TWiG 770 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.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Twig this Week in Google. Paris Martinos here, jeff Jarvis Coming up. We're going to talk about Google's weird AI answers and whether it is even possible to have AI safety. We finally learned why the OpenAI board fired Sam Altman. The truth is coming out. Everything Google announced at its big Chromebook showcase and Taylor Swift she doesn't have to worry anymore about people spying on her private jet. It's all coming up.

0:00:30 - Paris Martineau
Next, on Twig Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twig.

0:00:45 - Leo Laporte
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 770, recorded Wednesday, may 29th 2024. Giggle pants and chortle skorts. It's time for Twig this week in general, google giggles Featuring the much less cursing versions. Featuring the Leonard Tao professor for journalistic innovation at the oh. I have Stop swearing. Craig Newmark, graduate school of journalism at the City University of New York. I missed the cue for Craig. Yeah, we love Craig, Got to get him on. We love Craig, Get him on soon Also. Oh yeah yeah. Yeah, Also the former friend of Ed Zitron, Paris Martineau.

0:01:27 - Paris Martineau
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, Bleep, bleep, bleep.

0:01:30 - Leo Laporte
We did not bleep last week's show.

0:01:32 - Paris Martineau
We marked it explicitly we gave up. And I thought that was very fun.

0:01:36 - Leo Laporte
Benito made an executive decision. He said I can't get, I can't bleep, it would be all bleeps. So he just said, well, mark it explicit and move on. And that's what we did. But generally we like the only reason we look it's just a word or words. But generally the reason we try not to is so that we don't have to label it explicit, which means parents let their kids listen to it and that kind of thing.

0:01:59 - Paris Martineau
And we were only talking to Ann. My question, though, because I was explaining this to someone. I was like oh yeah, they didn't bleep the episode. And someone's like what, what children are listening to a three-hour tech podcast? I think that that is a good point.

0:02:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, Jammer B said that some parents listen to it in the kitchen and the kids there. Or one viewer said that to John, and that's when.

0:02:24 - Leo Laporte
because I said oh, come on the same thing with John and he said no, no, no, no, no, John's right. And on the radio show we frequently would get younger kids 10, 11, 12, because they're interested in tech, and we're, I mean, you're going to go, what are you going to do? Find a show with kids talking about tech? No, If you're interested in tech. No, If you're interested in tech. There aren't that many places to go, so young people.

0:02:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Let me explain to you. Don't try to be like Ed at home.

0:02:49 - Leo Laporte
It won't work. Oh, you can't.

0:02:54 - Paris Martineau
You know, jeff you're a father, you know you can't tell anybody. You know the young people have never seen a curse word online before. This is the only place they'd be able to hear it.

0:03:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, at least we weren't talking to the wife of a Supreme Court justice.

0:03:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, at least we weren't talking to the wife of a Supreme Court justice, so that story is kind of interesting. Apparently the Alitos got in a big fight with their neighbors and at some point the police were called because the neighbor said an expletive. Do any of the news sources you listen to or read say what that was? That she said they called mrs alito.

0:03:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh well, it went both ways. A neighbor called mrs alito, the c word, oh, and it wasn't capitalist oh and okay, or conservative, that is pretty mean.

0:03:35 - Leo Laporte
I wouldn't call the police if somebody called me that.

0:03:38 - Paris Martineau
That seems a little did the police show up?

0:03:41 - Jeff Jarvis
they called, they said, I think on the phone uh, no, you can't. But here's the other thing about it supposedly the flag went up in reaction to that, when in fact the flag went up and down, uh, two weeks beforehand yeah, yeah, so that was a response to the flag, but this is not a show about politics, so we won't go for it, but I do understand getting mad.

0:04:02 - Leo Laporte
If somebody called you a chromebook user, I think I would be upset as well.

0:04:05 - Paris Martineau
I don't know if I'd call the police.

0:04:08 - Leo Laporte
So there's been quite a furah over Google. I think we talked about AI overview last week and people have come up with more and more examples of this terrible feature. Google has turned it off, but it's interesting how few people know, oh, it's still on.

0:04:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Is it still on? Okay, oh yeah, but you only get it. You don't get it. When you expect to get it, I got it this afternoon.

0:04:32 - Leo Laporte
Okay, but I bet you have it turned on in labs Because when I checked it is a labs feature, so you can. If you go to your settings and you go to advanced search, is it advanced search? Where do you turn on the labs? I can't remember.

0:04:50 - Jeff Jarvis
See, I'm a Chrome OS user, not a Chrome browser user. Oh, I'm in Firefox.

0:04:57 - Leo Laporte
That's neither here nor there. Well, that's fine Search settings. There it is Other settings. Huh, I don't see it anymore. So I did see it in labs, and then labs you could turn it off. That's the search generative experience. Uh, that was in labs and they call it ai overview, but I thought that google, after all of the attention, turned it off. They haven't. Um, that's interesting. Okay, I was mistaken Because, as you know, I don't use Google.

0:05:29 - Jeff Jarvis
So I just asked it how do I get upgraded on Delta? I don't fly Delta, but nonetheless right, and it came back with AIO review oh, it does. There are several ways to get upgraded on Delta, including the SkyMiles. Paying cash oh, I hadn't thought of that, wow. Or traveling with someone who owns cash.

0:05:46 - Leo Laporte
Good luck bringing a bag of cash to the airport and trying to buy a plane ticket. I think you'd immediately get taken into custody. Yes, I don't. That seems a little odd, anyway, I thought. So Google's trying to fix it, but what's so? I think the problem is Google's trying to fix it. But, what's?

so I think the problem is but you can't fix it. Yeah, I think it's impossible to fix it. Yeah, it's a fool's errand to try to keep AI from making mistakes. The internet's full of mistakes that humans make, and so, of course, there's plenty of mistakes out there. I think the mistake is using Google to do AI to do Google search right. How you use it is the mistake.

0:06:28 - Jeff Jarvis
After this broke. I see what you think of this both of you is that Google could have said well, poor Microsoft. They're so desperate for attention. They're putting this chat GPT crap on their search. We, google, stand for reliability and credibility, as we have stood for years. You trust us. We use AI in all kinds of ways, but we're too smart to put it on search the way it is. They could have stood apart, but they come off now as desperate and it's showing it just seems lazy.

0:07:01 - Paris Martineau
I don't know if you guys saw Corey Quinn lazy. I don't know if you guys saw uh, cory quinn, a uh, really funny guy from this organization called the duck bill group. He mostly posts about aws stuff, but he noticed and I'm going to put the link in the discord right now that, um, google on their own documentation had examples of when it was supposed to be telling you, basically in Google's documentation, how to use Gemini to kind of extract dates and events and do stuff like that. It had massive AI hallucinations in its own documentation. That went totally unnoticed and I think that's like they ended up fixing it after this guy called it out.

0:07:46 - Leo Laporte
But I feel like that's like a perfect example of just how lazy and embarrassing this is for the company well you remember when google announced bard back it must have been a couple of years ago it, the announcement, had errors in paris yeah, their stock went down a few billion bucks.

0:08:05 - Paris Martineau
I mean in this it's supposed to be documentation on, I guess, using generative AI, and it gives you examples of how to extract dates and a description of events in chronological order from a paragraph. The prompt is it gives a couple of paragraphs about Oppenheimer's life and then that's right, it's supposed to be about his, like the things that were in that paragraph in chronological order, but instead it has a list of bullet points about Albert Einstein, all of which are wrong and not correct. About Albert Einstein, much less correct or about Oppenheimer. So here's my just think it's incredibly funny.

0:08:42 - Leo Laporte
Here's my question. People are using that as a way to say oh, your AI is not very good, but I don't think. Well, I don't know, Jeff, maybe you know better. Is this? This is what AI does, this is normal and it isn't an indictment of AI, because AI is, it's the use of it. Yeah, it's how you use it, because AI is just chewing up the material it's given.

0:09:06 - Paris Martineau
And since humans are so fallible, I don't even stop to ask for directions in the street.

0:09:12 - Leo Laporte
I'd say it's more of an indictment about how we're using AI or how we are communicating to people about it. It's a mistake to put it in a position that's authoritative, yeah.

0:09:22 - Paris Martineau
We are making all of these grand assumptions. I suppose these companies are telling us these are the things that you're going to be able to do with AI. This is our. You're going to be able to get credible answers about specific things like dates or you know specific generative information, and then it fails at that, and I think that it's an indictment of that framework entirely yes, but that problem is not the ai, it's the framework I mean when I ask a person for some information.

0:09:55 - Leo Laporte
I always have to vet it, whether it's in person or on twitter or wherever, for accuracy, because people are notoriously full of it.

0:10:04 - Jeff Jarvis
But it's more than that. In this case, the way say nothing. Everybody knows it is nothing but a word prediction machine based on the associations of these words in the past. Point one it has no sense of meaning, truth or fact. Point two even if you tried to say, oh, we're going to stop it from telling people to eat rocks, because of the randomness built in the system You're never going to be able to predict how it's going to respond. Point three, and then finally point four, and this goes. I put a story in about some really bad legislation just passed in California which would make model makers sign a statement under perjury that their model they put out would be completely safe. That's like telling Gutenberg that he has to guarantee Martin Luther is never going to use his press.

0:10:51 - Leo Laporte
There you go. That's a bingo, it's a general interest machine.

0:10:54 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a drink too, you know, two for one. It's a general machine that can do anything that someone tells it to do. That's what it does. I'm going to tell you to do this to me. And there is no such thing as guardrails, there's no such thing as safety, there's no such thing as truth. Nonetheless, it's pretty effing amazing what it can do. It can summarize things.

I've been using it senior moment in the last week. I go to metaa. There's a word I can't remember, a word I can't think of. I go in and I describe the word I want. I'm describing words, rather, that's exactly what it does. It fills in a missing word. I can tell you that word. It does a great job and I can verify that's the correct word. It's wonderful. It can summarize things, it can transcribe things. It should be used in all kinds of neat ways. I just watched a presentation today by Lev Menevich at CUNY, who's a brilliant digital humanist who uses it to make art and understand what art is and creativity is. I'm not against the technology, but I am against, as you said, paris, the company's using it badly.

0:11:56 - Leo Laporte
And I might go a little farther. I said this, used to say for a long time the same thing you did, which is, you know, it's autocorrect on steroids. It's just a probabilistic machine, but something seems to happen a little bit past that capability. There is some emergent property. I'm not saying it's conscious, I agree with you. It doesn't have any context, it doesn't know what it's saying, but something interesting does seem to happen. Some sort of emergent property seems to happen as you go farther and farther down the road.

Openai has now Sam Altman announced that they're going to start working on the next generation, chatgpt5. It will take nine months, which means it'll come out sometime next year and it will be even, but it seems to be they're going continuing down the LLM road. Right, it'll be more of that, but there does seem to be. Am I wrong? There's some emergent property or maybe I'm hallucinating, maybe I'm imagining something. No, that's possible.

Uh, you know, it's pareidolia, right, where we put project a face, a human face, on on a rock formation. Right, maybe I'm, maybe I'm doing that on ai. I'm projecting a human face on it, but it does feel like abby and I my daughter and I she was out visiting, sat in the car. We were talking about chat GPT-40. She loves talking to AI chat box, so I said I picked it up, I said I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, abby, and she and Abby and I got in a conversation. We had a three-way conversation. Now, admittedly, 40 was a little ingratiating. It had that Rogerian Eliza thing where it reframed what you said and then asked a question. So you know it wasn't a, but it did kind of. The conversation proceeded in a way that it would maybe with a human and I thought that was quite interesting. There is something going on there that is more than just wow, that's autocorrect, don't you think? Or maybe that's me, am I? Am I pareidoling?

0:13:48 - Paris Martineau
I mean I think that seems like a fun way to spend your time if you're into that, but I don't think that that. I feel like something you often say Leo is. Oh, I used to think this is just a parlor trick and a fun little chat bot that you can have a nice 10 minute long conversation with as a bit with your daughter does kind of sound like a parlor trick to me. You know like what grand like accomplishments are coming from that.

0:14:14 - Leo Laporte
She was trying to persuade it that AI would be better if it took a more diverse approach to source material. Approach to source material. She said you should consider people who are neurodivergent or even have mental health issues, because it'll give you a more divergent base to work from. And Scarlett Johansson I mean 4-0 said yes, that's a very interesting idea. Whether that I mean it felt like she was seen and heard and had a nice conversation, it probably is kind of projection.

0:14:48 - Jeff Jarvis
I go back to what Emily Bender says. University of Washington. Co-author of Stochastic Parents. All the meaning that we see in AI we Comes from us.

0:14:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it has no meaning, but isn't that the truth? But see, this is now we get really philosophical.

0:15:03 - Jeff Jarvis
It's true of art, but honestly, it's also true of me.

0:15:06 - Leo Laporte
I'm giving you meaning. For all I know, you're just I don't know what, I don't know. Uh, everything you do in your life is you applying meaning to send the sensorium and yeah well, are you calling me meaningless? No, no, you're meaningful from your point of view, but I'm probably not. I mean, I'm a stochastic creation on your part from your point of view.

0:15:35 - Paris Martineau
I would argue that we're all meaningless. Yeah, but I mean Narcissism for the win.

0:15:41 - Leo Laporte
And maybe this is just silly philosophic meandering, but all anybody has is their sensorium. You know this, this thing, these inputs, they're coming at you all the time from your eyes and your ears and, to a lesser degree, touch sense as taste and smell, and and you make some sense out of it. Um, now, there's generally agreement on what sense you make out of it. There's and I don't know if that's natural or we've kind of teach each other I think it's a lot of it's taught right to make sense of it. And then there are people who don't make the same sense out of it. We call them crazy, but their vision is not necessarily less valid than yours or mine. We kind of align with the consensus view of reality. But after all, all of that is invented. In fact, as far as we know, it might not be so very different the process than an LLM's process. I'm pretty sure it's different.

0:16:35 - Benito Gonzalez
Leo.

0:16:36 - Paris Martineau
Are you? Yeah, it is pretty different. Why? How Energy?

0:16:39 - Benito Gonzalez
consumption 22 watts in your brain. All right, 22 watts.

0:16:42 - Leo Laporte
That's because we aren't very good at making machines yet that are efficient. But that's just that's. That's mechanistic. That's just talking about. There's a different. Honestly, obviously, the human brain doesn't do it the same way as a machine does. But my question isn't about how it's done.

0:16:57 - Paris Martineau
The question is we have understanding and the ability to think. Do we? Based on the way that?

0:17:05 - Leo Laporte
Yes, we do, or at least we have ways to measure it that machines are not yet capable of achieving uh, I think you can make a case that well and this is deep philosophy so we probably shouldn't get into it but you might be able to make a case that there isn't a distinction.

0:17:21 - Benito Gonzalez
That's just in your mind, that you're at the point where you're saying objective reality could be all wrong. We know it is wrong. We know it's wrong.

0:17:29 - Leo Laporte
The world we're seeing is upside down. Our brain turns it right side up. We know it's wrong, Everything we sense. And how do I know that what I see as blue is?

0:17:38 - Paris Martineau
what you see as blue. I was just about to say that I mean, they're probably different.

0:17:42 - Leo Laporte
I don't know and we have no way of knowing, and so we have it agreed, a consensual reality. But I'm not convinced that what we think of is oh, you see, because this is very human, oh, we do something very special and different.

0:18:00 - Jeff Jarvis
But is it, I don't know Well, I write about? I think I've talked about this on the show sometimes. I about this in the book Parenthesis. There was a book called how History Gets Things Wrong by Alex Rosenberg, in which he argues against the theory of mind and the idea that we have wishes and desires and knowledge and experience that yield a conclusion. And what he says in the end is it's all Darwin man.

0:18:21 - Benito Gonzalez
It's those of us who make a decision?

0:18:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, we make a better decision than somebody else. Better is only defined by survival. Right, that's it. I didn't mean narcissism for the women before, I meant nihilism, but I'm not as good a computer as Leo's Lisp, lol.

