This Week in Google 697, 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. Yes, another three hour marathon. But of course, we're gonna talk when we get Glenn Fleishman here. From glen.fun and MacWorld Magazine, we've got Jeff Jarvis from the City, university of New York. Ant Pruit from Hands-On Photography. Stacy's on assignment at ces. She'll join us Sunday on Twit. Get ready, everybody. As, as fast as your seat belts. You might want to go to the bathroom before the show begins. TWIG is next. This is TWIG This Week in Google, episode 697 recorded Wednesday, January 4th, 2023. Don't track me, bro.
(00:00:52):
Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise@twit.tv and launch your campaign now. It's time for TWIG This Week in Google for a show of 2023. I am back from the tropics. I bought this hat on the beach. You like it? Join. Stacy's not here. She's at CES, but Glenn Fleishman, she's cause of that hat. She knew you'd be wearing that hat and she said, I'm not gonna be associated with, I'm gonna be nowhere near it. Glenn Fleishman is filling in. It's great to see you, Glen, from Glenn.Fun. Jeopardy champion, wore this shirt and honor of Ant being on as well. Should <laugh> it's got a camera. Got box cameras on it. It's there's lots of cameras. Very cool. Very cool. His favorite gift of 2022, Ant. Oh, you got it. You got it for Christmas. How nice. That's my birthday. I've been wearing it for months. Oh, okay. Ant Pruitt is also here. He's our favorite gift of every year. Hands on photography. Community manager at twit's Discord and the Club lobby. Sir, you had a lot of a lot of help questions over the holidays, I think. Thank you for doing that. I,
Ant Pruitt (00:02:10):
I, yeah, I saw that. But we were off <laugh>, so, so I am just now trying to get to those and address them. But
Leo Laporte (00:02:18):
If you had any problems during holidays, tough luck, buddy. How would you like a nice Hawaiian punch? Also,
Ant Pruitt (00:02:28):
I think I've answered everywhere.
Leo Laporte (00:02:29):
<Laugh> Awesome. <Laugh> also with us. Mr. Jeff Jarvis. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hello. Hello. Hello. Happy day. I need the prompter for this one. He's the director of the Tow Night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, City university of New York. Hello, Jeff. Oh, welcome back. Did you have a good holiday? Yeah. Yeah. Anything special? I also, during the holiday, enjoyed enjoyed
Jeff Jarvis (00:02:58):
Watching, watching the year end compilation, which
Leo Laporte (00:03:00):
That was fun. Really? Laughs Yeah. You and Glen were going back and forth on the old Mastodon.
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:05):
<Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:03:05):
Yep. About that. Good, good. I'm glad you enjoyed
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:09):
It. And the world the best. Mor We haven't used the moral panic thing since. I think we should institute that. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:03:16):
Well, Mr. Pruitt's here. He's got it. He's got his finger. The full, full moral panic over the moral panic button. Yeah. Oh, okay. Somewhere there's, oh
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:25):
Yeah. What is, no, this is the one. No, no, no. This is the one where I go dancing across the screen.
Leo Laporte (00:03:29):
Talk to Oh, we need that one. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:32):
That's
Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
That's built in to the show itself. We have to save that.
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:41):
There it is. I got a bad feeling about this <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:03:45):
<Laugh>. There we go. Wow. Did, did Anthony Nielsen do that? Must have. That's it. That was, yeah, that's the one he put in. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:03:54):
That and more in the year end show. You still watch it, folks?
Leo Laporte (00:03:58):
Oh yeah. It's good. It's good all year. It's pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Stacy's at ces. But that's the good news is she's gonna report back on Sunday. She'll be on the big, the big show This Week in Tech. And I'm I'm trying to get her to file something from CES for our brand new Ask the Tech Guy show, which makes it a debut at 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern on Sunday, the replacement for the radio show. And I was hoping, there are a few things. She said, can you give me an assignment? So I said, well, <laugh>, there are a few things, a few things that are interesting at ces. Maybe this one. The LOL button. So this is a device created by just some guy that won't let you use LOL on a text message. Unless you mean it, you actually have to laugh <laugh> into this LOL box.
Jeff Jarvis (00:04:56):
I appreciate this technology gone too far. That's cute. This is, this is, this is, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
I, I always use L L O L, which is, if I literally laughed out loud, I will send L Oh, okay. L o l. Well, Brian Moore has made a device, which will allow you to do that. He posts a vi video on something called Twitter. Dunno what that is. On Tuesday. He says I remember when LOL meant laugh out loud, you know, a real chortle. Now it's meaningless, dull down the, down to the mirror acknowledgement of a message. So as an artist who likes to play technology this is an article from Motherboard on Vice, he decided to build the box. It listens for some form of laughters. There actually some significant AI in here. You can't just go, oh, you gotta, you gotta really laugh and then it'll, a message will come on saying LOL verified <laugh>. And and then you're allowed, you're allowed. Does it cost you eight bucks a month to use, though? No. Not like the Blue check verification. No, actually I don't think he's selling these. But he, but he, he says he's gonna put the hardware design up and open source it anybody wants to build it themselves, including the software.
Jeff Jarvis (00:06:07):
So do you remember the story of David Cameron with the Levinson inquiry and l o l?
Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
No. What was that? He,
Jeff Jarvis (00:06:15):
He would send emails to Rebecca Brooks, who was number two to number two to Murdoch and is now back high in the, in the firm. After, after she managed to do her apology tour. And he would always send, send his emails with lol, thinking it meant lots of love.
Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
<Laugh>. Yeah,
Ant Pruitt (00:06:29):
I remember thinking that too. Back in the days. Really eighties <laugh> on the on the, the AIM. What was that? Yeah. AOL instant messenger. I remember seeing that from my best friend back in the day. It's like, why does he keep saying lots of love?
Leo Laporte (00:06:42):
<Laugh>? That's, I like him too. But Jesus
Ant Pruitt (00:06:45):
I mean, we buddies and all but sheez
Leo Laporte (00:06:46):
Know each other. That's a fun new ki There there's a, a thing called Amond Monda Green, right? Oh, yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (00:06:57):
Excuse me, while I kissed this guy.
Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
Yeah. Which are mis misheard lyrics. Gotcha. But now we can have misheard. What do you call an acronym? You call 'em emoji emoticons misheard some things. Yeah. Here is a product brought to us last earlier today on Windows Weekly. This is also from CS called the MuTalk. This is from a company called Shift all.net. It is a microphone. You strap on, like, no, that's not it. What's that? <Laugh> <laugh>
Glenn Fleishman (00:07:30):
Uhoh. How long is
Leo Laporte (00:07:32):
Apparently
Jeff Jarvis (00:07:33):
Timer Patience with us? It's counting down. We have 14 minutes and 10 seconds left
Leo Laporte (00:07:36):
Until God
Glenn Fleishman (00:07:37):
Explodes somewhere in this building.
Leo Laporte (00:07:41):
<Laugh>. Or maybe that's how long I have to wear the hat. I don't know. Yeah, I think that's can you pick up my screen? Or is that, is that not available? There it is. The, oh, I have a button I can press now. They've given me a button. Oh yeah. Watch. You're in control. Yeah, I'm in control. Look at that. Whoa. this is the mutalk. It's a leakage voice suppression Microsoft phone. You strap on like a feedbag. <Laugh>. What? Are you serious?
Glenn Fleishman (00:08:08):
Oh, I thought this was a, a cow translator. You strap it on a cow and it, you
Leo Laporte (00:08:11):
Could, it looks like you could fill it with oats and you give it to your horse. But no, I
Glenn Fleishman (00:08:15):
Wanna know what the cow say.
Leo Laporte (00:08:16):
The idea is it picks up and amplifies your voice, but no one outside can hear it. It's for use in vr. So if you don't look like enough of a dork wearing your headset and your, oh my God, you can put this on. Just go into
Jeff Jarvis (00:08:28):
A padded room and be done with that.
Glenn Fleishman (00:08:29):
That's what my, my wife has a bone anchored hearing aid, and it's got Bluetooth connectivity so she can hear calls in her head, but she doesn't have a sub vocalization chip yet. So
Leo Laporte (00:08:39):
Is that wild? Is that
Glenn Fleishman (00:08:40):
Wild? Yeah. The calls actually are directly transmitted
Leo Laporte (00:08:42):
To her. Is it like a cochlear implant?
Glenn Fleishman (00:08:45):
It's it's similar to that, but she's lacking the bones in her, in her ear on one side. So it actually is oh, okay. It vibrates the Celia inside your ear. Oh. So nobody can hear what, what it's saying. And so she can take a call or listen to music in her head.
Leo Laporte (00:08:59):
That's cool. Oh, that's, I can do that with my hearing aids. It'll pair to the phone.
Glenn Fleishman (00:09:04):
Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly,
Leo Laporte (00:09:05):
Yeah. It's a little weird. I'm talking and nobody knows what the hell's going on. It's good. It's good. It's good. I like
Glenn Fleishman (00:09:11):
Watching your voices in my head too. Sometimes with any Bluetooth. That's the thing.
Leo Laporte (00:09:14):
No Bluetooth involved. Let's see, what else. I can't wait to get Stacey. I had, I had, I, I have a whole section as usual with ces <laugh>, 90% of what gets showed never is emerges. Right. Here's the bird buddy. A smart hummingbird feeder that will photograph and identify 350 bird species. Which is weird cuz it's a hummingbird feeder. You know who love that, Craig?
Ant Pruitt (00:09:42):
How
Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
Many? Craig Newmark. But he loves pigeons.
Glenn Fleishman (00:09:45):
Craig. Craig
Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
Pigeons. The thing is, I don't get it cuz it's a hummingbird feeder. What feeds at hummingbirds? Not pigeons. Nothing but hummingbirds.
Glenn Fleishman (00:09:57):
Do you know the most Worst fact I learned over the pandemic, it relates to hummingbirds. And I've already told you this fact. It's the worst thing.
Ant Pruitt (00:10:02):
Well, I don't know it. What is
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:04):
It? About 70% of the hummingbird's diet is spiders.
Leo Laporte (00:10:08):
What?
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:08):
Really? Yep. They mostly eat spiders and they supplement with nec.
Leo Laporte (00:10:12):
Nothing wrong with that my friend. No,
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:13):
It's great. But you look at 'em a little different. You're like, oh man. They like will hover in the air and go, just
Leo Laporte (00:10:19):
Suck. They do their
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:21):
Tongue. Its web
Leo Laporte (00:10:21):
Or they do it with their shirt.
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:23):
Be
Leo Laporte (00:10:24):
They
Glenn Fleishman (00:10:24):
Spirit. It's, don't think of the, their vicious, vicious little birds are beautiful. But now I think of them a little bit more dinosaur
Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
Like. Well, that's what I think about birds as their dinosaurs. And they are, and you know, they're, they can be, you know, vicious. The humming. I didn't know this. It is a, it is a hummingbird feeder. There are 350 different kinds of hummingbirds. Well, there you go. You just don't run outta hummingbirds all year long. So you'll know exactly what kind of hummingbird is sticking its beak down your nozzle.
Ant Pruitt (00:10:54):
You know, I guess that does beat my idea, cuz currently I, I'd set a tripod out on mine.
Leo Laporte (00:11:01):
There are cameras, maybe you use them that are for taking pictures of wildlife, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they're weather impervious, and they, and they, they detect motion. And do you ever use that an or you
Ant Pruitt (00:11:12):
Just No, I don't use that. But my neighbors, back in Carolinas, they would use those little cameras for deer. Yeah. And, you know, we had a family of deer in the backyard, so we sat and walk back there.
Leo Laporte (00:11:22):
Tall
Ant Pruitt (00:11:23):
Rats. Every time they walk by <laugh>, it took some, you know, like little 12 mega picks of photos of them.
Leo Laporte (00:11:28):
And then
Glenn Fleishman (00:11:29):
I get a, I get an alert, whatever animals come to my porch. Now I live in, you know, relatively urban Seattle. And so, but, and then it's like, there's an animal at your porch. She's like, oh. And I look, it's just the regular, it's a apples home kit thing. And I'll be like, what animal's? Like, oh, it's a cat. Like, oh. And occasionally it's like, oh, that's a rat on the porch. Okay, well thank you for letting me know that
Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
<Laugh>, it's the UPS guy, you know, it's hard to tell sometimes. He's
Glenn Fleishman (00:11:51):
Got little Vine features.
Leo Laporte (00:11:53):
Roku. These are all c CES stories. Formerly the show formerly known as Consumer Electronic Show, which at some point, for some reason, the cea a, the Consumer Electronics Association decided should not be called this Consumer Electronics Show. But just ces, like Elvis. It's just c e s doesn't stand for anything. Roku is announced it's gonna make TVs.
Glenn Fleishman (00:12:13):
Oh.
Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
So it's partnered for a long time with TCL to put Roku in TVs. In fact, I bought my mom one because that way they're cost easy for They're cheap. Yeah. Yes. Who's, who's gonna make 'em for 'em? They're not make 'em. Does it say one Wouldn't think. One wouldn't think, but it, it says Roku's. This is from cnet Roku's first foray as, as opposed to June foray into TV Manufacturing comes in the heels of successful partnerships with tcl High Sense and Sharp. Hmm. Let me see if they mentioned,
Glenn Fleishman (00:12:47):
Oh, it says they have a icy Yeah, I just got my first little Roku box for a long time. I'd won years ago when they first came out and you know, moved onto to other stuff. But I got a lot of the micro ones for a, a guest room, tv, little sticks. I was actually, they're really impressed. Yeah, it's very high quality. It does. It's better at a lot of things than the Apple tv for sure. And they've got their own programming. It's now and it's some other stuff. I it is such a funny, it's a funny company where it was spun off outta Netflix when they worried about, I guess antitrust or something many years ago.
Leo Laporte (00:13:18):
Spun out Netflix.
Glenn Fleishman (00:13:19):
Yeah, it was I never knew that The founder really interesting. Very technology guy. And he suddenly had to be like a, a CEO E O Anthony Wood. Yeah. He's still in charge. And am I remembering that right? I think they, they were originally a
Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
Project Netflix with
Glenn Fleishman (00:13:36):
15%
Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
Equity in Roku.
Glenn Fleishman (00:13:38):
Yeah, that's right. It's a, it's, I know, isn't that a funny origin story? Cuz you're like, he sold his
Leo Laporte (00:13:42):
Investment in 2009. It explains why every Roku remote has a Netflix button on it.
Glenn Fleishman (00:13:47):
<Laugh> Yeah. Might be. Sure. Does investment part of the deal? Yeah. Yeah. He was I mean, Anthony was I remember seeing him outta C Yes. In fact, back in, I don't know, 2004 or something. And he was very excited about some stuff that was, felt like it was way ahead of the market, way ahead of the big consumer players. And they're, they're still keeping up, which is impressive given that they're competing against, you know, Amazon and, and Apple and some other, you know, some other very, very large
Leo Laporte (00:14:09):
I think win against Amazon anyway, because they do the same thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> without all the Amazon ads. I'm actually now tired of my Amazon the Echo shows, which have a screen, because they'll show up one of your pictures and then an ad, and then one of your pictures, and then an ad. And one of your pictures really, they spent, that's annoying all months, last month's promoting avatars, the new avatar movie. Oh. And they had an avatar, you know, say, Hey, just tell a word that you want the avatar theme and, and all that. And it was like, no said word. It's just an avatar. I
Glenn Fleishman (00:14:46):
Thought you talking, I thought you were talking about an for a second when you said a word. I'm like, you call him. That is a,
Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Hey, a word. Word.
Glenn Fleishman (00:14:51):
A word didn't
Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
Seem a word.
Glenn Fleishman (00:14:53):
Yeah. I need one of these
Leo Laporte (00:14:55):
Avatars. So you used to go to CES Glen, have you stopped Now?
