TWiG 782 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 is here. Paris martineau uh, the judge says he's gonna tear the barriers down in the google app store. This is in the google versus epic case. The ftc clamps down on fake online reviews. Is it enough? Soon enough? And the future of war? You take a guess? Is ai involved? Yes, ai is involved. All that and a whole lot more. Next on this week in google podcasts you 782, recorded August 21st 2024. Yes-ify, it's time for Twig this week in Google the show. We cover everything but Google, but that's our privilege because we're the bosses. It's not a democracy. It's Jeff Jarvis who is the town night professor, was the emeritus town night professor for journalistic innovation at the graduate school journalism at the city university of new york. Hello jeffrey, hello boss. How are you good to see you? Good to see you? Yeah, you were doing a book thing.
0:01:24 - Jeff Jarvis
You were getting adjusted to your new environs.
0:01:26 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I love it. Actually. It's great I don't have to wear pants. No, I'm wearing. Look, could I do this if I weren't wearing? I can't lift my leg. There you go. I'm too old to lift my leg. Just take it as given. That's Paris Martineau from the information. Hello, paris.
0:01:50 - Paris Martineau
Hello.
0:01:51 - Leo Laporte
You're getting on a plane, a big old jet airplane, this weekend to go far, far away.
0:01:56 - Paris Martineau
Not this weekend.
0:01:57 - Leo Laporte
Next weekend.
0:01:57 - Paris Martineau
But the weekend Two weekends.
0:01:59 - Leo Laporte
Two weekends from now, at some point in the future, yeah, because we're going to cross paths, because I'm coming to New York September 5th. You're not going to be in town, though, when we do our meetup at Bryant Park.
0:02:12 - Paris Martineau
I will say there's record on this very podcast of me saying I can do any time that week, just not after Friday night.
0:02:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, we don't get into Thursday night, that's fair. I blew it I friday afternoon in the park, I don't know for some. Anyway, we're going to a show that night, so I just thought it'd be better to do it saturday. I'm sorry we're gonna miss you, but then I also thought, for your own security, uh, it'd be better for you not to come. What does that mean? Seriously, I don't want you to be mobbed ah, by all my hordes of adoring fans yes, yes, jeff, you can come cream pies for me you guys can just wave towards the area of Brooklyn, vaguely at the general vicinity of where Gizmo will be.
But there'll be moms of Parisians. I'm nervous to do this in a park for some reason. Am I crazy? Bryant Park's?
0:03:15 - Paris Martineau
nice right. Why does that Bryant Park's?
0:03:17 - Leo Laporte
wonderfully nice. Yeah, that's where they have the Christmas festival fair, right.
0:03:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I've done that. Yeah, on the skating in that time.
0:03:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, near the library.
0:03:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, right next to the library.
0:03:28 - Leo Laporte
So it's good people there. Yeah, yeah.
0:03:32 - Paris Martineau
Hey hey, it's New York. Who's not good? They're all good people.
0:03:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's going to be fun. And then Joe's taking us on a photo walk. Actually, I'm really excited about this. I'm going to bring my good camera and everything. Excited about this. I'm going to bring my good camera and everything, because joe's taking us a. I'll give you the itinerary for the photo walk, just so you can, because I, I, while I, even though I was born in new york, I don't really know that much about it. I never lived there for any length of time. So we, uh, we're going to have the meet up from three to five pm. Sun goes down. What about seven?
0:04:01 - Paris Martineau
somewhere around, you can just watch happens to me and you'll know when the sun goes down. What about seven somewhere?
0:04:04 - Jeff Jarvis
around. You can just watch happens to me and you'll know when the sun goes down.
0:04:06 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's true, that's right.
0:04:07 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you by the end of this episode so we're gonna walk from brian park to grand central, which is the most beautiful terminal in the country in the world probably well, no, in the country anyway. Uh, we're gonna take some photos there.
Then we're gonna walk to this, the tudor city overpass, to take the classic shot, overlooking the chrysler building in midtown cute yeah, then we're going to subway it to washington square park because that's a great place for people watching and it's got the arch and all that. Then to doyer's street to take some photos of bloody angle and chinatown I don't know what that is doyer street I don't know what that is. Walk to manhattan, take photos of lower Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge and Chinatown during golden hour and then, if there's time, we're going to go to Cortland Street and take some photos inside and outside the Oculus. This sounds like a great photo walk.
0:04:58 - Paris Martineau
That sounds adorable.
0:05:01 - Leo Laporte
Aunt.
0:05:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Jemima says she's already exhausted the memorial as well.
0:05:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the memorial is. I've been to the memorial. I bawled my eyes out. It's really powerful. The 9-11 memorial and the Oculus is that you take that right? Is that the path?
0:05:18 - Jeff Jarvis
station. That's what the path station comes in.
0:05:22 - Leo Laporte
So that looks like a whale.
0:05:24 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, looks like bones.
0:05:28 - Leo Laporte
A dead whale. Bone building, bone building yeah, the bone. Is that what they call it? That's what the new yorkers call it. I called it. I went out of the bomb building down to the bone building.
0:05:34 - Paris Martineau
You take a left get on the path when I was at wired condom offices. Um we're at one world trade, so I was in the Bone Building a lot.
0:05:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you were in One World Trade. Yeah, how high. In the 30s, somewhere that's kind of scary Did it move with the wind?
0:05:53 - Paris Martineau
It's particularly crazy because they had a I think it's on like the 60th floor, a coffee shop that was just for, like, tenants of the building, and it was so incredible up there. One day my sister had come to visit and so we went up to the top of the world trade center and that did feel a bit scary yeah, very cool.
0:06:12 - Leo Laporte
And of course, I don't think, uh, it would be appropriate for mr jarvis, who is still a little bit skittish after 9-11. Yep, yep, I couldn't believe. I was thinking about this the other day. It's been 23 years. Yeah, it's amazing. It's almost the 23rd anniversary of 9-11. That's hard to believe. Paris, you don't remember it, do you?
0:06:33 - Paris Martineau
Vaguely.
0:06:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I remember like seeing the news reports People were upset, yeah 9-11 is to you as the shooting of President Kennedy is to me. Right, was that kind? 11 is to you as the shooting of president Kennedy is to me Right, was that?
0:06:46 - Leo Laporte
kind of young. I think she's even younger. I think she was like three or four. Right, it's 23 years ago. You're just. You were just a babe.
0:06:55 - Paris Martineau
I would have been like four or five.
0:06:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, five. Okay, I was six when Kennedy was shot. Five or six, I do remember and I vividly remember that. Anyway, enough, I do remember and I vividly remember that. Anyway, enough of the history, let's talk about the future.
Uh, so many interesting subjects today. Uh, we'll start with google. Just you know why. Not really. Yeah, that'd be.
Uh, the judge in the epic versus google case is pretty upset. He's gonna quote tear the barriers down on google's app store monopoly. Judge james donato eight months after a federal jury unanimously ruled that google's android app store is an illegal monopoly in the epic, epic makes fortnight. Uh, they sued both apple and google. Uh, they want to. They want to store in both, on both the iphone and the uh android phone. Not, you could sign, you could sign load fortnight for a while, but they don't want to give the 30 to google and apple, so they sued both.
The apple case didn't go so good. The google case went a little bit better. Judge donato uh, after the the jury unanimously ruled it was a monopoly. Eight months later had his final hearing on remedies, um, a couple of days ago, august 14th. Now he didn't say what he's going to do yet the that ruling will come, but he did say this, which probably gives you a hint we're gonna tear the barriers down. It's just the way it's gonna happen. The world that exists today is the product of monopolistic conduct. The world is changing. We're gonna hear, uh, his ruling in a couple of weeks. Um, it sounds like, uh, the court's gonna force google to do what apple's been forced to do in the EU alone, which is allow a third-party app store on the phone.
0:08:52 - Jeff Jarvis
The funny thing is he's talking about Google's monopoly of the app store. Has he heard of Apple?
0:09:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, but they have a monopoly of the app store on Android, right? Well, I think Samsung has an App Store. But yeah, google argued. The Google lawyers said this is Glenn Pomerantz, their lead attorney. Quote if the American Nazi Party app came to play, play would say no. Epic's attorney said if Google's actually reviewing every single app on a third-party store, it gives Google the gatekeeping authority. It's already abused. Judge Donato made it clear he plans to ban any non-discriminatory behavior when it comes to how Google treats rival app stores, up to and including human review. This is Sean Hollister writing in the Verge. That's confusing. He's going to ban non-discriminatory. I think, sean, maybe you meant ban discriminatory behavior, ban non-discriminatory. I'm as confused as I am about governor hokal's banning of congestion pricing. Did she ban it or did she not? I don't understand was it is she she allowed it for the show.
0:10:04 - Paris Martineau
She banned congestion, the congestion pricing setup.
0:10:09 - Leo Laporte
She said you can't do that she said you can't do it and I'm not sure if it was raining in new york city. Uber with price went up like three times, four times huge well, some different not all congestion pricing.
0:10:22 - Paris Martineau
This was a new york city specific congestion pricing scheme that, uh, I believe the gist of it was um cars entering and exiting a certain part of manhattan during certain hours of the day would have to pay like 15 I love that idea.
0:10:40 - Leo Laporte
You know what they?
0:10:41 - Paris Martineau
should just do. That's why people were booing her at the dnc. She did away with that at the last minute, or what I assume. Why I assume?
0:10:48 - Leo Laporte
governor, I think they should just close manhattan to auto traffic I think they're not quite beautiful wouldn't it be beautiful. Everybody have to walk. You'd have to walk, jessie here's the problem.
0:11:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Here's the problem. I sometimes have to go to long island and I won't go. That's the problem. Here's the problem.
0:11:05 - Paris Martineau
I sometimes have to go to Long.
0:11:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Island and I won't go over the GW bridge. That's your problem, man. So I have to go through Manhattan.
0:11:11 - Paris Martineau
Oh, so you're saying there should be a carve out for bridge haters.
0:11:14 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yes.
0:11:17 - Leo Laporte
In any event, google has always offered side loading, which is how Fortnite was, for a while, initially available on Android, but the problem was that it wasn't very secure. In fact, the program. Somebody hijacked the download and there was malware for a while being offered this is in the very earliest days A store would be a better solution Instead of you having to figure out where the file is while being offered this in the very earliest days. A store would be a better solution. Instead of you having to figure out where the file is downloading it, you have to check the box that says I know this is. I know this is bad, this is dangerous.
0:11:55 - Paris Martineau
I'm going to do it anyway and then it becomes meaningless to check that box, just like every time I download an app on my computer and it says you're downloading something from the Internet. Beware. Oh no.
0:12:08 - Leo Laporte
In this closing argument. Epic attorney I mean Google attorney Pomerantz said that the direction Judge Donato is aiming constitutes Soviet era communism oh geez. Communism, oh geez. The courts are supporting central planning of the sort that would force google to carry rival app stores and enter to create new competition. The donato had said the whole point of this is to grow a garden of competitor app stores. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. We don't know, it'll be two weeks, we'll talk about it.
0:12:48 - Jeff Jarvis
What about security? The thing is that Google is now responsible for us having a safe experience on Android. Are they, if anybody? Well, yeah, sort of.
0:12:59 - Paris Martineau
Should it be Google's responsibility?
0:13:02 - Jeff Jarvis
I want it to be because I don't want to have to worry about it. Well, but the good news is you don't have to install a third-party app store, jeff, you have that option, right but then then what happens, if in that third-party app store all kinds of bad guy russians or chinese or somebody comes?
0:13:15 - Leo Laporte
well, there will be then what happens right there will be, and what happens to google, then google will get blamed for all this.
0:13:21 - Jeff Jarvis
How dare you?
0:13:22 - Leo Laporte
well, google can't control it well, google will probably still have that warning that says what you're about to do is dangerous, right?
0:13:31 - Paris Martineau
yeah all right anyway probably come up that says you've chosen to install the bad app store with apps from the bad actors and then google will get blamed for being a bad actor and saying that you can't.
Yeah, I mean. No, it's definitely a lose-lose situation in many cases, and I think that's part of what google's argument is, but also I think that people like the plaintiffs have a fair point that they need their. I think that this quote from Judge Donato is interesting. He says when you have a mountain that's built out of bad conduct, you have to move that mountain. That's what's going to happen. So he's moving the mountain. It means that he's taking big actions to shift the playing field.
0:14:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, you're mixing metaphors, so much.
0:14:26 - Paris Martineau
I know I'm sorry.
0:14:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeez.
0:14:28 - Leo Laporte
It's rough.
0:14:29 - Paris Martineau
Is there a?
0:14:29 - Leo Laporte
playing field on the mountain.
0:14:32 - Paris Martineau
There is and it's falling off. Oh, that means, you can fall off and that scares me.
0:14:36 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I don't want to hear that.
0:14:39 - Leo Laporte
No, I think this, you know what. We've been grappling with this for a while. In fact, there's a general issue of how big is too big when it comes to big tech, and it's clear that Google and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon are, you know, kind of behemoths and that you almost, if you're going to buy online, you almost, have to do business with Amazon. If you're going to, you know, buy a phone, it's going to be from apple or or an android phone, from samsung, most likely maybe google. These companies are very dominant and I think it's not unreasonable for antitrust to take a look at not the size but the dominance. So, for I still believe that google search has way too much power, because if something's not on google search, it's, it's like it's not on the internet. How do you find it?
0:15:25 - Paris Martineau
uh, what do you think is the solution to that? How do you solve a system like google search becoming so powerful?
0:15:35 - Leo Laporte
very carefully. Yeah, I mean because you're right, there's hazards here as well, with the tennis court on the mountain. You got to be careful.
0:15:45 - Paris Martineau
The balls are going to be flying everywhere.
0:15:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, I. I agree that there is peril. You know there's a lot of peril. There's unintended consequences to this, you know, yeah, you're going to create an app store that's full of russian uh, you know cutouts and all sorts of stuff. So I don't know what the answer is. But if you believe in the free market, you've got to believe that it's better to have competition than not, right?
0:16:11 - Jeff Jarvis
that's the whole point. But competition, yes, I, I couldn't agree more. But a let's remember that android being free and open, open air quotes, was itself competition to, uh, apple and nokia and microsoft and blackberry and blackberry and all those the market spoke.
0:16:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we ended up with two you know duopoly, that's the defense of it is well, this is what people want. Yeah, people love their iphones. They love their android phones. They're happy. This is something that most people, except for epic, don't see as a problem. So I don't know.
