction to it. Right. And, and I could totally like, I, I understand, right? Like <laugh>, I mean, you know, I didn have these smart. Yes, I, I am a, I am one of those and B I was a kid once and I know what school life is like. And you know, and, and of course, you know, when I was a kid, we didn't have smart phones, but I knew the impact.

Jason Howell (00:43:15):
I knew the, kind of the, the draw of technology then. And I see that the incredible draw of technology now. And so I can totally understand how this happens. Do I think apples at fault for the fact that kids are ostracizing each other, you know, green versus blue? I, I mean, I don't know that I can say they are directly at, but there are things to consider. And that's what Hiroshi Lockheimer, who is the Google senior vice president of platforms and ecosystem said he went on a tweet storm and basically just kind of pointed out like iMessage can support Android users better without making iMessage for Android. Right. And we know through the epic versus apple courtroom battle, there were docs that were, that were shown off that showed, you know, that said, quote, iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families, giving their kids Android phones.

Jason Howell (00:44:08):
That was Craig Feder. Another executive said iMessage amounts to serious lock in. So there is a, there's a business in to keep iMessage kind of locked down. But what hero's point was is, is you can still have these benefits of iMessage that iPhone to iPhone still work and interoperate well and, and create these, you know, these kind of like moments of, of joy, you know, with me emojis and mm-hmm <affirmative> and these games that you can play from iMessage iMessage, but you can also support this, this bird, this up growing standard of RCS rich communication services, which is essentially meant to be an upgrade to SMS and almost all, and right. Devices support RCS. Now it really is SMS, but with some of the features that you get out, something like iMessage, you get the read receipts, you get the typing indicators better quality media sharing, all this stuff. And I think Hiroshi point, I totally agree with it's mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, have your cake, you needed too, right? Like apple and support iMessage users and have these special features, but, but not supporting this growing standard, that would actually not just make Android users happy. I think it makes everybody happier because that then it kinda levels the playing field a little bit and gives everyone a good experience, but I've been rambling. I know you have thoughts, Michael, what do you think

Mikah Sargent (00:45:32):
I do? I do. So I wanna, I wanna start by going with the psychology of the situation here by talking evolutionarily. We spent a lot more times as human beings living in small tribes. And because of that, we are sort of biologically predisposed to tribalism. And as we age, it is the hope that as human beings we grow, we become more open minded. We become more empathetic. And we acknowledge that part of our brain that, that lends, that tends toward tribalism. And we try to circumvent it to be more open, to, to realize that, you know, at, at that time in many, many, many, many, many years ago, that tribalism was important for our safety, but in the lives we live today, that is less important. And so we don't have to fall into that trap as much. So all of that's to say that when it comes to kids, I can understand why there may be a little bit more of that tribalism in place, but when it comes to someone who's a little bit older has, has a little bit more of an evolved brain, a grown brain, I should say, evolved is the wrong word there.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:42):
Developed brain at that point, for me, it is not that I want to exclude any Android user or you know, say, oh, you're an oo gross green bubble. No, it is precise. It, what you're talking about it is that the experience is worse in communicating with them. So I want apple to fix this. I don't want to have to whenever a group texts to set up, and there's a green bubble in the mix that, that messes things up. I'm not about that. Like, we, we can't say that so much for kids, cuz I think that in some cases that can be a, a little bit of thing because again, their brains are not as developed as we are. And in some cases they have not been taught to try to circumvent that. So I can't speak like there may be some kids who are kind of into it for the sake of just being like, oh yes, we're part of an elite club kind of thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:30):
But for adults, it is. And, and even older young folks, it's just the idea that like, it is tough to be able to communicate in the same way that we're used to whenever the person is on Android. And so that dread comes up because it's a worse experie, what do I want, I don't want for that to continue. I want that dread to go away. I want the communication to get better. And I want apple to adopt RCS. If that's what it takes to make that better. I will say that, you know, the, the, there are some people are like, why do the bubbles have to look different? Why does that have to be a thing? I understand why that apple did not put that feature in place in the, in the beginning specifically for this like, oh, let's separate that from this because I totally agree.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:18):
I totally agree. Wasn't always SMS, SMS and iMessage, apple had to differentiate between the two. And so that's what it's, you know, that's the way that it does that. So I, most of the time what I'm using it for is whenever someone gives me their number. And I know they're an iPhone user. I type that in. If it doesn't pop up correctly, I go, oh, did I get that number right? If it doesn't turn blue? Or if I'm talking to my mom who has sometimes her phone is out of signal whenever she goes to certain family members. And I know, oh, she's probably out here, there's less signal. And so that's why I'm getting green bubbles right now because she's not connected to a data network to do the blue bubble texting. So I find value in the green bubble versus blue bubble that exists outside of any kind of tribalism.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:06):
But I think that the big thing here is that what you said is true. It's not just about making Android users easier to communicate with with iPhone. It's also about just making things better for iPhone too. I want that for that reason. And frankly, I hate that there is you know, right now a number of kids who are being left out of conversations with friends from, from school simply because their family may not make as much money and are unable to afford to purchase an iPhone or their family is, has always been like an Android family. And so they bought their kid an Android device so that they can be part of that experience, you know, that same experience. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> whatever, the reason that othering let's not give more opportunity for othering. And you know, right now there's a huge argument that internet has become a basic need that everyone should be able to be a part of.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:10):
And people that are being left out of it are being left out of a very important part of our society. And I think that the same applies when it comes to this ability to communicate in the ways that people do. I, I won't name the company, but my partner used to work for a place where a lot of the communications between employees and the managers happened over a group chat. And there was one person who had an Android device and she was often left out of conversations that she needed to be a part of because of the difference between the, you know, the blue bubble and green bubble texting. Like there are all of these reasons why things should not be the way that they are. And I once to believe that apple is not choosing to just completely disregard.