0:18:40 - Leo Laporte
And Andy Weir's wonderful Project Hail Mary. I don't think it's a spoiler to say he meets an alien. The human meets the alien and the alien's thought rates are different, and he hypothesizes. The thought rates are different because they come from planets with different gravity and the need for catching something or predicting when something's going to hit the ground is very different. Your speed of your brain is either faster or slower, depending on how quickly you have to perceive that. That would be an evolutionary, a natural selection ability, and I think that that's not an unreasonable thing to say. But then that says a lot about what we think of as reality and consciousness. If it's determined by the gravitational force you grew up in and the speed of your thought varies depending on that gravitational force, there is no, there is no reality. There's. It's just. It's just.

It's natural selection, it's the selfish gene at work yeah, this is way it's who survives, and I agree that there's no reality this is a sophomoric in this, in the truest sense, uh conversation that we should, well, that means we could be, uh the heads of technology companies we should be staying up late at that level in the dorm room discussing this over a jaeger, but uh among other things, a jaeger and a bong, but um, I'm just.

My only reason I bring it up is I think we should. We need to be careful about how we judge. Ai, it's very um, it's also. It also. So we say watch out for anthropomorphism, but there's also an error in the opposite direction, where we assume that we are somehow special. Is there, though, you don't think?

0:20:18 - Paris Martineau
I don't think that there, I don't think that AI and we're using that general term, I guess, if we're specifically talking about large language models and models that produce like generative output in either text or video or images, I don't think that there is a risk of us not assigning enough humanity to them because they have no humanity or agency or, you know, they don't have the same qualities of complex thought that humans do and they seem very far off from that one thing we do agree is that google ai overviews were probably a bad idea, and google's current plan, which is to manually remove weird answers, is just not tenable.

0:21:10 - Jeff Jarvis
It's just completely. That makes no sense. Again, the randomness you ask the same question two times in a row, you will get a different answer, which itself shows how it has no relationship to credibility, fact authority.

0:21:22 - Leo Laporte
Well, and Google's?

first defense was oh, these are weird queries. No one would ever ask that, like how to get the cheese to stick to the pizza, or is it okay to eat rocks? Or what a weird query to ask what you should do about kidney stones. That's a weird query. You'd have to be dumb to accept the AI overview. You know it's funny because I think maybe it is possible to do this right. Remember I used to talk about Neva, the company that basically pivoted because they couldn't compete against Google, but they were in a search engine last year that I paid for that did an AI overview. They would always footnote it, so they'd always get they were taking the citations in, right, yeah and they were taking it from search results.

You could check it and they were footnoting. And maybe if you footnoted the Elmer's glue thing to whatever his name was on Reddit, who said it 11 years ago as a joke, the reader would go well, that's obviously a joke, even though the AI didn't know the difference.

0:22:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, one of the bad results, I forget that was the rock one. I the bad results. I forget that by the rock one. I can't remember it was off it was. It was obviously it was out of an onion piece, right, but somebody, for the sake of seo, had rewritten the onion piece and ended up higher in search than the onion piece. So even if if google said never, ever quote the onion, which would be the most basic rule, it doesn't matter, because somebody wanted to fool google with seo and it worked and it still read that as you point out in the web, we soon to appear from penguin, penguin harper or whoever it is oh basic they're all the same basic in the fall, as you point out.

0:22:58 - Leo Laporte
Um, we couldn't. We ai really wouldn't exist. It's a con. You say it's a continuum from the internet. It wouldn't exist if we didn't already have all of this knowledge digitized and online so that we could ingest it. But the fact is that knowledge is varied in quality dramatically and no one can say, well, that's good quality, that's bad quality, there's no way to do that. So you're going to have a lot of junk in there. But I think we both, we all do, we all. Let me just posit this we all agree it's how you use it. That is utility. This is just a bad use of it. Yes, paris, do you agree?

0:23:36 - Paris Martineau
I mean, there's definitely utility to large language models and applications of artificial intelligence technology models and applications of artificial intelligence technology, I mean.

0:23:48 - Benito Gonzalez
My question about that, though, has always been is um, is it going to be? Is it the value to the consumer the same like? Are we gonna? Is it? Is it worth the trillions that are being invested?

0:23:56 - Leo Laporte
I think it is I think it is that's benito gonzalez, by the way our producer, uh, who is also running the board. I think it is benito, because we already see some uses. I mean self-driving vehicles, right Well.

0:24:12 - Paris Martineau
Well, I think it's Leo. I think it's difficult to lump in all applications of any sort of artificial intelligence or machine learning into what I think Benita was referring to, which is the massive outpouring of funding that has arisen for anything with the word AI on it in the last couple of years.

0:24:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but how much money did Uber get we pour money into dumb things that can never pay? Off.

0:24:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Doesn't mean it's good.

0:24:44 - Leo Laporte
People are buying social the prices are going up

0:24:48 - Jeff Jarvis
like crazy now.

0:24:49 - Benito Gonzalez
It costs a fortune yeah, and we're at that point in uber where it sucks yeah, but yeah, that didn't stop people from pouring money into it.

0:24:55 - Leo Laporte
And one could argue that every bit of the benefits or of the results of uber were negative things like making manhattan undriveable. Uh, not every one of them. Some of them were good. My daughter doesn't have a car. If it weren't for uber, she would have to have a car.

Um, so I'm just pointing out we waste money like crazy, yeah that's true, yeah just saying that so we spend a lot of money and the investors are putting money into it just they did with uber because they see down the road a potential upside. Uber's upside was self-driving vehicles, which didn't manifest soon enough. The upside of AI potentially is curing cancer, creating new drugs. Mrna vaccines would not have emerged so quickly without AI Creating new materials, perhaps helping us invent cold fusion there could. There are some potential upsides that would be so incredibly valuable that every penny invested is worth many, many dollars. So that's why investors do it. The people who invest in this stuff are investing disposable income. One hopes kids don't put your rent money into Uber stock, but I mean, is this the best use of all that money?

0:26:10 - Paris Martineau
Well, you don't get to choose, they get to choose.

0:26:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, but Paris, I agree, and I'm going to give you an example right now. So OpenAI just did a deal today with Vox and the Atlantic. They've done deals with Wall Street, with News Corp and National Springer and the Associated Press and the FT. Okay, number one. They don't actually want that content. They don't need Atlantic thumb suckers. What are they doing? They're spending the money on lobbying and PR. Please don't sue us and don't lobby against us. That's all they're doing. But they're also putting the thumb on the scale of news and media. The money should go to places that are actually reporting on communities and doing things. That the information that they could actually use to answer questions out of AI. But that's not what's happening, because it's dumb VC money. The same time, you have Andreessen and Saudis who invested a supposed $6 billion in Elon Musk. How stupid, can you?

0:27:06 - Leo Laporte
get Okay, but you don't get to choose the people whose money it is get to choose.

0:27:12 - Jeff Jarvis
That's true, but they in turn, use it. I think Paris is right is that if we're trying to look as a society about how to support the news, the reason I'm going to California next week is to talk about legislation that is trying to redirect wealth to the wrong parties hedge funds in the news industry. Now, that's government doing it, but it's also government trying to force tech companies to do it. I think Paris' question is right Is this the best use of money? We can still ask that question.

0:27:41 - Leo Laporte
You can ask that question, but the people who invest the money are the ones who decide the use. I'll give you an example where we shouldn't get involved. I don't know how much the 2024 presidential election is going to cost, but the last cycle, 14.4 billion dollars spent, spent usefully. No, uh, the beneficiaries, I guess, were Facebook and the local TV channels and stuff. So they might argue oh no, that's money well spent. But you could easily eliminate that with campaign finance reform. You could set limits. There's all sorts of ways you could stop that. That's the result of Citizens United, but we didn't. Now that's something you could say well, we really should do something about it. But you can't say oh, you know a billionaire who decides to spend $100 million on a very speculative notion that maybe grok will become the next big thing in AI. You can't say to him well, that's you, shouldn't society?

0:28:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Well, but maybe we can definitely not put any money into it ourselves.

0:28:43 - Leo Laporte
Well, you shouldn't. That's what I'm saying. We can definitely not put any money into it ourselves. Well, you shouldn't. That's what I'm saying. Nobody who doesn't have a huge amount of discretionary income should be investing in any of this.

0:28:50 - Benito Gonzalez
I'm not talking about investment I'm talking about, by purchasing the services and products. If you don't get value out of it, don't that's called the free, I would also say that they're not going to make any of that money back.

0:29:02 - Leo Laporte
And that's what you don't know. But that's for them to decide. You don't know.

0:29:05 - Jeff Jarvis
They think they are, we can tax their carried damned interest. Well, I and put that.

0:29:10 - Leo Laporte
I think those are the kinds of things we should work on absolutely, but that's a larger issue. That's because yeah I feel like billionaires are a benign influence.

You might make the case that it's good that there are people with that much discretionary income, or we would never have. I don't know asteroid mining. You know there's no money right now in asteroid mining. There really isn't. It's a very speculative investment, but it's an investment that, if it paid off, would be massive. So if somebody decides, you know I think we should work on asteroid mining and wants to put their money, in it.

0:29:45 - Jeff Jarvis
You've been watching For All Mankind. You got to the last season of that. No, I didn't like that show.

0:29:49 - Paris Martineau
Oh, okay and is there a reason why the people making those decisions have to be singular billionaires instead of, you know, government bodies? Or community-run institutions.

0:30:03 - Leo Laporte
I wish the government would, but we don't have any consensus on what.

0:30:06 - Jeff Jarvis
What the budget for nasa and there's a fair amount of the government I don't trust either.

0:30:10 - Leo Laporte
Well, frankly, this is the problem with the current artemis program, for instance, is really just a boondoggle to give money to various aerospace companies. There's no intent really to make it anything of it, it's just a giveaway. Congress you know, every congress member says I'd like to have some pork fat for my, my widget manufacturer, so that they can build they're always saying that they're all saying it, it's all, it's all. Uh, you know, pork fat, it's all.

0:30:41 - Paris Martineau
To bring it back a little bit, though, to the open ai um media companies discussion. One thing that I think is really interesting about all this, at least from my perspective as a self-interested person, is five days ago, before the Atlantic announced its partnership with OpenAI, jessica Lesson, the founder of my company, the, wrote a piece in the atlantic titled publishers striking ai deals are making a fatal error. That I thought was really well considered and interestingly argued and I'm not just saying that because she pays my bills. Um, the piece kind of goes into this argument.

One of the fundamental points and I'm reading from the article here that media companies would rush to do these deals after being burned by their tech deals of the past is extraordinarily distressing, and these AI partnerships are far worse for publishers. 10 years ago, it was at least plausible to believe that tech companies would become serious about distributing news to consumers. They were building actual products like Google News. Today's AI chatbots are so early and make mistakes so often that I think it's, frankly, you know, hard to imagine that this is going to turn out well for any of these publishers other than them just getting cash now.

0:32:02 - Jeff Jarvis
I had a discussion with a Norwegian publisher on LinkedIn today about just this and Schifferstedt is the smartest company in media and news, I think. Besides, the information public presence company accept it and you know, saying I'm trying to balance this, I'm trying to figure this out and I left a very lengthy response, poor guy. But they're trying to do it more sensibly, there where media are coming, coming together and they're asking what's good for all of media, what's good for all the country. What's happening in the US and in the rest of Europe is a cash grab by those who are already rich and yeah, so they get some money out of OpenAI.

It's not going to change the business. It's not going to save them. It's not going to do anything to improve citizenry. It's not going to change the business. It's not going to save them. It's not going to do anything to improve citizenry. It's not going to do anything for open AI either, except be honest, because they can scrape whatever they need to train the models. They're just doing this to forestall lobbying and meanwhile the New York Times and the evil Alden Global, which owns the largest newspaper, one of the largest newspaper chains in America, is suing for their bucket of money. But that's not going to help either. It's all dumb.

0:33:11 - Leo Laporte
All right, let's take a break. I don't have anything to disagree with you. I think you're all right.

0:33:18 - Jeff Jarvis
That's no fun, is it?

0:33:21 - Paris Martineau
Disagreements on a podcast.

0:33:23 - Leo Laporte
I just don't know how we solve all this. You know, I don't. I mean, this is like it or not kind of a capitalistic society. We have a system. I think the truth of this is the system isn't doing such a good job right now, but I guess maybe it's always been that way, right, and we've just kind of muddled along and somehow we uh, somehow we survive. Is that the case, Ed? Ed, I won't call you Ed anymore, Jeff, you're the historian, Ed. Where are you, Ed? Jeff, you're the historian. I mean, what I loved about this web we weave and I'm in the process of reading it so I can write you a nice blurb is you're, uh, you're, the one who knows whether this is normal or is this different than the usual?

0:34:13 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm gonna go back. This is gutenberg parenthesis time drink. I'm gonna go back to print right, print you trusted. The one of my favorite parts in that book is when I described the system of fama, which is about about social of authority, because nobody trusted print and print at the beginning was highly unreliable and people couldn't trust that either. It took time to build the institutions of editing and publishing that enabled people to understand that there was something to it, but that took a long, long time. I think we'll eventually come up with new systems and new institutions to figure a lot of this out, uh, but it could take a century, yeah well, I don't know if we have a century to be honest with you.

Well, you and I don't a hundred years. Ai might, might keep paris alive for a lot longer than us, though I feel likea hundred years from now and she'll say she'll say you know, leo was.

0:35:05 - Leo Laporte
We don't know anything about what what it's going to be like a hundred years from now. I don't think we know what it's going to be like 10 years from now.

0:35:12 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

0:35:13 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't. It feels like we are in a big shift, somewhat, but maybe not Again. That's the question is like is this just normal? Everybody feels this way all the time or are we really in some sort of interesting change, sea change? Bigger than the industrial revolution bigger than the internet revolution I feel like we are. That's the hubris of the present tense.

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0:39:59 - Jeff Jarvis
You get them so confused.

0:39:59 - Leo Laporte
They all seem the same to me. They all seem the same. She was on the board. Her name is Helen Toner and I want to give credit to the podcast. It was called the ted ai show. Is that ted? I think it must be ted. It's capitalized. Uh, when chat gpta came out in november 2022, she says the board found out on Twitter. They were not told ahead of time. Now, I have not been on many boards, I don't know much about corporate governance, but it seems to me that you're supposed to tell the board when you're going to make a major product announcement. Am I wrong?

Yeah, the board should have known that this was coming out yeah, the board should have known that this was coming out um open. Ai has not commented. In a statement provided to the ted podcast, brett taylor, the current board chief, says we're disappointed that ms toner continues to re-envisit these issues. He doesn't say it's wrong, he just says can we drop it please? A?

0:41:04 - Jeff Jarvis
and b. They did this whole theatrical thing about how they were going to do this investigation. They hired a law firm to do it and we never heard anything from that. It's like it's okay, sam's back, it's good she said altman didn't disclose.

0:41:17 - Leo Laporte
This is another big one. Remember sam always would say, hey, I have no stake in this. I have no, I have no investment here. I'm not making money on this. He said it again and again and again. This was to reassure you that he had was not in this for profit. Well, turns out he uh, he actually owned a big chunk of open ai startup fund and did not tell the board that either.

0:41:39 - Paris Martineau
Uh, she criticizes leadership baffling to me that the board wouldn't know about an investment in the company I mean mean that is basic stuff.

0:41:46 - Leo Laporte
I think it's corporate malfeasance. I mean honestly, seriously. I understand why they fired him. At this point she criticizes leadership on safety. This is, of course, the biggest tussle still going on at OpenAI, In fact, and let us please put air quotes around safety, because it means something different to everybody.

Well, that's around safety, because it means something different to everybody. Well, including she's. She's a little bit on the doomer side too, so, uh, she said on multiple occasions he gave us inaccurate information about the formal safety processes that the company did have in place, meaning it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what we might need to change. After years of such events, toner, all four of us came to the conclusion we just couldn't believe the things Sam was telling us. And now, hearing this, I think you're right.

