This Week in Google 659, Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWIG This Week in Google! Stacy Higginbotham is here. Jeff Jarvis. Filling in for Ant Pruit, the great Kevin Marks. We're gonna talk all about web 3. I wonder what Kevin thinks about web 3, Elon Musk. Kevin has some real thoughts about Twitter's edit button and a kind of a farewell to Gilbert Godfried. It's all coming up next on TWIG.

Narrator (00:00:26):
Podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:35):
This is TWIG. This week in Google episode, 659 recorded Wednesday, April 13th, 2022. Keeping up with the Higginbothams. This Week in Google is brought to you by Nureva. Traditional audio conferencing systems can entail lots of components. Installation could take days and you might not get the mic coverage you need. That's complexpensive, but Nureva audio is easy to install and manage no technicians required and you get full room coverage. That's easyconomical, learn more at nureva.com. And by eight sleep good sleep is the ultimate game changer and nature's best medicine go to eightsleep.com/TWIG to check out the pod pro cover and save $150 at checkout eight sleep currently ships within the US, Canada and the UK. And by ITProTV, itproTV has everything you need to level up your it skills while you enjoy the journey, visit itpro.TV/TWIT for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the life of your active subscription. When you use the code TWIT30 at checkout

Leo Laporte (00:01:48):
It's time for TWIG this week in Google, the show where we cover the latest world news from the Google verse, the Twitter verse, the metaverse Hey, that actually works finally. And all the other verses a bit about us. Ant Pruitt has the day off. I'm so glad that Stacy's here, Stacy Higginbotham from Stacy on IOT, our chip and IOT guru. Hi Stacy. Hello from the Pacific Northwest from somewhere near the Trump golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. It's Jeff Jarvis from buzz machine.com, but you may know, know him better as the Leonard Tow professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark graduate school of journalism at the city university of New York. Hello, Jeff. Hello. And to fill in for Mr. Pruitt, we've got somebody who's actually, I think his ears have been burning last week has been the talk of the town, a good friend. Kevin Marks. Mr. Indie Web is here from the UK.

Kevin Marks (00:02:51):
Hey there. Nice to see you all again,

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
Just up the road from SBY hall in, in it's. It's great to see you, Kevin,

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:00):
Take a left at arms behold.

Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
You, you that's it, you got keep up the hill, you got hacker news and then some for your blog post about Twitter's decision to edit tweets. And in fact your post was Twitter, Twitter edits you, and we talked about this now. I think Twitter's changed their tune about what's going on. So what's the latest on this,

Kevin Marks (00:03:30):
So, well, do, do you want, do you me to explain what, what happened in the first place or

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Yeah, better cuz otherwise the fix won't make any sense.

Kevin Marks (00:03:37):
Yeah. So what Twitter for a long time, Twitter's had this ability for you to embed a tweet in, in your webpage which

Leo Laporte (00:03:44):
You could do, you could always do by cutting and pasting the text or by screenshotting. Yes. But Twitter didn't want you to do that.

Kevin Marks (00:03:51):
Yes. So, well this was Ben Ward came up with this in 2011 and it basically gave you a a little thing. You click in the top, right corner of the tweet that says embed tweet. And then it would give you a block of HTML to put in your page, which was a block quote with, with a tweet in it and a link to the tweet. And then a, a link to some script that would take that and flesh it out into 

Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
Oh, and he's frozen. We'll never know here's the block. Here's the block quote. Yeah. Would the blog quote would have the text of the tweet in it?

Kevin Marks (00:04:25):
Yeah. So if you look, he's got the text of the tweet in it right

Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
Here. We are working on it and who said it? Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:04:30):
Yeah. According Twitter, it's a little bit confusing cause it's Twitter and Twitter. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
But yeah, but you'd also get the link the href, but, but most importantly, you'd get this little bit of Java script.

Kevin Marks (00:04:41):
Yes. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:42):
Ask a dumb question. Yes. Ask a dumb question before you go on. So that's when you embed, which, you know, if I'm doing my, my, my WordPress blog in the old days with code, I would embed the code there. Now with medium and WordPress, you just put in the address, does that call on the embed code or does that embed differently?

Kevin Marks (00:05:02):
Yes. Now that basically what, what they do is effectively do the same thing. So what they do is they, I think they, they actually call the the O embed API that sort it provides, which will give you that block of got it. HTML to put in your page.

Leo Laporte (00:05:15):
It's basically a shortcut to this.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:17):
Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:05:18):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the same, the same

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:21):
Problem. Yeah. Kevin is about to describe yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:23):
And Twitter wants you to do this because they, for what they, you get the traffic, they control the content of the tweet and the

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:29):
Functionality of the box is there too. You can click

Kevin Marks (00:05:31):
On that. Yeah. Unless you retweet it and reply and copy and do stuff. Also the other, the other thing is the sort sort, it's a, it's a mutual benefit thing. Cause the other thing is sort of fleshing out the tweet into a, a real looking tweet is them saying, yes, this is an actual tweet that somebody posted Kevin, didn't just make it up and put it in the page, which is, you know, fairly straightforward to do. If you were just doing

Leo Laporte (00:05:53):
Screenshot it's it's it's verifiable. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:05:56):
Yeah. So they're saying, yes, this was posted at the time by this person. And if they got a tick mark, it's it is the person we've verified. So they're putting a certain amount of validation onto the tweet that you are quoting when you do this. Now, the problem was what happens when you delete the tweet? When, when the tweet is deleted by the, by the poster or Twitter, suspende their account or they go private or Twitter goes down or whatever. So what happens if there isn't? If Twitter can't verify, is it just falls back to the HTML and it shows you effectively the plane text of the tweet block, the block quote, there would appear with the account and the link to the date. But it'll be star, whoever that HR started on your side, which looks up to you, you,

Leo Laporte (00:06:39):
This is, this is what it looks like. And it still has ther it still has the href, the date. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:06:45):
Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, it's in a yellow box. Cause that's how I do block quotes, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:06:48):
So that yellow is provided by you not by Twitter.

Kevin Marks (00:06:51):
Yeah. Yeah. So this, and I could style that I to look more tweet life, if I wanted to. Right. That's a right. That's an CSS thing, but the, HTML, I keep it fairly plain on my side. So what would happen was that would be the full bank case, but recently they changed it so that if you, if the tweet was deleted, you'd get a big white box in instead

Leo Laporte (00:07:19):
Like kind of like this. Yes. Which has the Twitter logo has a button to go to Twitter, but has no, tweet

Kevin Marks (00:07:27):
Has a bunch of gray stuff to say.

Leo Laporte (00:07:29):
So there was something here

Kevin Marks (00:07:32):
Which is already in the opposite. I'm not quite sure what message that's supposed to send. I mean, the, the, the defense really

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:36):
Was there really a tweet here.

Kevin Marks (00:07:38):
It's like, it's like, but you know, you are, You are saying that there isn't a tweet there, but you're not actually saying what I've quoted. So you, you, what it, what it basically does is it's rewriting the text of my post. And if you write a long post where you quote a bunch of tweets to make a, make a case, they'll disappear and the text that you've pasted in has gone, and you just get white blobs.

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
I have to PO, I have to point out I was looking for an Instagram post when you PO embed an Instagram post on the web, it used to have the image. This is what you get. Now you get a LA a big old piece of your page gone, where the image would go and a simple link that says view this post on Instagram. And this is, Instagram's kind of hostile thank you, meta way of taking away that ability to embed a an image from Instagram that happens.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:27):
If you, if you wanna view it, you actually have to log in sometimes to your actual Instagram account. Yes.

Kevin Marks (00:08:32):
Yeah. No, that I've like

Leo Laporte (00:08:33):
Really hostile if

Kevin Marks (00:08:35):
Yeah. I, I hadn't seen that one. Cause I basically, I haven't embedded Instagrams like that, but yeah, that's, it's its a similar thing. It's them saying? Oh no, this is, are now under our control. Yeah. and you know, the response from Twitter was that we're, we're treating this to better respect when people have chosen to delete their tweets and it'll have better messaging soon, according to the a PM who was involved with that, who hasn't tweeted since. So hopefully said, okay 

Leo Laporte (00:08:59):
Geez, maybe she's just worried. Elon will get a get wind of her. She's hiding. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:09:05):
But the, but the challenge is the thing that gets tricky is when you've got, if you're writing a long article where you're quoting some tweets and talking about them and going back and forth, it really messes that up. And so I, I had example of an old blog post I wrote about it. But also if you go and look at news stories about the former president whose tweets are all now invisible or if you go to like Buzzfeed, which regularly quotes, tweets, and then these tweets disappear, you, you, what you find is that basically Twitter is leading white holes all over the web or what

Leo Laporte (00:09:35):
And that's of real import. If you're doing a news story about the president former president's tweets and, or just as you point out calling James Comey a slime ball and the tweets are gone, cuz he's been deleted. Yeah. Or,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:49):
Or you go and like you wanna write a book or like, I mean, Twitter is a, is it a first source? Jeff, you might know this, but like if you're actually like sourcing things officially for academic or

Leo Laporte (00:09:59):
Right. It could be a primary source if it's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:01):
A primary.

Kevin Marks (00:10:02):
Absolutely.

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:02):
I have, I have footnotes with with tweets. I have, in fact I, I added Jackson cause it was part of the book I'm working on. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:10:10):
Yeah. But also they, I mean they made a big fus about archiving at the library of Congress and things, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:10:18):
Thats right. 10 ago. In fact, we were talking about that when we were talking about your article, we said, but doesn't the library of Congress, which has the fire host Don. They have at all.

Kevin Marks (00:10:26):
I'm not sure if they still do so. So it that's, the challenge is you then gotta go and find somewhere else to, and there are sites that archive that will archive things for you. There's archive.ph and archive org. Both, you know, archive or will crawl things optimistically. You can also say, please archive this and archive.ph was explicitly designed for you to preserve a tweet in case it was deleted. So you can link to that copy. So there are sites that will do that, but you have to sort of proactively do that at the point. You are, I'm about to put it in your site rather than just going to the thing to do it because, because Twitter is, well, Twitter says users can delete their tweets, which I suppose is fair enough. The Twitter can also delete your account on you. And then, then their tweets disappear. But also even if, if you take your account private, then the, then these tweets, then the tweets will no longer appear as embedded.

Leo Laporte (00:11:10):
But this was our debate last week, which is an interesting debate is what is Twitter's responsibility? Is Twitter, is Twitter primary sources at a social media of record or, or is it like just, you know, an ephemeral spot where things come and go. And and

Kevin Marks (00:11:27):
I, well, that's, you know, it has changed cause it was originally a lot more ephemeral because it, they came in as text messages, the, the archive on the site didn't show many of them search wasn't very good. And then it got better at that. And so now they are, you know, now people will go back and find you a tweets from 15 years ago and say what idiot you were. But as

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:47):
An author of a tweet, don't you feel like you have the, you should have the control to kill it. And it stays killed

Kevin Marks (00:11:53):
Well to some extent, but, but that's the point. So the compromise that they had was they wouldn't validate it if I deleted it. So they would just fall back to the, you know, Jeff says, Kevin said this, and you'd just see the quote. You wouldn't see the verification by Twitter

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
Kind of like I'd, I'd copied and pasted it or, or done a screenshot.

Kevin Marks (00:12:12):
Yeah. So I basically it, but I could have edited it, you know? It's yeah. It it's straightforward enough to, to make someone's tweet say something else. You can just, you know, introduce the Chrome and edit it. Yeah. Stacy,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:21):
You were gonna pop in. No, I was just gonna say, I mean, I look at Twitter, like if you would look to talking to a journalist, right. You're on the record. I mean, there's nothing secret about out tweeting, right? So I feel like once you say it as a user, you may wanna disavow having said that at some point, but you said it and

Kevin Marks (00:12:44):
It's, it's a trade off though, because you know, it, it, Dana avoids context, collapse problem as well, because a lot of the time on Twitter, you are talking to some people and you're not really thinking about you're talking to the world. And yeah, for those of us who work in media are sort of more used to the idea of being on the record and so on. But a lot of times people are just responding and going back and forth and then suddenly find that their tweet has been, you know, made into core celebrity or been sent as a pile on, by somebody with a bigger account who didn't like them. And, and they're gonna get abuse for the rest of the day and on. So there are, yeah, there are some messy issues with it and certainly people should be able to hide their tweets and hide their accounts and, and so on.

Kevin Marks (00:13:22):
And that's, that's, that's part of what gets tricky as well because Twitter now, because Twitter has blocking and semi public accounts and also you can delete your account and then underneath it again, there's first three or four states you can put Twitter in to that will mean people can't see your, your posts. You know, I'm, I'm blocked by Chris Dixon because I argue with him about web three or whatever. He calls it this week. Which means if I wanna read his post, I have to go and open them in a incognito window to work out what he's, what he's complaining about. So on. So there's, there's, there's sort of these trade offs like that, that you hit all the time. And then there's 

Kevin Marks (00:13:58):
So there's this, and then there's the nuance of how to Rease the conversation itself. Cause they will sometimes show you conversations with bits missing because someone's blocked you or someone has blocked the person who's quoting them. And that gets a bit like bits gets a bit ambiguous as well. You know, I will sometimes see Chris, Chris Dixon's post on what I followers. Some I follow has quoted them, but only sometimes. So is they haven't fully solve solved the problem cause it's actually solving the problem is hard in trans exclusion is hard, is a hard problem. So, you know, I've, I've got some sympathy with Twitter for trying to deal with this. But I think the original thing that they did that banded years ago of we'll give you the text, the tweet is a block quote that will be in your page and that, you know, if Twitter breaks or a thousand years times, it'll still be there.

Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
It's not just if I embed a YouTube video and that video's deleted, I'm gonna have the same problem that we've shown you Instagram. They actually do stuff that hasn't been deleted.

Kevin Marks (00:15:01):
No, that's, that's true. I mean, the thing about Twitter, the Twitter is Twitter is released initially was text and you can quote the whole thing straightforwardly. It's harder these days. Cause there are a bit, there are you, there may be large images embedded and so as well, and you don't get those in the block quote, they'd have to give you a lot more stuff to paste in for that to work. So it, you, the, the, the environment Twitter has changed since this was first invented. So it's really

Leo Laporte (00:15:27):
In a way a battle over what Twitter is a, a debate over or what Twitter is. Yeah. So your complaint was that Twitter,

Kevin Marks (00:15:35):
This is a debate of what the web is as well. Cause basically, yeah, so, so Twitter was saying, okay, we can, you know, the bargain we made with Twitter when they've put this out and this is still quoted on their website is what happens to an authors, their tweet, the Twitter, which is jail ship will not display a fully rendered tweet. The tweet, the wrong resist on Twitter, the fullback block, quote, 10 tweet information. We on the page now, that's what the, that's what the, how to use this thing says. So that's been the sort of the contract, if you like. And the reason to use this for a long time, and if you are doing a, a sort of, if you're doing a buzz feed compilation, or if you're doing a sort of here, what six people say about this thing, and here's what I think about it and, and doing those kinds of, you know, quote, response type posts then that, that the quotes will still be there for you in your text. Even if the, even if the tweet has gone away, which is, which is, I think that's the right compromise. That's the compromise that so it makes sense at the point they said it, but we,

Leo Laporte (00:16:35):
And that's what Ben ward told Ariel Walman 11 years ago when she asked him the embed code is a block quote containing the tweet content. This is from your page, if it's deleted or 1000 years in the future note, the text remains. So there is kind of, but a promise, explicit promise. Yeah. One of the,

Kevin Marks (00:16:56):
That one hasn't been fleshed out. It's fleshed out for me. Maybe you've got the other things. You may have a script block at that's blocking.

Leo Laporte (00:17:01):
Oh, I do. I have lots of script blockers on here. Nothing. Nothing works well on my site. In fact, I don't see your images or anything. I don't know what you're doing on your page. I can't see. Oh,

Kevin Marks (00:17:10):
No. What if you

Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
A nice internet,

Kevin Marks (00:17:13):
But if you, if you, yeah. So on the right hand side of my post, I've got, I've got the, I've got, if you, you might expand the screen.

Leo Laporte (00:17:20):
I did. I did. I I'll shrink it down to a normal size. You see all these tweets, no images. Yes. Nothing. That's blocker work. Right?

Kevin Marks (00:17:29):
That's, it's hot linking the Twitter profile images directly in there. Yeah. so which is, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:17:34):
It's a third part. I think my scripts are blocking third party in beds. Probably something like that.

Kevin Marks (00:17:40):
Yes. Well, no, you probably, I think probably, probably some of them cause the, that S script is a third party in bed too, but I'm maybe I'm directly injecting it, but yeah. So I've got those comments on the side are web mentions that are embedding in this site through some inwe things and they are coming from Twitter through

Leo Laporte (00:17:57):
Bridge. Let me turn off you block origin and maybe we can we can get this page to, I thought, I thought you were slashed, dotted. I thought the hacker news had, had destroyed your page. No, it's still not what I show

Kevin Marks (00:18:10):
You my version. No.

Leo Laporte (00:18:11):
Yeah. That was you block origin. So Firefox might be doing it. I run a lot of protection. Yeah,

Kevin Marks (00:18:17):
No, there there's, there's lots of, there's lots of ways you could block it. I mean, I can show you my version if

Leo Laporte (00:18:21):
You wanna see. No, I believe you. I know your web page didn't look that. Yeah. It's like

Kevin Marks (00:18:26):
I can

Leo Laporte (00:18:27):
Build a webpage. Y let me show. This is, but that's, what's interesting. This is what in indie web is all about. And all of these protective things that I have going on are because people are doing nefarious things with stuff that should really be the, the kind of the foundational capabilities of the web to interlink. But I, but this against it, unfortunately,

Kevin Marks (00:18:47):
But this there's also issue we have with web MES as well. So with web mention, when someone links to you and comments on your site they can send you a mention to say, I've done that and we can, I can pull their, their quote in and put it on my side, but we also have a way for that to deal with deletion two. So if they delete it, they can web mention me again and return a four 10, which is HD for, for gone or HDDP for gone. And then, then it is up to me to delete it from my site as well, or if they edit it that we can show the editing version. So we have that mechanic in indie web as well and the dynamic way for, for removing the content. So potentially we may hit a similar issue if people are starting to edit pieces out. But the point of where I mentioned is, is, is more that we're explicitly, they're ex we're explicitly pulling in this, the response to our thing rather than actually quoting it. So I think there is distinction between I'm quoting something here and therefore I've EI found it and written, written down what it says, as opposed to I'm dynamically pulling in a response to my, my post it

Leo Laporte (00:19:48):
Here we are. I I've reloaded it in chromium and it, and it works just fine. So, oh, there we go. You better enough Firefox. I had strict blocking. Yeah. You had

Kevin Marks (00:19:58):
Some strict things like, yeah. So basically you can see, I've got some lights at the top and I've got some responses here and these are,

Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
Are any web mentions

Kevin Marks (00:20:04):
Is any web mentions, but they are mostly, I pulled from Twitter, I think. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
But here's the Hecker news.