Glenn Fleishman (00:15:00):
I, I, this embarrassing thing I manage, because I've always been a freelancer and never a staff member. I self-funded one trip there got foot sore over a few days, saw a bazillion things and never went back. And I, and I enjoyed it, but I hadn't, I've never had a coverage need. And nobody was like, yeah, we're gonna spend, I don't know, $8,000 to send you this ces. So I
Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
I just, it's expensive. Ant loves ces. I absolutely. And every year you ask us, can I go and every year
Ant Pruitt (00:15:26):
Love it. I crowdfunded it one year. The other times I went is freelance with tech Republic and Oh, that's great. I, I, I freaking love it. Someone asked me about it on Twit Social here recently, and the best analogy I could give is, for me it's, it's, it's a lot of work when you go there. It's a lot of walking. But I absolutely love that, that adrenaline I get from just trying to find the, find the good stuff to share with everybody, get that packaged up and shipped out, and then going, doing it all over again the next morning. It's about like people that love to go to the gym, going to the gym and, and lifting weights and running. There's, there's a little bit of ache and pain that comes with that, but it hurts good. You know? And that's, that's how I equate CES in my experience,
Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
You know? And
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:12):
That's weird. That's just weird.
Ant Pruitt (00:16:14):
<Laugh>. Yes, I am
Leo Laporte (00:16:16):
<Laugh>. No, I, I agree. You know, I liken it to go into New York City. Every time I go to New York, the energy just, I get excited. And you're right, it's the same thing CES
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:25):
Smelling that, that convention floor carpet, you just smell urine and
Leo Laporte (00:16:29):
Yeah, there's a, there's odors associated with both, but there's an excitement, there's an energy there, isn't there?
Ant Pruitt (00:16:37):
Yeah. And then in the evening, I, once I'm done with everything being created and published or whatnot, I go grab my camera and I just go walk some more for the rest of the night. And there's always some beautiful photo opportunities out there. Her interesting photo opportunities out there, it's, it is the busiest, you know, three, four days for me. And I probably average about three hours of sleep if that. And I feel great.
Leo Laporte (00:17:00):
It'll
Jeff Jarvis (00:17:01):
Make you feel very guilty for not
Leo Laporte (00:17:03):
Setting him. And I, well, we, the last, that's right, the last time he won was 2020 right before the pandemic.
Ant Pruitt (00:17:08):
Right? Right before the pandemic. And
Leo Laporte (00:17:09):
We had a great time and Ant wore the hell outta me. And then, and then, and then we'd have dinner and he disappear. And I said, Ant, you're going down and playing poker, aren't you? And he said, no, I'm taking pictures Uhuh to shoot. I was impressed. I was very impressed.
Glenn Fleishman (00:17:23):
It's funny to go to Las Vegas. I, when I, that's the only time I've ever been there. And I was like, I looked around and besides cs I was like, I don't smoke. I don't gamble. I mean, no, nothing moral. I just don't really do it. Doesn't have, don't have the, the knack or vi Oh, I, and I don't do that other thing you can do in Las Vegas. And I was like, there's not so much here for you know, this the show. Do you drink?
Leo Laporte (00:17:41):
The shows weren't as big as, do you drink? I don't really
Glenn Fleishman (00:17:43):
Drink. Don't
Leo Laporte (00:17:44):
Drink. You were a looser, geez Louise.
Glenn Fleishman (00:17:46):
Not to
Leo Laporte (00:17:46):
Go terrible CES with Glen. No
Glenn Fleishman (00:17:48):
Sins. I'll have a Halfa Club soda if you insist a club
Leo Laporte (00:17:53):
Soda. My,
Glenn Fleishman (00:17:54):
My wife and I realize we're from, we're from like two generations of Teetotalers, so
Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
I'm sorry. Oh, oh man. I, Glen, I have mixed feet guys as most people will go to CES and have been, I've been for many years, and then Conex for many years before that. I have mixed feelings about it, you know, and it's almost always a relief not to go, cuz a, you know, you're gonna get sick. You didn't get sick, Anne. I was impressed. But you know, you're gonna
Ant Pruitt (00:18:15):
Get sick. I did not. But I have gotten sick and lawyers passed normal. But when, when I used to hear folks like, you say this about ces, I'm like, what are they talking about? There's no way. But after doing it for a handful of years, I get where you're coming from. Yeah. It is a grind.
Leo Laporte (00:18:30):
And one of the things you learn is that most of the stuff you're gonna see is never gonna emerge.
Ant Pruitt (00:18:34):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:18:35):
And that like, look at a concept card. Yeah. Well the, the original idea I think of CES was companies go and show vendors, dealers, people are gonna sell it. Yeah. Their ideas. And then, and, and if everybody says, oh, that's good, we'll buy a thousand of them, then they make it. They don't make it until they, they sell it. And so I think that that's one reason a lot of stuff is shown that never comes out. Although with TVs, for instance, and that's one of the big draws of CES with TVs. Those are the big companies. Panasonic, sharp Sony,
Ant Pruitt (00:19:10):
LGT, cen,
Leo Laporte (00:19:12):
Tcl, high Senses, they emerged at ces, took over the Microsoft booth. I sensed it.
Glenn Fleishman (00:19:16):
That that's something I missed by not going for sure. Is that is that you kind of, it's like, was it Aha bar the street in Japan, people used to, I dunno if you still go where it's like, you're like, what's coming next? And wired had, its was it Japanese schoolgirl technology watch <laugh> for a while, which is like, you're trying to figure out what
Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
Here a Juko girls carrying.
Glenn Fleishman (00:19:33):
Yes. Yeah. And so I think CES is like a much bigger version of that, but it's like, what are people working on? Like, what are they actually all around the world? What have they actually put into a product they can show you in a setting? And even if 80% of it doesn't ship, you're like, oh, this is the state of the art. This is all the, you know, all the stuff people are working on. Which is, I don't know. I think that's
Leo Laporte (00:19:52):
Thrilling. It is also in the past year's, been showcased for self-driving vehicles, electric vehicles, new to auto technology, weirdly, Microsoft is there. They've they've gone back to ces, but as a Oh mob not, not as the Windows company or even at the Azure company, but as the mobility company. And they're showing car solutions, which is interesting. Oh Sony is not at CS this year. Usually they debut view their new TVs and they decided not to. They're gonna instead focus on PS two. And it says PS two. Yeah. five, what did I say? PS two, PSV two, which is four. The PS five. There we go. Okay. Thank you. And and according to the Virgin Electronic electric vehicle that Sony's gonna be doing, so cars are very big. So here's what's gonna happen. Just so you know father Robert Baller is there, Stacey Higginbotham is there. Scott Wilkinson's not, but his friend Mike heis is, we're gonna get reports from Scott, Stacy and Father Robert on Sunday on Ask the Tech Guys our brand new show. And then Sunday after that Sunday evening on Twit, Stacy will be our guest. So we will have our CS coverage. We'll be on the last day of C S Cs weirdly moved this year to starts tomorrow through Sunday.
Glenn Fleishman (00:21:10):
Oh
Leo Laporte (00:21:11):
Yeah. Normally it's, it's a week and midweek, but it's weekends, the holidays on Sunday. Is that why it's the holiday? They had to push it back. That makes sense.
Glenn Fleishman (00:21:18):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Had
Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
To move it around. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I always have a little fomo, you know, and I'm sure you do too, Ant, you know, we're not there. What's happening? I remember the days of, of the video, parts
Glenn Fleishman (00:21:28):
Of it, including porn and all that.
Leo Laporte (00:21:31):
Oh yeah. They separated that out. So it's used to be, because it was just VCs, vcr, you know, VHS tapes in the corner of the adult corner, c e s there was just a bunch of VHS tapes, sellers, and then they separated it to a different venue. In fact, one year I was there with Tech TV and we had cameras and we said, let's go over to the I think it was the Adult Entertainment expo. They called it <laugh>. And we went over there with cameras. It was quite embarrassing because I go in the door, remember I'm on Tech TV at the time, and one of the cam girls goes, Leo, and come running over
Glenn Fleishman (00:22:08):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
And I said, stop shooting, stop shooting
Glenn Fleishman (00:22:13):
<Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:22:14):
Stop it.
Glenn Fleishman (00:22:15):
Nice. Gosh.
Leo Laporte (00:22:16):
Turn off the cameras,
Glenn Fleishman (00:22:18):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:22:20):
We actually, I ended up making friends with her. I don't know if I should admit this, not that kind of friend, but we got, I got to know her. She was a fan of Tech TV. And a a year later we were looking to do, we did stunts on Tech TV cuz it was tv, cable tv. And we were gonna do a win a date stunt. And we decided let's use the cam girl. And so it was gonna be win a date with what, I can't remember what her name was, win a date with her. But it was troubling because we had the people on, we had her on a camera and she kept taking off her trying to take off her clothes. <Laugh> can't, I can't do that. You can't stop it.
Glenn Fleishman (00:22:59):
Stop it. It's important to point out that a lot of the innovations and technology started with pornography lense. It's like, it's so, it's so, it's always a Yeah. If you're too prudish as a technology related person about it, then you wind up missing out on things. And I remember meeting the a Netscape webmaster many years ago, Uhhuh. And he told me about being on a a panel with somebody from Hustler or some, you know, one of those magazines and was talking about, and the, you know, while we, you know, we can't get a three 20 by two 40 pixel screen doing more than 10 frames per second. And she's like, we can sell that. And he's like, oh, that's the future. Like, people will pay for.
Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
But they, but they did also develop the technologies that got a higher resolution faster. I mean, they absolutely drove that whole streaming video market because there was big money in it.
Glenn Fleishman (00:23:44):
You gotta watch certain market segments, even if you're not interested in the products or services offered.
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:49):
Well the other, the other thing is, is at, at n ab the church piece, the religious broadcasters? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:56):
Oh, huge.
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:57):
Like huge amounts of smaller technology to try to get them
Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
Going. Well, you know, we use TriCaster and one of their big markets is megachurches.
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:05):
I bet. Exactly. Yeah. That what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:24:07):
Yep.
Glenn Fleishman (00:24:07):
It's also the remote wireless mics. I think churches were big pushers in terms of trying to get the the FCC to license that really weird is a very complicated thing about a carve out with wireless access to prevent interference from like unlicensed purposes anyway. Cuz they use wireless mics light crazy throughout urban, interesting
Leo Laporte (00:24:26):
Urban areas. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:27):
Right. So
Leo Laporte (00:24:28):
With Broadway, it's like the scene from Spinal Tap where he's got a wireless guitar pickup and they're at an Air Force base and they keep getting the air air traffic controllers on the, on the pa <laugh> Broadway for on Arch. We've come a long way from Camgirl to this Twitch streamer controlled entirely by AI neuro Samma every day between six and 11:00 PM Greenwich. Meantime, I gotta explain device. We don't call it that anymore. It's U T C. But anyway, neuro Samma streams herself playing mine, Minecraft and osu, which is a musical rhythm game. She looks like a Japanese anime style character. 50,000 followers, talks with them in chat. But she's not a human. She's an ai. Wild,
Glenn Fleishman (00:25:19):
Wild.
Leo Laporte (00:25:19):
This is, of course, this is where that all happens, just is Japanese youth culture. Right. I mean,
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:25):
I saw a story, I didn't put it in the rundown about, about a huge market in China for making up fake people. Yeah. I don't mean to, to enter, you know, to be a spokesperson, a spokes thing.
Leo Laporte (00:25:36):
Do you wanna see Kauna Here she is on her YouTube channel, the AI channel. Is this a is this a disaster for, is this a take down ready to happen? I don't know. I don't know if I should play this. Maybe just leave this for you. Playing a game using only your voice, but you could see there's a certain,
(00:26:06):
So that's an AI voice, even it's not a human, at least according to this story, you never know. Right. There could be some person, some 38 year old guy <laugh> That's right. In a wife Peter <laugh> doing the background. I don't know. <Laugh>, some vote coder <laugh> in the, in the latest livestream on Monday, according to Vice, when a user asked Neuro samma if she's more of a chip or Dale type of chipmunk, she said, I think I'm more of a dale. She frequently back and forth with the chat saying things, are you seriously trying to troll me? That was an awful chat after numerous users put f in the chat instead of questions for, wow. Interesting. So I guess this is the next generation of of cam performers. Why, why you use a human when you can do ai. And I wanted to ask you if you were watching Monday Night Football on Monday and what you thought
Ant Pruitt (00:27:05):
I watched it briefly. Cause I was busy doing something else. And then I saw the incident with
Leo Laporte (00:27:13):
Demar Hamer. Hamlin, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, 24 year old safety, A very routine tackle ca you know, catching, he tackled a guy and
Ant Pruitt (00:27:24):
Got up former Clemson, tiger t Higgins was the most that he was tackling.
Leo Laporte (00:27:28):
Oh, mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Okay. Got up then staggered and fell. And they actually had to call off the game. They, they, they performed CPR on him for something like nine minutes.
Ant Pruitt (00:27:37):
Nine minutes.
Leo Laporte (00:27:38):
Brought an ambulance out on the field and took him to the hospital where he's still in critical condition. And we don't know much. They haven't said
Jeff Jarvis (00:27:45):
They
Ant Pruitt (00:27:45):
Last report he is improving Good. But he's still in critical care. Good. So good.
Leo Laporte (00:27:51):
According to the bills he suffered cardiac arrest during the play. His heartbeat was restored on the field. They had a small defibrillator in the ambulance, which I didn't see. I thought it was manual cpr, but no, in fact, they had a defibrillator. And he's in the hospital sedated. I think they had, I was told they had to incubate him, so, right.
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:09):
Yes,
Ant Pruitt (00:28:09):
They did.
Leo Laporte (00:28:09):
Since he's on a ventilator, you, you don't want to be conscious during that. His heartbeat was, according to the bills, was restored on the field, transferred to the University of Cincinnati, me medical center for further testing and treatment. He, and then they
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:21):
Had to do it again in the hospital, sent his office. Did
Leo Laporte (00:28:23):
They? Oh
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:24):
Lord. Yeah. That's worrisome.
Leo Laporte (00:28:27):
I did, I did not see it. We were on the airplane coming home, but when we turned on the news on the way home, it was of course all over the news.
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:34):
I saw a reference on Twitter and went to dial immediately and was shocked what was going on. And, and, and it was also just amazing. And I was curious the, what did the commentators say? They just didn't, they just didn't know what to say.
Ant Pruitt (00:28:48):
Yeah. The commentators are, were they wanted to be sensitive to the situation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
ESPN was the broadcaster.
Ant Pruitt (00:28:55):
Right. They wanted to be sensitive to the situation, but at the same time, you could see that they were, their emotions were, were all over the place. And I felt for those, those folks trying to do that job because they wanted him to present the information to the viewers. But it was very difficult for them because they could see someone's life was in the balance Right. In front of their eyes. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
You know, and that was to me the most remarkable thing After, after the fact. I saw a video. I didn't see the him, the tackler, his fall, but of all the players crying and you see these big br Yeah. Proof broody guys in tears
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:30):
For the grace of God. Go,
Leo Laporte (00:29:31):
They, yeah. Well, that's right. That
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:33):
Was very so close.
Leo Laporte (00:29:34):
Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:34):
And the other thing that struck me, Leo, is, is that, is that the damage that that professional football does to young men's bodies, we don't see until a few decades later mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And this is a case where we saw it right there,
Ant Pruitt (00:29:47):
You know, and even with that incident there, and I don't wanna diminish this, you know, he, he took a hit in the chest and that that triggered it. It
Leo Laporte (00:29:56):
Was kind of a freak as far as we know. Well,
Ant Pruitt (00:29:58):
It is a freak accident because that typically you see stuff like that would happen in an auto racing event because of the impact hitting the wall in that jarring motion. But it's still a freak accident. I hate what I saw online was the people were number one blaming it on football. It's not necessarily football's fault blaming it on t Higgins, the receiver himself. Not
Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
Certainly not his
Ant Pruitt (00:30:23):
Fault. Not his fault. And next blaming it on some other political bull crap that I'm not even going to say what it is. Right. But some other political stuff. Yep. this is just an, a freak accident. That's amazing. Unfortunately, people
Leo Laporte (00:30:34):
Get politics into everything is just mindfulness. It's
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:37):
Not just politics. It's lies. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:30:39):
But,
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:40):
But,
Leo Laporte (00:30:41):
Cause
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:41):
I'm not a sports guy.