0:42:31 - Paris Martineau
And this correct me if I'm wrong is a problem that people have raised at his previous companies he's worked at.

0:42:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes.

0:42:39 - Paris Martineau
That there have been a lot of concerns raised that he's a little duplicitous as an executive. I believe that's what people who had worked with him at previous startups had said.

0:42:50 - Jeff Jarvis
And, let's not forget, he also attacked her for a paper that she wrote, which was supposed to be from her position as an independent board member keeping watch on the issues of open AI.

0:43:01 - Leo Laporte
Let's talk about AI safety. Do you think that that's not possible or that that's a meaningless thing?

0:43:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Me. Yeah, I think it's not possible. I think alignment is impossible, because the machine doesn't make decisions. It matches words, that's all it does.

0:43:15 - Paris Martineau
What do you mean by?

0:43:16 - Jeff Jarvis
alignment. Alignment is the belief that we can align our human values with the machine and make it follow what we want to do. But there's no meaning to it. So there's not only to that Paris, it's worse than that. The guy who left OpenAI. He was in charge not of alignment but of super alignment. Oh yes, add the super in front of it, so it's AGI super alignment.

0:43:39 - Paris Martineau
It's a bull sandwich well, I mean, jeff, do you believe that there should be nothing done to ensure safety at these companies? To ensure that the goals of the people who are programming these large language models and setting parameters for it align in some way.

0:43:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, here's the problem best practices I think in theory, I absolutely agree, but the problem is, I think, that everybody's getting fooled about what's possible is that, um, you can't tell the machine not to do what we would call hate. Now, you can try to program in every imagined hateful thing you can think anyone might ask for and tell it not to do that, but that's the best you're going to get. There's no such thing as guardrails, and to me, that's the real safety. Issue is we're lying to people and making them think that we can get rid of these issues and we can't. Again, I'm not against the technology, but it's fraudulent.

0:44:37 - Paris Martineau
I do think that that's a good point the idea that one downside of these groups is that they're making people, they're giving people a false sense of security, possibly in these technologies.

0:44:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Paradoxically because they're also trying to give them a false sense of insecurity that we are so powerful over these machines. If you trust us and give us the full power, we will manage them and you'll be okay. We won't destroy mankind, which we couldn't do, because we're that powerful. We won't. That's a lie too.

0:45:06 - Leo Laporte
mankind which we couldn't do because we're that powerful, we won't um, that's a lie too anthropic was started because by people who didn't believe that open ai was paying enough attention to safety under this agi view. Yes, yeah, they've now hired uh, the one of the open ai researchers who resigned, jan likey.

0:45:22 - Jeff Jarvis
He's going he was the guy in charge of super alignment, yeah and now he's a charge of of super alignment again at anthropic.

0:45:30 - Leo Laporte
I I have to say I don't feel myself enough of an expert to weigh in on this safety thing. Uh, people who seem to. I mean look this guy, this is what jan does um believes that there's an issue and an issue and you need to pay attention to this. He says we're long overdue in getting incredibly serious about the implications of AGI. We must prioritize preparing for them as best we can. Well, but okay. But, jeff, neither you nor I have the technical skills. He's buying the AGI thing.

0:46:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, no, no, no, no. This is logic. This is pure, simple logic. No, agi is BS. And then saying further you're going to create something that's more intelligent, more powerful than we are, and then we're going to create these mechanisms to control it so that nobody can use it. It's all BS. And back to Benito's point billions upon billions are being invested in it because they're pumping the BS side of this about how all powerful it is, about how they'll reach general intelligence. It will do more than we can do as human beings. I don't buy it Now. I don't buy it with present technology. Could there be other things that come down the pike? Yeah, but generative AI ain't it.

0:46:41 - Leo Laporte
So here's the reason I'm not so as convinced as you, not because I took a walk on the beach, but because, nor because I believe that, because you were carried when you were walking by a robot, a friendly by a robot jesus.

Yes, no, I, I honestly don't know whether we could achieve that or not. I don't know. I don't think we know, uh, at all I. What I do notice, though, is that, after years of poo-pooing ai and saying, oh, it's just a pipe dream, ai is doing some remarkable, unpredicted things, which tells me we didn't know what ai was capable of, and it is now doing some very interesting things. I am not so confident in my belief that it can't get much, much better. Very quickly, like, who knows, like next year. Elon says next year. What are you?

0:47:40 - Paris Martineau
what are you thinking of when you say much, much better?

0:47:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Define AGI Well two different questions, but I think that that's a, I think one of the bad framework for what safety really?

I understand that they throw this around. I don't know what artificial general intelligence is. I do know that we are using ai to do things we didn't contemplate it being able to do before, and that it's doing them effectively. You're seeing it being used to read x-rays effectively. There was a recent study that said that AI was able to predict cancers in people who are not yet diagnosed as cancerous brain lesions by looking at their brain and saying, well and and I know the ai is not thinking well, I know, I see something, but the ai simply trained on many, many, many brain scans and knows what the outcome of those brain scans were and then is able to draw a connection between the two that humans have not been able to draw. That proved to be correct. Is that AGI? No, because it's not general. It's very, very specific, but it is nevertheless an ability beyond what humans can do. Yes, you agree.

0:48:55 - Jeff Jarvis
People thought that linotypes were almost human. You know what?

0:49:01 - Leo Laporte
Dogs can smell COVID. We know that I can't smell COVID. It doesn't mean a dog, it has agi but it does mean that a dog can do something a human can't can do tasks it could absolutely that's justification alone, ai can do things humans can't do is that

agi, I don't know, and I think that that doesn't matter, but I think the point is oh, it matters. Well, but the point is ai is getting better and better at doing things that we can't do. It isn't unreasonable to be concerned that it might prove to do things we don't want it to do and we don't know how or why, and and and not having prepared for this, that's all super alignment is about is just preparing, thinking about these things, so that prepare for what, though you?

0:49:51 - AI
have? We don't know, but you have to think about it.

0:49:53 - Leo Laporte
Not thinking about it is not well. We know that one thing that's not going to do anything is pretending it's not going to happen. If maybe, fine in it and maybe it won't have.

0:50:03 - Jeff Jarvis
The problem is that this is the point of the Stochastic Parents paper. All of that big Doomer talk distracts from the absolute, real, present tense issues of bias and environment and fraud and misuse of human beings in terms of using data. Those are present tense issues that are getting ignored because in this, oh no, we care about the 10 to the 58 future human beings in terms of using data. Those are present tense issues that are getting ignored because in this, oh no, we care about the 10 to the 58 future human beings. We care about saving all of mankind. That's the peril of all of that talk, of the AGI talk. That's what the and it all comes from boys, it comes from AI boys. Who is on the other side of this? The people who are never getting quoted, women and scholars of color Ruman Chaudhry and Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell and Emily Bender, and Well, wait Let me give you an example of a thing an AI could do right now that might be dangerous Take people's jobs.

0:51:04 - Leo Laporte
Is that not an ai safety issue?

0:51:07 - Jeff Jarvis
no, it's a buggy whips.

0:51:10 - Leo Laporte
It happens all the time in in in technologies and jobs so we shouldn't think about it, prepare for it or worry about it?

0:51:18 - Jeff Jarvis
oh sure, think about it, but that's a very specific thing and, well, that's one of many things I'm just using it as an example.

0:51:23 - Leo Laporte
Aren't there many things that we should think about?

0:51:27 - Jeff Jarvis
That's why they talk about guaranteed income and that kind of stuff. But there are certain jobs and yeah, what do you do? You invest in education, which is being condemned all around.

0:51:40 - Leo Laporte
I feel like it's a mistake to say no, no, no.

0:51:43 - Paris Martineau
It's stupid to think about it or plan for it, or or do, or consider ai safety it well, if you're talking about jobs, I would like to bring up a point, I think, that bonito brought up in the podcast a couple of weeks ago, which is what one thing we should think about is what is an entire multiple classes of people going to do in a future where entry or mid-level creative jobs simply do not exist because of the rise and permanence of generative AI technologies?

0:52:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I would submit that's an AI safety issue. I mean, that's in the realm of.

0:52:17 - Paris Martineau
I think that's more of a societal AI safety issue, but it's in the realm of preparing for an AI that could be hazardous to humans.

0:52:22 - Leo Laporte
For an AI that could be hazardous to humans. Elon says probably. This was at an AI tech conference on Thursday and everything Elon says is suspect. But he says probably none of us will have jobs. If you want to do a job that'll kind of be like a hobby you can do a job, but otherwise, ai and the robots will provide any goods and services you want. Now, of course, if you don't have a job, I don't know how you're going to pay for those goods and services. He says oh well, then you'll need a universal high income, not to be confused with a basic income, there would be no shortage of goods or services.

Okay, I admit Now.

0:53:02 - Jeff Jarvis
But see, jeff, wouldn't it be a mistake to say well, that's absolutely not going to happen, so we shouldn't think about it. Yeah, it's a mistake, because in no sensible present world A should you ever believe anything that Elon Musk says and B does that have a clear path to it? I just put up on the rundown something I just saw. You know what?

0:53:22 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute In 1930, 1930, was there a clear path to this, to a smartphone.

0:53:28 - Jeff Jarvis
So how could you have planned for it? How could you have said in 1930, oh, we must be ready, for the people were thinking they could have devices? I just I read about this. When it came to the typewriter, the newspaper said well, the next thing we know it'll be able to spell and then it'll be able to think. In 1880, okay, okay, eventually we got a machine that could be defined as thinking in some form or another. But that's been 150 years. So you're saying I mean, I don't think we have to wait for it to be thinking.

0:53:57 - Leo Laporte
I think we're already at a place where it's having noticeable impacts on people's and we should think about it through workers that, yes, there was a really interesting, I mean interesting is probably the wrong word.

0:54:08 - Paris Martineau
the ceo of clarna, um, posted a, made a press release and posted on social media a couple times this week. I linked to it on line 81 in the rundown about how clarna has already been using generative AI to replace marketing workers. He went into detail about how Gen AI has already saved Klarna 10 million in marketing this year and that their in-house marketing team is half the size it was last year, but they're producing more because they're using a variety of Gen AI tools, and I think that that is the sort of reality that we need to increasingly prepare for, where companies like various parts of companies that used to exist over the past couple of decades, suddenly won't, and the effect that that is going to have in the labor market is unprecedented.

0:54:59 - Jeff Jarvis
So in the next book I'm writing about the line of type I haven't even finished your last book.

0:55:04 - Leo Laporte
Can you slow down a little bit? I'm still working.

0:55:06 - Jeff Jarvis
What's the name for this?

0:55:07 - Paris Martineau
one.

0:55:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Hot type.

0:55:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I love it. You're good at naming. I got to say well, not always me.

0:55:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So so the, the typesetters said oh no, we're going to be replaced, we're going to be followed, the people who destroyed looms and fought the technology. But the wise typographical union said you know, no, it's inevitable, the machine's going to come, we're going to have to deal with this, but we have to be the ones to use it, we have to be the ones to control it, and if you don't, we're going to cause all kinds of problems. So the publishers agreed. Their jobs went down for about 20 years and then they knew it would spread and it went hugely, hugely up. It went up and up and up until the 1960s, when I happen to have a prop for those of you. Do you know what this is?

0:55:50 - Leo Laporte
No, it's a magnetic something.

0:55:53 - Paris Martineau
It's a cool circle with a smaller circle inside. It's a center. This is a circle and on.

0:55:58 - Jeff Jarvis
there are.

0:55:59 - Paris Martineau
A precision pace setter. So there are you probably can't see it, but are little, little uh things here.

0:56:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Those are letters. This was cold type light was shown through these letters on a high speed turn onto photographic paper. That's what finally killed gutenberg a half millennium later, and that's what the itu tried to fight and they lost. And they killed six of nine New York newspapers and their union, and they all lost their jobs as a result. So they didn't write one time where they said we're going to take over the technology. The next time we said we're going to fight it, and you don't know. I just put up on the rundown line 82, a statement that I just saw two minutes ago from Ruben Chaudhary on LinkedIn linking to this, which is a UN statement on the risks from generative AI. It is filled with risks to pay attention to, absolutely. I completely agree. It has not jacked to do with all this BS about AGI.

0:56:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, okay, fine, If I take the letters AGI out of it, are you still? Do you think safety is still an issue?

0:57:03 - Jeff Jarvis
You've got to take the meaning of this AGI crap out of it. Of course, safety is an issue, but you've got to take the meaning that the AI boys impute in this notion of AGI and super alignment. That's all BS.

0:57:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, sam Altman agrees with you, and that's why he's basically eliminated the super alignment team.

0:57:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh no, he created another team, put himself on it. He's on the new safety team. No, he just didn't like where they were headed. He believes in AGI. Believe me, I don't agree with St. Malton, there are risks, so what is your position? I don't understand what your position is. It's okay to look at safety as long as you don't have AGI.

No. Look at where we are today. There's plenty of risks to pay attention to today. Reread the Stochastic Parents paper and all those risks are laid out there. There's more here. Do not pay attention to this BS about how it's going to be smarter than us. It could destroy mankind. We need to pay attention to the 10 to the 58th future human beings. We need to populate Mars. Just stop with that crap.

0:58:05 - Leo Laporte
I get it now. You're saying, by saying let's look at the future hazards, you're ignoring the actual hazards that are today. Yes, and that we should pay attention to what's going on today. Yeah, you're not against safety, but you're against this whole idea of well, let's not worry about anything now, let's worry about what might happen. I agree with you on that.

0:58:26 - Jeff Jarvis
I think you could do both. I have a chapter about those people in the web we weave out in October. I think you could do both. I say what scares me most is those guys.

0:58:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you shouldn't exclude the issues that are arising today, absolutely not.

0:58:38 - Jeff Jarvis
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't, you shouldn't, be distracted from those.

0:58:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, right, but I think it's not. There's enough bandwidth to go around. You can think about what might happen. I guess it is pretty speculative. It's pretty speculative.

0:58:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm curious. Paris I look longingly at the information is holding an AI summit. Ooh, Coming up Smart.

0:58:58 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you're going.

0:59:00 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I'm not. No, are you going Paris? Oh Paris.

0:59:01 - Paris Martineau
No, are you going to Paris? Oh Paris, when is it? I don't know.

0:59:06 - Jeff Jarvis
You're not invited, it's on your homepage. Let me see here San Francisco of course September 5th.

0:59:11 - Paris Martineau
Oh then, no, no, I'm not.

0:59:14 - Leo Laporte
Could you send me your invite?

0:59:16 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, by the way.

0:59:19 - Leo Laporte
Amir Ifradi and Wayne Ma have confirmed Mark Glurman's Bloomberg. Mark Glumberg's Mark.

0:59:25 - Paris Martineau
Glurman's Bloomberg Mark Bloomberg's.

0:59:29 - Leo Laporte
Scoop that OpenAI has done a deal with Apple. Apple will have its Worldwide Developers Conference a week from Monday, and they are expected to announce all sorts of new features in iOS 18 and Mac OS 15.

0:59:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Which wait? Who pays whom in that deal?

0:59:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh, does it say, can you ask amir for us? Uh, paris, because I'm curious I'm gonna guess not saying apple is apple is a tough negotiator.

We know that google paid them 20 billion dollars a year a couple of years ago to have it be the default search. I'm going to guess that google and open ai were in a bidding war for apple to pay apple, yeah, to pay apple for apple's attention. It's all pr. On the other hand, apple definitely needs this because they don't really their series is. This is not the brightest tool in the shed and, uh, probably could use some help but I think it also said that google is it's not necessarily a one-company deal.

No, they're still apparently talking to Google, so Apple may offer you a. I don't know if Apple will offer you a choice or Apple will say well, we have a chat, a Siri-style chat, and it's using OpenAI. I don't know. I think the consensus, as the dust has settled, is that OpenAI 4.0 is actually pretty good, right or no? Do you not like it? Am I mistaken to give it any credit?