Kevin Marks (00:20:10):
Yeah. And all the bots that

Leo Laporte (00:20:11):
I love web mentions, I've been trying to get it to work forever day. But so yeah, this looks, yeah. Okay. Now I'm seeing now I'm seeing now

Kevin Marks (00:20:20):
You've seen what's going on. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
What's going on. So the good news is, and then you could go ahead.

Kevin Marks (00:20:26):
Sorry. Yeah. So, you know, you should see Ben's and areas quotes back in, in fleshed, out in

Leo Laporte (00:20:31):
Yeah. In two, an actual Twitter style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This makes a lot more sense now.

Kevin Marks (00:20:37):
So, so the good news is,

Leo Laporte (00:20:39):
But I wanted to fail nicely and it did in a way, I just didn't have the images and I didn't have the, I read the, but that's.

Kevin Marks (00:20:45):
Yeah. So you were, you were getting the fall back, the fallback case that, that you were meant to get. Right. Which was the other point of this is, is, is like if JavaScript fails, whatever, you still got some useful text there. Yeah. If you're reading it in links or something, or a screen reader, the text is still there.

Leo Laporte (00:20:58):
Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:21:01):
So yeah, so what happened was I wrote about this and news wrote about it. The, the verge wrote about it, UMT mem wrote about it and so on. And so it, it is got some circulation, some pickup. And I think some of the media organizations started asking Twitter about it and Twitter were like, oh yeah, that's more complicated than we thought it was. And then mark, mark, Jack built a tool to fix it. It, so basically some S script you run that would stop Twitter, removing them from your, from your page as well. So that I embedded that to, and then over the weekend on, under I spoke to T's weekly about it on, on last

Leo Laporte (00:21:41):
Wednesday. In fact, thank you for embedding that on your page. And I promise we won't delete it. Here's his interview at the bottom with the tech news with Micah,

Kevin Marks (00:21:51):
I start get this page start to

Leo Laporte (00:21:52):
It's getting long, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (00:21:56):
I, so our race between whether my, the column on the right and the column, the left gets long, when I be this show, we see, see bit further anyway, the point that, but the point is over the weekend, they suddenly, they, they said, oh, no, we changing our mind. We've reverted that they didn't mention it to me. I just noticed that the post appears again. But the verge got them on the record to say, yes, we've, we've changed our mind on this and we may do something else in future.

Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
So, so that's good

Kevin Marks (00:22:24):
Is

Leo Laporte (00:22:25):
Is good. Okay. Is this how it's supposed to work?

Kevin Marks (00:22:29):
It's good in that, they've gone back to what I think the right answer is. And I've potentially had more influence on Twitter than El know Musk did this week, which is fun, but it's in terms of actually changing how it works. But yeah, the, it is, is the thorny problem and they need to think about it a bit more and sort of as a first pass, leaving white blog all over the internet is not really a no an ideal way of approaching it.

Leo Laporte (00:22:53):
So with

Kevin Marks (00:22:54):
The, if, if they wanna try something else, I'm very happy to talk to 'em about it. Cause there's ways you could do this. And again, we have the web mention model for, for effectively sending edits and deletions around. But this, this is a slightly, the, the embed thing is slightly tricky. It, because you don't actually want to, you don't wanna delete the, the, the text of other people's webpages.

Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
Right.

Kevin Marks (00:23:16):
And that's, that seems to slight over is

Leo Laporte (00:23:17):
The issue that edit button or, I mean, it happens even if you delete an account or you or you go

Kevin Marks (00:23:24):
Private. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, edit button would, will also add some complex to this as well, because if you can edit the tweet then, which version of I, but the one that I saw at the time or the one that right. Appears later,

Leo Laporte (00:23:35):
So it really comes down to this again, this question of is, is Twitter a primary source that should be preserved historically because people say things or is it just a, is it water cooler conversation? And nobody should be held accountable. And and that's kind of Dana boy's issue. And I think others who've talked about this is that it's like a water cooler where stuff gets preserved forever. It's kind the worst of both worlds. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:00):
Well, is that a function of Twitter or is that a function of people just not understanding use it? I mean, part of this, I feel like, well, I, I mean, I feel like I know exactly when to use Twitter and how and why and what to put. I mean, I never casually approach it and I'm like, oh, let me just say my whatever. So I, I feel like it's incumbent upon us to teach people the rules of a new space. If it's a new, what is it, the town square, you know, we have to develop the rules that, and people understand and agree upon the rules that work in that town square. And

Kevin Marks (00:24:38):
I feel right, but, but the challenges there are different, but there are there, it, well, they've changed over time. This, this is the, this is part of it. Cause originally the sort of the rules of Twitter were very different initially because they didn't have, they didn't notify about replies. They didn't put replies under the posts. There was a whole sort of range of things that have changed over time and also that they didn't preserve much of a history. You couldn't scroll back very far on Twitter. It would, would just, you know, time hadn't failed on. So the, so the notion of it as persistent is something that has, that was built up later. Okay. And then the notion it is the place you go and shout at people is also a thing that built up over time as well. It's

Leo Laporte (00:25:19):
So it's both

Kevin Marks (00:25:21):
The, it's the void you screaming to, and sometimes you screams back

Leo Laporte (00:25:24):
And if you're the president of the United States, you get, you get the be benefit of both. It is authority thing. And I think it's part of the problem. I don't know, can this be solved? Is this just a sociological problem? And ultimately can be solved. It's not a technical issue. It's a sociological issue, right?

Kevin Marks (00:25:40):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's indeed. And it's, and it's a sort of community management issue and collective action issue as well. You,

Leo Laporte (00:25:48):
So are you happy that they reverted? Should they stay the, the way they were? I mean, you're, what's nice is your, your blog post now works where, you know, you post, I

Kevin Marks (00:25:57):
Had to go in I to go and change to explain what was what I was saying,

Leo Laporte (00:26:00):
Because cause, okay, look,

Kevin Marks (00:26:01):
Look at this one, look at this big bright white hole. It wasn't

Leo Laporte (00:26:03):
Being a hole.

Kevin Marks (00:26:07):
Had to put another thing to say, this is what it looked like,

Leo Laporte (00:26:10):
Honest, honest

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:11):
Screenshots.

Kevin Marks (00:26:15):
Yeah. So that's, but that's the thing I know. I think the, what they've, what they've done is, is better than what they did, but there's potentially they could do something more subtle.

Leo Laporte (00:26:25):
What do we want Twitter to be? What do we want Twitter to be Stacy? What should Twitter be? Should it, should it be the water cooler? Should it be the, the journal of records? What should it be?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:36):
I think it's, I think it is kind of the town square. So maybe it's the water cooler, but it's the water cooler at work. So you need to be aware that people who overhear you are not gonna be your best friends. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:49):
There's also the, an additional issue, which is that everybody's Twitter is different depending on who they follow. And for some people you know, you always bring up Jeff Black, black Twitter, Twitter is a cultural phenomenon on of its very own. That's completely independent of other Twitters.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:06):
Right. And, and I, and I, so I, I, I think Stacy's right that we, we, this is about a norm. We've gotta, we gotta set an expectation and, and, and follow. I think that if you had a Facebook post and you couldn't delete it, people would go back S right. Yeah. but of course Twitter's architecture is different and it's out there in the war world and people do delete their tweets regularly, their services to do so. They get rid of all their tweets from the last year. Some fools, like, I don't know, the, the, the, the host of a famous podcast just puts Twitter every once in a while. And, and I think you need to have, I have come right to do that. I have now,

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):
However, I have to a Dayton with Twitter. Yes, you have you,

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:42):
As Stacy said, if somebody over hears that, then it's outta your control. So if I, whether it's by a screen grab or me quoting or, and retyping or whatever, if I hear it, that knowledge is now mine, you can't kill that out my brain or what I say, you can kill the substantiation of it on Twitter. And I think you should have a right to do that. Like you should never write right. To kill your blog or right. To kill anything else you've done. But if I've heard it and either by retyping it in my blog, or by having a service, hello, Donald Trump that pulls all the tweets you've done. So you can't kill them from public record. That's that's Hey, you set it in public. That, that, that is the breaks. So I think there's a combination of both where you have to be, be talked to be aware that once you've said it, you've said it, people have heard it. You shouldn't put anything on the internet. You don't want to be in the, in, in, in stone forever. That's the deal. But your substantiation of yourself on Twitter, you should have some control of, yeah. This gets more complicated though, when we get to the edit button, because if I also think that I can change a tweet, that's now out in 25 different places. It's

Leo Laporte (00:28:52):
You can Gaslight me. You could say, you didn't read that tweet. I, this is what I said,

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:57):
Or, or on the other side of it, I think as an author of the tweet that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm updating and correcting the tweet, and I am doing so on twitter.com, but not everywhere, but maybe I'm not on your client or somebody else,

Leo Laporte (00:29:10):
Or in your mind, in your, in your mind, Jeff remembers what you said originally. My, yeah, it's a really it's a, it's a challenge, but this is a good example of how the internet and internet norms are still in flux. And we don't really know.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:26):
I'm sure Elon Musk would've fixed all of this it amount.

Leo Laporte (00:29:29):
Oh, we're gonna get to that three hours. We're gonna get to the big Elon. I'm really glad you're here, Kevin, by the way, it was Firefox strict mode that broke your site. If I put Firefox in standard mode in its privacy system. Oh,

Kevin Marks (00:29:43):
That makes sense. Cause cuz I I'm using third party scripts to do these things.

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And I generally run in strict mode, which breaks a lot, a surprisingly large number of things in the world. So I don't

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:56):
Paranoia doesn't pay.

Leo Laporte (00:29:58):
No, it pays fine. It just the, that gonna see things as

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:02):
His world is black and gray and not very pretty 

Leo Laporte (00:30:06):
Yes. Stronger protection.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:08):
It's it's like by the way, last week, when, when you, when we ended up making fun of the, of the, the Twitter version of that, the bear Twitter, I dunno if you saw the founder came on to thank us for the attention. That's exactly what I want is I want the boring Twitter. Yeah. So that's the Leo's world is boring. Twitter,

Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
Boring Twitter. It's my new pick of the week bear dot T w Twitter without all the stuff just

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:33):
That's Leo's world.

Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
That's my, that's how I want. In fact boring. Can I get rid of the images as well? I want to get rid of the images. I don't like this. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:41):
So I know. So rude. See that spark of color. Well you,

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:45):
Well, we, we, the iconic class Of

Kevin Marks (00:30:48):
The, if there is a tool for that as well, I I'll show you that later.

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Well, I, this is, this was of course there is. Yeah, I'm sure there is absolutely. I could turn off those images, but this is aside I mentioned last week, bear dot T w which is supposedly just the, just the tweets man, nothing but the tweets just the facts and they mocked me. They mocked me.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:09):
You're missing some cute dog photos.

Leo Laporte (00:31:11):
I mean, I'm missing all and cat every single one. But I do have an Neil dash and Paul Graham and that's all I care about. Let me take a break. We're gonna come back. It's so good to have Kevin Marks here. Love having you on the show whenever you can sitting in for aunt Pruitt. Kevin is a, as you've probably gathered by now strong proponent of the open web and Indy web.org is a great place to read more about that. And I'm always trying to to live the indie web life and his blog is Kevin marks.com. Our show today brought to you by new Reva. You know, we're coming back to work. We're in this new hybrid work situation where some people are in the office, some people are at home. We still have to have meetings. That means that huddle room, that conference room suddenly is a mess is a, because you, you want people at home to not feel disenfranchised.

Leo Laporte (00:32:07):
You want them to be able to hear the conversation. We wanna be able to hear them. Do you bring in some fancy AV company to put in cameras and big screens, you know, big Cisco systems and spend thousands of dollars and have wires and microphones and, and it's, you know, and in flexible mess, that has to be conf configured and calibrated constantly. No, no, you don't need that traditional system, cuz we've got a better way. Great audio simplified with Nova N you are E Eva. They have a patent on something. They call microphone missed technology. With this patented technology, all it takes is one or two integrated microphone and speaker bars. They look like sound bars. If you go to the website, they look exactly like sound bars on a, on a wall. They can fill the room with thousands of virtual microphones. No, no dead zones.

Leo Laporte (00:33:02):
Everyone everywhere in the room can be heard. Clearly meeting participants, class members can talk, can move naturally in the space can face any way they want can socially distance if they need and still be heard by remote participants and vice versa. It's remarkable. And not only is it much less expensive than those traditional systems, it's much easier to use. Continuous auto calibration means your rooms are always instantly ready with optimized audio. You don't need to bring in a technician to calibrate. In fact, your it department gets a console that makes it very easy for them to monitor, manage and adjust your rooms. No matter how many you have from anywhere. No need to go to from room to room and the installation. Well, if you've ever pulled up a soundbar, it's literally that easy. A 30 minute DIY job. That's incredible big savings on time cost compared to traditional systems, but you are gonna love it. And if you're still using that spider that's sits in the middle of the conference room table, please stop. Just stop the suffering. Stop the insanity. Go to neva.com N U R E V a neva.com. Ask yourself, do you want to go with a costly, complicated traditional system or make the leap to simple and economical Neva, learn more@neva.com. We thank Neva so much for supporting this in Google. New Reva, N U R E V. Neva.Com.

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
What do you use for your website? Kevin? What is the what is the engine? Oh, you're muted. Did we mute him? Did he mute him?

Kevin Marks (00:34:42):
No, I mute him myself cause I was pouring water. He muted. I it's just plain HTL. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:34:50):
What? You edit it in a notepad 

Kevin Marks (00:34:55):
Text

Leo Laporte (00:34:55):
Edit.

Kevin Marks (00:34:57):
I, I did visual studio code now, but yeah, you

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Edit in vs code. It's not even marked down. It's just,

Kevin Marks (00:35:05):
Hey, why would you use

Leo Laporte (00:35:07):
Markdowns? HTL. Wow know. Wow. So if I've used source, it's gonna look exactly like it looks to you.

Kevin Marks (00:35:14):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:35:15):
That's that's marvelous. Wow.

Kevin Marks (00:35:17):
I mean, I've, I've got it. It's served through Heroku static pages. Cause I always think, oh, do something dynamic. I never do that's so yeah, it's just a bunch of handwritten HTML.

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
Wow. That's old school man.

Kevin Marks (00:35:29):
And then I I've got it. So it in GEHA by checking into GitHub and that redeploys it so that I can edit it locally and then hit hit sink.

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
I use a static site generator called Hugo, but so I I'm right market.

Kevin Marks (00:35:43):
Yeah, no, I like hug. Hugo's good. I like that. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
It's static. And then it's just, it is, it's generating the HTML for me, but it's static. And I actually do I check it into GitHub so GitHub can serve it too.

Kevin Marks (00:35:54):
So, so that, I mean, I it's, I keep meaning, oh, I should go. I should convert this to Hugo rather than keep editing it by hand. Cause then I'd get like tag pages and things, but I can never quite get around to it.

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
And for your web mentions, do you use bridge? What do you use for your web mentions?

Kevin Marks (00:36:10):
What do use for web mentions is web mention dot hero, crap.com, which is written by Vox. And it, so it's an app that I link in and I said that as my web mentioned target, and then it injects that right sidebar and they put some, this,

Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
This is really sweet. So instead of a comments, if people mention you on hacker news or on Twitter looks like some other places as well. They'll go right here.

Kevin Marks (00:36:35):
Yeah. Some direct sites they've turn up there. So some of these are a sort of actual, pure web. Most of them come from Twitter, which comes through bridge. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:43):
And that used to pop up in the comments of your sites. Right? I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:36:47):
I like it as a sidebar here. It's kind of cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:49):
I like it as a sidebar too. I just was like, that's something that we used to rely on a lot. Yeah, no you, so

Kevin Marks (00:36:56):
Yeah, there there's, I mean, there's, there's ways to do it, but what we, what the web mention model is if I write a post on my site and link to you, I then send a web mention to you to say I've linked to you and it can appear there. And what we've done with bridge bridge will check Twitter for links to that URL when it finds one, it'll add it to the page as well. So that's that's trick. So you can see that they've all got they've Twitter edits you in there or so on. Yeah. it's actually a bit more subtle. Cause if I, if people reply to a tweet, whether I've posted it links to it, it'll come back there as well. So you'll get, oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:31):
Fancy.

Leo Laporte (00:37:32):
I recently, yeah. It's switched to using Macedon as my comment system. So it's similar to that. Except instead of using Twitter, it uses the, you know, FedEx

Kevin Marks (00:37:43):
That works. Yeah. And Twitter and Twitter is me is Mount up with microphones too. Right. So if you, you can, if you send a web mention from the master on post, it will show up properly in here, but it doesn't send the by default. So yeah. You you'd have to call the API to put them in. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
Yeah. It's a, yeah. I'm just, I'm always, I, I, I am such a strong believer in the free and open web. I just feel like whatever we can do to kind of preserve that is, is great. So let's catch you up on the saga, a, a little old Elon Musk. There should be a ballot, the ballot of Elon Musk sit right back while it tell you a tale, a tale of a billionaire who wanted to own Twitter. So he, as you know, if you've been paying attention over the first three months of 20, 22 has been slowly, they say paying cash, which sounds like he's actually like licking his thumb and spitting out bills for shares of Twitter, got himself all the way up to 9.2% delayed mentioning that either the way now he's being sued because the S E requires when you get to five, I think 5%, 5%,

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:02):
You

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:02):
Have to

Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
5%. Yeah. You have to report. He got to 5% by March 14th, but didn't file the April 4th. And so there's a, an investor lawsuit thing. And I think the S sec should probably also do something. I think they're investigating saying, Hey, you essentially kept the price artificially low by not telling everybody you were buying up Twitter. Of course, as soon as he filed an April 4th, Twitter stock price went up 27%. Right. Which

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:30):
Proved the point

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Proved the point.

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:32):
That better evidence, better receipts than that.

Leo Laporte (00:39:33):
Yeah. so anyway, he is now a 9.2% shareholder, which at that point gave him, I guess, enough stock that Twitter said, well, we better ought listen to this guy. Even though he is kind of obviously a troll, offered him a board seat. Now this is where gets interesting and invited him to speak to the staff for an AMA. The AMA has been canceled. And so has Elon's board seat, but we're not clear on what happened.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:08):
It's exactly why I didn't want him on the board in the first place. He's just a troll who runs around doing his own thing. And with rules get in the way he backs off. And this is exactly what we thought would happen.