Leo Laporte (00:30:42):
Your, your kids played football and you Yes. I'm, I think you played football right now. You're certainly a huge football. Yes, sir. Fan.
Ant Pruitt (00:30:48):
Yes, sir. I play
Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Does does it damage the sport?
Ant Pruitt (00:30:54):
No, in my opinion, no, it does not. And, and I'm very, very different when it comes to this because I know about all of the CTE and the, the concussions that people deal with. My son got a concussion, the college boy, he got a concussion back four years ago. And it pretty much ruined Queen, queen Pruit. She wouldn't go to another game because she, she didn't like what she saw. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, she supports him, but she couldn't go back to a ballgame. And when this incident happened Monday night, it, it brought me to tears because it's just you, it is beyond my control. But at the same time those kids are out there doing what they freaking love to do. And, and, and that sometimes that sad stuff happens. And I could think about Hardhead right now and that's in high school and the stuff that he's gone through and, and his teammate, the quarterback took a blow to the head at the end of a game. And that really wrecked us. You know, that was a, that was a hard night. And trying to console my son and push him through that and whew.
(00:32:06):
You know, but at the same time, he wanted to be out there for his team and he wanted to be out there for the love of the game. But yet he knows this is a very, very risky sport at times.
Jeff Jarvis (00:32:17):
Can I ask you the, the reparative surgery you had, was that from, was that football injuries?
Ant Pruitt (00:32:23):
Believe it or not track and field brought that on.
Jeff Jarvis (00:32:26):
Really?
Ant Pruitt (00:32:27):
<Laugh> track and field brought that on. I, I ran the high hurdles and I had a, a, a cartilage tear in my hip, and it was on my trail leg. So doing that repetitive motion Right, right. Whipping my trail leg across that hurdle just kept making it worse. I didn't know it at the time.
Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
<Laugh>, we wish the best, certainly for DeMar Hamman, but
Ant Pruitt (00:32:49):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>.
Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. I think part of what makes football fun is the risk. Young, young men especially need to take risks. Right. it's, it's part of our game.
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:02):
Or they're being exploited for that too.
Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
Well, that's the other question. And I wonder that when I see boxing, I often feel like, oh, this is an exploitive sport. You know, these are, these are usually poor black men who had no other way of making a living. So we put 'em in the ring and men and punch each other.
Glenn Fleishman (00:33:18):
Right. Yeah. My, my dad loved boxing. He watched boxing for many decades. And you ask him any statistic before a certain year, he can tell you everything about everything. And then at some point he just hit the limit and went, oh, I can't, you know, I can't watch and support this anymore. And I don't think that was blindness on his part. He is a very good guy. Or anybody's party still likes boxing. It's like we all have our different limits now. We perceive it. It's not like blood sport or something, it's not like
Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
Watching. Yeah. But it kind of is a bloods. And this, I have the same qualm because I love football. I love Gridiron. Mm-Hmm. And Iraq football. I love watching the nfl. Lisa and I both do, we know about cte. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we know about the long-term damage. Many of these athletes suffer. We now, it's been brought right up to us, the da the day-to-day risks as well. Yeah. My kid played pop Warner in fifth grade and he loved it. And they, you know, it's fifth grade, but they wear Yeah. Helmets.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:10):
They take hits
Leo Laporte (00:34:11):
Too. They take hits. And in a practice game one of the players got a tib fib break, a serious break. He's in a hip cast for the rest of the season. And I'm thinking, do I want my son out there doing this? But he loved it. And so it's hard.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:26):
That's, that's where I am. I see all of those, those potentially horrible aspects of it. Yet at the same time I tell my family this all the time, football changed my life. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, I can go all the way back to being seven years old in the exact moment where my life changed socially as a young black man and, and being different from the other kids in the neighborhood, not having friends, but something about football. And that it, it flipped a switch and my life changed going forward. And then being able to get relationships with, with coaches. Now granted, I did see my father regularly, you know, but when I was six years old, he and my mother divorced. So he wasn't in the house. But having those father figures as coaches was tremendous for me. And, and, and it all, and it all turns back to football. So really hard for me to poo poo the game of football when I look at what it's done for me in my life and help me in my day to day.
Jeff Jarvis (00:35:28):
Can I ask you a question then? Sure. cuz I'm not as, you know, a sports guy at all <laugh>. Right. I'm like, I'm like a Christmas and Easter Christian. I'm a Super Bowl and World Cup sports fan. Right. Nice. And so watching the World Cup, which this year was just even I knew was amazing.
Ant Pruitt (00:35:46):
Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:35:47):
What always strikes me when I watch, I watch what we call soccer, is that, you know, when you get kicked in the shins, you, you, you roll around in the ground in agony to try to get the penalty. Right. And so it's this, it's this performative agony versus American football is ah, I can take anything. Yeah. And I'm not hurting. No. Nope. I do it through the pain. I do it through the pain. Yeah. There just seems to be a, a huge cultural difference. The
Leo Laporte (00:36:13):
I'm gonna come up and kick you hard in the shit shits <laugh> and didn't you tell me how you feel.
Jeff Jarvis (00:36:20):
Football. They don't American football, they don't do it. You kick my heart of the shit in football. Ah,
Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
Baseball's the same way. They rub it off. What? Don't, whatever you do don't show. Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (00:36:27):
Exactly. I think it's, so the question is, is that American is part of the problem with American football is the sport and, and race and television and money. But is it also our
Ant Pruitt (00:36:38):
Culture? I would think it's American culture myself. I heard all of that in football, basketball, baseball, all of those. You, you get hurt, be quiet, rub a little dirt on it, you'd be okay. You know, <laugh> little stuff like that. Yeah. and that
Leo Laporte (00:36:54):
Is very
Ant Pruitt (00:36:55):
American. Don't cry. I enjoyed
Leo Laporte (00:36:56):
That. You tell boys not to cry, don't we? Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:36:58):
Yeah. And, and, and there's problems with that. You shouldn't tell 'em not to cry. But the biggest thing that I got out of it was things are gonna hurt sometimes, but it's not, it shouldn't stop you. Yeah. You know, and you can take that metaphorically in life. You know, you're gonna have some challenges in just societal norms, but you can't let it hold you back either. You know,
Leo Laporte (00:37:20):
It's such an interesting question because the players want to do it Right. They love it. Right. You just told an amazing story about it changing your life at the age of seven. Yep. It,
Ant Pruitt (00:37:34):
I remember the exact moment I was playing cornerback of all positions, had no idea what I was doing at cornerback. And this kid, you
Jeff Jarvis (00:37:43):
Were seven
Ant Pruitt (00:37:44):
<Laugh>. Right. And you were
Jeff Jarvis (00:37:45):
Seven. It's okay. You didn't need to know. And by the way, be a
Leo Laporte (00:37:48):
Quarterback. That's another thing. Seven. That's a big difference. That's another thing that's a big difference. <Laugh> football for some reason, seven, you know, you watch a seven year, year old group of seven year olds play soccer and it's like he watching a school of fish swimming. They're all curtain cats. They're all chasing them. They got cats. One kid's face the other, but it's, it's very football in America. Even for little kids is extremely serious. Yeah. You don't screw around in football. I didn't
Jeff Jarvis (00:38:14):
Interrupt the end. You were, you were telling your
Ant Pruitt (00:38:15):
Story. No, it, it's I remember I was playing cornerback and we were playing against Iva in South Carolina and the kid got the ball to run around the corner towards me and there was this moment of, oh crap,
Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
This, here he comes
Ant Pruitt (00:38:31):
Versus this other kid. Yeah. What am I supposed to do? And something just said, go hit him. Go make the tackle <laugh>. And when I went to hit him and make that tackle, I remember the sound, I remember what it feels like. I remember the sideline cuz it was on my sideline. I remember my coaches yelling. I remember my teammates yelling. Wow. And something just changed right there. And, and I was hooked ever since. And it totally changed my life. That kid, however, decided to become
Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
An artist.
Ant Pruitt (00:38:58):
Right.
Glenn Fleishman (00:38:59):
Something changed his, it <laugh> <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
No. Now I feel jealous. I feel envi. I have always felt envious of people who played team sports through college or even later. There's something you get out of being on a team together that is su a super valuable lesson.
Ant Pruitt (00:39:16):
Yeah. You know, and my mother did. She didn't want me to play. That that was a big battle in the family. Yeah. but her, her friend at the time taught her into it because he was a coach. And I'm forever grateful for him. He'd be good for him too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it did, it, it literally changed my life. And the whole team aspect that you mentioned. I I stand by that sir. I stand, stand by that.
Glenn Fleishman (00:39:39):
I mean the
Ant Pruitt (00:39:40):
Issue brotherhood,
Glenn Fleishman (00:39:41):
The issue with football is a lot of change though, right? Is that it's not the same game you played when you were a kid. I mean at the professional level, but even at the college level, it's like, you know, bigger, harder, faster. Kind of like every sport. It's got optimized towards something that is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> more dangerous. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I don't think the sports safety, I mean we're starting to finally see it hasn't caught up with that increased level of danger. Right. And if that keeps that, I mean that's the thing is, you know, you wouldn't be playing in high school if your, if your school couldn't get insurance. And we're starting to see reports to that. So it's gonna have to change at a high school and below level so the schools can keep getting insured and otherwise there won't be any pipeline to players.
Ant Pruitt (00:40:17):
Well there is definitely a trickle down with the research on helmets starting to happen towards the high school side. I can't say towards the popcorn Warner side yet, cuz that's a whole different ball of wise. It's usually private. But it is trickling down into the high school level forest to protection that they're getting in the helmets and then the shoulder pads and things
Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
Like that. And they're changing the rules dramatically every season. Yeah. the rules change dramatically on, you know, whether you can hit a quarterback you know, how you can hit somebody, how you hit a quarterback, helmet to helmet you know, we used to call it clipping, which <laugh> Yeah. Tackling some of the below the knees from behind. And that, that is, I mean, there is so many more things you can do that are, that are wrong. And that's good. That's, that's in response to that. But you make a good point, Glen, because our training methods have gotten so good in our diet and so forth. Yeah. We can make people who are huge, hugely strong. When you get hit by a 300 pound guy, I don't care if he's tackling you perfectly <laugh> this, it's gotta
Glenn Fleishman (00:41:18):
Right. It hurts. Where does mean Joe Green, if you look at mean Joe Green compare with tennis tiny players.
Leo Laporte (00:41:22):
She's tiny.
Glenn Fleishman (00:41:23):
You look at these new players, they're huge. Poor Joe Refrigerator Perry. You're like, I don't know. He is kind of like a college fridge now. I mean that's so a college
Leo Laporte (00:41:32):
It's amazing, isn't
Glenn Fleishman (00:41:33):
It? Dorm Fridge, yeah. Not to make fun. Those are great players in their day. I, it's funny, it's like we start talking about it. I'm like, oh yeah, I used to watch football. I kind of forgot, but I did. But those were great players in their days. It
Leo Laporte (00:41:43):
Is. And I guess it's a wonderful sport to watch. It's a, it's a, I imagine, and I think you've proven it an wonderful sport to play and it's dangerous, but I think danger is maybe part of the excitement of playing it. If it were perfectly safe, would it be as fun?
Ant Pruitt (00:42:00):
I
Jeff Jarvis (00:42:01):
<Crosstalk>
Ant Pruitt (00:42:02):
I'm not sure, but I will say that I've taken a beaten more so on the basketball court than I think, oh
Leo Laporte (00:42:08):
God, throwing elbows. Oh, yeah. And there's no protection, there's no pads.
Ant Pruitt (00:42:13):
More the basketball than, than football. Yeah. Hands down.
Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
Well, you're not protected. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:42:19):
Nope.
Jeff Jarvis (00:42:20):
The technology angle to this story, Leo was interesting because I, I watched for a long time and the TV didn't know what to do, so they threw in every commercial they had in the, in the box kept going to come back.
Leo Laporte (00:42:30):
They didn't know if the game was going, but come back for a
Jeff Jarvis (00:42:32):
Lot. He didn't know. Right. But the thing is, the, the crowd of the stadium stayed there, there was nothing being told to them, nothing at all. Right. Right. But they all had phones. They all knew what was
Leo Laporte (00:42:42):
Going on. They, they cared. I, you know, this is Cincinnati. It was a serious game. They really cared. And one of the things you see in football that you don't see in any other sport is the brotherhood between teams. It always amazes me at the end of the game when team players who've been fighting each other like animals. Right. For, for a whole game, come over and hug each other and shake hands. Yeah. Say how you doing? How the kids Sure do. There is a fraternity of football players.
Ant Pruitt (00:43:08):
I never see that in basketball. I don't think they do it in baseball. They
Leo Laporte (00:43:12):
Not only, they not
Ant Pruitt (00:43:13):
Do it. They, they each other's hands, like
Leo Laporte (00:43:15):
Their own teammates. The other, the losing team slinks off and the Yeah. Football players love each other. And I think part of that is because they know they're gladiators, what it takes in the arena. And but also because they all have played with each other. <Laugh>. They all know each other pretty well. It's a, I think it's a beautiful sport. I'm a I'm a huge fan and as a fan, and I'm glad we have you here Ant, because as a fan, I always worry that we're supporting something that is not good, that is exploitative of the players or not good for
Ant Pruitt (00:43:48):
The players. No. And, and, and the, the whole exploitation thing has been thrown out for the last handful of years. And I get where people are coming from, but at the end of the day, these players that sign those contracts, they choose to sign the contracts. They don't have to play in nfl. Right. They can go and get a job over here at In and Out, you know? Right. But they're given a tremendous opportunity to change their life financially. And they choose to sign that contract. It, it, that's, that's all you can say about
Leo Laporte (00:44:21):
It. The other thing I would say is that in you, in generations and centuries past, we've gone to war instead. So maybe it's nice to have an for young men to express those feelings and get that right. Testosterone out without killing, without literally killing each other. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this all actually is a Google story. Surprise. Look
Ant Pruitt (00:44:43):
At you, man. Look at me. I tell you, you got skills. Google
Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
Won the contract for Sunday Ticket. Oh, it's gonna be on YouTube tv. This was talking about a battle. Apple was the front runner for a long time. The N NFL gets a billion and a half dollars a year from Direct tv. Directv's been losing their shirt on it. They, they did it because they figured this is gonna sell a lot of satellite dishes and a lot of subscriptions, not just to homeowners, but to bars. But ultimately they couldn't justify the billion and a half dollars a year. So the, and the networks went. Yeah. And so who came into Amazon, Google and Apple to tech companies who have the money to spend and who have an interest beyond, you know, gaining subscribers. Apple eventually dropped out, I think because they couldn't come to an agreement with the NFL about how Apple could run it, for instance. Right. I've heard Apple wanted to give it away free. Mm. That there were, that was part
Ant Pruitt (00:45:43):
Of Apple Plus
Leo Laporte (00:45:43):
Or something, right? Yeah. And there were some issues over international rights. But, but Google jumped in as soon as Apple withdrew and, and took it. We don't know how much they paid, but speculation is, is at least 2 billion a year Google can afford
Ant Pruitt (00:45:58):
Pocket because because I was on vacation last week. I didn't read into this a whole lot. I just saw the headline and said, Nope, I'm not working. But I was curious, was there anything about the potential price intuitive, the consumer, because that was the problem with DirecTV in its package deal. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> was, it was ridiculously expensive for those handful of games to happen, you know, for roughly six months. It, it just never really equated to being a good dollar value.
