This Week in Google 283 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google. Matthew
Ingram joins Jeff Jarvis and me as we talk about the latest Google news. We
play with the new Google Translate. We take a selfie picture and a whole lot
more. This Week in Google, up next.
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Leo: This is TWiG, This Week in
Google, episode 283, recorded January 14th, 2015.
The
Wand of Narcissus
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It's time for TWiG, This Week
in Google. The show that covers not just Google but the
Cloud, Facebook, Twitter, everything up there above us. Jeff Jarvis is
here from the City University of New York, professor of journalism, blogger at
buzzmachine.com, author of so many great books, including Geeks Bearing Gifts, his latest. Can I get that on Amazon?
Jeff Jarvis: You can get that on Amazon and I left a copy on your
desk when I was there for New Year's.
Leo: I know you did. That was so sweet, I came in -
Jeff: As you were crying in pain.
Leo: The book fairy left me something while I was getting
tattooed.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: Nice to have you and as you know, Gina has left the
building. She'll be back every month, but right now we've got a great person
replacing her. Matthew Ingram is here from GigaOm. Always great to have Matthew on the show. Hi,
Matthew.
Matthew Ingram: How you doing?
Leo: Nice to have you. Your Canadian fellows up there,
Blackberry's near – is Waterloo near you?
Matthew: It's a couple hours away.
Leo: You're in Ottawa, right?
Matthew: I'm in Toronto.
Leo: Toronto, oh. For some reason I thought Waterloo was
near Toronto.
Matthew: It is.
Leo: Is it kind of backwater?
Matthew: I'm sure they wouldn't like to think of it that way.
It's a small-ish town in a kind of rural area.
Leo: Interesting. Isn't it funny that Blackberry's there?
Matthew: Yes, well, they came out of the University of
Waterloo.
Leo: That's right. Well, they may not be there much longer.
Matthew: Yes.
Leo: A lot of writers reported that Blackberry was in play,
that Samsung had made an offer as much as $7.5 billion. Immediately,
Blackberry's stock jumped 30%, closing at $12.59 on the day. You can see that's
that spike. This is the one day graph. Boom.
Matthew: Yes, if I drop off it's because I'm selling some
shorts that I had on it.
Leo: Do not short Blackberry at this point. But this is not
the first time we've heard this rumor. In fact, this rumor has been floating
around for years, literally.
Matthew: You know, it makes a certain
amount of sense. That's why it keeps coming up, it
would make a certain amount of sense for Samsung. Blackberry has patents that has value, QNX theoretically has value. You
know, the question is, what that value is and $7.5
billion seems steep to me.
Leo: Business Insider says the patents alone are only $2-3
billion. We kind of know this because there was some thinking about chopping up
Blackberry and selling off the parts. So we kind of know what -
Matthew: But then what's the rest, what's the other $5 billion?
Leo: I have to wonder. QNX was a big part of CES. Ford has
announced they're going to use QNX in the new Ford Sync, replacing Microsoft's
car operating system. QNX is actually a very highly regard, real-time operating
system and Blackberry owns it.
Matthew: Yes, so that has value, but is it $5 billion?
Jeff: [crosstalk] – still $5 billion. You know, Matthew, you
know how I love Canada. You know I'm a Canada-phile;
you know how I've wanted to move to Canada. But between Rob Ford, Blackberry
and whatever else has been going on lately, what's going on with Canada, man?
Jeez.
Leo: What do you mean? Come on. Is there something wrong
with Canada?
Matthew: Things are the same. You know, we took care of Rob
Ford so it's not a problem anymore.
Leo: Is he not the mayor of Toronto anymore?
Matthew: No, no. He is a councilor.
Leo: He's back to being a councilor again.
Matthew: No, we just have a regular old boring guy, now.
Jeff: Matthew, I'm very disappointed. You didn't even
apologize.
Matthew: Well, yeah, I should say, “I'm sorry.”
Jeff: What's happened to Canada? What has happened? I ask
you.
Leo: Nothing has happened to Canada. What are you talking
about?
Matthew: Yes, I think we're still doing the same old stuff. I
would argue, with the whole lumber-sexual trend, we're going to be on top
pretty soon. We've got pretty much – photos of them just look like Canadians,
basically.
Leo: “It's not hockey night in Canada. It's hockey night
all over the world.”
Matthew: You know, lumberjack jackets
and boots.
Leo: You invented that look.
Matthew: Yes, we invented that.
Leo: Not you personally, Matthew?
Matthew: Not me personally.
Leo: Anyway, we'll watch that story. It just broke a few
minutes before the show began and I'm not sure exactly whether it's credible or
not. The fact that the stock market clearly believes it maybe lends it some
credibility. We talked a little bit about this on Windows Weekly, Google and
Microsoft continue to bicker. Now, for the second week
in a row, Google's security forces have revealed a flaw in Microsoft Windows,
saying, “Microsoft had 90 days to fix it and did not. So we're going to tell
you about it.” Microsoft's response is effectively, “Come on, man! Come on!”
They did issue an out-of-cycle patch.
Jeff: “Are you Scroogling us?”
Leo: Then, in related news, they say the Scroogled site is down. It points to a different site now,
a site called Why Microsoft. So if you go to Scroogled.com, you get Why
Microsoft.
Jeff: Why, Microsoft, why?
Leo: I think that's probably not an auspicious name for a
site, Why Microsoft.
Jeff: No, it's not.
Leo: Why, Microsoft? But it ain't Scroogled. In fact, of late under such, Microsoft has
been kinder to Android and iOS than it has been to its own Windows Phone users.
Offering touch first version of Office, for instant, first on the iPad. Now
it's coming to Android. Still not on Windows Phone or
Windows, for that matter. So maybe it's just unrequited love.
Matthew: You know, the vulnerability thing, I know there's a
whole sort of educate around how you release information like that. But I have
to go with Google on this one. I think that's a public service. I think if
Microsoft had time to do something or say something, then they should have.
Leo: I know this is the case, that in the security
community if you discover a flaw, the thing to do, the done thing, is to tell the company that makes the software and give them an
opportunity to patch that. Google did that. I think maybe the only question is, how much longer do you wait before you disclose it? Does
anybody think you should never disclose it, like, “Well, even if Microsoft
didn't fix it, Google should never tell anybody?” I think everybody agrees that
at some point, hackers are going to find it. So it's incumbent on the security
firm that discovers the flaw, if the company doesn't fix it, to report it,
right? Or not? What's the ethic on that?
Jeff: Haven't you opened a window, Leo. I've been meaning to
ask you this. But isn't there a window open, then, between the time Microsoft
does act – has Google made Microsoft users more vulnerable? Or is the argument
that Microsoft didn't do anything, they were better
off pushing them in?
Matthew: In fact, someone in the chat room mentions it was
fixed a couple of days later. That's fine. So for a couple of days, it was an
exploit.
Leo: Well, it was. So Microsoft wrote, in the person of
Chris Betts, who's the senior director of their Security Response Center, he
posted, “Although following through keeps to Google's announced time,” like
Google did just say. They've always said you get 90 days. “Keeps to Google's
announced timeline for exposure, the decision feels less like principles and more like a gotcha, with customers the ones who may
suffer as a result. What's right for Google is not always right for customers.
We urge Google to make protection of customers our collective primary goal.”
Google says, “The public has a right to know about these flaws and if a company
doesn't fix it, we -”
Matthew: Yes, and I think if you don't have a timeline, then
Microsoft could just say, “Yes, we're going to get around to that. We're
working on it. Please don't say anything.” Right? Then
it's still a problem and nobody knows about it.
Leo: This has been going on for years and I think that this
wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't Google and Microsoft, because they're
such obvious rivals. But I remember talking to Matthew Conover, who was a
security researcher. This was on The Screen Saver, so that means this was more
than ten years ago. He was one of many researchers at a company called w00w00
Security. They had found a serious flaw in Microsoft Windows and he was irate.
He said, “It's been over a year. We found many flaws in Windows and it's been
over a year. Microsoft has done nothing about it.” So in absence of this threat
of disclosure, Microsoft very well may sit on its hands, or any company.
Matthew: You give the company notice, you have a time limit that's the same for everybody. If you make an exception
for Microsoft, give them a little longer, you have to do that for everyone.
Leo: That's right. “We are in favor of something called
coordinated vulnerability disclosure.” This, as far as I can tell, is
Microsoft's idea, although other software vendors have apparently agreed to it.
“Under the principle of coordinated vulnerability disclosure, finders disclose
newly discovered vulnerabilities in hardware, software and services directly to
the vendors, or to a national CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), or other
coordinator who will report to the vendor privately, or to a private service
that will likewise report to the vendor privately. The finder allows the vendor
the opportunity to diagnose and offer fully-tested updates before any party
discloses vulnerability or exploit information to the public. The vendor
continues to coordinate with the finder through the vulnerability
investigation. Upon release of an update, the vendor may recognize the finder
in bulletins. If attacks are underway in the while and the vendor is still
working on the update, then both the finder and the vendor work together as
closely as possible to provide early public vulnerability disclosure to protect
customers,” in other words, if it's a zero day. But what they don't mention in
this CVD policy, again it's a Microsoft policy, is a timeframe. The assumption
is that Microsoft is going to work to patch it or any company's going to work
to patch it. But what if they don't?
Matthew: I guess the argument, one argument, that I read was
that Google could have – basically, releasing the code, effectively telling
people how to use this exploit, doesn't help anyone but bad people. It doesn't
help users because there's no patch, so they can't fix it. Effectively, it only
helps the bad guys.
Leo: Right. Okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate here
because I don't – the question really is, how long do you wait? Do you wait a
year? Do you wait ten years? Because as the clock ticks,
there's the increased likelihood that a bad guy will discover this
independently.
Matthew: Right, so the only real argument is, Google could have
just said, “There's an exploit or vulnerability.” They didn't have to release
the entire - [crosstalk]
Leo: Maybe that's the way to do it, kind of stage the
announcement. Eventually, you have to have a proof of -
Jeff: No, no, they would have gotten crap for that as
saying, “You know something and now you're letting everybody know there's
something there.” I don't think they could have done that. I think they
would've gotten more crap.
Matthew: They're going to get crap no matter what.
Leo: Yes, and there's additional crap. Maybe we should say
– let's change the metaphor. Egg on Google's face, because – and you guys
talked about it last night on All About Android, Jason
Howell. There's a serious flaw in all versions of Android prior to Kit Kat that
Google – this is an interesting, you've got to choose your words carefully.
Some say “won't,” others say “can't.” I would say can't fix.
Jeff: Oh, I didn't hear that distinction.
Jason: Yes, it has something to do about web view in the old
Android browser.
Leo: Remember, in the early days of Android, instead of
getting Chrome on a Nexus device, you'd get a blue icon that just said “The
Internet,” I think.
Jason: It was just Android Browser.
Leo: The thing is, that web view
is built in throughout the operating system. So any application that displays a
web view, and many applications do for log-in purposes and so forth, is using
that web view. So it's not a simple component to patch but it's a very severe
flaw. So what that means is, billions of Android phone users are vulnerable to,
I think, it's a cross-site scripting hack. Google – I'm going to say, okay.
This is why I say, “Can't patch it.” All Google can do – remember, Google makes
Android, but they don't control who uses it. All Google can do is tell the
manufacturers, the LGs, and HTCs and Samsungs of the
world, “Hey, here's the patch,” which they've done. “You need to push this
out.” Google can't, has no physical means, of pushing it out. Samsung has to
push it out.
Jeff: Google did do a patch?
Leo: Well, this is the other thing – yes, there is a patch.
Google did not do it. A third party did it is my understanding, but it's an
open source project. That's not unusual. So the open source project has a
patch. But the problem is, fixing this requires not just – by the way, the
other thing Google did which puts a point in their favor, they changed the
system. So in Kit Kat and later, they can push a patch out through the App
Store.
Jason: Through the Play Services, yes.
Leo: The Play Store. So they can fix it now, but prior to
Kit Kat, there was no mechanism for them to push this out. So all they can do
is say to the -
Jeff: Oh, I see. Because otherwise
Android's in a position of weakness versus a fascistic control like iOS.
Leo: Yes. It's just the way Android is, an open source
project which Google funded, bought, funded and supports. There's debate about
how open it is, because if you're going to use AOSP, then you want Google
services. You have to have the Google Store, blah blah blah. But Google Apps and then Google has to approve your implementation. But that doesn't give
Google the ability to go into a Samsung phone running Gingerbread and fix it.
They don't have any way to do that. They have to go to Samsung – then, by the
way, Samsung probably has to go to the carriers.