1:00:55 - Paris Martineau
I mean, what are you giving it credit for?

1:00:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I just talk to it all the time. It's my little buddy.

1:01:01 - Paris Martineau
But what are you saying to it?

1:01:04 - Leo Laporte
I ask it questions.

1:01:04 - Paris Martineau
It's better than siri on factual matter were you using siri regularly before? Are we allowed to say your?

1:01:10 - Leo Laporte
name you gave up. So when is apple's worldwide developer conference? Is it coming up?

1:01:20 - Jeff Jarvis
you could have typed wwdc in the box box.

1:01:23 - AI
Wwdc is coming up soon. It will take place from June 10th to June 14th 2024. That voice is creepy. A special in-person event at Apple Park on the opening day. This year's WWDC will feature the latest advancements in iOS, ipados, macos, watchos, tvos and VisionOS, focusing on new tools and technologies for developers. Expect significant updates, especially with iOS 18, which is rumored to include watch os, tv os and vision os, focusing on new tools and technologies for developers. Expect significant updates, especially with ios 18, which is rumored to include you asked what it is and new customization options.

1:01:53 - Leo Laporte
This is as good, though, as the information you would have gotten if you asked me that same question I simply in the middle of you asking it, that I just googled when.

1:02:04 - Paris Martineau
Well, I thought I googled when wwdc turns out.

1:02:08 - Leo Laporte
I actually googled wgeb instead of when and then wwdc but still, I immediately got well, yeah, all of those things if all you want is a fact like that, google's better, but I mean, well, no, she's no, I even got all of that information.

1:02:25 - Paris Martineau
What it is there's no in-person attendance. That you know. It's a technology conference held by Apple that's going to give me updates. What?

1:02:32 - Leo Laporte
is Hashimoto's disease. What are the symptoms? What should I be looking for? Well, if you trusted for this, you're a fool. It's actually pretty good because it's using.

1:02:41 - AI
Hashimoto's disease is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the thyroid, a small gland at the base of your neck. This can lead to hypothyroidism, where I'm starting to like the personality. The thyroid doesn't produce enough hormones. Oh no, I would never hire him Really. Yeah, I hate it. He seems really smarmy.

1:03:01 - Leo Laporte
Yes, they're all smarmy.

1:03:03 - Jeff Jarvis
It's mansplaining.

1:03:05 - Leo Laporte
You just got to machine to mansplain, but I can have it just as easily female-splained.

1:03:09 - Benito Gonzalez
It's still uncanny valley boys to me.

1:03:12 - Leo Laporte
Okay, hey, they're painting the asphalt out front of our offices. Is there any hazard from breathing in those fumes?

1:03:32 - AI
That's a reasonable question. Yes, if it doesn't know what paint from breathing in asphalt fumes.

1:03:35 - Jeff Jarvis
These fumes can cause irritation to the eyes, nose and throat.

1:03:36 - AI
You said paint might lead to headaches, dizziness and respiratory issues. It's best to ensure good ventilation and limit exposure, especially during heavy paving activities. If you have concerns, consider consulting with an occupational health expert.

1:03:52 - Leo Laporte
I think that's a good.

1:03:54 - Paris Martineau
Don't you think that's a good? Did you say painting or paving?

1:03:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, but they actually are paving it. So, even though I said but you said, paint Well our.

1:04:02 - Jeff Jarvis
And it gave you an answer per pave give me a question and you just, you just skated right over that and said isn't that cute, isn't that clever, isn't?

1:04:09 - Leo Laporte
it smart. How many angels can dance in the head of a pin you?

1:04:14 - AI
pinhead you ah, the classic philosophical and theological question. It's often used to illustrate scholastic debates or to highlight the limits of human reasoning about metaphysical concepts In a more humorous or rhetorical sense. It's a way to ponder the infinite or the absurd. How about you? Do you find it more amusing or thought-provoking?

1:04:38 - Paris Martineau
Thanks, Hermione While we're on this, I'll just say the one thought that's been ringing in my head for the last seven minutes and I've got to say it to get it out is if no one has done a bit on stochastic parrots, that is, stochastic parrot heads, I think someone should, and I just need to say that so that I'd stop Looking for my lust.

1:05:04 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. We'll have to get Jimmy Buffett back from the dead with that one, let's take a break.

1:05:09 - Jeff Jarvis
There is Stochastic Parrot's Day.

1:05:12 - Paris Martineau
Listen. I googled Stochastic Parrot's heads in quotes and got nothing back. And I think there's a real content.

1:05:18 - Leo Laporte
Opportunity there for someone I think there is. I think that all of the movie tropes and sci-fi tropes about yes, go to your music.

1:05:27 - Jeff Jarvis
What's? I think there's. I think that all of the movie tropes and sci-fi tropes about yes, go to your music. What's?

1:05:31 - Paris Martineau
the music one we like, suno, which just got an investment of course. Yeah, you've got to get now. We've got to get a song out of.

1:05:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Suno for. Stochastic Parrot's Day.

1:05:37 - Leo Laporte
Okay, parrot's Heads. So what's the prompt here? Write us oh, I've got to continue my account.

1:05:47 - Paris Martineau
hold on, I'm not logged in uh, write us a song celebrating stochastic parrots heads day write a song about the stochastic parrots, uh metaphor, or like term in the style of jimett, about the perils of AI. About the perils of AI. Yeah, I guess I don't expect it.

1:06:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Risks of AI.

1:06:13 - Leo Laporte
All right, all right, let's see here. I said write a song in the style of Jimmy Buffett about stochastic parrot heads and the risks of AI. Ladies and gentlemen, we will have that song for you in just a moment.

But first a word from our sponsor, the show brought to you by Yahoo Finance. You know, whenever I want to know what's going on and we are always looking at quarterly results there's always a little race to see which company's worth $3 trillion, which one's worth more. Whenever I want to know market cap, when I want to get the news about any company, whenever I want to know why the Dow is down 400 points today, I go to Yahoo Finance. You know, when it comes to your financial future, I'm sure you've done the right things right. You've saved, you researched, you invested in the right. You know the best you could and all you could.

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AI talking about AI Isn't? That Is this.

1:09:03 - AI
Jimmy Buffet-esque talking about AI. Isn't that risky? Risky Is this, jimmy Buffet-esque.

1:09:08 - Leo Laporte
Well, it's a little slow. All right, let me try the other one here.

1:09:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Let's skip ahead.

1:09:26 - Leo Laporte
They need more rem, yeah Cold drinks.

1:09:31 - Paris Martineau
It's pretty good.

1:09:34 - AI
Danger lurks in AI Town. Don't test it. Parrot heads, oh yeah, bites and rust beneath the land. Be careful what you ask them for.

1:09:49 - Leo Laporte
You might not like what they have in store See AI can be used to dis-AI Unstored.

1:10:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, not the greatest thing ever. Did you put up a link to that in the rundown so I can share it with Timnit Gaboru and company?

1:10:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, which one do you want?

1:10:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Both Crediting Paris for the idea. Yeah.

1:10:09 - Leo Laporte
I'll make them both public and I'll give you links.

1:10:11 - Paris Martineau
Stochastic parrots.

1:10:14 - Leo Laporte
To both Stochastic parrots.

1:10:20 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know if Timnit will approve or?

1:10:21 - Leo Laporte
not, she might not, but there we go. There's one, and then I'll put the other one in there.

1:10:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know.

1:10:25 - Leo Laporte
It's just fun, right, it's just fun, it's not?

1:10:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, that's the thing, it's creativity, yeah. So I was listening to Lev Manovich I think I mentioned this before from CUNY for a talk about art and creativity, and he said that before, before the Romantic period, there was no sense of art and creativity. There was only one creator, god, and creativity came through moving away from the church and we went over to think about that.

1:10:52 - Leo Laporte
Is that really true? And so we asked whether the machine is creative.

1:10:56 - Benito Gonzalez
Tell the people who painted the caves in France. Or Michelangelo.

1:11:01 - Leo Laporte
This is cave painter erasure. I think Michelangelo was pretty creative.

1:11:06 - Jeff Jarvis
But what he's saying is, if we reject the idea that AI can be creative, we change our definition of creativity, which I think is interesting. And so yes we could even ascribe I'm not going to ascribe sentience or general intelligence to AI, but as a tool to work with, I think that it can be creative. That's a pretty high thing.

1:11:30 - Leo Laporte
You know what? I think we've made the case many, many, many, many times over the last six months. I think we just have to wait and see. I think you're right. We should probably pay attention to current harms, potential harms, do what we can to mitigate those, but I think we might, who knows? We might be surprised by what it could do and we might not. I completely acknowledge that we could be just heading into another AI winter because we overpromised.

And just like self-driving cars. We just can't do it, Although we've come a lot farther than we thought we would. I don't know, let's see. Did we talk about the ICQ powering down? Do you even know what ICQ is? Paris, Paris.

1:12:19 - Paris Martineau
Nope.

1:12:19 - Leo Laporte
Nope.

1:12:21 - Paris Martineau
ICQ.

1:12:22 - Jeff Jarvis
It's one of the great brands ever. It's just a brilliant brand, great brands, brands.

1:12:26 - Leo Laporte
I think that's an oxymoron just because it existed before you were born. Yeah, kid, is that an icq sound?

1:12:34 - Paris Martineau
I think it is benito sneaking in a little icq sounds there, uh I see, listen, if this can help me achieve my dreams of bringing a soundboard to twit I'm.

1:12:44 - Leo Laporte
You can bring a soundboard. You can bring a soundboard. Nearly 30 years icq has been around as the. It wasn't the first messenger program, but it was definitely the big one, until aol came along.

1:12:57 - Jeff Jarvis
In fact, aol eventually bought them, folded into instant making, making yosi vardia rich man and the um center of tech development in israel.

1:13:09 - Leo Laporte
Uh, you, I'm sure, used aim aol instant messenger yeah that was its successor aim and msn and msn is that's also that's.

1:13:17 - Jeff Jarvis
That's just not cool.

1:13:18 - Leo Laporte
Like us early kids so june 26, the software just will stop working there to take the servers down. I did did not know this, but a new version of the program was released as recently as 2020. The current owner is called VK. It's a Russian. That's the Russian company. Yeah, digital Sky Technologies. It's still popular in Russia, apparently, but VK is going to shut it down and move you on to VK Messenger. So if you wish to communicate with anybody in the Russian Union, please use VK Messenger Anyway.

1:14:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you know that you can still go to CompuServecom? What, what do you get? You get headlines for old peoplecom. What, what do you get? You get headlines for old people.

1:14:08 - Leo Laporte
Wow, that's interesting. That never went away. Huh, it's not loading for me, it's just shaking like it's an old person. Oh, that's because I typed the wrong URL, which probably is a malicious URL. It's probably desperately trying to serve me garbage. Oh, look at this. Look at this, it's the old compu serve. I can even get compu serve mail. What? No, it goes to hell.

1:14:32 - Paris Martineau
That's confusing why, am I just getting uh links without any of the graphics. Is it because I have an ad blocker?

1:14:40 - Leo Laporte
on. Oh yeah, probably. Compu serve complete and comprehensive products and access for Internet online users at home, in the workplace and around the globe, says this GIF.

1:14:53 - Paris Martineau
Oh that's fun.

1:14:54 - Leo Laporte
It's not even editable text. Copyright 2024, Yahoo. So wait a minute. So Yahoo owns it and AOL Very confusing. They've all merged into one big blob.

1:15:08 - Jeff Jarvis
But not, I don't think, yahoo, your sponsor, Yahoo Finance, I think, is separate.

1:15:12 - Leo Laporte
Is it? I don't know what's WOW.

1:15:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, I remember that, remember. Wow, I love that there's an exclamation point through the. Wasn't that their answer to excite?

1:15:24 - Leo Laporte
You got the World Wide Web web. Now you have the world oh web. Wow, I don't know. Let me, let me google this. Oh, you know, actually, let's ask our little friend. Oh, it's too young, do you remember anything called CompuServe?

1:15:41 - AI
Wow, yes, compuserve. Wow was an attempt by CompuServe to create an easy-to-use online service aimed at a more general consumer audience in the mid-1990s. It was designed to compete with other services like.

1:16:00 - Leo Laporte
AOL by providing a more practical user-friendly interface.

1:16:10 - AI
It included features like email, chat, news and forums.

1:16:12 - Jeff Jarvis
It doesn't beat a web search, but when you're driving it's useful.

1:16:17 - Paris Martineau
It opened in March of 96 and closed in November. Why is it asking you if you have specific memories about it?

1:16:20 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the weird thing about 4.0 is it wants to engage you in conversation.

1:16:24 - Jeff Jarvis
But that's what's wrong about it. That's what's anthropomorphic I is. It wants to engage you in conversation, but that's what's wrong about it.

1:16:27 - Leo Laporte
That's what's anthropomorphic I just turn it off when it does that.

1:16:31 - Paris Martineau
Let's try this it reminds me of when the Amazon product we can't name asks you questions. Hey, I really enjoyed the TV show.

1:16:37 - Leo Laporte
Succession. Do you have any recommendations for a newer TV show I could watch in its place now that it's over? See, this is the kind of thing you'd ask a friend, right?

1:16:46 - AI
If you enjoyed Succession, you might like Industry.

1:16:50 - Paris Martineau
It's a newer show that delves into the high-stakes.

1:16:51 - AI
World of international finance.

1:16:52 - Paris Martineau
There's a new season coming out Of Industry.

1:16:54 - AI
Intense corporate drama with personal conflict. Another one to consider is the White Lotus, which offers a sharp look at the lives of wealthy vacationers, with a mix of dark humor and drama. Both should give you that compelling mix of power plays and complex characters you enjoyed.

1:17:11 - Jeff Jarvis
In Succession. Oh, critical BS yeah.

1:17:14 - Leo Laporte
Hey, I mean, it's no worse than the stuff you wrote for Entertainment Weekly. Just let's be, honest okay.

1:17:21 - Benito Gonzalez
This TV guide grade yeah, but at least Jeff actually had to watch that stuff. Exactly, Benito.

1:17:24 - Leo Laporte
Exactly okay, this tv guide grade, yeah, but at least jeff actually had to watch that stuff. Exactly, benito, exactly. Can you write me a little short tv guide style thumbnail for succession episode one, season one sure, here you go.

1:17:41 - AI
Succession. Season one, episode one celebration. Media mogul Logan Roy shocks his family by announcing his unexpected decision to stay on as CEO of their global empire, sparking tensions and power struggles among his children. As they gather for Logan's birthday, the Roys must navigate their ambitions and loyalty in a high-stakes game of family and business.

1:18:04 - AI
That's exactly TV Guide style, if you take that and search on it.

1:18:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Maybe it came from TV Guide.

1:18:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it could have been exactly TV Guide Could be. Could be. Who cares, I don't care. Paraphrase away Is TV Guide gone for good? It is gone, isn't it? You can't? No, no, there's no paper TV Guide anymore. It was sold, for I think there is. Do you remember TV Guide Paris?

1:18:25 - Paris Martineau
Yes, I also have a deep understanding of it because I read Jeff's book magazine Ah of course you do, and now we've named all the Jeff books. So we must once again drink.

1:18:37 - Leo Laporte
Every book has been named. You're right, tvguidecom is a TV Guide. Actually, who?

1:18:45 - Jeff Jarvis
owns this it was bought for. I can't remember the numbers, it's in my book, but how much Murdoch bought it for?

1:18:50 - Leo Laporte
It's a fandom company, and it was sold for $1.

1:18:52 - Jeff Jarvis
$1?. Remember the thing about TV Guide was Murdoch got scared to death. What was the name of that company, leo, that gave you the codes for programming your VCR?

1:19:03 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, You'd see the code. It was in TV Guide, but mostly it was in your local newspapers. You'd get 40394, and then you'd have a special VHS recorder and you'd enter 40394, and it would record it. Chat room, what was that called? What was wrong with?