Leo Laporte (00:46:26):
I'm looking at the Google blog push and I don't see anywhere where they've said how much, but I have read in commentary that it's expected they will ch upsell it. That it won't be part of, you'll have to be a YouTube TV subscriber and then you'll have to pay an additional monthly fee. Oh. Which I, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, Google could subsidize it, but I think the NFL wants probably wants a percentage. Well,
Ant Pruitt (00:46:52):
Google also has the beads to sell the
Leo Laporte (00:46:54):
Advertising that Apple doesn't have. Well, that's exactly right. It's all outta market Sunday regular season NFL games based on the viewer's location. This is the biggest problem with the nfl by the way. Good luck trying to watch a game outta market. Yeah. Broadcast on Fox. CBS b NFL Sunday Ticket allows fans in the US the ability to follow all their favorite teams and players no matter where they live. That's the real value of it. Our sons Green Bay Packers fan, they're never gonna have a local broadcast of the Packers unless they're playing the Niners. So now we can watch the Packers games updated Sunday ticket product features and functionality will be announced ahead of the 2023 NFL season. That means later this summer. I'm gonna guess it's gonna cost a not insignificant amount of money every month, but I don't know. I don't know.
Ant Pruitt (00:47:41):
I I seem to remember like if you wanted to order it, it was damn near $400 back in.
Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
I think that's what it will be. That's be my guess. That's for a six month season, right? For six time. Right. August through February.
Ant Pruitt (00:47:56):
The, with I, I love the idea of having the ability to see out of market teams. Is that me, uhoh? Am I beeping? Is that not me? No, that's you. Oh no,
Leo Laporte (00:48:07):
It was John.
Ant Pruitt (00:48:08):
It was John. Mr.
Leo Laporte (00:48:10):
Jammer runs the 14 minutes came <laugh>. Yeah. The, that was the 14 minute timer. Well, there
Ant Pruitt (00:48:16):
You go. That was the timer. That's what it
Leo Laporte (00:48:17):
Was. <Laugh>. There you go. Now what happens? But,
(00:48:21):
Oh, okay. That's the, okay. So I should explain what that timer is and what the alarm is. We have a new studio sponsor. Thank you. ACI Learning. Woo. Yes. They're, they're a part of the IT Pro family. They also have auto pro practice labs hubs. We have been partners with IT pro TV forever now it's ACI learning from IT pro. And they sponsor the studio. So every 14 minutes, <laugh>, I guess we have to, we have to put this, we're gonna eventually have signage in here that's as we did with that last past some years ago. But that's in lieu of that. And, and I just wanted to welcome 'em and thank him very much cuz that's a, that's gonna be a, a big help to keeping the lights on around here. I hope
Ant Pruitt (00:49:04):
You just do a green screen across your desk. It'll just like flow
Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
Over. I'll be like football studio host. We can actually do that. I don't know why we don't do something like that. The ticker on the bottom of the Yeah, we can have a ticker. You're electronic. Yeah. I don't know.
Ant Pruitt (00:49:19):
But what I was getting at about the, the whole package is good that you can get these out of my out of market games. But my problem is YouTube TV service, not necessarily working for families. My college boy, even though he is on my quote, family plan as an authorized user, so on and so forth, he cannot watch YouTube TV being often college in a whole different zip code that makes no, that gum sense to me. If he were trying to use my username and password up there, I get that. But he's, he's in my, my plan, he's, he's, I've authorized him and everybody else under the plan to be able to access the service. I don't understand why Google can't, you know, flip a switch and say, oh yeah, he's legit. You know, he should be able to do
Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
This. Oh, it drove me crazy. When we were in Mexico, we wanted to watch the 49ers game and I tried every <laugh>, every method, every
Ant Pruitt (00:50:17):
VP VPN
Leo Laporte (00:50:18):
Option. I did express vpn and that worked with Amazon Prime. But Google was way too smart. They said, you're not in a country. I tried every possible, possible method. I subscribe to NFL Plus. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they said, but you're not in the country. And this is the problem. There's so much money in this. These rights deals are extremely complicated. The Mexican broadcasters obviously have their own separate deal. Right. And I'm with that deal. They NFL guarantees no one know they can't watch it any other way. And so it's it's a nice, well, VPN
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:49):
Wouldn't
Leo Laporte (00:50:49):
Get you in. No. I don't know how they're getting around it.
Ant Pruitt (00:50:52):
But at the same time, why, why do I have to figure out a VPN option on a television
Leo Laporte (00:50:58):
Set? Well, and, and why doesn't, and the NFL have a deal? <Laugh>, I mean, I'm willing to give 'em money. Just give me a way to do it. They're literally for money or blood or money. There was no way to get it. The only way I could get it was you watch Red Zone, which is the most a d d thing ever. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's so, it's nightmare-ish. It's like they, they, they go to game. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. But anyway, we, we were able to see some of the plays, so that was good. Youtube, actually, cn b c says it'll be roughly 2 billion a year. So that's the, it's that will be at the start of the new season next year available as an add-on package if you're already a YouTube TV subscriber. But this is the good news, an as a standalone ALA card option on YouTube's primetime channels. So it'll be part of YouTube tv, but also part of YouTube. So there may be a solution there for you. Right. so you know, and I'm sure Google will monetize it but, but maybe they will subsidize it as well. We'll see.
Ant Pruitt (00:52:03):
Hmm.
Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
It, it was Sunday ticket on DirecTV was $80 a month for the base option and extra features for a hundred forty nine ninety nine a month. So
Ant Pruitt (00:52:16):
80, $80 times six months.
Leo Laporte (00:52:18):
Yeah. but that was, yeah, that was the basic, yeah. That was a basic, almost 500 bucks. It'll
Jeff Jarvis (00:52:26):
Be interesting to see Google go up against Murdoch whenever sports things come up for exploration. Cuz that's Murdoch's whole strategy is to get as much sports audience as he
Leo Laporte (00:52:36):
Can. I think this is the problem knows these, these tech companies have such deep pockets that even Rupert Murdoch can't compete
Jeff Jarvis (00:52:44):
And they already hates Google anyway, cuz they're competitors and now they're really gonna hate
Leo Laporte (00:52:49):
Each other. So what is he gonna do? He's gonna do what everybody else does. He's gonna go to the government, whether it's the US government Yep. Or the u go and say, Hey, wine or Australia, which he practically owns. Yep. And say, Hey, these guys are doing me dirt. Which brings us to probably the most important story of the week. The Irish regulators Oh. Have ruled that meta. They're finding meta 400 million. But more importantly, they're saying, you cannot use what you know about your users to sp to sell ads.
Glenn Fleishman (00:53:32):
You did a very sad trombone sound right here.
Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
Yeah. <laugh>, a top European Union privacy regulator ruled this is from the Wall Street Journal. Meta platforms cannot use its contracts with Facebook's and Instagram users. They can't say, Hey, they said it was okay. Look, they signed this special contract, which nobody reads to justify sending them ads based on their online activity. Now,
Glenn Fleishman (00:53:56):
The long run screws media too.
Leo Laporte (00:53:58):
It screws everybody. Google, yes. Probably more than anybody else. Yes. Now, a $400 million fine is to, Facebook is not the end of the world. Bigger the biggest Oh, these days. Maybe be. Yeah, maybe.
Glenn Fleishman (00:54:11):
Well, they have, well, it's, part of it is, this is the first, isn't this one of the first resolutions? The GDPR was passed a few years ago. Yep. And there were massive complaints that the process was, you know, anybody, any citizen of the EU or I think certain residents and other organizations could file complaints and companies be forced to turn over a significant percentage, like single digit percentage of annual revenue and, and global revenue, if I recall. Right. Right. Yep. Yep. And this, as I read this, this is, these are 2018 complaints being resolved in 20, you know, late 2022, early 2023 here. Right. And the Iris regulators now issued a billion dollars in fines, but it took a while. So these companies are able to reap the rewards from it. And also with Apples change, their their do not track me thing. They're oh yeah. That policy, which, which Facebook said was gonna cost some billions, and there's been some disputes about whether meta really incurred that kind of cost. But people do, people when given the choice say, please do not track me across apps. And that's kind of the fundamental privacy issue. And it's gonna cost these companies money that built their operations around tracking them across apps. But in this case, this is even like within the app, right? This is where it gets to It is it's that it's within their systems. You agree
Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
Their, when you sign up for Instagram that we could track you, you allowed us to. Right. And you still can't now, according to the Wall Street
Glenn Fleishman (00:55:32):
Journal, well, but, but they're saying you have to ex you have to expose it better. No,
Leo Laporte (00:55:35):
No, no, no. They're saying you may not, despite, you cannot use its contracts with Facebook and Instagram users to justify sending them ads based on, on their online activity.
Glenn Fleishman (00:55:45):
Right. But you could, you could revise that and expose what they're saying is you could expo, as I understood it, you could expose an option for people, which is buried in the agreement now. But legitimately you could expose an option and let people choose to be tracked. And that's kind of what Apple did. And most people opted out, but not everybody. But Apple provided a very, you know, binary option. Apple doesn't really sell ads. Yeah. And a it does. So meta well, somewhat, but it's not the big business. But Meta could provide you know, incentives or present it in a different way that could wind up being compliant, that would be explicit instead of buried in an agreement and be in compliant. So they have, they have options. They just don't like them as well as just hiding it from the user that they're doing this.
Leo Laporte (00:56:24):
This is, but
Jeff Jarvis (00:56:25):
Also just demonizes this idea of targeting as if it's as if it's, it's the whole, you know what drives me nuts. A lot of it is this horrible book I had to finish reading. It's not surveillance. Surveillance is when governments come after you with police and watch you. This is ad tracking. It's, it's, it's a way that media and, and the internet is still seen as a medium. And it gets one of the mistakes here, including news, including a lot of entertainment, makes money so that you get what you get inexpensively. So what we're gonna see out of this is Yeah. Tons of paywalls now and further redlining of quality news and entertainment for the privileged, not for the society at whole. And it's, it's gonna be long-term damaging, I argue.
Leo Laporte (00:57:13):
So the, the, according to the Wall Street Journal, this issue is over first party data.
Glenn Fleishman (00:57:19):
Right, right.
Leo Laporte (00:57:20):
You can say, you know, as Apple does block third party trackers, but Apple, Facebook and Google all use first party data. And that's specifically what the Irish regulator is. Disallowing is unable. Meta has long allowed users to opt out of personalized ads based on data. It gleans from users activity on other websites and apps, but it doesn't give users that option for opting out of ads based on data about activity on its own platform. Instagram. Right, right. Or Facebook, such as what posts a user comments on what videos an Instagram user watches. The journal says that in-house data is one of meta's main tools for building customized audiences for the personal ads that sells. This is, this is the first party loophole that Apple and others conveniently ignore. We've said this again and again. Yeah. All Apple's saying is you can't track, you know, somebody else's app, but Apple knows exactly what you do on the phone. Google knows exactly what you do every time you go on a search. <Laugh> meta knows exactly what you're doing on every single meta property. Now, the EU is saying you can't even use that data. I don't see anywhere where it says you could you had have to ask permission. Maybe, maybe there is a loophole. I'm looking at
Glenn Fleishman (00:58:32):
The stories. I thought it this They don't, I'm sorry, go
Leo Laporte (00:58:35):
Ahead. Meta says it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal. Yeah. And the journal says that could take years, but if the decisions are upheld, they could mean that meta will have to allow users to opt out of ads that are based on how users interact with its own apps. So I guess that's the option implies a switch. Yeah. Yeah,
Glenn Fleishman (00:58:53):
Yeah. Yeah. But, and the question, I mean, right in it's first party data, if it's third party data, maybe it should be opt in or it should be informed in Apple's way. I mean, I guess, right. This gets us to the heart of, you know, what we're paying for if we're the product, even if we're the product of a first party, a first party customization, there's some things I want delivered that way. I remember when Gmail launched and people were freaked out, and in some ways, rightly so, the Gmail would Ana or Google would analyze the contents of our email and serve personalized ads based against that. Right. And now it's, I don't know how many years later are we 17 years or something? And it still is doing some variety of that. We don't have end-to-end encryption on email, although Gmail recently announced they're gonna enable an option for that, and then they won't be able to sell ads against the contents of email. So, but
Leo Laporte (00:59:36):
Google's long said, we don't do that anyway. Google, Google can
Glenn Fleishman (00:59:40):
Eat. Well, they're doing something right. They're doing something co contextual. Oh,
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:43):
They say they don't early, but
Glenn Fleishman (00:59:44):
They stop not the contents,
Leo Laporte (00:59:45):
But they say they do not, but they don't. And that's only, there's a lot things they don't need to <laugh>. Every time you do a search, you're announcing what your interests are. You, you give, it's better than that information. So here's what I see is the critical thing. Applications at Apples at t app switch, which by the way, a majority of users say, no, I don't want tracking never stopped first party data. It doesn't stop Apple right now the EU is saying Apple, Google Meta. You have to offer a switch that that stops first party data. And, and I think every single user will turn that
Jeff Jarvis (01:00:24):
Off. And I don't think that's a gdpr, that's the other thing. I think it's a misreading as bad as GDPR is, and as, and as confusing as it is, I think that's a misreading of, of what's there. Because again, when the newspapers realize and, and, and, and news publishers realize what's going on here, and entertainment companies realize what's going on here in the streaming world that is more and more supported by advertising they're gonna have fits here. Because, because I've been pushing every news organization out there to say, change your product strategy. So you get first party data, that is your only defense. Google went out there right? And tried to kill cookies and the publishers weren't ready. So they're the ones who said, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on to cookies for now. Because because they don't know what they're doing and they don't have their first party data strategies they're gonna be screwed all around. This is, this is gonna kill tons of media.
Leo Laporte (01:01:12):
This is what the journal says. Ireland did not want to do this, but they, they found that nothing in GDPR stopped meta from making behavioral ads a necessary part of its contract with users. But a number of other EU privacy regulators disagreed arguing that behavioral ads are not necessary to provide a social network. You don't, they didn't need those ads. And a board of all EU privacy regulators, the European Data Protection Board last month overruled Ireland as part of a dispute resolution system built into gdpr. So what happened is Ireland said, yeah, GDPR does not disallow this. But the rest of Europe said, no, wait a minute, it does. Or
Jeff Jarvis (01:01:59):
A body represented the resident Europe.
Leo Laporte (01:02:01):
Yeah. Said, no, we believe that in fact this is under the domain of gdpr and it isn't necessary for meta to create a business. So we're gonna be able, we believe that you should stop it. And I think this is a significant shot across the bow. And, and I think it should not be ignored, ma'am. Now it's gonna take a while. You know, it'll be appealed, there'll be a lot of litigation, but
Jeff Jarvis (01:02:23):
There's a risk. The US government, what does government do at the time when, when the US government is starting under both parties is going into Pier against Silicon Valley, this is about protecting American industry. You know, you watch what's happening with Mask on, it's fascinating that the EU government is investing in masteron. So I'm trying to think. It's fine. I've said it to you for years, stop whining about Google Invest in your own stuff. But because it's European and it's antis, Silicon Valley the government is taking a real role there in trying to fight Silicon Valley. And the US government is gonna have to say in trade agreements, whoa. Here, they'll see what they do.
Leo Laporte (01:03:00):
Yeah. I mean, I think users want that switch. Users want to be able to say, don't track me, bro.