Jason: Exactly. There's so many
layers of barriers in front of them, not to mention the platform numbers for
Android that just came out basically say that the versions that are affected
here are more than 60% of all devices worldwide. So the fact that Google
doesn't have their hands specifically in it to address it themselves and
they're leaving it in the hands of researchers to discover, then independent
third party developers to code around it and then roll those changes into AOSP.
Does that get pushed out to all those two-plus-year-old devices? Probably not.
Leo: No. It's available to the manufacturers, but it's up
to the manufacturers to fix it.
Jason: You know, are manufacturers
ever rushing to update two year devices or three year devices?
Leo: No, they want you to buy a new phone.
Jason: Heck no. They're not going to do that.
Leo: Same with the carriers. 60% of Android devices are
vulnerable, they run Jellybean or lower. If you're running 4.4 or later, you're
fine because Google changed this and they update through Play services. You've
probably seen those Play services updates. They happen automatically. So Google
says, “We don't develop the patches ourselves. We welcome patches with a report
for consideration. Other than notifying OEMs, we will not be able to take
action on any report that is affecting versions before 4.4. The fix,” Google
says, “Is Kit Kat.”
Jason: “Just update your device. Piece of
cake!”
Matthew: Simple.
Leo: I don't think you can fault Google for this, to be
honest. Maybe they should have thought of it. They didn't set up a way to do
this in the past. They do have a way now. Here's a good question. PSChops asks in the chat room, “Have we seen exploits?”
Jason: I think from what I've read, the researchers have
discovered these exploits and they have been rolled in, but I mean – they've
discovered the holes. Have they been exploited actively? I suppose that's a
really good question. I'm not sure the answer to that.
Leo: I'm sure Apple does not fix bugs in iOS 4. Microsoft
doesn't fix bugs in Windows XP.
Jason: Not anymore. But they did for a pretty long time.
Leo: So that's the issue.
Jason: Because of the market share. There were so many users
of XP.
Leo: Jellybean isn't that old. So the fix – I don't know
what the fix is. You have to get a new phone.
Matthew: I guess with all of those companies, they're hoping,
at some point, it's a trade off between, do you help
or fix, or kind of use that as a stick to get people to upgrade?
Leo: Yes. That's why this Google/Microsoft thing, the
timing couldn't be worse for Google. Because Microsoft says, “See, they're not
fixing their flaw.”
Matthew: But theirs is, arguably, not as fixable. The Microsoft
one -
Leo: That's what I would submit, yes. Microsoft, all
desktop operating systems, have a mechanism for fixing
this.
Matthew: Apparently Microsoft said, “We've got regular fixes
coming out in a couple of days. Could you wait?” And Google said, “No.”
Leo: They should have waited to patch Tuesday. Yes, so,
yes. I think there's a little -
Matthew: There's a little, “Eff you,”
in there.
Leo: Something from both sides. All right, let's take a
break. When we come back, we're going to talk about Title 2, self-driving cars,
Google domains. We should put that in the – are we going to do a changelog?
Jeff, what do you think? We did such a bad job without Gina last time.
Jeff: I don't know. We did, we did. I think we better just incorporate
it.
Leo: We'll just incorporate it in. So you can retire the
trumpets.
Jeff: Do we have a changelog here?
Jason: Oh. Well, I put a few things in there that would be
changelog-worthy.
Jeff: That's pathetic.
Leo: What do you mean, that's pathetic?
Jeff: No offense to the producer, we love you. But two things.
Jason: Gina really did find a lot of those things.
Leo: She worked hard. We miss her. I'll just put another
one in.
Jason: I'm sure there's more.
Jeff: [crosstalk] – in the effort to keep her, I even – it
wasn't my job to do, so I had no authority. But I was like, “What if we get rid
of the changelog? Let's work!”
Leo: “Anything!”
Jeff: All right, we'll do the changelog. We've got four
things now, three things.
Leo: I'm putting some in there. Our show today brought to
you by HipChat. See, if we had – you know what, we do have HipChat. Let's set
it up. We should have a host HipChat. HipChat is a great way for a team to stay in
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Jeff, we'll send you a link because we have set up
HipChat. We use it now, not only for the web designers, but our engineering
team has started using it. Our sales team has started using it. I think we need
a hosts and producers HipChat, Jason. I think that'd be very helpful.
Jason: That would be awesome.
Jeff: That way we can form a revolt against you, boss.
Leo: You can do that. Hey.
Jeff: Yes?
Leo: Why not? I'm all for it. See, I'm a democrat. I'm
egalitarian. If you guys want to overthrow, fine. I'll retire. I'll move to the
Seashell Islands, enjoy white sand beaches, mai-tais,
endless mai-tais. Who also retired -
Matthew: My parents lived there for a year!
Leo: Did they? Did they like it?
Matthew: They loved it.
Leo: Is it Dutch?
Matthew: It is not Dutch. It's sort of a weird amalgam of
French, and British and the local culture.
Leo: Perfect. That's what I want.
Matthew: It's paradise, effectively.
Leo: “It is de Republique de Seashella.” They actually have a Creole.
Matthew: Yes, and the only thing I remember is there's a
replica of Big Ben in the main square, on the main island, and it rings twice
just in case you were sleeping through the first one.
Leo: A lot of nap times in the Seashells. It's 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Wow. I want to move
there.
Jeff: Wow. No, you can't. Nope, you're not. Nope, can't.
Leo: What?
Matthew: Internet access is not great.
Leo: No, that's why I'm going there. That's precisely why
I'm going to the Seashell Islands. So, Kevin Rose is retired. Well, not
exactly. He's leaving -
Jeff: Retiring, yes.
Leo: I was going to wear my “Digg For,” it was my idea,
shirt. I should have. He was at Google Ventures. Remember, he founded Digg. He
worked with us on The Screen Saver. He's been with us many times on our shows.
He started an iOS app incubator called Milk, which he then sold to Google,
joined Google Ventures. Then he backed down because he wanted to go back to app
development. Now he's going to do that. His company, North Technologies – he's
formally left Google Ventures. Of course, he has raised $5 million -
Jeff: I love him. I admire him. I think he's wonderful.
Leo: He's got $5 million in venture funding.
Jeff: But the second app that lists the story?
Leo: What's the second app?
Jeff: Sorry, Leo. It sounds just obnoxious.
Leo: Well, I have Tiiny – oh, Watchville. Yes, I have Watchville too.
Jeff: Yes. Yes, come on.
Leo: No, but that's just Kevin.
Jeff: Invite – [audio feedback]
Leo: I could have written that in my sleep.
Jeff: - overpriced watches.
Leo: No, that's right. Basically, it's not even an app,
really. It just aggregates watch blogs and there are quite a few of them. I
think he's smart. I think that the Apple Watch, especially the addition, the
solid gold Apple Watch, is going to jumpstart an interest in watches, in old
school watches. He's always been a watch collector, ever since he got rich,
anyway.
Jeff: I know, I have friends who are that way too and I
always make fun of them, “When the revolution comes, people, you're getting
Timex.”
Leo: It's weird to wear something on your wrist that costs
more than your house. But it's jewelry, what do you want?
Matthew: Do people do that?
Leo: Oh, yes.
Matthew: Real people?
Leo: No, because if you can afford a watch like that, you
have a much more expensive house.
Matthew: Yes, I would assume.
Leo: So it's kind of a piggyback thing. House price goes
up, watch price goes up.
Matthew: I had a friend who said he had gotten a great deal on
a watch. It was 65% off and it was $25 thousand. I said, “I don't know where
you live, but it's not in the same world I live in.”
Leo: I know, it's weird. Well, it's jewelry. It's not about the time.
Matthew: It's not about function.
Leo: I have both of Kevin's apps. You know, I'm a friend
and a fan. Tiiny's kind of cool.
Matthew: I'm thinking, two years, Kevin's going to sell that
new venture thing back to Google and become a VC again.
Leo: Yes, for $100 million. He's a smart man. He made money
on everything. I think he's made money on everything.
Matthew: Did he make money on Digg?
Leo: I think probably not. I don't know. I don't pretend to
know, because I don't ask him those questions. I think he made money on
Revision 3. Digg, probably not. Although, wait a
minute, he did. You know why, because he took money off the table during one of
the venture rounds. That's the thing, you know, founders do. You get a $15
million venture round and you go, “Oh, by the way, I'm taking $2 [million].” So
he did that. I know he took at least $1 million off the table in one of the
Digg rounds. Not because he told me, because it was public knowledge. So let's
go back to Title 2. Title 2, revisited. What do you folks in Canada think about
this whole regulating the internet thing?
Matthew: We're in favor of it. Government regulation of things
is hugely popular in Canada. No, I mean, I'm personally not in favor of it. But
we have a history of government regulating everything.
Leo: It's actually my sense that Canadian internet service
providers are some of the first to do things like paid prioritization. Didn't –
was it TELUS who used to block Skype? One of them did.
Matthew: Oh yeah, and the stories are a legion. I remember
writing about cable and Rogers was the first to come up with nice sounding
ways, “packet shaping” and “bandwidth management” and so on. What they really
meant was “throttling bit torrent.” That was just no big deal. I mean, people
complain but I don't remember anybody, at that time at least, turning it into a
sort of policy issue. I remember when Shaw Cable -
Leo: Shaw, that's who was doing it.
Matthew: Yes, Shaw was a big western cable provider. They came
out with internet telephoning and I remember saying to a guy, an analyst,
saying, “Oh, that means they can compete with the real telecomm companies and
drive prices down.” He laughed. He said, “Are you insane? Why would they do
that? They'll just put their prices up to exactly the same height, within 15
cents or so, and everybody will make a boatload of money,” which is exactly
what happened.
Leo: And they started doing things like – I remember very
well. After an hour on Skype, that would be it. That's all you get. So the
company that, by the way, does all this D packet inspection for Comcast and
others is in Waterloo. It's called Sandvine and they
make the box that, at least for a while, Comcast was using to block bit torrent
and other things. It looks into the traffic. They call it “traffic
optimization.”
Matthew: “Bend with the shaping.”
Leo: “Bend with shaping. We're just talking -”
Matthew: “It's landscaping.”
Leo: “Yes, it's bandscaping.” Revenue generation, traffic optimization, network security. That's Sandvine. So it's not illegal but they're
also, as you can see, widely used by ISPs all over the world to keep an eye on
what the subscribers are doing.
Matthew: Well, Rogers was very good at – in fact, they all do.
But Rogers was very good at kind of portraying itself as, “We're just doing
this to help you guys, because you, the normal internet user, are having all
your bandwidth sucked up by these guys in pajamas in their mom's basement, bit torrenting everything.”
Leo: Bandwidth hogs, how dare they? “Traffic classification
technology for meaningful insight,” that's what they call it. “For communication service providers, DPIs, the organization that
enables the fully advanced services. Traffic
classification for actionable data.” That's it, right there. That's it.
Matthew: Actionable.
Leo: Actionable, like call the RIAA. Anyway, the FCC – I
don't know whether you subscribe. Certainly, the CRTC in Canada is just as bad.
But I don't know if you subscribe to the notion, the FCC is trying to protect
consumers, trying to protect themselves or trying to protect providers. Tom
Wheeler, who President Obama made chairman of the FCC, kind of notorious for
having been a lobbyist for both cable and wireless companies in his previous
life. Nevertheless, says that February, next month – in fact, a month from now,
I think, on the 25th. The FCC will decide. He indicates they're
going to go for Title 2, which we've all been talking about. Title 2 is the
section of the Telecommunications Act of 1934, updated in the '90s, that
basically allows the FCC to regulate broadband providers as common carriers. He
says, “We're going to do it but we're going to use forbearance to keep from
overdoing the regulation. But it does allow us -”
Now, Verizon says, “No, no, we'll sue anyway.” It's
going to go on and on in court.
Matthew: I think the hard part is that, you know, I've talked
to lots of people about Title 2. We've written about it a lot at GigaOm. I think, Stacy
Higginbotham knows it inside and out. I mean, the problem is, the tradeoff is,
you either have Comcast buying everyone and then doing whatever it wants to the
internet or you have the government trying to regulate the internet. It's like
choosing between getting stabbed in the eye and getting shot in the butt or
something. Neither of those is particularly great.
Jeff: [audio feedback] – but you're right. There's the
argument that net neutrality is government regulation. But our dear senator, Al
Franken, argues instead that no, what it is, is trying to keep the internet the
way it is and to prevent kind of a takeover of the internet by the companies in
a chain. I buy that.
Leo: I encourage – oh, go ahead.