Leo Laporte (00:40:21):
I mean, there, I mean, I think you're, it, it, it could be, I don't know. Do you think agro agro wall said now, nevermind. Do you think Elon said no, nevermind. Or

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:32):
Did some lawyers? What I hear? What, you know, what, what, what do you hear I hear is lawyers said the, you just can't, you can't do these things. You have a fiduciary, your fiduciary responsibility, right. And you can't go around telling the public what's gonna happen with the company without knowing it, or before it's known,

Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
He did delete a bunch of tweets over the weekend that were offensive, stupid, childish,

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:53):
Lots stuff,

Leo Laporte (00:40:55):
You

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:55):
Know? Yeah. I mean, I think he realized someone and probably set 'em aside and said, look, you can do all of this when it's your own companies. When you come in and do this to other companies, this is a problem. And then I think also Twitter's lawyers probably were like, yo, really is this really what we want? And I think probably everybody woke up next to each other and was like, oh yeah, no, this isn't right.

Leo Laporte (00:41:19):
He was putting up polls kind of facetious polls. At one point, he said, should Twitter delete the w and Twitter for its name, which is,

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:29):
That's just perfect for his humor.

Leo Laporte (00:41:31):
Like a nine year old joke. Yeah. Joke by a fourth grader. It turns out according to the timeline from the Washington post that on Saturday morning, he told Twitter he would not be joining the board. Now the there's another thought I had, because remember when we said maybe one of the reasons I think you Stacy's said, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. One of the reasons Twitter offered him a board seat is because board members are not allowed to own more than 15%. Bingo.

Kevin Marks (00:42:01):
Yeah. But, but also that then they have produced reduc. So he would have to follow the internal code of products about, yeah, no, because, because you're given nonmaterial information and for a few percent publicly, you are, that's

Leo Laporte (00:42:15):
Never stopped him in the past. And the S E has barely slapped his risks for these things.

Kevin Marks (00:42:22):
No, I'm not. Yeah. No, but that's, you know, the, the,

Leo Laporte (00:42:24):
When is that it also mean my question.

Kevin Marks (00:42:27):
Well, the pu, because he has beneficial issue with his own company, so he's not gonna Sue himself, whereas Twitter could Sue him for doing.

Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
Yeah. Okay. So, so the lawyer said, Elon, you're gonna have to muzzle yourself. He said, I'm not doing that. Also Elon, you can't buy any more shares past 15%. I still think Elon, I, mean's not the he's got the money. If he wanted to buy Twitter, you know, just do a, a hostile takeover. He could buy a 51 steak. I'm sure.

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:56):
Or he, his friends could. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:57):
Well, yeah. I was like, he doesn't have to buy the

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:59):
Whole 15% Peter te to buy another 15%.

Leo Laporte (00:43:03):
What would be the first thing we he would do is invite president Trump, former president Trump back, Probably you think. Yeah. I think that's what the, I, I suspect that's why the staff is, is nervous. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:16):
Explain the stock market response to me, cuz, cuz alright. So when he B buys that much, the stock goes up cuz Ooh, it could be in play or whatever, right? Yeah. He leaves the stock went down, but then it went back up again. The market is confused about what to do with Elon. Isn't it?

Leo Laporte (00:43:32):
The market's confused was be probably sufficient in that sentence. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know what the market, what the market's thinking. There's certainly some people in the bought shares when Elon was a massive shareholder. Just because why do you buy shares if you, you know, if you're a speculator because you think they're gonna continue to go up. So buy some 39, there's gonna be up to move to buy more shares.

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:00):
Sorry about

Leo Laporte (00:44:00):
That. What is it now?

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:02):
What? To 39 to 50 on April five. And right now it's at 

Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
45, 85, 45, 85. So it, it did go back down a little bit.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:12):
Yeah. That's not uncommon

Leo Laporte (00:44:14):
Though. Yeah. Yeah. You buy, what is it? Buying the rumors, selling the news. I don't know what the news or the rumor was. It's still way above its April 1st price of 39 31 before the Elon announcement. So it's still up a significant amount up 38% in the past month. That's that's still some good money. So I would say overall, the stock is, is bullish on Twitter. The stock market is bullish on Twitter with Elon's involvement.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:43):
I think they're just bullish on the fact that there's ch men the water. Like I, I feel like, I feel like being a stock market investor now is based solely on like stunk behaviors. I guess. I, I just don't even know anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
Oh, I think you're right. But I mean, so traditionally the vast amount of stock movements come from institutional investors, pension funds, they like that. People who presumably, you know, are, are solid and steady and and informed investors. I even th with, even though Robin hood and public.com and all these I was

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:24):
Gonna, I was just gonna wonder if it becomes a Robin

Leo Laporte (00:45:25):
Stock. I, I don't think, I don't think that do they move the market enough to really make a difference,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:32):
Yon behaves that way and can move the market. So that's what it feels like to me. I feel

Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
What we know is tweets. I mean basically are pump and dump. Sometimes when he says, you know, I'm going, we're taking Tesla, private four $20 a share financing secured. Then it turns out that was a lie stock market loves it, buys it up.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:52):
There's a lot of nihilism makes him

Leo Laporte (00:45:53):
Like

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:54):
Running around,

Leo Laporte (00:45:54):
Makes the richest. He is now the richest man on the planet except for Putin.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:00):
Yeah. So, no Putin's Putin's guess to hundreds

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
Of million stock is going down. At one point, he was because of his, you know, basically secret ownership of gas prom and all of the other Russian enterprises. He was thought to be by far the richest man in the world. Well, anyway Elon's 300 billion, nearly 300 billion fortune puts him pretty much at the top of the list. So it worked whatever whenever he's up to is working. And, but by the way, the gas price is going through the roof helps Tesla. Their sales are through the roof. They're they can't make them fast enough now.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:44):
Well, that's, that's behind the war lot.

Leo Laporte (00:46:46):
Isn't it? Yeah. Well, it's up even more. I think I saw 26% increase in orders over the last few weeks.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:54):
Wow. Well that makes sense. I mean, I'd want an electric car down too, plus there's I mean, everybody's Honda just did their announcement to not produce gas powered cars. I mean sure. It's by 2040 there's

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:05):
Tons of choices.

Leo Laporte (00:47:06):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:07):
Yeah. We're we basically hitting the, the inflection point for electric vehicles and Tesla. If you

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:13):
Buy a new electric car right now, which would you buy?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:20):
I really don't know. I like I'm, I'm waiting for things. I look at the Audi maybe, but it's pretty expensive and I really want a Subaru. I want the electric Subaru that doesn't exist yet.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:31):
Toyota Subaru one,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:34):
There, there isn't one Subaru is not making well, there's gonna be car yet

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:38):
With no, no, the, yes. The Toyota stupid name car is going to be a Subaru too.

Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
A what? Now? I'm confused. That's two D companies.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:46):
Yeah, Toyota.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:47):
But the Toyota, yes. Toyota B four Z 1568. Whatever their stupid brand is for it

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
Is a Subaru,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:55):
B four Z

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:56):
X also gonna be a Subaru,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:59):
The all electric. Let me see.

Leo Laporte (00:48:02):
Not a super a Subaru,

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:04):
A Subaru oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:06):
You're right. The VZ is a Toyota. See,

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:08):
It happens.

Leo Laporte (00:48:09):
Japan Subaru. It happens.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:12):
Okay. Yeah. Oh, it was okay. Well, there you go. There you go. 

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:16):
The Bey,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:17):
So it's coming out

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:18):
Brand.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:19):
Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:48:21):
Ter Toyota owns 20% of Subaru. It also didn't 5% Mazda. So Tesla, I was, I, I underestimated Tesla. Its estimated has seen a hundred percent increase in orders in some areas of the us as gas prices, soar

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:39):
Jesus.

Leo Laporte (00:48:41):
So that's

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:43):
Lived.

Leo Laporte (00:48:44):
Yeah. Whatever Elon's doing, he's doing doing it. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:48):
But there's still a huge, the market. Wait for those, isn't

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
It? Yeah. Oh yeah. The weight's getting longer and longer and longer. That's right. You know they're taking the orders. Okay. So Elon now is back to being a private citizen. I think it's a great,

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:06):
Is he gonna buy Twitter? Is he gonna do what you think or is he gonna get bored?

Leo Laporte (00:49:09):
He's bored already. He's already bored. I guarantee you, we should check his tweets.

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:20):
Yeah. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (00:49:21):
Latest Twitter lives and dies though by these guys. Right? When Trump was big Twitter on Twitter that made Twitter's for four years, Twitter was the place to go to find out what's going on.

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:31):
But I go, I go back to my black Twitter example. It's it's the longest of long tales. The most popular person on Twitter is a tiny proportion.

Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
Oh, oh, this is interesting. Tiny Elon has not tweeted in four days. Is he dead? Is

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:45):
He okay?

Leo Laporte (00:49:48):
His last tweet was April 9th, right before the news came that he wasn't gonna be on the board Saturday. Very interesting. He hasn't tweeted at all since then. Not to talk about DOJ coin, not to talk about SpaceX, not to talk about Tesla.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:07):
How often does he tweet?

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
Normally like a hundred times a day. You wanna see all tweets from the last day he tweeted? This is April 9th. Okay. Ready? April 9th, April 9th, April 9th, ninth, ninth, April 9th, April 9th, April 9th, ninth.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:20):
Okay. Yeah, but when he is not on a weird pump and dump

Leo Laporte (00:50:23):
Scheme. Oh, April 8th, April 8th, eighth, eighth, 7, 8, 7. I guess. Somehow he's tweeting in two different time zones. This is my, this is my favorite one. This was the one I bet I'm gonna guess. God him boot bounced from the board. We talked about this on Sunday. Twitter's next board meeting is gonna be lit. He tweets with a picture of him smoking a blunt on Joe Rogan.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:50):
All I have to say is it's so frustrating to see people act like this. When I know that as a woman, if I wandered around acting like this, no one would take me remotely seriously.

Leo Laporte (00:51:01):
Or they give you a reality show called

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:05):
No, they wouldn't. They, it just drives me nuts. Nuts.

Leo Laporte (00:51:08):
What's what's the Kardashians reality show.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:12):
Meet the K they've got a new one.

Leo Laporte (00:51:13):
Yeah, I know. They, they retired and now they're back. Meet. Yeah. Don't the hi. Bonhams I think it would be good. Yeah, but

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:23):
They don't. The Kardashians are still a running joke in the cold. Whereas Elon Musk can get,

Leo Laporte (00:51:29):
They may be a running joke in the culture, but they're rich running jokes. Keeping up with the Hagen. Bonhams

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:39):
Not something necessary at all.

Leo Laporte (00:51:48):
All right. Let's move on to more serious matters. The war in Ukraine, rages on apparently thanks to a security company one of our sponsors and Microsoft I think they do something in the technology sphere. The Ukrainian power grid, which was gonna be taken any minute now was, was stood a Russian cyber attack using they believe it's sand worm, a Russian military group using kind of an old school malware. But Microsoft and east discovered it, the electrical outages were gonna be Friday evening, but having discovered it, they were able to pull down, I guess, the botnets and to avert the blackout that would've taken power out for 2 million people in Ukraine. So this cyber, yeah. Yay. Good guys. Good guys. Win researchers as cyber security companies. You said Microsoft identified and neutralized the malicious software used in the attack

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:55):
And it, but it was, it was a new software just done by an established agency, correct?

Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
No, in destroyer, which was a malware used in 2016 to do the same thing, knock substations often Keve for about an hour. Remember that? Yeah. And we thought this is a little pro, but a little test of of their capabilities. So that was the mama that created the variant that they were gonna use this time dubbed in destroyer two.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:25):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
Okay. The conjuring sand worm is a part of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. It's also accused of causing blackouts in I think 20, 20 or 2021 in Ukraine. So, And here is the wanted poster GRU hacker's destructive malware in international cyber attacks, conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, false registration of a domain name. Oh man, that's gotta have a penalty. 

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:02):
Whew.

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, intention, damage to protected computers and aggravated identity theft. So these guys better not go in a us post office anytime soon.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:15):
I, I think they're safe.

Leo Laporte (00:54:19):
So there's also, this is interesting. A there's so a, a malware called caddy wiper being spread around Ukraine, designed to delete data on infu infected computer systems CA this wiper was also used to disrupt the us satellite communications provider via that on the day of the invasion. You may remember. Anyway. So the, so even though there haven't been an, any catastrophic cyber attacks, it's a it's going on right now, back and forth, back and forth.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:52):
And that makes sense. I mean, you wouldn't expect, I mean, they're losing the, the war on land or they're struggling. I, I wouldn't say losing.

Leo Laporte (00:55:03):
Yeah. I don't want to say anything about it. Except that it's horrific

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:09):
Is. Yeah. Mm. Okay. Let's talk about like tech that isn't gonna make us sound TikTok,

Leo Laporte (00:55:20):
Tiktok. That doesn't make you sad. Well, wait a minute. Tiktok. Oops. Yeah, here's the problem. This is, so we've been talking a little bit about sanctions and how they're not necessarily, in some cases it's to make the company look good rather than to further Ukraine's welfare TikTok kind of banned in a way banned Russia, suspended, new video uploads and live streams from Russia and walled off. This is the thing they did. They walled off Russian users were seeing posts from outside the country, including Ukraine and according to the post, effectively creating a second censored version of its platform. But as a result because the block on Russian content has not been effective. A lot of what's on TAC in Russia now is pro-government propaganda. They're not seeing the story of what's going on outside of Russia. So this is a, this is an example of sanctions gone wrong, I think.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:30):
Yeah, but I mean, these are blunt tools. And so it makes sense that we're gonna have to figure, I mean, in a, in a sense, you'll see, actually, there's another story I think on algo speak, people have to get creative. People will get creative, but I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:56:44):
When you're trying, oh, I love this story. You wanna talk about this? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:48):
I'm just, yeah, it's just,

Leo Laporte (00:56:50):
This is Taylor Lawrence doing great stuff.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:52):
This is, she's doing freed from the New York times. She's doing great work

Leo Laporte (00:56:56):
Post she's now at the post. I was looking forward to doing this story. So if you use TikTok, you know, that the TikTok algorithm looks at things you're saying. And so in order to get around the TikTok algorithm and talk about what you want to talk about TikTok creators have started to use but she calls it algo speak, but euphemisms, for instance, instead of a vibrator, you might have a spicy egg plant. Instead of saying dead, you might say unli she's got a whole, a whole series of stuff. When TikTok started gloss started banning COVID 19 misinformation. People started referring to COVID 19 as the Backstreet boys' reunion tour, or calling it panini, or the Panda express. When young people began to discuss, struggling with mental health, they talked about becoming unli sex workers, call themselves accountants. And instead of using the word favorite, instead of using the word porn, they use the word corn or the, or better yet the corn emoji. So if you see an accountant who's into corn, it ain't what you think it is.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:14):
We've all become Chinese, right? This is, this is all the tricks that the Chinese had.

Leo Laporte (00:58:19):
Oh, no. That's why winning the PO years. That's why Winnie the P

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:24):
That's why they band.

Leo Laporte (00:58:25):
Yeah. They caught up that's the promises

Kevin Marks (00:58:28):
Iterative. Yeah. Yeah. But, but this is, you know, this is, this is, you know, Dana boy again, was explaining how teens have been doing this social networks for 50 decades. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very much like you, you, you use ant that other bud dont understand to talk about what you wanna talk about

Leo Laporte (00:58:45):
POS. I remember when you were when we, my kids were doing, I C Q they'd write POS and I didn't know what it meant. It stood for parents over shoulder. And it was like, just,

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:56):
You know, who was also a POS

Leo Laporte (00:58:58):
Yeah. Yeah. Any vaccine groups on Facebook do this too. They changed their names to dance party or dinner party vaccinated people were referred to as swimmers. I just, it's a great story just cuz I love I, so for instance, instead of saying LGBTQ they use, they say they're members of the leg booty community because apparently that's what the voice synthesizer turns lb GT Q into is like,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:34):
Oh, that's hilarious. I didn't realize that. Know that that's beautiful.

Leo Laporte (00:59:43):
Instead of nipples, can't say nipples, obviously NPN, KNS. If you're gonna talk about crackers, you can't say crackers because the algorithm thinks you're talking about SU white southerners people crackers. So you have to say saltines, which is real really ironic. If you ask me Twitch considers the word, cracker a slur, it is a slur actually. Wow. Thank you. Tale Lorenz for, oh yeah, this is, that's also, here's another one. The TikTok, Texas speech. You can't say lesbian. So what they write is El dollar sign B I a N, which the text to speech pronounces LA dollar bean. So they just started writing LA dollar bean, but you're right. This has been going on. It's probably been going on since you know, the surf saw that the Lord coming said POL

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:38):
Well, yeah, well, it's kind of fun because I I'd be very curious to see how quickly it spreads with social media. Right. So like that's true. How long's true. What's the longevity of your

Leo Laporte (01:00:50):
Much faster right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:50):
Slang or your, what did you call it? Idio dialect.

Kevin Marks (01:00:54):
IDTT. IDT. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:56):
So yeah, that would be a fun thing to research. And is it different on different platforms where older people are, you know, versus where younger people are? I just don't know, but it's super fun. You,

Kevin Marks (01:01:07):
You read Gretchen Al's book on this.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:10):
No,

Kevin Marks (01:01:10):
That's really good. The name of it, hang on.

Leo Laporte (01:01:13):
I think it's back there. Yeah. I think it's on my list from from Jeff

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:19):
I'm like Jeff, do you read all the books on your bookshelf back there? Or

Kevin Marks (01:01:24):
Because, because internet is called

Leo Laporte (01:01:27):
Internet. What a great name for a book.

Kevin Marks (01:01:29):
Understand the new rules of language. Yeah. And, and it it's really good cause she basically, she's a, she's a linguist and she goes through and talks about all these different linguistic constructions that turn up that different groups and subgroups loves that. And also things like different ways people use punctuation on. And so,

Leo Laporte (01:01:47):
Oh, my kids marked me using punctuation and my text messages.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:50):
Oh my daughter, folks were all yelling at her

Kevin Marks (01:01:54):
Full stop straight boo. Yeah. Full

Leo Laporte (01:01:56):
Stop. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:57):
Period. Like if I put a period she's like, they're yelling at and I was like, no, no people our age, just

Leo Laporte (01:02:04):
With periods

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:05):
The right way to write. And she's like, no, it's so harsh.