Mikah Sargent (00:51:05):
Yeah, we don't need, we don't need you to do iMessage on Android. I understand why that's not a thing, because then again, you're also, by that point, you're asking people on Android to download an app that is not just a, like, that, that bothers me more than anything else, because there are also the people who will say, well, why don't we all just move to telegram? Or why don't we all just move to signal? Or why don't we all the more friction you add to communicate each, each time you do that? Like half of the people who are going to participate, drop off and suddenly people are abandoned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They're, they're not interested in adding friction. That's why we stick with iMessage instead of me talking to you, I usually talk to you over slack because I, I don't have to worry about the green bubble or worry about the, you know, even I know I could talk to you in text message, but it's just easier for me to talk to you in slack.

Mikah Sargent (00:51:55):
So yeah, I do I as an iPhone user and a, a long time iPhone user and as a person who talks almost exclusively to people who are also iPhone users, I still want this to change. And I have to admit that, you know, there were times when I was back when I was on the dating scene and on occasion when I would exchange a number with a person and I texted that person and then there was a green bubble and I thought, huh, that's interest because it was, it was more just the idea of like, okay, so how is this going to limit things whenever it comes to communication. And also, you know, we won't be able to share photo albums in the same way. And you know, all those things that start to come up in your mind of the, the nice features that you get, whenever you're both on the same experience. So yeah. I'm not gonna lie like that has come up for me too. And if we limited that by apple adding RCS support, I think that'd be great. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:53:00):
Yeah. Ron Amad at ours, Technica shared shared an article that, I mean, has just like, it's, it's gone, it's basically caught fire. Like there's so many comments on article. It really resonated. But you know, and I agree with some of his points overall, his point is that, you know, it's all sour grapes for Google. It's, it's Google failed so hard at messaging that now it's now it's coming back and saying, please support us. And I don't, I don't really feel like that's necessarily the case too. I'm not arguing that Google hasn't failed at, at messaging multiple times. I believe that they have, but I think they also have a really good point. Look, here's, here's a, a growing standard just support the standard by the longer you're not supporting the standard. The more, it seems like you're intentionally avoiding standard to make things more complicated and more difficult. And that I don't agree with.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:48):
So at the very least, then if you're not gonna support the standard, then explain why. I think that've seen a number of times where we we've had executives send out emails and then those emails get picked up by the press where they explain a thing. I would like that. It would've, it would've been good. Someone in the chat asked I thought I heard, I thought that you switched to Android. They thought that they had heard that. How heard me say that on the tech guy? No, I didn't switch to Android. I used both devices. I have an Android device with a mint, mobile SIM in it and an iPhone. So I think what Leo and I were talking about on the show was how we both use both platforms pretty regularly. Right. So that also does play a role in me, you know, wanting to be able to use, use both platforms because I do, if there's something on the Android device, the, the pixel six that I come across and I wanna save it for later, I will just text it to myself on my iPhone.