Matthew: I think Title 2 – I mean, the principle of Title 2 is
that, you know, it's a pipe. It should carry things. I'm trying to remember the
phrasing that David Weinburger used in the update to
the Clue Train Manifesto. But it should flow and they should not be restricted
based on where they come from or who paid for them. That,
theoretically at least, that's the way Title 2 is supposed to or should
operate.
Leo: Right. I'm encouraged by this most recent call from
the President and the FCC saying – this is the other side of the coin. Yes,
regulation, but also competition is a solution. You know, 19 states in the US
have laws that prohibit municipal WiFi.
Matthew: Right, and that's ridiculous. I know that Tim Woo and
Susan Crawford both, I think, have said, “If you're going to – there needs to
be more options for communities to have competitive providers.” If it's
actually literally against the law to have someone do that, that's a problem.
It's not enough to just have Title 2 and have the FCC telling people what to
do. You need to help incentivize more competition in regions as well.
Leo: I have to commend Obama because, you know, in the
campaign he said he would do this. Then it seemed like, when he appointed Tom
Wheeler, “Oh my God, he's gone the opposite way.” But he did in a speech say,
“Title 2. We've got to do Title 2.” Now, the White House says it wants to end
laws that harm broadband service competition. I think this is actually the best
possible outcome. This is from the report, “Laws in 19 states, some
specifically written by special interests trying to stifle competition of held
back broadband access. Today, the President is announcing a new effort to
support local choice in broadband, formerly opposing measures that limit the
range of options available to communities.”
They're filing a letter with the FCC saying, “We'd like
your support in this.” The FCC is apparently already examining state laws and
considering whether it can invalidate them by using its authority to promote
competition in local telecomm markets. This would be things like not only
municipalities offering WiFi but in some cases,
municipalities taking over the infrastructure and providing internet. There
were a couple of lawsuits, I remember, a couple of municipalities, Chattanooga,
TN for instance, provides internet to everybody in Chattanooga. It's doing –
it's a great solution.
A lot of people have called for it, and we've talked
about this a lot. In fact, the guy who brought it to my attention first was one
of the creators of Lotus 123. Wait, no. Not Mitch Kapoor. VisiCalc, let's go
back even farther. He said, “The thing that municipalities should do is use
their right of eminent domain, take over the infrastructure and then rent it
back to a variety of providers so that there's competition. Just like the water
and power, it could be run by the municipalities, the local governments, but
the service on top of it could be provided by private companies who compete
with each other for price, performance, bandwidth shaping, you know. Fast lanes and all of that.
Matthew: There is an argument, if you buy the sort of public
highway or water, utility argument. That the actual infrastructure should be
available to anyone and that private companies should basically have to bid to
run their services on top of it.
Leo: Yes. Instead, in the States, anyway, we give them
monopolies. So last week, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, proposed changing
the definition of “broadband.” See, one of the ways they get away with this is
by saying, “Well, broadband is 4 megabits downstream, 1 megabits upstream.” If
you talk about that, 75% consumers have a choice of two or more providers. If
you really define broadband as it should be, and this is what Wheeler's
proposing, as 25 megabits down and 3 megabits up, that's what you need to watch
video, to use all the monitoring services. Then three out of four Americans,
75% Americans, have no choice at all. They don't have a choice between
providers. There is one incumbent provider who can provide true broadband in
75% of areas. That's why there's no competition. There is no competition.
Obama's speaking today at an internet service provider
in Iowa -
Jeff: [crosstalk] – us ever – [audio feedback]
Leo: Go ahead.
Jeff: I apologize, my lag is bad.
Leo: Jeff has a terrible connection. I'm sorry.
Jeff: It's awful. Here's an example. I'm paying for 50 down
and 50 up on Phios.
Leo: You're not getting it, dude.
Matthew: Are you bit torrenting in
the background?
Jeff: I will, I'll do a speed test. It's 50 down and 50 up.
Matthew: Are you bit torrenting?
Jeff: Not running anything. Jake's not here, so I know he's
not running anything. I always wonder if Obama's – if this is the equivalent of
him just doing immigration and closing Guantanamo. It's the internet equivalent
of that, saying, “Let's just do this stuff and get going.”
Leo: Except he never did close Guantanamo.
Jeff: Yes, no. That's what I'm fearing.
Matthew: It's closed to new guest. They're not accepting any
new guests.
Leo: That's a start. Though he's in Cedar
Falls. He's speaking right now, actually. Iowa's first
gigabit city. I'm trying to think if it's municipal-wide? Municipal internet?
Matthew: Yes, he showed a graph or a chart of high speed in
other countries. So it was South Korea, Tokyo, cities. The first one in the US
was Cedar Falls.
Leo: Iowa's a really good test case because two-thirds of
Iowans are in rural areas. There's a huge rural population that isn't well
served. So this is part – to me, it's an issue of equality. If you don't have
access to high-speed internet, it's not that you can't watch Netflix. You can't
really participate in the world. It's an issue of just good economic
development. Municipalities should be able to do this.
Matthew: I know that at one point, Mark Andreessen did a sort
of tweet storm, talking about net neutrality, which I then aggregated in my job
as a journalist.
Leo: I remember that, yeah.
Matthew: One of the sort of core
arguments was that he believes we're going to need orders of magnitude, more
bandwidth, to telepresence and 3D modeling. All that stuff we're doing.
Leo: Imagine the educational opportunities that can be
provided in rural areas if they had high speed.
Matthew: But his argument is that we can't – if we have Title 2
– basically, he was saying we need the owners of these networks to invest
hugely in more bandwidth. If we make it less economically viable for them, they
won't do that.
Leo: That's exactly – I mean, should we call Jeff back? I
don't want this to be just me and Matthew going back and forth. Let's take -
Matthew: Not that that wouldn't be great.
Leo: Not that there's anything wrong with that. I wouldn't
mind getting – I know Jeff has a lot to say. He's probably, right now, fairly
frustrated. So we'll wait for a little bit here before we go on. I wonder why –
he says it's 50/50. That might be an example of bandwidth shaping.
Matthew: I got to tell you a story. Rogers, who I use, I saw an
ad just randomly in the newspaper a year or so ago. It said, “Hey, if you sign
up now for Rogers Extreme, you'll get 30 megabits.” I thought, “30 megabits, wait a second. I've got Rogers Extreme. I've been
paying for it for two years. I get like 8 megabits.” So I phoned Rogers and the
guy says, “Oh yes, all you have to do is go get a new router.” So I literally
just went and got a new router and, boom, 25 megabits. But had Rogers told me
that? Had they sent me anything saying, “You can upgrade to a faster speed if
you get a new router?” No. They literally never mentioned it because they don't
want me to get that higher speed. They want me to keep paying for the low
speed. Why would they want to get me more bandwidth for the same amount of
money?
Leo: So can we not get him back?
Jason: He's offline right now.
Leo: See, that's the question. He says, “I have 50/50.” Says, “Let's do a speed test.”
Jason: I think right now, he just did a full machine restart.
Leo: I'm not sure I'd try and blame this on Verizon,
though.
Matthew: It's the Chromebook.
Leo: Jeff is insisting on using some very odd technology.
Jason: Well, he also said in chat, I think, he's ready to go
the Mac Mini route.
Leo: Good, we'll buy him one. He doesn't have to use it.
Jason: That's what I figured. All right, I'm giving him a
call right now.
Leo: He could stay pure.
Jason: Let's see here – [crosstalk]
Leo: [crosstalk] – of Coolbreeze is exactly right. He's an old friend of mine who is one of the members of the
Bay Area Internet Service Providers – I can't remember what it is. BAUG, I
think it is. Anyway, he's very much about community internet. It's not Dan Brinklin, it's the other guy. I should remember his name.
Jeff: Yes, my good friend.
Leo: I know. I'm going to look it up. The Google will tell
me. Bob Franksten!
Jeff: Rob Franksten. Rob is great.
Leo: He's very much been taking this on as community
internet being the solution. Jeff, we're going to get you a Mac Mini.
Jeff: I just declared defeat. I'm going to go get a new
computer.
Leo: Because I don't think we can blame Verizon on this
one. I think we've got to figure something out.
Matthew: Why not? Blame Verizon.
Leo: It's certainly worth doing all the time.
Matthew: If this isn't their fault, something similar to this
is.
Leo: It ought to be their fault.
Jason: Jeff, all right. We have you back. I'm not sure if we
have the right mic, though.
Jeff: Oh, not again.
Jason: We're not getting that talk back that we were. I've
been riding the feeder the whole show trying to minimize the echo.
Jeff: How am I now?
Jason: Sounds better. Are we getting talk back? Check, check,
check?
Jeff: Sorry guys.
Leo: No, it's fine. I didn't want to leave you out. I feel
like this is such a – this is your -
Jeff: I know, it's my thing. I didn't want to be awful with the terrible lag.
Leo: Just jump in and we'll be very patient.
Jeff: Is it okay now?
Jason: I think it is. It sounds great right now and sounds
like maybe the lag is minimized as well.
Leo: Good. Picture's not great, that indicates probably
where the problem is.
Jeff: I'm going to get a Mac Mini.
Leo: We'll pay for it, Jeff. Seriously. What I would suggest, and some of our hosts do this, is just dedicate it. We
will buy it. It will be dedicated. We'll set it all up. I think Steve does
that. A lot of our hosts do that.
Matthew: I'll take one too.
Leo: Matthew, you can have one. It's on its way.
Jason: Let me throw this bug up here real quick, just to help
you.
Leo: What we try to do is just not use it for anything
else, just leave it.
Jeff: That's the key, yes. I'll leave it. I'll still use my
Chromebook for everything else.
Leo: That's the way to do it.
Matthew: I would run a bit torrent server on it, but -
Jason: But only in the off time.
Matthew: Oh, yeah. I'll throttle the bandwidth.
Jason: All right, we're good to go. Go on, Leo.
Leo: So we were talking about – by the way, kind of a followup on the story we reported last week, that Google
weighed in on this Title 2 regulation by saying, “Oh, it would give us access
to utility poles.” Of course, immediately Verizon says, “No, they've always had
access to utility poles. They're crazy, blowing smoke.” The NCTA, actually, it
was a cable company, filed, “Google can already avail itself with pole
attachment rights under section 224. That's why they're in Austin.” Google
didn't have a comment. Ars Technica doing this story. So
anyway, I don't – you know what? That's a minor detail.
Jeff: Boys, boys, boys. Get along and give us our internet.
Leo: Yes, we just want a free, open and fast internet. It
seems that every other country is able to do this except us.
Jeff: Except then, in the UK now, they're going to spy on
everything.
Leo: So we talked about this. I'd love to get your opinions
on this. We talked about David Cameron's speech on Security Now yesterday.
Jeff: I'll bet you did.
Matthew: What a train wreck.
Leo: I think Cory Doctorow had an excellent takedown on
Boing Boing. So, Cameron, the Prime Minister of Great
Britain says that it should be illegal to make a communications product that
the Home Secretary can't listen in on. He said, “It's okay, you're protected
because the Home Secretary would have to sign a warrant for us to listen in on
it.” Now, I have to say, I think it's one thing for
David Cameron to say that. It's another thing for it to actually happen.
Jeff: But what it reveals, in the attitude, this is Greenwall's argument. What it reveals is it's just a
terrible view of our rights.
Leo: Cory argues it's also ignorance.
Jeff: Yes, terrible.
Leo: He says, “David Cameron says there should be no means
of communication which we cannot read. No doubt, many in his party will agree
with him politically. But if they understood the technology, they'd be shocked
to their boots.” Cory is always eloquent in this stuff. He says, “Cameron
doesn't know what he's asking for.” In order to make this work, you know, you
can ban What's App. You can ban iMessage or Apple Messages, both of which provide encrypted message passing that the
government can't read. But first of all, you sure you want to ban iOS from
Great Britain?
Matthew: Or Linux?
Leo: Then, you can't ban Linux. Who do you ban? Who do you
stop, for Linux or BSD?
Matthew: It makes no sense. It's like saying, “No one is
allowed to have door locks, just in case we need to come in your house. But
only for your own protection.”
Leo: Okay, but there is an analog there. If you have a gate
here in this area, a lot of people in the farm areas have a gate before you can
get in. They have a special key that the fire department can open, because if
your house is burning down, you don't want the fire trucks to have to stop at
the gate or drive them down. So there's an analog for that. The TSA-approved
locks keep bad guys out but the TSA has a way of opening them. So there's a
precedent. Cory points out, first of all, if you put a back door in any kind of software, that makes it not only easy for law
enforcement but criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies. So you've made all
communications insecure. This is what Cameron's proposing, when Cory breaks it
down. “Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from
producing secure software.” That includes Microsoft and Apple. “All major code
repositories,” GitHub and SourceForge, for example,
“have to be blocked.” That's where you get the open source programs like Tech
Secure and others, True Crypt. “Search engines must not answer queries about
pages that carry secure software.” I raised this point yesterday with Steve, it also means that you have to have a backdoor in
secure HTTP, HTTPS, SSL. That's not an easy thing to do since that's
essentially open. “Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease.