Glenn Fleishman (01:03:07):
But they, Hmm. I see. I I, I, I think there's a fundamental there's a fundamental issue not about whether personalized ads should be used at all and whether companies should have a right to use data they collect from you within their own systems in order to feed advertising. I think it's an ecosystem issue. It's a disclosure issue. And it's also a what are we paying for issue, right? I'm, I preferentially pay for or use services that I know are not making money off me in a secondary way, whenever it's possible. It's one reason why, again, like lasted on, I'm not paying for maid on yet, but it is a superior product in some ways already for my particular set of interests. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because I'm not worried about Twitter's business model any anymore, what they're doing with my data. Now, I, I should, ultimately, I do wanna pay somebody for ADON in some distributed way. Leo, thank you very much for underwriting the a hundred million tweets I've, or toots I've made on the twit social. You, you're, cause you're paying, Leo paying for me right now. Wonderful
Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Person. And I'm very glad to have you on the
Glenn Fleishman (01:04:04):
Mask today. So you're, you're my volunteer volunteer payment coordinator here for this service. But but so I don't, I don't blame Google or Apple, any of the companies for wanting to do it. I, I feel like, I mean, if EO went too far, it's in creating a not providing enough guidance about what to do. And if the option were, look, you gotta have a really clear page where someone can go and say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And Ooh. And the companies, I think by contrast should say, if you slip, flip the switch off, you're gonna need to upgrade to a subscription where you pay x. I mean, that's the Twitter trade off, right? We're seeing in real-time Elon Musk discover what advertising actually brings to Twitter and how his $8 a month service doesn't necessarily replace the value of the ads he wants to turn off. So, you know, is it a privacy thing when everything's first party and everything's kept within the system? Not as much as when we find out that companies have been leaking first party stuff into third parties, which comes up all the time. So there's trash tissues. I don't know. I, I just, just,
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:02):
Glenn, I, I, I think you're, I think you're way right, going back to the very beginnings to the first days of the first cookies mm-hmm. Your cookies were necessary for the maintenance of web operations when they got used for advertising. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we were not in the least transparent about it. It made it easy for the Wall Street Journal to come along and demonize them. You know, what do they know about you? What they know. Right. It was a whole big series. And the industry, by that I mean, both technology and media and advertising all hurt themselves by not having, by not caring about the trust in
Leo Laporte (01:05:36):
Public. But let me ask you
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:37):
This, I think got demonized, overdone.
Leo Laporte (01:05:38):
Do you think it's a user's right to tell Facebook or Instagram or Apple or Google? No, I don't want you to track me,
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:48):
I think, no, I actually don't think, cause I think, I think it's what, what what Glen just said. A company can set the terms of their use, and you can say, this is their service. You wanna use this thing, fine, here's the deal.
Leo Laporte (01:06:01):
Here's how we
Jeff Jarvis (01:06:01):
This's the deal we make. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:06:02):
Right? Like, hu like Hulu, you pay a different
Jeff Jarvis (01:06:04):
Rate at Hulu with ads and without ads, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
And, and it is the case that we are using these amazing free services from Google and Facebook. They're absolutely free. And they're paid for by advertising. And that advertising, apparently advertisers believe, I know they tell us this, they need this tracking information. Yes. The advertisers have been spoiled by digital media. You know, when you buy a TV ad, when you buy an ad on the Super Bowl, all you know is you're gonna reach 80 million people. You don't know which people. Right. and that's why, you know, if you're Coca-Cola, you go, well, they all drink Coke, or worse, they drink Pepsi and we want 'em to drink Coke. So that's a worthwhile buy. But when people buy our podcasts, they want to know who am I talking to? And I, and I understand why advertisers want that, and I understand it's a careful balance between us turning over information about our audience. The good news is with podcasting, we can't cause it's rss. All we know is your IP address. And even that we don't really care or know about
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:10):
Until Spotify comes along.
Leo Laporte (01:07:12):
But then that's the, that's, well, but see, that's why it's Spotify's a threat. And iHeart and Amazon an audible because you, all of those shows you listen to only in their app, and their app knows everything. It knows everything. Your charge card, your name, address, phone number, it knows how much of the show you listen to when you listened to it. Did you hear the ad? Did you not hear the ad? And advertisers, if given the choice between knowing absolutely nothing and absolutely everything, always, you're gonna choose everything. Whether it helps 'em or not, I don't know. But meanwhile,
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:44):
The other book that I had to read that drove me completely nuts is Lenier
Leo Laporte (01:07:48):
10 Arguments Off Leading Your Social Media Councils This
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:52):
Companion piece to the much longer Shoshana Zulo. Right. The, the view of the moral entrepreneurs here is that advertising is the root of all ills and all. And so we should, it should become a paid internet, which is a position of extreme privilege that you can afford to pay for all these services. But many can't, number one. Right. or there's gonna be be crappy competition and disinformation that's always free. And, and I think that, that they're not looking at the larger picture of the, of the ecosystem in which we
Glenn Fleishman (01:08:25):
Live. I I'm just surprised that Jerry Len wrote a book because I remember his famous quote when he missed the seventh deadline of not delivering an earlier book. He called his publisher and said, every cell in my body has been replaced since I agreed to meet the devil.
Leo Laporte (01:08:39):
Oh my God.
Glenn Fleishman (01:08:40):
15, 15 years ago.
Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
<Laugh> Oh my God. He, his
Jeff Jarvis (01:08:45):
Hair was all, was the same hair.
Leo Laporte (01:08:48):
Jaron, who was an early proponent of vr. He was the, the VR King. Yes. has written books called You Are Not a Gal, <laugh> Truth Technology. And the Visual Virtual World, the Dawn of the New Everything, he's kind of become a Luddite.
Jeff Jarvis (01:09:10):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's the, these technologists Tristan Harris Roger Mcy Jerin Laier,
Leo Laporte (01:09:18):
They made
Jeff Jarvis (01:09:19):
Their money Bernie Bush. Yeah. They made their money. They cashed the check and then the Bernie Bush and find Virtue.
Glenn Fleishman (01:09:24):
Yeah. Cliff Stole who got out of the business. Yes. Who wrote a bunch of books that were like that, and then got outta the business and now makes Klein bottles.
Leo Laporte (01:09:30):
We have an interview.
Glenn Fleishman (01:09:31):
He went the right direction.
Leo Laporte (01:09:32):
I did a triangulation with Cliff. Oh. Yeah. Cliff Cliff used to be a regular on tech tv. He used to come on and do Andy Technology screeds.
Glenn Fleishman (01:09:41):
We, I kind of love the
Leo Laporte (01:09:42):
Guy. We loved it. It was fun. Because here we are at Technology channel and some guy's going, he's saying exactly what Jared just said, delete your social media. Yeah. And but we did an interview with him on his Klein bottles. And he, he went into his attic and he had a, he has a little robot that goes into his attic. Oh my God. And fetches the Kline bottle and pros it out. It was, I, I ca it was un triangulation. Well worth watching. Cliff wrote, of course, the Cuckoo's nest, which is a very famous book about tracking hackers. I like Cliff a lot. He's a stranger. There's,
Glenn Fleishman (01:10:14):
He's a weirdo. There's a long, long history of people. I mean, you know, writing negative things about technology. It may
Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
John CX a career. Are you kidding?
Glenn Fleishman (01:10:23):
<Laugh>? Well, it's also weirdly, at the same time, it's like if you're a school district or a state and you wanna fund something, you say, we're gonna buy computers for every kid. If you wanna sell a book, you say, no kids should be using computers in schools. There's some fundamental conflict there. I don't get. Right.
Jeff Jarvis (01:10:36):
There was a, there was an exchange on, on MAs on today. A somebody who, who, who left Twitter wants to write a book about responsible ai. I'll find this in a second. And is being driven nuts by agents and publishers and trying to write the book. <Laugh> and Masick came in Masick, I, you know, had the same experience. Masick came in and said, yeah, I tried to sell a book that was, you know, positive about the internet. And they all said, no, nobody wants that. Which was my last book was that's what happened. Nobody bought it. I'm gonna try again
Leo Laporte (01:11:05):
Soon. Do people still buy books? Really?
Jeff Jarvis (01:11:08):
Yep. It was a good year. The pandemic was a
Glenn Fleishman (01:11:10):
Very good year. Yeah. Biggest highest dollar value. The e-book sales have tapered over leveled off. Oh, hardcover. Sales remain strong. Trades sales are strong.
Leo Laporte (01:11:19):
Cuckoos egg. Thank you very much, Doug. Em, for correcting. Zig, that was Cliff's book of some years ago, probably
Glenn Fleishman (01:11:25):
30 years ago now. I, I met one of the guys in Cuckoos Egg. I was reading it, and I was like, oh, is that you name redacted? And he said, oh my God, please don't bring that up. That ruined my childhood. He got, oh, he got caught hacking at a young age and redeemed himself. Was he German? I thought
Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
It was a German
Glenn Fleishman (01:11:39):
Hacking group. I, I shouldn't reveal the details. I don't wanna ruin his life 30 years later. <Laugh>. Okay. I mean, his name was, his name was openly in the book and he hadn't changed his name, but he was hoping this was before the internet. Oh my God. I just realized this was when I brought this up to him, wondering if it was the same person. This was before you could search on anything on the internet. It was just the early days of Alta Vista. And so for him, he's like, oh, if you don't say anything to anybody, no one will ever connect me.
Jeff Jarvis (01:12:04):
You're not Yahoo.
Glenn Fleishman (01:12:04):
You're fine. I know. And now I'm like, oh, you're typing for the, you're like, oh, here's where he was in cl you know? Exactly. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
Oh, poor guy. Who was that? Yeah, all. Wait, how was your trip to Germany with your son? I saw all the pictures. I really enjoyed it.
Glenn Fleishman (01:12:16):
Zeke Nets <laugh>. It
Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Was, it was, it was great. Each breakfast was the best, best breakfast you'd ever had to date.
Glenn Fleishman (01:12:22):
Oh my God. The food in Germany was so good. And which Germany austria's just to eat Chucky. And and Slovenia and I met the last letter press printer in Lub, Slovenia was a lovely guy. And he's a letter press printer in stone letter Carver. His father was trained on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia as a stone carver. He said, my father had two choices. He could go to the sea or he could learn to carve stones. And he chose to go to the school <laugh> to St. Carve Stones. And he's like the la there's some other letter press printer in Slovenia, but it's so wild. It's a relatively small country. This guy has a shop in like downtown li and he has beautiful work, and he has crammed the entire capability of letter press printing into this tiny workshop he has. And he's in there on a weekend working away on some books for somebody. And it's like, what is it like to be the last, you know, in other countries, America, there are a lot of interest in letter press. There's movements, there's colleges, whatever. It's like he can't ignite any interest there. So he's kind of the last person in in Slovenia maybe.
Jeff Jarvis (01:13:26):
Glen was talking about trying to figure out how, how to do a tour Oh yeah. To go over to weekend Miss Slovenia for, for press nuts like us.
Glenn Fleishman (01:13:32):
Yeah. Go there and eat delicious food. Take the funicular up to the, the lab castle and ride on the river. And it's a, it's a lovely capital of Slovenia top notch. You can hear more about this trip if you're a member of Club Twit. <Laugh>. That's right. Ooh, talk fireside chat. Did I hosted with Mr. Fleischman? Just, I went to through Talk much, I went to every technology museum I could in the German technology museum. The Deutche Technique Museum has a great, it's an incredible place you could spend days there. And I went to the printing floor, of course, and met a wonderful fella who is covered in tattoos and piercings. And I was like, I know, I know. I'm gonna like this guy. Yes. Because <laugh>, if you meet printers are usually either covered in tattoos and piercings are looked like me just absolutely bland in every way. <Laugh>. And so <laugh>, we had a great conversation about Flo and printing techniques and lithography and the history of things. And he showed me cool stuff. And they have an amazing typewriter collection. And like, wait, I know that typewriter, typewriter, it was like a rare 18 hundreds thing that was made in Denmark. Anyway, it was speak.
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:36):
Speaking of typewriters, one of the reasons I wanted Glen to be on today is so we can plug something that he's been helping with that
Leo Laporte (01:14:41):
You should talk about Right now. Me shift,
Glenn Fleishman (01:14:43):
Shift happens. I have, in fact, right in front of me, I just got today, this is the we did a test print of the of the book. So this is exclusive, exclusive to twit. Ooh. Live on the air. This is blue. This is, we need, I
Leo Laporte (01:14:58):
Can't wait for machines.
Glenn Fleishman (01:15:00):
<Laugh> adding machines and keyboards and Beautiful.
Leo Laporte (01:15:05):
Oh, I like how this is is heaven. This is gonna be in a slip case. It's gonna be a beautiful yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (01:15:11):
Volume. This is and we've using stochastic screening a mod. It's sort of the modern dithered printing. And you get, let me find the there is a, there's a Linotype in here. There we go. Here's the Linotype. Oh, well, that's to my heart. And it's the printing. Like I'm an old printing guy where you use half tone dots and you always had a mess with like, the angles of things and sizes and whatever. It's stochastic screening. It's like super high quality dithering. And so you can resolve the dots or super tiny. And so you can read like the type, like if I showed you a oh, I don't know, like there's a picture of a, of someone typing on a piece of paper and you can read the paper on their, you know, like, this is a good example. You know, this looks like a continuous tone photograph because there's so much detail in it. And this is a printed, offset printed item.
Leo Laporte (01:15:58):
So it's still screened and it's incredible. But it's such a high resolution, or
Glenn Fleishman (01:16:02):
Yeah, it does. It's, it's, they use individual. So it's FM screening, it's frequency modulation screening as opposed to amplitude modulation. So the half tone dots are bigger or smaller. And these are a, a pattern. And when you put the pattern together, you get like, here's, you know, here's a centerfold for those for the right age era <laugh>. Yes. This spectrum. Anyway, please. So this is a 32 page preview. We're going to be handing out to a select few and maybe as a premium, but yet a month March wishy and I are gonna launch this thing. It's his, his baby, 1200 pages plus another a hundred pages and a third volume. It's like you can go to the site and shift happens. What's your body font? That is oh, you know what's funny? I don't know. <Laugh>, I wasn't involved in design marching, did a beautiful job of it. I should know that offhand. And I don't know the answer.
Leo Laporte (01:16:47):
It's a very lovely sif. Do you know what software they used to lay it out?
Glenn Fleishman (01:16:51):
It's in design and marching is a programmer and designer and photographer and, and a lot of other things. And he InDesign has a JavaScript programming language built in. It's an old bad version of JavaScript. So he has been wrestling for years, and he can write a new draft to this thing, or edit it and hit a button in over a period of literally hours on a modern Mac. It will relay out the entire book.
Leo Laporte (01:17:16):
Wow. It's really incredible. Incredibly produced the way the function key.
Jeff Jarvis (01:17:19):
Well, Glen Glen was helping him
Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
Do that. Yeah. It's just beautifully produced. Wow. I can't wait to see it. I will. Absolutely. This is
Glenn Fleishman (01:17:26):
Great. Bye. This is gonna, we're gonna start this about a month. You can sign up now. My little promotion thing, thank you, Jeff, is that if you go to this site, if you go to shift happens.site you can sign up to get a notification. When we launched the Kickstarter in about a month, this is the book I was talking about. We almost bought paper from a printing paper maker in Germany, and then it shipped across the ocean. And it was, it was ridiculous. In the end, we're using a US printer and a domestically produced US paper, because it's just so much simpler. And we found a paper we really like. But it was funny. It was like, am I gonna fly to like a small town in Germany to talk to paper makers?
Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Well, and sadly, and so recently, a lot of these books were printed in China. That was the, that was the too, to print these high quality books. Chronicle books and others. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is,
Glenn Fleishman (01:18:11):
There's a thing called, was it Inshoring or something? Or Reshoring is like the, we were trying to find in, we were actually, we were gonna go to press last year, and printers in America were overwhelmed and the prices were going up because so many publishers had tried to bring books back. Yeah, yeah. And so they locked up capacity. So this year is a little bit easier.
