TWiG 776 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. Jeff Jarvis has the week off, but Paris Martineau is here and filling in for Jeff. Molly White from Web3 is going just great. We're going to talk about the Texas town that is being deafened by a Bitcoin mining operation. Google says it's not possible for us to be carbon neutral anymore, sorry, and the FTC bans a messaging app called Not Gonna Lie. It's all coming up next on this Week in Google Podcasts. You love.

0:00:35 - Paris Martineau
From people you trust.

0:00:37 - Leo Laporte
This is Twig. This is Twig this Week in Google, episode 776, recorded Wednesday, july 10th 2024. The geese of God, it's time for Twig. This week in Google, the show. We cover the latest from Google, twitter, facebook, the Internet, bitcoin, ai, frankly, anything we're interested in. Paris Martinot is here. She is from the information and has a wide-ranging interest. We're going to get her to tell us about the time she sat outside an Amazon trucking facility with a noise meter, but that's for later. We'll get there. Hi, paris, good to see you. Hi Now, jeff is. Where is Jeff? He said he wasn't going to be here this week. Hi Now.

0:01:25 - Paris Martineau
Jeff is. Where is Jeff? He said he wasn't going to be here this week, Jeff is out doing typing camp.

0:01:29 - Leo Laporte
He posted a very fun Not typing typeface Typeface camp. Yes, he knows how to type.

0:01:36 - Molly White
I mean maybe he doesn't, maybe he doesn't.

0:01:39 - Paris Martineau
You can always get better at typing, that's true. I'd go to typing camp. I type for a living.

0:01:47 - Leo Laporte
Typing camp sounds like great fun, so he's. He's learning about typefaces and fonts and stuff.

0:01:50 - Paris Martineau
What fun there's a very fun photo he posted on his twitter, which I put in the discord chat, of him wearing a silly little paper hat and holding some sort of I don't know letters. Oh, oh.

0:02:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's Linotype Operator. Cosplay Camp.

0:02:06 - Paris Martineau
Yes, that's what it is.

0:02:08 - Leo Laporte
Fantasy Linotype Camp.

0:02:11 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's kind of like LARP Camp, but for a different lover of nerds.

0:02:16 - Leo Laporte
So well, I'll tell you what. Don't get all excited, jeff, because we've replaced you with somebody everybody's going to be very happy to see. Replaced you with somebody everybody's gonna be very happy to see. So, while jeff's uh, they're wearing a hat that makes him look, frankly, a lot like he's uh working at in and out burger. Um, there, there's his picture it is true that's so cute. Uh, uh, we are really thrilled to get molly white on show. Hey, molly, great to see you again.

0:02:46 - Molly White
Hello Welcome, good to see you.

0:02:53 - Leo Laporte
Molly is well known, of course, for her research and coverage of cryptocurrency. She runs the website Web3 is going just great and, as we learned in your last appearance, is also an active Wikipedia editor and has been for the last 15 years. Guerrilla warfare if you know guerrilla warfare, you know molly white. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me where's your little paper hat. You need a little paper hat. I think we should all have a little paper hats.

0:03:22 - Molly White
Yeah, I think I missed the dress code notice.

0:03:24 - Leo Laporte
Wow, that's hysterical. So before the show we were talking about this, you cover crypto. I just got a new book from Andrew Chow of Time Magazine about crypto, which I'm actually kind of enjoying. Just written a piece for time about a small town in texas granbury, texas which has to listen to the non-stop roar of bitcoin miners uh, wow, uh, they've taken over called.

0:03:59 - Paris Martineau
We're living in a nightmare yeah inside the health crisis of a texas bitcoin town is what Benito, our producer, calls late-stage capitalism.

0:04:09 - Leo Laporte
Exactly the funny thing is, from the industry perspective, this is a good thing. Texas Tribune quotes Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council. Did you know there was such a thing? He says we need more price sensitive loads on the grid, not less. By locating in rural areas with too much power and not enough transmission capacity to get that power to major population centers. Cryptocurrency mining is using power that otherwise would go to waste. Now here's the. They got a sweet deal because they're buying electricity before it goes into the electricity market.

Texas has a very odd power setup. They have something called ERCOT, where the electricity is kind of sold on the open market and they get because they're pre-ERCOT. The Bitcoin miners get electricity for 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, while the average price in Texas is more than 10 cents. So, as you pointed out, molly, this is actually a profit deal for these guys. Separate from the Bitcoin mining because what they do is they operate at night, when the electricity is cheap. Separate from the Bitcoin mining because what they do is they operate at night, when electricity is cheap, and this is what Lee Bratcher is celebrating Power down during high power demand times, like hot afternoons in the summer or winter cold snaps and sell their electricity back at a profit.

0:05:41 - Molly White
Yeah, it's almost kind of extortionate. There was a period of time last summer and it happens pretty much every summer now where some of the miners in Texas actually made more money from not mining Bitcoin than they did from mining. It was more profitable for them to shut down and sell the electricity, but of course, it means that people in Texas who are struggling to pay their electricity bills are facing higher and higher electricity prices. But yeah, I mean, what you mentioned before is part of this effort by the cryptocurrency world, especially among Bitcoiners, who have reacted to the story that you know, oh, bitcoin is bad for the environment because it's so energy intensive. Bitcoin is bad for the environment because it's so energy intensive. They've really tried to flip the script a little bit and say, no, bitcoin is actually good for the environment because it uses so much electricity. And there's like this sort of crazy mind game that goes into it that is like, oh, it's, you know, incentivizing more electricity generation and stuff like that.

0:06:42 - Leo Laporte
But it's pretty flimsy this is the same logic we were talking about this on sunday that bill gates uses when he says all the power that ai is using. That's, that's good, because it's encouraging a power folks to come up with green ways to create power. And, uh, and of course, bill gates big green way to create power is his new nuclear power plants that he's building in the uh, in the midwest.

0:07:06 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, a lot of bill gates doesn't have to deal with any of the consequences of rising no yeah, he doesn't live next door to a bitcoin mine he doesn't have to deal with the consequences of rising heat levels and uh water levels or any of the side effects of global warming?

0:07:23 - Molly White
yeah, well, apparently it is a lot of the go ahead molly I was just gonna say. A lot of the arguments that I've seen around, the sort of, you know, ai uh, energy use is good are like directly cribbed from the bitcoin energy folks. So I think there's been a lot of cross-pollination there as far as trying to sort of spin it.

0:07:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, at least in energy usage, ai is very much like Bitcoin kind of over-the-top amount of energy use. In fact, we talked last week about the fact that Google was admitting that their emissions had gone way up over the last five years, primarily due to creating LLMs, the models for their large language models, and now the latest is that Google is saying we're not going to be carbon neutral anymore. We still aim to reach net zero carbon by 2030, but, believe it or not and maybe this isn't a bad thing they say they've stopped their mass purchase of cheap carbon offsets so they can no longer claim their operations are carbon neutral. These carbon offsets, though, I think are a little bit controversial. Right, you're matching the you're still emitting-warming gases, but you're matching the volume of emissions with purchases of offsets that support green energy and climate-positive things like planting trees. This is from Bloomberg today.

Today, the changes to Google's carbon credits purchase strategy have coincided with their push on artificial intelligence, which is extremely resource intensive. We mentioned last week that Google's planet warming emissions in 2023 are 48% higher than they were five years ago. Its total energy consumption has doubled. It's the same for Microsoft. Its total energy consumption has doubled it's the same for Microsoft. So the real question is, I guess and this is what Bill Gates says well, it'll all be worth it, is it? I think we know, from crypto.

It's not.

0:09:44 - Paris Martineau
It doesn't seem particularly worth it. I also also I mean I don't know how to feel about the news that google is no longer buying carbon offsets, because I feel like experts have found that the purchase of any sort of emissions avoidance offsets that really does very little to reduce actual emissions emissions. You're kind of just like paying a tax right and not even a hefty one at that right, uh, bloomberg says.

0:10:11 - Leo Laporte
After offsets based claims from companies came under scrutiny, google told bloomberg in 2021 that it aimed to reach carbon neutrality without offsets. So they say now they're going to focus on absolute reduction in emissions, but not so, not right now. It's like saint augustine lord, let me be good, but, but not yet someday um.

Now they want to do carbon removal credits, which are more expensive but might actually do some good by verifiably drawing down carbon dioxide from the air. A couple of years ago, they pledged $200 million towards a fund that was set up to catalyze the carbon removal market. The company has contracted 62,500 tons. There are lots of ways you can do that. By the way, there's sequestration in concrete. There are and they haven't really proven to scale very well plants that actually suck carbon out of the air. I guess this is what Google wants to do. I wonder if this is going to collapse the carbon um offset market?

0:11:33 - Paris Martineau
it's a big, pretty big player saying, yeah, we don't believe in these. I can't do them anymore and I think it is interesting as to whether or not other companies that are large players in the AI game are going to follow Google's lead in saying eh, what are we doing? Trying to get our emissions figures down? Might as well? Just devote more and more computing power to dominating our rivals in the AI race.

0:12:02 - Molly White
Well, and especially as a lot of the AI companies are very ideological about AI, is the most moral thing to be developing right now Effective altruism. Exactly it's possible. Upsides are so high that basically any downside cost is vastly outweighed, even if you're churning out huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

0:12:25 - Leo Laporte
That's basically what Bill Gates was saying. You know, the implication was well, thanks to AI, we're going to invent fusion, so it'll all be fine in the end.

0:12:34 - Molly White
Yeah, there's a lot of like okay, we'll waste a ton of electricity now so that we can develop AI that will solve the climate crisis, which I think is a pretty big bet to be making.

0:12:45 - Benito Gonzalez
Something they're not actively trying to do either.

0:12:48 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I was going to say, but I was like no one. From what I can tell, very few of these players are actually devoting resources to solving the climate crisis or doing anything useful to humanity. They're like who's going to make the best chat bot? Who's going to have a personal assistant that will win us the most customers? That's not super relevant to our climate right.

0:13:09 - Molly White
But if if you're a company that can basically say that our product, that we will eventually develop, will solve any problem you can possibly imagine, then it's really useful to sort of pull on that when people criticize you or say you know that you're doing something perhaps unethical, because everything can be fixed. If you have this very vague future, you know prediction sure it's.

0:13:33 - Paris Martineau
It's kind of horrifying to watch, honestly so this is the part of the podcast where jeff would say test real yeah with a hand, are you?

0:13:41 - Leo Laporte
familiar with that acronym Molly TESCRIAL. We all are.

0:13:45 - Paris Martineau
I am quite familiar, yeah, I saw that there was, you might have been following. I guess there was some sort of Wikipedia drama lately over the TESCRIAL page continuously getting removed. Is that right? Yeah, Are you familiar?

0:14:01 - Molly White
with that. Yeah, it was deleted when it was originally created for pretty standard reasons. You know there wasn't that much coverage of the topic because it was so new. But it was recently recreated and, at least as of last time I checked, it still exists.

0:14:21 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I saw Timnit Jebru post about how it was finally back up and as a win too, yeah, for everybody who wants to.

0:14:29 - Leo Laporte
She created the she and emil torres, uh, who has been on jeff's podcast with jason howell, the ai insider, um coined the term test grail um, so I could see why she wanted it. And, by the way, I noticed guerrilla warfare is is actually in the talk section, so you have had something to do with this. Yeah, did you bring it back or did you kill it?

0:14:52 - Molly White
neither um, but I saw that it came back and went and cleaned it up a little bit, so nice thank you, know what that is?

0:14:59 - Leo Laporte
an unsung heroine? Uh, heroism, and thank you for doing that. It's so important.

0:15:05 - Paris Martineau
That's really great I think I saw a snippet of your comment right there on the screen and did you say that it was originally 1500 words and that that should not be the case?

0:15:16 - Leo Laporte
it says. The readable prose size is 1119 words, which is well short of the required 1500,500 words.

0:15:27 - Paris Martineau
Ah, it's a very.

0:15:28 - Molly White
That's controversial too right. Well, there was a question about whether or not the article was long enough to be featured on the main page as, like a new article, there's sort of a section of the main page where we feature new articles and someone was concerned that it was too short. But they had confused character count with word count. And they were saying that it was too few words when in fact it was far more than the required number of characters, which is a very weird. I don't know why the limit is set in characters.

0:15:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, because word length varies. Characters, you know, one character per child or whatever it is, so I understand that that's what they uh, so I understand that's what they say.

0:16:06 - Paris Martineau
yeah, that is what they say somebody must say that I love the talk pages on.

0:16:12 - Leo Laporte
Uh, I love the talk pages and I think probably people, uh, I always forget. You know I'll go to the article and then right next to the article there's talk, which is the editors on w debating and going back and forth and things you know that were changed and things that weren't changed, and this is actually fascinating. There's as much information here as there is on the main page, in some ways Weasel words I love it there.

0:16:43 - Paris Martineau
uh, I once spent like hours going through the talk page and like change history of, uh, the wikipedia article for face off the uh 1997. Uh, really, that fixture that is, uh, nick cage and don travolta switch faces. Um, because they make a really interesting choice in that Wikipedia article. Because, like I said, the plot of the movie is that the main two guys, archer and Troy, switch faces and so you have Nick Cage as the actor playing John Travolta's character and vice versa, john Travolta's character and vice versa. But throughout the description of it, instead of referring to either of them as the character or actor names, it uses Troy as Archer hyphenated or Archer as Troy throughout the entire article. And it is baffling and difficult to read and I couldn't figure out why they chose that. But I spent a long time looking once and it was delightful it's.

0:17:44 - Molly White
So I recently got really into the weeds of how we spell the name of the character beetlejuice in the movie beetlejuice oh, which is almost involved.

0:17:55 - Leo Laporte
Yes, that's true, um because don't spell it like the star, I'm sure right well.

0:18:02 - Molly White
So the problem is that the movie itself is not consistent. So they spell it one way and like the title credits, but then it shows up in like the background and when he's in that like little miniature hotel thing, and it's spelled differently, and then, like the scripts spell it all differently, and so there's really no consensus within the movie itself it's not b-e-e-t-l-e-g-u-i-c-e well that's the name of the movie that's hysterical

yeah, there's. There's a question of whether it's that, or whether there's a space between beetle and juice, or whether it's spelled like the star. Those are, I think, the three options that.