Security research must only take place in proprietary research environments
where there is no onus to publish one's finding, such as Industry RND and
security services. All packets, in and out of the country and within the
country, must be subject to Chinese-style D packet inspection,” we were just
talking about that. I'm sure Sandvine has a tool.
“Any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped.”
Existing “walled gardens” like iOS and Xboxs will be
ordered to ban their users from installing secure software. Anyone visiting the
country from abroad must have their smart phones held at the border until they
leave!”
Jeff: That's the funny one, yes.
Leo: “Propriety operating systems vendors, like Microsoft
and Apple, must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled
gardens that only allow users to run software from an App Store that will not
sell or give secure software to Britains. Free and
open source operating systems that power the energy, banking, e-commerce and
infrastructure sectors must be banned outright.” So that's why, you know, Steve
was upset. A lot of people are upset about this. I think it's pretty clear it's
unenforceable.
Matthew: Even if it was enforceable, it's totally – it wouldn't
achieve what it's supposedly going to achieve or wants to achieve. You
criminalize security software, only criminals will have security.
Jeff: What it indicates is a belief that there is a Manifest
Destiny and a right for government to be able to listen to anything we say.
That's the real issue. That's what this reveals.
Leo: I agree. It's telling into their state of mind.
Matthew: And unfortunately, in Britain at least and in lots of
other European countries, it's taken for granted that the government has those
rights. I think US is abnormal in a way in the sense that people won't put up
with that kind of stuff.
Leo: That's the sad thing is that he's blaming the attacks
on Charlie – he says, “After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France, we've got to do this.”
Matthew: Which makes no sense at all.
Leo: But that's what happened in the US. As soon as 9/11
happened, we had the Patriot Act. That's the kind of knee jerk reaction. Here's
Prime Minister Cameron speaking – oh. After an ad. How
come there's an ad before the Prime Minister speaks? Apparently, people having
erectile dysfunction -
Matthew: That's actually the Prime Minister speaking.
Leo: I'm sorry. No, it's a Charles Schwab ad.
[video of Prime Minister
begins]
Jeff: How much has been used?
Leo: Is that the first duty of any government?
Jeff: No. It's to protect our freedom, indeed, but how much
tyranny has been wrought under that justification?
Leo: And, as Cory points out, it would not keep us safe.
Matthew: Right.
Leo: It would open all communications to bad guys, spies
and, Cory points out, voyeurs.
[video continues]
So what we're going to have here is old fashioned
illiberal -
Matthew: Right. It's totally the opposite of what should be
allowed in old democracy.
Leo: Somebody's pointing out in the chat room, and this is
true also, that Cameron is faced with a – I don't know how significant, but
somewhat of a challenge from the right wing UKIP.
Matthew: The UKIP, yes.
Leo: This may be merely a political statement that he knows
has no chance of passing through Parliament.
Matthew: I think he is trying to save a rattle and look tough.
He's not known for being tough and this is a great opportunity, “Oh, look at
all the terrorists.”
Jeff: But look at the justifications we have. In France,
there has been - since the Charlie Hebdo murders,
there have been 54 examples of people being arrested for supporting terrorism.
After a loud and clear support of free speech, then what turns around? We turn
around and we abuse free speech. In the American view, you support even
obnoxious speech to support speech. The other problem – there have been great
reports to the Guardian and elsewhere that all of the Heads of State who
marched alongside [???], who do terrible things to free speech.
Leo: I know, it was really ironic
to watch that parade of dictators.
Matthew: France themselves just finished arresting someone for
something they said.
Jeff: Yes, that's what I said, 54 cases of that.
Leo: They arrested a comedian! A well
known but radical comedian, in France, because he posted on Facebook
something that they didn't like.
Matthew: Right after saying, “We have to uphold free speech.”
Leo: “There's no free speech if you don't say what we agree
with.”
Jeff: Right, right. That's really a case – I don't want to
go off the reservation here. But that's one of the shocks to me in the
aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo case. When I talk
about free speech, what I get back often is, “Oh, you're American. You have a
different view.” I wrote about this, that free speech is weirdly, oddly
American. And no, it's not particularly American. It is a human right. Unless
we see it that way -
Matthew: Right, but the protection of it and the explicit
protection of it is unusual to the US. In other countries, many things take
precedent. Security. I'm not saying that's right, I
just -
Jeff: Yes, but then I think there's a lack of understanding
of what free speech means. That really struck me after this case. By the way, I
also took to task American journalist newspapers for not publishing the
cartoons. Let's be clear here, I understand why the Jewish Chronicle didn't
publish them. But Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the New York Times,
the firs time she attacked the issue, she kind of
danced around it. But today she came straight out and said the New York Times
was wrong not to run the current new cover of Charlie Hebdo.
It's not offensive by any standard of civility and it should be there. You
know, even our American newspapers don't really understand, I think to some
extent, that free speech is not just a right for journalism. It's a
responsibility.
Matthew: This comes up whenever I write about free speech,
especially when I'm talking about proprietary platforms like Twitter and
Facebook that are effectively corporate-owned town squares. Someone will say,
“Well, free speech only applies to government.” Like the First Amendment is
only designed to apply to government, so free speech is just a fiction unless
it applies to how government treats citizens, which doesn't make any sense to
me at all. The whole point, the whole reason why there's a First Amendment is
that there's a principle – [crosstalk]
Jeff: Well, Matthew, well! I'll argue that case. The reason
that is, is that part of your free speech is as an editor. Leo has free speech.
Leo can say, “Jarvis, I just don't like you. I've had it with you. I'm fed up
with you and your damn Chromebook, get off my air.” He has a perfect right to
do that. That is part of his -
Leo: Because I'm not the government!
Jeff: But the government can't tell me to stop extolling the
virtues of Chromebooks. It's not the government's rule. But the old court has –
a private company has a full and complete right to decide what speech is
chooses to distribute. That's not censorship.
Matthew: Sure it does. My only point, when I wrote about
Facebook was, Mark Zuckerberg made a point in standing
up for free speech and against censorship. Said he stood behind all of those
principles despite the fact that Facebook routinely censors things for no
reasons or for reasons it doesn't discuss. I'm not saying they don't have the
right to do that, I'm just saying, you can't have it both ways. You can't say
that you're -
Jeff: No, I think you can. You set your standards. Because
otherwise, what we'd have – this is why we have Section 230 in the US. If it
were a binary switch, we would have no forums and no discussion in the US. If
you were held responsible as, for example, Europeans are for the things that
occur on your site or the things that you link to, then you would have no discussion. So Section 230 protects us from making our own judgements. So we can make our own judgements.
We can let things go up that we disapprove of. We can take things down. That's
our freedom. I have to disagree with you there. I think private – [crosstalk]
Matthew: But Section 230 protects them. If Section 230 protects
them, then why do they take so much stuff down?
Jeff: Because – okay, another way. Forget the Facebook.
Let's say that the comments on my blog, I take down things there that are
offensive, and stupid, and off target and abusive. That is not only my right
but I believe my responsibility to have a good community there. If you believe
that all speech is equal, all speech must be allowed, it's allowed by
government. But that doesn't mean I should be forced to be the host for it.
Leo: It's not inconsistent.
Jeff: It shouldn't matter if I'm the host.
Matthew: I'm not talking about – [crosstalk]
Leo: It's not inconsistent for you to support censorship on
Facebook and be against government censorship. That's not inconsistent.
Jeff: That's not – see, that's my point.
That's not censorship, Leo.
Leo: Or what about – well, you could call it censorship.
Matthew: It is censorship.
Leo: Let's say censorship.
Jeff: No, censorship is when government censors you from
speech.
Leo: I'm going to agree with Matthew to broaden it and say
censorship is censorship. Just cutting something off your site, for whatever
reason, is a form of censorship. But it's still not inconsistent to say, “I
have the right to do that as a private business and what we should all fight
against is the government doing that.”
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: That's not inconsistent. So it's not inconsistent for
Mark Zuckerberg to say, “Yes, of course we have to control the environment on
Facebook but I don't want the government arresting somebody because they say
something that the government disagrees with.” That's not inconsistent.
Matthew: But the fact is that Facebook and Twitter are used by
governments to censor. They are actively censoring people on behalf of
government.
Jeff: But they also say, Matthew – in that case, they also
say, always say that they must follow local laws. Now, Twitter does it more
cleverly where it will cut out something in France but leave it in the rest of
the world if the French government demands it be taken down.
Matthew: Not just that, they actually fight requests in court
on behalf of the users. They fight and in some cases, they have put content
back that they took away because the government of whatever country didn't make
a good enough case. Facebook – [crosstalk]
Jeff: So you're talking about a couple of different things.
One is when they are an agent of government, when government says, “You must
take this down under law,” and they do that because they follow the law even if
they don't like it. They may fight it but they lose and take it down. That's
one thing.
It's another thing when they choose to take something
down on their own. Now, Twitter was indeed a very, very open platform but
Twitter hit the wall with two things recently. We talked about this on the show
a while ago. One was the beheading video and two was the naked celebrity photos
that had been stolen. Twitter decided, basically for the first time really, to
say, “Okay, that's going too far. We are making an editorial judgment to take
that down on our own without request.” That's their right to do.
Matthew: But look, Google does not take down videos that
criticize Turkey from YouTube because there's a law in Turkey against
criticizing Turkishness.
Jeff: Yes they do, well -
Matthew: No they don't.
Jeff: No, Matthew. Because -
Matthew: They get blocked from Turkey because they make a
choice to leave that content up.
Jeff: [crosstalk] – because YouTube is blocked in Turkey and
they've chosen to go with that way.
Matthew: Yes, so I'm saying at some point, a company has to
decide whether they are just going to roll over for every government request or
whether there are things they're not going to do when asked by government.
Jeff: Exactly. All right, okay. We agree there. So thus,
Google got out of China.
Leo: Briefly.
Jeff: But are you suggesting that every company should pull
out of every country where the government demands they do something they can't
do? That's -
Leo: Yes, yes.
Jeff: Well, okay. That's the Ingram Doctrine.
Leo: I think you have to punish these countries for having
that kind of reactionary point of view and if these companies did, the
countries would soon turn around, I think.
Jeff: Well, given the right to be forgotten, then Google
should pull out of Europe too.
Leo: I agree. Look what Google did in Spain.
Matthew: [crosstalk] – YouTube a number of times, even though.
So they'll punish them and block them, and then put them back on again. I just
think if Facebook has principles, which is sounds like
they do, then they should stick to them instead of bending over to every
government that asks them to take something down.
Jeff: Hey, listen. I sympathize with your view.
Leo: As do I.
Jeff: But it's not as simple as that.
Leo: I'll tell you why it's not. They're publicly held
companies and they have a fiduciary right to their stakeholders to maximize
profits. It's hard, in that environment, to take a principled stand, I think.
If it's a privately held company, they should do it. But as soon as your -
Matthew: I will – I don't want to go down a rat hole here. But
somebody recently pointed out to me that companies do not actually have a legal
fiduciary duty to maximize profits.
Leo: They don't?
Matthew: No.
Leo: No, not a legal duty. But the shareholders could
punish them, throw everybody out.
Jeff: Shareholders could punish them in the market and in
the courts.
Leo: Of course, agree, every
company public or not has the right to lose money and run a crappy business.
You're always protected from that.
Matthew: Mark Zuckerberg controls the majority of the voting
shares in Facebook and the Board of Directors.
Leo: So he faces no risk.
Matthew: He can do whatever he wants.
Leo: He faces no risk.
Jeff: What are you saying Zuckerberg should do? Be specific.
Should Facebook pull out of 20 countries? Should they pull out of every country
that doesn't have a First Amendment?
Matthew: I would like to see Facebook put up a bit more of a
fight. That's what I would like to see.
Leo: You think Twitter is a good model for this?
Matthew: Twitter puts up a fight.
Jeff: Twitter is better modeled, but I think you're
presuming that Facebook doesn't fight. Facebook also has a transparency report.
Google has a transparency report. They all fight. Twitter does more, and more
cleverly, but Twitter does other things that are odd. But I think Twitter is –
[crosstalk] I'll agree with that.
Leo: Some of the fighting, some of the companies, look like
window dressing.
Matthew: Facebook does not say in its transparency report, I
don't think, specifically what the complaint is or what content it involves.
Jeff: It can't. You're not allowed.