0:16:53 - Paris Martineau
I mean isn't that, I guess, the argument you could have made for the monopolies of your sure that standard oil?
0:16:59 - Leo Laporte
people love their standard oil except that wasn't how standard oil was created. Well, we love our, uh, our, standard Oil.
0:17:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Except that wasn't how Standard Oil was created. Well, we love our Ma Bell. We love that wasn't how, but Ma Bell was imposed as monolithic from the beginning, standard Oil was structured. Right now I'm writing about Henry Huddleston Rogers, who put it together.
0:17:21 - Leo Laporte
It's so good to have a historian on that.
0:17:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I'm not a historian, but he put it together by strong-arming the various players, so they had no choice. The consumer had no voice in that. In this case, the consumer had a voice. There were multiple companies.
0:17:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's true. It is very different, isn't it?
0:17:40 - Jeff Jarvis
And again, Android was offered for free to create.
0:17:44 - Leo Laporte
Samsung can exist profitably because it uses Android Well, but this is the and this is not this case. This is the other case which Google has also lost the way. The Department of Justice is suing Google. Judge Ahmed Mehta ruled on this one, but he made the very I think, the very good point that Google has all these tying arrangements. So Android is open source. But if you want to provide an Android device that consumers want, with the Google Play Store and Google services, you have to sign on and Chrome has to be on there, the Play Store has to be on there, all these Google background services have to be on there.
0:18:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Because, as you just said, with the services that consumers want and you can't delete it, you can do an Amazon phone. That worked really well, didn't?
0:18:30 - Leo Laporte
it? No, but that's the point. It isn't really open source, because nobody wants to buy the open source version of Android.
Because they want the Google part. They want the Google thing. Now it is the case, for instance, the R1, that little, cute little AI thing that's running Android, non-google Android. There are a lot of non-Google Android devices out there. Your Fire tablets are non-Google Android. My Peloton bike is a non-Google Android, so they get the benefit of. There is an operating system that's open source that you can install on your device and have it run.
0:19:06 - Jeff Jarvis
But if you want to use the store, you gotta give into google, and that's what. Then google should have a right. If you're going to use the google brand, with what comes with it, then google should have a right to dictate those circumstances things like you can't delete the browser, you can't delete chrome it's, it's got to be on there and you can't delete it.
0:19:20 - Leo Laporte
This is a false search has to be google search, things like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean, this is why it's so difficult. This is why it's hard. Yes, because consumers like it.
0:19:38 - Paris Martineau
We're here because consumers liked it so much, and part of the argument is that it's a non-coercive monopoly, kind of what Microsoft was dinged for in the 90s monopoly kind of what microsoft was dinged for in the 90s that it wasn't a monopoly by force, I guess like standard oil and whatnot. Interesting, but it is a monopoly kind of that ties in, I guess the market forces huh is that?
0:20:00 - Leo Laporte
is that a term of, of of law? Uh non, I'm not sure if it's a term of law, I'm not sure if it's a term of law. Yeah, does the law care about that?
0:20:08 - Paris Martineau
Non-reportive monopoly.
0:20:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, apparently not.
I mean, the FTC and the DOJ don't think so. They're not concerned about that. All right, here's another case of Google being Google. Google's AI bot is tied to the Google spider, so publishers are saying that if you block Google's AI bot, which is scraping all your data, it could also prevent you from showing up in search. To me, that's exactly what we're talking about, which is Google's dominance in search is being used for them now to become dominant in another field. That's classic trust behavior and, by the way, this is not something consumers want, as far as I can tell. Which is the AI search result at the top of every Google page? That's the one where it told you to eat rocks. People don't like that one. It also hurts the sites because users may never click through to the site. They provided the information. Many site owners this is from Bloomberg say they can't afford to block Google's AI from summarizing the content, because it's the same tool that spiders for the web index.
Blocking Alphabet Incorporate Incorporate Blocking, let's just say Google. Can I? Blocking Alphabet? Incorporate Incorporate Blocking? Let's just say Google. Can I stop saying Alphabet Blocking Google? The way sites have blocked some of its AI competitors would also hamper the site's ability to be discovered online. That is a classic monopolistic behavior. The problem is that the court stuff takes so long to wind its way through. This will be a case in five years, and then, with appeals, in 10 years, maybe they'll be, and by then you'll have, you know, the Terminator. You'll have Skynet, you'll have Hal 9000.
0:21:57 - Paris Martineau
You'll have 25 new problems at the very least Exactly. More like 25,000.
0:22:03 - Leo Laporte
Google says AI overviews that the summaries at the top of the search page are part of its longstanding commitment to serve higher quality information. And you tell me if this makes sense, Jeff Bolster? Opportunities for publishers and other businesses. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web and we intend for this long established value exchange with websites to continue, said a Google spokesperson. With AI overviews, people find search more helpful and they're coming back to search more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered or maybe creating new opportunities for us to advertise. Do you think that people don't click through the AI search results?
0:22:49 - Jeff Jarvis
It's the same argument we have with search. Do you learn enough? Would you have otherwise clicked through? But Google's been moving in this direction all along.
0:22:59 - Leo Laporte
So, like they've been getting like with the knowledge graph, more and more they say no, look, people just want an answer when they do a search. They don necessarily want to go to a website, so we're just giving them the answer. We're giving them what they want but there's also.
0:23:10 - Jeff Jarvis
There's also the case that you can't you can't tell the intent. You're proving a negative, you can't tell the intent beforehand. Did someone say I would? I would absolutely have gone to the story, but google told me what I wanted? Or, uh, I didn't know anything about this and I discovered it through Google and yes, that's enough. Or I discovered something and I clicked through. There's no way beforehand to measure what the case was, so everybody's going to debate about a negative. What?
they would have done had they not had this? You can't tell, unless you had a really controlled experiment.
0:23:45 - Leo Laporte
Google, according to Bloomberg, is the lone holdout. Uh, you know, open ai, anthropic and others are paying content. We have another story we'll talk about in a bit paying content creators for use of that content. Condé nas just sold their entire library of content let's talk about that no, wait a minute.
Let me just say google will not do that. The only thing they've done is a $60 million deal with Reddit. According to Bloomberg, google has signaled to publishers beyond closed doors it's not interested in negotiating, it doesn't want to buy this stuff. All right, so that's on the one hand. Now let's talk about Condé selling the New Yorker. What do they sell New Yorker selling?
0:24:24 - Jeff Jarvis
the New Yorker. What do they sell New Yorker? Well, it's what they have, the New Yorker and Vogue and Wire and such Vogue.
0:24:28 - Leo Laporte
Vanity Fair, but what?
0:24:28 - Jeff Jarvis
they're really selling is their silence in litigation and legislation, because, you think about it, what a large language model needs is an incredible amount of text, and the little, tiny, tiny bit that Conde Nast has is not enough to train a model. It's not worthwhile in that, and OpenAI is not really setting up a business of distributing content to people, as perplexity is at this point, so it's not really useful there. All they're buying is their silence. Now, when I testified before the Senate, who sat down at the table for me? But the CEO of Condé Nast who was saying they better do deals with us, and they did. But it's really just a legislation and litigation deal here to shut up Condé Nast and give them a bucket of money. And hey, everybody for themselves, okay, get a bucket of money. The problem I have with this is the vast majority of media is left out the big moguls, my old bosses, the New Houses, who I like very much, and Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch and Action Springer.
0:25:37 - Leo Laporte
And the Guardian.
0:25:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, but they're all big media. They're all big media and they've stepped in to do a money grab here. And this story media, yeah, they're all big media and they've stepped in to do a money grab here. Yeah, and you don't see the information in this deal. You don't see the city, you don't see the san francisco standard, you don't see, uh, public radio texas observe yeah but this is very interesting because this is the same thing with link the link tax.
0:25:58 - Leo Laporte
It went, the money goes to the big guys. It's the same thing with the california journalism.
0:26:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, breaking, breaking, breaking news. I just two minutes ago got a text that there is now a deal in California. I put it in the rundown on line 67.
0:26:12 - Paris Martineau
A deal in California? For what?
0:26:14 - Jeff Jarvis
For the news protectionist legislation. Both the bills that existed have now been superseded by a deal that was negotiated with Google, and full disclosure here is that I testified next to Google, brought in by the California Chamber of Commerce, on these bills, and I was testifying for what this becomes. This is a fund, so you won.
0:26:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, congratulations.
0:26:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, wow. So it's a new partnership that will provide $250 million over some years in public and private funding over the next five years, with a majority going to a funding of newsrooms. The goal is to front load a hundred million dollars in the first year to kick off start the efforts. It'll be managed by Berkeley, who chooses who the money goes to. Berkeley, berkeley. There'll be a, there'll be a committee that I'm trying to see, so presumably won't just be the big boys.
0:27:07 - Leo Laporte
The Los Angeles Times.
0:27:08 - Jeff Jarvis
It better not be. I haven't read this yet because it just went up, but I'm trying to pay attention to the show.
0:27:13 - Paris Martineau
California news publishers will be the beneficiaries of a news transformation fund to be administered by the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, providing financial resources that preserve and expand california-based journalism.
0:27:26 - Jeff Jarvis
The funding representative panel yeah, contributions from tech platforms and the state of california, supporting innovative new investments that promote local journalism so it's really going to depend on whether they live up to the promise of supporting independent journalism, non-profit journalism right, but I knew when I talked to people a few days ago, the committee, much like New Jersey, was going to be represented by other groups, including black media, including old media, including, I think, lion, the local independent online news, good, and so on, and it's endorsed here and it has blurbs Chris Crewson, who's the head of Lion, regina Wilson, who I know from the California Black Media, who I talked to, Sandy Close, who represents a lot of ethnic media, so-called ethnic, neil Chase, who runs CalMatters, lance Noble who runs Berkeley Side, ken Doctor who does the Lookout Santa Cruz, and others, and so they're signing on here and the two bills are now thus superseded.
The next question is whether or not Google and the legislators will convince other tech companies Hello Meta to sign into this and add in for the benefit of California news media. What I like about the fund, as opposed to a blanket everybody gets some money is that it's done on merit and you have to apply for the money and have a goal and have it judged and have accountability, which I think is a better way to do it so does that mean that the journalism bill is dead?
Yeah, both of them. There were two of them uh a from Buffy wicks and uh, senator glazer.
0:29:08 - Leo Laporte
Uh they were, so wicks made this agreement right yeah, wicks is taking.
0:29:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, this is what you call a forcing mechanism. Right, they can brag that. Oh, my bill got him to the table, got it fine, right, it's okay um, and that's what I said, my testimony good, if you can. If you can do that, dandy. Uh, I'm still always allergic about government involvement in speech and journalism. Uh, people are allergic about being dependent upon google.
0:29:33 - Leo Laporte
But google will not decide where this money goes, neither will the state and the university of california is is independent, sufficiently independent from your point of view?
0:29:41 - Jeff Jarvis
I think so yeah yeah, the jersey fund is run out of montclair state where I have a relationship and um it has a board that's made up of representatives appointed by the top public universities in the state plus the legislature. That's one way to do it. In this case it'll be run out of uc berkeley and will be a board that's that has various representatives. Is this a template for how?
0:30:05 - Leo Laporte
local small journalism can be supported going forward.
0:30:09 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm glad you said use the verb supported rather than saved. This is generous, it's money. It's not going to happen in every state. California is different because it's so A, it's so huge B it's the home state of Google and these other technology companies. I don't think it's going to happen in every state. Also, I think that you have a similar fund in certain states like Texas and Florida.
I fear what they would do with it. They would exclude certain parties and favor other parties. So I don't think this is a national solution at all. But in the cases of New Jersey and California, I think it's a better solution than what happened in New York, where Kathy Hochul's office insisted at the last minute that the bills support only print newspapers another reason to boo her and the same thing is happening in Washington state. And so I think it's a model, but I think it's better than the two bills that were going to be there. But I think it's better than the two bills that were going to be there and, given the chance to negotiate, which didn't happen in California in Canada we came up with a better solution, I think, than would have occurred.
0:31:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, congratulations, cause this is what you were fighting for, and I think yeah, congrats yeah.
0:31:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Well done. I mean, it's just, I was just one voice, but you actually flew to Sacramento, california.
0:31:23 - Leo Laporte
I wrote a 41-page paper, yeah, To fight down Wix's bill.
0:31:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Bravo and folks listened, so that's good Bravo.
0:31:33 - Leo Laporte
Yay, jeff Jarvis, woo-hoo, he's our hero.
0:31:36 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm going to have a new career as a lobbyist.
0:31:40 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to start smoking cigars and go into steakhouses.
0:31:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Is it satisfying to do that or it just a pain as a as a moment? It was fascinating, I bet. I went and talked to the. I made two trips to sacramento, the first time both brought in by the chamber of commerce that also commissioned my paper, and I talked to the legislative aides and every member of the senate finance committee um to talk them through this. And it's really it was. It was an exercise in democracy, yay good job.
0:32:07 - Leo Laporte
You know, in a related story, the new york city uh news radio, wcbs, has abandoned its news format. This is a big company, this is uh. This is not some little company it's not cbs, by the way. It was long ago so well, it's's Intercom, right, yeah, which is what CBS became, but still, I don't know. I grew up listening to WCBS. Did we talk about this last week? Yeah, we did. Okay, it's okay, gramps. I'm still sad about it.
But maybe that's more about the end of radio, and AM radio in particular, than it is about journalism. Although I feel like newspapers and AM radio are kind of in the same boat.
0:32:49 - Jeff Jarvis
And magazines. Same things happen to magazines. All mass media. Last week we talked about cable and the write-downs $9 billion write-downs from Paramount and Warner Brothers. Where's all that money and viewership flowing Podcasts.
0:33:08 - Leo Laporte
Leo, Okay, now I know you're teasing me.
0:33:10 - Paris Martineau
Screens for sure.
0:33:13 - Leo Laporte
YouTube TikTok, but not cable TV, not like. Fox News.
0:33:21 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what's being written down. And they still haven't figured out the model for streaming. Yeah, it's what's being written down, that's what's going on, and they still haven't figured out the model for streaming.
0:33:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Right, it's really interesting. We live in an interesting world. Youtube YouTube.
0:33:32 - Jeff Jarvis
I think this is the future.