1:19:18 - Jeff Jarvis
us Something wrong with us, and they were so scared they merged the companies. Oh wow, and then that became useless. Paris, do you know that VCRs used to flash 12? You knew somebody was old, but they couldn't figure out how to program the time in their VCR.

1:19:34 - Paris Martineau
Oh, you mean like flash 12 the time. Yes, the time.

1:19:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean a lot of things, do that or would do that. And programming your VCR was such a 302 level course for old people that this company came along and said well, no, we're going to build a special proprietary technology, put in this five number code and it will do everything for you.

1:19:58 - Paris Martineau
Oh, my God.

1:19:59 - Jeff Jarvis
That's pretty good and we had to make room for it in the print edition of TV Guide. When you consider the volume of printing in TV Guide on those little pieces of paper that was a huge expense adding in five letters on every five numbers on every tv show this was a gigantic expense video plus or vcr plus or g code.

1:20:19 - Leo Laporte
What was the name of the company, though? Uh, here. Here let's see the concept branding. This is wikipedia, pentasonic late money of vcr, which supports vcr plus. I remember vc star, gem star. You're right. There is a similar system for microwave oven cooking called true cook plus. I think there should be something for podcasts. We should assign a six-digit code to our podcast, and then you have a podcast player and you just enter in the six-digit code and it would automatically record it for later listening. What about that?

1:20:54 - Jeff Jarvis
So they had special hardware. If you Google, don't chat GPT. If you Google VCR Plus, well, it's like the CubeCat eBay is selling yeah, exactly. Well, it's like the cube ebay is selling yeah, exactly, ebay is selling um, uh hardware at the time so that you could program your vcr with the numbers or you could just buy a vcr that has it already. Well, that was the thing you didn't want to buy.

1:21:19 - Paris Martineau
You wouldn't want to buy, couldn't you just gone into the settings in the vCR and set the correct time.

1:21:25 - Leo Laporte
No, that was too hard for us.

1:21:26 - Paris Martineau
Why do you need me at this it?

1:21:27 - Leo Laporte
was too hard for old people. We didn't understand that it was too hard.

1:21:30 - Jeff Jarvis
When we were your age, we made fun of people our age because they wouldn't do that. Yes, oh boy Pretty much it.

1:21:39 - Benito Gonzalez
Yep, I did that for my parents all the time. Oh my God.

1:21:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, parents all the time, oh my god. Yeah, it was around a long enough time that you can't call it an interim technology, but in fact it really was only a decade or so, and then it was oh, the wind I mean as our cds, dvds and all this stuff. It's amazing how fast this has moved. That's why I am very hesitant to say, oh, you know, we're not going to get to AGI or stuff. This stuff is unpredictable and moves very, very quickly.

1:22:10 - Jeff Jarvis
That's quite an extrapolation from Gemstar to AGI.

1:22:15 - Leo Laporte
Everything I talk about these days is AGI. Congress just made it impossible to track Taylor Swift's jet. It's about time possible to track taylor swift's jet. It's about time. Remember, elon musk gotten a big tiff with musk jet on twitter tizzy uh. This was started by a college kid at university of florida, jack sweeney. He made an account that tracked the billionaire's private jet activity elon jet. In 2020.

After musk bought twitter in 2022, he shadow banned sweeney, then fully banned him, but I didn't know this. He has now been back, allowed back on x uh. He also had an account uh for taylor swift's jet. In fact, he recently compiled this youtube video taylor swift I didn't know this has two jets and this is their flights in 2023. All the places they went ended up in kansas city a lot, for reasons I don't fully understand. But uh, there you go there. This is so congress has decided. You know this is these poor billionaires being tracked and people are commenting on their usage of jets and so forth and so on we could end up on the supreme court we better be nice to.

Oh, he's gonna. I'm telling you, there's the sky's the limit for elon at this point. Yeah, uh, he, uh, and probably taylor, who also went after sweeney. She sued him or served him with a cease and desist order earlier this year. Uh, apparently convinced congress that there ought to be a law Congress, which has notoriously not been able to pass many laws this year. I think 27 was the count did pass this one On May 16th. The Senate passed it 88 to 4. The House 387 to 26. That's broad bipartisan support for the faa reauthorization bill that allows private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information. I guess they bundled that into the overall you, you really want the faa to exist. So biden signed it into into law and now taylor can fly with impunity, even though there there's quite a lot of flight going around.

Her jet submitted 1,200 tons of CO2, according to Sweeney, 83 times the amount of the average American Flying up and down and around. Why does she need two, though there's only one of her? Is the other one for her dogs? I don't understand. Oh, the gear, the gear, gear. Okay, I guess. Yeah, look at this, they could have a truck. It feels like I guess that wouldn't be any better than a jet.

1:24:55 - Benito Gonzalez
Maybe it would, I don't know. I mean, of all the billionaires flying around the world with their private jets, taylor Swift is okay, because at least she's bringing happiness.

1:25:06 - Paris Martineau
She brings happiness and huge economic windfalls. But I mean, the reason why she's being called out is because she is the most prolific user of a private jet in in our records is that true?

1:25:13 - Benito Gonzalez
and she's also an industry?

1:25:13 - Paris Martineau
yes, that's why she's been a flashpoint, I believe is because of all the people using private jets, taylor, swift.

1:25:20 - Leo Laporte
She deserves, uses it the most. She deserves it, she needs she needs.

1:25:24 - Benito Gonzalez
Well, she's a whole industry herself.

1:25:26 - Leo Laporte
She is. I mean. The economic value of having a Taylor Swift concert in your town is massive.

1:25:33 - Benito Gonzalez
And she definitely can't fly commercial.

1:25:35 - Leo Laporte
It's better than the Olympics. Yeah, what she's going to get on a plane. What are you crazy?

1:25:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Do we also credit her with the investigation of ticket master?

1:25:46 - Leo Laporte
uh, I don't. I don't know, but it is a good thing. My god, this is the one antitrust action that I think every american is 100 behind is breaking up ticket master. Their hold on the on both the venues and the ticket sales is clearest form of monopoly I've ever seen.

1:26:04 - Paris Martineau
Oh, and it's about time the practical like implications of this are just clear to see as well. I I'm not a taylor such a fine personally know so many people who have who tried to get tickets to the eras tour in the us were priced out and found that it was cheaper to go to par or Portugal or whatever.

1:26:26 - Leo Laporte
Where there's no ticket master, where?

1:26:28 - Paris Martineau
there is no ticket master because the tickets were that inexpensive in comparison. They could afford a flight and international lodging and a ticket for the same cost as a ticket in New Jersey.

1:26:41 - Leo Laporte
After I bought tickets in the hotel to see the formula one race last november in vegas, I checked around. I could have gone like four races in europe for the same cost and had a trip to europe in and to boot. Yeah, it was really. I think things are just overpriced in america. Bless it, because we're god bless capitalism man. God, all right, we got a changelog to come, but let's take a little break. You're watching this Week in Giggles with Jeff Lord, ha Ha Jarvis and Paris. What should I call you Paris? Giggle Pants, martineau Are showtimes brought to you by no no.

Okay, all right. Should I call you paris giggle pants martineau our show today? No, no, okay, all right, just go to the ad. You really cringed. That was a cringe. That was a cringe. I don't know why. I don't know why I said that Are Saturday brought to you by Cachefly. I'm sorry, I lost my head.

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1:30:13 - Paris Martineau
That's pretty good.

1:30:14 - Leo Laporte
Unfortunately $1.99 in the resale bin yeah not exactly the hottest album on the charts. Thank you, Joe Esposito. I appreciate it. All right, let's do our Google Change Log. Craig, Craig, Craig. See why I call you Google pants. You see the Google Change Log. You will like this JJ.

1:30:51 - Jeff Jarvis
She's more of a chortler. I wouldn't call it giggly, I would call that a chortle pants.

1:30:57 - Leo Laporte
A cackle, a short-throated chortle, chortle skirt. How about that?

1:31:00 - Paris Martineau
Oh no, that's worse. That's actually significantly worse on all accounts.

1:31:07 - Leo Laporte
Jeff is going to appreciate this. Google had a big Chromebook showcase.

1:31:11 - Jeff Jarvis
They didn't invite me, they didn't invite you. How could they not invite me? They're best friend.

1:31:16 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you love Chromebooks. Six new Chromebooks. They're in New York. These are the premium Chromebook Plus category which you know. I looked around. They're not that much more expensive In fact, often not but they have more power, advanced AI features. In fact, if you buy one, you'll get a full year of Google Gemini, which is pretty nice. Ultra, the Acer Chromebook Spin, starts at $699. That's got Intel Core Ultra processors. That's pretty hefty. Hp's got the Chromebook Plus X360, asus Chromebook Plus CX34, the Acer Chromebook Plus 516GE. That's for cloud gaming with a 16-inch 120-hertz display and you can use GeForce Now with it. I guess you could use GeForce Now with all of these.

1:32:02 - Benito Gonzalez
Wait a minute. Is it really going to deliver 120 frames a second?

1:32:07 - Leo Laporte
I don't believe that you know it really depends on how it works, because I don't think GeForce Now sends the whole picture down every time, every second or 120 times a second. I think it sends a picture. It's keyframing right.

1:32:21 - Jeff Jarvis
At a delta.

1:32:23 - Leo Laporte
So it sends a picture down maybe every three seconds and then does just the changes.

1:32:27 - Benito Gonzalez
Maybe but the Chromebook isn't powerful enough for that itself. Maybe, not, I don't know.

1:32:32 - Leo Laporte
Hey, hey, hey, Benito. Why don't you get one, Benito? And let us know, this is Chromebook CM30, which is only 10.5 inches, but it does have a detachable keyboard, and the HP Chromebook 14-inch, which is only $249, Pentium processor, so forth and so on. These are all new. They'll have generative AI wallpapers. You can use text prompts to make images for both your desktop background and your video call background. I'm coming to from the world of the future An AI text editor that will help you write. Magic editor with Google Photos. I think you're going to. Are you going to get one of these, Jeff?

1:33:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, I was just looking last night because the one I'm using is on its last leg. I'm debating between the 714, the new version, which is which we love.

1:33:26 - Leo Laporte
And so does Kevin Toffles, who's liked the spin, and Kevin has, or the HP high-end one, chromebook. Plus. Yeah, even that's fairly affordable, Not that HP, even higher end than that. Yeah, so the Dragonfly.

1:33:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Pro.

1:33:41 - Leo Laporte
Oh, the Dragonflies are beautiful.

1:33:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, each Dragonfly Pro is $2,000.

1:33:47 - Leo Laporte
Yikes, I have to get a new one for Abby, my daughter. She uses a Chromebook exclusively ever since college.

1:33:54 - Paris Martineau
She's a. Chromebook fan yeah, ever since college.

1:33:55 - Leo Laporte
She hates it. I said, believe it or not? I came to her with a new Apple iPad. I said, abby, I think you'll like this.

1:34:07 - Paris Martineau
Okay, leo, abby, I think you'll like this. You know, okay, leo, she didn't want to try to give her a ipad as a replacement for a laptop even a chromebook.

1:34:10 - Leo Laporte
That's ridiculous. She doesn't like apple. That's basically what she said. She said she hates apple, uh, but she doesn't want windows, macbook better, she had a macbook, but she doesn't want apple. She says apple is a corporate. Uh, I don't know something bad.

1:34:24 - Paris Martineau
Has she heard about Google, also a corporate?

1:34:27 - Leo Laporte
She likes Google, I know she likes Chromebook.

1:34:29 - Paris Martineau
I mean listen.

1:34:30 - Leo Laporte
She's got to have something.

1:34:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Don't forget who you're talking in front of here, paris, you know.

1:34:35 - Paris Martineau
I mean Jeff.

1:34:37 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, this is a good time oh one of the reasons I have to be careful is she's sensitive to the flickering of LEDs. She wants an OLED screen. She doesn't have problems with OLED screens, so there's only one that I know of. The Samsung has an OLED Chromebook, so I have to find her an OLED screen Chromebook.

1:34:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Check out the. There's a super-duper screen on the HP Elite Dragonfly.

1:35:02 - Leo Laporte
Okay, good.

1:35:02 - Jeff Jarvis
That has 1,000 nits. Well, most of these are 400 nits.

1:35:08 - Leo Laporte
I don't think having it brighter is what she I'm just saying it's that different, it's that yeah, let me see if it's an oled, though she really doesn't want an led. Uh, and there's flicker. Some people are very sensitive to it. Um, google ads ai. Oh, that's the AI-powered features I talked about that. There is a Google Home app favorites widget, what that means. This is another one of those APK Insight posts.

They looked deep within the APK of Google Home and there's some specialized widgets which you can. You know these are nice because they're the big favorite buttons. You can push and you can have it. Do you know? Off all the lights? Turn on the lights, good morning, open the curtains, turn on the fan, that kind of thing. So that's uh, that's good. Google ads are now being mixed in with organic results there. This is kind of an interesting issue yeah, yeah I was not. I put this in here because I'm not happy about this.

1:36:04 - Jeff Jarvis
This is, from bro, an interesting issue. Yeah, I was not. I put this in here cause I'm not happy about this.

1:36:08 - Leo Laporte
This is from Brody Clark, writing for search engine journalcom. Google has been discreetly mixing ads within its search results. They've actually been doing it for a while. Um, yeah, I mean look this, this is the problem, uh, and we don't do, uh, what do they call it organic ads? We don't do the ads where we don't say it's an ad, because the idea is to trick you.

So a listener thinks you're hearing editorial or you're reading editorial or you're reading search results and, in fact, you're reading something that was paid for by a sponsor. So that's why I begin every ad with our show brought to you by that kind of thing, our sponsor, that kind of thing. I think it's important. You understand this is a paid announcement versus the editorial content, but that's why advertisers want to sneak these ads in the search results, not because that's a better place to be. No, to trick you. It's just blatant to fool you into thinking it's real. They started June 17. Place to be no, to trick you, it's just blatant to fool you into thinking it's real. They started june 17th 2023, almost exactly a year ago, as a test, ramped it up until march of this year and then they launched it. Google ads liaison announced the change would be a permanent one and you could buy it right. It's a little more expensive because you know we trick you. This is appalling.

1:37:29 - Jeff Jarvis
That was always what Google said is you cannot buy placement within the organic listings. Well, you, can. Now you can.

1:37:35 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, pragya Van and Prabhakar. I think so. It still says sponsored. At least it still says sponsored right?

1:37:42 - Jeff Jarvis
It's still clearly labeled no yeah, no, it's still clearly labeled. Oh yeah, no, it's still labeled.

1:37:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but I don't like it.

1:37:46 - Paris Martineau
The other problem is frankly, google has changed the way they denote sponsored ads over the last couple of years to where it's hard to tell it's hard to tell.

1:37:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it used to be in a block in its own color yeah well, the other problem in some slight fairness, I guess is that when google went away from the 10 links on a page to a constant scroll, it needed to put ads somewhere and they end up in there, I mean, but still so when it annoys me is now, at the very least in mobile, using it on chrome, I like to.

1:38:19 - Paris Martineau
I do a lot of deep internet searches and I'll scroll like 10 links and then it'll give me some on unrelated search and it's like well, other people search for this, why don't we start your search for that? I'm like no, I want to finish my original search, google, and now I'm gonna have to contend with that, plus extra sponsored ads and the results disgusting yeah this is exactly what ed zitrin said the propaganda, propaganda.

1:38:47 - Leo Laporte
Raga van was ruining google search. He came from the revenue side and and explicitly to increase revenue ad revenue in google search, and that's exactly what. This is exactly what he was there put there to do. That's why I don't use google. I have really pretty much de-Googled myself. I was talking to Paul Therot earlier on Windows Weekly. He said wait. I said yeah, I stopped using Gmail years ago, started using FastMail. I now use FastMail instead of Google Calendars and Google Contacts to sync my calendars and contacts. I use Kagi Search. I never use Google Search anymore. You know it's hard to get it completely away from Google.

1:39:27 - Benito Gonzalez
You're never leaving.