Matthew: Yes, they can. Sure they can.
Jeff: They can't. Google's doesn't either. Google is only
allowed to say that they get between 1 and 900 requests from government and
that was after fighting.
Matthew: Twitter will tell you what the order was, what it
related to and where it came from.
Jeff: Not in a lot of cases. They cannot, Matthew. It'd be
jail.
Matthew: They can't in cases where the US Government has asked
them for data. I know that.
Leo: Right, if it's a national security matter, they have
to shut up.
Matthew: But if the Turkish government files a court order
saying, “Take down that thing because it makes fun of Kemal Ataturk,” they can
certainly say that. They don't.
Leo: We're going to take a break.
Jeff: Good timing.
Leo: When we come back …
Matthew: I got to put my boxing gloves on.
Leo: No, this is a great topic and I'm glad we had the
conversation. But when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the changes
from Google. Not the changelog, because nobody can do the changelog like Gina
Trapani. But there are some new things from Google we want to talk a little bit
about.
But first, a word from our friends at SmartThings. SmartThings had a great showing at CES this year. In
fact, TIME magazine said SmartThings – gave them the
2015 Editor's Choice Award. SmartThings is kind of a
neat story, there you go. Six of the coolest Smart Home
innovations at CES. SmartThings, right in there. It's a great story because it was a kickstarted project by some guys who said, “We need to
solve this problem of this tower of Babel among home automation systems.”
There's Z-wave, and Zigby. There's X-10 and Nest.
Nest doesn't talk to anybody. “Why don't we make something that can talk to
everybody?” They raised a lot of money and they created a great product, the SmartThings Smart Hub. They're getting better all the time.
It talks to everything – your Sonos music, your Hue
lights, your Nest thermostat, your DropCam camera. It
talks to all of the SmartThings devices as well. In
fact, to make things easy, they've created these solution kits and home
security kits that give you everything you need to solve a particular problem.
By the way, it's a great starting point because they
all have the Hub, like the great Energy Saver Kit for $179.10. It saves you
money by controlling how much energy you use, allowing you smart phone access
to all the information. Your lights, your locks, your thermostats, your home
security can all use that same app. Yes, it is awesome for iOS, for Android and
for Windows Phone. I think a couple Windows Phone users feel a little left out,
you don't have to. SmartThings supports you too. Now
you can type – tap “Good Night” on your phone and the lights turn off, the
thermostat turns down, the doors lock, garage doors close. Set your lamp to
brighten each morning at sunrise or when you want to wake up. Even keep your
home protected with SmartThings Home Security, motion
detector, water detection and more.
You can even have your speakers bark. You can have dogs
barking if there's motion outside the house.
Jeff: Really?
Leo: Yes!
Jeff: That's cool!
Leo: I know! (barks) Your doors
will recognize when you're close and unlock themselves as you walk up. SmartThings is really cool, and to set up your smart home
right now, SmartThings is offering TWiG users 10% off any home security or solution kit and
free shipping in the US. But you have to go to SmartThings.com/twit and use
their offer code TWIT10 at checkout. SmartThings.com/twit. You're minutes away from a smart home with smart things.
Don't play the trumpets, we're
just going to talk our way through the Google -
Jeff: Play a kazoo.
Leo: (makes a kazoo noise) I haven't gotten it yet, but
Google is pushing out to all Android devices and iOS, too, a better Google
Translate. I love this idea.
Jeff: I got it.
Leo: Did you get it? Have you tried it?
Jeff: I didn't try it yet. Let's see.
Leo: So they bought Word Lens a while ago, that was the
really cool iOS app that would let you – see, it's right there. Show a sign in a language you don't understand and it will
translate it. It even preserves the font and translates it into your language,
which is very awesome. So you could snap a photo, too, of text to get a
translation for it in 36 languages. The instant translation that you're seeing
with Word Lens works from English, to and from, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. They're going to add more languages in time.
Matthew: They do realtime voice, too.
Leo: This is really cool.
Jeff: Should we try it? Here we go.
Leo: I don't speak a language. Who speaks a language?
Matthew: Say something in German.
Jeff: Where is the train station?
Phone: Wo ist der Bahn?
Jeff: Did you hear that?
Leo: Yes, now you have to respond in German.
Jeff: Es ist geradeaus.
Phone: It is straight ahead.
Leo: Whoa! So the idea is that they've sped it up so first
of all – the first time, you have to press a button. You tap the mic, you start
speaking. It immediately recognizes what language you're speaking, which is
nice. Then it goes back and forth much more quickly without you having to do
anything. So you talk, they talk, you talk, they talk. Here's a demonstration.
[video plays]
Leo: Wow, that was very quick.
Matthew: It's like a – [crosstalk]
Jeff: Here's the thing. Just turn it on its side, so I do it
– it's going to translate. So... English
to German. I would like a cup of coffee.
Phone: Ich mochte gerne eine Tasse Kaffee.
Jeff: Mochten Sie Milch?
Phone: You want a milk?
Matthew: Wow.
Jeff: No thank you, just sugar.
Phone: Nein, danke. Nur Zucker.
Leo: That's pretty neat. That's the Babelfish,
and it's instant.
Jeff: Gross or Klein?
Phone: Big and small?
Jeff: Oh, whatever. All I'm doing it turning the phone
between each one. So I talk upright and he talks this way. So you just go back
and forth.
Leo: Oh, I see. That's how it knows who's talking.
Matthew: I could have used that when I was in Italy. I got a
ride from the train station with a guy who didn't speak any English at all
other than, “Hello.” So I said, you know, “Where are we going?” He said, “Eh?”
Jeff: “To ISIS, Mr. Canadian.”
Leo: Even a little bit, however mangled or grammatically
incorrect it is, is better than nothing. Would you be
embarrassed to use it? Would you feel like a weirdo using it?
Jeff: No, I think everywhere except France.
Leo: In France, they just spit at you and tell you -
Jeff: Although right now, everybody loves France. So I'm
making no French jokes, make no excuse here. But the French are -
Leo: You make the attempt in France, they're very kind.
Jeff: Right. That's what I wonder, would they think this was
cheating?
Leo: I would say, start a conversation and then go, “Oh,
pardon, pardon, [French], but my mobile does.” Then you know what? That might
be kind of cool. I'm going to try it. I'm going to Europe in June. I'm going to
Netherlands, don't speak Dutch. Germany, don't speak German. Austria and I'm
also going to Istanbul, don't speak whatever – Hungarian. I think that's what
it is.
Jeff: So this is really cool.
Leo: I want to use it.
Jeff: I remember when Eric Smith showed it at Davos four
years ago, saying, “This will stop war.”
Leo: I don't know about that. Might start
a war, actually.
Jeff: What I want to do is put the picture part of this over
the Charlie Hebdo covers and see if it can translate
Charlie Hebdo.
Matthew: Good idea.
Leo: This is interesting, from the Google blog post about
this. By the way, it'll be Android and iOS, and some of these features have
never been available before on iOS. So if you're an iOS user, definitely try
it. This is a stack from the blog post, “Half a billion people use Google
Translate every month, more than a billion translations a day.” Kind of mind boggling, so people do use this, obviously. I
would guess a lot of it is on the web. I've used it a lot, where either you're
reading a webpage that says, “Translate this page,” you do that.
Jeff: Or a snippet, yes.
Leo: That's probably the majority usage, but still.
Matthew: I remember when they added the ability to recognize
the language automatically so you didn't have to choose from a drop down. Super handy.
Leo: Why shouldn't it?
Matthew: When I mentioned Google Translate this morning on
Twitter, somebody said they wouldn't be impressed until it could translate from Tamarian, the Star Trek language that is solely
metaphor driven. [speaks in Tamarian]
Leo: That's not going to work, ever. All
right, moving on with the changelog.
Jeff: You left the photo part out.
Leo: No, I mentioned Word Lens. We said that. Google
Domains has launched. This was beta only for a while but it's now here if you
go to domains.google.com. It still says beta but you can register a domain
name. They have hundreds of TLDs, $12 a year, which is kind of in there with
the going price. It automatically works instantly with BlogSpot, but also works
with Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly and Wix. So you just use
their software and you're automatically in there. I don't know, let's see. What
domain name should we get here?
It's got a domain management feature. It's much like
any registrar. Now, we like Hover because they're good Canadian fellows and
gals. But I don't know, I need a new – what do I need. Chris, give me a domain
name. We need a new domain name. How about Minecraft Today? That's going to be
the name of your new show, Chris. Just kidding. Never doing another Minecraft show again. That Minecraft fad
is about to end, isn't it? Availability? Yes. I can
get minecrafttoday.com, minecrafttoday.net, minecrafttoday.org, .company,
.partners, there's quite a few choices. Look at that.
Matthew: .today?
Leo: Should I get minecrafttoday.today, minecraft.now? Look at these. Then they're just
making up stuff. Videogametoday.org, modstoday.net, youtubegb.today? What the hell is that? Mineart.today?
Jeff: YouTube Great Britain Today? I don't know.
Leo: Twittertoday.org. All right, twittertoday.org, that's
got to be worth something.
Matthew: I can't search because I'm in Canada so I'm not
entitled.
Leo: It's US only? What do you want? You want .ninja, This
Week in Google? All right, let's see what we can get – actually, I don't know
if this search works. That looks like a normal Google search. Oh, now I'm lost.
You know, somebody's got to teach these guys to use Ability. I have to go back
to the original, domains.google.com.
I'm not sure why Google wants to be in this business
but it makes more sense than the insurance business, which they apparently also
want to be in.
Matthew: I don't understand the whole domain thing. I don't
know, maybe domainers are a
big market.
Leo: I can't imagine. Well, Go Daddy's made some money.
Look, thisweekingoogle.com, no. Somebody's got that. But
.net, .org, .company, .training. MadMenTwitter.com, I don't know where
they get that from. Now they're just making crap up. MadMenWebsite. Did I mention
Mad Men? All right, there you go, domains.google.com.
That's another new thing.
Matthew: They check your birth certificate information, that's
why they suggested Mad Men.
Leo: Oh, is that it? You know, “You must have been born in
the '50s.” Google and, of course, Go Daddy must be one of the largest of the
rest of the registrars. Google was Ican accredited in
2005.
Jeff: Oh.
Leo: So they could have done this for a while.
Jeff: Wow.
Leo: They might have done it internally. I wonder.
Matthew: I remember they locked up a bunch of those extensions.
I still don't know why, like .blog.
Leo: Well, maybe they want to sell them on
domains.google.com.
Jeff: Here's the thing, there is a .google, right?
Leo: Yes.
Jeff: If they never sell it, it just seems a bit odd to me
that they own an entire subdomain.
Matthew: Me too. They did say they were going to open a bunch
of them. I don't know if that ever happened. They said, like, .blog and a bunch
of those, they were going to open up so they wouldn't control them.
Jeff: To me, if you're going to own a subdomain, it should
be required to be open or don't have it.
Leo: I would hope that Google wouldn't in any way
prioritize in search the domains you purchase on the Google Domain site, but
I'm sure they wouldn't do that.
Jeff: Oh, that's ridiculous. For the $12 a year, yes, “We're
going to throw out our entire business model for $12 a year for one person per
domain.” That's absurd.
Matthew: Sorry. I should point out Blackberry came out and said
that it is not in talks with Samsung and the stock dropped.
Leo: The stock went right back down. Oh well. We've seen
this – if you search on Google for “Blackberry Samsung,” there are references
to an acquisition or merger since 2012. It's been going on for a while.
Matthew: I bet some traders made some money today, though.
Leo: That's a very clever idea. Google's rolling out a
Classroom Mobile app for students and teachers, saying, of course, if the dog
actually has eaten your homework, Classroom cannot help. The Classroom, we
talked about six months ago. This is the mobile version. Here's the promo clip.
“Google Classroom Mobile app, snap a photo.” So there you're doing a chemistry
lab and you've got colors and smoke. You say, “Take a photo, Experiment Photo,
Chemistry 101, done.” I don't know what you got out of that you couldn't do
otherwise, but there you go.
Jeff: That's – I know I'm going off the change
whatever-we-call-it-now. But Google going into Classroom with that kind of app
and Facebook announcing Facebook for Work, it's really interesting me that
they're taking these. They're trying to take basic functionality that already
exists, that you can use for anything you darn want, whether it's work or
school, and then try to declare it, work or school. I'm not sure how much they
have to add to make that true.
Leo: Well, I think for schools, certainly, there are
privacy issues that you have to be aware of. Kids under 13, there's special
rules on the web, etc. etc. So it makes sense that, you know. This is a
category that's not very well served. Commercial products like Blackboard and
open source products like Moodle are kind of not great. I think Google probably
looked at it and said, “We can do better.”