0:33:34 - Leo Laporte
Well, we're streaming on YouTube. We have for a while. We stream on Twitch, Kik, YouTube. Actually, we're going to move from K to telegram, I think. I think telegram will be a better place. That's very cool of you. Yeah, I like well, I've loved telegram for a long time. Um, I think it'll just be a more active place Facebook, LinkedIn and xcom so we're on a. We're on streaming on a lot of places so people can watch uh, can watch us as we do the shows live. I think that's a really cool thing and I'm hoping that maybe we'll be considered to be with the hip kids. I think I've been an influencer for almost my entire career before there was even a term called influencer, but I haven't reaped any of the benefits of it, so I'm trying hard to become an influencer. Let's pause for a moment and for an advertisement, and then we will continue on with this week in Google. Are you going to announce a new job at some point, Jeff? I'm hoping, like next week.
0:34:38 - Paris Martineau
We've been talking about this for a year. Come on, chop, chop.
0:34:43 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm talking to another university Actually talking to two of them and, um, where it is now, is you get into this case where universities take cuts and all kinds of stuff and oh wow, that's not nice workout, but uh, yeah, I'm hoping like that one cotton pick and bit, and then I'll have something else that's publishing related.
uh, I hope sometime next month another book, well, that I'm working on now. Yeah, there's always another book the web and then I'll have something else that's publishing related I hope sometime next month Another book, well, that I'm working on now.
0:35:08 - Paris Martineau
There's always another book.
0:35:09 - Leo Laporte
The Web we Weave comes out next month. It's no October, right.
0:35:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, october, and the paperback of the Gutenberg Parenthesis comes out in November.
0:35:19 - Leo Laporte
Our esteemed colleague Jeff Jarvis. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for all the plugs. And our also esteemed colleague Paris Martino. Who is? Where are you going, croatia? It's true yeah, you're going to go see Diocletian's palace.
0:35:35 - Paris Martineau
I don't know. I know I'm going to lay by a pool, maybe a beach this is more like history.
0:35:43 - Leo Laporte
Diocletian was a Roman emperor who decided he just really didn't enjoy being emperor, so he retired to raise his cabbages.
0:35:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that does sound like the sort of thing I'd want to see, actually A cabbage-raising palace.
0:35:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Diocletian. Palace it's also, if it helps, where the Game of Thrones shot the dragon lair. Oh, In fact, when we were there a few years ago, they were shooting it. The Game of Thrones shot the dragon lair.
0:36:05 - Paris Martineau
Oh.
0:36:06 - Leo Laporte
In fact, when we were there a few years ago, they were shooting it, but they said you can't see it because it hasn't aired yet and we don't want any spoilers and we don't trust you, leo.
0:36:18 - Paris Martineau
They wouldn't let you see the palace, the place.
0:36:21 - Leo Laporte
No, I saw the palace and they said, okay, see these stairs. That's the dragon lair in the game of thrones oh, they wouldn't let you go down there can't talk about it. And you know what, when they did show it, I said oh yeah, there's the stairs and the rest of it's green screen.
0:36:37 - Paris Martineau
It was just like this much they're like oh man, he's gonna tell them how many steps it was all fake.
0:36:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, I guess it had to be because dragons, I'm sad to say. I hope I'm not disappointing you aren't real. What?
0:36:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I've known a few Work for some Is Buffy one of them.
0:36:56 - Leo Laporte
No, no but we do not like Buffy, because Buffy did a good thing. She did the right thing we're good with.
0:37:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Buffy.
0:37:02 - Leo Laporte
Our show today, brought to you by BetterHelp. Our show today brought to you by better help, h-e-l-p. Now, this is uh, this is practically a public service announcement for me, because I am a big believer that when people are struggling, when they have anxiety, depression, when they just don't feel right, if you're not happy, if you're not enjoying life, you shouldn't go it alone, you shouldn't suffer in silence or by yourself. You can seek help. It's basically self-care, right? You don't skip leg day, right. Well, you shouldn't skip therapy day either, even if your schedule is jammed with kids' activities and big work projects and it's easy to say, oh, I'll do that tomorrow, I'll do that next month, I'll do that next year and pretty soon. You're my age and you never did that. No, don't I. Actually I didn't. I. I made mental health a major priority in my life and I'm glad I did. And it wasn't there was something wrong with me. I just wanted to have a better life. That's what BetterHelp does, because it makes it easy. It makes it easy, it's convenient, it's online, it's affordable because it's online and it's flexible, suited to your schedule.
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Visit betterhelpcom slash twig. We're going to get you 10 off your first month. I'm such a believer in this betterhelpcom slash twig. You know we talk all the time about the mental health crisis among young people and and, and you know people say just get rid of social media, that'll fix it. No, that's not the way to fix it. The way to fix it is to get help, to get a trained professional to work with you. It makes a huge difference. Better help H E L. Pcom slash twig. Get 10% off, but only if you go to that address. So do me a favor, go to that address Better helpcom slash twig. We thank him so much for supporting this week in Google and my personal mental health. I hate you guys so much. No see, I think I would be cranky and mean if I, I, if I didn't take care of my mental health.
0:40:05 - Paris Martineau
it's easy to get if I didn't see a therapist, I would yeah be, it's helpful and it's not a shame do you think your generation is a little more open to that? Significantly, most of my friends have seen a therapist, yeah, or currently see one.
0:40:22 - Leo Laporte
Remember in the Sopranos Tony Soprano was so embarrassed to be going to a psychiatrist and Dr Melfi it's like my guy you murder people.
0:40:30 - Paris Martineau
It's a therapist, it's not that big of a deal.
0:40:33 - Leo Laporte
You probably should. You probably should. It's actually a brilliant conception for a TV show. We got a mafioso and he's going to psychotherapy. Just imagine the conversation of his mother because of his mother who really was a piece of work.
0:40:48 - Jeff Jarvis
It's always because of your mother so I went to a therapist once in san francisco yeah and the next once in your whole life. Yep, and the next weekend is when jonestown happened. And then the murders of mosconi and milk, who were friends of mine, and I was a little busy and I kind of said I'm not so screwed up right now and that doesn't mean I shouldn't have gone back. And shouldn't have gone back, that would be the time to go.
0:41:10 - Leo Laporte
I know I can imagine how disruptive, how horrible that would have been. Yeah, you know Terminal 2 at San, that is the harvey milk terminal and there's yeah, have you been there? It's beautiful pictures of harvey. I just went in just to see it. Yeah, it's incredible, it's great um, moving right along.
Should we stick with? Ai sure, because it's the future of everything. Actually, I'm seeing more and more articles now I'm feeling bad that I took that walk on the beach. I'm seeing more and more articles saying, oh you, you know it was overhyped, it's not going to happen. I was right in the beginning when I said, oh, it's just overhyped, it's just a parlor trick. But no, then I got sucked in, you got hypnotized, I got hypnotized, grok.
0:42:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh boy, boy you had to start there I had to start well you should start with the most extreme example of ai right.
0:42:12 - Leo Laporte
This is uh niel on musk's ai new version came out. It's got an image generator. I do believe that one of the presidential candidates must have used grok uh, because you can use grok to generate things like kamala harris with a gun, taylor swift and lingerie, mickey mouse with a cigarette and a beer on the beach and uh, trump on truth social put up a bunch of ai generated uh images of Taylor Swift endorsing him, which is not true, obviously so, but I'm kind of torn. I feel like, well, why should? What is safety? What do you know when I see Mickey Mouse on the beach? Maybe if you're Walt Disney, you might not like that. This should be interesting to see if there are lawsuits.
Maybe, if you're probably are going to see if there are lawsuits, I mean, yeah, I think they probably are going to have a problem copyright-wise Right. They haven't prevented that, as all the other AIs have, and maybe, if you're a Taylor Swift fan, might you be confused and think that she did in fact endorse.
0:43:22 - Jeff Jarvis
I was thinking about this. Let me just do a different example. Openai found that Iranians were using ChatGPT to create campaign misinformation and they shut down that account and I thought, oh good, then I thought, well, it's no big deal now. Anybody who wants to make up anything can use any of these models and put it out there. And it's not like this is some superpower, it's just they used it to write their lies and they put it out.
0:43:47 - Leo Laporte
and what's the difference in a lie picture and a lie in text? Yeah, we should be suspicious of all kinds of things you could I mean trump could easily take the stage and say hey, I just got a text message from taylor swift who said good luck, we hope you win. And that's as much a lie as a picture.
0:44:05 - Paris Martineau
Someone could also just use Photoshop and Photoshop any of these images together.
0:44:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, so this whole AI is going to cause disaster in these realms. We're already in kind of a disaster in these realms. And yeah, it's a new tool and, yes, the speed and scale is slightly different, but it's not fundamentally different.
0:44:26 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I think part of the reason why the other AI companies have tamped down on these tools' abilities to say I'm looking at an example from this website create a image of Mickey Mouse with an AK-47 over a bunch of images of dead children is because that's bad for their company to have people to be saying, hey, I made this with grok, or open ai or perplexity. As it's been made very apparent over the last couple of years, elon musk doesn't feel that way about uh, controversial content on his platform.
0:45:01 - Leo Laporte
He loves it. This is good for him.
0:45:03 - Paris Martineau
I was about to say well, he might feel differently when the lawsuits come in, but it's also. What we've seen over the last couple of years is egregious. Amounts of lawsuits seem to roll off of him. They seem to just happen to him and he. He does not change his behavior in response to lawsuits as quickly as other CEOs of tech companies would. So perhaps this is just how he's choosing to exist.
0:45:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, here's a good one.
0:45:44 - Paris Martineau
This is from the video Romantic Mom moments of trump and kamala. I was about to say I was like I'm not sure if this is grok but yeah, the one with kamala pregnant and trump's belly, and it's definitely the very funny thing is that uh grok seems to get trump's face. Uh correct, in most of these videos I've seen, but kamala is what the kids say yasified. Does that mean anything to you guys?
0:46:04 - Leo Laporte
no, what's yasified?
0:46:06 - Paris Martineau
no, you got us uh, you knew it was yas queen, that kind of yeah, it's kind of like yas queen, but yasified is a uh verb, that would mean made pretty in kind of a fakey uh, I guess I would say a drag queen sort of way is perhaps the uh most neutrally charged way to describe that it's often specifically related to uh filters. You'd see on tick tock or instagram that give people kind of a very strong jawline, really pursed lips, like, imagine, like the worst, uh, the worst negative or positive ever it's both.
It can be positive and it can be negative it depends on your text, like in this case kamala harris Yossified, but it technically means she's not really there. Pretty in this context, but it's not. The Yossification does not make her look like herself.
0:47:11 - Leo Laporte
I'm wearing makeup right now, does that mean I'm Yossified?
0:47:15 - Paris Martineau
No, you're not Yossified. We could Yossify you. Let me see if there's a Yossifier.
0:47:20 - Jeff Jarvis
I bet. Benito has a filter. How many A's in Yossify you? Let me see if there's a Yossify, I bet Benito has a filter.
0:47:22 - Leo Laporte
How many A's in Yossify Two, three, four, five.
0:47:25 - Paris Martineau
One Yoss and then a five.
0:47:28 - Leo Laporte
Y-A-S-I-F-I-E-D. I just want to know. Double, S Asking for a friend, actually asking for the title. I think Yossify would be a good title here. Good title. Here's a grok image barack obama stabbing joe biden with a knife jesus, I think they both look a little yassified on this.
0:47:46 - Jeff Jarvis
You see this. This too is the case. Do you blame the model for that? Do you blame the sick f who asked it to make that?
0:47:52 - Leo Laporte
well, in this case I think it was a verge, but okay, well, um. Well, we support section 240, 230, right.
0:48:05 - Paris Martineau
We support section 240, too, whatever that is Make it bigger. That's it.
0:48:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Make it bigger. That's the right.
0:48:13 - Paris Martineau
I'm 50 myself, let's add another 10.
0:48:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, here's Bill Gates sniffing a line of cocaine from a table with a Microsoft logo, although that again is not. It's a Yossified Bill Gates, and it's not clear if he's sniffing a line of cocaine from a table with a microsoft logo. Um, although that again is not, it's a yasified bill gates, and it's not clear if he's sniffing it or he's actually emitting coming out of his lip.
0:48:30 - Paris Martineau
It looks like it does look like he's spitting, he's making it.
0:48:34 - Leo Laporte
he's making cocaine, uh and again. Uh, these are generated byge Anyway. So this is clearly a copyright violation, offensive, but is it illegal? I mean you could sue who do?
0:48:51 - Jeff Jarvis
you sue. Well, that's the whole thing. This is about the California Legislature as well.
0:48:55 - Paris Martineau
And what are the damages is the issue.
0:48:58 - Leo Laporte
And I honestly maybe I'm wrong, but I've been arguing against guardrails like legit. Well, first of all, they're never.
0:49:06 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm against believing they're going to work. That's try, that's put them on, that's okay. But there's no way. A and b put responsibility where it acts. Again, the person who asks for it is responsible. You blame the machine for that? No, and I've used this example before, but it goes back to get your drinks ready. People, gutenberg and the press, the technology versus booksellers and publishers, the intermediaries versus the authors and users. In the end, the authors of AI are the person who asked for that photo.
0:49:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.
0:49:39 - Paris Martineau
This is a perfect example of Yossification.
0:49:47 - Leo Laporte
The girl with the pearl earring yassified, and I can see why it's morally ambiguous. Is that an?
0:49:50 - Paris Martineau
improvement. No, yeah, it's, I mean, I would say, morally ambiguous. If you scroll up, I posted one of jesus christ that I think also. Uh, something that I think is important to know is yasification kind of stems from the facetune of the internet. Facetune is an app people can use to use ai to make yourself look more yasified, or if you use snap, you could do this on snap yeah, yeah.
0:50:14 - Leo Laporte
Um, in fact, I tell everybody on tiktok does this kind of thing yes but it's different if you're yassifying yourself. Yeah, self-yassification is okay.
0:50:25 - Paris Martineau
Don't yassify others just a little bit.
0:50:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, don't yassify others have you yassified yourself, paris?
0:50:32 - Paris Martineau
no, I don't think so I don't think I'm capable of being yassified I think it's.
0:50:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're already perfect.
0:50:37 - Paris Martineau
You laid down a challenge yeah, oh, joe's working right now here is the.
0:50:44 - Leo Laporte
Uh, here's the first, first to run at it.
0:50:47 - Paris Martineau
I don't, no, no, no it's a filter of some sort what is that?
0:50:54 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I don't know. I learned so much for this, so don't yasify me, bro. This is good, I love this.