1:39:28 - Leo Laporte
YouTube Because.

1:39:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I still have to pay for a YouTube premium. I de-Microsoft myself, not on purpose, but I just did Pretty much by accident, accidentally de-Macrified.

1:39:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't mind not being uh, that's just part of it is. I think we realize we have to pay for stuff. The promise that google offered was all that stuff's for free, but we realized it really is a deal with the devil. You really aren't. It isn't free. You're giving up your a lot of your attention and your information to pay for it and I prefer to pay for it with my money.

Well, I don't watch. You know what? I have not seen a TV ad in a long time. I don't know, jeff, do you? Have cable news on in front of you right now. Right now, he's got it. It's always on. Is there an?

1:40:22 - Paris Martineau
advertisement.

1:40:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Not right now. It's Ari Melber talking to somebody. Somebody, yeah, I know you're waiting for it too.

1:40:29 - Leo Laporte
You're waiting for the and now. Big announcement any minute, now verdict well, not tonight they're. Did they go home?

1:40:36 - Paris Martineau
I assume they're gonna be taken a little bit on this one. Well, that to me.

1:40:40 - Leo Laporte
Okay, I'm no jury consultant, but if the longer they take, the more it seems like there may be an acquittal If they were all convinced, all 12 of them. No, no, no.

1:40:51 - Paris Martineau
Frankly, I assume that any we're not going to go too much into this because I know it's not a politics show, but I assume that any judgment rendered against a former president in a groundbreaking historical, groundbreaking historical case, people are probably going to take a little bit I don't know.

1:41:11 - Leo Laporte
I'd just go throw the book at him, but that's me they'd take one look at you and I would never have gotten on that jury not even close youtube.

Speaking of, youtube has rolled out free games they call them playables kind of like lunchables out free games. They call them playables. It's kind of like Lunchables only for games and just as bad for you. They announced yesterday their collection of lightweight free games will start appearing in the YouTube app for all users, in addition to on the YouTube homepage. They're not paid downloads and there are no in-app purchases, so that, I guess, is good. It's one of the ways they're going to get this on Apple's app store and the YouTube app in Apple. What's the point of it? Well, I don't know. Angry Birds, showdown, words of Wonders, cut the Rope they're all pretty old, kind of junky games. Trivia Crack Would you like to play a little Trivia Crack? I wonder if we can play it. Trivia Crack Okay, it's a little play on words. Yeah, trivia Crack you got a problem with that. Is it not on the desktop? Maybe it's only on here, or maybe it's just not rolled out yet. Yeah, I don't see it. Do you see it? Anybody see it on there?

1:42:32 - Paris Martineau
because I'd love to play trivia crack I think you should just keep repeating trivia crack what could possibly go wrong?

1:42:42 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I don't see it yet, so I guess we're going to get it. Yeah, it's funny. Youtube is worth paying for. I hate to say it, but it's worth paying for Because I don't want to see all those ads. There's a lot of ads and every time you try to use an ad blocker on YouTube, they find a way to get you. There's workarounds to that though you know, yeah, but the If it sees an ad blocker, it'll skip to the end of the video.

1:43:03 - Benito Gonzalez
No, it's more. You know the VPN trick.

1:43:05 - Leo Laporte
What's the VPN?

1:43:06 - Benito Gonzalez
trick If you go, if you come from. There's certain countries where, if you come from there, YouTube can't serve you ads because there's no ad deals there. Ah.

1:43:15 - Leo Laporte
Like Estonia and stuff like that. So say, I'm watching YouTube in Estonia.

1:43:18 - Benito Gonzalez
Yep.

1:43:20 - Leo Laporte
Do you get a lot of Russian language programming? It seems like I don't know it's still going to be your algorithm. Yeah look, I'm going to pay youtube on that account. They got me there.

1:43:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I think they got you know what leaves me is that amazon prime, and now I have to pay extra for not getting ads and video.

1:43:37 - Leo Laporte
That pisses me ridiculous I immediately gave him an extra whatever bucks because I don't want ads, which is exactly why Twitter is faltering. By the way, lisa gets so mad at me when I skip the like we're watching TV and I intentionally pause, go do some stuff and then start the show like 20 minutes in so I can skip the ads. And she gets mad at me. She says you make your living on ads, what are you doing? I said that doesn't mean I have to the ads. And she gets mad at me. She says you make your living on ads, what are you doing? I said that doesn't mean I have to watch them.

That's right. If you would just please do me a favor, join Club Twit, so I don't have to get yelled at in my own home.

1:44:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, please. That's the real reason.

1:44:18 - Leo Laporte
$7 a month. You get ad-free versions, no more ads on any of our content. You get video on stuff like the Hands on Macintosh, hands on Windows shows, the Ultimate Linux show. We've got the Home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson. You get video for all those shows. These are the club specials. What else? You get access to the Discord, which is a really nice community, a very smart, interesting, sharp, funny people the kind of people you hear on our shows are also in our club and it's a great hang. And all of this is only seven bucks a month plus. It makes a huge difference in our bottom line.

We are right now. I don't like to do these scare things because I feel like a TV preacher, but I also want to be honest with you. We are facing at this point the imminent closure of our studio because we can't afford it. Uh, with your help, maybe we could keep it open. Twittv slash club twit. Well, at least I want to keep doing these shows, but we do need you to join because the advertising I got books to sell people. Yeah, how's jeff gonna sell?

his books going. How's paris gonna keep up? Keep up in chortle skirts? It's not, she's got to, it's got to, you've got to. Seven bucks a month stop, leo stop you can pay, you wouldn't hear this.

1:45:34 - Jeff Jarvis
You see, that's the best benefit you wouldn't hear any of that right then I'm gonna hover pay for club.

1:45:40 - Paris Martineau
If five to ten percent of you guys pay for club, twit. We could hire a man to hit Leo with a big stick anytime he says that I will do it.

1:45:48 - Leo Laporte
I will do it, I will do it. I think I can buy Chortlescourtcom. I'm just going to check here. I don't know. It should be Chortlescourt or Chortleskirt, I don't know. Okay, I do think Chortlescourt is funnier.

1:46:01 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I do think chortle-scort is funnier. Both, I think, are bad.

1:46:07 - Leo Laporte
But if we're comparing them, chortle-scort is objective. There is a thing as a scort, there's a scort right.

1:46:10 - Paris Martineau
Yes, a skirt-chort.

1:46:13 - Leo Laporte
Which is a terrible name too, oh it's terrible, should it be chortle-scort or just Chortles. No One word Chortlescourt.

1:46:20 - Paris Martineau
If you can't get Chortlescourtcom, then the idea is ruined.

1:46:24 - Leo Laporte
Sorry, there was a problem finding suggestions for you. What? You know, Let me do com.

1:46:31 - Paris Martineau
As the going gets tougher, I'd like to re-up. We could do a 24-hour Twit Donate-a-thon. Oh, that's a good idea, that'd be good.

1:46:37 - Leo Laporte
That's a good idea. That'll be good. That's a good idea. We might have to do it out of the local Chuckle Hut, but we'll try.

1:46:45 - Paris Martineau
Listen, it could be a Chuckle Hut virtual program.

1:46:49 - Leo Laporte
Here's chortlescourtcom is available. I'm shocked. I think it would be. I have fancypantscom. They could go together. That's true. It could be a subdompantscom they could go together.

1:47:05 - Paris Martineau
That's true, it could be a subdomain.

1:47:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Fancy pants and shortle skirts. Shortle skirt. Do you? Own fancypantscom.

1:47:12 - AI
Yeah, don't ask me why did you? Okay, yeah, no, why. I got to know why.

1:47:19 - Paris Martineau
Are you sure you own fancypantscom?

1:47:23 - Leo Laporte
Why?

1:47:23 - Paris Martineau
Because it redirects to something that I don't think is yours.

1:47:26 - Leo Laporte
Somebody must have gotten it. Oh, that's not good. Oh sorry, stop, don't do it, kids, it could be worse. I mean, it's not bad, it's just, it's actually they're wearing a skort FancyPantscom does good when women are wearing a skort.

1:47:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I might have maybe let it last. What is the?

1:47:45 - Leo Laporte
yellow thing she's oh, it's a tennis ball oh, it's a tennis ball really okay let me log in to hover and see, because maybe I did, maybe I gave it up. That would be terrible that I registered it in the early days because, uh my-wife wanted to do a business where she would sell pants that were fancy. That's all I can say. They were fancy pants, and so it seemed to me that was the natural name for the website, but maybe I'll let it lapse. The natural name for the website, but maybe I'll let it lapse sometimes, you know, when in a divorce you lose.

1:48:30 - Jeff Jarvis
You lose stuff, and maybe I lost she's still on it, maybe that's no, I kept it.

1:48:32 - Leo Laporte
I kept it that was in the settlement. I'm keeping fancy pants. No, I don't think she wants, I don't think she. Honestly, she probably didn't even know that I had registered it.

1:48:43 - Paris Martineau
Guys, are we still on the Google train?

1:48:48 - Leo Laporte
And that's the Google change log. Thank you.

1:48:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris. The universe is back on track, aligned. This is super alignment.

1:48:58 - Leo Laporte
Now, yeah, oh yeah. I don't own fancy pants anymore. You know, I did at one point a few years ago go through a lot.

1:49:05 - Paris Martineau
I see look at all these I own such a ridiculous I do feel like every man I know goes through an owning a lot of domains yeah, that maybe says more about me than I have uh at one point, remember, I was going to create a tikt called LipLock.

1:49:23 - Leo Laporte
I still own LipLocklive. Never really took off.

1:49:27 - Paris Martineau
That's not how I thought that was going to be spelled.

1:49:30 - Leo Laporte
Maybe that's why I own it.

1:49:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I was going to start a business of criticism on Twitter. I owned TwitCritcom. I let that go.

1:49:44 - Leo Laporte
It's so easy to used to well, it is still. It's so easy to create a domain name. Why not just do it? Don't go. Apparently people are going to that site. Don't go. Maybe you could bloop that. How about blooping? It's not, it's just a woman wearing a tennis skirt in a suggestive manner.

1:50:06 - Paris Martineau
I mean, it just looks a little.

1:50:09 - Jeff Jarvis
The name is a little creepy.

1:50:12 - Leo Laporte
Oh, they sell pants. Yeah, okay, fancy pants. Maybe that wasn't that they do. Yeah, I think it's funny because they made the business out of it. Their pants aren't as fancy as the pants we were going to sell.

1:50:25 - Paris Martineau
Definitely not. We were going to have, like Mid-level pants.

1:50:28 - Leo Laporte
We were going to do like hammer. You know hammer pants. You could do like JNCOs Harum pants with like flowers yeah, like that. Yeah, jncos, jn, tee-in or Teemu or any of those.

1:50:41 - Paris Martineau
No, Do you? No, I feel like the elders are going to know.

1:50:46 - Jeff Jarvis
That's why you buy your fancy pants.

1:50:48 - Leo Laporte
Well, it is interesting, I was Teemu T-E-M-U, which is attempting to take over from Alibaba. These are all Chinese kind of gym crack.

1:50:58 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm sorry, I just Googled. There's too much crack in this episode Teemu fancy pants. It's okay, it's safe. Just Google T-Mu fancy pants. Do they have them? Oh, they are very fancy, they are so fancy.

1:51:12 - Leo Laporte
See, maybe T-Mu really jumped on the fancy pants craze they might have. You see what you lost.

1:51:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Is this it? What did you do? No, no, have you see what you?

1:51:25 - AI
lost um is this? What did you? Do no, no, no no google.

1:51:27 - Jeff Jarvis
I said listen to me, listen I don't have google.

1:51:28 - Leo Laporte
Google, oh jeez I.

1:51:29 - Jeff Jarvis
I searched for is that what you mean when?

1:51:31 - Leo Laporte
you say google search?

1:51:32 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, you google you search and you search the internet scale bronzed flare leg.

1:51:37 - Paris Martineau
Elegant high waist pants slim pants clothing is what comes up.

1:51:41 - Leo Laporte
Very, very nice.

1:51:43 - Paris Martineau
Very fancy.

1:51:44 - Leo Laporte
The reason I bring it up? A couple of things. One is Timu has decided to advertise not to the big cities, but to the flyover states and the smaller towns. They think that that is going to be where their money is and of course, they are becoming a big competitor, not just to Alibaba, but to Amazon. A big competitor not just to Alibaba, but to Amazon. Louise Mitsakis with her piece in the Big Technology blog how Shein and Timu snuck up on Amazon. The Chinese-owned platforms represent the biggest threat to its e-commerce empire in living memory, and we know Louise. She's been on the show. We love her stuff. She in reportedly earned 45 billion dollars last year. Uh pdd holdings, which is the parent company of timu, said its revenue surged more than 130 percent in the first quarter. It's now the most valuable e-commerce company in China.

Teemu had 47 million monthly active users in the US in April. Shein had 29 million, amazon only 66 million, down from 77 million a year ago according to Sensor Tower. So this is kind of interesting. The america the reason I asked is the average american she in shopper is female in her early 30s earns roughly 65 000 a year. So you're too young. You're too young. Team was fastest growing demographic consumers between the ages of and this is for you, jeff 55 to 64, leading younger people to make fun of their older relatives for becoming Teemu victims. Morgan Stanley found that the majority of Teemu's customers are also women and more than half make less than 50,000. So I guess she ends upscale and Teemu's downscale. I don't know. It's an interesting story. Louise covers this.

1:53:44 - Jeff Jarvis
She's actually covered amazon for years benedict evans has been following their numbers. I like it as newsletter.

1:53:50 - Leo Laporte
He's been following for a year and a half just watching this happen team who spent two billion dollars on instagram and facebook ads last year. Two you have to spend a lot of ads.

1:54:00 - Paris Martineau
I will say I just did an informal poll of my skee-ball team group chat, which is almost all women in their early 30s, and the consensus about Timu is they don't use it and quote. It scares me is the response from multiple of them.

1:54:16 - Jeff Jarvis
How about Sheehan?

1:54:18 - Paris Martineau
I'll ask. I don't think so either, though Sheehan, I feel like, is more of a Gen Z or lower. Yeah, I think you're right.

1:54:25 - Leo Laporte
Last February, timu was reportedly running approximately 9,400 Facebook ads at the same time, while Shein was running 2,200 at the same time. So watch out, you know. It's very interesting to see these companies, and both want you to, and I keep seeing Timu ads for whatever reason. I see these, these companies, and both want you to, and I keep seeing timu ads for any reason. I paid attention to this. They want you to download the app. That's the big thing, right? Get that app on your phone. So go ahead and get. Kill tiktok. We got shian and timu to spy on us, no problem. Buzzfeed is clashing with its newest investor. Vivek Ramaswamy, who now owns a little more than 8% of BuzzFeed, says he wants to see more commentators like Tucker Carlson and Charles Barkley on the site. Jonah Peretti has already rejected some of Ramaswamy's requests, according to the New York Times, setting up a clash between the two men.

1:55:25 - Paris Martineau
York Times setting up a clash between the two men. Poor Jonas, I mean. Obviously Vivek is making these points just to be an instigator get more attention on him because it, like it, bears no grounding in reality. When you think about BuzzFeed's audience, which the audience for buzzfeed's content is overwhelmingly younger women, like that is, those are the people who are doing buzzfeed quizzes, those are the people who have the app.

Those are the people that's interesting, any of the things on buzzfeed that's interesting, oh yeah so those people are not going to want watch tucker carlson but they like bow ties.

1:55:58 - Leo Laporte
They like men in bow ties. I I heard Ramaswamy is pushing BuzzFeed to add three new members to its board of directors, to hone its focus on audio and video content and to embrace greater diversity of thought. You know what that means. According to a copy of his letter shared with the New York Times, he recommended BuzzFeed cut staff significantly. Cutting around the edges will not work, wrote mr ramaswamy. You require a complete ground-up rethink of every single piece of content being produced at the company. This is so annoying. Where did, where did ramaswamy make his money? He invested in pharma, right, he didn't. He didn't create any drugs, he just he was an investor and made some money in pharma and then made a name for himself by by making it to the republican debates and running for president, even though he didn't have a chance in hell. He's also like got a podcast or a youtube or something it's also very funny that he's arguing again.