Leo Laporte (01:02:09):
So we used to think it was typing in caps right now. It's not typing caps. It's simply using punctuation.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:15):
Yeah. Don't use punctuation. That's the moral

Leo Laporte (01:02:17):
Come on.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:18):
So I've got a question for you all. Yeah. So at a journalism school, right. We, we taught proper grammar and the AP style book and all that. And if we take what I say about serving communities where they are we, I think need to accept and value many different linguistic styles, even in a journalism school. Of

Leo Laporte (01:02:41):
Course.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:42):
Yeah. Well, I think that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:43):
Controversial though, in some quarters.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:45):
Well, so I think it also depends on your, your platform. So like in the New York times or in a print paper, I feel like there's probably, you know, like use eighth grade level English when you're writing for, you know, your local daily. Right. Whereas you may do something a little more highfalutin for a magazine and maybe for the TikTok account, you're using different language and emojis. And I don't think that's weird.

Leo Laporte (01:03:11):
It's UN Reddit a lot. There are a lot of non-English speakers. So I often, you know, cut some slack to people, but there's a lot, you see this a lot. I seen, I seen the Waymo or I see a cruise car be pulled over by the PD. I seen it. And at first I'm going well, that's just, you know, ignorant and ungrammatical. And now I'm realizing no, I have to be less judgemental. That's just that's language evolves. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:35):
So I, I was editing a chapter of the Guttenberg book yesterday and I came across this section that I actually wrote. I, I forgot I'd written it. And it occurred to me that that when Monta wrote his essays, he raised the bar on being able to join in the conversation because you had to be a writer.

Leo Laporte (01:03:55):
Yes. Literally, ever since then,

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:57):
We've all, how many people do we know who are scared of writing? Whether it's a memo, it's

Leo Laporte (01:04:01):
Kevin Mark's fault. I can't keep up with his public school. Poncy educat.

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:07):
Exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:04:10):
Mind bothers, man.

Kevin Marks (01:04:19):
But no, but you adopt different, you know, you adopt different, you're talking to you, you, you have it's code switching as well, but it's also, you, you, I would speak differently to you guys about stuff, cuz we've got a bunch of shared vocabulary and, and context and I would speak to, you know, my sons about it or, or someone on me in the street cuz yeah. It's just a question of what's shared and what, what can be done. But the, the, the Gretchens what was interesting. Cause she says a lot of it does show up in where it does show up in where things like punctuation. She says, you can tell old, old people. Cause they always put ellipses in their texts for some, for some reason

Leo Laporte (01:04:53):
I love ellipses.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:55):
You're old.

Kevin Marks (01:04:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:58):
And the end dash,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:59):
Like I'm just looking at my, my text from my kid and they are definitely very different than my text.

Leo Laporte (01:05:05):
Oh. I might have to look at my text for my kids now. See my daughter who's 30 is probably more older than old now. Right? She doesn't, she doesn't count. Oh yeah. No capitalization, no periods. No, no there's no punctuation, no periods. Just a lot of exclamation marks.

Kevin Marks (01:05:24):
Exclamation marks. Yeah. And

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:25):
Tons of tons of what are

Leo Laporte (01:05:28):
This called with my son? The, he capitalizes the first letter of the sentence probably cuz apple does it for him.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:34):
Exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:35):
Ah, good point.

Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
Yeah. And that's the last time it's capitalized. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:41):
And lots of, and ironically mine doesn't maybe it's cuz she's on an Android phone, but she doesn't use a lot of emojis. She just uses 

Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
No, no Henry uses no emojis and, and Abby does use emojis quite a bit. So I that's just maybe what,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:57):
What is it called when you use the letters? Is it leap? No, not lead

Kevin Marks (01:06:01):
Skates.

Leo Laporte (01:06:02):
Emoticons,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:02):
Emoticons. There we

Leo Laporte (01:06:03):
Go. Now year old. Forget a Lipsy Aons Hey shruggy guy. Hey.

Kevin Marks (01:06:10):
Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:11):
Yeah, no, they're not that complicated. They're like the little, but she does. She does the little hearts and

Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
I think it's fascinating. I love language. I love I'm gonna, I've just added the McCullick book to my my audible.

Kevin Marks (01:06:24):
Oh no. I recommend everyone to read that book. Cause it also, it helps a lot when you are, you are reading other people's section. You're like, oh right. Yeah. They're writing this style. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
I get very judgemental.

Kevin Marks (01:06:34):
I'm not sure I can write in those styles, but at least I can read them.

Leo Laporte (01:06:36):
Yeah. And I, I have to train my myself, but Kevin, McWaters been great on that too, which you introduced me to Jeff he's really been good on, on showing me that, you know, he's linguist as well. And it's just, you know, it's, it's, like's how language evolves. It's normal.

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:50):
Well, this is where, pardon me, Gutenberg moment. This is where print came in is, is that I think it's a Baro echo who said that a a dialect is a language without an army.

Leo Laporte (01:07:02):
Oh, I love it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:03):
And, and so when print came in a whole bunch of dial, I mean, when Luther chose to publish in German, that was AOUS decision

Leo Laporte (01:07:12):
The vernacular.

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:13):
Cause he was then speaking to a public number one and number two, he started standardizing German. And so a national identity long before the nation was created, a national identity of, of Germans was created from that moment. And so, so the technology had a huge impact. So now we come around and, and, and, and now you don't have to be ed. You don't have to be literate in the sense of your grandparents. You can change the language. And in fact, use things that aren't in our view language, you can use emoji and you can use memes and other nonverbal nont textual things. And I find that very exciting, but it scares the hell out of people who define literacy around the text that they, that the rules, they knew

Leo Laporte (01:07:56):
It's a form of ignorance. And you know, when my kids are growing up, they would always say, me and my friends did something. Yeah. Right. And I would always say, no, no, it's your friends. And I, it just bugged me or bet. I really hate it when people say between you and I,

Kevin Marks (01:08:13):
It

Leo Laporte (01:08:13):
Just drives me nuts.

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:14):
Oh, that versus which drives me crazy. Yeah. Have you been a copy of there's all kinds of things,

Leo Laporte (01:08:18):
But that's just terrible. That's just, we're just, that's just terrible. We're terrible people

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:23):
Intolerant,

Leo Laporte (01:08:24):
Intolerant. You have just posted in in our IRC, Mr. Kevin Marks Robish is piece the mystery of a Unico, a Unicode character of unknown purpose, which it looks like a a line graph gone wrong is what it looks like to me where the arrow is off the axis is pointing left and down

Kevin Marks (01:08:50):
A, a lightning bolt on the, on the, on the right axis. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:08:54):
Yeah. Right. Angle downward zigzag arrow is the Unicode description of it. Did they ever figure out what the, what the Jonathan Chan set out to uncover its mysterious purpose? Here's Jonathan Chan's blog. It's a Unicode 2, 2, 3, 7 C.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:15):
And it's the opposite of the, the Gartner upper right. Quad.

Leo Laporte (01:09:19):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not a Gartner quadrant. It's it's anywhere. But the Gardner quadrant

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:23):
It's it's where things go wrong. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:27):
I like those Stacy.

Leo Laporte (01:09:28):
Wow. This is a fascinating one. Did you read the, the Chan article? Kevin? I don't.

Kevin Marks (01:09:32):
Yeah, no. I, I read, I think I read that the original article I read, I sort through Twitter and it's like, where, where did, where, what is this similar? Where did it come from? And it's been covered from like list of symbols to symbols. Nobody knows actually what it's for

Leo Laporte (01:09:44):
It comes from it's inherited from the association for font information interchange, a II, which has, was long dissolved in favor of UN code over their gly registry. Anybody at the time could register a gly with the a F I I, for a fee of five to $50.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:07):
Oh, I missed the opportunity.

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
And then when, when Unicode came along, they just absorbed them. Even though there was no, it was somebody paid five bucks to put it in there.

Kevin Marks (01:10:18):
Well, yeah, Unicode had a, initially Unicode was like, okay, we've got lots of space now we're just gonna create everything. And then it's, it's got a bit more organized now and you have to make a case for things. Cause there was,

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:32):
Was the in bang, a late addition to Unicode or was it something that came along in that, in that clump

Kevin Marks (01:10:38):
I'd have to have a look. I mean, there, there there's, you can, you can go back and look at the history, but I mean, there are symbols that look a bit like for angles and things, but yeah, but that one was apparently added at, at some point. Even though no one ever used it for

Leo Laporte (01:10:52):
Anything, I'm gonna start putting it in all my text messages in my kids. See what they say,

Kevin Marks (01:10:57):
But there's, there's also there's looks, there's a, there's a signal a, a magical symbol that looks a bit like it, ah, with a thinking signal, which has been has that has, is, is this where it came from? Did someone put this in as

Leo Laporte (01:11:12):
A, as a prime? It could be a magical, you say single, I say, SI, you say GIF, IIG. I say GIF. I don't know which is right. But yeah. Yeah. SI, cause you know, there are lots

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:24):
Of mathematical symbols that are very

Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
Strange. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it could well be some, you know, some Satanists put it in there a lot long time ago, you know,

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:35):
Did you know? Yes. That from the second century to the seventh century, all scribble text had no spaces.

Leo Laporte (01:11:42):
See, there's a mistake

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:43):
S I continue on.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:45):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:46):
And it makes no sense until somebody's one of the books I read said, the guy who wrote a whole book about the space said that, you know, you're a child, you don't put spaces in. It's just a continuous sound.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:56):
That's why my, like my daughters, when she was in kindergarten, they actually taught them first to write in cursive. And they would just, her writing was in cursive and it was just all

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:08):
Never ending. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:12):
Fascinating was, let's take a little break.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:14):
So now she's like the only, what is it? 15 year old? Who knows cursive.

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Good for her. Good for her.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:20):
She can communicate with y'all

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:22):
How's how's her handwriting. Stacy is, is typing ruined that? Or is it held up decently?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:27):
No, she, she has, I mean, her cursive writing is atrocious, but I mean, she learned it when she was five, but her print is fine.

Leo Laporte (01:12:36):
Okay. Hey, at least she learned it. That's all that matters.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:39):
She can read mine.

Leo Laporte (01:12:41):
Our let's take a little break. I wanna talk to you. Let me show you. I'm so proud of this, Lisa, you know, every morning she says, what's your sleep score? And I have to say, oh, 60, 50, 40. Let me show you my sleep score today. That's a, you see that 90

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:56):
That's cheating.

Leo Laporte (01:12:57):
No, that's the real deal. 93%. And I owe it all to see the name up there. My eight sleep magical eight sleep mattress cover the pod pro I first learned about eight sleep from Kevin Rose, who said, have you tried this? I said, and what is it? He said, well, so, and for what we had for a long time, we had a mattress electric mattress pad that would heat the bed up. But that's, it was one direction was heat the bed up. He said, no, no, no, this doesn't heat the bed up it alone. It cools it down. It can range from in the fifties to, in I think the hundreds. So it has this huge range and it turns out this is evolutionarily, what our bodies want. So imagine if you will, way back when you're sleeping in a log hut or something, you go to bed, put the fire out.

Leo Laporte (01:13:52):
It's warm, you get in bed. Maybe you use one of those. I used to have one of those colonial bed warmers. You put the coals in a bronze pan on a stick. You rub it around and you're you get in there, nice and toasty cozy. But over the night, it gets cooler and cooler and cooler. Your sleep gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And then in the morning you wake up. Well, that's exactly what my eight sleep does. Actually. It has a modern advantage. It starts warm. It's toasty, cools off through the night. So I sleep deeper. And then I've said it to wake me up at 8:00 AM. It gets warm and warms me up and I get it's nice and toasty. I jump outta bed. It is incredible. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. It's nature's best medicine consistent, good sleep can reduce the likelihood of serious health issues decrease the risk of heart disease, lower your blood pressure.

Leo Laporte (01:14:40):
There's even studies that says it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's. And yet so many of us struggle with sleeping. Well, especially as we get older, more than 30% of American struggle with sleep temperature, one of the main causes of poor sleep. Well, I could tell you, I've got the proof right here from, from the low sixties to the upper nineties. I am falling asleep in record time. I love getting in bed. It's cozy fast than I ever have before. All thanks to my eight sleep pot pro cover. After Kevin told me he it was a show with Amy Webb was on. She got it. She said, she keeps saying, get that pod pro. So finally got this. We got this some months ago. It there's, you can get a mattress from eight's sleep, but I think that for most of you who have a mattress, you love, I do the pod pro covers a great solution.

Leo Laporte (01:15:26):
It just goes on it. Pairs, dynamic, cooling, and heating with biometric tracking. So let me, I'll show you this screen again, because this is, this is kind of cool. It's got autopilot on here and the caliber says calibration complete. It's actually monitoring. It's monitoring my sleep and it's changing the temperature based on what it observes. So if I'm restless, it, it turns the temperature down. So the autopilot is, is on and it's automatically calibrating. Let's see what my sleep was yesterday. Let's see. We can go back in time. My sleep fitness score let's see. 93 was that yesterday. Let's get the graphs day before 98. Look at that day before that a hundred percent.

Leo Laporte (01:16:18):
So I have to say, I have never felt better. You can go as cool as 55 degrees as hot as 110 degrees, you get two temperatures. So we're, you know, Lisa and I are sleeping in a king bed. She, she likes it a lot hotter than I did last night. She said, I'm turning it all the way up. I'm like 10. So really it's gonna be kinda warm. She loves it. She loves it. It kind of Soos her muscle aches and stuff. I don't like to start so hot. And, and, but I have to say, as it cools down, my sleep gets deep. The temperature of the coverage, just east side of the bed, based on your sleep stages on it does biometrics. It of checks the bedroom temperature, and it reacts intelligently to create the optimal sleeping environment. A and by the way, I, I really think so right now, it's still cool out, but it's starting to get warm.

Leo Laporte (01:17:06):
This will be the thing to have in the hot summer, those hot summer nights, where you sleep sticky, it's awful. Imagine it's basically air conditioning for your bed. Eight sleep users on average, fall asleep, 32% faster and reduce sleep interruptions by 40% and overall get a more restful sleep. I've never had a hundred percent sleep score. That's amazing. With 30% more deep sleep. I know I'm feeling better. My body and mind are moving through all the sleep stages. The REM the deep sleep vital for physical recovery, hormone regulation, mental clarity. I love my sleep and you are gonna love it too. Go to eight, sleep.com, spell it out. E I G H T eight, sleep.com/TWIG. Check out the pod pro cover. You'll save $150 to checkout eight sleep currently ships within the us Canada and good news. Kevin, the UK eight sleep.com/TWIG. I admit I was a little skeptical.

Leo Laporte (01:18:08):
You remember when I put it on, I told the story, putting it on backwards, do watch the video. They tell you how to put it on. I just, I'm one of those, you know, I didn't, I guess I can do this. I don't need to watch the video. I could clearly see how this works and that was wrong. So watch the video. You put it on. Doesn't take, it takes maybe an hour to get it all set up. You, it uses water, actually, what? It runs water through it. It's not a water bed, but it, but that conducts better. So it uses water and it's just incredible eight sleep.com/TWIG, honestly, there's you don't have to wear any sensors. CJ's asking, how's it get the biometrics it's in the mattress. It's got sensors or in the cover, it's got sensors in the cover, so you're right on it. So it knows where your heart rate is. It knows when you're moving and tossing and turning, it knows when you get up that kind of thing and it adjusts. And I'm not sure there's they describe it. I'm sure on the app, but it, somehow it adjusts and it's great. It's great. Love it. What does a hundred percent sleep even mean? I don't know, but I just know I've ever gotten there. My life.

Leo Laporte (01:19:10):
It's the first time ever. I didn't actually, when I went back, I had not looked at this, so I did not know. So I'm, you know, I, your heart

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:19):
Rate looks really low.

Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
Yeah. You must be

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:21):
Very happy. Yeah. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:19:24):
It's incredible. I, I, I'm a, I'm a, you noticed that. Did you, you notice that? I did. Yeah. So hours 43 minutes asleep wake up consistency was was a little low. I'm working on it. 99% time to fall asleep. 14 minutes times to get up five minutes. It's it's this thing works. That's all I can say. The statistics prove it. I all right. On we go with, yeah, you're in a better mood these days. Have you noticed I'm not I'm maybe it's cuz I'm not sitting on the saddle with a stick that

Speaker 7 (01:20:00):
That has yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Yeah. Kevin, I got this seat. That's supposed to make you like, but it's really just like a bicycle seat on a stick. And so it's, it's extremely uncomfortable. It

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:11):
Was the shortest show we ever did ever. It was like an hour and a half.

Leo Laporte (01:20:15):
And if you, you know, every once in a while they pop pick me up and I I'm, I'm like I can't try to anyway. Yeah. That's the opposite of an eight sleep for your butt. That's the complete opposite plea opposite. Don't don't I don't recommend it. Peggy Newan is still around. Amazing. Was she a speech writer for Reagan Nixon? Nixon? I think

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:35):
So. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
Nixon, Jesus Nixon. So she's a hundred years old. Take,

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:39):
Hold on, hold on.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:41):
Thought it was Reagan, but either way

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:44):
Might be right. 

Leo Laporte (01:20:46):
So wall street, journal opinion piece. How to protect children from big tech companies. Lawmakers are way out of their depth, but a good place to start would be a simple age limit. She says, if you're under 18, get off the internet. Can you believe

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:05):
That? See if you're under 18, delete their stuff from the internet.

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
Don't read the wall street journal.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:13):
I was gonna say, if you're over 70, get off off a newspaper, but that'll be me soon enough.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:20):
And outta Congress,

Leo Laporte (01:21:22):
Why can't we put a street? This is really Roseanne Roseanne advantage. It is. It is why can't we put a strict to age limit on using social media sites. You have to be 18 to join TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Why not? You're not allowed to drink at 14 or driving 12. You can't vote at 15. Isn't there a public interest here applying such control would empower parents who face all the other kids are allowed with an answer because it's against the law that really stopped us from smoking pot. For, for all those years.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:50):
This is your brain on YouTube.