Matthew: A lot of that stuff in that market has been
proprietary, way more proprietary than Google, to the point where you have to
get locked in, SAPS style to some thing where the kid
can't get any of their data and teachers can't share with teachers or use a
different system. I'd love to see Google open some of that up.
Leo: Our local elementary school uses G Apps and all the
kids get Chromebooks. Yes, the local high school that I'm on the board of, even
though they're giving MacBooks in their 1-To-1
Program, they're absolutely using Google Apps, Google Mail. Everything
Google.
Jason: My wife -
Jeff: I have this vision.
Leo: Sorry, Jason.
Jason: I was going to say, my wife and I are touring
preschools right now. Or, not preschools, kindergarten
through six, through eight. As early as fourth grade, they're giving them Chromebooks.
Matthew: Really?
Leo: I think that's great.
Jeff: Leo, I have visions of Leo standing outside the school
laughing at the kids. “Haha, you just have a
Chromebook!”
Leo: No, I've come around. I think it's great. I love it.
Jeff: I know you love it. I joke.
Leo: This is great for school or anywhere you want to
constrain what people can do. I've always said that.
Jeff: I think we talked about this on the run down two weeks
ago, or whatever. The LA School District, of course, had done iPads. That was
an utter disaster so they're switching to Chromebooks.
Leo: Well, also because of corruption. It turns out that
bid process might not have been as fair as one thinks.
Matthew: I went into my daughter's classroom and the teacher
had brought in her old computer from like six years ago. That's what they had
in the classroom.
Leo: That's very common.
Jeff: Hold on, I want to correct myself. Obviously, I didn't
mean subdomains. I meant TLDs, top level domains. Thank you.
Matthew: We knew what you meant.
Leo: Oh, God, I didn't even notice.
Jeff: I said that.
Leo: If you used iOS, which you don't, you might want to
try this Chrome remote desktop for iOS. They must have it for Android already,
right?
Matthew: They do, yes. I just installed it last night on my
iPad, actually.
Leo: So it allows you -
Jeff: But it seems kind of ridiculous. Why do you need –
because you can have all your stuff anywhere, why do you need a remote desktop
to a Chrome device?
Matthew: I actually use it – this might seem like a weird use
case. But if I'm downstairs and I have stuff on the computer upstairs, I've
actually looked at it on the iPad to remind myself what was going on to return
to the state of mind I had when I was looking at that computer. Or to reboot something or restart something.
Leo: It just makes it easier. Everything's more fluid.
Matthew: It is really easy. I've used remote desktop apps for
decades, VNC and all sorts of proprietary – this was super slick on every
device.
Leo: So you start by adding a Chrome extension, the Chrome
Remote Desktop app, they call it now. You enable remote access, you give it a
pin so only you can get to it and you launch the app on iOS or Android. It sees
it on your network and says, “Oh, which one would you like to join?”
Matthew: You can say, “Don't ask me for a pin any more on this
device.” It was fast.
Leo: I'm definitely doing this. I don't know why, but I am.
Matthew: Because it's cool.
Jeff: Because it's there.
Leo: Now, if I install the Chrome extension on any one of
my Chromes, it installs across the board too, which is kind of nice. All right,
thank you, oh my overlord Google, for once again convincing me of the value.
Matthew: I was actually thinking of getting my mom a Chromebook
and then just running Chrome Remote Desktop on that.
Leo: Oh, clever, so you can fix it and stuff. Can you do it
on the network? No, you have to be on the LAN.
Matthew: You do?
Leo: I don't know.
Matthew: I don't think so. Oh, well, maybe you do.
Leo: A lot of remote desktops you can do over a network.
Matthew: Can someone in the chat room figure out whether that's
true?
Leo: Can you figure that out, chat room? We're confused.
Matthew: Get back to me.
Leo: Project Era, which I've mocked because I don't feel
like anybody really wants a modular smart phone that you can take apart like a
Tinker Toy. But it's going to being pilot testing in Puerto Rico later this
year. This was kind of a skunk works project, part of Motorola. Google kept it
when they sold Motorola to Lenovo. Right now, as we speak, the second Project
Era developer's conference is going on. This will give you a road map of how
and when the modular smart phones will get out on the market.
Jeff: Something about this is appealing to me.
Leo: It's cool, but I feel like I don't want to carry
around a phone that' going to fall apart as I'm walking around, little modules
are going to shed off of it. Oh man, I dropped my speaker module!
Jeff: Night vision, you can look through people's clothes.
Oh.
Leo: If you're in Puerto Rico, Open Mobile and Claro will,
I guess, are they going to sell it like a smart phone?
Matthew: It would be easier to upgrade, right? You could just
upgrade modules instead of the whole thing.
Jeff: That's the key.
Leo: But look how ugly your phone is. It's an ugly ass
phone. It's not new. Remember the LifeSpring modules
for the LifeSpring Palm? Anyway, you know what? It
might be very cool. I don't know.
Matthew: The Palm is coming back.
Jeff: When you can buy one, you will, Leo.
Leo: Oh, I'll buy one. But I don't know if it'll ever be my
major, main phone. Here's Dita Von from the Verge
looking at it. You know this guy's a designer because he's wearing eyeglasses
with white frames and has no hair. That's the designer giveaway. If he had a
scarf, we'd know he was definitely -
Jeff: I think you'd look good with white glasses, Leo.
Leo: I'm going to get white glasses to go with my white
hair. It's kind of an interesting idea. So we'll watch.
Matthew: HandSpring did that, didn't
it?
Leo: HandSpring, that's what it
was. HandSpring, not LifeSpring. The HandSpring modules. I have a HandSpring over here. You could add a modem – it was really
a Palm Pilot that you could add a phone to. But only one at a time, so this one
you could kind of plug and play all together. If you want, there is a
livestream if you go to projectera.com. You can watch the livestream of the dev conference.
And, a new MDK has been released. If you want to get
developing, you can. You know, I think open hardware is a very interesting
category. I'm not against it. Let's see.
Oh, Facebook at Work. You brought this up.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: I had an insight. Yes, me!
Jeff: I love those moments. I wait for them; I live for
them.
Leo: I had an insight. I was thinking about this, because
on Windows Weekly we were talking about it. Just as the iPhone really changed
enterprise computing because of bringing your own device – employees started
saying, “No, I'm not going to use that crappy Blackberry or Windows Phone you
issued me. I'm going to use my own iPhone and I'm going to bring it into the
enterprise.” It forced IT managers and CIOs to even acknowledge that it existed
and then embrace it. Now, iPhones and iPads are everywhere in enterprise. I have
to think Mark Zuckerberg is thinking, “Hey, BYOD, what about BYOS?” Users are
used to using Facebook. They love Facebook. They probably are already using
Facebook a little bit for business communications. What if we made a
business-specific version of Facebook that in effect is a leverage or wedge
into enterprise?
Jeff: Yes, that's a good point.
Leo: People want to use what they use. They don't want to
use a special HipChat or whatever. They want to use what they use. Now, interesting that there's no messaging in Facebook for Work. So you still need HipChat but that makes sense to me. Also, it's a beta. What
they said is, “Well, we've been dog fooding this for
ten years. It's what we use at Facebook.”
Matthew: I also think they probably saw what's been happening
with Slack and how that's been.
Leo: Stuart Butterfield startup, yes.
Matthew: They've been signing up enterprise customers like it's
going out of style. The chart on that thing usage wise is just mind boggling.
So I'm sure they thought, “We've got to get a piece of that even if we can't
get all of it or crush Slack. We need to at least be in there.”
Leo: Well, it's not too much of a stretch to think of them
adding What's App into this mix. Making an enterprise,
and of course, enterprise has requirements. It needs to be a walled garden. You
want it to be an intranet, not an internet. You want it to be secure. There's a lot of needs, just as in schools and classroom
apps, there's special needs. I think this makes a lot of sense for Facebook.
This is, to me, like Facebook leaving the colleges and going out to the public.
Matthew: There is a potential, too. Assuming they can get their
Newsfeed algorithm working properly inside the enterprise, at least there's the
potential for them to become kind of, you know, central dashboard. Information
dashboard where you can find all the stuff that's relevant to your company.
That's a huge value. LinkedIn, I'm sure is -
Leo: They're doing something similar to that.
Matthew: Right, because that's what they want to own.
Leo: If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. People
want to use what they're familiar with. They don't want to learn a specialized
tool. But businesses have certain needs. I have needs. It makes sense that
Facebook, just as they do with my personal needs, want
to satisfy enterprise's needs.
Jeff: So you'll have – I predict now, you're going to have
the case of some, “Oh, I meant to post that half-naked picture to my personal,
not to my work.”
Leo: Yes, but that can happen anyway, right?
Jeff: Not if you're not using Facebook for Work.
Leo: I posted – we were using HipChat for our conversation
and then I was talking about – remember, I think it was on this show. I was
talking about those acronyms that teenagers use like, “Get naked on camera.” So
I posted them to our HipChat which is our business chat. Well, that's okay,
because we've got – one of our people immediately said, “Ignore Leo, he's just
showing off something in TWiG.”
Hey, congratulations to Amazon, by the way. Transparent
won a Golden Globe award and rightly so, by the way. It's a really great show
if you haven't seen it.
Jeff: I haven't watched it yet. I feel so behind.
Leo: Jeffrey Tambor is wonderful
in it.
Matthew: He's great.
Leo: He plays the dad of a totally dysfunctional family
who's decided to finally live as a woman, something he's felt that he is all
along. The kids – it's comedic. It's very funny and in fact, I thought that's
what it would be about because the name it Transparent and all of that. But
really, it's as much about his totally dysfunctional family. Each of them have their own awful quirks. His ex-wife,
who's equally awful. It's a great, great show and Jeffrey Tambor deserved the Golden Globe. I think he did a great
job.
Matthew: I didn't know the writer, the character's based on her father.
Leo: Yes, I believe that. You can see it's deeply felt.
It's very insightful and a great show. It's Amazon only so it's a huge victory.
Of course, if you go to Amazon, they're touting it like they've just won the
World Series.
Matthew: It's a big deal.
Leo: It's a very big deal. Now Amazon – by the way, they've
been doing great stuff. Both Netflix and Amazon have totally proven that you
don't need to be a cable network, don't need to be a broadcast network to produce
great programming. I love House of Cards, it's coming back. I love Orange is
the New Black. Amazon has Alpha House, which is incredibly funny. They've got
some great shows.
Jeff: Let me ask you a question, Leo. I have argued – you
have argued that Google is in a position of conflict. I've argued that Google
can't really own and create content and really, they don't. YouTube is a
platform. So here's Amazon, which is the primary media sales operation in the
world, now, and it's making its own content. I don't hear the squeals there.
Leo: Why should you? Amazon's a retailer. Amazon sells its
own stuff all the time and all stores – yes, I would squeal -
Jeff: That's what I'm saying, compare it to Google.
Leo: But Amazon's – no. It's different.
Jeff: Google's not even trying to sell stuff, they're just –
[crosstalk]
Leo: It's different. Google's trying to be an objective
search engine. Amazon's never said anything but, “Hey, what we do is sell stuff
for money.”
Jeff: How is that objective?
Leo: That's what I want it to be objective. Don't you want
Google to be objective if you're going to rely on it?
Jeff: No, I want it to be relevant. No, objective wouldn't
mean good for everybody. No. They're not claiming that. They're claiming it's
relevant to you.
Matthew: But in the beginning, they claimed it was objective.
Leo: I would hope -
Jeff: See, it's not paid. You cannot pay for – what they
claim is -
Leo: What's the difference between paid and Google saying,
“Well, our content's better than others.”
Jeff: I'm not saying you've proven that they do that.
Leo: No, they haven't. But that's the real fear is that
they will. That's why it's a conflict of interest.
Jeff: But Amazon, I'm making my own TV show. You're making
your own podcast. Now Amazon says, “I'm not going to promote yours, I'm going to promote mine.”
Leo: They're not a search engine. They're a store.
Jeff: They're the only way you can get sold if you make
certain things now, books and such.
Leo: Well, if they become a monopoly, that's an issue.
Matthew: They are a retailer. The central difference is, Google did not start off as a retailer.
Leo: This is their business. They've done this, by the way.
Amazon makes cables, too. They make a lot of things.
Jeff: I'm not complaining that Amazon shouldn't make the
stuff. I'm just trying to compare.
Leo: It's not comparable. You lose.
Jeff: Eh, I think it is. Ooh!