Mikah Sargent (00:54:50):
And you know, it, it, it depends on how it shows up. It might show up as an MMS at SS. It could be, it could be a whole mess. So yeah, that's a,

Jason Howell (00:55:00):
A messaging mess. All right, well coming up your story of the week disformation is everywhere. That's a fact we're gonna talk about that. Let's see what I did there, but first this episode, tech news weekly is brought to you by Arons Arons, cyber protect. It's the only solution that natively integrates cyber security, data protection management all to endpoints systems and data. They have an integration and automation system that provides unmatched protection. Ultimately that's increasing productivity. It's also decreasing your total costs of ownership, all available in flexible deployment options that are gonna fit your needs. Next generation security of course, is what it's all about. It's advance AI based behavioral detection engine for zero day attack prevention. So you get reliable backup as well. You get reliable recovery, super important. You get full image and file level backup, disaster recovery, metadata collection for those, those security forensics.

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Mikah Sargent (00:58:39):
Yeah, so a couple of organizations, groups, individuals have shared some open letters regarding disinformation misinformation spread online. We've got one, an open letter to Spotify, and this is a, a call from global scientific and medical communities to do better. And then one for YouTube, from a group of a huge, huge group of different fact checkers and actually different fact checking organizations. So we'll start with the Spotify one surprise, surprise yet again Joe Rogan on his, I, I guess you can call it a podcast. Garbage cast is shared a bunch of stuff. It's, it's one of the most popular podcasts on the planet, or one of the most listened to podcasts on the planet, I guess. But anyway they had, he had a person on the show Robert Malone now, Dr. Robert Malone has been discredited time and time again for his scientific prowes and on the show claimed that millions of people have been hypnotized into believing facts about COVID 19.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:59):
And then also people bull who are in line to get tested for the Aron variant are an example of something called mass formation psychosis which is, which is something that you know, somebody somewhere made up as this phenomena that is where, you know, a bunch of people start to believe a thing. Mass formation psychosis does not exist. It's not real. But this scientist insisted that it was, and that people are you know, hypnotized in, in their beliefs about COVID 19. Now here's the thing. This person has a huge platform as again, I think it's what 11 million people listen to this podcast. Yeah. And Spotify as a Spotify exclusive Spotify is in ways in involved in the distribution of this podcast. And so these open or this open letter says, Hey, you responsible for these 11 million people being told something that is patently false and time and time again, continues to spread information that is patently false.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:15):
We would like for you to implement a misinformation policy that would help with this thing. And as somebody in the chat is pointing out the constantly Joe Rogan's refrain is anytime someone criticizes him for spreading misinformation. Oh, you know, I'm just, I'm just a comedian. I, I don't really know, you know, I don't know what's true and what's not, I just have people on my show to talk and is completely D guarding the fact that he is responsible for providing communication to 11 million people. And as much as it pains me to say, you know, not everybody is as skeptical as they should be. Not everybody is has access to the necessary materials to be as educated as they should be. Not, I mean, there are so many reasons why a person may be led to believe something that isn't true.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:13):
You know, I know this is true in part because there's a whole Facebook group, probably probably multiple Facebook groups, but certainly one Facebook group devoted to people who believe that drinking your own urine is a therapy that will help you. And have a whole Facebook group dedicated to teaching people about the ways of urine therapy. That is a bit of an aside, but it's just to point out like you, you think that you want to believe, I think at least I did, who wanted to believe that most people won't be tricked by a thing, but when it comes to it, a lot of people will be tricked by a thing and will be led to believe things. And I think that this pandemic has proven that out. Even maybe some people, people who we thought were not going to be convinced of certain things who ended up being convinced of certain things. And of course, especially,