0:18:43 - Leo Laporte
It's definitely not spelled like the star.

0:18:47 - Paris Martineau
By the way, that's so interesting this article is a mess, you're so right, it's spelled in the strangest way. In here it's spelled B-E-T-E-L-G-E-U-S-E, that's the star Betelgeuse.

0:19:00 - Leo Laporte
That's how the star is spelled Betelgeuse. So Betelgeuse is obviously from the star name, but I think it has a life of its own.

0:19:10 - Paris Martineau
This is in the talk and then under cast, it says Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse pronounced.

0:19:19 - Molly White
Betelgeuse In the credits, but then the movie title is spelled differently. Yeah, it's this whole thing. I spent like a full day on this.

0:19:25 - Leo Laporte
I love this. So go to the talk section of Beetlejuice and right here, the very first thing, main character name. This article is a mess.

0:19:36 - Molly White
It's from like 2008 or something like that.

0:19:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, 2008,. Closer to the movie's release, it is Beetlejuice. In the closing credits. In the opening credits, it's credits. It's beetle juice, two words, but the name of the film is one word beetle juice.

0:19:54 - Molly White
So who wrote the script for this way down, hunt them down and ask uh, yeah, it's um tim burton, yeah and he spells it like the stars well, the scripts are published. You can find copies of the scripts online and it's spelled differently throughout the scripts as well I think that's maybe somewhat intentional.

0:20:16 - Leo Laporte
So scroll down and do what. What should I be looking?

0:20:18 - Molly White
if you scroll down, you'll see the section where I started the most recent conversation about it, and I had to do this like very long analysis of where each name is uh used, and that's why it took me like a full day oh, and here's a third spelling g-u-i-s-e.

0:20:40 - Leo Laporte
I haven't even seen guys, I haven't even seen that one, wow oh, I like whoever's wikipedia handle is mike wazowski oh, that, of course the character from monsters inc. Where do you get your title from?

0:20:56 - Molly White
uh, molly, that's, that's interesting, interesting title gorilla war yeah, I was 14 years old and I had lost the password to my old account and I was sitting there just like trying to think of something and, for whatever reason, that's what came into my head um, but excuse me, it's misspelled.

It should be g-u-e-r-i-l-l-a yeah the unfortunate thing is there's this kind of profane like copy pasta that's become very popular. I know what you're talking about yes. Like I'm a Navy SEAL and something. Yes, yeah, so a lot of people think that I'm named after that, but I have pointed out that I actually created my account, like several years before that became a thing, so I'm not like a big fan of that.

0:21:48 - Leo Laporte
You were guerrilla warfare before guerrilla warfare. Let's just put it that way.

0:21:53 - Paris Martineau
The line in the copy pasta is I am trained in guerrilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US Armed Forces. You are nothing to me but another target, so maybe that's the energy you bring.

0:22:04 - Molly White
You are nothing to me but another target. So maybe that's the energy you bring. That was not the inspiration for my handle when I was 14.

0:22:10 - Leo Laporte
I love this so way. At the end of this very, very, very long scroll, molly says I realize I'm reopening a can of worms, but can we take another swing at achieving consensus on how to spell the character name Molly? Surely you have better things to do.

0:22:32 - Molly White
It's some sort of weird compulsion, honestly.

0:22:36 - Leo Laporte
How late at night was it when you restarted this conversation?

0:22:41 - Molly White
I'm not sure 2 am.

0:22:42 - Leo Laporte
I guarantee you this is very funny. 18.08 UTC. What is that? Oh, wow, I thinkm. I guarantee you this is very funny 18.08 UTC.

0:22:47 - Paris Martineau
What is that?

0:22:48 - Leo Laporte
Oh wow, I think that's actually like midday.

0:22:50 - Molly White
Oh is it, oh is it.

0:22:51 - Leo Laporte
Am I going in the?

0:22:52 - Paris Martineau
wrong direction.

0:22:53 - Leo Laporte
No, it's.

0:22:53 - Paris Martineau
What time zone are you in? Yeah, it's too complicated Eastern, which is.

0:22:59 - Molly White
I can't figure it out Minus.

0:23:01 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I think, is that more or less embarrassing that it's 2 pm. That's a good point.

0:23:08 - Leo Laporte
You just had had a Frappuccino and you were a little buzzed and you thought this is a good time.

0:23:14 - Molly White
Often what happens is I'll be working on something that I'm trying to procrastinate, and it's like you know what, instead of doing this important work, I'm going to go argue about how we spell Perfect.

0:23:25 - Leo Laporte
That's what it is, at least you're aware.

0:23:28 - Paris Martineau
And you really reopened it with such a long opening Sal. Though there are so many different parts to this message, it's great.

0:23:36 - Leo Laporte
This is what geekdom is all about. This is what it was made for. It's really the heaven for the pedant, I think uh, we're just, I'm just thrilled you do it and uh, all the other editors it's a handful. Do you know how many editors there are wikipedia? It's not very many like really active yeah, it depends how you count.

0:23:57 - Molly White
Yeah, it's like a hundred thousand, I think, on the english wikipedia, but it uh, it's been a minute since I looked yeah, well, that's a good number.

0:24:06 - Leo Laporte
That's more than I thought, but nothing compared to the number of views, even in an hour on Wikipedia. I just love Wikipedia and I'm very grateful to the volunteers who do all that work. All right, where were we Fusion? Fusion, all right, where were we Fusion? So the nuclear power plants we have and also the atomic bombs we have used, all use fission, which takes heavier molecules, heavier atoms, and breaks them down into less heavy atoms with the release of energy. But the sun doesn't do it that way. It goes the opposite direction. It does fusion, which is great because it doesn't create radioactive waste. It creates um heavy water or something.

0:24:54 - Paris Martineau
Uh, was that where we were? Were we?

0:24:57 - Leo Laporte
there talking about nuclear fusion. I think I put a pin in it there, but I could be wrong. Well, the only reason I wanted to bring this up is this is what bill gates and others is hoping that ai will save us, right, and the reason I bring it up is because it's it is in some ways getting more distant. So there's a big fusion uh project uh that has been funded by multiple nations in france, uh called iter, i-te-r. They have now announced that they're going to push back another I think it was nine years. Full fusion power won't happen until 2040, 2039 on their time frame. That's a four-year delay relative to the previous roadmap.

Now, the first thing we should point out is scientists can already create fusion, but it uses more energy than it releases, so it's useless for energy generation.

The goal is to create not even cold fusion, but fusion using less energy than it generates, and they are using a pretty well-known technique, a tokamak, to do this. But cost delays, other building delays and cost overruns are causing a real problem. Also another problem according to Ars Technica and this was just the other day this article came out the day after the holiday, the 5th of July the product is the international nature of the collaboration, which sees individual components built by different partner organizations before assembly at the reactor site. In France, the pandemic disrupted production of those components, so that delayed it. And then the fact that it's in France is a problem because the country's nuclear safety regulator halted construction, so it's kind of a mess. So if you're hoping for the magic of fusion to save us which it would, I guess, if we could come up with it uh, cold fusion, but um, it's not, it's not going all that well, I will say the photo they have in this ars technica article is pretty cool.

0:27:14 - Paris Martineau
It's a pretty cool looking photo of tokamaks are really cool, you want?

0:27:18 - Leo Laporte
I mean, there are some really amazing. I bet you, wikipedia would have some really good pictures. Let me just see.

0:27:25 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean, have they tried typing into chat GBT Invent Fusion.

0:27:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Just ask.

0:27:29 - Benito Gonzalez
Invent.

0:27:29 - Molly White
Fusion oh, that's a great point. No one's thought to do that.

0:27:33 - Leo Laporte
How about this for a cool picture? Paris this is the experimental tokamak.

0:27:37 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that's very cool. It looks like a nightclub.

0:27:40 - Molly White
It looks like the inside of the TARDIS.

0:27:45 - Leo Laporte
It is bigger on the inside. It's true, this is General Atomics in San Diego. They've been working on this since the late 80s. It does look 80s, it does, doesn't it? What is it about these kinds of projects that they feel like? You know, we got to make it look like sci-fi, or nobody's going to believe what we're doing. Maybe, I don't know, it's a giant magnetic field. This is a giant torus clad with graphite to help withstand the extreme heat. Anyway, we've been trying to do this for more than 50 years. Hundreds of billions of dollars from all the involved nations and there's quite a few have gone into this, and it is delayed a little bit. Who knows, maybe this won't be where it happens. Maybe an AI will solve it. You're right, benito. Would you do me a favor and ask ChatGBT4O if it would just design a nuclear fusion reactor?

0:28:37 - Benito Gonzalez
I just did and it looks like it has oh Problem solved.

0:28:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh, great Problem solved everybody.

0:28:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Thank, problem solved. Oh great Problem solved everybody, thank you. Why didn't nobody think to do this?

0:28:44 - Leo Laporte
Call the. Nobel people.

0:28:46 - Molly White
Yeah, yeah.

0:28:49 - Leo Laporte
Get Alfred Nobel on the line, we've got a winner, anyway, do you? So? You said you've been asked this, but I'm going to ask it again. Molly, you're famous, of course, for your website. Web3 is going just great, which includes as well as uh as web3. They're all kind of interrelated. Oh, doja cat's twitter account hacked to promote meme token. Okay, uh, bin sensor wallet, like the photo.

0:29:17 - Molly White
Okay, there's a photo of doja cat in armor which seems relevant yeah, I don't know if they like faked that or if they had that photo Like I don't know where the photo came from.

0:29:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's funny. That's the hacked account.

0:29:29 - Paris Martineau
That's the tweet.

0:29:30 - Leo Laporte
That's the hacked tweet Wow that you should buy Doja or else.

0:29:37 - Paris Martineau
I mean, those seem kind of threatening.

0:29:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, buy Doja, or else Silvergate Bank pays $63 million to settle charges. Yield app declares insolvency. I'm just glad to see that you really haven't run out of material on on the page doesn't seem like it no no, I love the little. How much money's been burnt? In the lower right hand corner, the counter is currently at 74 and a half billion dollars. Wow, so are you gonna? This is the question everybody asks you. You said, and I'm gonna ask it anyway when are you doing the? Ai is going?

0:30:14 - Molly White
just great web page I have no plans to do that, unfortunately. Are you more bullish? There are more than crypto, maybe, but in sort of a different way, I guess. But what I usually say when people ask me that is that there actually are some projects out there that are kind of like AI is going just great. There's a really great project called the AI incident database that is run by a bunch of researchers, I think, and and they accept submissions and stuff, and it doesn't have the sarcasm, I guess, but it's a good equivalent in my opinion.

0:30:53 - Leo Laporte
I am still, and Paris has unfortunately had to live with this up and down kind of I don't know you change your mind every week and I do think that's at least entertaining. I'm very back and forth on this. I currently my current thinking on AI is I'm getting a little worried, I'm getting a little worried.

0:31:17 - Paris Martineau
About what.

0:31:18 - Leo Laporte
I'm just no about it not paying off Like that Really. Yeah, that we've kind of. So it's interesting because it suddenly out of nowhere showed all this interesting progress with music and images and then with text and it looked really exciting. But then I'm worried that it's just gonna, but it never really did anything really substantively, as benito has said over and over again I guess I'm listening to benito now more. It's still just crap. Basically, yeah, it's just crap. So when is it going to start really, uh, delivering on the, on the promises, right? That's the question what would?

0:31:59 - Paris Martineau
what would deliver for you? What's like an example of a bar you'd want.

0:32:03 - Leo Laporte
I just want to see it getting better nuclear fusion yeah, fusion will hey fusion would be great. I just want to see it getting a little bit better, you know, and I think it, I think it's maybe starting to plateau a little bit. I've been playing with I think I mentioned last week claude's, maybe it was on twit claude's sonnet. Um, the newest claude Anthropic chat client and it's Claudeai. It's kind of it feels smarter but not smart. I just I want more.

0:32:37 - Benito Gonzalez
It's like maybe cure one kind of cancer and you'll get a good like 10 years of money from us.

0:32:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, if you cure one kind of cancer then you can make all the chatbots you want. It feels like we're this close, but we've been this close forever and a while. Yeah, I don't think we are.

0:32:50 - Paris Martineau
I don't think we're very close to curing one type of cancer.

0:32:54 - Benito Gonzalez
That's exactly my point. Do that once, and you're going to get goodwill from us for the next 10 years.

0:32:58 - Molly White
Yeah. Okay that's fair. I had started using AI to proofread my newsletters before I send them, which was very useful until most recently. I don't know why, but in some update it seems like it started hallucinating errors in my newsletter.

0:33:23 - Leo Laporte
So it'll identify like issues that are not in the original text which is really irritating. So instead of correcting actual errors.

0:33:29 - Molly White
It was making up new errors for itself to correct. Yes, oh, that's not useful.

0:33:32 - Paris Martineau
That's actually really bad yeah, I'm hoping that another, uh, a shoe doesn't drop on the one use of ai that is in my daily life, which I've talked about in the show before. Mac Whisper Transcription, yeah, which uses the Whisper transcription tool from opening AI but locally on your computer, and it is fantastic, I've converted my entire newsroom to it. So I'd be in trouble if they're all using it, hallucinating stuff, yeah, I mean because previously we'd been using Trent, which was great but way less accurate and way more expensive, and we kind of had to look for alternative solutions.

0:34:10 - Molly White
And surprise, surprise, there's a lot of really cost-friendly solutions from these large OEMs you know, I started to see a lot of podcasts and things that are publishing transcripts now, mostly just because of that, which is amazing, Like it's so helpful especially because there's so many times where, like, yeah, there's so many times where I'll be like listening to a podcast on my dog walk or something, and then I'll come back and I want to go back to something and being able to go through the transcript is so much better than having to just like scrub through.