0:51:02 - Paris Martineau
Yassify, jeff and Leo.
0:51:04 - Leo Laporte
We can yassify us. In fact, that's okay, it's like. This is why it's so subtle and this is why old white men like us don't really get it Like it's okay to yassify me, but not you. Okay, I don't understand and I do, but I don't you know what I'm saying. Yeah, Google, did you see? Did we talk? I feel like we talked about this, but maybe we talked about it on Twit and not on Twig. Google threatened tech influencers unless they preferred the Pixel. On Twig, you talked about it. We did talk about this.
0:51:38 - Jeff Jarvis
No on Twig, you did On Twit Twit.
0:51:40 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so they stopped doing this. But there's a thing called Team Pixel, which is not aimed at reviewers from credible magazines, but aimed at influencers, but it's kind of. The whole point is to obfuscate the difference between an influencer and a reviewer. They send out Pixels, but in order to get the Pixel, at least initially you had to agree. So let me read you what the agreement was. By opting into this program, do you acknowledge you're expected to feature the Google Pixel device in place of any competitor mobile devices? Google pixel device in place of any competitor mobile devices. Please note if it appears other brands are being preferred over the pixel, we will need to cease the relationship between the brand and the creator. This is the most oblique way of asking.
0:52:30 - Paris Martineau
I like that it's in a Google form. Uh Fox says brand love brand love.
0:52:37 - Leo Laporte
Actually, I think this was the uh brand. Love was the name of the PR agency. 1,000 Heads, oh geez 1,000 Heads, 773 EOSified.
And that's what they do. Wait a minute Now, swing and a miss. Try again for the homepage. I guess I screwed up. It's a social transformation company. We combine expertise in data analytics, strategy technology and creativity to help the world's best businesses build social age brands. And that's the whole point. You see all these people using these products. They've been given these products and told you better show it and nothing else, because you're not a reviewer, you're just playing one on tv you're just our yeah, yeah, you're.
You're working on maggie's farm is another way of putting that.
0:53:36 - Paris Martineau
So I mean it's similar to just influencer marketing generally.
0:53:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris. Did you get that reference? Maggie's Farm.
0:53:44 - Paris Martineau
Maggie's Farm. No, I assume it's some TV show in black and white.
0:53:50 - Jeff Jarvis
No, bob effing Dillon.
0:53:55 - Paris Martineau
Do you know who Bob Dillon is? I know who Bob Dillon is, I just you know.
0:53:59 - Leo Laporte
I ain't going to conditions on Maggie's farm.
0:54:11 - Paris Martineau
See, I'm learning. She knows All right.
0:54:13 - Leo Laporte
In any event, Google says oh yeah, that was tone deaf, Sorry, we take it back. But let me point out this happens all the time that every company apple. Apple may not put it explicitly, but that's the implication if you get a free iphone. Reviewers of course, are very clear about this.
0:54:31 - Paris Martineau
They don't say no, look you know, but this is why I don't take free stuff, because then I don't even want that potential quid pro quo, right I think there's something a little different here too, which is kind of the blurring of lines between influencer marketing and like proper review culture, which has been happening more and more over the past decade or two.
But I mean a forum like this is clearly targeted at like an influencer marketing campaign where it's like you know people promoting clothes on instagram. It's like we give you clothes and in exchange you post them. We give you phone and in exchange you promote it. It's a bit different than reviewing, but I think part of the issue is that over the past decade especially, the two have kind of become the same. You see this a lot in the video game industry and basically with any product relating to Apple. I'm sure other companies have this too where if you say a bad word about the product you were given to review, your access is pulled.
0:55:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I think the entire intent of these PR agencies and the people who do this and the companies who do it is to blur the line. The whole reason they do it is because you may not be able to tell the difference between an influencer and a reviewer.
0:55:45 - Jeff Jarvis
We still have the FTC rules that were put in oh 10, 12 years ago for bloggers. That did not apply to companies like HoneyNAS but did apply to bloggers, saying that if you received something for free or if you received consideration, you had to disclose that Disclose it yeah. And I don't know that I've seen any. And and there was enforcement in the early days.
0:56:09 - Leo Laporte
I don't see any mention of that lately, of you good, good, good, yeah, I good, but still a rule, by the way, yeah, and, and we are very careful to adhere to the law when we do our ads. For instance, I can't endorse a product I don't actually use. I have to use it.
0:56:25 - Jeff Jarvis
And when you don't hear an endorsement from me.
0:56:27 - Leo Laporte
That was also the Pat Boone problem. Right Right, he had the acne medicine.
0:56:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Do you know who Pat Boone was? Now you're just baiting her. I assume it's a Boone mic with a baseball cap.
0:56:38 - Paris Martineau
Is that right? A Boone mic smoking a cigar?
0:56:45 - Leo Laporte
Pat Boone would abuse you.
0:56:46 - Paris Martineau
There is nothing to be gained by knowing about pat boone.
0:56:49 - Leo Laporte
Okay, just boone or boom boone b-o-o-n.
0:56:50 - Paris Martineau
He wore white shoes I thought my joke was really he was a cruder doesn't work that boom, he wore white shoes. That's a description of who this man was he tells you a lot what you want to know. Imagine if you died and Jeff, someone was explaining you on a podcast and like oh, jeff Jarvis, he wore white shoes.
0:57:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Go to patboonecom right now and you?
0:57:11 - Leo Laporte
I think he had a song, didn't he, about white shoes, I think? So White bucks is what they were called. See, there's his shoes. White box wow, there are his shoes. Yeah, gospel hall of fame. I, uh, I worked at tech tv with his granddaughter actually really, yeah, she was great, uh, very nice person and grandpa pat was actually quite a sweetie, so they're 90 years old I like that purple suit.
0:57:40 - Paris Martineau
I've got to get one of those, isn't that great? With a string tie.
0:57:43 - Leo Laporte
I love that String tie and the name of the song my Stupid Tattoo.
0:57:48 - Paris Martineau
Okay, that's very Brooklyn core, that whole outfit and the song called my Stupid Tattoo.
0:57:58 - Leo Laporte
Talk about cultural appropriation. Yeah, he, he talk about cultural appropriation. Yeah, he. He sang in a crooner fashion early rock and roll songs I can't remember was it hot diggity, I can't remember which song it was, but he brought rock and roll into white america mainstream with his really god-awful renditions of, with his really god-awful renditions of, traditional rock songs, whereas Elvis did it with some panache. Elvis did it and with some panache Pat Boone was. No, it was about. Oh, no, no, pat Boone was the whitest of white men. He was panacheless.
Hot diggity dog, diggity, boom, what you do to me.
0:58:35 - Paris Martineau
I say hot diggity often.
0:58:44 - Jeff Jarvis
He recorded Fats Dominoes. Ain't that a shame.
0:58:46 - Leo Laporte
I can't play it or we'll get taken down but you can just see how he's, how he's moving. It's a ain't that a shame. Yeah, yeah, and and so it really was cultural appropriation. I mean it was, it was the of the worst kind back to the point he.
0:58:57 - Jeff Jarvis
He endorsed an acne cream but uh, didn't really use it, didn't really endorse it and got in and got sued for it yeah, or yeah, so and and lost, by the way he had to take it back.
0:59:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so the ftc has long said that they also have rules about um. Well, they just actually passed some new rules, which are, I think, really good, against uh, buying reviews, fake online reviews. This is an example, though, of how slow they are to respond to this. Yeah, the rules prohibit the selling of fake and ai generated reviews and testimonials, which is just everywhere.
0:59:33 - Paris Martineau
The ftc was working on this as a priority when I was at wired in, like 2018, 2019. It's wild that just now, wow, yeah came into existence.
0:59:45 - Jeff Jarvis
That was the whole sports illustrator case. That was that horrible company.
0:59:47 - Leo Laporte
That's all they do, you know let's get back to pat boone for a moment let's get back to where this podcast belongs do you know who Rod McEwen is?
1:00:01 - Paris Martineau
No See, I'm the worst person to play this game with, because I don't know names of people I know in real life.
1:00:08 - Leo Laporte
Your folks do.
1:00:10 - Paris Martineau
I'm just bad at names. Who is he?
1:00:12 - Leo Laporte
So what's interesting is he was everywhere, everywhere in America in the late 60s and early 70s and he's just disappeared off the face of the map. I just read a slate piece this came out a couple of years ago about Rod McEwen, best-selling poet in American history. That's not saying much 60 million books, 100 million records Wow, his poetry was excreble. It was just awfulble. It was just awful, um, but he but it was romantic and and he just sold like he'd be, big on tiktok. Oh, he'd be big. Yes, he would, because he talks.
1:00:54 - Paris Martineau
You know, we're kind of oh, he was like barry white before barry white.
1:00:58 - Leo Laporte
He was the white barry white, the white barry white, the white Barry White.
1:01:02 - Jeff Jarvis
And I just read this article and I thought oh, never mind.
1:01:06 - Paris Martineau
I was completely irrelevant. A lesbian on. Tiktok, very similar to him. Oh really, appearance, yeah, appearance-wise.
1:01:14 - Leo Laporte
He had blonde, long blonde hair. This title of the show should be Ask your Parents.
1:01:24 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it's the actual opposite.
1:01:25 - Paris Martineau
When you guys were teenagers. Okay, let's take this further. No, but we laughed.
1:01:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure Jeff did. We laughed at Rod McEwen. I did, I did. Why Go?
1:01:33 - Jeff Jarvis
ahead Paris. Paris was like oh, because he was to be mocked Like Pat Boone.
1:01:38 - Leo Laporte
He was treacly, treacly middle American, like Pat Boone. He was treacly. He was treacly middle American.
1:01:41 - Paris Martineau
He was yeah, but you guys, as young adults or teens, had an awareness of a poet.
1:01:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Because it was pop culture. It wasn't real poetry. You want to hear a little?
1:01:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, is it?
1:01:52 - Jeff Jarvis
spoken word. Perhaps the time will come when I no longer smile the way I did this morning or last week.
1:02:02 - Paris Martineau
Oh, this should be going huge on TikTok. Actually, this would go so well.
1:02:06 - Leo Laporte
I want to see Sarah Cooper lip sync this People get to part as they come together.
1:02:14 - Jeff Jarvis
With the San Sebastian strings.
1:02:18 - Leo Laporte
Which was a made up name. This was a huge in 1967. This was huge. Middle america ate this up, sold millions of copies. It was on the album charts for 143 weeks wow, that's a lot of weeks isn't that not god awful? Anyway, really.
1:02:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I'll put a link in the show notes was going to ask us something about our teenage oh, when you guys were teens, what did you enjoy cultural?
1:02:50 - Paris Martineau
what did you do with your free time?
1:02:51 - Jeff Jarvis
long-haired marijuana yep protesting, the lord mitchell protesting um. Okay, I feel like people from your generation are always like what did I?
1:03:01 - Paris Martineau
I do as a child? I protested. That's like a couple nights.
1:03:05 - Leo Laporte
That's what your generation's going to say that was our entire culture. That's how we identify ourselves.
1:03:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I helped organize a moratorium watch when I was in 10th grade in Garden City.
1:03:17 - Paris Martineau
Wow, very punk rock, oh yeah.
1:03:23 - Jeff Jarvis
That's folk music.
1:03:24 - Leo Laporte
yeah, my mom and dad uh, my dad was a professor at brown and they may day 1970 was the may 1st was the national college boycott against the war, and I remember my mom silk screening shirts with the peace sign and a fist in it Sweatshirts.
1:03:45 - Paris Martineau
Very cool.
1:03:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I grew up in that kind of.
1:03:47 - Jeff Jarvis
My father and I argued about that I should go into the service. It would be good for me. And when I told him that I was going to go to Canada or jail I couldn't decide which Very difficult that was the equivalent of Fox News parents in the day.
1:04:04 - Leo Laporte
So actually I have a story about that. A couple weeks ago I went to my dad's 91st birthday party. He was born in 1933. And we had a Zoom call with family members and there was one couple on the call he was my dad's nephew and they were wearing T-shirts with his picture on them and I mean it's like he. They were more into my dad than and I barely knew these people. I found out later it's because my dad helped him escape the draft, helped him go to canada. So it's quite the opposite. He helped this guy get out of and they're still in Canada, by the way. Wow, yeah, my father got upset enough about it.
1:04:45 - Jeff Jarvis
There came a point where he switched and I guess it was seeing his son go to war. But it got real yeah he didn't want to do that and he went to the. I had had a lung blowout when I was young and he took me to the doctor to make sure I got. Well, see there you go.
1:04:58 - Leo Laporte
He changed his tune changed, he did he did you know? By the way, just for future reference, bone spurs it's. It works every time yeah uh, you're watching. I don't know what you're watching this week in bone spurs probably wondering what you're watching at this point.
You're watching this week in google boom with pat boone rodney tv memories down the road with the statler and waldorf of tech. I really think we should rename this paris and her grandpas. I honestly do, uh, paris martineau, who is way too young to put up with us. Uh, from the information, it's great, perhaps just young enough, just young enough to think, to be in awe, uh. And of course, jeff jarvis, uh, who will soon announce that he's employed, gainfully employed, yeah, hey, I see the web we weave behind you on the bookshelf yes, it is yes, how exciting I had to do a video promotion for it, oh nice.
That's why I Earlier today.
1:06:03 - Jeff Jarvis
No, over the weekend that's why.
1:06:04 - Leo Laporte
What do you do with that? I mean where does that go?
1:06:07 - Jeff Jarvis
So they have a company which is very nice and basic, my publisher, they're producing it and they show me them and they were, frankly, quite produced. I said I'm just a podcaster, can't you just do something simple like like jump cuts and things and so?
1:06:20 - Leo Laporte
I'm just a humble podcaster I always love it when um they have podcasters on the news, and you know they're in the wrong format because they've got big headphones on and a big microphone in front of them and they have a background somewhat like this yeah, and you can, and it just screams podcaster that's what it's like whenever I join a company, zoom call accidentally, like like from home.
1:06:45 - Paris Martineau
If I'm working from home because I'm writing and I haven't put this mic away I come in and everyone's like wow, Paris, your camera's so good, you have such a large mic. What's going on? And I'm like I'm a podcaster. You wouldn't understand.
1:07:00 - Leo Laporte
Didn't we do this last week?
1:07:03 - Paris Martineau
But officer, I'm a podcaster.