Leo Laporte (01:18:28):
Nice. While
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:29):
We're on this topic, we should go to line 89.
Leo Laporte (01:18:32):
Well, we will and we would if this were a democracy, but it's not <laugh>. So <laugh>, but, but put a pin in it, please.
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:42):
Alright. All right. Or in my, in my eye, whichever.
Leo Laporte (01:18:45):
No, no. The emperor has spoken. Are should just,
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:50):
It's just like the US house right now. It's not a democracy either. <Laugh>. I was thinking that today.
Leo Laporte (01:18:53):
Are you saying I'm Kevin McCarthy? Is that the Yes, yes. Thank you very
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:57):
Much. Yes. We've had holding on to power for Dear Life. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:18:59):
You could be Jim Jordan then. Ooh. Ooh. Wow. Ooh, ooh. That's, ooh. I did want to show you Glen cuz I took my son to Germany in, I think it was 2006. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And here's a picture. I saw your picture. At Checkpoint Charlie. Here's a picture of Henry, my son, when he was a little boy at Checkpoint. Charlie.
Glenn Fleishman (01:19:18):
Hey,
Leo Laporte (01:19:18):
Nice. I, and I made, what I did with Henry is I made him pose the Brandon Brigade at the time had a giant diorama, let me see if I can, yeah. Oh, of, of, of what it looked like after. Oh, wow. The war. Wow. You could see the actual horses and the gate is just behind this, but there was this giant, so I said, look sad. <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (01:19:39):
An actor.
Leo Laporte (01:19:40):
And he, he's a good actor. Yeah. There you
Glenn Fleishman (01:19:42):
Go. I, I sent pictures of my wife from Checkpoint Charlie. She had been there. She, my wife was passed through Berlin in 19 nine on a long European trip. And I think it was after the word fall had fallen and she got a tiny piece of the wall and later lost it, unfortunately. But so she was there when things were going a little nuts. And I showed her some pictures from Checkpoint Charlie today, and I'm like, you cannot take a picture without KFC or McDonald's. Yeah. Or other, like, there's no,
Leo Laporte (01:20:06):
No angle Subway. Subway right over his shoulder, unfortunately. Oh. But there's also Snack Charlie, which is snack. I think that's been there forever. I think that's where you would stop after you crossed over from the Eastern District. Well,
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:18):
I, I, I, I was, I was in, I was in East Germany a couple times. I spent a month there. Oh, really? Trying to write, trying to write a really bad novel was, thank God never got
Leo Laporte (01:20:26):
Published when it was still East Germany.
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:27):
Oh, yes. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (01:20:29):
Spent, I spent Germany. Why would you go there to write a novel
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:32):
<Laugh>? Because it was about Berlin. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:20:33):
Okay. He was a sufferer.
Glenn Fleishman (01:20:34):
It's a sufferer
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:35):
For his art. It was, it was, it's, I, it's there's, it's, it's up in the closet when I die, the kids can laugh at it, you know. Oh, wow. But I went over and, and the thing is, you'd come back from, this is so capitalistic. You'd come back from East Berlin after, you know, a day there, and I would be, so I would be grateful to leave Kami Cola behind and find a choice of
Leo Laporte (01:20:56):
Coke Pepsi again. God Ka Cola was so bad. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:59):
Oh, it was terrible. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:00):
This is Jeff told me when I was there, he said, you have to go to Ka deve, which is the oh, what is, it's like the
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:05):
Ka f's.
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:06):
Yes. Right. So it's the, it's the shrine to capitalism. Yes. And you, I went in there and I was, it was like, it makes you want to tear the entire world down <laugh>, because it's just all luxury branding en crusted. It was still, I had a great meal there. It's a wonderful place.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:21):
The food floor, the food floor coming vexed,
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:24):
No food floor. The sixth floor.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:25):
Sixth floor. See, I
Leo Laporte (01:21:27):
Think of Germany and great food in the same
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:29):
Sense. It has changed.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:31):
Changed,
Leo Laporte (01:21:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Because
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:34):
I love versed,
Leo Laporte (01:21:35):
You know? Yeah. You have to love sus.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:37):
I go to the V stand and I got a couple de Deborah cheater in mustard with a little rich and, and a beer. And I'm, I'm happy. That's actually
Leo Laporte (01:21:43):
Pretty good. I'm
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:44):
Very happy. I have to, I did not have any der kebab and I did not have, what's the verse you're supposed to have there? No, I don't know how it happened.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:50):
Curry versed. Curry versed
Glenn Fleishman (01:21:52):
Is awful. I didn't have curry versed, so I don't,
Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
It's awful. I really, Berlin missed nothing. Okay, that's good though. <Laugh>.
Jeff Jarvis (01:21:56):
What? I didn't know until I, I haven't been back to Jordan since I learned this. I didn't know that. Labor Caza, which means liver cheese is neither livered nor cheese. Ah, I
Glenn Fleishman (01:22:06):
Didn't know that. This is
Jeff Jarvis (01:22:06):
Not a bad
Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Eating. Is it <laugh>? What
Ant Pruitt (01:22:09):
Is it then? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
What is it?
Jeff Jarvis (01:22:11):
It's meat.
Leo Laporte (01:22:13):
It's extra. So it's meat. Meat,
Jeff Jarvis (01:22:15):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:22:17):
<Laugh>.
Ant Pruitt (01:22:18):
I, I love German food. I do you. My first experience with German food, I was visiting an office in Florida and there was a German restaurant nearby. So I went over there on a whim and I walked in and it was a very small little shop. And I walked in and there was this Flatiron skillet back there, just, just sizzling. And there's this big giant dude, blonde haired dude just flipping something in the grease and just going at it. And then he's chugging a beer. And I was like, I'm going to eat here. And it was the
Glenn Fleishman (01:22:49):
Best O'Neil.
Ant Pruitt (01:22:50):
Oh, it was
Jeff Jarvis (01:22:51):
So good. You found Home
Leo Laporte (01:22:53):
<Laugh>.
(01:22:56):
Alright, great time. I don't have any ads, which is always sad moment <laugh> on this show. But I do have two house ads I want to tell you about. First of all, we're doing our annual survey. We don't track you, but we do like to be able to tell something about our audience to advertisers. So this survey is what we tell 'em, and it's actually very helpful sales tool for us. We don't collect information about you individually. We're not gonna ask you for your, even for your email or anything like that. It's all in aggregate. So the address for this year's survey, as you could figure if you saw the the, the video, it's twit tv slash survey 23. This is one year later survey 23. We do this every January. You have the month of January to do it, but please do it quickly if you would.
(01:23:44):
That would help us. In fact, if, if we get enough respondents, we don't have to keep talking about this. We'd like to get about 10 or 20,000 respondents as a good sample size of our audience. Just, you know, to know a little bit about you. It shouldn't take long. It's of course completely optional, but it's very helpful to us. Twit.Tv/Survey 23, no salesman will call. And then the other thing really is something I near and dear to my heart, and I didn't realize this, but we started Club Twit almost two years ago. Yeah. It was April of, it's been a couple years. Yeah. I had no idea. April of 2020. It's a big announcement. I remember that. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (01:24:22):
And it's been growing and growing and, and this dagum awesome to
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
See the growth. We're so happy that you have joined those of you who have, and we thank the members of Club Twit for making it possible to do many of the things we do these days including incidentally the special shows that we do on Club Twit. Coming up, we've got Stacy's book club that's coming a week from Thursday. We're gonna be doing Andy Weir's project. Hail Mary. I can't wait for that. Lisa and I are gonna do an inside TWI on the 19th. So that's that's always fun to hear us talk about what's going on inside Twi and Win to Dao, who's one of the hosts of all About Android will be on February 9th, but it's always putting together fun events. Len Fleischman was one of those events after the live event. You can listen on our Twi plus feed.
(01:25:13):
That's where we also put shows that we do for the club only. Things like Hands-On Macintosh with Micah, Sergeant Hands-on Windows with Paul Throt this week in space, launched in the club. The club members supported it once it got big enough. We put it out in public. We're gonna add video to that soon. The Untitled Linux Show, which is Saturdays with Jonathan Bennett, we're gonna start adding video to that as well, which is exciting. Woo-Hoo. Yeah, I it, it's a chance for us to, to test stuff that can't support itself yet the club members get to support it. And you'd think after all that, that's gonna be expensive. It's not. It's, it's a buck less than a blue check on Twitter. It's seven bucks a month. <Laugh>. That's a great deal. You get ad free versions of all the shows. That means no tracking, no ads, just the show, just the content.
(01:25:58):
You get the Twi plus feed with special shows we don't put in public. The GIZ fizz is gonna be part of that as well. In fact, the GIZ fizz is coming up. Its first episode is coming up after this show. Dick t Bartos. Giz Fizz right after twit TWIG con concludes later this afternoon. All of that, seven bucks a month. Do me a favor, go to twit tv slash club twit. Thanks to all of you who've already joined. Actually, there's no point in doing that cuz they're not seeing this <laugh> because they don't get ads <laugh>. But I, I do. Thank you. Anyway, it absentia and and soon you'll be part of that group, right? Twit tv slash club.
Jeff Jarvis (01:26:36):
I subscribe myself.
Leo Laporte (01:26:38):
We gave you a complimentary membership
Jeff Jarvis (01:26:40):
Thing. Didn't matter. Thank you. About being part of the club. It's about doing it and you all should do
Leo Laporte (01:26:45):
It. It really we're very happy with how it's turned out and a lot of that's due to Ant Pruitt who's our community manager and has made it interesting and fun. Try. Yeah. No, I really appreciate it. <Laugh> Iridescent ox in our discord says big fan of Club Twit Purple Heart. I guess that means he was wounded in action at some point during the club. Twit chats. <Laugh>. I don't, I d I dunno. I dunno. <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:11):
Kinda a lavender heart
Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
Actually. Okay. Lavender is fine. <Laugh>, I love the only thing about the Discord, it is the home of animated gifts or gifs. Yes. Oh yeah. Gifs yfs ye all the time. Oh, it's, it's really, it's really quite an entertaining actually in every now and then, Joe Esposito makes a meme out of us. Oh yeah. Live. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All right. What is it? Line 89. Let's see,
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:38):
That's typewriter relevant. That's all little,
Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
There's a story about typewriter art. No.
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:44):
Well, it's just a
Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
Little moment. I love typography.
Glenn Fleishman (01:27:48):
I know people who do this. You, you
Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Have to do this on Twitter. I don't understand them. Okay. Oh, that's really nuts.
Glenn Fleishman (01:27:53):
It's Instagram. It's, it's from Instagram.
Leo Laporte (01:27:55):
It's from Insta. Okay. Yeah, this is nuts. He's using a typewriter to do Ky Art of MoPac Kettle at the barn. This is
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:03):
He go to his Instagram. He has tons of them and Wasted life. But Oh
Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
My wasted God,
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:08):
The work.
Leo Laporte (01:28:09):
Oh, my. No, it's not, I just American Gothic. But honestly, don't you think of it as Mom Pop Etle. I mean, who doesn't? Right.
Glenn Fleishman (01:28:16):
<Laugh>? Well, I forgot you're 97 years old because but, but should I point out that I got the reference? You re it. What am I saying? I I
Leo Laporte (01:28:27):
Say that really seriously. I guess you're right that, that Mo Po Kettle is probably
Glenn Fleishman (01:28:32):
Very, it's like a 1920s radio show that became like a 1930s movie
Leo Laporte (01:28:36):
Series or Yeah. I didn't
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:38):
Watch where Leo goes to the YouTube.
Leo Laporte (01:28:39):
Yeah. Sean,
Glenn Fleishman (01:28:41):
What
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:41):
They missed
Leo Laporte (01:28:41):
Mo Pot Kettle was a, was a great movie series. It's pretty funny. I loved it. Yeah. But then I like Charlie Chan also, which was some white guy pretending to be Chinese and saying Confucius say Murder lives on Roof or something. I don't know. Yeah. It's
Glenn Fleishman (01:28:57):
A, a different, they say a different time representation.
Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
I remember Charlie Chain, the actor was Werner Oland or
Glenn Fleishman (01:29:05):
Oland, is it German?
Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
I don't know
Glenn Fleishman (01:29:08):
The guy. The thing I just found out is the guy who played the worst, the major, the worst Nazi in Casablanca was actually one of the greatest anti-Nazi Germans in history. And he used money he got from his salary in Hollywood to fund anti-Nazi causes. Anti-Fascist causes.
Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
Wow.
Glenn Fleishman (01:29:25):
Incredible. But he insisted on playing like the worst Nazis. He didn't wanna see them. So he did incredible job.
Leo Laporte (01:29:31):
Oh, that's good. He was a bad Yeah, because he hated Nazis. He
Glenn Fleishman (01:29:33):
Wanted to show them bad. Yeah. He said I'll never play one and shows them at all in a good light. And he was major Tossa. Right? Isn't that place page
Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
Tossa? It's Casa. Oh,
Glenn Fleishman (01:29:41):
He or not. Yeah. Anyway, it just, I read that just the other day. It came up his anniversary of his death or something. And a one beautiful man where married to a Jewish woman refused Gorings or Guil no Gorings in trees about things. Anyway, he risked his life to to perform in some movies that were anti Hitler. Anyway, is
Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
He the, so you're like why did you come to Casablanca? Rick, I wish came for the waters, but we are in the desert. I wish Mission formed <laugh>.
Glenn Fleishman (01:30:16):
Yeah, that's great. Major Hein, Asher's name. Yeah. Hein. Dr. Ka. Fight Con Fight. V E L D T. Oh yeah. An incredible, incredible man we should know more about. I just did not have any idea.
Leo Laporte (01:30:27):
And, and let's not forget the Swedish American actor, Warner Oland, who played <laugh>, Charlie Chan, you can show
Glenn Fleishman (01:30:34):
Possibly more problematic.
Leo Laporte (01:30:37):
More problematic. Just
Glenn Fleishman (01:30:39):
Fast forward a little bit. You can find Peter Sellers playing every race except his own. Oh, oh gosh. And it's kind and it's so sad. It ages very
Leo Laporte (01:30:47):
Badly. I very badly. And, you know, you're too young Glen, and certainly you are Ant, but, but Jeff and I grew up in that era. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, I know it's, it's very wrong to say this, but I kind of miss all of those bad. Well, you also sympathize with Elon Musk. That's, that's guy, you know, kinda the last show. I still watch Blazing Saddles and enjoy it and then that's good. But, but Blazing Yout say that mind though in public anymore. Right? Well,
Glenn Fleishman (01:31:16):
True. That's, that is an interest where you can't say, it's an interesting debate though, right? Cuz that film is, I didn't, Richard Pryor co-wrote the film. He was supposed to be in it Uhhuh, but they couldn't, they was issues with insurance or something to get him cast or the studio. But I mean, that is
Leo Laporte (01:31:30):
So it's Levon, who was it? Levon
Leo Laporte (01:31:32):
Cleon little Cle
Glenn Fleishman (01:31:33):
Levon Li. He's amazing. Yeah. It's tu it's too
Leo Laporte (01:31:36):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And, and well, all right. But this is, yeah, it's an interesting question because I mean, gone With the Wind is reprehensible too. Oh, oh. But it's, it's, it's part of our culture. You
Glenn Fleishman (01:31:50):
Gotta watch a historic, it's historic context. We are, we are just, my wife loves Holiday Inn and she's like, oh yeah, well, do I, are we gonna skip over the you know, the Lincoln's birthday Yeah. Episode in which everyone puts on Blackface. Yeah. Blackface. And I think when I was a kid, they'd eliminated the, that that holiday they just skipped over. It opened those, got some plot elements. And then as an adult, I watched it. I thought, what? Wait, what? You know, cause it was the very end. You can't show any fashion showboats
Leo Laporte (01:32:19):
Full of minstrel sea. And yet it's part of our history. I don't wanna bury it. I think what MGM or Turner did eventually with it was they would put a big disclaimer in front of Gone With a Wind. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> saying, this is old history. This is not, you know, this is a terrible thing. Slavery was not good. These people were not happy.