0:34:40 - Leo Laporte
I agree, I agree, we use it. We also use it for show notes and we use it to generate clips. Ai is kind of a tease, though. I feel like it, like it, it, some of it sort of works, and then it's enough to make you get excited about it.

0:34:57 - Paris Martineau
But it's not, it doesn't say it's kind of a parlor trick, I don't know. On Twit this weekend one of the guests was talking about how he just goes around and uses AI all the time just to ask questions and putts around. It's just how he wastes time on his computer. I'm like that's not particularly interesting for me. I mean, if that's something that's fun for you, go for it, but I don't think that that is useful enough to us as a society that we should just give ai companies access to all human information to better their models well, get ready, we're going to take a break when we come back back, the AI brainchild of Sam Altman and Ariana Huffington.

0:35:52 - Leo Laporte
Just imagine. Just imagine what that could be coming up in just a little bit. They've got a new venture the two of them have cobbled together. We've got a great, great panel. It's we got rid of that old guy, right, and uh, grandpa's gone that's true, and no old guy's here anymore.

Paris Martineau and, from the information and Molly White, web 3 is going just great. It's great to have you both. Molly's website, mollywhitenet, has all the information you need. Our show today is brought to you by the email client email company I've been using for more than a decade now. I left google and I went to fast mail and I've never looked back.

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I love Fastmail. If you use one password one of our sponsors or Bitwarden, another sponsor you can use Fastmail with your password manager to make it easy to create unique passwords for every account, which is great. It doubles your security and you still get that email in your inbox. Fastmail takes care of all of that. Fastmail's advancing open standards and leading industry cooperation. Together, we're making email better for everyone. I'm so proud to be a Fastmail customer. You will love it. Try it free for 30 days. Get 15% off your first year. Fastmailcom slash twit. That's Fastmailcom slash twit. We thank them so much For supporting this week in Google. Well, you just know that if Arianna Huffington and Sam Altman are getting together to create a new enterprise, it's got to be great.

0:40:10 - Paris Martineau
You just know you just know, you just know that.

0:40:13 - Leo Laporte
You just know it's got to be. It is AI health. So Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. So so Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global and she is working with OpenAI to create Thrive AI Health, the company that OpenAI's Startup Fund and Thrive Global are jointly funding. Are you want to know what it's doing? Oh, that's. Oh, I'm glad you asked.

It's right in the name AI Health. It's right there in the name. It's a customized, hyper-personalized AI health coach that will be available as a mobile app and also within Thrive Global's enterprise products Trained on the best peer-reviewed science, no less, as well as Thrive's behavior change methodology, including micro steps, which are tiny daily acts accumulated cumulatively lead to healthier habits. I'm only going to smoke half that cigarette, that's. That's a micro step.

0:41:17 - Paris Martineau
That's a micro step in the right direction.

0:41:19 - Leo Laporte
That's right. It'll be trained on the personal biometric lab and other medical data you've chosen to share with it. Oh, interesting. Sure, sam Altman protects my privacy. I'm sure It'll learn your preferences and patterns across the five behaviors what conditions allow you to get quality sleep, what foods you love and don't love, how and when you're most likely to walk, move and stretch, and the most effective ways you can reduce stress. Combine that with this I'm reading the press release from Time Magazine Combine that with a superhuman long-term memory and you have a fully integrated personal AI coach that offers real-time nudges and recommendations unique to you, that allows you to take action in your daily behaviors and improve your health. Is this labeled an ad?

0:42:08 - Paris Martineau
I mean, that's just a press release. That's what a press release is.

0:42:11 - Leo Laporte
Holy cow. Well, they wrote it. It says Ideas by Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington. I bet you this is Time's version of native content, don't you think? But it should say that somewhere, shouldn't it?

0:42:25 - Molly White
Yeah, it's really not well distinguished from their normal it's yeah, well, that's true.

0:42:29 - Paris Martineau
Maybe that's part of the problem is how much money was poured into this thing well, don't you know?

0:42:35 - Leo Laporte
it's going to cost trillions of dollars. Uh, to do this anyway might as well just each micro step costs one trillion dollars.

0:42:44 - Molly White
I feel like I have. I feel like I have co-workers from a previous job who started working here during the pandemic and it was all about burnout at that point, and I don't recall AI being a big thing, but maybe they've pivoted to AI.

0:42:57 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is the new thing. Yeah, they're going to swish in some AI plus burnout and create a delicious treat. Um, oh gosh. So it's.

0:43:10 - Molly White
I just remember it, feeling a little bit weird to be like all right, your employer is going to have you download an app to try to condition you not to get burnout.

0:43:19 - Leo Laporte
Wow, it does. It feels like this is part of the quantified self movement right, the more you know about all of that stuff, I have to say that's another thing that's disappointing. I know exactly how many steps I took. I know exactly how many calories. It didn't help, doesn't?

0:43:38 - Paris Martineau
listen, the problem with my health is me.

0:43:41 - Leo Laporte
It's not a mystery I know how many cigarettes I've smoked. It doesn't help to know that. No, I do not smoke, by the way. I just want you to know. It's just I'm using as an example with ai driven personalized behavior change that sounds very sinister oh man, it's dystopian. You know the AI is going to help you. Wait, what is?

0:44:04 - Paris Martineau
the name of this partnership.

0:44:07 - Leo Laporte
It's Thrive AI Health.

0:44:11 - Paris Martineau
Thrive AI Health.

0:44:14 - Leo Laporte
The company that opened AI Startup Fund and Thrive Global are jointly funding to build a customized, hyper-personalized AI health coach that will be available as a mobile app. Great, you know what it is? It's Microsoft, bob. It's Clippy for health. You look like you're going to need another one of those Cinnabons there, paris. Maybe you think about you know, cutting back.

0:44:41 - Paris Martineau
It's basically the pop-up on my iPhone that tells me you need to complete your move ring today or I'm going to come and beat you up in your home.

0:44:49 - Molly White
It's that on steroids exactly although now it's got the nice like ai uh errors too so it'll start telling you to eat rocks and things like that.

0:44:59 - Leo Laporte
Those rocks would be very good for your diet. You need more, more minerals, don't you, paris? Didn't you recommend at one point an app that would tell you you're going to die?

0:45:10 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, I've got a great app called. Wecroak that five times a day sends me a push notification. I put that on my phone, Don't forget you're going to die After.

0:45:18 - Leo Laporte
You recommended that and it was depressing, I took it off.

0:45:23 - Paris Martineau
Why Are you afraid of your upcoming?

0:45:25 - Leo Laporte
demise. I just don't need to be reminded. I know, you know, when you get to my age, paris, you don't need to be reminded.

0:45:30 - Paris Martineau
It looks you in your face, it looks you in your eye it says I'm coming for you, buddy. And they also oh, I've got to sign in because I upgraded my phone. They also do these weekly leaps where it's like a challenge each week, where the goal at the end of the challenge, once you complete it, it asks you does this bring you closer to accepting your untimely demise?

0:45:52 - Leo Laporte
well, this is yes or no. Isn't this what the roman emperors had? Uh, as they were processing down the appian way and their chariots to to trumpets and laurels, they had somebody standing behind them whispering in the ear remember, you're going to die God.

0:46:10 - Paris Martineau
that would be a great job to have in the Roman times.

0:46:12 - Leo Laporte
Memento Mori.

0:46:13 - Paris Martineau
It's going to be the death whisper, yeah.

0:46:17 - Leo Laporte
Am I imagining that?

0:46:18 - Paris Martineau
You should bring that back.

0:46:19 - Leo Laporte
I think it's real. Let's look at Wikipedia. Remember that you have to die Memento Mori. Yeah, this is what you're doing right there with we Croak.

0:46:35 - Paris Martineau
I just Googled death whisperer guy, roman Empire. According to Reddit today I learned that Marcus Aurelius had a servant follow him around and every time Aurelius received a compliment, the server had to whisper in his ear you're just a man. Just a man to keep him humble.

0:46:56 - Molly White
It kind of makes you wonder why he realized. What made him think that was necessary.

0:47:01 - Leo Laporte
Marcus, you're just a man. It's like having your mom in your head all the time. In some accounts of the Roman triumphant companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality.

0:47:18 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

0:47:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we croak.

0:47:21 - Paris Martineau
I mean I think it's nice, because sometimes you'll be like stressing out of a work deadline or something you know or an interpersonal conflict. Then you'll see it pop on your phone and you're like, don't forget, we're all going to die. This is kind of meaningless.

0:47:33 - Leo Laporte
Don't worry, that enemy of yours is going to be dead soon and you'll dance on your grave. So you may wonder where microsteps came from. It came from this Arianna Huffington opinion piece in the New York Times. How small habits can lead to big changes. I have to say I never finished it because the lead is on April 6, 2007,. I woke up in a pool of my own blood. Wow, wow. I'm just going to stop right there. I don't think any of us need to finish that article.

0:48:04 - Paris Martineau
Were we talking about that's we talking?

0:48:05 - Leo Laporte
about. That's a lead grabs you, doesn't it all right? Enough of that. Have we talked about nuclear fusion lately? Oh yeah, we did that also we, we've hit that one. Yeah, it's the new ai it's the new ai nuclear fusion. We've solved it. Wait a minute. I asked claude, and it said I can't do that for you. What? What is benito? What is the? Uh? What is the tokamak of the future? What? What have they done? I?

0:48:34 - Benito Gonzalez
don't know. Uh, it's a star on the desktop. Have you seen that article? There's that they're like trying to build a star on your desktop well, it's just an, I think it's just.

0:48:42 - Leo Laporte
Uh, it's just it's the stuff of sci-fi, though. Right, if you had this little fusion reactor under your desk, you'd never get chilly, You'd never Continuing on. Did you watch the early morning feed from Paris? Not that, paris, paris.

0:49:01 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say no, I'm living my life, every day.

0:49:03 - Leo Laporte
I don't need to watch a feed the other paris, uh is, was samsung's uh big unpacked event. They do that, uh, every year. This time, paris, I guess because of the olympics, I don't know they have new devices, uh, the galaxy z flip six, the z fold six. You know what? It's funny normally, are we?

0:49:25 - Molly White
still doing folding phones.

0:49:27 - Paris Martineau
Yes, it wasn't revolutionary.

0:49:30 - Leo Laporte
It didn't change things.

0:49:30 - Paris Martineau
No one was clamoring for the folding phone.

0:49:33 - Leo Laporte
I have both. I don't have the new one, but it's in a drawer, it's just not.

0:49:41 - Paris Martineau
Oh, time to play my favorite game. Leo, how many phones do you have on your person, right? Now one wow, I did swedish death cleaning.

0:49:50 - Leo Laporte
I only have one, but I do have a drawer that's filled with phones that's.

0:49:55 - Paris Martineau
That's more acceptable. Yeah, I don't. There have been times I've asked you that and you've pulled out three to five.

0:50:00 - Leo Laporte
I know no, I know, uh, the the fold is, you know it's funny. Uh, I offered it to my daughter. I said, hey, uh, if you need a new phone, I've got the Z fold. And she said and I gave it. I handed it to her. She said, oh, that's cute. And immediately handed it back. Had absolutely, and I think that's the normal. There are people who love them and Samsung clearly making them. They're continuing, but it's hard to get excited about this. There is a new Galaxy Ring. Are you ready, $500?

0:50:40 - Molly White
What does it do? Quantifies?

0:50:42 - Leo Laporte
yourself probably. It is exactly what it is Congratulations, the Ring is.

0:50:47 - Molly White
It's like instead of a fit bed or something.

0:50:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't have a screen. I mean, obviously it it will, um, it will tell you how you're sleeping. It will tell you, uh, if you, how many calories you burned, that you know the usual have either of you guys used one of these?

0:51:03 - Paris Martineau
I have, I have the aura, yeah.

0:51:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I have the aura. Do you like it? I wore it for a long time. You know what I wore? It was during COVID, because one thing a ring can do really well is tell you what your temperature is and it not. It's not so much of your current temperature, but if it's going up or down. It was also good at variable heart rate, so both of which are good kind of health indicators. You want your heart rate variability to be high and you want your temperature to be consistent, and so I. The theory was well, I'll have early warning if I get sick. It didn't I. I stopped worrying, it didn't. I didn't learn. I didn't learn much, and it's kind of an annoying cause. They're a little clunky. This one will be a little thinner than the aura. Many of the same features. I think it's more expensive. Do you still wear your Aura, john? Yeah, john's wears his. Why do you like it? For sleep or Sleep tracking mostly.

Sleep tracking yeah, will it tell you you're snoring?

0:52:00 - Paris Martineau
It tells me if I'm moving.

0:52:02 - Leo Laporte
Okay, moving's good, yeah, unless you're sleeping. Well, while I'm in bed sleeping, yeah, if you're moving while you're sleeping. How often do you have to charge it? About a half hour every morning.

0:52:16 - Molly White
He just charges it when he takes a shower. Oh I would never be able to do that. You take it off, you take a shower. Yeah, I would forget that immediately.

0:52:20 - Leo Laporte
The Galaxy Watch rings supposedly six to seven days and it has like an iPod. It has the like the AirPods, I mean, has the charging case so you can put in the charging case and that gives it another one and a half charges so you could kind of carry it around and get two weeks out of it. They have a new Galaxy Watch.

0:52:42 - Molly White
Ultra which.

0:52:43 - Leo Laporte
Victoria's song on the Verge says. You know why they're calling it the Ultra Because it's a direct copy of the Apple Watch Ultra. Everything about this watch is reminiscent of apples. There's even an orange quick button that launches shortcuts to the workout app, flashlight, water lock or a few other things. That's what I use, my orange button on my Apple Watch Ultra.

0:53:08 - Paris Martineau
It's orange as well on the side there, um, does it feel ultra powerful to you? Do you think it lives up to the name ultra?

0:53:14 - Leo Laporte
well, I have the apple, the original ultra, and I do like it quite a bit. It's big, I don't. It's I it's honking big. I don't think you would want to wear it, but maybe you would do. You like big watches. No, do you even wear a watch?