1:07:04 - Leo Laporte
Classic events there was a very interesting article uh in the new york times this week about alex carp the founder. Did you read this uh of palantir? Uh, who is it kind of an interesting billionaire rough photo well, but that's how he looks. He's kind of rough.
1:07:22 - Paris Martineau
Look at the pink socks I know it's just the socks, the loose, uh rubix cubes oh yeah, well, a wooden sword, the, the tissues the box of tissues well, he does say he does tai chi.
1:07:38 - Leo Laporte
So I think that's where the sword is from.
1:07:40 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a sparse home.
1:07:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's right.
1:07:44 - Jeff Jarvis
So he says it's more aimed out at length, which is a little more than I can take in the morning, but yes.
1:07:49 - Leo Laporte
It is a long. It needs a TLDR, and I'm not sure I'm prepared to do it, but I do recommend reading it because the company that he and Peter Thiel founded, palantir, is being used in Ukraine, and soon probably in war zones everywhere, to add AI to killing machines. And he makes, I think, a strong case, for, hey, you know, this has always been a case that has been made by hawks everywhere. The path to security is through strength. That you don't. You don't prevent war by being a pacifist. You prevent war by bristling with weapons and saying f around and find out, buddy and I, in some ways, I kind of. I kind of. Here's another rough photo.
1:08:39 - Paris Martineau
This is, I mean, a classic quote from a man who makes his millions or billions being a defense contractor. Right, of course, the only way to fight war is with more war, using my tools. What's funny?
1:08:52 - Jeff Jarvis
he studied uh, he has a phd in german philosophy I saw him speak and I was at an event I helped moderate. I didn't I didn't moderate him, but I was an event in vienna some years ago and he was on a panel before me and he's american, but he chose to, uh, do the panel in german because he had studied, got a degree in german and kind of wanted to show off yeah and did a good job. I think he's probably very right.
1:09:19 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, very, very smart, very oppenheimer of him yeah, mark, yeah, that's right.
1:09:24 - Leo Laporte
Oppenheimer was prone to watching different languages.
Mark milley, uh, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs, said that carp is at the vanguard of the most significant, fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history. Um, and I think it's worth reading this. It's a long piece. It's probably too long for us to kind of quickly summarize on this show, but I it is in the new york times. It's worth reading. It raises some really interesting questions about the kind of research that we're doing in the united states.
His. He says look, everybody's doing it. We need to do it because our enemies are absolutely doing it. He says you scare the crap out of your adversaries. He also says the tech scene in America is like the jazz scene in the 50s. I'm constantly telling people 86% of the top 50 tech companies in the world, just by market cap, are american and people fall out of their chairs. It's hard for us to understand how dominant we are in certain industries. The cia funded palantir after 9-11, even though it was just a couple of guys, a couple of grad students kind of used, would seem his first kind of like a beard.
Right.
1:10:41 - Jeff Jarvis
He's very much in charge.
1:10:42 - Leo Laporte
Right. Palantir is also instrumental in border security, yeah, the border security.
1:10:51 - Paris Martineau
And works has constantly renewing contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.
1:10:59 - Leo Laporte
He says we don't do business with china, russia or other countries opposed to the west. Uh, we have a consistently pro-western view that the west has a superior way of living and organizing itself, especially if we live up to our aspirations. It's interesting how radical that is, considering it's not in my view that Alex Karp says If you believe we should appease Iran, russia and China by saying we're going to be nicer and nicer and nicer, of course you'll look at Palantir negatively. Some of these places want you to do the apology show for what you believe in, and we don't apologize for what we believe in. I'm not going to apologize for defending the US government on the border, defending the special ops, bringing the people home. I'm not apologizing for giving our product to ukraine or israel or lots of other places. Giving yeah, well, giving for a fee.
So he's an ardent supporter of us hegemony right, it's like makes right, right sort of guy kara swisher guy, kara Swisher, her burn book, actually the author of burn book, but told the author of this profile, while volunteer promises a more efficient and cost effective way to conduct war, should our goal be to make it less expensive, onerous and painful? After all, war is not a video game, nor should it be, but I think that's a little too pat. I mean video game, nor should it be, but I think that's a little too pat. I mean, I think this is a real conversation. Um, that look, I'm a. You know, I'm not a hawk, I, I would say I'm a pacifist, because you were protesting through your whole youth right but at the same time in a leather hat.
Would you like a leather? I have a peter teal leather hat.
1:12:43 - Paris Martineau
It's a cowboy hat this is still on my desk from last time we did this all right you wear the cowboy hat I could get you in political trouble or wear my, my new hat oh, white dudes for harris, get out of here. Get out of here wrong for me to wear? Does it send the wrong message? I'm like, what message do you think it's sending other than you're a white dude and you're for hair?
1:13:09 - Leo Laporte
it's pretty, pretty simple, isn't?
1:13:11 - Jeff Jarvis
it. Yeah, I could wear this hat okay from the uh.
1:13:15 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that's a really good hat. From the article. Mr carp's friend, diane von fersenberg, told me that he sees himself as batman, believing in the importance of choosing sides in a perilous world. I'm.
1:13:27 - Leo Laporte
The new york office is called gotham and features a statue and prince of batman well, yeah, and palantir is named after the, the seeing stones in the, uh, the lord of the rings, I mean it's definitely got this counterculture. That's what's so weird about it. Has this counterculture vibe.
But uh, I think he's to the right of henry kissinger anyway, um, I just think worth reading, because I think, however you feel about this and I'm not, by the way, I'm not clear how I feel about it however you feel about this and I'm not, by the way, I'm not clear how I feel about it um, it's probably good to be aware that this is going on and this is where ai is in the cutting edge oh yeah, I do think that defense tech companies, and specifically the intersection of defense tech, like and ai, do not get enough scrutiny from the media.
1:14:19 - Paris Martineau
We're all endlessly distracted by the parade of big tech, whatever Elon Musk is doing, and so on.
1:14:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I smell Paris's next beat Meanwhile.
1:14:32 - Paris Martineau
defense tech is a large and scary sector.
1:14:38 - Leo Laporte
Dowd quotes, quotes uh, Akshay Krishnaswamy, who is Palantir's chief architect. You live in the liberal democratic west because of reasons, and those reasons don't come for free. They act like it doesn't have to be fought for or defended rigorously. I know that we have a lot of listeners who feel that way and I I'm not sure I disagree I don't know, this is benito.
1:15:01 - Benito Gonzalez
I kind of disagree with that good, what do you think?
1:15:03 - Leo Laporte
benito is our producer, technical director. Well, you also didn't?
1:15:07 - Benito Gonzalez
you also don't have this cut. You also have this country, because you genocided a bunch of people. So are you okay with that too?
1:15:13 - Leo Laporte
no, that's yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is that all of this?
1:15:16 - Paris Martineau
but that's old history. Pro-america might. So what's your cutoff? Here, we've got to just do war to everyone constantly, and that's having come from a country that was colonized by America, right, you know.
1:15:30 - Leo Laporte
Spain first, but America later.
1:15:32 - Paris Martineau
Then we're talking about the Philippines it's uh, yeah, all the more fun, one after another, yeah, I suppose we can take our hats off while we're talking about this serious discussion.
1:15:42 - Leo Laporte
Yes, gasifying myself. So yeah, that's a good. So you sound a little angry, benito, are you angry? I mean, you know?
1:15:55 - Benito Gonzalez
I'm not. I'm not. I am an American, I am an American. So, like I can't really be angry at America, I'm angry at a lot of the choices that America has made.
1:16:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, what. So how should we look? Obviously, we should stop If we are still doing it, we shouldn't certainly do it in the past overthrowing governments. You know cause? Just cause Dole wants to create a banana plantation in in Belize. We should not overthrow their legitimately democratic all plantation in belize.
1:16:22 - Benito Gonzalez
We should not overthrow their legitimately democratic all of the economic terrorism we did in south america. Like there's a lot of this stuff. There's a whole lot of this stuff, you know so that I don't.
1:16:27 - Leo Laporte
I think we all agree that's a bad, bad thing, but is I don't and I don't think that that's necessary but this is the stuff that volunteers tools are being used for you see, yeah, yeah, it's colonialism of one better nothing.
1:16:39 - Jeff Jarvis
I was thinking about this the other day, benito, that you know we grapple way late and badly with diversity in this country. Whenever I have discussions with people in Europe, they kind of think, well, that's not our problem, that's not our thing, Well, but their colonialism was off their land and ours generally was on our land, except with exceptions like Philippines, and I think that Well, I mean, there's still Puerto Rico, there's still Guam.
Yeah, I agree, I agree, I agree. But there's also slavery here and failed reconstruction here, and so it causes different definitions of the idea of responsibility in these various places. Then you go to the countries where it happened to them and it's obviously drastically different. Again you wonder how Palantir is being used now for control outside our borders.
1:17:42 - Leo Laporte
It's worth reading the article. I think it raises some very interesting issues and, like it or not, we need to acknowledge what's going on, especially with AI and tech. And there is a Twitter account called Alex Carp's hair If you want to follow that. Roblox, matthew ballco. Roblox is the biggest game in the world and it cannot make a profit. You, if you know a kid, you know Roblox, right? Uh. You, if you know a kid, you know roblox, right? Uh, roblox is.
80 million people log into roblox every single day. More people log into roblox every 10 or so minutes than use that other vr world, second life. In a month at its peak, roblox counts 380 million monthly active users, twice as many as steam, three times that of the playstation, three times the number of unique annual users of the nintendo switch, five times as many as about the xbox. This is one game, and a game for kids at that. Uh, it is typically one of the three to seven most played games on playstation and xbox. Sensor tower said, in 2023, roblox averaged more ios and android monthly active users than any other game, including candy crush. This is a massive success and yet has never made money how does it operate then?
I guess billionaires are pouring money into it. Run rates spending on roblox over 3.8 billion dollars, which is probably more than any other game?
1:19:42 - Jeff Jarvis
On what servers and stuff?
1:19:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, marketing it's expensive. Every one of these users is costing money. In 2022, roblox users designed 170,000 virtual clothing and accessory items and 15,000 virtual worlds every day, every day. Virtual worlds, every day, every day. Uh, now, a lot of the revenue that it makes it pays out to the people who create this uh content.
1:20:11 - Jeff Jarvis
three billion dollars since 2006 because I don't play it, I do I. Am I buying fake hay?
1:20:19 - Leo Laporte
uh, you're buying clothes, you're buying houses.
1:20:23 - Benito Gonzalez
Uh also, roblox is more of like a it's a platform where people make games for other people, so you're buying other people's games within roblox as well, right? So, like the thing with roblox is, it's a lot like twitch. It has the same problem as twitch is that they have a lot of overhead to operate, because there's a lot of servers and there's a lot. It's a live service, um, and, and it's like they have that whales problem. You need a couple of whales to keep the whole thing afloat, right?
1:20:49 - Leo Laporte
uh, over the last 12 months it has averaged 138 in costs for every hundred dollars. It makes it that's not a. That's not a road to success, a road to profit. It's really interesting. This is a piece at MatthewBallco. They spend a lot of money in R&D 44% of revenue on R&D $1.5 billion a year. So probably somebody figures they're going to turn a corner at some point.
1:21:37 - Paris Martineau
And they just in their most recent earnings report, they said that they lost their net loss for the last to around, you know, 255 million or 275 million in the next quarter, which is not good, not what you want.
1:21:49 - Leo Laporte
Cash flow is great, but the costs are even greater, and that's really part of the problem is it's very expensive to do this.
1:22:09 - Paris Martineau
I assume it's also a problem, given you know, with the potential for bills like the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0 to pass. That would create an even bigger issue for companies like Roblox because many of their users are kids, and that's going to create even more stringent requirements around that data another problem, of course, is the fees that ios and android charge.
1:22:26 - Benito Gonzalez
30 percent, uh comes straight out of roblox profits and like their biggest, their biggest audience is little kids, who are notoriously broke right, yep.
1:22:39 - Leo Laporte
Right. Roblox continues to grow it's 13 plus and 18 plus database. They released a photo ID based 17 plus age verification system last year, so they now have age gated content. Of course, as those kids I mean. It's like Minecraft. I play Minecraft. As kids who played it grow up, they're going to keep playing it and there's nothing that makes it inherently a kid's game. Have you played it, benito?
1:23:03 - Benito Gonzalez
I haven't I haven't, no, but like it's a little different in my uh from minecraft, because minecraft people make their own servers it's, it's, it's distributed right, roblox runs.
1:23:13 - Leo Laporte
Roblox is essential.
1:23:14 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, it's more like blizzard's model I guess part of the issues that or at least part of understanding this is they've been cashflow positive um for like at least I think, of the last year, if not more, and so probably why they're not focusing as much on profit is that you know they could always get back to sustainability by pumping the brakes and like reinvestment spending or whatnot, but I also think that that's not a super sustainable way to run a business, especially if you're not. You know you're losing a billion dollars a year. Right.
1:23:52 - Leo Laporte
Advertising. They're going to start doing it, but it's. I just wanted to bring it up because it is, in fact, one of the biggest media properties in the world and because it's played by kids. I think a lot of, uh, a lot of us aren't really our. Our awareness is not, uh, not there.
1:24:08 - Jeff Jarvis
R-o-b-l-o-x well, you have another story in the rundown which I think is relevant please bring it up about game players, and so, since I'm not one and you are, it says something about each of us.
1:24:23 - Leo Laporte
Well I would say both paris and I like to play games that's what I'm saying.
1:24:27 - Jeff Jarvis
You both are game players and I am not. Ergo I must be better looking. I did see that I did see that.
1:24:38 - Leo Laporte
Uh, this is a study. Uh, what line is this? If you put it in, uh, I don't know what line it is, though, oh, uh looks and gaming looks and gaming who and why. This is from nberorg, the national bureau of economic research. Very weird study. We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video computer gaming. Average american teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming. Average American teenagers that's actually I would have thought it would be more than 2.6%.
1:25:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, because there's good-looking people like me who don't do it.
1:25:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, For adults it's 2.7%. It's a little bit higher.
1:25:19 - Paris Martineau
I'm surprised that it's higher for adults.
1:25:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, using the American ADD Health. Surprised that it's higher for adults. Yeah, yeah, using the american add health study, we show that adults who are better looking oh, that's determined, I do not know have more close friends. Arguably, gaming is costlier for them, so they engage in less of it. Physically attractive teens are less likely to engage in gaming at all, whereas unattractive teams who game spend more time each week on it than other gamers. I don't know why they even did this study. I'm offended, it's ridiculous.