Jason Howell (01:03:08):
Especially when you're talking about like large numbers as, as 11 million listeners, like it's the same in, in, in well actually it's the same in Android world. Like, you know, how many hundreds of millions of users, you know, using Android, even if it's like a 0.05% of this thing that is impacting users that ends up being multiple millions of people. That's no small number. And it's kind of a similar thing with Joe Rogan, you could have, you know, you could have 99% of all those listeners being, and I don't believe it's that, but being you know, CR kind of having a skeptical view or, or critical view of what they're hearing, but it's the, but it's the other number. Like that's not insignificant just because it's a small percentage. Doesn't mean it's a small number.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And so let me, I'm gonna read a little bit from this first open letter throughout the COVID 19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading in false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are gene therapy promoted. Off-Label use of ivermectin to treat COVID 19 contrary to FDA warnings and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Mo alone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID 19, Dr. Malone used the platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID 19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have hypnotized the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited. Notably. Dr. Malone is one of two recent Jr guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:47):
These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous. You can all read through this letter if you'd like to, it was published at Spotify, open letter.wordpress.com. What I'm curious to see is it, if this is going to make a difference at all that, you know, that is one of the, one of the most frustrating parts of this pandemic. You know, I first experienced the whole idea. I think many of us were confronted with the idea that it is incredibly difficult to change someone's mind during the not even the last election, but the election before that. That was the point when I started to see like, oh man, it is it's kind of, it's hard to have a conversation with someone and actually get at them to change their mind. Then it was doubled down during this past election.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:40):
And then it was doubled down again when we had black lives matters, protests all over the country due to huge bouts of police brutality, et cetera, et cetera. And then again, now with the pandemic, and so like of feel like we're all being confronted with the idea that there's so much disinformation and misinformation being spread online, and when that stuff gets rooted in, it becomes so incredibly difficult to change someone's mind because someone who doesn't want their minds to be changed can easily fall into and sort of embrace the, or not embrace the cognitive dissonance, but embrace the desire to avoid cognitive dissonance by saying, well, how do you know what you're saying is true? How is, how do we know anything is true? How do we know that any fact that's ever existed as a true fact? And it it's just like, it's so exhausting and disheartening.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:39):
So the other one is from YouTube. And this one is a more general one. It wasn't even about a specific, you know, video or something like that. It's just more generally where they've written in the last. And I will say too, YouTube videos are very popular means of spreading misinformation. And the last year quote, we have seen conspiracy groups, thriving and collaborating across borders, including an international movement that started in Germany, jumped to Spain and spread through Latin America, all on YouTube. Meanwhile, millions of other users are watching videos in Greek and Arabic that encouraged them to boycot vaccinations or treat their COVID 19 infections with bogus cures beyond COVID 19 YouTube videos have been promoting false cures for cancer for years in Brazil was used to amplify hate speech in the Philippines. It was used to to sort of support let's see false content with over 2 million views, denying human rights, abuses and corruption during the Marshall law years.

Mikah Sargent (01:07:41):
So, and then up unsubstantiated accusations of fraud and Taiwan overall time and time. Again, YouTube is a common place for for misinformation and again, disinformation to be spread. And in the pointer.org article, that's where the, the group of, of fact checkers published this. They actually have some solutions that they suggest including meaningful transparency, providing context and offering debunks acting against repeat offenders and extending the efforts that they have against disformation and misinformation and languages, other than just English, just because English users are the ones making the most noise about disformation and misinformation does not mean that those are the ones that we should be focused on. So many signatories on this open letter as well. And again, I hope that this leads to change, but will it <laugh>.

Jason Howell (01:08:48):
I mean, this kind of thing, I, I feel like we've, this is not the first time that we've seen these sorts of, you know, articles call to, to the CEO of this and that company to make a change. And I mean, all, all that, that, that comes up for me right now is just the, the sheer fact that we are living in a disinformation age and it's oh man, like you said, it's exhausting, it's exhausting to maneuver through it. Sometimes it's exhausting to know what actually is the right approach here, you know to, to know whether like, do, do you clamp down on this entirely? Is there some wiggle room? Is there some gray area? Like if Joe Rogan had invited this person on and then spent the time like being super critical about it, mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, okay, I understand that you believe this, but here are the reasons why you're full of it or, or here are the reasons why a lot of people believe that you are full of it.

Jason Howell (01:09:41):
I don't know. Like, like I do think that there is some, there is some benefit to not completely blanking out the conversation entirely, but bringing someone on and, and, and kind of really being critical with them and saying, here's why this is wrong, or what exactly do you have to say about this? You know, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about with the with the green bubble blue bubble. Like if apple acknowledged it that's one thing, but they don't, you know, and so then you're left wondering, and it's kind of the same thing here. I don't know if that's the right approach or if it, or if the right approach is to, you know, kick Joe Rogan off the platform entirely because this keeps happening. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, and I realize I'm going back to Spotify, but I think it also applies to YouTube and any other platform, you know, these platforms are making decisions as far as what is worth the, the trouble, you know, and, and why, because on the other side of that, they're making a, an insane amount of money, you know, off of this content, if they were aren't, they probably would not feel as, you know, they probably would not let a lot of this stuff slide.