0:53:28 - Paris Martineau
I'm I'm a flailer. I had an apple watch for a while, but I kept forgetting to charge it. That's why I asked the question about the aura ring because it would run out of battery I think that's generational charger.

0:53:40 - Leo Laporte
My kids invariably. Every time I see them say do you have a charger? Their phones are always dying, molly do you?

0:53:48 - Molly White
wear a watch.

0:53:49 - Leo Laporte
Molly.

0:53:51 - Molly White
I don't. I have the same problem around, like the cigarettes thing, where it's like it'll tell me how bad I'm sleeping, but I know.

0:53:59 - Leo Laporte
I already know that. I already know that. Thank you. I am painfully aware of how bad I think there's some evidence that actually sleep trackers make you sleep more poorly. They make you anxious, they make you consider. You know you're thinking about how well you're sleeping is not a good thing for sleep, for your conducive to sleep yeah, I have that problem every time I'm about to go on a trip.

0:54:18 - Molly White
I spend the whole night beforehand being like I need to sleep really well, so I'm not tired on my trip and I get like two hours of sleep it's the the worst thing for sleep.

0:54:26 - Leo Laporte
I need to sleep. In fact, the best time to sleep is when you can't afford to sleep like your articles do in a minute now.

0:54:34 - Molly White
Yeah, that's true, I'm out.

0:54:35 - Leo Laporte
That's it. It's either that or edit Wikipedia articles.

0:54:42 - Molly White
Yeah.

0:54:44 - Leo Laporte
They are raising the price of the new Samsung phones by about $100. $1899 for the Z Fold 6. But guaranteeing seven years of updates. This is what Google is doing as well. This is important, I think. For Android devices, the display is a little bit wider. I don't see these folding devices in the wild much, do you?

0:55:08 - Paris Martineau
I can't remember the last time I saw a folding phone. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild.

0:55:13 - Benito Gonzalez
The only real advantage to a folding phone is you get to hang up with force.

0:55:18 - Paris Martineau
Once. That is pretty fun. Yeah, Once Once.

0:55:23 - Leo Laporte
You don't want to make a habit of it. They're not like the old Nokia flip phones where you go flip.

0:55:27 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah like a Razr right Like a Razr.

0:55:30 - Leo Laporte
You could really hang up on those. You want to be a little more gentle with them, because these screens, the folding screens, are not super good.

0:55:36 - Paris Martineau
I would absolutely crush something in that phone.

0:55:39 - Molly White
Yeah, yes, but when it says seven years of updates, my question is like does the screen last?

0:55:46 - Leo Laporte
seven years? No, never. It says seven years of updates. My question is like does the screen last seven years? Because that seems ambitious. That's a very good point.

0:55:51 - Molly White
Like I could see a regular phone, if you take care of it, lasting for seven years if you're, you know, careful, but one that you're folding a lot seems iffy.

0:56:03 - Paris Martineau
It's also like if you drop it and it cracks, how are you replacing that screen?

0:56:09 - Leo Laporte
You can't just go to your local phone repair place and have them replace a folding screen, I assume we used to cover these events almost as if they were as important as a new apple iphone event which the world seems to sit up and take notice to. That I feel like nobody. Android phones are really um, for people who don't really care that much about their phone. They just want a phone. Am I wrong?

0:56:34 - Paris Martineau
I feel like it's illegal for us to say that on this podcast. It should be.

0:56:38 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I have I have an android phone, so I can speak but that's because you don't care about you know, it's like you don't care that much, right?

0:56:46 - Paris Martineau
you are the lorex. You just speak for the Androids.

0:56:49 - Leo Laporte
You just need it. You're utilitarian, though, right you just you need something that you can use to message and yeah, I think that is a part of it.

0:56:58 - Paris Martineau
Look at the comments in the chat right now and part of it's also just stubbornness.

0:57:01 - Leo Laporte
Okay, everybody in the chat room is mad at me, right?

0:57:09 - Molly White
They're saying you're everybody said was said very wrong. That is not true. Very leo, hell. No, I will say I am also an android person. Who's who likes to have the same like. I'll have a phone for five years if possible.

0:57:18 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, I'm not getting up at 6 am to see what samsung is announcing you don't care, all right for all of the people who are really into their android phones in our, in our chats, and we are everywhere now. Youtube x linkedin, facebook twitch kick any of there and I'm seeing the chat from everybody. Did you get up early to see the samsung event?

0:57:44 - Molly White
of course not I will say, though, I feel like the shine around developer events and like big keynote events, including Apple's, is sort of worn off. You know it used to be a bigger event when Apple had their annual announcement. I feel like it's been more muted in the last couple of years.

0:58:01 - Leo Laporte
Even that is kind of worn off yeah.

0:58:03 - Molly White
Yeah.

0:58:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think honestly, I got an email from somebody said you know, I was almost apologetic. I used to listen to your shows and really care about all this stuff and I just don't care that much anymore. And you know I would listen, but I don't. Technology is just a, it's just a background noise. Now it is, isn't it? It's kind of become that, hasn't it? It's just part of life, it is, isn't it?

0:58:28 - Molly White
it's kind of become that, hasn't it?

it's just part of life it's like you don't watch a show about toasters. Yeah, that's what I was thinking is. I was reading something interesting recently about how, um, there aren't really tech publications anymore because everything is technology, right. You know like, yeah, and there aren't even really tech companies anymore. And I actually was recently at a conference where, um, anil Dash gave a talk and he said something around. The idea was basically there isn't a tech industry anymore because you don't just build tech, you're building technology that does something else. But every industry these days is a tech industry to some extent, because I mean what industry is like purely analog extent, because I mean what industry is like purely analog. Um, so I I definitely feel that impulse or that, uh, that sentiment. I guess where, like how much can you really devote to paying attention to, like, the new tech when it's just everything around you is it's new tech?

0:59:20 - Leo Laporte
I love a Neil and he did. He did. Uh, he's been for some time now saying you know it's for some time now saying you know it's all over. And I've been trying to get him on to talk about it, but I think he says, no, I'm not going to do any podcasts. That's ridiculous. Here's one from last month the new alt media and the future of publishing. You might have noticed it's not a super fun time to be in the publishing industry, especially if you're trying to do journalism. Uh, he has become kind of, of late, skeptical of this. I I feel like I mean, it's not good for us. In some respects we used to have larger audiences and people like this guy emailed me. We, we're very interested. What's the next thing? What's the new thing, what's going on? But now it's really it's more like it's a subculture. It's the enthusiast subculture. It's not a general thing that people are interested in. Yeah, people don't get up for tech announcements anymore.

1:00:22 - Paris Martineau
I think also it has something to do with how ubiquitous and easily accessible technology is like you could buy a bunch of weird gadgets from timu for like seven dollars, right, I think it's, it's part of life now it's nothing special, yeah and I think also we're starting to get to that point, especially with phones and things like that, where a lot of the updates and announcements are really incremental.

1:00:48 - Molly White
You know it's like, oh, it's a faster phone, or it has, you know, some improvement to a feature that it already had. It has an extra camera. You know it's not. You know, oh, this is, we've just launched the iPod for the first time, or the iPhone for the first time, and so I think people get less, you know, excited about it when it feels like it's just sort of the 2.0 version of something they've already seen.

1:01:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, neil's pretty bullish on the idea of kind of a democratization of it. You know he wants people to have their own websites and write their stuff and express their point of view. So he just doesn't think there's a role for a tech press anymore, which is probably true, I don't know I don't think so.

1:01:37 - Paris Martineau
I think there's definitely a role for journalists in the technology do people want reviews?

1:01:41 - Leo Laporte
what do they want?

1:01:43 - Paris Martineau
actually. I'm probably not the best person to answer that, because I'm not sure that I love Actually. Yes, people want reviews, people love reading reviews. There are whole websites dedicated towards it, not just not you People love Wirecutter and I mean I will occasionally like read reviews if I'm going to buy something. I don't consume them passively like some people.

1:02:05 - Leo Laporte
But see, this is an interesting thing because the New York Times times is surviving. I think I'm glad jeff's not here because he's not a fan, but new york times is surviving, not so much as a news operation but as as as the site for wordle and the wire cutter as a games business, as a shopping, say as a cooking news is kind of dead.

1:02:26 - Paris Martineau
It's not just tech news, it's news in general, maybe well, I would say also the new york times has size advantage, where if someone's going to subscribe to a news outlet, they're probably going to subscribe to something like the new york times because you get wordle with it, yeah wordle with it yeah, I don't know if I would agree that like news is dead, I think.

1:02:47 - Molly White
I think it's just changing a lot. People still get the news. It's just a question of where they get it and how they get it.

1:02:54 - Leo Laporte
What do you do for news Molly?

1:02:59 - Molly White
Well, I mostly use RSS because I'm about 90 years old, about 90 years old, um, but yeah, I mean I I mostly try to follow like a uh, uh wide range of sources that provide sort of interesting perspectives on things that I'm interested in. Um, some of it's paid, some of it's not. Um, mostly I don't subscribe to the big ones, like the times, and you know those guys, but I think, increasingly people I don't subscribe to the big ones like the, the times, and you know those guys, but I think increasingly people.

1:03:32 - Leo Laporte
I don't. Maybe that's why I'm curious if young people feel this way. But I think in general, increasingly people are seeing mainstream media as being corporate shills like they have.

1:03:44 - Paris Martineau
I think that's more of a talking point online.

1:03:47 - Leo Laporte
Oh really, it's not real. It's not for real.

1:03:49 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think for some people certainly, but yet still they. When they're looking for information about something, they're going to Google it and take a gander at headlines from places like the New York Times, but they don't care what the headlines are.

1:04:05 - Leo Laporte
They don't say well, let me look at the Times. They don't go to the Times at all, they go to the Google. You just said it. In a way, the source, the authority of the source, is not See. Part of it is people of my generation grew up with ABC, cbs and NBC and you had Walter Cronkite and you had Huntley Brinkley and you had uh, I don't remember who ABC had, um, cause they were kind of a small network and that was your news. That was where you got your news. And if you had a, and then you might get a paper, you might get a morning or evening paper. We used to have evening papers and you'd get that on your doorstep and you'd read that and that was the news.

1:04:50 - Molly White
You had a handful of sources and they were authoritative because they were the only sources yeah, I think people fewer people these days it seems like go and you know, find a newspaper and sit down to read the newspaper, or they not that many people will go to nytimescom and like scroll through the front page. I think most people you know, these days at least, will see something come in through social media or they'll hear about something from a friend and they'll go look for something about a very specific topic rather than, you know, thumbing through the pages of a newspaper.

1:05:27 - Leo Laporte
Where do you get your news? Paris, I mean, you're a little different because you both of you are journalists, so and I mean obviously I have to cover tech news, so maybe we aren't the best group to ask, but yeah, I mean I use a variety of sources.

1:05:42 - Paris Martineau
Obviously I'm always like scanning on like Twitter and blue sky for things I I go to New York times, I go to the journal Bloomberg.

1:05:49 - Benito Gonzalez
That's not. Where do real people do that? What are your parents do Real?

1:05:54 - Paris Martineau
people use Twitter. My parents uh, I think my parents listened to a handful of inflammatory radio stations and TV channels and their worldview is warped by that.

1:06:09 - Leo Laporte
That's one of the things that's. The other thing that's happened is, uh, people go to sources that can you know confirm their biases.

They look for their tribe, um, and I think that is always kind of in the case yeah, but when you only had walter cronkite or donnelly br Brinkley, you, there weren't that many, you know, unless you were really a crackpot and you found the local KKK meeting, uh, you, you were, just that you were getting that kind of mainstream news. This is like we'll save this conversation for when Jeff gets back, because I'm sure he has some opinions, being a journalist and professor of journalism. But I just I feel like times have changed and I've lately, of late, been thinking what is where do we get our information and does there's no one spot anymore? Right, everybody gets their information from different places, which I think, is in's always a good thing.

1:07:09 - Molly White
I mean, I think it is good that people have access to a diversity of views that they maybe once didn't oh, absolutely, but obviously you know I would say that yeah, yeah.

1:07:20 - Benito Gonzalez
But yeah.

1:07:23 - Paris Martineau
On a similar but radically different note, I don't know if you saw that a sequel to the Devil Wears Prada is in the works currently. How is that related in any way? Editor Anna Wintour, it is going to follow the main character, Miranda Priestly, during the decline of magazine journalism.

1:07:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah.

1:07:52 - Paris Martineau
As she has to battle it out with her former assistant, who's now the head of a luxury advertising brand.

1:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Is it still Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway?

1:08:04 - Paris Martineau
It's still going to be Meryl Streep and. Anne Hathaway. Yeah.

1:08:06 - Leo Laporte
But now the roles have shifted a little bit, because Meryl Streep is the editor of a dying paper magazine and Anne Hathaway is the hot, you know editor.

1:08:16 - Paris Martineau
It's a high-powered executive for a luxury group with advertising dollars that Priestley desperately needs.

1:08:21 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh wow, I think that's code for private equity, right?

1:08:24 - Leo Laporte
Yes, that's right, yeah, code for private equity right, yes, that's right. Yeah, probably, wow, yeah, you know, I think. Uh, you know, hollywood's going to reflect the times. Let's take a little time out and we're going to come back with more molly white. Paris martineau you're watching this week in google our show today, brought to you by. Oh, I'm so glad to have them on as a sponsor, experts Exchange.

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Here's an ad interlude. He's got a little wildlife going while the ad's going on. Harvest mice love to eat pollen. Sometimes they nap in the flowers. Thank you, chocolate milk mini sip for that moment of zen. Isn't that what Google calls it? Riyadh, saudi Arabia, has decided they want to be the home to e-sports. In fact, they are offering a prize pot that's bigger than the Professional Golf Association, a $60 million prize pool for the eSports World Cup, and MBS wants to build an eSports capital in Riyadh. It's kind of sports washing. They're not new to this. Remember the LIV golf. Not new to this. Remember the liv golf tournament to compete with the pga. That was funded by mbs. There are many gaming companies in saudi arabia and apparently, uh, the crown prince is a gamer himself. He likes to play call of duty. What a surprise why not?

why not? Uh, this now. See, this is interesting because I remember when I was in dubai a couple years ago and dubai never had much oil, but but the emirates do united arab emirates do and they kind of helped dubai build the this amazing city. But they all realize that oil will run out, that that either people stop using it or they'll run out and they need something else, and so this is part of their vision of the Saudis' Vision 2030 agenda, which aims to diversify the economy away from petroleum wealth by creating new industries and opportunities for the young population. Mbs wants Saudi Arabia to host 250 gaming companies, develop dozens of homegrown games, and his plan is to add more than $13 billion to the GDP by the start of the next decade. And it all starts with the eSports World Cup opening show. Did you watch this?