1:56:52 - Paris Martineau
I think it's ridiculous for any of us to try and take any of this seriously, because obviously he's just doing this to be a political agitator. But buzzfeed has already tried the approach of attempting to appeal to conservatives and different areas of the right. There was that whole era when they hired I'm forgetting his last name, benny johnson, I think like a a far right, extremely online guy and uh had him writing articles for buzzfeed until it came out that he was a prolific plagiarist and then had to fire him.

1:57:26 - Leo Laporte
Oh God. So the new thing you've heard about debunking and actually Micah is going to cover this tomorrow on Tech News Weekly the new thing is pre-bunking. According to the Washington Post, election officials around the world are adopting pre-bunking campaigns as ai and other threats jeopardize voting. The idea is like a vaccine you expose people to weakened doses of misinformation paired with explanations to help the public develop quote mental antibodies to recognize and fend off hoaxes. In a heated election year, you think this will work.

1:58:03 - Jeff Jarvis
The thing is, it's not about belief, it's not even about facts, I argue. It's about a lack of belonging and the vulnerability to be pulled into a cult or an insurrection. That's what Hannah Arendt said.

1:58:17 - Leo Laporte
Exactly.

1:58:17 - Paris Martineau
I totally agree, Jeff.

1:58:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:58:19 - Paris Martineau
I think that the reason why people fall into conspiracy theories is because it gives them a sense of community and it gives them a worldview that in many cases, affirms them and their own beliefs as special or unique or adding value, in a way that the world doesn't understand, and that is a very difficult thing to combat yeah, and when they, when they telepolster a crazy thing, when they put their flag upside down, when they scream something, they're signaling that belonging and they get to own the libs, and there's nothing better than nothing.

1:58:57 - Leo Laporte
Nothing better than that. Our friends at the internet archiveive have been under DDoS attack for the last few days. Yeah, it's been a long time Since Sunday. Tens of thousands of fake requests per second. Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian at the Internet Archive, says Thankfully the collections are safe, but we're sorry that the denial of service attack has knocked us offline intermittently during the last three days. With the support from others and the hard work of staff, we're hardening our defenses to provide more reliable access to our library.

Support the Internet Archive. That's all I can say. It's amazing what it does. It's such a valuable thing. I donate monthly and anything you can do to help would be much appreciated.

I did not know this, but cyber attacks this is from archiveorg are increasingly frequent against libraries, including the British Library, the Solano County Public Library in California, the Berlin Natural History Museum and Ontario London's Public Library all victims of DDoS attacks of late. That's anti-democratic, that's not good. And finally, before we go to our break, I want you to explain this to me. A huge Google search document leak reveals inner workings of ranking algorithm. This is from search engine land, danny Goodwin, writing thousands of documents which appear to come from Google's internal content API warehouse, released March 13th on GitHub by an automated bot called Yoshi Codebot. Then co-founder of an SEO firm, spark Toro, rand Fishkin saw it and wrote an analysis of it. It apparently tells you how Google's page rank is working these days, and SEOs are thrilled because it means they can do a better job of improving your search ranking. But I read it, and maybe you know better, as the author of what Will Google Do, jeff, but it feels like this is what we always thought.

Google did kind of.

2:01:05 - Paris Martineau
Google also confirmed that the documents are real within the last hour.

2:01:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, oh, I didn't see that.

2:01:15 - Leo Laporte
So links matter. Link diversity and relevance are key. Pagerank is very much still alive within Google's ranking features. Page rank for a website's homepage is considered for every document. Now, Google spokespeople in the past have said links are not a top three ranking factor. But links do matter quite a bit and they may not. Danny says they've lied that they are important. Successful clicks matter If you want to rank well. Well, you need to keep creating great content and user experiences based on the documents. Google uses a variety of measurements, including bad clicks, good clicks last longest clicks and unsquashed clicks.

2:01:55 - Paris Martineau
You need to drive more notable because google representatives in the past had said that clicks are not going to. Don't play into this at all, right so you know what I kind of?

2:02:07 - Leo Laporte
I kind of give google a pass on lying to us, because there's a very brisk and somewhat shady seo business in the world designed to ruin the web. Yeah, to make sites in the web.

2:02:20 - Jeff Jarvis
In a sense, it's true, because people are trying to fool Google, and that's why they put up all this crap.

2:02:26 - Leo Laporte
So Google does not want you to know exactly how it works, because it just makes it easier to game it, and we don't want people to game it, right, right? Anyway, if you're interested certainly if you're in the SEO business you should read this Fishkin's big takeaway brand matters more than anything else. If there were one universal piece of advice, fishkin wrote, I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be quote build a notable, popular, well-recognized brand in your space outside of Google search. In other words, don't try to fake it, make it.

2:03:03 - Benito Gonzalez
No, that's what private equities thing was. They bought all the big stuff for that capital, because then it'll rank higher.

2:03:11 - Paris Martineau
They bought it for the brand cut off all the people who worked there.

2:03:14 - Leo Laporte
Cut off the value, but keep the brand.

2:03:17 - Paris Martineau
Maximize the profit.

2:03:21 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, there's a lot more.

2:03:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Can I ask you one story? Yes, line 89, good reporting by the washington post, because I know this story irritates all of us tiktok being banned by our dear government. Tiktok offered a pretty amazing deal through the feds. They said that they would let federal officials pick its US Board of Directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire, would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code. It even offered a kill switch, kill switch and they turned that down the Biden administration, declined, declined.

2:04:08 - Leo Laporte
that's wild, isn't it? Which just shows you that, that the tiktok ban has nothing to do with the actual safety of americans or america.

2:04:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Excellent reporting by drew harwell at the post. Drew Drew's good Yep.

2:04:20 - Leo Laporte
It's a political action.

2:04:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow, talk about proving it, jeez, and it's going to lose Biden votes of youth. So stupid.

2:04:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't get it. I don't get it all around. This confirms what we've been saying. Frankly, we didn't see a reason to shut down TikTok. And where else are you going to see parents dancing like it's the 80s?

2:04:45 - Jeff Jarvis
It's pretty good.

2:04:47 - Paris Martineau
There's nowhere else in the internet for you to see that.

2:04:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, okay, there's a video if you go down. If I go down, there's a video of what Parents dancing.

2:04:56 - Paris Martineau
I love that this is in the dance section of the New York Times.

2:05:00 - Leo Laporte
It is. It's in the dance section. How funny, how funny, how funny. Maya Salam TikTok can add a new skill to its resume Disco Time Machine. In viral videos, parents are asked by their adult children oh God, please don't ask me, as they would have back in the day, the 1984 Sonic Earworm, Small Town Boy by the British synth-pop band Bronski Beat. I don't think we had them in the 80s. Most posts are tagged hashtag Mom Dance Challenge, Dad Dance Challenge or 80s Dance Challenge you don't even need to sound up for them.

2:05:41 - Jeff Jarvis
They're funny enough without the sound.

2:05:50 - Leo Laporte
But where there's some clicks there aren't there. Uh, okay, let me see if I can take it down. Let me see if I can find uh here's. Here's a tiktok. She couldn't believe she got two million views. Oh that's.

2:05:58 - Paris Martineau
That's her responding to it, yeah, so let's.

2:06:01 - Leo Laporte
So let's go to the original.

2:06:06 - Jeff Jarvis
What did you do to your ad blocker? If I have the New York Times story, there's video on the story, is there really? Yeah, yeah. Well, you mess up the web. Well.

2:06:18 - Leo Laporte
Where do you see?

2:06:19 - Jeff Jarvis
it. It's right there.

2:06:23 - Paris Martineau
This is great content, guys.

2:06:25 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm putting it in the chat.

2:06:29 - Leo Laporte
This is what grandpas do. Well, look, you'll see it, it's right there.

2:06:32 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it's not there, I don't see it.

2:06:37 - Leo Laporte
No, it's in the Discord. You old coot, you old coot, that's called a mouse. You can move it up and down to scroll. I told my mom to it's not doing oh my God Leo. How does the internet work?

2:06:55 - Jeff Jarvis
You need Jetstar, it'll record it for you.

2:06:58 - Leo Laporte
The real problem is I'm on Linux and Firefox and it just won't let me do this. It just won't. It says no, you're not going to play that video. Oh, you're useless.

2:07:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Useless, you're useless. You're just so stubborn about this stuff. If you would just live la vida, google, everything would be okay. One more time, let's play some music here.

2:07:22 - Leo Laporte
I told my mom to show me some moves from the 80s. She kicked off her. This is why did you put this in the show notes? Who the hell cares about somebody's mom dancing? Why is this important in any way?

2:07:37 - Paris Martineau
why is this? I don't get this one jeff, to be honest oh okay, I thought it was funny.

2:07:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I thought you'd actually be amused by old people acting weird, but I guess they're not old enough. She's younger than me. Yeah, she is All right. Well, I try Pick another one. Jeff, I appreciate the TikTok. You get many of them.

2:07:55 - Leo Laporte
Pick you two. Young turtle shorts Pick a Stop, stop. Chortle shorts pick, pick, pick a stop, stop. Uh, jessica, lesson in the atlanta. Oh, you already did this one.

2:08:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Media companies are making a huge mistake. Well, meta meta has a new advisory group for its ai. Who do you think they picked?

2:08:14 - Leo Laporte
mark zuckerberg. All white men. All white men, of course because, no one knows better than white men who how ai should behave, patrick collison he's from stripe.

He was a founder of stripe. Nat friedman he uh founded uh two startups, led github as ceo I remember him at github. Uh. Toby lutka he's the ceo of shopify. And Charlie Songhurst just because he's got the greatest name Former general manager of global corporate strategy at Microsoft. He ran the Yahoo acquisition and commercial deal and drove the Skype acquisition. Okay, these guys, you know, if anybody knows more about AI than these guys, I don't know who that would be.

2:09:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah the white guys, not just white. Stop fighting it. Anybody knows more about AI than these guys. I don't know who that would be. Yeah, the white guys.

2:09:04 - Leo Laporte
They own the world, not just white. Stop fighting it. They're all wearing puffy vests. This is a villain's lineup of VC types. These are just Mark's friends. That's what this is right. Yeah, Friends of Mark.

2:09:25 - Jeff Jarvis
What else, but the New York Times also declares that AI has made Mark Zuckerberg popular again in Silicon Valley. Along with his new haircut and his new wardrobe, he's the new Zuck.

2:09:38 - Leo Laporte
Okay, I don't think Ed liked him much. Ed has a two-parter on him.

2:09:43 - Benito Gonzalez
Ed really.

2:09:46 - Leo Laporte
Ed's fed a lot of lines on Zuck. All right, let's take a little break. When we come back Picks of the Week we wrap this thing up for another fabulous Wednesday of this week in giggles. I guess I already did give the plug for Club Twit. That's where I would normally put this. Just a reminder, you know.

2:10:04 - Jeff Jarvis
You do it in context, which is good, when people are just feeling they don't want you to say silly things to Paris.

2:10:10 - Leo Laporte
Should I just drop it and just say you know, forget it, just do what you want? I mean, I feel really I don't like to pay. No, you've got to sell.

2:10:17 - Paris Martineau
No, I don't think you should, leo, because if you're not being frankly, it'd be duplicitous to pretend like everything's fine. Right and people who listen to this show and love you and love the various shows on Twit are going to feel shocked and surprised and sad when you announce the network is shutting down.

2:10:39 - Leo Laporte
And that's kind of what I'm trying to forestall A I don't want to shut down the network, but B I want to let you know. So if I do shut it down because we just don't have any money, you won't go wait a minute. What, how did? Why, didn't you tell us? But it's also. I mean, if I were a listener I would go shut up. Who cares? Go away. I'm not going to give you money just because you keep asking me for money. If you're one of those people, give us money, Understand, I feel your pain. I understand. I don't like to do it. I don't want to do it.

If you want to join the club, it's a great bunch of people. That's the real reason to do it. It's a good community. You're joining a group of people who are tech enthusiasts, who want to kind of hear these conversations. There aren't many people left who would listen to a three-hour podcast. You're the few, the proud, the, the, the lonely, I guess. I don't know. We're just. We love you and we appreciate your support. That's, I guess, really what I mean. Paris, what's your thing of the week?

2:11:38 - Paris Martineau
I got two things, one of which is a small anecdote that leads me to wanting e-bike recommendations, and I'm prefacing this up top because I put a video in the chat. A couple messages up that I think you might need to download in order to play, but the short version is my friend is a huge bike lover. He rides his van and moves to work every single day and everywhere. He's put like 5 000 miles on it in the last couple of years and it exploded this week.

2:12:12 - Leo Laporte
Basically, uh, but it wasn't an e-bike, it was just a regular bike no, it was a e-bike. It was a van move oh, he was riding it to work, it's suddenly yeah, top of the line although they are bankrupt now.

2:12:23 - Paris Martineau
So he was. I mean, yeah, he was riding it to work and suddenly black smoke started pouring out of it. So he pulled over, got off it, ran away and called 9-1-1. Uh, smoke continued to pour out of it until the fire department got in there and they were trying to cut the bike off or the battery off the bike so that's the problem with VanMoof's, and it exploded Because to look gorgeous, they put the battery inside the bike.

2:12:49 - Leo Laporte
But that means if something goes wrong with the battery you're stuck. All the e-bikes I have you can pop the battery off and if it's burning you throw it away.

2:12:58 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean my e-bike, a wing same thing. You can pop the battery off and throw it away.

2:13:03 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you have an e-bike. You have an e-bike I do.

2:13:06 - Paris Martineau
But my e-bike is kind of crappy and I'm fine with that. I don't use it every single day, I'm not putting thousands of miles on it, but I've been trying to help him find a new one he's looking for like a. Luckily he had insurance so he's getting reimbursed for it. But he's going to buy something that isn't a van move because they're out of uh they're gone commission now they're bankrupt.

He's looking for like a three to four thousand dollar e-bike, bosch or mahler or a similar motor, one that's maybe class two, could maybe go 25 miles an hour and has like front suspension or like fenders, and can be fitted with oh, he's too fancy for me.

2:13:42 - Leo Laporte
What are you fancy for me? I use I ride rad power bikes. They're less expensive. Um I really like my rad power I mean rad lives in that area. Look at that yeah, well, all you bikes are expensive. We have a specialized at seven thousand dollars. Our kid has that. But I like rads and I just think that they're really simple and really good. But if he bought a van move, he is in a much higher category.

2:14:04 - Paris Martineau
He I mean yeah, that's the thing is. He got really used to it I was just.

2:14:08 - Leo Laporte
I keep reading great reviews at electric. Who is doing the all the reviews? Oh, electric, I think, does have yeah, and they've recently reviewed some really nice e-bikes that have very much tempted me. I do, like you know, so in new y you may not want a detachable battery because they're worth something and people might steal it.

2:14:27 - Paris Martineau
Well, I mean, I have a detachable battery and the thing is to get it out of the bike. You have to have a key to get it out, right?

2:14:34 - Leo Laporte
So it's not like somebody's going to be able to do that. Yeah, let me see where I read. I read from reading some really good e-bikes that made me want an e-bike. Consumer reports our friends at consumer reports have some recommendations, yeah I mean, I sent him some of that.

2:14:51 - Paris Martineau
I think, um, he's gonna go try out a specialist, a specialized, but for some reason specialized can't sell their bikes physically in new york city. What? Because something about them like doesn't meet the New York City regulations. So he went to the specialized showroom and they were like you have to go to New Jersey to try them out.

2:15:07 - Leo Laporte
Well, everything's legal in New Jersey.

2:15:09 - Paris Martineau
Everything is legal in New Jersey, and New Jersey and New York have a great history of going to New Jersey to do illegal stuff and then coming back to New York with it.