Attractive adults are also less likely than others to spend any time gaming, and if they do, they spend less time on it than less attractive adults. This reminds me of when I was a kid I don't know if I should bring this up um, I liked, so I was always worried that I enjoyed self-pleasuring, shall we say we're really hitting all the all the
1:26:25 - Paris Martineau
notes in this show the doctor said don't worry, he'll grow out of it, he'll gain wait wait wait you discussed this with the doctor you discussed this with your parents, who brought you to a doctor?
1:26:38 - Leo Laporte
no, it wasn't that bad, but I just I was in I thought well is. Is this, how much is too much?
1:26:45 - Paris Martineau
at what age are we talking about 12?
1:26:48 - Jeff Jarvis
was it that? Was it the hairy palms gotcha?
1:26:51 - Leo Laporte
no, I don't know. Anyway, it was an abnormal amount. It was not out of control, but I just was curious and the common wisdom at that time was don't worry, you'll grow out of it. So I kept waiting to grow out of anyway. Enough of this, let's stop. This is why I I game.
1:27:10 - Jeff Jarvis
That's all I'm just saying sublimation, a very, very useful uh thing.
1:27:15 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah uh, we need that jammer b button oh, I need that hey, just I didn't say I was very careful very careful, trying to keep a straight face there.
1:27:26 - Leo Laporte
Hey, impossible do you know bulwer-litton? Who doesn't know bulwer-litton? It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out. Right, you know that. I'll read you the uh? The original quote from the book paul clifford it was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets. For it is in london that our scene lies, rattling along the housetops, fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. That is one sentence, the first sentence of paul clifford, and it is widely considered the worst sentence ever written in the english language, which means, of course, there is a bulwer-litton fiction contest every year to come up with an equally awful first sentence. Would you like to hear the winners this year? Yes, there's quite a few. This is the 2024 Grand Prize from Lawrence Person, austin, texas. She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham hock tossed from a speeding truck.
1:28:40 - Paris Martineau
That's pretty good.
1:28:42 - Leo Laporte
The Grand Pangendrum's Special Award for joel phillips, west trenton, new jersey. I like this one. Mrs higgins body was found in the pantry bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a 50 pound sack of yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose I think that's a great question, that's a great sentence actually I, I like that one.
1:29:05 - Jeff Jarvis
You're buying that book, right?
1:29:07 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I'm gonna look it up but there's so much.
1:29:10 - Leo Laporte
I love this contest. There's so much creativity. Here's the adventure winner. As nils norgrun struggled mightily, treading water, to stay afloat, while grimly watching from a distance the nor, the Norwegian oil tanker he captained, slowly sink in the treacherously dark and stormy seas off Murmansk, he gave no thought to whether the giants had any chance of a pennant win this year. This is Northern California, obviously. Do you have any other favorites? There's quite a few of these. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish. But as fish tend to live in the sea rather than in a skiff, he had only himself to blame. She was poured into the red latex dress like jello poured into a balloon, almost bursting at the seams, and her zaftig shape was awesome to behold. But I knew from the look on her face and the 45 she held pointing at me that this was no standard client of my detective agency but a new collection agency tactic to get me to pay my long overdue phone bill.
1:30:23 - Paris Martineau
This is the winner from the romance section. If broken hearts were made of simple syrup and shattered dreams were made from white rum, and agony and despair came from a three-fourth ounce of lime juice freshly squeezed and three mint leaves respectively. Then mary lou just served up a mojito cocktail straight from the ninth circle of hell when she told Ricky the baby wasn't his. I think that actually rules. I think that's a good sentence, oh my God.
1:30:53 - Leo Laporte
Here's from the Purple Prose section. The winner Robert Wolf, pittsburgh, pa, hungover. Bethany walked out onto the deck of her Malibu Beach Beach house, her pimento-less olive green eyes. Bethany walked out onto the deck of her Malibu Beach beach house, her pimento-less olive green eyes scouring the sand below like two Brillo pads, while a thundering blitzkrieg continued hammering within her head, like demolition wrecking balls repeatedly smashing against concrete walls, while accompanied by the deafening salvos of the cannons from the 1812 Overture. Wow, these are fun. Anyway, the winners are out.
1:31:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Read them at your peril by Snoopy Pardon me Made famous by Snoopy. Oh yeah, dark and Stormy Night, that's right, because he kept typing. Yeah, that was always what Snoopy's book was beginning.
1:31:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and suddenly a shot rang out. I should give credit to Charles Schultz for that, because it's not in the original Right. Odious outliers Alexandra Strauss from New York. New York, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and with precisely this questionable choice of paving material, Combined with the ongoing flight of middle class demons from the urban center of pandemonium proper to more spacious brimstone lakefront homes in its suburbs that have produced the mess of closures, detours and gridlock that were making Azazel's commute this morning a living. Oh, you know, I found my favorite here.
1:32:26 - Jeff Jarvis
The historical fiction. It has a Gutenberg touch On an otherwise fine spring morning. Helga Totentanz learned in an exceptionally hard way that, whatever they might have told you in hospitality school up in Cologne, as a serving wench in Mainz's finest inn in 451 AD, you don't greet a battle weary and obviously stressed general named attila fresh from crossing the carpathians at the cost of 10 000 or so men with an overly cheery hi hon oh yeah yeah, baby, hey, there is some good news.
1:33:02 - Leo Laporte
Uh, the department of justice I know I think everybody agrees this is a. This is a lawsuit that it has merit suing. Live nation and ticket master looking to break them up. 10 more states have joined indiana, iowa, kansas, louisiana, mississippi, nebraska, new mexico, south dakota, utah and vermont. This 39 of the 50 states plus the district of columbia are now part of the lawsuit.
1:33:27 - Jeff Jarvis
This is antitrust that affects consumers that you go after this is a good one.
1:33:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is a good one. I mean they are, I mean just a just horrible and you no longer work for them.
1:33:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, so you can. Um, didn't you work for it wasn't I worked?
1:33:43 - Leo Laporte
worked for I heart which used to wasn't it part of my nation?
I think it was part of, but I don't, I don't, I don't know. Anyway, I have no association with uh, either I heart or live nation any longer. Um, live nation ticket master says the DOJ exercises power over performers, venues and independent promoters in ways that harm competition. They also impose barriers to competition that limit the entry and expansion to rivals. In particular, a safe ticket feature that they added, I think, right after COVID. They added, I think, right after COVID, that was ostensibly to protect ticket holders from counterfeits but in effect kept every other ticket company out of the business. I know, in order to get in the venue since COVID, I have to have a Ticketmaster app on my phone, that I have to present the phone uh, to enter.
1:34:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Speaking of antitrust, speaking of monopoly, speaking of yeah they're terrible market power.
1:34:50 - Leo Laporte
It's just terrible so there's one we can all get behind.
1:34:54 - Benito Gonzalez
Yes, yeah, that's a fight that's been happening since the 90s yeah, I hope they win on this one, I really do.
1:35:03 - Leo Laporte
Uh, let's see 20 years ago this week, google went public how and if you bought a thousand dollars worth of google stock 20 years ago, what do you think it'd be worth today? Probably a few money. A few money. The stock is appreciated six thousand five hundred percent, so that thousand dollar investment would be worth sixty six thousand dollars today, I think right around. When google went public, I bought 20 shares, but in order to preserve my integrity uh, doing this show I dumped them did I tell you my story.
1:35:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I, um nick denton, late of gawker, begged me to get the new houses, who I worked for at connie nast, to save blogger in the day, and so they invested a puny amount I think it was $600,000, to save Blogger. And they did save Blogger. That was not the only time it was saved. And then, of course, blogger was sold to Google and I got a call from the lawyers when I was still working there and they said and this is before it went public we supposedly own some Google stock. Do you know where this came from? And so they owned it pre-IPO and I'll bet you anything they sold it.
1:36:32 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure they did. I have no regrets, I don't mind. You got other regrets. I have plenty of regrets. I just don't regret selling my Google stock.
1:36:43 - Paris Martineau
I've never owned a stock, really Probably never will.
1:36:46 - Leo Laporte
You're young, yet there's time yet.
1:36:48 - Paris Martineau
I mean it doesn't really mix super well with journalism. Yeah Well, that's kind of yeah.
1:36:52 - Leo Laporte
I only have mutual funds. Do you have any mutual funds?
1:36:55 - Paris Martineau
I mean, yes, I have like mutual funds. You have a 401k, but I'm saying I don't personally own any stock. I don't think that counts.
1:37:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't either. Hey, we're back. Sorry about that. It dropped out a little bit, but we've survived. Our long national nightmare is over. Leo's internet is back. Some good stories from I think from you.
1:37:23 - Paris Martineau
Mr G, mr J, mr G, that J, mr G, that classic person on the podcast you know. Erase part of it, flip it around.
1:37:34 - Leo Laporte
Wyoming's capital city.
1:37:39 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh yeah, you need to reconnect the other camera as well, by the way. Oh yeah, Let me do that.
1:37:43 - Leo Laporte
Okay, that's interesting that it lost that. That's weird. You can see it now.
1:37:52 - Paris Martineau
Yes, oh, now we got to do this again.
1:37:56 - Leo Laporte
What is the capital city of Wyoming? I should know this. That's a good question. I don't know.
1:38:00 - Paris Martineau
It's a wonderful question.
1:38:02 - Leo Laporte
It's we should know I'm ashamed, I don't, and you know what the? Washington Post doesn't seem to know either. All the Washington Post says is Wyoming's capital city, and at least in the first four paragraphs there's no mention.
1:38:17 - Paris Martineau
They were like listen, I don't know, I'm not going to find out.
1:38:20 - Jeff Jarvis
A little city of Wyoming.
1:38:23 - Benito Gonzalez
Cheyenne, cheyenne, cheyenne.
1:38:25 - Leo Laporte
I've been to Cheyenne so I'm ashamed to admit that the train, the California Zephyr, goes right through Cheyenne. Anyway, a mayoral candidate running for mayor in Cheyenne, wyoming, says if he wins he's going to let an AI run the town.
1:38:45 - Paris Martineau
Didn't someone in Europe try this? Recently we talked about this in the show.
1:38:50 - Leo Laporte
Yes, we had the same story for someone else.
1:38:52 - Jeff Jarvis
This guy also was trying to do it, but then OpenAI said, no, you can't, I'm guessing liability. And so he found a way around it.
1:38:58 - Leo Laporte
He calls the AI bot VIC, short for Virtual Integrated Citizen. The AI bought Vic, short for virtual integrated citizen. He had a sign that says AI for mayor gave a brief PowerPoint presentation on the history of AI. Thank you very much. Then he stepped a slide to give this floor to his Mac mini and iPad, propped on a table and connected to a hanging speaker at the front of the room and told attendees to direct questions towards the screen. Somebody asked is the computer system in City Hall sufficient to handle AI? Another said if elected, would you take a pay cut After each question? A pause followed. Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance of data-driven insights and human empathy. Here's how I would approach it. It added, before taking off a six-part plan that included using ai to gather data and public opinion. Is this a terrible idea?
yes, isn't it yes, yeah, ai for mayor. It says vote vic meat avatar. Oh, I guess victor miller the human is the meat avatar of vic the ai.
1:40:15 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh boy, this is gonna turn out to be a mechanical turk right, come on yeah, there's gonna be, I think.
1:40:21 - Paris Martineau
I think victor's gonna get to run the whole thing god, this is so funny the day before miller had scrambled to get vic working after open ai, the technology company behind this, shut down his account, citing policies against using its products for campaigning. Miller quickly made a second chat to bt bot, allowing him to hold the meet and greet almost exactly as planned. So he's just hoping that he's able to continuously evade opening eyes attempts to shut his I've crafted a prompt that gets around here is uh.
1:40:55 - Leo Laporte
Here's an example of uh about the meet and greet from the washington post, the. Washington Post Would you take a pay cut? Pause Thinking, Working A little soft, However.
1:41:12 - Leo Laporte
Dick Miller, the human candidate has always emphasized his commitment to serving the community above personal gain.
1:41:20 - Leo Laporte
Don't vote for that guy. Enough said.
1:41:23 - Paris Martineau
His campaign email is a Gmailmail account oh, forget about it that's rough forget about it ai for mayor 2024 at gmail. Okay, wait, look, this paragraph is actually a perfect uh work of journalism. Miller created a campaign email ai for mayor 2024 at gmailcom. He started marketing events. His father, rod miller, who said that quote pretty much nothing victor does surprises me. And quote begin formally advising his candidacy he's gonna lose.
1:42:00 - Leo Laporte
This is this is a little league. Actually, more than 30 tech companies have pitched AI tools to political campaigns in November. The campaigns seem to be less than interested. This is from the New York Times. This illustration is also from the New York Times. Thank you, sam Wood. Um, yeah, I think. Good, good, let's not. Let's not. Let's have for humans by humans. I like ai, but I don't think they should be using ai. Civox, which is one of the companies that an artificial intelligence company that offered its services to a candidate, made almost a thousand calls to voters in five minutes. Nearly all of them hung up in the first few seconds when they heard a voice that described itself as an ai volunteer yeah, wouldn't you hang up?
1:42:55 - Jeff Jarvis
well, yeah, we don't answer the phone.
1:42:57 - Leo Laporte
The hell with you yeah, not at all campaigns are largely not biting, says the times, and when they have, the technology has fallen flat. Only a handful of candidates are using ai. Even fewer are willing to admit it. Three of the companies said campaigns agreed to buy tech only if they could ensure the public would never find out. They must never know what I've done. An AI robocall in January mimicked Biden's voice, remember that Denounced by political watchdogs, investigated by local law enforcement. I think that this isn't going to be the year AI decides the election. I hope.
1:43:46 - Paris Martineau
Be Human, a New York company founded in 2020 that uses AI to create videos, has pitched political campaigns on a product that personalized videos of candidates for voters. Candidates could record themselves speaking on an issue, and Be Human's AI-based technology could then clone their face and voice to create new videos. The opening lines could be tweaked to greet a specific voter or recite a particular talking point. Don Bosco, BeHuman's founder, said Imagine you're a voter and you get a video in which a candidate says your name and speaks to your issues. That is creating human connection.
1:44:18 - Leo Laporte
Fake human connection, but human connection. By the way, I was very happy to see Tim Waltz, the candidate for vice president for the democratic party, at a runza the other day celebrating. He says if you come to nebraska you've got to have a runza what is a runza? Didn't we have runsas on this show, or you don't know what I'm talking about. I ordered I I ate them during the show. Benito, you had a runza right, you thought it was quite delicious that thing.