1:15:42 - Paris Martineau
This is also why the Saudi government is investing so heavily in kind of the VC space. They've been a big mover and shaker in kind of Silicon Valley investments lately. I assume for the same reasons.

1:15:58 - Leo Laporte
Bloomberg does report that there are some who have been boycotting the events because Saudi Arabia not known for their track record with LBGTQ plus or women's rights. Bloomberg quotes an e-sports event host, stella Chung, who says she declined the offer after feeling she wouldn't be able to express herself as bisexual. You know, this was the same problem LIV had. There were some a lot of bigname golfers who said, hey, that's nice money, but I'm not sure I want to support Saudis.

1:16:33 - Paris Martineau
And weren't they bought out by the Saudis?

1:16:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah. Mbs is putting in billions into it. It's the same thing. The term is sports washing. You know improving your national or international reputation by you know putting lots of money into things that aren't chopping up journalists. E-sports, world Cup operator, has a five-year deal. The indoor arena is being built. It hasn't been built yet. This is a rendering of what they want to look like. Would you go to something like benito did? Were you into like league of legends or any of this stuff?

1:17:14 - Benito Gonzalez
did. I didn't like compete, but I did cover this when I worked at game spot. Yeah, it was the esports right in chief, so, like and it's had for a while.

1:17:23 - Leo Laporte
I thought, oh, this is the next big thing. There's good takeover for the nfl, and then it's been a lot of the esports leagues.

1:17:28 - Paris Martineau
It's waned.

1:17:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's waned.

1:17:29 - Benito Gonzalez
It's a lot of, because a lot of the way that a lot of companies approached it was just wrong. I mean that whole industry was a bubble and it's just that, like they over, they didn't try to grow organically.

You know like e-sports was an organic thing, like kids would just play and commute for no money. For the longest time they did it just for fun, you know. There was no money involved. And then the money came in and then kind of just like ruined it all. All of like the grassroots efforts kind of got squashed by corporations. And also it's not like e-sports is a little different from sports because no one owns the rules to basketball, you know, but a company owns oh, they definitely own the IP for those games.

That's the big sort of difference between sports and esports.

1:18:18 - Leo Laporte
Bloomberg says, although hundreds of thousands of people watch competitive gaming tournaments on YouTube and Twitch, esports businesses have struggled to convince those outlets to spend money online. Investor and sponsor funds have also dwindled broadly in recent years, and the stadiums are not doing all that well. Comcast's Spectacore, which is owner of the now-defunct Philadelphia Fusion Overwatch League team. The now defunct Philadelphia Fusion Overwatch League team turned its $50 million esports arena into a multi-use dining and retail facility. Oh yeah, malls, that's the next big thing, sure.

1:18:57 - Benito Gonzalez
But see, that's part of it, like they built all these giant stadiums and they spent all this money Right.

1:19:03 - Leo Laporte
On the other hand, saudi Arabia can afford to spend this money right.

1:19:07 - Paris Martineau
It's true, they can afford to build crazy malls.

1:19:10 - Benito Gonzalez
Because it's not about profit for them, it's about sports watching, like you said.

1:19:13 - Leo Laporte
Exactly, revenue from the video game market in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt is forecast to reach a relatively paltry $2.9 billion in 2028. It's $2.1 billion this year in 2028. It's $2.1 billion this year. I mean, if you're a kid in Saudi Arabia, there probably isn't a lot of stuff you can do, so I guess gaming might be one of the few things that's fun and sanctioned. I guess, Do you play? Do you game Molly at all?

1:19:48 - Molly White
Not in any serious way.

1:19:51 - Leo Laporte
No, Baldur's Gate 3 for you. This one's a real gamer here over here Paris is like oof.

1:19:58 - Molly White
I get pretty brutal motion sickness from most video games. Unfortunately, so, although I would love to, I am basically incapable of playing most games, but I do play a lot of like. I've been really into RimWorld recently, which has been really fun. It's like a little that counts. What is RimWorld? It's this little like colony simulation game that has this really weird sort of dark side to it. It's sort of like a dwarf fortress in a way, where you just like oh this looks like fun yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

1:20:37 - Paris Martineau
Nice.

1:20:38 - Leo Laporte
It's dwarf fortress with graphics. Yeah, it's a colony simulation.

1:20:41 - Benito Gonzalez
Right Colony simulator.

1:20:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Colony simulator that's the technical terms. Got very good reviews on steam. Yeah, colony Simulator, that's the technical term. It's got very good reviews on Steam. Yeah, it's very fun.

1:20:50 - Molly White
I would warn against it if you have any deadlines coming up. I speak from experience.

1:20:55 - Paris Martineau
You are really good at procrastinating. I bought a bunch of stuff on the Steam sale and I already know it's going to ruin my life. Yeah, I got the email from the Steam sale.

1:21:04 - Molly White
I was like uh-oh.

1:21:05 - Leo Laporte
Uh-oh, this looks. The email from the steam sale was like oh no, this looks like fun. I might want to. Uh, I'm going to try this one out and you could play it on apple. Good, if it's not apple or linux, I have to, I have to dodge it yeah, I play it on my mac and it's yeah perfectly reasonable good fun.

I have in the past and for a long time, been recommending uh offy for two-factor authentication. It's a twilio product and it's free. I no longer rec. I haven't recommended in a while. In fact, my current recommendation, which is also free, is 2fas too fast on android and ios. Twilio says hackers have been able to exfiltrate cell phone numbers of Authy users 33 million Authy users.

1:21:52 - Paris Martineau
Oh boy.

1:21:56 - Leo Laporte
Now I don't know what they're going to do with the phone number. I mean, it's not like Shiny Hunters, which is a well-known group of hackers, wrote they had hacked Twilio and obtained the cell phone numbers of 33 million users. Twilio uh says yes, that's probably the case due to an unauthenticated endpoint. They've secured the endpoint, no longer allow unauthenticated requests. I think they were using the api to to request.

1:22:25 - Molly White
Yeah, I feel like hack is really not the right word for what happened there, because it was just like oops, we forgot to secure an endpoint and they realized it.

1:22:33 - Leo Laporte
Right, right, and what? How useful is it? I mean, look, I get robo calls all day and all night. I don't know if somebody knowing my phone number gives them any advantage, although I guess if you were going to do SIM jacking, that would be the place was gonna say I think the threat really is more like sim swapping rather than just yeah yeah, but but even with that, you don't really know. It's not like they got your two fa codes. I mean all you guys they're not able to it's.

1:23:03 - Molly White
It's really more that they have your phone number. I think the fact that offie was involved is sort of that's more of the concern, isn't it?

1:23:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah?

1:23:11 - Molly White
Well, but I think that there's no actual threat as far as the two-factor side of things. It's really just a question of the SIM swapping, end of things, which is obviously a big deal if people target you for that, but it's not like people can bypass your two-factor or something like that exactly you're watching this week in google.

1:23:31 - Leo Laporte
I've got a google story for you with molly white. No, jeff will be back next week. A google story, and not a good one, or maybe it's a bad one for the open web, I don't know. So this is a study, a zero-click search study from the folks at Datos, which is they have a million-device clickstream panel so they're able to, I guess, click on links. The question is, what happens after you search on Google On the left? What happens when Americans search On the right? What happens when Europeans search?

So you search for a term on Google. 41% of the time a click happens. 37% of the time, nothing happens, 21%. There's another search, another search. Now why is this important? Well, the nothing happens is when you click, you enter a search term and you got the answer without going anywhere. More than a third of the time, people, in fact, they call 58% zero-click searches, which is, no traffic was sent off from Google, basically to another site. They either did another search or they didn't do anything. In fact, out of every 1,000 US searches on Google, only 360 clicks go to an actual open website. Listen to this Of the 41% that click a link, 28% go to Google properties. 1% go to a paid ad. So even of the 41%, almost a third doesn't go to an actual open website. 360 clicks out of a thousand go to your site, mollywhitenet, or, or the informationcom or twittv. Pretty much the same.

1:25:39 - Molly White
I would be really curious to see a breakdown even within that 70 too, because there's a lot of other really big websites that I wouldn't necessarily consider to be the open web right that I bet get a ton of traffic as well.

1:25:51 - Leo Laporte
That just aren't google properties yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure 80 is the verge.

1:25:57 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean, that's just my usage pinterest pinterest they so much pinterest yeah yeah, so I'm curious how they got this data.

1:26:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, they have a lot of devices. I don't know. Okay, let's see A million device click stream panel. Are these people? Click stream panelists may not be there, so they're real people. They've got a million devices. Maybe they have an app on their phone.

Click stream panelists may not be perfectly representative of the overall population, although SparkToro, which is where I found this story, says we found them to be historically as close as we can get Dados. The generators of this information goes to great lengths to ensure their panelists are a demographic and behavioral match to the overall online population, not just for research like this, but because their customers require it. Still, it's wise to keep in mind some limitations exist Minimal coverage of mobile iOS devices because, frankly, apple blocks this kind of stuff, and it's possible that people use Google differently on iPhones, although SparkToro says we don't think that's likely. The mobile data only goes back to January of this year, so this is very recent information, but over time they're going to continue to do this. They'll get what they say a longer stretch of mobile panelists to study. One of the biggest unknowns is ad blockers.

1:27:32 - Paris Martineau
So it's kind of like a Nielsen box, but for using the Internet, yeah it's like what happened when you did a Google search.

1:27:38 - Leo Laporte
What did you do after that? Is it surprising to you that so few clicks? Well, first of all, the first thing that comes to my mind is that 28% of the actual clicks which is, by the way, less than half of all searches go to YouTube. I mean the Google properties like YouTube, Maps, Images, News. So Google directs a huge amount of that traffic to its own sites. Is that because people want it or because google kind of? I mean, you know you do a search well, I mean part of it comes from.

1:28:11 - Paris Martineau
If you look up like I don't know. The other day I was looking up a way to cook a sausage that I know I'd searched before and I searched it and google had at the top it's featured snippet box. That gave me my answer.

1:28:25 - Leo Laporte
So you were done out no more.

1:28:26 - Paris Martineau
I was done and this is something that google has been getting in trouble from, at least, featured snippet box. That gave me my answer, so you were done out, no more, I was done. And this is something that Google has been getting in trouble from, at least from content creators and, uh, pretenders of this sort of information that it is cribbing their work and making it so that people do not need to go through to their websites to get the data or content that they produce.

1:28:47 - Molly White
I remember there was a whole kerfuffle about this with.

1:28:51 - Paris Martineau
I believe it was like Celebrity Net Worth or something. There was a website that tracked Celebrity Net Worth.

1:28:56 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, if you just say what is Paris Martineau worth, you don't ever have to go to the site. They just give you the answer from the site, which is, by the way, bullshit, because I search for my name and it's wrong.

So yeah, but it still pops up on google, oh yeah, the only celebrity whose net worth I actually know is me. Um, although it's not far, I have to say it's not far wrong, it's in the ballpark. I have to. I need some celebrities so I can ask them. Celebrities are not anxious to tell you their net worth. I'll be honest with you. In my experience, you can't just say, hey, what are you worth? What are you worth?

1:29:37 - Benito Gonzalez
Does the study say if this is all from the Google search bar, let's look, because if it's like Google Maps, if you're searching Google Maps, obviously it's going to serve you Google Maps, right.

1:29:48 - Leo Laporte
I think it's Google search bar. That's certainly what they're implying. Let me see if I can.

1:29:53 - Paris Martineau
God. I was in a meeting yesterday and someone was sharing their screen and they were using Google Chrome and someone suggested oh, why don't you search this? And they, sincerely and without blinking, typed in the Google Chrome bar wwwgooglecom. I misspelled it a couple of times, then hit enter and then searched and I was sitting there gripping the table. I was like I can't believe that people still do this.

1:30:22 - Molly White
I still do that once in a while for the very rare occasion that I want to Google a URL because I still have not figured out how to do that.

1:30:31 - Leo Laporte
Well, I will frequently type just the middle part of the URL, you know, knowing that it's going to take me to the dot com or whatever. But I don't know. Is it mollywhitenet dot com, dot org? I don't know. So I just type Molly White and then it says mollywhitenet. There you go. I do that all the time. I'll never forget going uh, I think in the in the early days of google, they had a big uh in the lob front lobby. Within the days when they had a front lobby, they had a big screen that would show the current searches, what the number one searches were and the number one search was yahoo the number one search was yahoo these people would go to google and type yahoo.

That's pretty right, that's it. That's faster than typing yahoocom. I guess now I'm sure it's not the number one search anymore, but no, I think this is benito. To answer your question, this is in fact going to uh, so there. I rarely go to googlecom to search. I type the search in my address bar and I'm sure everybody else does that. Now, right, but I'm sure that's what they're counting is from the address bar.

1:31:39 - Paris Martineau
Leo, leo Leo, google is putting you to shame. The number two search in the US right now is Samsung.

1:31:47 - Leo Laporte
See, I was wrong.

1:31:48 - Paris Martineau
Everybody wants to know Everybody cares about the Samsung event apparently.

1:31:56 - Molly White
I wonder how this study tracks people who click through from wherever they land, because I was just thinking like I pretty frequently will Google something and then I'll click on Google News and then I'll click on a news article and actually go to the news source.

1:32:12 - Leo Laporte
So I wonder how that's tracked. So I think that would go into the bucket of to a Google property. The first click goes to the Google property and they're not counting that subsequent click. So, yeah, that undercounts people who use going through Google News.