Leo: I disagree. I disagree! It doesn't bother me. See,
here's the other thing. If you're in the content creation business, there are a
million competitors creating content. I'm not mad at Google because they want
to be in the – if they wanted to be in the content creation business, have at
it. But drop the search business because the search, the directory, is what
allows people to discover us. I don't need Amazon to be discovered.
Jeff: If you're an author, you do.
Leo: Then you have an argument.
Jeff: That's what I'm saying.
Leo: Amazon is, by the way, going into the publishing
business as well, aren't they?
Jeff: That's what I'm saying. So if we
talk about the standards around Google and, “Oh my God, Google's promoting its
own stuff!” What I'm saying is, of course they do. And it's obvious when
they do. But they also promote their competitors. Now, Amazon also promotes
competitors, by the way, right? It allows anybody to sell at price and they do.
Leo: You know what? They'd be out of business if they only
sold Amazon originals on their video store.
Jeff: Oh, God, yes.
Leo: As good as they are, there's
other stuff I want to see. By the way, this all came up because they just
signed Woody Allen to do his very first TV series which is going to be called,
in a kind of sly inside joke, The Untitled Woody Allen project.
Jeff: I'm sorry, but the obvious joke here is next, they're
going to sign Bill Cosby.
Leo: It is the obvious joke.
Matthew: I said they should do a duo. Yes.
Leo: All right, I don't want to get in this conversation. I
don't think it's comparable. I think the claims against Woody Allen can be
questioned.
Jeff: I know. In terms of shamed and questioned celebrities,
there's a cloth there.
Leo: I have to admit, I'm a little queasy going to a Woody
Allen movie these days.
Matthew: I did like his comment, though, where he said, “I
don't know why they did this and I think it's probably going to turn out badly.
I don't have any ideas.”
Leo: He says, “My guess is Roy Price,” who is the director
of Amazon Studios, “Will regret this.” That's Woody, though. You love Woody.
He's totally self-deprecating.
Matthew: He's setting the expectations low.
Leo: You know people will watch it and frankly, if they got
Cosby to do a show, you know people would watch it but then stop buying things
on Amazon.
Jeff: I used to be a gigantic fan of Woody Allen. I also
think that he's not quite what he was.
Leo: Well, yes. It's none of our business to discuss the
allegations against him.
Jeff: I'm not talking about that, just the known fact that
he -
Leo: He's not as good as he used to be?
Jeff: He married his stepdaughter.
Leo: He married his stepdaughter but they didn't live
together. She lived down the road.
Matthew: Right, sure.
Leo: You can not like somebody
because he married a very young woman who was, in fact, his stepdaughter. But
that's not illegal. The other allegations, that he molested his stepdaughter,
are illegal.
Jeff: That, I'm not commenting on.
Matthew: I still think he's a great actor. Lots of his movies
he's continued to age and the people he's romantically involved with in the
movies get younger.
Leo: Okay, that's a little creepy but again, that's not
illegal. Just creepy. You know, I think some of his
later movies are great. I love the Midnight in Paris, one of his best movies, I
thought. Did you not like that, Jeff?
Jeff: That one I liked, yes.
Matthew: One reason I liked it was because he wasn't in it.
Leo: Right, he should stop being in his movies. I don't
know if he'll be in the TV show. I guess he will.
Jeff: I need to watch Annie Hall again and see if it holds
up.
Leo: Oh, it holds up. Absolutely holds up.
Jeff: I'd imagine it does, yes.
Leo: Anna's, not so much. Let's see. I think we've covered
everything. Artificial intelligence experts are all signing a letter saying,
“(screams) We've got to protect mankind from machines! Skynet!”
Jeff: I'm going to run a dinner session with Davos next
week, so this was interesting to me.
Leo: Oh, this will be interesting. What's it called? What's
it about?
Jeff: You know, man versus machine sort of things. There's two AI robotic people, there's the arch bishop of
Ireland.
Leo: Wow.
Jeff: A technology historian and a biological, “I can print
organs for you,” guy. They're going to be the discussion leaders. It'll be
fascinating, absolutely interesting. The good thing about it is, there's no technopanic representative
there. Some people in the room will be saying, “Oh my God!” But here are the
technologists. So the discussion that I want to have is, “You're all making
these technologies, same as this letter in a way. How do you protect us? You
presume you can, because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it, if you think it's evil. So talk about it. What are you going to do to
make all of this okay so we can take advantage of
these technologies?”
Leo: I want to point you to two books. These are two people
we've interviewed on Triangulation on the subject. The first is a guy named
James Barrett, who wrote a book called Our
Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era. He's
a journalist. He's not a scientist but he did interview a lot of experts in AI,
many of whom I think agree that we've got to tread lightly here, because
there's a big risk. I asked Ray Kurzweil about that because he's one of the
people who believes that the singularity is nigh, and
the machines will be as smart as humans any day now. He said, “Don't worry, the
machines will think of us as mom and dad. They'll take care of us.” Not sure I
agree with that.
Jeff: I heard him speak at Google. He said, basically,
“We're not going to get there in the way that you think.”
Leo: That doesn't mean we don't have to worry. Here's the
other one. Nick Bostrom is a guy with a very
interesting CV. He's not just a computer scientist, he
does a lot of stuff. But his book, Super
Intelligence really talks about these issues. It's a really good book. He
was fascinating. He is a guy who's working in this field. He's a professor at
Oxford and director of the Future of Humanity Institute there. So very interesting fellow.
Matthew: Ask the people at your event what they think a Google
self-driving car should do if sacrificing the occupants of the car would
actually prevent more deaths than not sacrificing the occupants of the car.
Leo: We've talked about this on the show, haven't we, Jeff?
Jeff: Yes, we have. But it's a hard calculation to make with assurity.
Leo: Well, does the self-driving car look and say, “If I
swerve into the lane with the bus, I could kill 20 people. But if I drive off
the cliff on the right, I'll only kill the guy inside.” So the smart thing,
overall, societally would be drive off the cliff.
Jeff: You saw that amazing video of the 169-car pile up in Michigan? Phenomenal video and you wonder -
Matthew: Is that the one where the firecracker truck blew up?
Is that the one?
Jeff: Yes. You see these vehicles come barreling down and
man, there is nothing they can do. They've got two seconds and they smash on
top of things. What would a self-driving universe look like? They wouldn't be
barreling down the road, I don't think. They'd also be in connection of what's
ahead of them and saying, “Uh oh, better slow down now.”
Leo: I have to find the video, now.
Jeff: You haven't seen this? God.
Matthew: [crosstalk] – told them that was coming.
Leo: What I think is smart, a smart car would, of course,
do a better job than humans in an environment like that, right?
Jeff: Yes, it would have data from ahead. You'd be
networked. The network would save you.
Leo: Is this is? The fireworks go off following the
accident? No, now we have to watch tennis! Come on, Google.
Jeff: It's a funny commercial. That's a funny one, at least.
[video begins]
Leo: Since Chase is done, we get to see this fiery wreck
from the Ann Arbor news.
Jeff: That's the company I work with, yes. Oh, this is a
different one. This is later. That's the fireworks going off, yes.
Matthew: It is funny even though people were injured.
Leo: I'm sorry that people were hurt. This is straight out
of a Warner Brothers cartoon. I think self-driving cars are demonstratively
better drivers than humans. So lives are saved right off the bat. That Audi that drove 500 miles to CES, pretty impressive.
Matthew: Yes, I see, at least for me, the earliest benefit from
self-driving cars would be things like, you know, everybody's at a party
downtown and you want to get somewhere. You don't have a designated driver, you don't want to call a cab. A self-driving car can
take you wherever. The other thing is delivery. Think about all the UPS trucks
that could be automated. You really don't need a human being, right? They're
just dropping off a package.
Jeff: I found the video, here, Leo. It's in the chat in the
run down.
Leo: Oh, good. Do you want to play it?
Jeff: I can't.
Leo: No, no, I'm talking to Jason.
Jeff: I know you are.
Leo: He's the magic man.
Jason: Hope we don't get sacked with an ad. Okay!
[video begins]
Leo: But worse, vertical video!
Jeff: One person died, that's all. But
that horrible sound.
Matthew: They're going full speed.
Leo: In snow, in the fog.
Jeff: In the blinding snow.
Leo: Humans are not the best drivers in the world. In the
world, what am I talking about?
Jeff: On Mars, we're fine.
Leo: Listen to the guy on the phone saying, “Oh no, oh no.”
Jeff: Then he's saying, “Get out,” because they know there's
somebody behind you coming.
Leo: Right.
Matthew: This happens regularly near where I live, near the
Circle.
Leo: It happens here in drizzle.
Matthew: The snow squalls come up very quickly. So you can be in a clear area and then all of the sudden, there's a
squall and on the other side of that is a truck that jack-knifed.
Leo: Horrible. I want a self-driving car. I have, for the
most part, a self-driving car. It warns me when I try to switch lanes with
another car in the lane. It warns me, if I drift out of lanes, it starts to
vibrate the steering wheel. It has adaptive cruise controls so I can just turn
on cruise control and close my eyes, because if they car in front of me slows
down, it'll slow down. If it stops, my car will stop. Yes.
Matthew: Really, that's interesting.
Leo: It keeps a following distance that's really, the right
following distance, which is often -
Matthew: What kind of car?
Leo: It's an Audi. It's surprising because, God, I'm far
behind. I'm supposed to be this far behind?
Jeff: Yes you should.
Matthew: Did you see the video where it reads the speed sign
and automatically decreases speed?
Leo: Yes, I want that.
Matthew: What happens if a Google self-driving car is
potentially in an accident that would only kill the occupants of a Microsoft
self-driving car?
Leo: Computers are smart enough – by the way, somebody
says, “That's not cool, Leo. You shouldn't close your eyes.” I don't really
close my eyes! You think I'm nuts? He says, “You still have to steer, Leo.” No.
It's a joke. We're going to take a break and we shall return with picks, and
tips, and numbers.
Jeff: Whether you want us to or not.
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Jeff: Leo – [crosstalk]
Leo: Usually we would do Gina's tip here. I think we're
going to have to re-jigger how we do these things. Let's let Matthew Ingram of GigaOm, great to have you here, Matthew. Is there anything
you'd like to talk about? A movie you saw? A book you read?
Jeff: A snowflake you admired?
Matthew: I guess, well, I did see the Imitation Game last
night.
Leo: You know, we should talk
about that.
Matthew: I mentioned when I got home that the first thing I was
going to do – I know a little bit about Alan Turing but not that much. The
first thing I was going to do was research how much of the movie is just
Hollywood BS and how much of it is actually what Turing was like.
Unfortunately, a lot of the movie is Hollywood.
Leo: It's pretty bad.
Matthew: Yes and the picture it kind of paints of Turing is
unfair in a lot of ways and goes for the sort of easy, you know. He was a nerd
who couldn't mix with people, none of which I think was the way it's portrayed
in the movie. But, you know, it was good and Benedict Cumberbatch is a good
actor.
Leo: It's a wonderful movie, he is great, the acting is great. But as the Guardian points out, in a
way, the movie slanders Alan Turing. What's sad is, in a way, Alan Turing was
persecuted, and slandered and reviled by Britain even though he made a huge
contribution to the war effort and frankly, to the industry we love so much, to
the invention of computing.
Matthew: He's the father of modern computing.
Leo: He is. So while I loved the movie and I had the same
reaction as you, Matthew. I thought, “This is based on a well-known biography,
it must be accurate.” There's some horrific things
that they do, the chief of which, and I won't give you a spoiler. In effect,
the movie implies that – the movie, which is very much at the end, it says,
“Tens of thousands of Britains were put in jail for
homosexuality,” and that he was persecuted, he was chemically castrated and
eventually committed suicide because of the harassment of the '50s. So they're
in some ways doing the right thing by letting people know how awful that was
but there's a moment in which he's blackmailed by a spy and this spy says,
“I'll tell them you're gay,” and he says, “Okay,” and he knowingly breaks the
law but acts in a cowardly fashion to hide the spy's identity. None of that
happened. So that's the slander that the Guardian is talking about.
Matthew: Actually, you know, the thing that bugged me was that
they go for this kind of easy trope of the nerd genius who doesn't understand a
joke and can't make friends, none of which was apparently the case, according
to other things I've read. That's kind of an easy stereotype. But I wish
someone would make a movie where they celebrate his accomplishments. They don't
even tell you how the Enigma breaker worked. They don't even discuss all the
things that he did that were groundbreaking. He just seems like a giant nerd
who builds this thing and then wins the war. Anyway, it was disappointing in
that sense.
Leo: I found it a wonderfully entertaining movie and I love
Benedict Cumberbatch.
Matthew: He's great, does a good job.