Ant Pruitt (01:32:36):
I remember seeing that on a Jesus things, that shit actually
Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
As Right. So,
Glenn Fleishman (01:32:40):
But you shouldn't never watch it. Right. Because historically we should know that that film was made in influenced opinions. Yeah. But you shouldn't watch it uncritically
Leo Laporte (01:32:48):
Or, that's right. And, you know, so you don't want a young person to watch it and think, oh, that's, you watch it. What did you critically Ant, do you like gone with the wind <laugh>?
Ant Pruitt (01:32:58):
I never watched it. Never. I've never had any interest in it. I saw bits and pieces of that. I only gone in The Wind that I enjoyed was Ms. Carol Burnett doing her?
Leo Laporte (01:33:06):
Oh, <laugh>. Oh yeah. That was actually much a much better. Hilarious. That was actually a much better, absolutely
Ant Pruitt (01:33:12):
Hilarious.
Leo Laporte (01:33:13):
H fair <laugh>. Let's, let's not forget that it was the, I think the first black person to win an an Academy award. Yes.
Glenn Fleishman (01:33:21):
Hattie
Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
Hattie McDaniel Daniel who played the slave who helped helped miss Scarlet make her dress outta curtains.
Ant Pruitt (01:33:31):
Adam, a cur in
Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
Course Burnett, the accident left the curtain Rodt in <laugh>. That's right. That's,
Glenn Fleishman (01:33:37):
Yeah. There's a lot of great cinema, bloody great black cinema going on in a parallel world, right. At the same time. But fortunately, some of that was preserved too. So we gotta see what's happening. Where do you
Leo Laporte (01:33:46):
See, see
Glenn Fleishman (01:33:47):
That? I wouldn't have to see
Leo Laporte (01:33:48):
That is a,
Glenn Fleishman (01:33:49):
There it's YouTube. This is, I mean, oh, so, you know, look, don't get me on copyright cuz I'll get on this. But back a few years ago, right? We just hit the public domain day, Ben. So material from 20 sorry, 19 27 and earlier in the US it was published, is now completely in the public domain. And back in 20 19, 20 18, I wrote an article for Smithsonian about the first year of that after a 20 year halt because of the Sunny Bono Act that Disney had promoted there was this gap of 20 years before anything entered the public domain. And so one of the things I, that Smithsonian had me do was like, let's talk about the cultural impact. And a lot of, a lot of folks I spoke to said the Harlem Renaissance was cut in half. So Wow.
(01:34:29):
So it started in the 1922, but it didn't really blossom until later in the twenties. So because a lot of the rights were owned by publishing houses that didn't want to publish it, or they let it go outta print and they wouldn't allow it, or there were a lot of orphaned rights. You didn't know who owned the rights. So the Harlem Renaissance lay kind of fallow. And now it's being, I, you know, I haven't seen the real reevaluation you need to for that era, but because some of the stuff did remain in print, we know some of the best works from the time. But some of the stuff is also just now because it's in the public domain, it's not like, oh, you can share it freely or remix it. It's also, you can literally publish new editions or put PDFs up of these books that were just, you'd have to go to a specific library to get a copy. And same thing with film. We're gonna see this incredible explosion of black cinema from the thirties and forties. It was hidden because nobody knows who owns it or the print. Someone doesn't wanna deal with copyright issues to get it out there.
Leo Laporte (01:35:22):
There's a good article from last year university of California Public Domain expansion last year, highlights of the Harlem Renaissance and modernist writers in HHI trusts, newly opened volumes.
Glenn Fleishman (01:35:34):
Yeah. So do you ask why, why were people unrepresented in in certain eras in American culture? It's partly because that's fascinating. We can't see them easily. Copyright. Go to a library. Yeah. Yeah. You have to go to a library or a film institute to see stuff because it's just not in,
Leo Laporte (01:35:47):
I think I mentioned this last episode, but some of the public domain works that are now available, Bessie Smith's songs. Songs by Louie Armstrong
Glenn Fleishman (01:35:56):
Putting on the
Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
Ritz, putting on the Ritz and
Glenn Fleishman (01:35:59):
Scream.
Leo Laporte (01:36:00):
We all scream for ice cream.
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:02):
And the jazz singer, the totally unproblematic movie,
Leo Laporte (01:36:05):
The jazz singer,
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:06):
Lord, there's nothing Jason
Leo Laporte (01:36:08):
And Black face. Huh? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:11):
Oh my God. It's yeah. Well it's important we examine these things.
Leo Laporte (01:36:16):
Yeah. We don't wanna marry I Am his America still as long as they're contextualized course. Yeah, yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:21):
Learn from I I think, I mean, wait, I mean, look, not to get too on this, but it's like, it's important to understand how deeply embedded white Americans were in watching Minstrel Sea for such a long period. One of the most popular forms of culture. And I think it explains more about American history than we wanna understand as, as white people, that this is true and it's all suppressed because Yeah. It's unacceptable instead of being studied.
Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
Mm-Hmm. Yes. Yes.
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:44):
Good call. I'll get off my hobby horse now.
Leo Laporte (01:36:47):
<Laugh> next year. Mickey Mouse. Unless Sunny Bono comes back to life
Glenn Fleishman (01:36:53):
And see, and I thought that was this year. It's so hard to track though, isn't it? <Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:36:59):
According to duke, which does this page every year for public domain day, the first appearances of Mickey and Mini will enter the public domain next year, January 1st. And this is a character Steamboat Willie there. Steamboat Willie.
Glenn Fleishman (01:37:12):
Yep. Yeah, but only that depiction. I mean, Winnie the Poo entered the public domain a year ago. As long as
Leo Laporte (01:37:16):
He's not wearing a red coat.
Glenn Fleishman (01:37:17):
Not Yeah. So we have that, there's a horror film, like a slasher horror film about Winnie the poo that's out.
Leo Laporte (01:37:22):
But he can't wear, he has to be naked because Disney can't wear Shirt owns the Winnie the Poo with a red shirt.
Glenn Fleishman (01:37:30):
<Laugh>. That's right. Bambi entered the public domain last year. Good. Mickey Mouse. Yeah, I mean, so make, so the question is, I it was a good, very good New York Times article about Steamboat Willie entering the public domain. And, and as I say this one and Mickey Mouse and Minstrel Sea is a whole other subject. I swear to God. I'll stop talking about anyway, the white gloves, it's anyway, so do
Leo Laporte (01:37:51):
You think Mickey, Mickey Mouse was supposed to be blackface?
Glenn Fleishman (01:37:53):
Mickey Mouse is blackface. There's some really good academic articles about it. I'm sorry, boy. The white gloves. The exaggeration
Leo Laporte (01:38:01):
Teachers known racist. That's for sure. Wow.
Glenn Fleishman (01:38:04):
Yep. Yep. It's a whole, wow. There's a whole book about it. In fact, that's really eyeopening about, again, American culture. American culture. What do we love?
Leo Laporte (01:38:13):
And that's what we lose when we don't talk about this stuff, is how gotta teach it. If you, if you want to, you know, get rid of systemic racism, you have to recognize it. Mickey Mouse is blackface. Oh my God. These steam Boy Willie was
Glenn Fleishman (01:38:26):
Guessed that it, it's shifted over the years. The modern depiction less so. But if you look there, different eras and there's some, but there's some really good academic. But, but so Mickey Mouse, the question the New York Times raised I think had a really solid article about the nuance of Steamboat Willie entering the public domain is Mickey Mouse is trademarked and all of Mickey Mouse's later appearances and everything he said, and every character trait is still under copyright from 19, you know, after next year from 1929 on. So Disney may aggressively defend the copyright and be like, oh, you know, we have a trademark each It's derivative. The Mickey Mouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this happened with Sherlock Holmes, but the last Sherlock Holmes story is that were copyrighted under US law went into the public domain this January 1st. So now you can write about Sherlock Holmes owning a dog and having human emotions cuz those appear the last
Leo Laporte (01:39:15):
And you mentioned, you mentioned before the show, Jeff, but it's worth re mentioning that Canada is expanding its copyright term, which is currently life plus 50 to life plus 70.
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:27):
I say it's because of the, of the free trade agreement they have to regularize.
Leo Laporte (01:39:31):
But Michael Geist who is I think a very smart and yes, and, and salient attorney who writes about Canadian law says it is, it is a massive loss to education and to the public. And
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:50):
One of the, one of the odd things about this is the Canada cares so deeply about Canadian content. Yeah. And so they've cut off 20 years of Canadian content that could be out there and be usable
Leo Laporte (01:40:03):
Profit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. He says the Canadian term extension would cost Canadian education. Millions of dollars would delay works entering the public to make for entire generation Yeah. 20 more years. Even worse, the government chose to do so without mitigation measures to reduce the economic cost and cultural harm that comes from term extensions. That's that is unfortunate.
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:26):
Kaist has also been covering the, the Canadian versions of the Australian law. Right. you know, the protectionism, and that's not, and, and copyright. It's, it's, it's as bad in Canada as it is the us.
Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
Well, and as long as we're talking about racism, let's talk about face recognition, which once again is the culprit in arresting a black person who did not commit a crime instead of, of enjoying a late Thanksgiving meal with his mother in Georgia. Randall Reed spent nearly a week in jail in November. Oh my God. Falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana face authorities using face recognition technologies. This, according to nola.com, I'm reading from the article on common dreams.org. They actually didn't wanna disclose the fact that they used face recognition but they did. And the sad, you know, the really sad story is, is this guy is, you know, he's spent a week in jail and there's no compensation for that. It's
Glenn Fleishman (01:41:30):
Wild.
Leo Laporte (01:41:31):
He had nothing to do with it. Randall Reed was arrested in the June theft luxury purses from a metre consignment shop, even though he <laugh>, he, he'd never been to Louisiana. They pulled him over as he, he's drove on Interstate 20, DeKalb Cab, DeKalb County Georgia headed to Thanksgiving with his mom. He said, they told me I had a warrant outta Jefferson Parish. I said, what's Jefferson Parish? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I've never been in Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don't steal. Oh my God. He was booked into the DeKalb County jails. A fugitive, not let go until a week later without any apology. They tacitly admitted the error and rescinded the July warrant.
Glenn Fleishman (01:42:23):
Good. Hope he gets you,
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:24):
Sue.
Glenn Fleishman (01:42:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Good lawyer.
Leo Laporte (01:42:27):
Lawyer, we've talked many times about face recognition. You know, when we came back into the country a couple of days ago, there's a big sign saying we're gonna take your picture now. But don't worry, we're gonna delete it from our databases if you're a US citizen within 12 hours,
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:43):
But you furnishers
Leo Laporte (01:42:45):
We're gonna keep it forever. And, and they even said something, I should've taken a picture except they would've arrested me. You don't
Glenn Fleishman (01:42:50):
Know to
Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
<Laugh>. But, but something like but don't worry, it'll be safely stored by the federal government. So Yeah. Hand wavy. So yeah. They, they're using now face recognition to everybody who comes to the United States. And, and the C p B officer said, okay, ladies first. Lisa, stand in front of the camera. Take your picture. Then it took my picture. God knows what. Well, I
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:13):
Used, when I traveled, I used the cause I, I traveled a hell of a lot, so I used all the things I could use. But the global entry, yeah. Every time I went to the machine Yeah. Took to the picture of me every single time.
Glenn Fleishman (01:43:25):
Yeah. Yep. Leave your eyes. It in you, you specifically did the I I had nexus, which includes global entry. First time I gotta use it. And you know, I did the picture thing, and I walk up and in Montreal to come back through passenger Montreal. And the guy, cousin guy kinda looks at it like, you scan your face. I'm like, yeah. He is like, okay. I was like, oh, wow. All right. <Laugh>. That was a little less, that was nothing. That was weird.
Leo Laporte (01:43:48):
That's permission there. You gave
Glenn Fleishman (01:43:49):
Him permission. That's great. Like, yeah. No, no. He, he said, did you, he was just asking. He looked at my id, he looked at me. He is like, did you have your face scanned? I said, yep.
Leo Laporte (01:43:57):
All right. All right. Come
Glenn Fleishman (01:43:58):
On. In the country,
Leo Laporte (01:43:59):
We know you're okay.
Glenn Fleishman (01:44:00):
Into the cord
Leo Laporte (01:44:02):
<Laugh>.
Ant Pruitt (01:44:04):
Just the whole unintended consequences of this, this facial recognition, because when it works, it could work very well to, to solve some problems, especially with crime and finding the actual right person. Sure. You see persons, and then you're gonna have issues like this where are mistakes are going to happen. Yeah. we, I got a message from on Macedon a while back. I could never remember how to say her name. It's Adrianna Langston.
Leo Laporte (01:44:29):
Oh, Adriana Langston. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (01:44:31):
Adriana.
Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
Adriana. Yeah. She's great. Langston. Yeah. I really like her.
Ant Pruitt (01:44:34):
And she shared a story about Metalogics. Basically a gentleman decided to come up with a way to help fill in the gaps in the ai, where the AI has, doesn't have enough data trained far as capturing people to look like me. Black men, people of color. That's the problem. Sure. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But at the same time, you know, there's that bit of a panic out there. Like, I don't
Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
Want my face. Yeah. Do you want a volunteer Ant with Right. We, we need more. Come on, come on over. Let's take your picture. Right.
Ant Pruitt (01:45:07):
So, so, so where's the balance here? I, I, I totally support putting more data in there. But I can't speak for everybody
Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
Out there. I think that the risk of false positives in a case like this is so great, that it's just not, it shouldn't be used. And a lot of jurisdictions, including the city of San Francisco, have mm-hmm. <Affirmative> basically banned the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. The law enforcement, there's so many things law enforcement could do to make its job easier. They could put cameras in everybody's houses and, and watch for illegal activities.
Ant Pruitt (01:45:38):
What? Wait, wait, what?
Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
<Laugh>? Well, they could, and it would, and, and it would have a salutary effect on reducing crime, but I don't think we want that. So we really have,
Glenn Fleishman (01:45:46):
It's just in Leo, Leo Laport advocating for cameras, put in everyone's houses
Leo Laporte (01:45:51):
In, you know, that TV set should be a two-way street. Oh, wait a minute. You
Glenn Fleishman (01:45:57):
Saw the January. The insurrection thing was fascinating though, because there was this crowdsourced, a motion to identify people who were in pictures from the January 7th insurrection. That
Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
Was also problematic. But, but
Glenn Fleishman (01:46:09):
Yeah, it was problematic. But here is the interesting part there versus say we took a picture of a random person and we told the, all the police everywhere. We didn't get, tell, we didn't tell him where you got the ID from and arrest this person. Right. This was a lot of people independently as well as the government. Agencies are trying to ID folks. Some of the independent folks were using different forms of, of facial matching and systems. And then they would call the FBI or present it, and the FBI then did the legwork. So, as far as I can tell I haven't heard any cases, amazingly out of like, what is almost a thousand people have been charged in various forms, and so far, and I haven't heard a single case where it was like the FBI went out and they're like, oh, that's not me in that photo. And, and maybe it's happened, but I think there was an enormous amount of deliberative process to winnow down and get the right people and present it in an effective way in court, as opposed to arrest a bunch of people all at
Leo Laporte (01:47:02):
Once. And also, there's, let's face it, a long standing tradition of, if you have a picture of somebody committing a crime, <laugh> put it out and say, anybody know this guy? That's right. I mean, pictures, that's different. These people committing a crime. God. and of course, you know, we've had wanted posters on the walls of post offices for as long as I can remember.