1:32:28 - Molly White
Yeah, Because I often use Google News to filter out a lot of junk. Right, I do that too.

1:32:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:32:34 - Paris Martineau
I think, whatever the company is that's tracking this information should add me to the Google News and Ratings. I think I could single-handedly skew these results in the opposite direction.

1:32:44 - Leo Laporte
What do you do? So tell us what you do.

1:32:47 - Paris Martineau
I legitimately. I will Google search something like a specific string and quote me with a site or file type. Modifier.

1:32:56 - Leo Laporte
How do they make human skin for robots?

1:32:59 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I will command. I will open every single search result in a different tab, so maybe there will be 20 to 50.

1:33:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh you're the tab monster.

1:33:11 - Paris Martineau
Web pages open from it.

1:33:17 - Leo Laporte
So I think that I could single-handedly shift these results dramatically. So when I wasn't here two weeks ago, did you ever explain how you got to the result that you got to Like the steps you took when you were searching for what they make, how they make this human skin for robots? For what they make how they make this human skin.

1:33:35 - Paris Martineau
So a couple of weeks ago, leo wasn't here and they someone had brought up an article where they some scientists had used human skin cells to make a human skin face.

1:33:45 - Leo Laporte
Uh, but by the way, just in a petri dish that had really creepy eyes.

1:33:50 - Paris Martineau
It was really rough, and so my immediate question was whose skin is that? Whose cells are those that's?

1:33:56 - Leo Laporte
not what I was expecting it to look like.

1:33:59 - Paris Martineau
No, it looks rough Because it says Japanese researchers used living skin cells to make a flesh. Yes, it is literally a kill me.

1:34:14 - Leo Laporte
So we ended up going to the original research PDF. So this is what I want to know is how did you? What was the? This is really informative because you are an investigative journalism journalist using Google in the ways you just described. So did you on the show, describe how you did this? I?

1:34:27 - Paris Martineau
did not use Google that much for this. We ended up going to the original published paper on this it was a PDF. I think I control F'd. First I scanned through it, thinking if there was anything about research methods or things like that.

1:34:43 - Leo Laporte
Here's the paper.

1:34:44 - Paris Martineau
All right, perforation type anchors inspired by skin ligament.

1:34:49 - Leo Laporte
For robotic face covered with living skin. And then you searched control F for cells Because you want to know, and there were a lot of.

1:34:57 - Paris Martineau
there were actually not that many, so then I went through all of them and that one cells culture NHDFs were purchased from PromoCellGBH, the first line there.

1:35:06 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so now you've got a name PromoCellGBH, so I grabbed that.

1:35:13 - Paris Martineau
No, I, I grabbed nhdfs purchased from promo cell gmbh and then just search that in google so that's valuable.

1:35:21 - Leo Laporte
So you didn't just take, you didn't go to promo cell goomba, you copied the whole sentence and then no, no, no, I did NHDS specifically. Oh, not N-H-E-K-S.

1:35:34 - Paris Martineau
N-H-D-F. Whatever it was, and I didn't put it in quotes.

1:35:37 - Leo Laporte
And I just wanted to see what would come up, and you didn't put it in quotes, so let me take the quotes off. So you did this, and now you've got normal human epidermal keratinocytes promo cells yes, from promocellcom, very nice.

1:35:53 - Paris Martineau
so you click this link, that's where we went okay and so I think, if you go back to the original, um, uh, yeah. So here we are, and the first description it says oh, you found it right away and I well, I do think I need to tell you guys about this.

1:36:13 - Leo Laporte
Juvenile foreskin or adult skin from single or pooled donors you get your choice.

1:36:22 - Paris Martineau
And then we did think you know we could hypothetically buy.

1:36:26 - Leo Laporte
We could buy this. It's not expensive.

1:36:28 - Paris Martineau
It's not going to stop you because you're not a researcher. You could just buy a million cells.

1:36:33 - Leo Laporte
It's only $150 for a million cells. Let me add that to the cart.

1:36:37 - Molly White
Your targeted advertising must be wild right now.

1:36:40 - Leo Laporte
It is the product has been added to cart. Okay, wait a minute. I accidentally bought two. I don't really want two.

1:36:48 - Molly White
Let's check out though just in case, excellently bought two. I don't really want to. Let's check out, though, just in case, I've even got a recommendations engine.

1:36:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, wait a minute, let's go back. People who like this, people who bought human foreskin cells also bought. Oh well, you gotta have medium the, the keratinocyte growth medium. You need the freezing mediocre sfm, which is animal component free, and you need a detach kit for the gentle and effective detachment of adherent primary human cells. So all three of these that's where they get you.

1:37:19 - Molly White
That's where they get you because I bet that's expensive.

1:37:21 - Leo Laporte
Let's just see how much for the detach kit. Oh no, that's not so bad 57 euros. Somehow we went from dollars to euros. I'm now in Germany for some reason. Oh, you know what? You can't get the detach kit. Oh yes, you can Never mind.

1:37:36 - Paris Martineau
Yes, you can.

1:37:39 - Leo Laporte
Only in Germany can you get the detach kit.

1:37:41 - Paris Martineau
Okay, hey look, 50 bucks, that's a steal.

1:37:45 - Leo Laporte
So we could make our own human skin.

1:37:50 - Paris Martineau
We could make our own human skin.

1:37:51 - Leo Laporte
We could make our own little fleshy face. Now and that was not a zero-click search by any means you actually got Google, got a number of clicks.

1:37:59 - Paris Martineau
Many-click search. That was my process, so that's not what they're talking about here.

1:38:09 - Molly White
That is definitely not what they're talking about here, but they could be. If they brought you onto their panel, they could have this valuable data.

1:38:15 - Leo Laporte
You should be on the click panel. Is it surprising to you Does this give ammunition to Rupert Murdoch and his ilk that so many of Google searches by the way they say they probably undercounting because it doesn't include voice searches by you know, saying, hey, you know what's a human keratite or whatever, and they don't.

1:38:33 - Paris Martineau
OK, I feel like nobody is doing that, though.

1:38:36 - Leo Laporte
Human search you.

1:38:37 - Paris Martineau
I do, you don't do voice searches. Molly, do you voice search? I hate voice, I hate talking to any sort of thing.

1:38:47 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, huh, I.

1:38:56 - Paris Martineau
Well thing, oh, that's interesting. Yeah huh, I well see I have. Well, you, you live your life, your, your whole deal is talking. So of course you want to talk to search.

1:39:00 - Leo Laporte
That makes sense. My natural instinct is not to go to the keyboard but to talk. You know, you're right. You're exactly right. Um, it also doesn't include people who use the google search app. Do you ever use the Google search app? Nobody uses that.

1:39:14 - Paris Martineau
I didn't know there was a Google search app. I use the Google app exclusively for Google lens when I need to, when I need to identify a, a piece of furniture that was made in the early to mid 1900s, that is, and I've also used it for a flower once. That is exclusively what I use the google search app for yeah, I, you know exactly.

1:39:37 - Leo Laporte
We're walking around and I don't see all these pink and white flowers. I'm saying, what is that? And I did the lens. And actually no, I didn't. I did claude, I did anthropics, claude and I, and you didn't use your glasses I wasn't wearing my. I should have been wearing my glasses. I still haven't gotten my special glasses.

1:39:56 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, what happened to that?

1:39:57 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. Everybody else is getting theirs. And they say they got my order. I think it's because I ordered lenses like prescription lenses. It's slowing it down. So, claude, lets you take a picture of something. So it's a picture of these things. And it actually gave me a great answer. It said I said what kind of flower is this? That's the picture. These appear to be oleander flowers, nereum oleander. The image shows clusters of bright pink five-petaled flowers under characteristic of oleander. It was, by the way, oleander. It gave me the whole story of oleander. Then I said are they native to Northern California? And it gave me that this was very useful. But again, this is another zero click right, because wherever Anthropic got this information the open web, scanning the open web it sucked all the information out of it and didn't even give me an option to go to a web page. That's just the result. So I think this is a legitimate cause for concern for content creators. The zero-click results you're going to see more and more of them. Already it's almost a third of all searches.

Actually, it's almost a third of all searches, or actually it's 50.

1:41:12 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I opened up the google app to see what I've searched before being like there's got to be things other than furniture.

1:41:19 - Leo Laporte
I've searched in google lens you know, it's all furniture and it's all mid-century modern. Is that your thing?

1:41:25 - Paris Martineau
I mean kind of like I would not mid-century modern, because I don't really like modern furniture that's made to look like mid-century furniture, but I really do like vintage pieces from the 50s to 70s or 80s In the 50s.

1:41:41 - Leo Laporte
That's what we called. It is mid-century modern.

1:41:44 - Paris Martineau
I grew up with that I feel like that term has now been co-opted mid-century modern to mean furniture that's supposed to look like it's mid-century oh but it isn't, but it's manufactured by like way back.

1:41:54 - Leo Laporte
Oh See, we thought back then that that was modern.

1:41:59 - Paris Martineau
Listen, I think it still looks modern. I've got a whole book that is an interior design book from the 70s. That is all kind of like space age type furniture.

1:42:09 - Leo Laporte
This is the look. This is the look. This is the look. So the you know, when I was watching mad men which all takes place in that's that's 50s, 60s, 70s era and I could literally feel the texture of the, of, like that couch. I know what that feels like because I grew up on it. You know, I just know it. I know it's hard and it's very interesting.

1:42:35 - Paris Martineau
Um, I think amanda mole, who uh used to be a writer at the atlantic, but now is that business week recently did a good article about why it is so hard to buy a good couch now, and it's partially because of the way that manufacturing for american uh typically most how for a long time, if you're going to buy a couch in america, you're going to be getting one that was made, I believe, in either north or south carolina, I'm forgetting where but it was like the manufacturing by real people with wood by real people with wood and like specific types of foam, but now everything has to be shippable from China, so it is more modular.

1:43:19 - Leo Laporte
Press board and it's yeah, it's Ikea stuff. It's kind of crappy.

1:43:22 - Paris Martineau
It's flap bag yeah, it's crap it really is Even the expensive stuff, even if you're spending three, four grand for a cat you're gonna get kind of crap no, and it's glued and stapled, yeah, no, it's.

1:43:36 - Leo Laporte
It's sad furniture. So go get your antiques, your mid-century modern antiques that are not modern. They're made in north carolina by actual craftspeople. Yes, ftc. Okay. So remember, we had the big thing about the surgeon general of the United States of America saying there should be warning labels on social media, and which, to which we thought that's terrible. Well, guess what? The FTC is now banning an app called NGL Not going to lie, not going to lie, not going to lie. This is a digital platform that is being banned from serving users under 18 because of its ability to use artificial intelligence. Wait a minute. No, because they exaggerated their ability to use artificial intelligence to curb cyberbullying. Have you ever used NGL? Do you know NGL? I?

1:44:33 - Paris Martineau
think it's like one of those apps that's kind of like Ask FM. I'm assuming it's one of those things where you can invite people to ask questions to you or comments anonymously, so it's basically just a cyber bullying app.

1:44:50 - Leo Laporte
The complaint alleges that ngl tricked users into paying for subscriptions by sending them computer generated messages appearing to be from real people and then this is so bad saying, hey, for ten dollars a week I can find out their real identity. Oh no, they no, they weren't real anyway. People who signed up received only hints of these identities, whether they were real or not, enforcers said. After users complained about the bait and switch tactic, executives at the company this is from the FTC announcements laughed off their concerns and referred to them as suckers.

1:45:31 - Paris Martineau
Okay, that's a great grift, though, is start an app where children basically invite open themselves up to either get bullied online by anonymous people or have confessions of love by anonymous people, and then be like well, if you pay us $10 a month, we'll tell you who's bullying you or who likes you, and then they're like ha ha, no, actually.

1:45:51 - Leo Laporte
Suckers. That's you know what they deserve. They agreed to pay $5 million and stop marketing to kids and teens to settle the lawsuit, which also alleged the company. Not only that, they violated privacy laws by collecting data from youths under 13 without parental consent I feel like the headline kind of buries the lead here.

1:46:14 - Molly White
Yeah, they didn't really ban the messaging app from doing anything. There was a settlement where they agreed to stop marketing to children.

1:46:22 - Leo Laporte
This is the washington post, christiano lima strong writing the uh piece, although I doubt he wrote the headline. Yeah, the headline's wrong. Probably not the headline's wrong. Probably not the headline's wrong, it really is. These guys were scammers and they got caught and got fined and said okay, we won't market to kids anymore. Market in quotes.

1:46:41 - Molly White
Oh, it does say that they will be required as a part of the deal. They will be required to prevent users who indicate that they are under 18 from accessing the app. Not that that will really stick.

1:46:55 - Paris Martineau
I think that would be all of their users.

1:46:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah I mean I? I mean I know what ngl stands for, but I'm not going to use an app called ngl. Ngl co-founder said in a statement tuesday the company cooperated with the ftc's investigation for nearly two years and viewed the resolution quote as an opportunity to make NGL better than ever. While we believe many of the allegations around the youth of our user base are factually incorrect, we anticipate the agreed upon age gating and other procedures would now provide direction for others in our space and hopefully improve policies generally. Suckers uh user base topped 200 million at their peak at one point the most downloaded product on the app store back in 2022. You know why this is 2022. That's why it was popular. You were stuck at home. You couldn't really gossip about people in person.

1:47:53 - Paris Martineau
Yep.

1:47:55 - Leo Laporte
You can also market yourself as a place where people can play games such as Never have I Ever. Yeah, people were lonely, they were stuck at home, teenagers and they wanted to do the things that they would do in person. So they did them on this app. But then the app it sounds, sounds like kind of suckered them jeez.

1:48:14 - Molly White
In this case, it says that some of the fake messages that were supposedly coming from people's actual friends included. I know what you did that's terrible, oh my god.

1:48:30 - Leo Laporte
That's a great phrase to just send people in messages randomly.

1:48:33 - Molly White
Yeah, I know what you mean. That's what people are going to do with all those phone numbers they got from all of you. There you go.