Leo Laporte (01:21:52):
Oh wow. Oh wow. Here's a story. A mother of a large Virginia family who raised her kids closely. And with limited use of social media, the mother took her children to shop for food. The woman at the checkout counter who had been observing the family, asked the mother, do you homeschooled your kids? The mother, mother. Wasn't sure of the spirit of the question, but said why. Yes I do. Why do you ask the checkout woman said because they have children's eyes, not the thousand yard stare of the young, always scrolling on their phones. That's Peggy Newton's proof.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:30):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:22:30):
Proof people should not be on the internet under 18.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:35):
I, I actually think so again, I'm just gonna go from limited sample of my child and her friends she's been aware of the internet, but she's also, we do a, I think we do an okay job talking about, we done a, a good job talking about what it means to post online. And we also did a really good job of not posting stuff of her online as well. So, and we talked about all of that and I feel like she's actually pretty, she doesn't spend a lot of time on social media and she seems pretty

Leo Laporte (01:23:07):
San. I was really worried about Henry and video gaming. But at the same time I wasn't gonna stop him cuz his peers did and he was gonna do it when he went over there and I thought, this is the culture he's grown up in. So I'm gonna let him do it. He doesn't do it anymore. And he didn't do it in to access. Now some kids will of course, but, but I didn't make it a big deal that he couldn't do it. I didn't say limit your hours. And he naturally regulated. Of course he's a to star now. So his attention span is about this long, but other than that,

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:42):
But he could make a living out of it. Maybe that

Leo Laporte (01:23:43):
Maybe actually thinks his a

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:45):
He's gotta edit those videos

Leo Laporte (01:23:47):
Down. Yeah. Some of those

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:48):
He's gotta have some tremendous focus.

Leo Laporte (01:23:49):
32Nd TikTok might take him eight hours, absolutely. To cook and cut and all that stuff.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:54):
Content creation is not for the week cook

Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
Word. Yes. Here is Peggy. Newnan's understanding of how the internet works by the way case. You're I don't know how old, how old is she Jeff? She for Reagan.

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:06):
I think I just hook

Leo Laporte (01:24:06):
It up. She, well, she must have been very young when she wrote for Reagan. She was,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:11):
She was always she's 71 70.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
Well, she's not that old. She's only five years older than me, but she sounds like this for some reason. So,

Leo Laporte (01:24:20):
So I'm gonna have to really be careful about my ageism. I I'm suddenly realizing this isn't gonna work. This ISN, the play so well she says, all right, this is her. And this is her understanding of of how big tech works. The nature of the beast is opaque and fluid. How do you audit an algorithm? It's a moving river changing all the time. The algorithms are proprietary, but constructive regulation must be based on clear information. True. Dad speaking as a child, as a young person word, I asked a speaker if I was thinking correctly, when I imagine algorithms, I see them as a series of waves. Not necessarily in sequence difference in size, pushing my small skiff in this direction or that nor

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:17):
That's not a terrible, I mean, that's actually not a bad,

Leo Laporte (01:25:19):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:20):
Analogy.

Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
Algorithms are like the waves pushing you along the ocean in different.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:26):
I mean that, I mean she's describing dark patterns are just patterns. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
But she was wrong. Apparently the speaker said, no, the algorithm isn't the wave. It's the water. It's the thing upon which you sail to go to a site is to choose to cast off she's she's this is all aimed at her group who apparently are avid sailors. They're all wearing it. It's very, topsiders in the polo shirts and they understand this. They understand this. And that's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:59):
I think she's an opinion columnist. Right? You don't go to opinion columnist looking for yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:04):
Yeah. I, I don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:06):
Credibility.

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
Here's the problem. You take kids off the internet until they're 18. They are disadvantaged if you ask me.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:16):
Oh yeah. I dunno if they're disadvantaged because they'll figure it out. But I, I do think, I do think it's ridiculous to say. I mean, it is just a silly idea to lock children off from the internet. That's not gonna happen. So I mean, it's kind of like let's have

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:31):
Some faith at our kids.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:33):
Yeah. I think people just don't wanna have to deal with this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
This is related to our conversation about linguistics earlier. It's very easy. You for us of a different generation to say, well, that's, that's no good. That's not how I grew up. Go outside and play. By the way. Does your daughter go outside and play?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:53):
If we push her to

Leo Laporte (01:26:56):
I, the other day I was walking around Petaluma and I saw something I almost never see, which is about five or six kids outside play. And I, I thought, wow, homeschooled. Yeah, they must be homeschooled. No, I thought that is weird. You don't see that anymore. And that's cuz you know, stranger danger or whatever. But I can't judge kids growing up today. According to the way I grew up, cuz the way I grew up was was repugnant to my elders. They didn't want us to watch too much TV. I can only watch half an hour a day. You know, that was ridiculous. I'll never forgive them for that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:34):
I had a TV in my room. That's how I became a TV critic.

Leo Laporte (01:27:37):
By

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:37):
The way, chicken. I had a TV in my room and I never watched it.

Leo Laporte (01:27:39):
Chicken head said, there's a reason they were outside playing their internet was down. I don't, I don't do do kids go outside to play anymore? What? What's it like in the play

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:51):
Dates? You schedule

Leo Laporte (01:27:51):
Play dates. You schedule play dates. You go over. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:54):
I mean we used to send her outside and she goes walking and good for her. She goes two places.

Leo Laporte (01:28:00):
Yeah. Yeah. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:02):
We also, I mean like there's not a lot of places you can send your child outside. A lot of people feel like, and so

Leo Laporte (01:28:11):
Well it used to be, you'd go out in the street and you'd play catch.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:16):
I, I know I I've seen leave it to beaver. I get it. But

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
In my day

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:23):
You've had lados kinna on. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:28:25):
I don't know the name

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:27):
Free range kids. She were the

Leo Laporte (01:28:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no I never, I don't think maybe Megan did Megan liked to do a lot of that stuff. Gilbert Gottfried passed away at the young age of 67 way too young. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:41):
Very disturbing.

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
He had a serious illness. You were remember him of course is the loud math comic, but not many people remember him from this Microsoft office ex

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:52):
Before you do a Leo, do you have a Gilbert Godfried voice?

Speaker 8 (01:28:55):
I don't really go. Gober Godfrey. I just know it's and

Leo Laporte (01:29:03):
That's the closest I can get. I haven't worked on it here. Here's the real Gilbert Godfried playing Microsoft's favorite mascot. This is actually

Speaker 9 (01:29:17):
A flash

Leo Laporte (01:29:18):
Video. Microsoft put out in the nineties when office XP came out.

Speaker 9 (01:29:22):
Why? Hello there? Hello? I'm leveraging real time. Legacy compliant, collaborative micro branding to complete the most important project in my company's history. As soon as I finish this proposal, I,

Speaker 10 (01:29:32):
It looks like you're writing a letter. You like hell

Speaker 9 (01:29:36):
You you little metallic,

Speaker 10 (01:29:39):
You little hall. Try rephrasing your query. For example, print multiple copies of a file will lead to stop.

Speaker 9 (01:29:49):
Listen next to Microsoft. Bob, you are the most annoying thing in computer history.

Speaker 10 (01:29:55):
You know Bob he's a friend of mine get

Speaker 9 (01:29:58):
Lost. Didn't you hear?

Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
This is when M I decided to metal to get rid of Clippy, but the best God freed, like moment is

Speaker 9 (01:30:07):
Your toast pal right here. I'm gonna need you to back out of the cubicle.

Speaker 10 (01:30:11):
Oh, really? Office P where we'll just see about this. Hey, you hit, looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like beat it? Hey yo.

Leo Laporte (01:30:25):
Anyway everybody who's who knew Gilbert Guty said he was a very generous sweet guy and

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:33):
Spoke with, I said one that obituary spoke with a Barone

Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
Offstage. I'm sure he didn't talk like that only made up. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with Bobcat gold way. He isn't talked that way. It's not a unusual, yeah, it was a character he was playing. And the voice of Clippy, at least in that one promotional hat they picked

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:51):
Was that, that was, that was Microsoft produced that.

Leo Laporte (01:30:54):
Yeah, because they were get finally getting rid of Clipy getting

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:57):
Rid of Clippy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:58):
Oh, and, and so they picked the most annoying. They

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:01):
Recognized how hated

Leo Laporte (01:31:02):
He was. Yeah. The, but he was hated. He was hated. Oh. And is not much missed big tech pouring a lot of money. This is an article I saw today in the Atlantic into carbon removal. This is interesting. This is basically investing Google and Facebook more than 900 million into a technology that doesn't exist with the hopes that if they pour all this money into it, that somebody will invent it

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:29):
Like an NFT

Leo Laporte (01:31:31):
It's, it's kind of an NFT yesterday in Alliance of prominent Silicon valley companies, Google meta Shopify Stripe announced its purchasing 925 million in carbon removal over the, the next eight years. That's a huge amount of money. The C the purchases, which will be made by a new Stripe owned company called frontier is the largest ever almost a billion dollars. But as you may or may not know, car carbon removal right now is kind of a, a pipe dream. So there are a lot of carbon removal projects, 14 different startups that will be funded by this, including carbon built, which is trying to, sequ trying no the word to sequester carbon by capturing it in concrete, the future forest company, which seeks to accelerate the natural process of rock weathering. I I'm not what's that mean, I, I don't know, there's a link project, Vesta, which wants to line bees with a carbon capturing mineral called VE. There is, there is a kind of a a precedent for this in 2010. The Atlantic says a set of donors committed one and a half billion to buy doses of vaccine for streptococcus pneumonia before it had, before it had been invented, it's called an advanced market commitment. And it's spur in, you know, if it works the rapid invention and deployment of a product in this case, a pneumococcal vaccine, which has since saved 700,000 lives worldwide. So it worked in that case. But 

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:14):
I've, I've been writing about carbon sequestration since I was in college working like an internship at business week. So some of these are I'm like, yeah, sure. Maybe one day you know, they've got a lot of money to spend. This is a big deal. I mean, no, it government funding, it

Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
Might be, I mean, it might be real. Yeah. I mean, we need to do, we

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:35):
Don't have the federal budget going into a lot of this stuff. And I, I think, I mean, would I like a more organized response than like private companies finally deciding that this is what they should do. Yes. But we don't have that. So

Leo Laporte (01:33:51):
This is different from carbon credits or I guess it could be a kind of carbon credit. I don't know if that qualifies. We buy, for instance, at twit, we buy every month carbon credits to offset the carbon we use with our lights and, you know, all the, all the power we use from a firm called, I can't remember the name of it, but actually I think I have it here, Terra pass Terra pass. And so I think they do a variety of different projects X to offset carbon, whether it's plant trees, although that's often been that's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:29):
Carbon credits are a little bit of a scam.

Leo Laporte (01:34:31):
Yeah. Well, I know there, but I wanna do something, you know, I mean, maybe I should buy, you know, maybe I should buy these carbon sequestering technologies. I don't know. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:42):
I mean, who knows how we're gonna get there.

Leo Laporte (01:34:45):
Right. We feel like we, Lisa and I feel like we've got a, you know, this is the least we can do. It might be literally quite literally the least we can do. It's more than plant trees though. They do local projects. They have a large variety of things that they they do. I picked this one because the Yale school of forestry recommended it. I figured, well, okay. You know, they must, they must know,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:08):
Or they must have gotten money to recommend them.

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't. It wasn't in a, a context like that. It was actually an interview with somebody in the forestry department and they said, well, what do you do to, to keep the world green? She said, well, most of us when we travel, we'll buy carbon credits from Terra pass. And they mentioned another company, I think. Yeah. So, Hey, these are foresters. They do this company does a lot about it, but at the same time, I, I understand completely. It's like a drop in the bucket, let's try

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:40):
It all. Let's try everything.

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
Let's do everything, do

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:43):
Stuff, man.

Leo Laporte (01:35:43):
That's why Lisa and I drive all like vehicles or solar panels and we could

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:48):
Stop doing as much we could stop buying as much stop.

Leo Laporte (01:35:51):
Well, I agree. The best thing to do would not be to have personal car ownership. For instance, that'd be a fantastic solution. Right. But Intel has said we're gonna have well sort of net zero carbon by well, let's see, 20, 20 40 would that, is that okay with you? The problem is it does, it only affects scope one and two, which is raw materials, manufacturing. It is not gonna affect SCORP scope three emissions, which it turns out are the biggest source of carbon

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:25):
What's pollution footprint of, of, of chip fabbing.

Leo Laporte (01:36:28):
Pretty bad

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:29):
Water.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:30):
It depends on what you're measuring. Yeah. There's the water ass, but there's a

Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
Lot, lot of bad chemicals.

Kevin Marks (01:36:36):
Well, I also like, it takes a lot of mining to make pure Silicon as well, right?

Leo Laporte (01:36:41):
Yeah. the chemicals that are integral to Intel's process include per flora, carbons. Those, those are not good. I remember that FCS, FCS and other gases that warm the planet, thousands of times more than carbon dioxide, the problem is they, they still need to make chips and, and they don't yet have a way to do it without per floor carbons among other things.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:04):
We're still waiting on those, those what room? Temperature superconductors. Yeah. One day

Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Some break. Yeah. Yeah. Someday

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:11):
That's coming. When we get carbon and all, all wrapped up. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:16):
All right. Yeah. Let's cheer up. Let's cheer up because fine. We have free. Amazon is renaming IMDB TV, which is way too many letters,

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:27):
But I didn't even know what existed was IMDB

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
TV. You know what? I threw this in because there is a large contingent of our audience that says you never talk about free TV solutions like Tobe and Pluto and IM DBT. These are ads

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:44):
BTV is fun to say by the way, IM D

Leo Laporte (01:37:46):
BTV IM DB TV.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:47):
So I, I get rid of that. I

Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
IM DBT. I like that. Yeah. Free V though. I don't know. Free. V's gotta kind of like the whole idea is you get television ad supported television over the top, over the internet. And that's why Amazon probably is interested. They're gonna move. It's called a OD advertising supported video on demand. They're gonna move a bunch of stuff that's done well on Amazon prime, over legacy sprung, the home design series, Hollywood house lift.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:20):
Okay. So it's another revenue stream for their content. They put on prime video first. So it's, it's like windowing. That's actually pretty savvy,

Leo Laporte (01:38:30):
Right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:32):
Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
Amazon hasn't release an active user metric for free, according to tech crunch, but in may, they reported, they have 120 million monthly active users across all the ad supported content, IMDB, TV, twitch.tv, live sports. So that's a lot, 120 million Maus. Ain't bad. You know who doesn't have a Maus,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:58):
Cnn.Com or CNN, sorry, not CNN plus

Leo Laporte (01:39:00):
CNN plus,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:02):
Plus they're

Leo Laporte (01:39:04):
Not doing so hot New,

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:08):
But yeah. It's not a good social beginning.

Leo Laporte (01:39:10):
Yeah. So they're saying now 10 million daily active users. No, that can't be right. Is that right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:17):
No, there was 10,000,

Leo Laporte (01:39:19):
10,000. That's a difference. There's a difference. A few extra zeros. Yeah. 10,000. We actually have more than that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:30):
That's that's actually what I was thinking. I was like, oh, leave it

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:32):
A year.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:34):
Yeah. We have a okay.

Leo Laporte (01:39:36):
Significantly more than that. 10,000 daily active users on

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:40):
How much have they spent so far? It's, it's a

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
Huge 300 million.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:44):
Yeah. It's like, quibi

Leo Laporte (01:39:47):
Well, but this one, I think they're in for the long haul because they realize they they've gotta do something right. Streaming 

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:55):
Or they've gotta they're they they're, they're part of the discovery thing.

Leo Laporte (01:39:59):
Yeah. They merged.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:01):
They're gonna cut the heck out of it with a new boss. I bet. Cause it was the old boss's idea.

Leo Laporte (01:40:05):
This is A's story. Hundreds of millions of dollars expected to be cut from the original investment total. They were gonna invest about a billion over the next four years. The new company's leadership team has yet to decide the ultimate fate of CNN. Plus Chris lick, who is the new boss starts May 1st. Is that, is that he's replacing what's his name from Zucker Zucker from CNN. Okay. Yeah. So Zucker was forced out because he was dating a subordinate. Hiring has been frozen at Warner media for the past six weeks. There is a, this is all Axios reporting. There's a sense of confusion internally as to why CNN did not push back the launch of CNN plus a until after the discovery merger. The other problem I've heard from people saying, but it doesn't have live news on it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:59):
Yeah. You can't get CNN.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:01):
Yeah. So that, because

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:02):
That would piss off the theos,

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
The cable companies. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:06):
Yeah. They're what is that? The I innovators dilemma right there.

Leo Laporte (01:41:10):
Yep. In a nutshell. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:11):
Yeah. Stacy. Right, right.

Leo Laporte (01:41:14):
They much, they say much of the subscriber opportunity should come from international markets. So in other words, they don't piss us off the us MSOs.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:23):
Yeah. But I mean, if you don't have news, what is CNN?

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Right. Well, it's a bunch of shows. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (01:41:31):
It's CNN. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:32):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:35):
Cable network. Just like it's

Leo Laporte (01:41:37):
Cable network Without news. It's just the cable network in the us yesterday. CNN launched on Roku, one of the largest smart TV companies in the country that might help it. Wasn't on Roku. Okay. but yeah, there's a big, there's a lot of flux happening at the top. So, and that's, I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:56):
There's a lot of flux happening in, in

Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
Cooper. In general. Yeah. What, yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:02):
But who watches? Those shows?

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:04):
I know.

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Well only 10,000. It's just CNN

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:07):
Mean. I don't know who watches, watches. CNN just in general. I mean like million

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
By the way, was in my mind because that how many subscribers Disney plus got in its first few months, 10 million. So 10,000,

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:21):
60 bucks a year.

Leo Laporte (01:42:23):
Yeah. It's five bucks a month, right? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:25):
Up to 12 da live daily and weekly shows each day. So they do have live, but they're more like talking show things interactive, Q and as with experts, you, the interview club

Leo Laporte (01:42:36):
Working

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:37):
Free element street,

Leo Laporte (01:42:37):
It's a podcast

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:42):
On demand, original series and films, live news coverage and exclusive reporting. So they'll have some kind of

Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
Have, has any, any of you sampled it? I have it. Oh. And I watch CNN every night. I go home and I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:55):
Don't watch news shows. I'll be honest. So I'm not great.

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:59):
I think MSNBC's gonna be the same trap because now, now Rachel Mado is gonna go to Mondays only for some limited period, by the way, until she goes off and does other projects. Oh, that

Leo Laporte (01:43:10):
Explains it. I, and she was on, I thought, what are you doing here? I thought you'd left.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:15):
Not quite

Leo Laporte (01:43:16):
Okay. She's she's got one foot left in the door.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:20):
It's like, it's a slow roll.

Leo Laporte (01:43:25):
Here's an, this is this. I hope these aren't your numbers of the week. Did you do the security cost of security? Corporate? No security.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:32):
I did do the CNN, but that's okay. I don't.