Jason Howell (01:10:43):
But no question, Joe, Rogan's pulling a lot of subscribers for Spotify. Yep. And he end up seeing the true kind of, kind of the true colors of the company. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. I mean, that's capitalism at work. Right. And yeah, Tuesday on all about Android, wrong was going on off about how he, you know, like his opinion on capitalism is, is shifting and changing because of, of modern events. And I think this kind of plays into that, you know, and big tech in general, like at a certain point, it's kinda like, okay, well, but is any of this good for anybody? And maybe that's just us getting older, you know? And I don't, I don't know.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:14):
It's frustrating. Well, we're all, Jason is any of this good for anybody as something that by the way, if anybody's wondering why I kept saying misinformation and disinformation, there is a difference between the two misinformation is let's say I read something and I believed it wholeheartedly. And then I told Jason that misinformation, but let's say that I made something up and I gave it to Jason, knowing that it was incorrect. That's disinformation. So disinformation is spreading something that you intentionally, that, you know, absolutely is not true. And you intentionally spread it anyway. Whereas misinformation is something that you did not know, it was a lie, but you shared it with other people and it got out there. So just so you know, that's why I differentiated between the two types of, of false falsities in either case they're both damaging one is just more nefarious than the other is. Yeah, yeah. Right. All right, Jason, are we done with this episode? We're done.

Jason Howell (01:12:14):
<Laugh> I'm exhausted now. Yeah. <Laugh> thanks so much for watching and listening each and every week we do this show. Every Thursday, twit TV slash TNW is where you can go to subscribe and get the get the show and audio and video formats delivered to you like magic.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:30):
Now here's a bit of true information. If you would like to get owl of hour shows ad free, we've got a way for you to do that. It's called Club TWIT. It's got a great name for seven bucks a month. You too can join the club. What's that gonna, what's that gonna do when you do well, you'll get all of our shows ad free. It's kind of cool. You get access to the special secret page that has custom feeds just for you that are ad free versions of the show. You also get access to the TWI plus bonus fee that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else. That might be things that happened before the show, after the show, during the show that get cut out. But also you'll get some fun stuff like the upcoming AMA with with Andy and NACO, if you don't watch it live, you'll be able to check it out there.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:13):
I know there's one from Mary Jo Foley and in the feed. Some other AMAs, I think mine is in there. I was the, the first one to do an AMA with Ant Pruitt. And you'll get access to the Discord server. If you're wondering what the heck discord is. Well, I've got some comparisons if you've ever used slack or Microsoft teams, it's a lot like that. It's a place to go and chat with your fellow Club TWIT members, but also us folks here at TWIT, you can hang out with us too and have a conversation. I was just pulling some text from the chat earlier with the questions that somebody had. And of course you can always head to irc.Twit.tv to chat with us live, but twit.tv/clubtwit to check that out seven bucks a month. And then we also had some feedback that folks wanted to support favorite shows directly, and weren't interested in all the extra stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:59):
So you can get the audio version of the show, add free through apple podcasts. You hop in apple podcasts, you type in Tech News Weekly. You find the audio version of the show. And then for $2.99 a month, you'll get the ad free version of the audio feed. So that's a great way to do that. If you want to tweet at me or follow me elsewhere, I am @MikahSargent on many of social media network or head to chihuahua.coffee, C H I H U A H U A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most online. You can check me out on Tuesdays on iOS today and in the future. I also will be once again, joining Leo Laporte for The Tech Guy on Saturdays, the radio show where we answer your questions live and help people with their tech. Jason, how, where can folks find you?

Jason Howell (01:14:54):
It's easy. @JasonHowell On Twitter. That's all you need to know to find me in my, in my social musings. Anyways, you can also find me on all about Android, every Tuesday, twit.tv/aaa. We just actually welcomed a new a new co-host Huyen Tue Dao. Yeah, who's an Android developer to the, to the weekly rotation. Super awesome to have her on as a cot offering her kind of developer insights to everything going on with Android. We're really excited to have her on. So now that on Tuesday, so check out the show. If it's been a while, since you listened, check it out again because you know, you're gonna have some new perspectives on there on a regular basis. So but that's it for this show big, thanks to John Ashley, to Burke there at the studio. Also, John Slanina, everybody behind the scenes, helping us do the show each and every week. Couldn't do it without you, and thanks to you for watching and listening every week. Cause we could do it without you too. And we'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody. Goodbye.

Ant Pruitt (01:15:51):
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