1:44:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, the pierogi, the meat pie. Oh no, that's different.
1:44:53 - Leo Laporte
You were something else you ate listen, I'll support a meat pie runza is a uh local delicacy in Nebraska and it's a meat, a handheld meat pie. I like those. Tim Waltz is campaigning in Nebraska. Stops at the Runza restaurant to eat. This is a man of the people, but you know I have to say he's right, it's all about the bread consistency. It's a. It's a delicious, delicious treat. So now, since Joe Biden has his ice cream, cones.
1:45:31 - Jeff Jarvis
This is Chicago week. I love Chicago pizza and yes, don't at me, it is pizza. I like Chicago hot dogs a lot. I have never developed a taste for Chicago Italian beef Love it.
1:45:44 - Leo Laporte
We have a local place. It's actually great because it's called Roy's at the Yard. It's at the Stockyard where they auction off beef, so he gets his beef fresh and actually she says he ships the hot dogs and accompaniments, including the nuclear green relish, in from chicago by truck. But he makes a very fine chicago beef sandwich which I had to have because of the bear.
1:46:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, the bear, I know, and I just, I, just, I just not have you ever had one?
1:46:15 - Paris Martineau
uh, paris no, I haven't. Well, the closest is I I mean yes, I have it's a french dip in chicago.
1:46:22 - Leo Laporte
It's a French dip, not in Chicago. It's a French dip, but they do the dipping at a time.
1:46:25 - Paris Martineau
I went to a local Jewish restaurant Jew-ish is how they describe themselves. They did like this Shabbat service non-religious, but just kind of like a Friday night, highlighting local restauranteurs and they did Chicago style latke dogs. It was like latkes with a. Chicago style dog on top.
1:46:50 - Leo Laporte
So the dog, instead of a bun, is wrapped in potato pancakes.
1:46:53 - Paris Martineau
It's kind of just on top of a latke. It was quite good.
1:46:58 - Leo Laporte
By the way, when you're talking about AI being used in elections, there is some good news on that. Apparently the russians who've been trying to use ai to throw our elections uh, according to meta, that interference is failing. New meta security report finds that ai power deception campaigns provide only incremental results for bad actors, which we've known for a long time it's like cambridge analytica had no secret sauce.
1:47:23 - Jeff Jarvis
It really didn't make a huge difference. People who are dumb and vote the wrong way in my view are going to vote the wrong way in my view. And that's where we are. Yeah, there's no such thing as an undecided voter today.
1:47:35 - Leo Laporte
That is true, except somehow CNN keeps finding them. Oh, I know.
1:47:47 - Paris Martineau
I don't know where. Oh, one of my favorite undecided voters in this is part of the new york times is a series going on right now where they're checking in with the same group of undecided voters throughout the election. You could probably put up. There is one guy who every time they check in with him he's like I haven't heard about b dropping out, been too busy working. What he's out, Harris is in and I'm like what a life you must live that you know none of the things that the New York Times reporter is calling you about. And every single time you're like oh, beats me.
1:48:16 - Leo Laporte
Here's the problem If you are on the panel of undecided voters that the New York Times keeps calling you, damn well, better not decide, because they're going to stop calling you. Yeah, they're basically bribing you to not decide. We'll be regularly checking in with undecided voters between now and election day. Oh, five people, he's. The times is the one that works at Target.
1:48:42 - Paris Martineau
If you control F Target, it might be showing up.
1:48:45 - Leo Laporte
That's alright, we're done. I want to know why Google's Gmail is turning your rough notes into Polish, huh.
1:48:59 - Paris Martineau
I'm sure, for only good reasons.
1:49:01 - Leo Laporte
It's not, it's Polish, it's called Polish. I'm just kidding. It's time for the Google Change Log, the Google.
1:49:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Change Log. I'm so glad you brought the trumpets and tippin' it with you to the attic.
1:49:17 - Leo Laporte
Oh man, it's not easy getting them all into the attic either. Okay, guys, this isn't going to be a long one. Don't go too far. They were going to be a long one. Don't go too far.
1:49:30 - Paris Martineau
they were going to take a lunch break. They get. They get a smoke break. Usually gmail can turn smoke in the trumpets.
1:49:32 - Leo Laporte
It's very impressive gmail can turn rough notes into a full draft with gemini polish. Okay, show of hands. How many thought it was the polish language that google was going to turn your notes into?
1:49:48 - Paris Martineau
I mean you said Polish, so I trusted you.
1:49:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, we talked about hot dogs, sausages. We were talking.
1:49:54 - Leo Laporte
Polishes.
1:49:55 - Paris Martineau
We were talking Poles earlier also.
1:49:56 - Leo Laporte
When you say brat summer, I say brat summer.
1:50:00 - Paris Martineau
Let's call the whole thing off let's call the whole thing off.
1:50:04 - Leo Laporte
After entering some text in gmail rough notes uh, you can tap the pencil with a sparkle icon in the toolbar for polish. This is available on mobile and the web. Google will let you regenerate and quickly replace the text. Meanwhile, gmail for mobile will now show a help me write shortcut. The ability to polish drafts in Gmail is widely rolled out for Google one AI, premium, gemini, business and enterprise. Add on Gemini education. I have this, but I don't really. I don't think I'll. Should I use this? Should I try it? You can formalize, elaborate or shorten what you've written, but I don't really. I don't think I'll. Should I use this? Should I try it? You can formalize, elaborate or shorten what you've written. That's been around for a while now. There's also polish to effortlessly refine your emails.
1:50:54 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, I don't want to lose that je ne sais quoi of Leo's original voice.
1:51:02 - Leo Laporte
Let me just try this here.
1:51:04 - Paris Martineau
Yes and no. As someone who hates writing emails and has to write a lot of emails, there could be something to just you know, you're a writer, don't you Listen? I got to write a lot of things, I'm a writer, so I sit there and I overthink how I need to be writing the email sometimes and I overthink how I need to be writing the email sometimes, and there might be an occasional instance where it could be nice for me to just type in Leo, send me video and then have it sound like a normal human sentence. I say that, but I also am a writer with anxiety, so I don't think I'll relinquish control to Google to do that for me, but I could see the use so I'm gonna, I'm gonna write a little gmail to you, gizmo, I have a robot and I could take care of gizmo, gizmo via telepresence.
1:52:03 - Leo Laporte
Okay, now I click. What is it? The sparkle? Help me write. So I'm going to click show this on the screen.
1:52:09 - Benito Gonzalez
So people can see the excitement your phone number's on there.
1:52:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that phone number doesn't count. I'm going to sparkle it up. Okay, what? Now I have to write more. There's not enough to sparkle um make. I don't understand. I have to put this, maybe. Okay, maybe I have to put this message in here and then sparkle it.
1:52:39 - Paris Martineau
I have a robot it's just the exact same hello gizmo and new gizmo was a.
1:52:47 - Jeff Jarvis
That's all it did I mean this is a creative writing age.
1:52:53 - Leo Laporte
Okay, that was refined. Let me, uh, formalize it. This is more formal, dear ms gizmo. Hello, best regards. It says now best regards. Let's elaborate on this.
1:53:10 - Paris Martineau
It allows me to. It's got shorter. This is the worst. It's really good.
1:53:15 - Leo Laporte
Shorten it. How could?
1:53:18 - Paris Martineau
you make it any shorter, you don't even need the robot.
1:53:20 - Leo Laporte
I don't need a robot. That's redundant.
1:53:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, that's right, that's good, that's redundant.
1:53:25 - Paris Martineau
Well, that's right, that's good, that's true, it is shorter.
1:53:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it is, Because telepresence presumes the robot.
1:53:30 - Leo Laporte
Now what else could I do with this? I don't have Polish yet, so let's just keep doing this until it comes up with something better.
1:53:41 - Jeff Jarvis
I guess I just didn't give it enough to work with it.
1:53:43 - Leo Laporte
Pay something out of the new york times and see what it does okay, I think that's okay, I'm gonna take, maybe oh, I know what I'll do I'll take some spam from somebody here we go all right, this, this, I'm gonna do a new one. Uh, let's, uh, uh, how do I, how do I put stuff in there? Paste insert okay. Paste this in okay now. Now I'm gonna fancy that rid of.
Oh there, I got polish. I got polish, polish. Okay, let's try it. So this is, uh, some spam. I got hello greetings of the day. We can get your email, your website, first page of google, okay I bet I don't.
1:54:38 - Paris Martineau
Actually, this is a great thing for you to use, because I bet this is exactly how this is going to be this is how it's written in the first place.
1:54:45 - Leo Laporte
Probably well I was going to say spammers would use that to make their things more legitimate.
1:54:53 - Paris Martineau
But maybe they won't, because part of it is by making it sound so crappy. You are weeding out everyone who wouldn't immediately. I can't, I can't figure it out.
1:55:02 - Leo Laporte
I can't, it's too hard for me to figure out. Yeah, I'm just immediately. I can't figure it out. I can't, it's too hard for me to figure out.
1:55:05 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I'm just going to Well, you don't know Polish, that's fair. Yeah, Anyway you can do that.
1:55:11 - Leo Laporte
Unpolished. Google's stunning new Android AI feature instantly locks phone thieves out. According to Forbes, davey Winder, a veteran cybersecurity writer, hacker and analyst, imagine if your smartphone was not only smart enough to know that it was being stolen, but could lock itself down and prevent the thief from being able to access your data. That's what this new feature, rolling out soon to devices running Android 10 or later this is Forbes, which I'm a little dubious about.
1:55:40 - Jeff Jarvis
I had not heard of this anywhere else.
1:55:43 - Leo Laporte
A theft detection lock timeline. To keep your device and your data safe before, during and after a theft attempt, we introduced a new suite of advanced theft protection systems. Michelle Raman, we know him well, has written about it. Oh, it's rolling out in Brazil. Okay, but it's rolling out in brazil. Okay, but it's stunning, leo. Yeah, yeah, that's forbes. Uh, I tried google's pixel screenshots it's everything.
1:56:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I'd want an ai feature to be.
1:56:17 - Leo Laporte
People are liking this. I, you know uh, tomorrow I get my pixel 9. I will uh next week I'll play with it and uh give you. We can have exactly the same amount of fun. We just had trying the polish feature, which one did you get.
1:56:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Which pixel did you get?
1:56:30 - Leo Laporte
that's the most expensive, yeah of course, the biggest, the best, that's you. Uh, I was very excited about the call notes, right, but uh, android police says disappointing restrictions. Um, app researchers warn of potential restrictions on call notes functionality for saved contacts. Um, let's see. Well, we'll see, because I I'm going to try it tomorrow while there's a glimmer of hope that google could extend the convenience to older phones Sorry, jeff, with a feature drop it's probably restricted. Let's see what they don't like about it. It's, the lack of automatic feature activation on calls with saved contacts is disappointing. Okay, the option to manually enable it for calls should be available on the in-call ui. So there's no, is there no button to press? Uh, the feature description looks a lot like the always record option from calls from unknown numbers. So there's a good chance it will not launch in the us oh well, last time we checked android police says google's other automatic call recording features were also available.
Unavailable unavailable in canada, the us, uk and most other regions in europe probably because of one party recording yeah, because of as privacy yeah well, I'm a little disappointed, all right, well, I'll. Well, I'll have a personal hands-on for you. Google Play will no longer pay to discover vulnerabilities in popular Android apps. The security reward program, seven years old, is winding down.
1:58:18 - Paris Martineau
Add it to the graveyard.
1:58:20 - Leo Laporte
Put it in the graveyard Because it's perfect, it doesn't need it anymore. Ah goodness, graveyard. Put it in the graveyard. Perfect, it doesn't need it anymore. Ah goodness, um, the reason google gave the program has seen a decrease in the number of actionable vulnerabilities. It is this, is it?
1:58:33 - Jeff Jarvis
it's fixed yeah, yeah, because they haven't added anything or changed anything of notes. So what the hell?
1:58:38 - Leo Laporte
it's fine, yeah okay, there you go, gsrp on and that is your google. Let's take a little teeny tiny break and then, because we're running long, and then I would like to come back with your gizmos of the week. That's such a cute kitty. So you're saying that if I were there and I were a woman, she'd be hissing.
1:59:06 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, she'd be hissing, swatting, hiding in strategic locations to slash at your feet when you walk by. I had the skee-ball team over a bit ago to watch a movie and I drugged her. Gave her gabapentin. I had made sure it workedged. Her gave her gabapentin I had made sure it worked. It gave your cat gabapentin because she draws blood. Leo and I wanted to have people over in my apartment.
Um, she did when it was just me. When people were over, she powered through, fueled by rage, and was completely normal and anxious and I had to hold her down. I had to pin her to my bed with both my hands in order to let my friends go to the bathroom that's terrible what movie did you?
watch um, this was a couple months ago that we watched rrr, which was a great movie, oh the movie that I want to recommend, though, for my pick of the week. It's a movie I went to go see in theaters uh trap. It is a thriller, an m night shamalan movie, oh, and it's the new one it's the new one.
I love big, silly, dumb movies in theaters. I think that's one of the best things you can see in theaters. If it's not like a cool art house interesting thing, it should be a big, dumb, silly movie and trap.
2:00:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh let me turn off the sound.
2:00:29 - Paris Martineau
That's scary, okay, yeah no so they're at a concert it's basically a dad takes his daughter to the equivalent of the taylor swift era's concert, except for, as he's going around like buyer a t-shirt, he hears from the con, he starts to see police outside. He asks a guy who works there and they're like oh, you know, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you know that serial killer, the butcher who's been all over the news. The police figured out he's here and this whole thing is a trap for him. And then you realize the dad is the serial killer, the dad is the butcher he's trapped in the.
Is that a spoiler concert?
2:01:05 - Leo Laporte
no, it's not the trailer, and in the first five minutes of the movie.
2:01:09 - Paris Martineau
The whole movie is. He is trapped in basically a giant arena with all the doors locked and he's got to figure out how to get out, while also being with his daughter at what's essentially the air tour and it's what's your favorite chamelon movie is there?
2:01:27 - Leo Laporte
up and down, there's all I haven't watched many.
2:01:30 - Paris Martineau
I'm just starting my m night chamelon journey because I used to be so easily spooked by movies. I wouldn't watch thrillers, so I stayed away from a lot of m night chamelon movies. I want to watch the one about the beach that makes you old next, um, because I think that sounds quite silly unbreakable, unbreakable I will see that's benito's favorite.