Leo Laporte (01:43:34):
Okay. You still have one? I won't touch it. I, yeah, I won't touch that last one. So it's apparently, I didn't know. This mark Zuckerberg only gets paid a dollar a year.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:46):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:43:48):
But his security is 27 million. Of course he doesn't get any of that unless well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:54):
Given the coverage about him, I gotta say,

Leo Laporte (01:43:57):
Oh, it's worth it. Every penny of it. He's the most expensive security CEO, actually his number two, Cheryl Sandberg's 9 million. Senator Patia only caught us 4.3 million a year. CEO of snap, Evan speak 2.3 million. Larry get bigger

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:16):
Than is there. I'd say snap. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:18):
Nobody's going after you, Evan. Well, you know what? Their offices are down there on Santa Monica beach and boardwalks. I mean Venice beach. So it's a little,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:26):
Is it a, is it a function of location or how much they travel or

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Jeff Bezos? 1.6 million. They don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:33):
What he tough now. He's tough. He

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:35):
Travel can find

Leo Laporte (01:44:36):
Anybody. He could protect himself.

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:39):
He wears Jarvis.

Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
Is that the name of his clothes? Jarvis?

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:44):
No, that's the, the movie. Oh, the Jarvis suit.

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
Oh, the Jarvis suit. Warren buffet only 273,000. But he only to McDonald's in back. He doesn't exactly. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:54):
He lives in Omaha. Yeah. Who comes to him? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
Yeah. Wow. TW so that includes a private aircraft. Of course. The, let's see the filing attributed the higher cost to per regular personal travel COVID 19 protocols and the increased expense for security personnel.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:23):
I wonder if it was, he did that thing around the country. Was that last year? No, that was two years.

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
That's two years ago, but yeah. Pre pandemic. This is up over

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:31):
Now, Stacy.

Leo Laporte (01:45:31):
Yeah. Everything two years ago. Life was two years ago.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:36):
It's coming back.

Leo Laporte (01:45:37):
I,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:38):
I bet you this trip.

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
I bet you Elon's got some pretty hefty security. Although

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:42):
He's got a lot of children.

Leo Laporte (01:45:44):
He's got eight kids. I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:45):
Don't know if eight. Yeah. That

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:46):
And

Leo Laporte (01:45:47):
He doesn't have a home. He's homeless.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:50):
He's not homeless. He's living in somebody's mansion in Austin and

Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
Couch. Surfing does not count.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:57):
Okay. The person doesn't live there. It's a whole city where his spaceships are.

Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
That's true. In, in Boca, Chica. He probably has a rather large bachelor pet and Boca Chica.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:10):
I mean, he's still sleeping on the floor of his factories. You come on. That's why he's absolutely

Leo Laporte (01:46:17):
Tweeting. Let's see. Oh, we should, I should hustle this along change log. We gotta do the change log and all that stuff. We're not even close to done. You know, I have so much fun talking with you guys. I we, we only, we rarely get through all of our stories.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:31):
What's your longest shows normally what? This show, which,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:35):
Which show this one. It's always this show

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:38):
Stacy

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:39):
Grow. Stacy's like,

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:40):
Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:41):
Man. I had cake in the beginning, so I'm okay. Oh good.

Leo Laporte (01:46:45):
Is it? Somebody's birthday?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:47):
My birthday was yesterday.

Leo Laporte (01:46:48):
Happy birthday. Happy

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:50):
Birthday.

Leo Laporte (01:46:52):
Oh, that's great. Did you Was cake? What else happened? There was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:56):
Cake. Yeah. nothing much happened. I did a, I did all my birthday stuff. I went on a hike over the weekend. Nice. So cuz yesterday it snowed

Leo Laporte (01:47:04):
What?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:05):
Geez. I know. I was like, hello. It is snow. It's

Leo Laporte (01:47:09):
Like snow. It's a Alan Morse song, right? It was like snow on your birthday.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:14):
I'm pretty sure it was rain on your wedding day.

Leo Laporte (01:47:17):
Yeah. Plus

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:17):
Thank you. Thanks. Lannis

Leo Laporte (01:47:22):
Let's do the Google change log. The Google change log. Kevin. This is where I pretend to care about things. Google's up to, we haven't had a lot of Google news told 'em to yeah. They made me do this. Google quietly launches. It's a waited switch to Android app for iOS. Have you been awaiting this? I don't know how it, it promises long

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:47):
Waited a decade.

Leo Laporte (01:47:48):
Geez. Yeah. Yeah. Apples had a switch to iOS forever on Android. The app promises. You

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:55):
Can write, you can writes friend, right? Apple. Wouldn't let you ship on.

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
Oh, there you go. That's a good point. I wonder how, how they got this past past apple, the 

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:05):
Oh, that worry about antitrust.

Leo Laporte (01:48:07):
Oh yeah. You know what that's exactly what this is. That's why finally it promises to make the transition between mobile platforms, easier to manage, you know what, the number one feature it, instructs users, how to turn off Apple's iMessage so that you can get text messages on your Android device. It's not easy kids not easy at all. There was a switch to Android website, but it doesn't mention the app and the company has not officially announced the app. So I think they're trying to sneak in under Apple's radar. Sh don't tell anybody here's a a gallery of images for you just, just to make you, I don't know what desire this. I, you know, people do this all the time, I guess, right? Switch to Android, I guess. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:00):
Google is

Leo Laporte (01:49:01):
This is some guy talking mostly. All right. That's enough. I don't care about you. Googley has dropped its prices. Yay. I'm a fi customer on my pixel six for unlimited plans. It's adding more data mobile plans. Now let's see. The simply unlimited plan has gone from $60 to $50 per line, $40 for two lines, $25 for three per line, $20 per month for four lines. That includes 35 gigs of high speed data, which is a big increase over the former 22 gigs and includes five gigs of hotspot tethering. I I think Google finds a good a good deal. It is.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:43):
I keep pausing mine because I used it for

Leo Laporte (01:49:46):
International. But the fact that you can is another reason to use it, right? Yeah, yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:50):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
You do, of course you get throttle. If you go past 35 gigabytes, but Google says only 1% of five users ever hit 35 gigabytes a month and you can even then buy more at $10 a gigabyte. So not nice. Nice. If you're a fi a fi user

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:12):
AHI fan a

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:13):
Fan

Leo Laporte (01:50:15):
Fi five. Oh, Fu Google. Now lets you search for things. You can't describe.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:24):
I, I laughed at this, but I was also like, well you, yeah, that is what I need. So sure. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (01:50:29):
Yeah. I found this thing in a drawer. What is it? Yeah, I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:32):
Can see that. I'm trying to remember that book, I read three years ago with the lady in the, the dinosaur, what was it? You

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:39):
Want something that looks like? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:50:43):
It's kind of that way, like the example that the verge gives is you like this, but you want it in green, so yeah, no it's yeah, that happens. Right. And then you, there's a, like, there are dresses like that dress, but in green it's a Google lens feature sort of too. You can. She's. So she's, she's taking a picture of a notebook that has nice leaves on it and she's searching for, for wallpaper drapes. Can

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:11):
I live around that notebook?

Leo Laporte (01:51:14):
That's kind of interesting. Or like I would type a house. I want the, I want my house to look like that. So this is an interesting addition to search. These are AI models, I guess, that have to,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:24):
Oh, did we talk about Dolly, Dolly too?

Leo Laporte (01:51:29):
Dolly. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:29):
Put it on link to Dolly there last week. I tried it, but that, that link, I can't find that we'll

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
Get there. We can actually do it. That's not a change log, please. Let's stick

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:36):
To the, oh, sorry, sorry. Sorry.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:38):
My bad,

Leo Laporte (01:51:39):
Please. Let me do,

Kevin Marks (01:51:41):
Makes it co to this, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (01:51:43):
Yeah. It's the side talk is what makes it so exciting? No, really is actually Google joins Samsungs.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:52):
It's definitely not your delivery. It's

Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
Not my delivery. Ho hum. Google joins Samsung and working with, I fix it on a self repair program.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:03):
You repair your own phones.

Leo Laporte (01:52:04):
I have my pixel four. I told you that I got an I fixed and battery and smudger and all I did it myself. Just, just for the experience. That's the sci-fi board board voice. I read a whole article on this that apparently it's taking over in the sci-fi this this kind of like you, this voice, like at the beginning of her the way Joaquin Phoenix is kind of down is, is a way of expressing that you're in a dystopia. They use as an example the voice, the Google

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:42):
Change log, AKA, the TWIG dystopia

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
Dystopian. Yeah. You know, you're in a dystopia when you hear my voice and I'm

Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Latest Android, 12 QPR three beta includes a fix for dirty pipe on pixel six, dirty pipe is an exploit that you probably will never encounter. That gives an attacker full control of any Linux based device, including Chromebooks and Android phones. You have to have a fairly recent version of the ger. Well, it's kind of interesting. You have to have a recent enough version of Linux Colonel to be subject to it, but not the most recent which is fixed. Unfortunately the pixel six and the S 22 from Samsung are vulnerable. So fixes are going out. They spent some time talking about this yesterday on all about Android. Samsung says they patched the dirty pipe in the galaxy S 22 and the April update. I just checked this morning just now it fact right before the show, I, I do not have the April update yet. So come on and get me hackers. My dirty pipes are open and that's the Google change log Dolly. This is from open AI D double L dash E two. What is Dolly?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:11):
We just did the entire changelog yeah, yes. Sorry. I got just,

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
She was doing something

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:17):
Else. I was getting Dolly.

Leo Laporte (01:54:17):
You complain about my voice, but you're not listening.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:21):
I was looking, I was making, I was making Corey and top hats 

Leo Laporte (01:54:25):
On Dolly. I hope.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:27):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:54:28):
So Dolly can make realistic edits to existing images from a natural language caption. So is that what you were doing?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:36):
Yes. So you give it an idea of something you would like to see and it makes it so, you know, Quirky's and talk. I tried last

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:42):
Week to do squirrels fighting and it didn't work.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:46):
What give you now? I wanna do squirrels fighting weird,

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:50):
Weird shapes. I should have saved it. I, I

Leo Laporte (01:54:52):
Accidentally. So here's the girl with the Pearl earing? I don't know. It doesn't say what, what they did to, it's just, it just cha Dolly just changed it to a different girl with the Pearl earing. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:04):
A, yeah, it's a, it's in the style of the girl with the Pearl. Yeah. Here's style of the mirror.

Leo Laporte (01:55:09):
Here's the, here's the, here's the kiss. Gustav CLEs, famous painting. And here's somebody else kissing. It looks like an sleeping bag. Here's a bunch of rat TUI style rats and here's some more, oh, look at it. Afternoon in the park with George still pointless, but Theyre now are apple trees and instead of dogs, they're pigs with muzzles. So that's fascinating. So that's so that's one of the things it does is it just takes images and modifies them. You could, you could text description, create, like if you write an astronaut, riding a horse in a photo, realistic style, you'd get this. If you say Teddy bears mixing sparkling chemicals as mad scientists as a 1990 Saturday morning cartoon. Well, that's pretty good, but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:59):
These are, yeah. That's why it's fun.

Leo Laporte (01:56:00):
These are all the examples. So where do I get to? Do

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:03):
You have to

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:04):
Wait it down? Oh yeah. They had it up in the story about a,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:08):
Of people are

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:08):
Playing with it. Now it's down.

Leo Laporte (01:56:09):
They put it on a wait list. Oh.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:12):
But you can see a lot of people's efforts with it and they're, they're super fun.

Leo Laporte (01:56:16):
Yeah. Polar bear with a bass guitar kind of a Mon painting. Do this is their video, I guess.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:26):
I mean, it's, it's basic, you know, with like GP G PT, G PT,

Leo Laporte (01:56:31):
But yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:32):
It

Leo Laporte (01:56:32):
Was like, so it's a general, it's sort of a general AI taking a, a dog and making it cute. Cat. That's pretty good. I don't trust these example.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:45):
That's that's why I did it. It was really, it was like the

Kevin Marks (01:56:50):
Cherry picked the good ones for like all of these things.

Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Marks (01:56:53):
By the text writing ones

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
As well. Okay. Well, if one of you gets into the the, you know, the trial, let me know so we can play with it. That'd be fun

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:02):
Here. Go to, let me see if this will give you something. Okay. Go to this one here. Copy. Where do you want me to stick this link?

Leo Laporte (01:57:13):
Put it in the chat room. IRC,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:16):
The IRC. All right. Do, do, do

Leo Laporte (01:57:20):
Less wrong.com. Less wrong playing with the Ali, Dave or who got access to this? He said just a golden doodle puppy and play position. That's pretty good. I don't know what you, you know, I don't know what the purpose of it is. Oh, there's something wrong with that one. Yeah, but I mean, it never, this never existed, right? This isn't clip art. This never existed.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:44):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:57:46):
In a sense kittens,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:48):
You could illustrate your blog post perfectly. Oh. Or you could create really weird stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Ah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:56):
Moral panic about deep fakes counting down 10, 9, 8.

Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
Oh. And then you can add to it. So you could say in a surreal style. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:08):
See, so you like, if you scroll through all these dogs,

Leo Laporte (01:58:10):
Playings dogs playing poker by reir in the style of, reir not really that doesn't look like a reir, especially with the dogs, potato

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:21):
Wearing a trench coat in a heroic pose, 3d digital art. Nice. I mean, I didn't know. I wanted to see that, but

Leo Laporte (01:58:28):
Here's a poem about the singularity written in the Sarah font. Tiny snitty. Griffy

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:37):
I think that's, I thought maybe

Kevin Marks (01:58:38):
It looks more like text than a lot of these things look like text.

Leo Laporte (01:58:40):
Yeah. A poem about the singularity on the back wall at gymnasium. Interesting. Well, I like the idea. I can't wait to play with it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:51):
I mean it, yeah. It's, it's just, it's a good way to explore. And people have already been exploring like a CEO and it shows only white men or a nurse in a show is only Asian women.

Leo Laporte (01:59:01):
Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:02):
You know, so there, but it's, It's a good way to show like where our biases are. Oh, look at

Leo Laporte (01:59:09):
This. Oh, this is the one you like heroic potato.

Speaker 6 (01:59:12):
Yeah. That's good. That's good. 

Leo Laporte (01:59:18):
Combine this with Wolf frame alpha. You could get some interest. Yeah. Effects. This is interesting. I like this. I'd like to play with it. You know what? It's just a matter of time before this becomes better and better and better.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:30):
Let's see. Here's here's stock art. Hello, world printed on a computer screen. Yeah. My favorite is hell word,

Leo Laporte (01:59:38):
The new, the new hello world. Look at that. So he's, which is nice in this blog post@leswrong.com. He's putting a whole bunch of the images that generated instead of cherry picking the one that's that's great. Right,

Kevin Marks (01:59:55):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:59:56):
And that's what G P T always has been. You know, you, if you ask it to write some pros, you pick, you know, one out of samples. Oh, this is cool. An Outback Australian landscape with T-Rex dinosaurs being chased by ducklings.

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:09):
These are better than every single NFT I've seen.

Leo Laporte (02:00:12):
I know. Yes. I know that is what's your take on web three, Kevin, I I'd really like to know.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:20):
Let's have a, like, can we brew a cup of tea for the, I feel like we've gotta

Leo Laporte (02:00:23):
Sit down. You'll get some tea. This is good. Sit down.

Kevin Marks (02:00:25):
Well, I can give you, give you the short version of it. I mean, it basically is not the web, so go away. It's

Leo Laporte (02:00:30):
That's good. I like it.

Kevin Marks (02:00:32):
The web doesn't have version numbers. Web two was a, was a a mistake or rather a, it was a, it was a sort of marketing thing. Web three, is we trying to break the web? We're trying to make the web, not the web. We're trying to turn it into some weird financial nonsense and it's all hand waving. There's nothing that there's no, there, there, and it's basically Dixon and COA, a 16 Z trying to bump and dump things. And yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
Like this NFT vending machine in the Manhattan financial district the prices of NFTs range from $5 to $420

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:10):
You put in money and nothing comes out.

Leo Laporte (02:01:13):
You get a QR code to scan is no, actually something apparently does come out

Kevin Marks (02:01:19):
Once it's like Bitcoin ATMs don't ever give you any money. They just take it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:23):
Yeah. I'd rather go to

Leo Laporte (02:01:24):
My bird. What a good design is that right? That's a great design. They give you a QR code. You scan it. Now the Bitcoin is in your wallet though, right in Siri, but they've got the dollars.

Kevin Marks (02:01:36):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
Okay, good. That's my take on too. Thank you. The web three, the web three is not the three

Kevin Marks (02:01:42):
Is going great as a site to, to read about it, which I'm sure you've already covered, right?

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's Andre ho Horowitz's attempt to, you know, make money. That's their job. I don't blame him.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:53):
Yeah. Yeah,

Kevin Marks (02:01:54):
No. It's basically speed running financial crises.

Leo Laporte (02:01:58):
Oh, they that's a good bull Mo like that.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:01):
There we go. There's our new title.

Leo Laporte (02:02:03):
I'll tell you what. Kevin's better than Dolly.

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:09):
Kevin is artificial

Leo Laporte (02:02:10):
Pop in a coin. Give him a concept. Epigram Craig Newmark has put $50 million in complete this sentence.

Kevin Marks (02:02:22):
Jeff Chavis.

Leo Laporte (02:02:24):
Jeff Jarvis.

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:25):
No, no,

Leo Laporte (02:02:25):
No, no, no, no. Civil cyber, civil cybersecurity. Cyber civil defense.

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:31):
Yeah. He's worried.

Leo Laporte (02:02:33):
Yeah. What is, so what is so he's gonna focus on expanding cybersecurity, education and literacy. This is all through Aspen. Institute's Aspen digital program, opening career opportunities in the cybersecurity field, in an inclusive manner. There are certainly plenty of career opportunities right now in that field and developing security tools and services for protecting individuals and small businesses. It's kind of a vague portfolio, but okay. Is Aspen Institute good? I mean will, they'll be

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:04):
Good? It, it run by a friend of ours, a new Vivian or the digital piece is run by a friend of his and mine named Vivian chiller. It feels

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:11):
So fancy though. Like how are you gonna get the right people there? The Aspen

Leo Laporte (02:03:15):
Institute?

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:16):
Yeah. Well they do the, well

Leo Laporte (02:03:17):
You do ski. Don't you Stacy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:20):
Well, I've, I've done it. I've done Aspen.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:24):
I've done Aspen.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:26):
Well. So even the dogs get facelifts in Aspen for that way,

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
But whatever, whatever you do in Aspen do not. If you're a dog, hang around a room here it is. It finally happened. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the vacuum that ate buddies tail.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:51):
I watched that 10 times. You

Leo Laporte (02:03:52):
Did really? Jeff, did you put this in here?

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:55):
I did. I put it in, of course I did.

Leo Laporte (02:03:56):
Okay. Of course he

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:57):
Could guess that.