1:48:39 - Leo Laporte
You know it does explain. There's been a real uptick in messages from people I don't know and numbers I don't know, like how you doing? What's up things like that. That's really common for the romance scammers.

1:48:53 - Molly White
Yeah, it's the big butchering yeah, yeah, exactly, I was getting. There's a period of time where I was getting text messages that they would I was. I probably shouldn't have been responding to them, but basically someone would say like hi, I'm looking for Catherine, or something like that, and I would say you have the wrong number and they would argue with me, which is one of the weirder things I've ever like, and I don't think it was a pig butchering thing, because there was never any attempt to like.

1:49:23 - Leo Laporte
You're not supposed to argue, they're supposed to get to know you.

1:49:26 - Molly White
And it was like no, you are Catherine.

1:49:28 - Leo Laporte
No, I know you are, I know you are, I know you are.

1:49:30 - Molly White
Yeah, and it's like what are you going to convince me that I'm this random person? Yeah, it was very strange?

1:49:46 - Paris Martineau
I think there's. I mean, my personal conspiracy theory is that I think a lot of these are just trying to test whether or not your number is active and maintained by a person. So that's why I I mean, knock on wood, I don't really get many spam calls at all or spam texts, and I think it's because if I get a spam text, I delete it without even looking at it, so it won't send the iMessage like red thing to have on. Same with calls, I don't pick them up. Yeah, I don't even.

1:50:06 - Molly White
I think that's probably true is that you know it's a bad idea to respond to these things because they know your phone number is active. But I still don't see why they would argue with me like they know my phone number is active at that point. Why not just add it to their list and move on Like I'm just very baffled by that behavior.

1:50:23 - Paris Martineau
It is very odd.

1:50:24 - Leo Laporte
So in this case, I think, while I disagreed with the attorney general's warning labels, this was an example of a rogue social media app that definitely deserved to be curbed Right.

1:50:35 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

1:50:36 - Leo Laporte
Yes, see, we're not we're you know, we're open minded. Here's a story from the information by Jin Yang. Maybe you know something about this. Paris, no Timu breaks with direct from China strategy in threat to Amazon. What's going on with Timu? I mean Timu by itself is a threat to Amazon.

1:50:59 - Paris Martineau
Yeah. So Jing found that products shipped from Timu basically 20% of Timu's US gross market value is coming from products that are shipped from US warehouses, which is very Amazon of them, Because Timu's whole thing has been that they're going to ship you products direct from China.

1:51:22 - Leo Laporte
Like Alibaba. Right yeah, that was the whole thing and it would take months, but your price was a buck.

1:51:36 - Paris Martineau
That's not what more than half of new timu sellers since march can ship from the us, and part of this is because timu is under threat of an import ban on direct from china shipments. Um, but it's really interesting that this is happening now because it's coming just in the heels of Amazon. Internally, my colleague, theo Waite had reported, I think last week or the week before, that Amazon is now working on its own version of Teemu where it's going to make a super discounted part of Amazon where you can get cheap crap sent to you direct from China that won't have the same prime two-day shipping but you will be able to get like a weird appliance for three bucks.

1:52:16 - Leo Laporte
So this is interesting. I went to the Timu site and look at this. It says local warehouse, fast delivery. So they're not hiding this fact. Because that was always the problem with Alibaba is like you don't know when you're going to get it. You'd order it and forget you ordered it.

1:52:34 - Molly White
And then it would come three months. So are these like items that they're shipping from china, storing in us warehouses and then basically just shipping them from the warehouse at that point? Are they originating from outside of china?

1:52:47 - Paris Martineau
uh, here I'll read from this instead of only shipping items from Chinese factories directly to customers' homes, avoiding paying US duties along the way, timu is signing up Chinese sellers that already have inventory in US warehouses and can ship to homes from there, as well as US merchants. Some of the sellers that Timu has signed up recently are also big on Amazon's marketplace, so they're mostly going after sellers that already have stuff in the US that Teemu can kind of sidestep the import-export issues altogether Interesting.

1:53:20 - Leo Laporte
Oh so, and that's another thing that's different. I think Alibaba didn't have third-party sellers. Maybe they did, and I just didn't notice that's more than half of all of Amazon's business is third-party sellers.

1:53:31 - Paris Martineau
I believe Alibaba is like all third-party sellers as well.

1:53:33 - Leo Laporte
It's all third-party, oh okay.

1:53:35 - Paris Martineau
It's kind of the same thing where you can correspond with like a manufacturing facility, basically so this $8 portable neck fan, which, by the way, everybody's swearing.

1:53:47 - Leo Laporte
I just ordered one. You've got to have these.

1:53:50 - Paris Martineau
From Amazon, from Timu, but how?

1:53:52 - Leo Laporte
much was the one you ordered. Was it $8.50? $20.

1:53:55 - Paris Martineau
Yeah see, because I'm an idiot. Look at it.

1:53:58 - Leo Laporte
This is ice porcelain okay With a copper motor, Pure copper.

1:54:06 - Paris Martineau
Low noise.

1:54:07 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, it is provided by King Jun, but it ships from Timu, Although it's DHL, it looks like so, or maybe I don't know. Let's see if I order it when I'll get it. Should we have a race to see who gets?

1:54:23 - Paris Martineau
their neck 11 days. I mean mine's coming in tomorrow, so I think I'm going to win.

1:54:26 - Leo Laporte
You're going to win because you used Amazon Prime. It's true. Look at all the different neck fans you can get.

1:54:35 - Paris Martineau
I have a friend who's a big neck fan advocate and I used it for the first time on Saturday of hers and I was like, actually I've got to get this.

1:54:45 - Leo Laporte
Isn't this wild. This is like all of a sudden everybody's talking about neck fans. It's because it's hot.

1:54:54 - Molly White
Yeah, but what happened? Do you wear them like sitting in your house or are they no like walk around with I?

1:54:57 - Paris Martineau
would. Yeah, I would wear them, probably while walking to and from the subway.

1:55:01 - Leo Laporte
Got it do you see other people wearing neck fans? I do, yeah, I mean it.

1:55:08 - Paris Martineau
It looks just like a tiny little thing around your neck.

1:55:11 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of not that it could be like headphones it looks like headphones.

1:55:14 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it looks like headphones. Yeah, that's what they look like. I think it could be useful, because I have a very sweaty head.

1:55:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, who doesn't?

1:55:22 - Molly White
Localized air. I think they should really. Have you ever seen those hats they make that have the fans and the brim, I think those would really make sense.

1:55:30 - Leo Laporte
This was last year's neck fan and I bought this and it's a bad idea. My hair would get stuck in this. The fans you point them at your face, so it's around your neck, but it's like two fans in front of your face. This was not a success, I think. So they've improved uh, improved on the.

Here's an example iterated they've iterated uh oh, and they have aromatherapy pads like a chinese factory, which is you know what I'm going for. By the way, notice her books the people's lawyer mid-century modern furniture. The coffee book all right. People's Lawyer Mid-Century Modern Furniture the Coffee Book All right. Short films these are all fake books, right? They've got to be. Nobody named Guofford Thurlow wrote a book called Short Films.

1:56:25 - Paris Martineau
Guofford, if you're out there, I'm sorry.

1:56:27 - Leo Laporte
Now I'm interested in getting uh dummy books that she has I'm sure they sell them.

1:56:34 - Molly White
I want those you can buy like from wayfair. They'll sell you like a pack of books by the six, books that are all the same color.

1:56:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, books by the foot. I want that. Yeah, all right. Uh, I've now completely see timu. Every time I get sidetracked, every time have you ever bought anything from timu?

1:56:52 - Paris Martineau
no, this might be my first the eight dollar neck fan I have not, I haven't either, um okay I think we did a news story in the show at some point saying like that timu is particularly popular among women in their 30s um, and so I asked this is the right demographic. I was going to say I asked my skeeball group chat have any of you guys used Timu? Because it's all women in their 30s? And all of them said no, except for one friend who's like, yeah, I buy the most random crap from Timu. It's a delight I buy like a T-shirt that says horse, pig or something.

1:57:32 - Molly White
It seems good for like the novelty type of things, but I'm not sure if I would like. I don't know if I would buy something there that I wanted to use for an extended period of time.

1:57:41 - Paris Martineau
I guess. Yeah, it makes me feel morally kind of squeaky.

1:57:45 - Molly White
Yeah, I mean, I think the same is true with Amazon to some extent, but yeah, it doesn't feel like great as far as labor rights go.

1:57:55 - Leo Laporte
A new Illinois law will force influencer parents to compensate their children for appearing in social media content.

1:58:06 - Paris Martineau
I think this is good. Yeah, I think this is good.

1:58:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, on July 1st, the state enacted new rules on its child labor law, requiring adults to pay children under the age of 16. If minors appear in at least 30% of their social media content over a 30-day period, funds must be placed into a trust which the minor can access at the age of 18. Parents who fail to do so could be sued by their children. I think this was a big issue in the 30s in Hollywood, right With parents, you know. Yeah, this had always been a child actor issue.

1:58:42 - Molly White
Yeah, I was hearing it discussed in that class. I was listening to, I think, Tech Dirt maybe, and they were talking about it and they gave a really interesting history of child actors. I hadn't thought of it from that point of view, but I think that makes a really good point.

1:58:55 - Leo Laporte
It's like they're basically child actors yeah, and I think it is a little bit out of control. Uh, on social now, you know, with with parents who are putting their kids, and of course you hear some horror stories about, like the mom who had her child duct taped to the wall and things like that. So good, now I don't know if it's, I guess it's illinois only.

1:59:20 - Paris Martineau
Um, I wonder if they say that uh, maryland, california and wisconsin are said to be considering similar legislation there are laws to protect child actors, aren't they?

1:59:31 - Benito Gonzalez
but I think influencer has complicated it yeah, I think social media doesn't count the same for a employer.

1:59:42 - Paris Martineau
Your parent is running a social media account that is getting reached out to by sponsors who are paying them directly, so I think it's a bit more ad hoc so jackie coogan was a famous child actor in the in the 20s.

1:59:58 - Leo Laporte
He started with charlie chaplin and the kid uh. He made millions of dollars in his teens. When he turned 21 he found his mother and stepfather had spent most of the money he'd earned already and he sued and won in 1939. But he still didn't get most of the money because it was gone. But as a result, the Coogan Act was enacted in California, mandating the trust fund created for a child actor to place a portion of their earnings that can't be touched until the actor is 18. Place a portion of their earnings that can't be touched until the actor is 18. There are loopholes and apparently Shirley Temple, judy Garland, macaulay Calkin all have parents have all found those loopholes.

In 2000 the Coogan Act was updated I'm reading from Backstage Magazine, by the way, which is a perfect magazine for this. The Coogan Act was updated to mandate a minimum of 15 percent of the gross income be saved. Parents and guardians no longer allowed to access the fund. It's seen as property of the minor. Uh, yeah, child, I mean that makes sense right, long long uh standing practice of stealing from your kids. I know I did, um, actually, if only my kids had been famous and rich, then I would have the idea for the legislation came from shreya nalamuthu, a 15 year old high school student in kohler's district.

2:01:23 - Molly White
Good for her was she a child's influencer, or was she just? I don't think so.

2:01:28 - Paris Martineau
I think she says quote when scrolling on social media, I always saw young children and families called family vlog channels posting videos online. After finding that users could make money off platforms such as youtube and tiktok, I learned that often these kids are made to participate in videos without any guarantee of income generated from the content.

2:01:46 - Leo Laporte
I wanted to work with senator kohler to protect the money that these kids have rightfully earned here, here, I just looked for Just doing it for the love of the game, just for fun. Yeah, I looked up family vlog on TikTok. Look at all these parents using their kids for, you know, social credit. Meanwhile my kid refuses.

2:02:05 - Paris Martineau
Mia's first day out of an ICU, nice. That child is like one day old.

2:02:12 - Molly White
Get that trust fund going.

2:02:14 - Leo Laporte
Get it going. Wow. I wish my son would have used me in his videos. I could sue him.

2:02:23 - Paris Martineau
Sue him for some of that Cheetos dust, some of that.

2:02:26 - Leo Laporte
Cheetos, dust, money, baby. All right, let's take a little break and then we're going to wrap things up, if you wish, with some picks of the week. It's so great to have Molly White here, mollywhitenet, of course you've seen her website. Who hasn't? Web3 is going just great. She also writes for the Citation Needed newsletter. That's your newsletter, right?

2:02:50 - Molly White
It is.

2:02:50 - Leo Laporte
Yes, and you do all sorts of other things, including editing Wikipedia as a gorilla. Three terms on the arbitration committee as well. That's really cool, really cool. Do you charge people to get Citation Needed? Do you make money on this? Let's do it.

2:03:12 - Molly White
Optionally, let's get some subscribers. Yeah, it's like a pay, what you want.

2:03:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, pay what you want. Yeah, sign up. Support Molly, absolutely there. She is right there writing with her laptop, literally in her lap.

2:03:27 - Molly White
Sometimes I write about stuff that's not crypto too. So if you're not into crypto, Actually all sorts of fun stuff.

2:03:32 - Leo Laporte
I love it. Yeah, all right. Our show is brought to you, of course, by the sponsors I've been mentioning, but, more importantly, by you, our listeners. It's probably the most important part these days, uh, of what we do. Just just like Molly, we invite you to subscribe $7 a month and you get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get extra content. You get access to the Discord where the whole community lives. It really is a great community. We're very proud of the group of people we have here and we want you to join it. Plus, it really helps us, you know, make ends meet. If you want to know more, twittv slash club. Twit Got some events coming up.

I think there's one more day to vote for the Stacy's Book Club the book you want coming up on Wednesday, july 17th. The return of Micah's Crafting Corner a cozy chill, and you got to be there. By the way, we were debating back and forth and Micah said I don't want people to watch it after the fact. The whole idea is that you join me doing your crafts. Be kind of boring if we just sit there knitting and you know you listen to it later. So, yeah, join Micah, we're going to do an inside twit on july 26th. Uh, talking about the situation, uh, what's going on in twit and why we're closing the studio. We've got an event for google the pixel event coming up august 13th. All of these things will be in the club twit discord, so please join us. Twittv slash.