2:15:19 - Leo Laporte
They like the e-bike. It's interesting.

2:15:22 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, to new york with it. Um, they like the other, it's interesting. Huh, yeah, I I thought it was interesting.

2:15:25 - Leo Laporte
Consumer reports, recommendations or bikes I've never heard of um, but I still send him that there are a lot. It's a big category all of a sudden. I love e-bike. Any e-bike is great, I love I know that's the thing.

2:15:35 - Paris Martineau
My actual recommend pick this week is uh, my weekend plans are to watch this new series, uh, I guess like kind of a short docu-series coming out on HBO called Ren Faire.

2:15:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, no, this weekend.

2:15:47 - Paris Martineau
This is by the same guy who did the documentary Some Kind of Heaven, which is one of my favorite movies that's ever existed and I'm just really excited. It's like a deep look at Ren Faire.

2:16:00 - Leo Laporte
Not just any Ren Faires, but the Texas Ren Fair, yes. Did you ever go to one Paris, no, but I want to. Oh, I'm surprised. I thought you were a Ren Fair regular, oh no.

2:16:11 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I agree, it seems like I should be there.

2:16:14 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah Well, you went to what's the place where you have dinner and eat the chicken legs.

2:16:18 - Paris Martineau
Oh Medieval Times, I have legs. Oh medieval times, I have medieval times. You've done that, yeah. Yeah, I thought times was incredible, actually.

2:16:25 - Jeff Jarvis
An incredible show, a wonderful experience, a real hoot and a half uh the problem with the renfair is you can't laugh too loud because people take it very serious oh yeah, there's a whole.

2:16:35 - Leo Laporte
There's a whole cosplay thing. Um, that's been around forever before, even like the cosplay you see at, you know comic-con and stuff. There are people who do civil war reenactments. That's larping not oh yeah is that more larping live, live action role-playing yeah but it but larping implies to me people with foam rubber swords pretending to be knights guns playing confederacy, come on the confederacy.

2:16:58 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, that is larping, I'm sorry they're giant.

2:17:01 - Leo Laporte
They sleep on the ground. That's a LARP. That's what.

2:17:03 - Paris Martineau
LARPing is All right. Those people are dedicated. Let me read you the description for this, though, because I think it sounds very good, especially as someone who's into succession Leo. For half a century, george Coulomb has reigned over the Texas Renaissance Festival with an iron fist. Now he's ready to spend the last years of his life on a quest for a romantic companion but before he retires, king george must choose an employee to take over his crown.

Oh, it is. Documentary variety with fantasy. Renfair invites you behind the curtain of the famed texas festival to witness a tense and comical succession drama in which the employees imagine themselves in a real-life Game of Thrones. It premieres June 2nd at 9 pm and I will be watching.

2:17:47 - Benito Gonzalez
You know what that looks like. It looks exactly like the bad lip reading of Game of Thrones. Did anybody see that? That was like one of the bad lip readings I love.

2:17:56 - Leo Laporte
Bad lip reading, I love those. It's basically this yeah, they just added some sound to it. But Basically this yeah, they just added some sound to it, but I left the sound off. Let's should we watch just a little bit of the Game of Thrones. Bad lip reading the top one the medieval fun land.

Medieval fun land. Yeah, that's the one. Okay, let's you know. I think we can watch a little bit without getting in trouble. This is a trailer Trailer. Medieval land, fun time world. A bad lip reading of Game of Thrones from BLR Films.

2:18:29 - AI
We got one week until the park opens, all right, so let's run through it all again this time, please. Joust for fun.

2:18:36 - Benito Gonzalez
Get off my case. It's hot in this. Get up you chowd. Meet Eddie Seven days to get this place ready.

2:18:46 - Leo Laporte
If I don't make it work, I'm right back to the finger painting college. So this is real footage from the Game of Thrones.

2:18:53 - AI
I bit my tongue.

2:18:55 - Paris Martineau
Get the Filipino employee back on that horse.

2:18:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I love it. Cersei's not happy.

2:19:00 - Benito Gonzalez
The best medieval theme park in the world Makes me want to watch Game of Thrones again.

2:19:03 - Leo Laporte
Bobby B.

2:19:14 - Paris Martineau
It's powerful, yeah, powdered sugar.

2:19:20 - Leo Laporte
JoJo.

2:19:22 - Paris Martineau
This really is edited like a. It's quite good.

2:19:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's quite well done. This is why I pay for YouTube, right? That stuff's worth it. It's good stuff, yeah. It's creativity they make money. I'm sure they make good money on doing that stuff.

2:19:36 - Benito Gonzalez
The BLR guys. They actually moved to Instagram.

2:19:39 - Leo Laporte
Really.

2:19:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, interesting.

2:19:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is kind of the dirty little secret of all of this stuff is the companies make the most money. They're the ones really raking it in. Let's see, here's a recommendation in our discord, just for you, of an e-bike Well, just for your friend, of an e-bike. That I guess our discordians like a lot.

2:20:02 - Paris Martineau
Yes, Priority.

2:20:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, priority, I never heard of this. The most progressive e-bike with more power and more comfort at unmatched prices? Okay, oh, chocolate Milk Mini Sip has one. Oh, it's a belt drive. Yeah, see, I've never tried a belt drive.

2:20:21 - Paris Martineau
Ooh, that's fun.

2:20:22 - Leo Laporte
As opposed to the traditional chain drive. Oh, they're not cheap. Drive, yeah, see, I've never tried a belt drive. Ooh, that's fun. As opposed to the traditional chain drive oh, they're not cheap. That is nice looking, though, see, I can't do this, because every time I do this I go ooh.

2:20:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I can't believe how many are on sale. I was in Best Buy yesterday buying a UPS and they're selling like 10 different models of e-bikes.

2:20:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I bikes. Yeah, I was amazed. Well, anybody. It's like a ev, an electric vehicle. When you, as soon as you do it, you go oh, this is where have you been all my life? This is great. Jeff jarvis pick of the week. Oh, let's see here. Um, oh, let's do canva. Matt hamilton okay, let's do it good, all right I do like this one, so this is is the developers conference that was in San Francisco this week Boy.

I'm sorry I missed this. Now, I presume these people aren't Canva employees. Oh boy, oh, it gets good, though Wait because somebody from the audience gets involved.

2:21:24 - AI
Well, kind of.

2:21:29 - Paris Martineau
Okay, someone from the audience. Sure, oh boy, he just did a flip.

2:21:43 - Leo Laporte
The dancers in this really commit they do.

2:21:46 - Jeff Jarvis
They got paid. They're the dancers. I think it's pretty fun.

2:21:49 - Leo Laporte
Are they from the San Francisco Ballet? No, I don't know, I would just imagine, but this is actually not badly done.

2:22:02 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean it's sad that it's in the service of Canva Enterprise, but yeah, this has a rapping third grade teacher energy.

2:22:06 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, rapping third grade teacher. I like that the threads post says this is Lin-Manuel Miranda's fault, because I agree.

2:22:13 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he made this. Okay, it is very Hamilton. What is it that makes it Hamilton-y? It keeps going. Oh yeah.

2:22:28 - Paris Martineau
I mean, it's a rap about a non-conventional rap subject, I guess.

2:22:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh boy.

2:22:35 - Paris Martineau
Safe and secure.

2:22:37 - Leo Laporte
Is it super white? Is that what it is?

2:22:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh yeah, it's just super not good. White, Is that what it is? Oh?

2:22:45 - Leo Laporte
yeah.

2:22:41 - Benito Gonzalez
It's just super not good. It's better than an AI could do.

2:22:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, you'd have the AI write you a rap.

2:22:51 - Benito Gonzalez
Could an AI do this this good?

2:22:53 - Leo Laporte
Let's see. No, let's not. Anyway, canva may say, oh yeah, you don't like it, but we got more mileage out of this thing than anything we've ever done before You're playing it. It sure did Got people to think about it.

2:23:09 - Paris Martineau
But is it the mileage that someone's going to see this and be like, yeah, I want to spend enterprise level money for this product.

2:23:18 - Leo Laporte
You're grotesquely I don't know. I would have enjoyed it if I'd been at the conference. That's just me. Do you want to talk about the top 50 podcasts? I'm pretty sure we're not on that list.

2:23:33 - Paris Martineau
I was about to say, aren't they all just this Week in Tech podcasts?

2:23:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we used to be easily, but that was in a much smaller universe.

2:23:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm going to rant this. This is the ruin of the wonderful thing that we love the podcast this comes from edison, which is good edison stuff.

2:23:49 - Paris Martineau
Rogan crime junkie the daily, daily.

2:23:53 - Leo Laporte
Uh, new heights with jason travis kelsey, that's. That's the taylor swift dateline nbc.

2:23:59 - Jeff Jarvis
That's no effing podcast.

2:24:01 - Leo Laporte
This American Life same thing. Call her daddy. By the way, spotify paid her Alexandra Cooper $20 million a year for three years. They paid Joe Rogan half a billion dollars, it's rumored Smartless.

2:24:16 - Jeff Jarvis
This is the rule of the podcast. It's mass media, it's the mass ruling. That's all I wanted to say.

2:24:20 - Leo Laporte
Is it ruined, or is it just what happens when it's successful?

2:24:28 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it gets exploited, yeah, but they take it over and then they ruin it and then they get bored with it.

2:24:31 - Leo Laporte
And ben shapiro, number 13 stuff you should know.

2:24:34 - Paris Martineau
I will say I feel a bit gross about how many of these podcasts are like true crime, yeah ones.

2:24:40 - Jeff Jarvis
I think that it's it makes me feel really my favorite murder the consumerization, the commodification of yes, people's deaths yes, yes, very few of these come from independence by the way, and I think that's the big, the big story.

2:24:57 - Leo Laporte
That's the problem. You got to be a big player to uh, to play at this but.

2:25:01 - Jeff Jarvis
But what I'm saying is this sets the goal improperly and wrongly. It's not. It was never meant to be a mass medium. It should have been a mass medium. It should have been a human scale. That's where all the good stuff is, and this view ruins this wonderful medium and advertisers now think well, I gotta have all of this. I'm not gonna advertise in a little tiny podcast that has really loyal audience now.

2:25:23 - Leo Laporte
The way they know. By the way, there's no way to know how many downloads a podcast has. This comes from a survey by Edison of 5,000 people and they asked them age 13 over.

2:25:35 - Jeff Jarvis
They asked them what they listened to, which is a ridiculously small sample when you consider the incredible range, huge range of podcasts that exist.

2:25:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Anyway, it doesn't bother me. I know we're not in the top 100 anymore. We used to be in the top 10 for a long time, but that's fine. Times have changed. We may be just on the way out. This may just be the end of the line for us.

2:25:58 - Jeff Jarvis
That's the problem. If the advertisers were still with you, you'd be as successful as ever ever. The audience is still here with you.

2:26:04 - Leo Laporte
We had a good run yeah, we had a great run. I'm not complaining, um, maybe some of the people who might lose their jobs might be complaining. But yeah, um, you can go get a job with joe. He's got lots of money.

2:26:23 - Paris Martineau
I love it when you can hear the laugh from off screen.

2:26:27 - Jeff Jarvis
It really brings me joy just sew an upside down flag on your on your jean jacket.

2:26:32 - AI
You'll be in all right, so we're gonna wrap this up before we go.

2:26:40 - Leo Laporte
what is your prognosis? We will hear in the next few days a verdict from the trial.

2:26:47 - Paris Martineau
Oh no, we're not doing this. I want to know what you think. I don't have an informed opinion. That's fine.

2:26:55 - Leo Laporte
You don't have to.

2:26:56 - Jeff Jarvis
That's an appropriate response. I just saw on the TV which is on. I recuse myself, Lower third.

2:27:00 - Paris Martineau
I don't watch enough cable news.

2:27:02 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to say there's going to be a not guilty, at least a hung jury at the very best. It won't be acquittal.

2:27:09 - Jeff Jarvis
It won't be acquittal it'll be a hung jury. I just saw on the lower third on the TV that's always on MSNBC one juror was seen nodding with the Trump defense. Yeah, so uh-oh, breaking news.

2:27:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, I don't. Everybody's reading the tea leaves, including us. Thank you all for joining us. I'm sorry I interjected that little political thing at the end. I was just curious because I know Jeff's a famous liberal and I was just curious what he thought Mastodonsocial at Jeff Jarvis. He is, of course, the Emeritus Director of the Townite Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, gutenbergparenthesiscom.

New book coming out soon, the Web we Weave. I'm reading it, I'm loving it. Add the galleys. Thank you so much, my friend.

2:28:07 - Jeff Jarvis
You're going to read it too. Paris, it's kind of it would get you an actual galley.

2:28:12 - Leo Laporte
It's in the nutshell yeah, I like these old print book sort of things that is kind of an old-fashioned, so pretty for a chortle squirt.

2:28:21 - Paris Martineau
uh, paris smart quitting the podcast.

2:28:24 - Leo Laporte
That was it. I finally pushed her over the time. No, no, please don't forget it. Just think I'm a jerk. That's all there is to it the secret third option yes the third option.

He's such a jerk. Uh, the informationcom. She's on signal. Martineau.01, m-a-r-t-i-n-e-a-u the nice french pronunciation and spelling, uh, and if you have a tip, a lead, a story she should be working on. If you just want to commiserate with her for having to put up with me all this time, martineau.01, are you working on big story? What are you? What are you up to?

2:29:02 - Paris Martineau
I'm working on the medium story, you know the jonah peretti was a biggie, that buzzfeed story is a biggie you might need to do a follow-up on the uh?

2:29:11 - Jeff Jarvis
vivek ramaswamy yeah maybe, maybe vivek wasn't thinking of them until he read your story and said oh, it's your fault yeah, you know, vivek is uh definitely an information reader.

2:29:20 - Paris Martineau
You, you can tell.

2:29:23 - Leo Laporte
Well, he can afford it Always. Always a pleasure to talk to you both and have all of you who are in our audience. We do this show every Wednesday around about 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. The live stream is on YouTube youtubecom slash twit slash live. After the fact, you can download a show from this week from twittv slash twit slash live. After the fact, you can download a show from this week, uh, from a twit dot TV. Slash twig T. We like it. We like acronyms T W I T dot TV slash T W I G. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in Google. Best thing to do, though, of course subscribe and your favorite podcast player.

2:29:57 - Jeff Jarvis
That way, you'll get it automatically the minute we're done editing out all the swear words, of which there were pretty much none right.

2:30:07 - Paris Martineau
One, one, one one is my fault you can always check the bonito section down at the bottom.

2:30:10 - Leo Laporte
I know exactly one at two minutes and 53 seconds in. So there you go two hours did I say two hours, two hours. No, we haven't. We haven't even done two and a half hours yet, oh no that was time of day.

2:30:21 - Benito Gonzalez
That was time of day, time of day 2 pm 2 pm in 53 minutes.

2:30:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Did I do it, benito, was that me? Yes that was. I'm sorry.

2:30:30 - Benito Gonzalez
I apologize.

2:30:31 - Leo Laporte
It's just beepy. I get into a. What tone do you use for that? 100 hertz, 200 hertz? What do you just duck it? Yeah, we duck it.

2:30:46 - Paris Martineau
You know, what I like they used to do is they take it and reverse it so it sounded like you were saying something, but it was weird, right.

2:30:52 - Jeff Jarvis
I think you could just put like a kind of a hee-haw, did I ever tell you how I got dumped off the BBC?

2:30:56 - Paris Martineau
No, I think you did at one point. I did okay.

2:31:00 - Jeff Jarvis
I was going to say the S word and I thought, no, I can't do that. So I said crap.

2:31:04 - Leo Laporte
And that's worse, they don't like that that's worse than they hate that. Oh it's worse. See, it's all just made up. I got dunked, it's just made up. You can't say that on television. Thank you all for joining us.

2:31:24 - AI
A special. We love you, thank you, thank you, thank you. We'll see you next week and this week in Google. Bye-bye.