Leo Laporte (02:03:58):
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:58):
I think Jason put like any like this there. No, he's serious.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:02):
And it's, I don't put things in there at all. So you knew it wasn't

Leo Laporte (02:04:05):
Me. Then you must have also put in audiobook, narrators as a TikTok thing.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:11):
This is interesting. I thought

Leo Laporte (02:04:15):
10 audiobook narrators. You need to follow on, on TikTok. See, I know a lot of these guys, cuz I listen to audiobooks read religiously.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:23):
So they all do something different.

Leo Laporte (02:04:25):
Getting back audio corrections.

Speaker 11 (02:04:27):
The mistake says, you said blush instead of blush. You know what I probably did. Let's see An nod. My head as some of the blush dissipates.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:44):
That's pretty good.

Leo Laporte (02:04:45):
That's Kelsey D Navarro. Okay. Here's Cindy. K I dunno if I can play this one. She's narrated the Emper of salt and fortune the mermaid J J and scattered all over the earth.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:59):
Oh no, the blooper does bad words.

Leo Laporte (02:05:00):
Bad words. Bad words. Okay. We'll skip that one. Michelle Lee I've listened to some of her books actually. Lisa has the red palace. Mark of the Empress snow roses. Oh, this is

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:09):
Funny. Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:05:10):
Today's narrator trip up is I arrived at an abandoned encampment. Can you say it in one? Try.

Leo Laporte (02:05:18):
I arrived at an abandoned encampment. It's

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:21):
Not easy. Yeah. Add an add in,

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Add an abandoned. Yeah. They give me stuff like that. All the time. Chelsea Steven's narrator. Chelsea on the TikTok. She's done. Catherine Ann Porter's pale horse pale writer, Montessori, the science behind the genius. Many other books here,

Speaker 11 (02:05:35):
Starting a new audiobook. Get coffee, get cozy, get reading. I'm gonna look up any words. I'm not sure of any accents, any pronunciation. This is more like languages. How she does it so I can ensure correct pronunciation. Then when I'm all done with that, I'm gonna get water and lots of water and

Leo Laporte (02:05:51):
Vodka

Speaker 11 (02:05:52):
And even more water. Well

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:54):
She, she doesn't go to a studio. She does it at home.

Leo Laporte (02:05:55):
Yeah. I imagine a lot of people do that. It's a lot of water.

Speaker 11 (02:05:58):
When it's to record, I'm gonna grab my most inspirational cup, get some love,

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
See,

Speaker 11 (02:06:05):
And then get,

Leo Laporte (02:06:08):
See these tos that get too long. Now Natalie notice I know 30 seconds and I'm

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:15):
Catch. Are there only women who do, is it mostly women who do audio?

Leo Laporte (02:06:19):
No, but apparently that's mostly women who do audio narration on TikTok, TikTok.

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:23):
I

Speaker 13 (02:06:23):
Just don't know audiobook narrator.

Leo Laporte (02:06:26):
Sponsor's got a nice voice.

Speaker 13 (02:06:26):
Absolutely nobody. Nice voice. It is a 4 million of winter break. It feels like my children are never going back to school. I get them outside. I do some stretching, AKA contemplate existence for a little bit, drink some tea.

Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
I like her voice.

Speaker 13 (02:06:39):
She had a it's pretty chilly outside the barn. Cat has come in to warm her cozies. She lives out.

Leo Laporte (02:06:44):
I would listen to her books. Here's a guy, Ronnie Butler Jr. He's narrated P shepherds. The cartographers how long till black future months and rebound let's listen.

Speaker 14 (02:06:56):
All the while her inner muscles had clenched him.

Leo Laporte (02:06:59):
Okay. We can't do that. That's pornographic.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:04):
I was not prepared for that. I was like, I I've read how much of black future money. I was like,

Leo Laporte (02:07:10):
I don't think that's from black future months. I don't think so. I could

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:14):
Be ill to one right now where whatever, because one of the hard things for an audiobook is when you got a quote, but you don't say quote, how you signal that. It's a quote. Yeah, usually just a little. I do it like Gilbert Godfrey. Well, the one I do now goes into a, a higher level whisper higher, higher quote, and then back down on this and then a higher level.

Leo Laporte (02:07:32):
The real challenge is when it's male readers doing female voices is

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:36):
Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:07:37):
Sometimes comedic. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:40):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:07:42):
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:43):
I've returned audio books. Which audible lets you do come

Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
Bless if you don't like the reader. If the,

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:48):
If the reader, if it's like a book about Germany and they can't pronounce

Leo Laporte (02:07:52):
Anything

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:53):
In Germany drives me bad.

Kevin Marks (02:07:54):
Yeah. That's

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:56):
John.

Leo Laporte (02:07:57):
Oh, I hear that all the time. Do you say now Kevin Marks, you're probably an authority on this. I'm gonna ask you K L U D G E as in, you know, a kind of ugly programming trope. What, how do you pronounce that?

Kevin Marks (02:08:09):
I, I'm not sure. Cause I, I think it's one of those words I read before. I've heard anyone say it. So I, I would've said club. Yeah. But I think it is CLE

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:17):
It's Klugy

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
It's I've always said CLE. And then I listened to one of my favorite readers doing a microcosm, which is one of my favorite books about the technology revolution. And he called it a clutch. No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:32):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:08:33):
And I thought, Hmm, maybe maybe that's a British pronunciation. That's why I asked. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:38):
I didn't really thinks riff through things, but apparently that's how things like audio boasts have been like an eye opener.

Leo Laporte (02:08:44):
Riffle, not rifle riff. No riffs.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:47):
I don't know this. I read

Leo Laporte (02:08:50):
It'ss it's riffle like riffle ball. It's not a white ball.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:54):
I just

Kevin Marks (02:08:55):
Riff. You can riff things too. That that's a, that's a sort of parallel meaning

Leo Laporte (02:08:58):
I've heard rifle, but is that the same as riffle?

Kevin Marks (02:09:03):
No, that's more like sort of more violent somehow. Like

Leo Laporte (02:09:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Rifle. If you're rifle through somebody's belongings, you're kind of throwing them around riffling is like flip flipping the pages. Here's grammar. By the way. Who has

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:18):
Ripple versus rifle?

Leo Laporte (02:09:19):
Yes. They don't mean the same thing. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
So there you go.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:25):
Can I recommend two audiobook to you real quick?

Leo Laporte (02:09:27):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:28):
So how to be perfect. That's by the creator of,

Leo Laporte (02:09:31):
I could have written that

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:34):
Michael sure. The creator of the good place.

Leo Laporte (02:09:37):
Oh, it's

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:38):
Fun. Okay. It's it's it's it's it's and then allow me to record a black guy's guided the constitution by Ellie Misal you have to listen to the audio book version of it. It's he's he's on a missing all the time. He's brilliant.

Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
Yes. I saw him talking about that and I was, I put that on my list to to be listened to it's

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:53):
It's it's it's amazing

Leo Laporte (02:09:54):
How to be perfect. The correct answer to every moral question by Michael. Sure. Oh, look at Kristen. Bell is in it. Ted dancing. Yeah. They,

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:03):
They make little tiny 

Leo Laporte (02:10:05):
Nice

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:06):
Cameo voice cameos.

Leo Laporte (02:10:07):
Nice.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:08):
I was like, are they cameos? If you're in the voice?

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:10):
That's what I was. Yeah. I was trying to think.

Leo Laporte (02:10:12):
Yeah. They're cameos. Yeah. What what was the other one? If you guys,

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:18):
The other one is Ellie ALS allow me to torch

Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
That's right. A black guys guide to the constitution, which I actually put this on my wishlist because I figured this is gonna be awesome. Here. I'll play a little bit. Just so you can hear Ellie

Speaker 15 (02:10:34):
Trolling. The Athenian Illuminati is not what got Socrates. A death sentence. However, SOC teases sory was mainly a front for anti-democratic authoritarian views. Did

Leo Laporte (02:10:47):
You write this? Kevin Kevin's pros written by read by Ellie Misel. That's good. I like it. When somebody like that reads their book. Cuz they have a voice.

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:59):
Yeah. He gets angry. I I but I, but right then that drove me nuts. Cause I'm listening to him at one, 1.75.

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
Oh

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:06):
At that

Leo Laporte (02:11:07):
Speed. That's fast. That

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:08):
Drives me

Leo Laporte (02:11:10):
Insane. Yeah. See,

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:11):
I cannot. Here's

Leo Laporte (02:11:13):
You're spoiled for normal pros. Normal conversation. Well, when

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:16):
I try to read a book, when I try to, you know, voice the book, they, they, they got

Leo Laporte (02:11:20):
Wait a minute. When I do the Google change log, do you listen to that? At 1.75?

Kevin Marks (02:11:25):
He

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:26):
Doesn't listen at all. He's on

Leo Laporte (02:11:27):
Twitter. Oh, that's right.

Kevin Marks (02:11:29):
Yeah. He's spoiling to faces. I sent him

Leo Laporte (02:11:32):
Probably a good Paul. Yes. Mr. Marks.

Kevin Marks (02:11:35):
I don't intend to listen to all books. The anyone I listen to was the Sam man one. Cause that was so well

Leo Laporte (02:11:39):
Produced. Oh, wasn't that great.

Kevin Marks (02:11:41):
I'll listen to anything to mag does because he he's basically doing radio drama, pretending it's a book and he,

Leo Laporte (02:11:46):
Well, it is it's radio drama. Exactly. Sam man is perfect example. But do listen to Neil. Gaon do listen to Neil game's narration of his books because he does a beautiful job though.

Kevin Marks (02:11:56):
He does it good too. But, but the, but the adaptations that, that that max has done for the, for those one, he did cover the BBC as well. They were very good.

Leo Laporte (02:12:04):
I should play a little of the same.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:06):
The other one, an audio book is amazing. I, I, I, I couldn't see the play cause I wasn't gonna go to the theater and see anything these days. And it's almost theatrical you,

Leo Laporte (02:12:14):
Which, which play

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:16):
The, the layman trilogy,

Leo Laporte (02:12:17):
The layman trilogy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:18):
Oh the H M a N about the layman brothers, the, the rise and fall Leman

Leo Laporte (02:12:21):
Brothers. Okay. They made a play out of that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:23):
They made a play out of it, but, but the book is actually an Italian. They made an opera as well. Yeah, I think so.

Leo Laporte (02:12:29):
Theano Mai narrated by just

Speaker 16 (02:12:34):
In his thought before his eyes BA

Leo Laporte (02:12:40):
Okay. That's one. I'm putting that in my wishlist too loud.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:44):
C land. Have I commend that because it's got a little, sci-fi feel too much.

Leo Laporte (02:12:48):
Now you might say cloud KACO land, but I'll

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:53):
No, I might

Leo Laporte (02:12:54):
Not. You might not. Anthony do the light. We cannot see all the, oh, all the light we cannot see was great. Yeah. He's yeah. It's great. Okay. And that's my wishlist too.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:03):
Do you have the more toll that one right below? That is very

Leo Laporte (02:13:05):
Good too. The Lincoln high. Oh, you know, all I've read of more tolls is the Russian

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:11):
I waited for, I thought is too popular. I'm not gonna like him. I

Leo Laporte (02:13:14):
Love's so good. It is gentleman in Moscow gentleman in Moscow. So I have to read this new in a Lincoln high. This is very different.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:20):
Very good.

Leo Laporte (02:13:21):
Oh man. You

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:23):
Get, he's very nice on Twitter.

Leo Laporte (02:13:24):
He's a good writer and more tos.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:27):
He responds to you on Twitter.

Leo Laporte (02:13:28):
Does he?

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:29):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:13:29):
Yeah. That's nice call.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:31):
I was writing a new book now Gary Steinard. I like,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:35):
Oh, I read the, our country friends. That was fun. Did what'd

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:38):
You think it was fun? Wasn't it?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:40):
I liked it much actually. Cuz sometimes a little Steinard goes a long way cuz I'm kind of like I'm so over his Marose, like I'm a sad sack of a man kind of thing. Let's see

Leo Laporte (02:13:51):
Was to

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:51):
Meet him for coffee on Monday, but then he, he had to cancel. So I

Leo Laporte (02:13:56):
Can't, he was probably too depressed. Let's listen.

Speaker 17 (02:13:58):
The house on the hill was in a tizzy workman's truck streamed up the long gravel

Leo Laporte (02:14:04):
Driveway. That's Rob, Rob Shapiro, reading that one. This

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:06):
Is a C novel. It's probably one of the first COVID novels where

Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
It's a bunch. I'm not listen. COVID novels country

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:12):
Home. Oh no, no. It's actually

Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
Fun. Oh no.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:15):
It's fun. What's her name? Oh, I can't think Louis Elrich the sentence. What is, I'm just gonna find it

Leo Laporte (02:14:26):
The sentence. There's a name of it called Seth Urich. Urick Urich.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:30):
Louis Urich. Someone who likes to read. I recommend anybody who likes

Leo Laporte (02:14:35):
This is horror.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:38):
No, it's not.

Leo Laporte (02:14:39):
It says it's horror right here on the top horror

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:43):
Stacy's definition of like to read at horror. You know,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:47):
There is a, there is a okay, there is a ghost. I, I was like, why would it be horror?

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:52):
Who runs over cats? Let's not forget just for any example,

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
It's a ghost. It's a ghost story. It's a ghost

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:57):
Story. It's a ghost, but it's not, it's not actually

Leo Laporte (02:14:59):
A scary ghost story. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:01):
It's, it's a meditation on reading and books and the role they play in our lives. I love it. And they can play in other people. It's a beautiful book

Leo Laporte (02:15:10):
And that's my wishlist. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:12):
The cat haunted me. Apparently someone came over to my YouTube channel and made a joke about dead cats. My husband looks up from the breakfast table and is like, Stacy, there's a weird comment on your YouTube page. You might wanna take a look at. And I was like, oh God, what does it say? And he said something about killing. And I was like, oh,

Leo Laporte (02:15:37):
All I can tell you is if you're a member of club twit, this is this is something that should go in our books discussion. We have a lot of very interesting conversations in our discord Stacy's book club. Next month, June 16th will be termination shock. You'll see's new, it's his newest right? Newest novel.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:55):
It's his newest, it's so long. Poor aunt.

Leo Laporte (02:15:59):
Yeah. Aunt's really struggling. That's okay. There

Kevin Marks (02:16:03):
Was a good essay about so Stevenson in termination shock, which I will now try and find basically saying he's the, he's the weird venture capitalist house writer.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:18):
I'll that's, that's a fair that's some of the research going into carbon sequestration or carbon, any sort of thing. Yeah, this is that kind of,

Leo Laporte (02:16:25):
Oh, I'll be listening. And then Jeff's fireside chat is tomorrow. Yay. 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern. That that'll be great if you're in club TWiT, just go to the discord at 9:00 AM. You can ask Jeff questions. Aunt PR will be hosting and of course is our community manager as well as all the other things he does at TWiT

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:44):
Ask aunt a few questions myself.

Leo Laporte (02:16:45):
Oh, I hope you do turn the tables on him.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:48):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:16:48):
He's never, we've never done that. That's great. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:52):
Adjust that

Leo Laporte (02:16:52):
If you're not a member of

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:54):
Was Octa you me on his podcast.

Leo Laporte (02:16:56):
You did do that. I know. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:58):
Know. I, I, I asked he

Leo Laporte (02:16:59):
Was complaining about that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:01):
Oh, Hey

Leo Laporte (02:17:04):
Club TWiT gives you ad free versions of all of our shows. You don't even hear this plug also get access to the discord, which is a really I think discord is a, is what a social media, what a, a community online should be. It's it's just pitch. Perfect, great people, great conversations on all sorts of topics. And then the TWiT plus feed.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:25):
Lots of me. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:17:27):
Lots of gifs, but that's in the if you're in the ch chat. Yes. You got a lot of that animated gifs, but there's also, you know, I mean, there's a there's conversations about coding beer, wine and cocktails, current affairs, data science, Linux the crews, by the way, people have been asking cruise, cruise dot TWiT TV. Some more cabins have opened and Lisa and I are gonna pick our excursions. So if you want to go with us to Alaska, Paul thro, his wife will join us. 

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:00):
What the well should have been

Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
July 16th. It it's like the well isn't, it, it feels it is. I just love itty. I just love it community. And of course it's foot plus feed, which has all sorts of material that doesn't make it into the podcast, including the untitled Lennox show Stacy's book clubs in there. The GIZ fizz, lots of extra stuff. We are gonna be debuting. Some club only shows soon. Some things, I think it be very excited about a club because you know, when you launch a show, you don't, it's not big enough to get advertis. So we're kind of, you, you do it as a, a loss. Sometimes for years, the club gives us the opportunity to do that without the loss. So we put it in the club. Only we can grow these shows. That's what happened to this week can space. We did I think five or six episodes and then put it out for public consumption. So the club really is, has been great as a experimental spot, as a social. I just, I couldn't be happier with it. If you wanna join it seven bucks a month, it's nothing. It's months to months cancel any time. If you're not happy, I go to twi.tv/club TWiT. Let me do just like,

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:03):
Googlefi

Leo Laporte (02:19:04):
Just like Googley, except you don't have to pay PI gigabyte. Let's take a break. I wanna take a break and then come back. We will do picks of the, we can wrap it up cuz I, I am gonna ask Patrick Delehanty. I know he is listening right now. Patrick, if you would, what is the longest show? Maybe he's already put it in there. What is the longest show? Oh, he's done it. Hours. Longest show on average, two hours, three minutes, 51 seconds. That's on average. That's the tech guy, average TWIG episode an hour and 55 minutes. That's because no, you're kidding. Well that's cuz there were years of shorter shows. The average like uses. Yeah, no. This week in tech average is an hour 56. Five. Yeah. What is the max? What's the longest. That's what I wanna know. Patrick has the he, there was one that was longer than three hours. He could do the the SQL search or whatever. There's an API or something. I dunno.

Leo Laporte (02:19:57):
Meanwhile, let's talk about our sponsor of the moment it pro TV. Actually, we've been talking about them for years since they started it's about four or five years ago now. I met Tim and Don at nav, the national association of broadcasters conference. They had this idea, they were, it trainers. They had this idea. We could do it like you do TWiT. We could do it online. Like a, like an internet television station. They do. They have now seven studios running all of them Monday through Friday, all day creating content. But it's specific to people who are interested in it. People want to get in the it and get the certifications to get those first jobs. People are already in it who wanna re-certify or get more experience it teams that you know, want, you wanna get up to snuff as a business owner.