2:05:09 - Benito Gonzalez
I also do random unscheduled music, do you?

2:05:13 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, I didn't know that, benito. I haven't done one yet, but I will I am so pleased that you're going to do that. Benito is a very accomplished musician and occasionally you'll see a picture of him from home Actually, I don't know if you've ever broadcast that. I've seen it with all your synthesizers and your keyboards Very cool. So what will you do? Will you create a new song? Is that what you want to?

2:05:33 - Benito Gonzalez
do. No, I was going to do like a kind of a variety show where, like first, like 20, 30 minutes will be like I'm just going to DJ, like play music that nobody's ever heard, probably, and then I'll do some. Maybe do some synth, some you know, generative synth stuff, and then maybe do some some I close it out with just like to jam with Lo-Fi Girl, or something like that.

2:05:54 - Leo Laporte
Fantastic. That sounds great. I look forward to that. So join the club, keep an eye on the Discord and watch for Benito. I think I'm going to do the same. Once we get this studio set up in my attic my new attic studio, I think I'm going to do some gaming and stuff. Maybe I'll play that game that molly was playing that play balder's gate three with me will you, will you play with me? Will you show me?

2:06:16 - Paris Martineau
I've said so many times okay, because I need your help, good so I don't know how you're having trouble, but all right, we'll get there. Maybe we should play. I don't know. I was gonna say maybe we should play the hardcore mode. Yes, you die.

2:06:31 - Leo Laporte
The whole game starts over yes, I want to do that. Save hardcore, because I'll be running and hiding I mean we will need to.

2:06:39 - Paris Martineau
It's very difficult. I've never played like that good that'll be fun.

2:06:43 - Leo Laporte
We will do that, um, so there's another reason to join the club. Paris and I are going to do a balder skate three. You have to be the Grinch though.

2:06:52 - Paris Martineau
That was your one character.

2:06:53 - Leo Laporte
That time I will absolutely be the Grinch. You got it. And, by the way, thanks to a chocolate milk mini sip in our Discord, we do have some horse pig T-shirts for your friends.

2:07:05 - Molly White
Oh no, oh no, those are terrible.

2:07:09 - Leo Laporte
They're really awful but they are all on Timu and they're cheap. Those are Canadian prices. So you know I want to get a plus-size men's funny pig T-shirt. That's great.

2:07:24 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I'm going to send this to my group chat.

2:07:30 - Leo Laporte
Paris pick of the week you got anything before you send it to the group chat. Paris pick of the week you got anything? Before you send it to the group?

2:07:33 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I've got something. It is a one-page role-playing game called there, but for the geese of god about, uh, the bishop, the saint, saint mart Tours, who, legend has it, he was a real saint, by the way, he was a real saint and this is his actual.

So his actual backstory is and this is from the website maintained by Tours At a time when bishops were still chosen by the people, martin was sought out to serve as bishop after the previous bishop died. Everyone knew Martin was too humble to accept the position, so they resorted to trickery, asking him to come to the church to care for a sick woman. A well-known story surrounds the incident. When Martin realized their real purpose, he hid from the people of Tours in a shed full of geese. The squawking geese quickly revealed his hiding place he reluctantly agreed, revealed his hiding place, reluctantly agreed.

so this rpg is where you serve as an archangel, but also a fourth century goose, and you must lead martin of tours to sainthood via a series of convoluted schemes wait a minute, it's a one-page rpg.

2:08:44 - Leo Laporte
What, how, how does that work?

2:08:46 - Paris Martineau
click the uh link below that one in the show notes and it's kind of got all the rules there. Um you, so it says you are a fragment from the lord god's divine will made earthly in the form of a fourth century goose. Uh, for the gm, the instructions you are martin of tours. Far from the heroic figure shown in supple severus is the life of saint martin. You are a feckless dullard chanced upon by destiny. You need two people to play this then, so you need a game master yeah and you need you to be more than one feckless goose geese I think.

So I think you can be uh a various, because there are things for the geese to do essentially. Um, there are also other geese and they have uh specific things rafael, the prince of healing, mender of ways, benevolence, unfathomable. His specialty is honking, which you get a plus 2d6 to. His duty is restoration, also a plus 2d6, and you've got his domains. So they've got a honk d6 system scheme. In order to act, outline your scheme or gambit or ruse the more complex the scheme, the greater the payoff, but higher the scheme rating. It goes through kind of how to play.

2:10:02 - Leo Laporte
It's just basic rules for your standard east saint encounter is this kind of like a dungeons and dragons kind of a thing? Yeah, it's kind of a role-playing game, it's a rpg and yeah, and you would have a dice or a single die right and uh yeah, it seems to be d6 base six, which that's good, because everybody has one that's a normal dice.

2:10:22 - Paris Martineau
That's just the dice you you'd have around the house oh, this uh so I don't know if you want to role play as a, maybe after we play balder skateur's Gate 3, we could play there Before the Geese of God.

2:10:35 - Leo Laporte
And you know it's semi-serious. It says it's a serious game about the early Catholic Church, which is pretty wild.

2:10:44 - Paris Martineau
And so how you win, I think, is there's a section called In Accordance with Prophecy. The GM awards the player up to five points per scene, depending on how saintly they made St Martin appear. At the end of the game. It determines their outcome based on the amount of points. If you get less than five points, martin of Tours is not canonized. Your mission is deemed a failure and god takes away your badge and gun. So you know, could be a fun thing to do with your weekend rowan rook and decardcom.

2:11:24 - Leo Laporte
Okay, r-o-w-a-n-r-o-o-k-a-n-d-d-e-c-a-r-dcom. There, you know what I'm thinking, if you did search for the phrase there.

2:11:36 - Paris Martineau
But for the geese of God there, but for the geese of God, I think it will come up.

2:11:39 - Leo Laporte
You'd come up Right, exactly, molly. Here's your chance to give us a pick of the week.

2:11:46 - Molly White
My pick of the week is one of my favorite things, which is basically people doing very ill-advised things with software for no real purpose.

2:11:57 - Leo Laporte
That's what you should do.

2:11:58 - Molly White
Yes, Someone has created a font which is called Llamattf, which is a font that is itself a large language model, which is a font that is itself a large language model. So the font is actually what is? You know, performing as the LLM, and as you type, it will generate words for you, which is basically completely useless for any real purpose and is also something that no one should ever really do.

2:12:31 - Leo Laporte
I tried to watch the video of this guy using it, and I couldn't.

2:12:34 - Molly White
It seemed a little baffling to me it is very baffling.

2:12:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but the fact that he could do it is amazing.

2:12:42 - Molly White
That's exactly right. It's taking advantage of the fact that there is now support for basically much more powerful computing than you would expect in fonts, and so people have done things like make a font that is also a large language model, or make a font that allows you to actually play Pokemon, like within the font itself. Oh, that's so. Yeah, this is.

2:13:05 - Leo Laporte
Tetris font.

2:13:07 - Molly White
Look at that. This is another one that I originally really enjoyed, where the font itself is actually this animated Tetris game. Oh, it's spelling the word Tetris, yeah and yeah there's a text box in the top left and if you put in your own text you can see how the font works.

2:13:24 - Leo Laporte
So type in Molly Benito and let's see if it can make Molly out of Tetris.

2:13:32 - Molly White
So this isn't interactive, it just gonna, it's just gonna do this one is not, but there is a font at the bottom of the llamattf website where it shows you that you can actually play, basically pokemon uh within a web font, yeah, yeah, actually this is one of the reasons ttf fonts are dangerous, because they are pretty much programs and anything that renders them has to be very careful, because you can render something that's actually malicious.

2:14:00 - Leo Laporte
Uh, that's been a problem for some time. I have a pick of the week. Since jeff's not here with his number of the week, I thought, well, I guess I better come up with a pick of the week. This is the stupidest, lamest pick of the week ever. Um, it is a cutting board designer. So how many times in your life have you been sitting there saying you know, I've got some wood and I'm saying that all the time.

2:14:28 - Paris Martineau
I've got wood in the shot with me.

2:14:30 - Leo Laporte
Right now you've got some wood okay, well, this is perfect, I could be. Yeah, this is just for you. Uh, so you? There are different kinds of cutting boards you could do. You could do a checkerboard, a brick, a chevron. Some of these are very, very cool, like the dna okay, actually this is very useful yeah as someone who's designed the cutting board before.

Oh, you've done this before. You've done woodwork, yeah, so I like this one. This is the weave. So it tells you you, can you know, tell it how big it is, and so forth, and it tells you, you know what wood you would need, and then it will actually make a pattern for you to cut the wood, so you can then make your cutting board out of it.

2:15:13 - Molly White
Oh, it even estimates the cost for you. It estimates the cost.

2:15:18 - Leo Laporte
I'm amazed. So we can create our own board. We can start with this and then we can mix and match and create our own board. Good, well, if I send you a design, can you make me a cutting board?

2:15:33 - Paris Martineau
um, good, well, if I send you a design, can you make me a cutting board? So my question is is it gonna show you, like when you print out, like how many pieces of wood you need to cut, to what specifications?

2:15:43 - Leo Laporte
because that's part of it, that's the part of this that I would be excited by well, you'll just have to try yourself, because I have no idea what it does or anything. Uh, I got the impression that you could use it to print out a pattern.

2:15:58 - Molly White
Yes, okay, if you go to, there's a link that says build steps in the top right and it'll say you'll need the following strips oh yeah, there.

2:16:08 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, because that's the annoying part of woodworking. I figured I'd sit down and do a lot of planning and basic math, and that's incredibly annoying when you just want to cut stuff.

2:16:18 - Molly White
And how much wood you need to buy to get that much.

2:16:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah so some of the designs you can actually pick designs that don't have build steps for, but here's the DNA one we could. We could go through this. So you cut the sub board of two inch strips and this and this and this, and you got all those little things all cut up and then you arrange those strips and then you glue it up and there you go, you got it. That looks like fun. So do you do this kind of thing molly too. It sounds like you know a little bit about this too.

2:16:50 - Molly White
I've never made a cutting board, but I did once design a? Um. I had raised beds for like vegetables and there were um like rabbits were eating my vegetables, so I made these like enclosures to go over them. That took me a lot of time to try to figure out how many tiny pieces of wood I needed to cut. Oh, cool.

2:17:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, you both are very handy. I have no, no skills along those lines whatsoever, but uh, good, I'm glad I came up with something you like. There you go, paris, your own cutting board designer. By the way, the website is cuttingboarddesignercom, and it's free.

2:17:30 - Paris Martineau
Nice, they got the url yeah, I guess where did you find this?

2:17:35 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I don't know, I think I think my secret is uh, you know, I bookmark stuff at pinboard, which is the delicious replacement that mitchell glowski came up with many years ago when delicious used to be great and then it kind of went out of business. Blah, blah, blah. So Pinboard has a section that I really like of popular links that other people and I have a feeling this came from, that I can't say for sure, but a lot of the weirdest links that I come up with for the shows are from here Reverse Engineering, ticketmasters, rotating barcodes.

2:18:12 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, people have done that. It's causing problems.

2:18:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this crystal fragment turns everything you see into 8-bit pixel art, you know. So it's all sorts of weird kind of stuff in here which I check from time to time to make sure I'm not missing any of the good stuff on the internet. See, this is not a zero-click site. Pinboardin slash popular. Molly, it is so great we could talk to you again. We really appreciate everything you do, both on Wikipedia and at your website, mollywhitenet, and on your newsletter, Citation Needed and it's always good to have you on. So thank you for spending your afternoon with us, appreciate it thanks so much for having me.

2:18:55 - Molly White
Yeah, it's been fun thank you, paris martineau.

2:18:58 - Leo Laporte
You'll find her at the information and if you've got a hot lead, she's always looking for inside information. Her signal is martineau dot zero. One use signal, that's true. Oh, and don't use your work phone don't use your work phone.

Don't use your work phone, but don't do it I would say that, except so many do, so many do, so many do, is that the winklevoss twins on the cover of your uh newsletter? I think those are the winklevi. Yes, the one of the winklevoss twins on the cover of your newsletter. I think those are the Winklevoss.

2:19:31 - Molly White
Yes, one of the Winklevoss twins likes to wear a Rage Against the Machine shirt, which I think is the thing.

2:19:36 - Leo Laporte
That's ironic, isn't it? Isn't it? Wow, yep, wow, all right, thank you everybody for joining us. We do this Week in Google on Wednesdays about 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us live now everywhere. The YouTube stream goes live when the show begins. That's youtubecom slash, twit, slash live. But we're also on twitchtv. That's also twit, I believe. We're on LinkedIn, we're on Facebook, we're on xcom and usually at this time of day, X isn't so busy, so we are often, if you go to Xcom, the number one live stream or among the live streams, oh, x is down. That's nice, nevermind, but follow us, watch us and if you want to say, X shows up as live for me and if you want to say x, shows up as live for me.

Oh, I'm getting. Is something went wrong? Try reloading try I'm.

2:20:40 - Paris Martineau
I'm looking at your face right now talking. It's working. Let me reload the whole page.

2:20:42 - Leo Laporte
Maybe they've shadow banned you. Oh I, they just kicked me out. I'll have to re-log in, let's, I hope I can right now it's showing you refreshing x on x oh, that's creepy.

All right, uh. If you don't want to watch while we're doing it live on a wednesday afternoon, you can watch anytime, because it's a podcast. Download your copy from our website twittv slash twig. You can also go to youtube. There's a dedicated youtube channel for this week in Google that'll have the edited versions of the show as soon as those go up. There's also, of course, your favorite podcast player. Probably the best way to do this Subscribe and you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Club Twit members get special feeds with no ads, so you might want to consider joining Club Twit, just seven bucks a month. Twittv slash Club twit. Thank you everybody for being here. We will see you next week. Jeff Jarvis will be back. I'm Leo Laporte for this Week in Google. Good night.