Leo: He will get an Oscar nomination, no doubt about it,
might even win. But for those of us who want to honor Alan Turing's memory for
the amazing contributions he made -
Matthew: It's not great for that.
Leo: I'm kind of with you on that and once I read this
article, I went, “Oh.”
Matthew: I get the feeling most people probably won't, so on
the good side, they'll be exposed to, “Oh, there was a good guy named Alan
Turing, and he was persecuted and did these amazing things.” But the picture of
him they will get will not be realistic.
Leo: You know, they did the same thing with Mark Zuckerberg
in The Social Network with -
Jeff: And it was wrong.
Leo: It was wrong and in fact, they made up the whole basis
of the movie that his girlfriend dumped him. That's not true, in fact, he's married to her now. But -
Jeff: I'm binge watching The Good Wife, which I absolutely
love.
Leo: Me too, love it.
Jeff: So in the second season, they have a copy of – they
make a reference up front to Zuckerberg but it's exactly the same story. It's a
guy fighting and the stupid screenwriter is saying, “I don't care about the
facts. I don't care about the truth.”
Leo: I can't wait. The show, I'm in the first season,
starts off like a traditional, procedural lawyer show. It's actually pretty bad, all the crimes get solved by the deus ex machina that appears. “Oh, look, here's a clue.
Oh, he's exonerated!” But then around episode 17 of the first season, it
suddenly gets ambiguous and interesting. It starts to deal with some really -
Jeff: It's really good. The weird thing is, I wanted to
watch – I've watched from both ends. We're in season six now. I watched all of
season five. While I was watching one, trying not to buy it, and gave up and
ended up buying every season.
Leo: It's all on Amazon Prime for free.
Jeff: I know, but I'm on airplanes. So I just bought the
damn seasons and I'm watching it. So I'm in a full season and a half now at the
beginning and trying not to watch the end. But I know some spoilers, it's a weird way to watch. But each show is really good. It's super.
Leo: But Alan Cumming is wonderful. He's wonderful. It's
great. Anything with Alan Cumming in it, I'll just watch. I don't care.
Jeff: I think I'm going to go see Cabaret. He's in Cabaret
in New York.
Leo: I saw him in Cabaret in the old Studio 54 some years
ago.
Jeff: How was it?
Leo: It's great. He's wonderful. I can't remember who
played -
Jeff: Emma Stone is now.
Leo: See, that would be good. The person who played Sally
was not an actor. She was like a celebrity so that wasn't great. It was
somebody like Annie Wilson from Heart or something, just a random, “Oh, this
will sell tickets.” But he is great. People are pointing out, by the way, that
the other movie for nerds that everybody should watch is the Theory of
Everything, Stephen Hawking story, which I haven't seen. Have you seen that,
Matthew?
Matthew: No, I haven't, but I really want to. Because I've
heard Eddie Redman does an amazing job.
Leo: He'll win the Oscar because that's how you win an
Oscar.
Matthew: Playing disable people generally -
Leo: Guarantees you an Oscar. But it does look like he does
an amazing job.
Matthew: It's Rain Man all over again.
Leo: That one, I think, is a little more accurate. It's
harder to slander somebody who's still alive. Maybe not,
actually. Zuckerberg.
Matthew: They do go into the fact that he dumped his wife, so
they don't try to paper that over.
Leo: Mr. Jarvis, do you have a number?
Jeff: Yes, I have a few. Where is it? So
two things that I found fascinating. One is, I
didn't know this. According to RW Baird analyst, Google's desktop search
revenue is now below 50% of Google's total revenue.
Jason: Whoa!
Jeff: Whoa, I heard a reaction. The other little point that
I thought was interesting here, and I'm going to start the Street and it's
going to play a video to me, which I hate. This says, “Credit Suites analyst
says that Google Play's revenue run rate at $4 billion is equivalent to
Google's YouTube revenue run rate of $4 billion.”
Leo: What does that mean?
Jeff: It just means that the Play is a hidden gem for the
company.
Leo: It's going to make money for the company.
Jeff: But, B, just says that
everybody thinks that Google's 90% of revenue is advertising. True, but Google
– people think Facebook is moving ahead fast on mobile, true. But Google is
more mixed and diverse in its revenue than I would have thought.
Leo: That's good. So that whole content strategy, working
good.
Jeff: Even though that Search – Google lost Firefox as the
default search, it lost some market share. But, flea on the
butt of the elephant.
Leo: I've got a crazy tool for you. When the HTC announced
this little doo-hickey, we thought they were insane. This is the HTC Re, it looks like a little periscope or asthma inhaler.
Matthew: Yes, I thought it was a puffer, maybe.
Leo: It looks like a puffer but it's actually a camera.
It's kind of the logical successor to the FlipCam or
something like that. It's not exactly a GoPro. It's a weird thing, but look,
I'll show you if you can get the over the shoulder shot. It ties to Android or
iOS. So I have a viewfinder here. Now, it's not great for stills, but it's
actually kind of a decent movie camera because it just sits there. You know,
you don't need a tripod. It's really easy. They added a feature, which I kind
of think puts this over the top and makes it very interesting – live YouTube
streaming. So if I check this box, I've already set up my YouTube account to
receive it. Press the Record Button, I am now
streaming live on YouTube. Talk about an interesting and simple way to start vlogging or I don't know what.
Jeff: Is that out in the market now?
Leo: It's pricey, in fact, a little overpriced. It's $179
on Amazon. I think $200 is the list. I wouldn't use it as a still camera,
probably. In fact, I probably wouldn't use it as a movie camera, I don't know if it would be that valuable. But it's really intriguing as a
streamer. It's just like, you could start vlogging instantly and create a YouTube – I don't know. I just found this really
intriguing and I have to admit, I was skeptical about it. There's some cool features. I'm going to review it fully on Before You Buy next week.
There's some cool features. One, it's always on. There's a
touch sensor in the body so when you pick it up, it wakes up. So you don't have
to – you can wake it up and take a picture right away just by pushing that
button.
Jason: Are you still streaming on YouTube – okay, so it
finally came up on YouTube.
Leo: Takes about 30 seconds to get going on YouTube. So if
you go to my YouTube site, youtube.com/leolaporte.
Jason: Yes, it took a little bit to appear.
Jeff: Yes, there's not as much of a lag as I have on the
show.
Leo: Well, it has to encode and stream, and YouTube has to
receive it. It's using YouTube Live. Oh, is it not?
Jason: Come on, YouTube. We believe in you. Yay!
Leo: You can only stream for half an hour at a time. Audio
is pretty good, listen.
[video begins]
That sounds good, doesn't it? I could do video.
Jeff: So does it record in its own memory, or does it always
go -
Leo: Yes, it comes with an SD card, 8 gig SD card. You can
put up to 128 gig micro SD in it. So it has plenty of recording space. But you
tie it to the smart phone with their Re app and then, you've got a viewfinder
and the ability to stream. It streams through this, through the phone. It works
much better on Wifi. I wasn't able to do much
streaming on LTE. But very interesting.
Jeff: So I've got a gadget too, Leo. I decided, I asked myself,
“What's the most obnoxious thing that I could do? I can take a selfie stick!
The selfie stick!
Matthew: That's technically called “The wand of Narcissus.”
Leo: Don't stroke your wand of Narcissus there!
Jeff: I thought going Ron Davos with the selfie stick would
be the most ridiculous, obnoxious thing I could do. So I got that.
Leo: Let me just point out that the Re has a tripod thread
in the bottom and will work with a selfie stick as well. So I think I might put
this on a selfie stick too or just, it just kind of naturally follows you
around, look at that.
Matthew: You need a Belfie stick.
Leo: You've seen that, the butt selfie stick? It has a
little angle? Let's try it, let's see. Here's my selfie stick. I've got one
too, Jarvis! I've got one too! Now how much would you pay? Close this whole
studio down. You're all fired, I've got everything I
need with my selfie stick and my HTC Re!
Matthew: It'd be better if it had an extendable on the actual
camera.
Leo: It should be its own selfie stick.
Matthew: Or a flex head that could move around.
Leo: Inside, it's got a battery that goes about an hour and
a half. But you can get an extended battery. As I said, the YouTube stream is
limited, probably because of Google, to 30 minutes. But I don't know, it's kind of funny. So good. When
are you going to Davos, Mr. J?
Jeff: Next week.
Leo: Will you be here from Davos, or what are we going to
do?
Jeff: I think that's going to – I hate to leave you without
Gina and without me.
Leo: It's going to be a one person show.
Jeff: The problem is, they have me
doing that dinner until 10 o'clock when the shows start up the street.
Leo: Matthew, can you come next week too?
Matthew: Leo, I'm happy to do it and never go anywhere.
Leo: We love you, Matthew. We love you. You have no plans
to have a baby any time in the near future or a startup?
Matthew: Not to my knowledge, no. I'm not getting a selfie
stick either.
Leo: Matthew Ingram, we love Matthew.
Jeff: That would be very un-Canadian to have a selfie stick,
which is why I love you.
Leo: Apparently, they're coming to the United States. This
is going to be the summer of the selfie stick in the US.
Matthew: Oh, no.
Leo: I saw them all over Europe.
Matthew: Yes, they're everywhere.
Leo: Matthew writes for GigaOm,
he is the guy. You have to read him at GigaOm.com. I'm sorry, what, Matthew?
Matthew: Look at the Oatmeal, did a selfie stick, “Should You
Buy a Selfie Stick” cartoon?
Leo: I love the Oatmeal. Matthew Ingram, is he any relation
to you, Matthew Indman?
Matthew: No. All people named Matthew are not related.
Leo: Yes, but Indman and Ingram, he's practically your
brother. No, you're right. That doesn't make any sense at all. There it is.
“Should you buy a selfie stick?” writes the Oatmeal. “A handy
guide for shoppers. Have you completely given up on life? Yes, you
should buy a selfie stick. No, are you Japanese? Yes, you should by a selfie
stick. No, you should not buy a selfie stick.” It's a simple decision tree.
Jeff: My favorite is the little arrow at the bottom of the
drawing.
Leo: What, scroll down?
Jeff: To the character's Crocs.
Leo: Oh, I wear Crocs. What's wrong with Crocs?
Matthew: Actually, I think selfie sticks are an interim
technology and soon we'll have little mini drones that can take pictures of us
from any angle.
Leo: I ordered a drone, too. I am Mr. With It.
Matthew: I would like a drone.
Leo: I'll send you one. You can put your camera on it and
be looking up every time you do the show.
Matthew: Want to put it in the same package as the Mini?
Leo: With the Mac Mini, absolutely. Matthew Ingram,
GigaOm.com.
Jeff: You have to have a drone camera for the show, yes.
Leo: We do, but I don't know if doing it inside is a good
idea.
Matthew: Oh, yes, it's a great idea.
Leo: What could possibly go wrong?
Jeff: Leo, you had a fire dancer inside!
Leo: That's true, you saw that. You were there.
Jeff: I smelled it.
Leo: We had to leave because the kerosene was so – but she
was great. She was great. Jeff Jarvis is at the City University of New York, we
call it CUNY. He also blogs at buzzmachine.com, and he's on Twitter and he's on
Google+. His latest book -
Jeff: Soon I'll be on a Mac.
Leo: We'll send you a Mac. We'll talk. I'll get John to
talk to you and we'll get you an appropriate piece of hardware. We would love
to replace Skype. It's not that we're in love with Skype, it's just the only thing that seems to work reliably, alas.
Jeff: I should have restarted the machine right before the
show. I've learned that.
Leo: It's good now. It's settled down.
Jeff: It's better. I closed everything on the machine.
Leo: That's the key. Nothing else can be going on. We do
This Week in Google every Wednesday at – I love this selfie stick. I'm just
going to keep using this.
Jeff: Good for you, Mr. TV.
Leo: I love my Narcissus wand. We do This Week in Google
every Wednesday, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern time. That would be 2100 UTC. You can
watch live.twit.tv. You can join us in the studio, we love that. Tickets at TwiT.tv. Just email us so we put a chair out for
you. But if you can't watch or be here, well, of course you can always download
audio and video after the fact. TwiT.tv/twig is the website, but you can also
find This Week in Google everywhere you can find podcasts, iTunes and all the
aggregators. On our newly released – we didn't do it, but thank you, Mark for
doing it. Mark Hansen did a beautiful job of – what is it called? TWiT droid?
Jason: TWiT Pro?
Leo: For Android! 3.0 just came out. There's actually
several Android apps, several iOS apps, thanks to a shift key software. They also did our Roku app. These are all third party independent
developers who work very hard and do a great job, making it easy for you to
watch wherever you are. Thanks for being here, we'll
see you next time on TWiG!