Leo Laporte (02:20:46):
It is a great place to learn about at it. And I, I mean, it's huge. If you're getting into it, it could be overwhelming. Or how do you get started? So I wanna suggest, just go to it pro TV with the most up to date content, every vendor look at all the vendors, all the skills that you need to advance your it career. Those courses go for from the live studio to the library fast in about 24 hours. There's 5,800 hours of content. Look at that 151 hours of Linux training alone, all of them in 20 to 30 minute episodes. So you can binge easily. They have practice exams and virtual labs, so you can get ready for those tests. April is Linux month at it, pro TV. Woo. Check out the on demand webinar with Don Ette and Daniel Lowry choosing the right Linux distro for 2022.

Leo Laporte (02:21:37):
I love that I'm gonna be watching that the free weekend is coming up. April 23rd and 24th. Lots of content in Linnux, including shell scripting, basics, pic two Linux engineer. That's cert more about the Linux command line. Look at all these so many more. Don't forget your it team can also get its training at it pro TV. So check out an it pro TV business plan individuals or business it pro TV is the best place to learn from the best entertainers experts in the field who really know how to get you engaged. Get you excited and teach you. Visit it. Pro.Tv/Twi for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. Just use the code TWiT 30. And if you're getting a business plan, tell your account executive TWiT 30, you can get a discount too. It pro.tv/twi offer code T w I 30, 30% off. As long as you stay active forever, if you want, I think that's a great deal. It pro TV build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey it pro.tv/stacey. What's your thing this week.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:52):
So my thing this week is actually a book because why not? And I am breeding the, this a new book by this guy who is great horror writer. His name is Thomas old a belt. I don't know, I'm not Dutch. Anyway, this book is called echo and it is, it's a little farfetched, but it's, it's a

Leo Laporte (02:23:13):
Thrilling descend into Madison obsession as one man confronts nature.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:20):
You gotta be into horror and you gotta have the suspension of disbelief that goes with it. Now

Leo Laporte (02:23:24):
I don't like horror movies, but I love horror books. I don't know why. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:27):
Think I may have liked text more, which is his first book. Or maybe it's not his first book, but it's the first one I read. And it was it's from like 2016 and it was about this, this witch. And it has like social media and it was really good. And really unexpected.

Leo Laporte (02:23:43):
It's cute. Look at this. He's very this, I feel like this he could be the next next big thing. He's a young guy too.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:55):
Oh, it's like he's young,

Leo Laporte (02:23:57):
1983. Don't think he's cute. Look at the hair. That's cute hair. If I ever saw it, he does look like he's he stays up late though.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:06):
Yeah. Anyway, fun books really enjoy him as a horror writer

Leo Laporte (02:24:12):
Hicks. 

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:14):
Yeah. I'm not finished reading this one so it could like totally disappoint me, but I know it's not my usual sci-fi but I thought I T throw it out there. Nice. Because right now the gadget I'm testing are not as much fun.

Leo Laporte (02:24:29):
Stephen King says, this is totally brilliantly original. George R. Martin says hex is creepy and gripping and original.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:24:38):
Nice echoes the new one

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:40):
He's to do really well. Yeah. They're very creepy, like super creepy.

Leo Laporte (02:24:45):
Nice. Nice. Thank you Mr. Jeff Jarvis, give us a number.

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:53):
So Stacy, I'm curious whether does your daughter bought any clothes from sheen, which we might think is pronounced shine?

Leo Laporte (02:24:59):
I always pronounce it shine.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:00):
We, we don't because we are against fast fashion.

Leo Laporte (02:25:06):
It is fast, right?

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:07):
Always it ever I'm I, so according to Benedict Evans in his newsletter, they've just raised money at a hundred billion dollar valuation. Whoa, they're now bigger than C Zara and H and M in the us fast fashion market. They add five to 10,000 new SKU a day.

Leo Laporte (02:25:26):
Oh, that's the fasted fast fashion. Wow. a lot of turnover. It's very inexpensive, right?

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:32):
They

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
Keep, yeah. Do

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:33):
Short run manufacturing 500 units based on browsing behavior says then they have no advertising budget. I mean, they have a huge advertising budget instead of building budget. And so it's the second Chinese global breakout effort TikTok. And if you look at it, I mean, it's not for you or me Leo or you Kevin, sorry. Very toy, very Fri, very kind of,

Leo Laporte (02:26:00):
I know about it, cuz I it's very, you see it all the time. I'm a TikTok. You got she and try ons. You know where they say, oh look what I got. I'm gonna, I have

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:08):
A different TikTok than I do.

Leo Laporte (02:26:10):
You don't, you don't see those. I do for some, I

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:12):
Don't see that though.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:12):
He follows young women.

Leo Laporte (02:26:14):
Remember, oh, I don't follow young women. I don't follow. I follow SA Hank, but I never get his stuff. I only get, you know, Tryon. It's not always sexy. It's just could be things. Look, they have some guys look, Jeff you'd look great in this stay wild. I certainly would stay wild. Jeff

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:37):
Minecraft, 80 close. I found my, how much does that cost?

Leo Laporte (02:26:41):
$8 and 90 cents Cheap. Gotta be made by slave labor, right?

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:47):
Oh God. Yeah. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:49):
It's weaker pajamas.

Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
How do you think people in, you know, concentration camps making this stuff feel like they're going these freaking Americans gonna wear this stupid pineapple pants, this Breck deck wreck.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:03):
If you, if you didn't see it on TikTok, Leo, would you have been aware

Leo Laporte (02:27:08):
Of she? No. Cuz Lisa would not wear this stuff either, but and Stacy

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:14):
I would be aware of it aware of it

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:17):
Cause the daughter, because I, I, no it's cuz I like fashion. So

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:23):
You follow,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:24):
Try to, I follow low fashion information, I guess.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:28):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:29):
It, this stuff's look at this. This stress is $11. I don't know how you can ship it for that much.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:42):
Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:43):
Well shipping free or not. No, no it's not free.

Leo Laporte (02:27:46):
3 99 and then it's free if you order $49. So it's free probably cuz everybody's are gonna order 'em more and you can get a mommy and me dressed to match for only $7.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:56):
I don't think anybody who's buying this close as children do they?

Leo Laporte (02:27:59):
Oh, I bet they do. Well. Look at this woman has gray hair. She's 28, but she's got gray hair. She probably dies at gray. Come to think of it. Look at it. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:14):
It's a very hot color. It's

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:15):
Like, it's like a man wearing a Berg

Leo Laporte (02:28:17):
People dye their hair gray.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:19):
Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:19):
Yeah, yeah. Super trend.

Leo Laporte (02:28:21):
Well actually I should admit it. I do too. 

Leo Laporte (02:28:28):
Wow. Wow. Let's get a, so that's your pick a hundred, your numbers? A hundred billion. Cause I'm

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:35):
Just fascinated. I never really

Leo Laporte (02:28:37):
I'm amazed. Isn't it? Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:38):
And it's this phenomen and, and, and, and so when you think that the internet, everybody sees all the same stuff. This is a huge company, an old farm, like me never saw it.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:48):
Well, it's a huge company because young women love it. And you know, old well tend to mock And not pay attention to what young

Leo Laporte (02:28:57):
People, except for those of us, with our fingers on the pulse of TikTok

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:03):
Or not, not sweeping fast enough across the That's. Why you see it,

Leo Laporte (02:29:09):
That's gotta get right by it. Right. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the wonderful, the talented Kevin Marks. When did you, when were your, when, when did you first appear on our shows? You've been part of our family for a long, long time

Kevin Marks (02:29:22):
While back. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:23):
Yeah. We're we should get you on more. I just love having you on,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:27):
I met you Kevin in 2008.

Leo Laporte (02:29:29):
Wow.

Kevin Marks (02:29:29):
There we go. Yeah. That sounds, that sounds plausible. Isn't about right? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:29:34):
Yeah. Yeah. That's probably when he started appearing on, on our show,

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:37):
How did you know that? Yeah. Off the

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:39):
Top of your head. Because I, I met him, he was one of the first P I met after I joined giga O and I joined GIGO in 2008.

Leo Laporte (02:29:45):
Ah, Ooh. That's right.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:48):
And I remember I was

Kevin Marks (02:29:49):
Like, you came to San Francisco and I was like, great. Let's let's let's check. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:52):
Yeah. And I was like, oh my God,

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:53):
I'm meeting Kevin barks. Yes, I was the same. And

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:57):
It was, it was kind of,

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
Kevin has worked every he's worked at apple he's we've interviewed him on triangulation back in 2011. That was, but I think we, we would had John even on

Kevin Marks (02:30:09):
The day that Steve jobs died. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:30:10):
Oh that's we were talking to you when that happened.

Kevin Marks (02:30:14):
Yep.

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:15):
Oh

Leo Laporte (02:30:15):
Wow. November 30th, 2011. You're absolutely right. I remember we had to interrupt the show, but fortunately you had having worked at apple. You, you had lots to say too. Oh, wow. Thought about that. Yeah. Wow. So what's your pick of the week? This week?

Kevin Marks (02:30:33):
So this is a site that I've been I looked at and I now look at it all the time. It's the electricity map. And what it shows you is effectively you click on a, on an electricity organization, you go in California, that'll be like green. So if you click on it, it gives you information about what is generating the electricity and also how it changes over the day and over the night. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:30:56):
This is great.

Kevin Marks (02:30:57):
If you, if you, if you scroll up the left hand side a bit, you can see a, a yeah. A graph of, of when it, when it's, when it's green, when brown. Yeah. You just could feel somewhere very brown when you

Leo Laporte (02:31:06):
Yeah. That's Turlock. But if I go back to our area, the California independent system operating.

Kevin Marks (02:31:12):
Yeah. So you can see it's green at the moment. Cause you've got a lot of orange sun there. Right. and, but the there's a bit of, there's a lot of purple gas that takes over at night. And so it goes brown browner at night.

Leo Laporte (02:31:22):
Interesting

Kevin Marks (02:31:23):
Fun. And it's, and it's, and it's great. And the other, the other thing, if you look, and you can look around the world and see Europe and different countries as well. So

Leo Laporte (02:31:33):
Look how green Quebec is. Holy cow. Yeah. So

Kevin Marks (02:31:35):
The Northern ones of the rest of the all hydro house. So they've got load.

Leo Laporte (02:31:38):
Ah, yeah, yeah. Be

Kevin Marks (02:31:39):
Good. And then the

Leo Laporte (02:31:40):
There's UK 17. No, no, sorry.

Kevin Marks (02:31:43):
UK sort of muddy brown. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:44):
Muddy brown. I was, I was confused by Scandinavia.

Kevin Marks (02:31:48):
Scandinavia is really green cause it's, it is mostly hydro with, with some geo things. Yeah. The UK is let down my gas. We have, we can't really do solar. We can do with a lot of wind. But we, we, we, we fill in with gas and, and we, and our nuclear has been declining. So, but, and France is, is extremely nuclear and that's, it's very green. So, but it's the fascinating thing is you, you do see the difference convers with the different countries and how basically the natural experiments of what's going on. So yeah. That's basically France is more than half nuclear. Yeah. Where it's Germany is,

Leo Laporte (02:32:20):
They've decommissioned almost all their nuclear.

Kevin Marks (02:32:23):
Yes. Cause they're full and they've, and they've, they're mining more coal and PO is very cold.

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:28):
They're using more Russian gas.

Leo Laporte (02:32:29):
Yeah.

Kevin Marks (02:32:30):
Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. But anyways, this is, this is one of those, you know, I'm paying attention to, to environment and electricity and, and this is, this is just, it's very interesting to look at it and look at it over time and look at every day. So it is something I pay attention to. So I was,

Leo Laporte (02:32:46):
I really like this electricity map.org. Very interesting. And it shows you where the power comes from. It shows you carbon intensity over time.

Kevin Marks (02:32:57):
It also shows you flows. If you click on one it'll if, if there's, if they're feeding power to other areas, you can see errors between them as well. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Really interesting. Oh, this is fascinating. Thank you.

Kevin Marks (02:33:09):
Yeah, no, this is, it's one of these things that you just keep, I just keep looking at it. But as we talk more about the, the energy stuff and things about that, you, you look at that and you start to think about it. Yeah. But my, my, my reaction to it, we're looking at it was, yeah, it's great to get know. Sail is great. If you're in the right part of the world, wind is great. If you're in the right part of the world, like the UK is, but the challenge is what do you do when it's it's dark or the wind's not blowing? And the thing that actually would make sense there is, is pump hydro, which the UK does a bit of. But if you, if you, it was designed to do intrad smoothing it was originally designed to move. Cuz you run coal and nuclear powers, full blast. It was designed to you, you pump the water uphill at night and then edit it out during the day. But if you scale that up and pump the water with the solar and the, and the wind wind, you have it and then use the water when they're not there, you could lose a lot less gas. Cause at the moment, everyone is basically burning the gas to, to fit in all the gaps between the variability of everything else.

Leo Laporte (02:34:07):
Fascinating. And you see the difference between you know Eastern south America and Western south America. And then I guess that's governmental policy primarily it's fascinating. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (02:34:19):
And yeah, I mean, you see Australia is, is like just all

Leo Laporte (02:34:22):
Oh, ah, nasty.

Kevin Marks (02:34:25):
Oh actually not in south there. Yeah. Look

Leo Laporte (02:34:26):
Just just south Australia, but it's yeah. Tasmania is doing great. Good on you. Tasmania

Kevin Marks (02:34:34):
Tasmania is hydro again. Yeah. But it, but it, you know, it really interests, you see the boundary between the different organizations and, and what they, what the choices they've made. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:34:43):
Yeah. Fascinating.

Kevin Marks (02:34:45):
So I,

Leo Laporte (02:34:45):
Electricity map.org. And of course we wanna promote ind web and the home brew website trying to save the web one page at a time.

Kevin Marks (02:34:57):
Oh, so this is, this is another thing. This is, this is a little bonus one. This is some something made this this week. It's basically it gives you a random indie web page. Oh, nice. Click on a button and you an random

Leo Laporte (02:35:07):
Page. Get stumble upon for the indie web. Yep. I like it.

Kevin Marks (02:35:11):
You'll probably get something about programming. There we go.

Leo Laporte (02:35:13):
You like geeks? Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (02:35:16):
That's quite fun.

Leo Laporte (02:35:17):
Is it a web ring? Will I find another button at the bottom? No, it needs to be a web ring.

Kevin Marks (02:35:22):
Oh we, no, it uses the, we've got an Indy web ring. It uses that as well.

Leo Laporte (02:35:25):
Oh, okay. That's cool. That's really cool. So random blog posts. What makes you an indie web blog?

Kevin Marks (02:35:35):
We've, we've fairly got a loose definition, but see if you, if you have, if it's you own your own side, right. We've got a set of things that you can add to it. We've got all these different protocols, like we've mentioned and micro problem. And so on that, that, that could make it easier for you. But the basic thing is have your own website. Right. And there's lots of ways to do that. And we are not, you know, we are Catholic about that or agnostic about that, which way you wanna look at it. Nice. we will cuz there's lots of ways to do it, but the point is if it's, if it's a website that you, you have control over, that's important. It's I mean, that makes sense.

Leo Laporte (02:36:06):
And if you're looking for a group of people who are working along these lines, the home brew website club, which is on the indie web.org page has its meetings next meeting tonight

Kevin Marks (02:36:19):
In about an hour.

Leo Laporte (02:36:19):
Yeah. In the Los Angeles time zone, but it's it's virtual so everybody could go, right?

Kevin Marks (02:36:24):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:25):
Yeah. Very nice.

Kevin Marks (02:36:26):
Yeah. No, I mean, we, we, we, we used to do them in person basically would have them in person in San Francisco and B London and bright and so on. And now we've been doing them on online with timezone grouping for a while. Now

Leo Laporte (02:36:37):
It's a great community. Lots of really neat, interesting people like Kevin big, big supporter. And I I'm gonna throw in your third link, which you put kind of hit away, but I think it's great. Web three is going great.com, which is sarcasm and is a collection of articles about all the horrible things happening in crypto NFTs and web three. Yeah.

Kevin Marks (02:37:03):
Yeah. Especially this, this, the scam of the day round up. So

Leo Laporte (02:37:06):
Scam of the day. Yep. Hey, thank you so much for being with us, Kevin. I really appreciate. Yay, Kevin. It's great to see you.

Kevin Marks (02:37:15):
Great to see you. Let's do it again soon. Soon.

Leo Laporte (02:37:17):
We will. We'll make a point in getting you back.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:19):
I'm I'm not gonna be here in a couple weeks for like two sessions.

Leo Laporte (02:37:22):
Kevin should be our tradition, our standard standing

Kevin Marks (02:37:26):
Be your standard.

Leo Laporte (02:37:26):
Okay. Although I know it's late for you. Is it midnight?

Kevin Marks (02:37:30):
It's 10 to one now.

Leo Laporte (02:37:32):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:34):
Grief.

Leo Laporte (02:37:34):
No. So no more complaints from, from you young. Hi and B keeping up with the HIIN BS.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:40):
Well, I don't get, if, if it was that late at night, I wouldn't be hungry. I'd just be asleep. You, you had two choices, always hungry or sleepy.

Leo Laporte (02:37:51):
Stacy HIIN baths@stacyoniot.com. That's her websites. Some to her free newsletter. Find out about all the events. And of course listen to her podcast with Kevin. TOFL the IOT podcast. Thank you for being here, Stacy. We always appreciate your thanks for having me pushing through those hunger PS to listen to yet another Google change log. And then there's this guy named Jeff Jarvis, the director of the town night center for entrepreneurial journalism@thecraignewmargraduateschoolofjournalismatthecityuniversityo… Is his indie web blog. Thank you, Jeff.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:38:32):
Finally

Leo Laporte (02:38:33):
Appreciate it. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do TWIG every Wednesday afternoon, 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2100 UTC. You can watch live@livedottwit.tv. There's also a live audio stream so you can listen if you're doing something else. If you're listening or watching live, do chat with us. Live irc.twi.tv is our community chat. There's also the discord. If you're in a club TWiT member, after the fact on demand versions of the show available at twit TV slash TWIG if you go there, there's a link to the YouTube channel. There's a dedicated channel for all of our shows on YouTube. Watch the videos there, share them with your friends. Of course, the easiest most convenient thing to do is subscribe and your favorite podcast client. And you'll get it automatically. The minute it's available of a Wednesday evening. And if your podcast client allows reviews, please leave us a five star review. Tell the world about this week in Google. Thank you everybody have a great week. We'll see you next time on TWIG.

Speaker 18 (02:39:31):
Don't miss All About Android. Every week. We talk about the latest news hardware apps. Now all the developer goodness happening in the Android ecosystem. I'm Jason Howell also joined by Ron Richards, Florence ion, and our newest co-host on the panel. Huyen Tue Dao who brings her developer chops, really great stuff. We also invite people from all over the Android ecosystem to talk about this mobile platform. We love so much join every Tuesday, All About Android on twit.tv.