2:01:50 - Leo Laporte
I like the village a lot oh yeah, that's a.
2:01:54 - Paris Martineau
Really I know all the twists oh see that spoils it if you know a sixth sense that you know what the truth is.
2:02:00 - Leo Laporte
It spoils, I know. Oh, because that's the fun of a Shyamalan movie, is what he's the serial killer. What so you like Trap?
2:02:12 - Paris Martineau
I thought it was a delightful time Listen. I was telling my friends afterwards and they were like oh, you know this and this doesn't hold up, if you think about it. I'm like we're not thinking too hard about it.
2:02:23 - Leo Laporte
No, we're a fun movie. Uh, signs, signs. A lot of people in our discord and youtube say mel gibson and joaquin phoenix and signs that's uh, that's the one, that's the. Uh, the one where the the crop circles right, or is that is? Yeah, that's the crop probably that seems like a sign.
2:02:39 - Paris Martineau
I will say I've also been on a nick cage kick lately and watched Snake Eyes a week or two before which is a perfect movie to pair with Trap because they both take place in a locked arena yeah, and they're both over the top.
2:02:56 - Leo Laporte
It sounds like very nice Trap. Our recommendation of the week from Paris Martina. Mr Jeff Jarvis. Pick of the week from paris martina. Um, mr jeff jarvis, pick of the week, you've got a bunch.
2:03:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I got a bunch, I got a bunch. Um well, I'm gonna start here. I've started reading the san francisco standard because I'm trying to read more independent media and the standard uh nice moritz I think is very good. Um, and I gotta I'll piss off people when I say this, but I gotta say that I have some amusement, some schadenfreude here that burners are finding that they're eating big losses. They are not selling the tickets this year. They buy tickets in advance thinking they got to be safe here.
2:03:39 - Paris Martineau
Have either of you guys ever been to burning man?
2:03:41 - Leo Laporte
No, you have you no. I have many, many, many, many, many friends who go. Oh yeah.
2:03:48 - Jeff Jarvis
In fact.
2:03:48 - Leo Laporte
Petaluma, this little town we're in, is a big headquarters for burners.
2:03:53 - Jeff Jarvis
I doubt it for a second.
2:03:54 - Leo Laporte
You know, a lot of the sculptures are made here and they bring them out. And, yeah, we have a lot of listeners who are burners.
2:04:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Then the next problem is that where have all the burners gone? The shops that cater to Burning man are bracing for a slow season.
2:04:09 - Leo Laporte
What does the standard attribute To what does it?
2:04:12 - Jeff Jarvis
attribute. I wonder if it was last year's mud festival. The mud yeah.
2:04:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.
2:04:18 - Paris Martineau
I bet it's that. I bet it's really expensive to get to Burning man. It's become kind of a joke. I mean it's always been like a rich tech dude thing to do, but it's becoming increasingly more just that kind of guy.
there, a college student, me and my friends ventured out to the deep, dark brooklyn, a place that was crazy to go as a fresh nyu student, um, to go to a, a busker ball like a, a party of um, street musicians and whatnot, supposed to be very chill. We're walking down the street I think I've told this in the show before but we're walking down the street and start hearing it's like an empty street in bushwick or something we start hearing. And we're like, oh, I street and start hearing it's like an empty street in bushwick or something we start hearing and we're like oh, I guess that must be it.
There can't be two big parties in the street. We walk in and it's like half naked men and women in animal masks tossing fire like someone's swallowing a sword everybody's climbing on it. It was a burning man pre-party we found out later and then eventually we left and went to the party we were supposed to actually be at.
2:05:28 - Leo Laporte
But that's the closest I've been. Well, that's about like going to Burning man.
2:05:32 - Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, I feel like I got it.
2:05:33 - Leo Laporte
You got it. It's supposed to be an art thing, right, and I think there's a lot of art.
2:05:38 - Jeff Jarvis
It's also a cult. One of my former students is big on it and believes in it is that it's kind of an experiment in society and a idealized society for the week of burning man and and I will respect her views on that. But I'm never going. I just don't like deserts and alcohol. Have you?
2:05:55 - Leo Laporte
ever been tempted to go.
2:05:56 - Benito Gonzalez
I've never been to burning man, but like I think we're like over, we jumped, it's jumped the shark. I wanted to go back in like the early 2000s. Maybe in the 90s would have been fun. The billionaires, burning man it's just like it's when it's the best time to be in san francisco, because it's like nice and clear, nobody's, nobody surrounds anymore, not this year, buddy, no one's going.
2:06:16 - Jeff Jarvis
It might be a little more crowded in san francisco this and then in related obnoxious san francisco story, also from san franc. Standard is inside the opulent world of six-figure birthday parties for kids in Silicon Valley.
2:06:28 - Leo Laporte
Wait, $100,000 birthday parties.
2:06:32 - Jeff Jarvis
And above. It's like Burning man for kids. That's why I put this in here. That's why I put this in here um, uh, this, uh. The silly circus show, founder brie crabtree, who juggled and goofed around with the kids of all kinds of venues, um, uh. And then there's wendy gross said it's the brilliant man for kids. It's a great market for clowns, magicians, balloon twisters and everybody else. A dreamy place to earn a living. For kids. There's a business called power up parties can you? Imagine what does this turn out? What? Does this create?
2:07:11 - Leo Laporte
oh, but there's so much more to talk about, but I guess we'll just there is, we could.
2:07:17 - Jeff Jarvis
We could do the um, the tiktok parrot, uh, which I thought, okay, that's, that's good enough, as is that, that's right. There, just what you said okay, that's good enough, as is that's right there.
2:07:26 - Leo Laporte
Just what you said is sufficient.
2:07:27 - Jeff Jarvis
That's all. I didn't know the owners. It's so good They've quit their jobs and they're now full-time TikTok parrots.
2:07:34 - Leo Laporte
Now we're going to have to make a law so that parrots don't you know that their parents don't take all the money from their work on TikTok. An african gray apollo has the brain power of a human toddler. He's very bubbly, very outgoing, he really wants to perform for everybody.
2:07:51 - Paris Martineau
He's a complete and total show-off is this the parrot that knocks over all the cups?
2:07:57 - Jeff Jarvis
no, this parrot's tricks are really stupid, like it can identify metal that's like a, an x-men power there's a uh parrot.
2:08:08 - Paris Martineau
I don't follow it on tiktok, but it follows me on tiktok and I'm not upset about it. I'll often see uh videos of it come across my feed where its parents they just have like a cabinet in their kitchen that is empty except for just a bunch of like loose, like tiny solo cups and like tiny little cups that are all plastic. And the bit is, they open the cabinet, put the parrot in there and then the parrot moves to knock over the cups and they pretend to be really scared and angry. They're like oh no, parrot, please don't. And the parrot really likes that. So it knocks over all the cups even more and they keep screaming please stop, don't knock them over. And then it looks at them and throws one angrily and it does. They do this every day.
2:08:52 - Leo Laporte
It's like I'm really happy. It's almost like a M Night Shyamalan movie. Yeah for parrots.
2:09:09 - Paris Martineau
Don't ever let Gizmo meet this, this parent, I won't. No, it'll be all. She doesn't understand that you can knock things off of surfaces and really, because most cats are very good, listen, I'm counting my blessings. Yeah, she's a misogynist, but she doesn't understand that you can spill glasses of water all over my electronics. Oh yeah, don't want to know that. For that, I count my blessings I have one for you.
2:09:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris, this is my san francisco standard. Run here line 119. This is the kind of thing that I think you're going to run in your retirement with your friends. It is a mini golf where the object is having fun, not keeping score.
2:09:39 - Leo Laporte
I like it.
2:09:40 - Paris Martineau
Isn't that all mini golf?
2:09:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, honestly, why isn't that all mini golf? Let me, is there a picture here that I should show? If I can. Paris and pals need this San Francisco mini. Oh, it does look like fun. There's a rubber duck. See, I'd be a cocktail. Yeah, that's a cocktail.
2:10:01 - Paris Martineau
It's called the Holy Moly. That's really good. Apparently cocktail it's called the holy moly, that's really good apparently it's mostly about cocktails.
2:10:09 - Benito Gonzalez
I used to listen, exactly you know it benito, I used to live near here, yeah, oh, this looks cool.
2:10:14 - Leo Laporte
Whatever that is always let's, let's play the video. The ball goes in and then it goes right down and it comes out the hole right here. Congratulations, you're a winner and holy moly oh, I love this.
A vincent van gogh bedroom that's pretty cool disco ball, wow. They have locations also in Austin, houston and Denver. Nine holes for $14. 18 holes for $26. You're under $21. There's a discount. This sounds like fun. The bells and whistles are mostly confined to the front nine. Going for the full 18 means golfers get to venture upstairs, where it's much calmer, and there's a kitchen up there where french fries are served in a shopping cart with functional wheels.
2:11:08 - Jeff Jarvis
That's beautiful pop till you drop vodka, lime, watermelon, prosecco, served in an adorable ceramic unicorn head for $15 I don't like the rub-a-dub in the tub I do yeah yeah, this is where you should go with it when you're out here visiting the information.
2:11:27 - Leo Laporte
Paris Martineau writes for the information theinformationcom. She is in charge of covering the Utes.
2:11:35 - Paris Martineau
The Utes the future generations. The people who are Yossifying. Well, I don't think they're Yossifying things anymore, it's a little passe. The people who once Yossified.
2:11:45 - Leo Laporte
Are you working on a particular story right now, or what are you getting? The lay of the land?
2:11:50 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I'm working on a number of things that will come to fruition. When they come to fruition, good.
2:11:56 - Leo Laporte
I want you to do an investigation. This is oh, I lost my internet again. No, you're here. No, you're here.
2:12:03 - Paris Martineau
No, you're here.
2:12:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, now you're paranoid. Now you're thinking all the time I know every moment If we don't move enough, you're thinking that we're frozen. We've got to keep moving to prove that we're alive.
2:12:14 - Leo Laporte
So you may remember that some years ago, hewlett Packard spent billions and billions of dollars on a company called autonomy an advertising company called autonomy, oh yeah which they wrote off. And then the boss of autonomy was accused of fraud and brought to trial. His co-defendant brought to trial as well, steven Chamberlain, vp of autonomy. Both died in mysterious accidents after being acquitted. A couple of months ago. Chamberlain was fatally struck by a car while jogging. Mike Lynch was on that yacht that sank in the mediterranean within a few days of each other and a few months of their acquittal.
2:13:09 - Paris Martineau
I think this is suspicious, paris, and I think you need to look into it yeah, I think the information needs to get me my own yacht to go out there and investigate I just seems a little.
2:13:21 - Leo Laporte
I mean it's karma, I guess, but he was acquitted. I feel like maybe mark heard or carly fiorina put out a hit. No, that can't be that can't be my.
2:13:35 - Jeff Jarvis
In my dream we he would have frozen again right then, before you could say that can't be, it's a joke and then we're like what?
2:13:42 - Leo Laporte
happened? What happened? I don't know, it's just. It's just, it's a coincidence, it's one of those just things that happen sometimes very once in a while. It's very sad yeah, and it's sad. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of this fine episode. I was going to tell you about the orange peels, um, but maybe I'll save that for another time. I thought this was kind of an interesting story.
2:14:12 - Leo Laporte
I didn't not put it in the rundown because I didn't want you to steal it. See if I can find it here.
2:14:14 - Leo Laporte
How 12,000 tons of dumped orange peel grew into a landscape. Nobody expected to find. This is from Science Alert 2017. Nobody expected to find. This is from science alert 2017. A juice company dumped 1 000 truckloads of orange peel in a barren pasture in costa rica in the mid-1990s as an experiment. There they are. Uh, it was. It was thought that it might this deluge of nutrient which organic waste might turn the lifeless soil of the site into.
2:14:51 - Jeff Jarvis
They didn't know how to get rid of all these damned orange fields making orange juice so look, this is before, this is during.
2:14:58 - Leo Laporte
It's a very pretty orange. This is after it did in fact turn the field into a lush green. It went through. This is after it did in fact turn the field into a lush green. It went through a gross stage, but within six months the orange peels have been converted into soil. And then then then the rest and this appeal to you.
2:15:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Why, I don't know, I just thought it was if you have.
2:15:23 - Leo Laporte
Just I guess if you have some extra orange peels, you might want to apply it. Mr Jeff Jarvis is an emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the beautiful City University of New York. Soon, maybe tomorrow, to have a new job we will find out next week. We hope. He's also the author of many books. You'll find the Gutenberg parenthesis soon to be in paperback at Gutenberg parenthesiscom next month or the month after, I guess. The web we weave magazines also available at Gutenberg parenthesiscom and you're working on a new book right?
2:16:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Working on the line of tech now.
2:16:03 - Leo Laporte
Oh nice, and there's meg, and I know you're denied this, but you are our resident historian of technology. You this is I know you, you know you don't have a degree in it or teach it.
2:16:15 - Paris Martineau
I consider you guys both the resident historians, just because we're all your experience.
2:16:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'm a historian of popular culture from my youth. We've lived it, but I think it's good to have Jeff's perspective. I really appreciate it. We do this week in Google every Wednesday round about well, we're after Windows Weekly round, about 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us do it live on seven count them seven platforms. We're, of course, in discord for our wonderful club twit members. Thank you, club twit members. If you're not a member, ad free versions of all the shows and the great warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you are supporting. Yes, we're grateful. We're trying to do here seven bucks a month twittv, slash, club twit. That's all you have to know. Just go there, please join. We'd love to have you and, of course, they make it possible. So we stream in discord. We stream in YouTube, youtubecom, slash twit, slash live. Twitchtv slash twit. We are also on Facebook, linkedin, xcom. Right now we're on kick, but I think we're going to move.
2:17:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh man, but I think we're gonna move, oh man, we're gonna move to pigeons, we're gonna do the show you can watch the show they're live 2 pm.
2:17:36 - Leo Laporte
He's back. Oh my god, is it frozen? Where did you lose me? Kick, and of course, kick, but I think we're going to replace kick with a telegram. Watch this space. You can also get the show after the fact on the website twittv slash twig. Best thing to do is subscribe in your favorite podcast player so you get it every week the minute it's available. Paris, thank you so much. Thank you, jeff Jarvis, great to see you. We will see you right here next week on this week in google. Bye.