Jeff Jarvis (01:47:19):
Yeah. Europeans think we're nuts about that. The purp, when I was in the Daily News, I learned about the purp walks. Right. You know, when the pur is gonna get walked outta Europe, they just, they just, I remember when, when a, a former French official, you know, was, was accused of raping somebody in a hotel in New York Yeah. And then the perp walk. Oh, yeah. And, and France was just up in arms as they should be. Show
Leo Laporte (01:47:40):
His face as they should be. Yeah. Because this person is, is, is accused. They're not convicted. But
Jeff Jarvis (01:47:47):
Here's another argument that says that more transparency and openness in our criminal justice system is important because if you hide who the people are, right. And others don't know it. So in Germany, you, you know, they put the black squares against the eyes and they don't reveal names and, and all of that. So there's, there's an opacity to the
Leo Laporte (01:48:06):
Criminal system. Yeah. I mean, we have a tradition of you, you, you get tried in an open court. Exactly. People can go see it. And I think that that's appropriate as long as everybody understands you're innocent. That
Jeff Jarvis (01:48:17):
That's the issue.
Glenn Fleishman (01:48:18):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Although you gotta love when the person with that notorious Twitter account, lives of TikTok went on Tucker Carlson exposed her face for the first time, and then
Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
Immediately
Glenn Fleishman (01:48:27):
Talk There she is. Allegedly. Well shoot. Either there she is, allegedly one of the January 6th insurrections they found
Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
Her photo. Yeah. Allegedly. Hmm.
Glenn Fleishman (01:48:34):
Allegedly,
Jeff Jarvis (01:48:35):
You see in, in the horrible Idaho case that evidently the way the police tracked the accused murderer was through dna N and open public.
Leo Laporte (01:48:47):
They didn't have his dna, the ideolog, but they were able to go to genealogy places with relatives DNA and then cross. And that's not the first time that people have got arrested that way.
Glenn Fleishman (01:48:59):
Golden State Killer. And
Leo Laporte (01:49:01):
That's right. That was a big story. Yeah. Huge.
Glenn Fleishman (01:49:03):
Yeah. There's been a b Well, there was this, there was this long-run theory that if serial killers never stopped Right. Until they were caught or died, or were imprisoned. And it turns out it's not true. And a lot of the DNA stuff is finding people who did terrible acts sometimes 20, 30, 40 years ago, and then stop doing them for some, you know, whatever psychological thing drives them and they get found.
Leo Laporte (01:49:22):
You are one fun suck. Sorry. Fun stuff. <Laugh>.
Jeff Jarvis (01:49:26):
See what happens when we have no commercials. We get very depressed. Don't crime in.
Leo Laporte (01:49:29):
Here's some good news from the fbi. Even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker.
Glenn Fleishman (01:49:36):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:49:36):
That's hysterical. That's great. That's great. In a pre-holiday public service announcement, the FBI said that cyber criminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands like cryptocurrency exchanges, legitimate in air quotes. Ads are often placed at the top of search results, but with minimum distinction between the ads and the search results. So one of the recommendations you might wanna install an ad blocker, cyber criminals, impersonating brands using search engine advertisement services to defraud users. There's a headline, <laugh> guaranteed to drive engagement. Yep. Actually, I'm glad that the f FBI has yet to discover link bait. That's probably a good thing. Top.
Glenn Fleishman (01:50:19):
Did any of you get the package tracking Phish? I, I got, oh, yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
Holidays. I got tons of that.
Glenn Fleishman (01:50:25):
I was expecting a DHL package from, which I don't know if I can get D Hhl stuff. I got an inbox email inboxing that says, dhl, your package is delayed. And I go, I'll just click. Wait a minute,
Leo Laporte (01:50:35):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Oh, I've been expecting that.
Glenn Fleishman (01:50:38):
Damn it. And I was like, that's not how you sell D dhl
Leo Laporte (01:50:41):
Easy, so easy to fall for that stuff. <Laugh> so easy. Especially, how was it spelled, by the way? Was
Glenn Fleishman (01:50:47):
It, I'm just kidding. I don't know who I was kidding. Cuz it's a day. It did have all the logos, but it was full of typos. And then the URL was like D Hhl package H 73 95, you know, all hidden behind a, a nice looking link.
Leo Laporte (01:51:00):
Did you see the movie yesterday? The film about I love this movie. A guy who hits his head in a bicycle accident wakes up in a world in which the Beatles never existed. Realizes I know all the Beatles songs starts performing them as if he wrote them, becomes a huge superstar, wonderful movie. Maybe you saw the trailer which featured one Anna Demus, who everybody loves Oh, as the love interest in this movie. But she was cut out of the release because they decided that, well, the, you know, he shouldn't have a secondary love interest. This is a love story. But it was, but she was in the trailer. And De Armour fans have now sued <laugh> saying it's a deceptive movie trailer. We, we went, they filed lawsuit alleging they had rented the movie after seeing de Armas in the trailer, only to discover she was cut out of the final film. Universal sought to throw out the lawsuit saying, Hey, it's <laugh> movie trailers are entitled to broad protection under the First Amendment. The studios argued the trailer is an artistic expressive work and thus should be considered non-commercial speech. The judge said, no, no, the trailer is a commercial, is commercial speech subject to the California false advertising law and the station. Oh my gosh. Competition law. You can't, you can't advertise something. But if anybody who goes to movies knows it happens all the time, there's stuff in the trailer that never happens. The trailer's a abandon,
Jeff Jarvis (01:52:33):
Or, or the quotes I used to beat when I was a former TV critic, as you know. And I would say, what a colossal waste of time. And the quote would be colossal Jeff Jarvis tv. Got
Glenn Fleishman (01:52:42):
I, I know I'm always coming a step every time you say that. I, that I know you were a former TV critic, cuz when I was a small child, I used to read you in tv. I'm getting younger and younger, and every Victoria sunny I two years old when I was reading in Tea House,
Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
<Laugh> little
Glenn Fleishman (01:52:56):
Drawing of Jeff Jarvis, a TV guy. Go on. Jeff Jarvis, I'm so excited to see this week, this year.
Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
The plaintiffs each paid $3 and 99 cents to rent yesterday on Amazon Prime. By the way, I'm just gonna say even without add to Armas Worth the 3 99, they're seeking $5 million as representatives. Is this her, is this her mother and father? Who is this? I
Glenn Fleishman (01:53:18):
I to get 90 cents back, 90 cents back each
Leo Laporte (01:53:21):
Yeah. Three nine. Yeah, 3 0 9 fell. So the, the judges ruled that lawsuit can can go ahead <laugh>. I, I just, I found that amusing. But the judge was very careful to say, look, this is only in the case of an actor not shown in the trailer, not appearing in the film. You can't say that that joke didn't appear in the film. That's, that's coming from too far. <Laugh>. There are some limits to this. Now, there was a story, and I think we should report it because for a long time, Jeff, you and I have been defending TikTok. But there was a story while we were gone that by dance, and they admitted this by dance, found that employees had obtained the user data of two journalists. They were trying to figure out where leaks were coming from. So they got the location information from the journalists who were using TikTok to see if the leakers or anybody connected to TikTok, spoke to those reporters.
(01:54:22):
They were trying to determine if the journalists were within proximity of bite dance employees. Woo. Those efforts failed to find any leaks, by the way. Bite Dance's fired General Council, as employees were fired, employees were fired. But they revealed that it happened. All four employees in the scheme were fired. The company said, correcting an earlier statement that one of the four had resigned. Two of the employees working in China, two in the United States, by the way. Bite Dance says it's restructured, restructured its internal audit and risk team, and removed any access to US data from that department. But it does lend a lot of ammunition to those people who saying, we gotta ban bite dance. We gotta What do you think?
Ant Pruitt (01:55:09):
I, I I thought about the whole Bandon TikTok story. Last week during bowl week college football bowl week as halftime rolled up and com ESPN puts up, you know, Hey, coming up at halftime, I'm gonna talk about this and that. And the very top banner, if you look, line 1 38 of it shows it's brought to you by TikTok. And I'm like, how is this even possible considering so much pushback here in the US leadership about TikTok?
Leo Laporte (01:55:40):
It was the TikTok Halftimer Boys. Yeah. <laugh>. Wow. Yeah. But I've seen a lot of TikTok ads. They've actually ramped up their ads spending in the face of this threat as they should.
Glenn Fleishman (01:55:53):
Well, okay. So I guess it's the, the, the end of the day money talks.
Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
Sure. That's it. It's an advertiser. It's not illegal. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's under, you know, suspicion.
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:03):
All, all, all this, all this. I mean, that's a bad story, but the moral panic going on. There you go. Ant, Ant <laugh>. I should have given you a warning.
Glenn Fleishman (01:56:10):
Dang it. Right,
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:11):
Man. The moral panic. Click, click, click the button. Thank you very much, <laugh> about you know, governments say you can't use aa who uses TikTok as part of job. You got a really boring job. You're watching TikTok. Okay. But b, we're not thinking through the harm here. You know, what is, what is hold the Chinese all bad things gonna happen. That's, it's being, the whole internet is being politicized in this way. Yeah. But Jeff, it takes away expression for
Leo Laporte (01:56:37):
People. I understand.
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:38):
You gotta look at the other side of this. I
Leo Laporte (01:56:39):
Agree. And I don't think banning TikTok is the answer, but there's gotta be some controls. By the way, this could have happened from Instagram, it could have happened. This, this, the same type of access could happen with the, the apps that are homegrown here in the us. And in fact, that's why I, two of the employees were US based. So it's, well,
Glenn Fleishman (01:56:57):
I remember Uber and Sara Lacey remember that yeah. The God, how many years ago that that was part of the thing that almost ended that kind of was part of the beginning of the end for, for well, at least the head of Uber at the time.
Leo Laporte (01:57:09):
Yeah. Yeah. They had that. God, but they had used that
Glenn Fleishman (01:57:11):
Many times before. They were allegedly got a track
Leo Laporte (01:57:13):
Reporter. They had used that many times before, for instance when fighting with the regulators in New York City. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they banned <laugh>. If you asked for a cab for an Uber in New York City and, and they knew who you were and you were IR regulator, they said, don't pick them
Glenn Fleishman (01:57:27):
Up. Oh. Or they fed you a different version of the app. Yes. which is amazing. You know, cycling back just one second. The facial recognition thing, you know, that some lawyers have been banned from venues owned by like Madison Square Garden. We talked about this because of Oh yeah. Yes. But I was just thinking this is that combination, it's like facial recognition being banned from a surface. A whole company. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:57:49):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Msg really overstepped on that. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (01:57:54):
We talked about, but it's the ago. Yeah. But TikTok, I mean, there is the, there's a little bit of that interaction is like they're tracking or they were ostensibly tracking people where they were, they knew about too much information about them based on
Leo Laporte (01:58:06):
So there's a, there is a solution here. I mean, first of all your platform, your mobile platform should do as Apple does should block that kind of thing, or at least give you information and give you the opportunity to block that kind of thing. You shouldn't have automatic location tracking without your permission ever. So I know Apple does that. Let's hope it's actually Apple's strongly enforcing it. And I, I don't know if Google does that. Google, of course, has been accused of <laugh> and, and I think properly convicted of doing the same thing, but ignoring the setting <laugh> and still tracking you we gotta do something about that. This, this, your, your location information is important. And sh it should be able, you should be able to protect that. I think of course, one of the reasons perhaps that TikTok is being maligned, is because this article from the Wall Street Journal, Google and Meta's advertising dominance fades as TikTok and streamers emerge. If they're, they're taking money out of the mounds of those parts poor
Jeff Jarvis (01:59:12):
Google eggs. So what do we say about duopoly and monopoly? Then? Nothing can happen. You know. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:59:17):
Yeah. There's
Jeff Jarvis (01:59:18):
Competition out there, including by the way, TikTok. And so you go un unintended consequences department, you ban TikTok, you give more power to Google and Facebook. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:59:28):
Congratulations. And by the way, if you look at the graph, and this is the Wall Street Journal, which always takes any shot they can at competitors. If you look at the graph of share of US digital advertising revenue from 2014 through 2023, can you show that? Oh, hi. Wait a minute. I have a button. Oops. <laugh>. Oh, two people pressed the button. We're in trouble. Look at this little slice that TikTok takes compared to the big slice. Oh yeah. Google do little bit dear. Oh, TikTok do. You can't even, I can't even hover over it. It's so small. 2.5% of the market, estimated <laugh>.
Jeff Jarvis (02:00:06):
But Amazon's amazing.
Leo Laporte (02:00:07):
Amazon plus
Jeff Jarvis (02:00:08):
12, Amazon's revenue is now bigger than the magazine industry worldwide. Oh. But
Glenn Fleishman (02:00:13):
Advertising revenue. Advertising revenue.
Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
Oh, yes. Amazon, you don't even think of them. Amazon as an advertising department. No.
Glenn Fleishman (02:00:17):
Yes. It's, well, you, you wanna get thing why I get a cable That short circuits, when you buy it, where do you go? You go to a promoted sponsored link on Amazon.
Leo Laporte (02:00:26):
Okay. We haven't said anything about Elon Musk.
Glenn Fleishman (02:00:29):
Good. Who, I don't, I don't remember who this, who
Leo Laporte (02:00:31):
Is this? Yeah. Should we just ignore?
Jeff Jarvis (02:00:33):
I think this is a shot. This is, no, this is a shot in Freud of opportunity,
Leo Laporte (02:00:36):
First person in history to lose 200 billion. Although that's a mis kind of, not a, not really true. Cuz it was paper money. He never, it's, it's but still un unrealized gains is, that's kind of meaningless. It's not like he had $200 billion in his pocket and misplaced it.
Glenn Fleishman (02:00:52):
Has he lost more money for u for other people? More money than anybody else has in history for other people? Oh, yeah. Because I was thinking it might be Zuckerberg because meta went down 700 something billion. But I think if, if you look at all of, all of his holdings
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:06):
Yeah. Tesla's down over 65% Twitter,
Glenn Fleishman (02:01:09):
That's like 80 Twitter
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:10):
Billion Fidelity slashed their book value on Twitter by half
Leo Laporte (02:01:15):
This we knew was gonna come. And it's gonna come from the banks too, who have lent him money. Yeah. That they're gonna start getting this stuff off the books because they know it's, it's a loss. Twitter is not paying its rent now. And Elon has decided not to buy toilet paper. So we've heard that Twitter employees now have to bring their own,
Glenn Fleishman (02:01:34):
You know, why he's installed fiber in all the buildings.
Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
<Laugh>,
Glenn Fleishman (02:01:37):
Thank you very much. All these, come on.
Ant Pruitt (02:01:40):
Where's that rim shot? Man? Man,
Leo Laporte (02:01:41):
Come on. And and apparently because, because they're they're not they fired the janitors a month ago, and nobody will go across the picket lines Twitter's San Francisco hq, a hub of stinky smells.
Glenn Fleishman (02:02:00):
<Laugh>. That's a good headline. <Laugh> also Twitter. It's, you know, the service, the real world and the analog, the digital Alliance.
Leo Laporte (02:02:08):
This is from the San Francisco Chronicle. And by the way, Elon you should never have gotten that Iron Man costume because that's all we're gonna ever see from now on. They have they, they're without janitorial services for a month. If we cut janitorial services for a month, I can tell you it would be worse at downtown New York City during a garbage strike. Oh. the, a accord, according to the New York Times, the office, no
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:34):
Offense staff, no offense, but Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:02:36):
But you
Ant Pruitt (02:02:37):
Were none taken.
Leo Laporte (02:02:39):
The office is in disarray. No, I'm the worst. I throw food in my garbage all the time. The office is in disarray with people packed into more confined spaces. The smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors according to four current and former employees, bathrooms have grown dirty. These people said remaining workers reportedly bringing their own toilet paper. What's wrong with this guy? I don't feel sorry for him anymore.
Glenn Fleishman (02:03:11):
They've they've been evicted from, in my Seattle folks Seattle to, from their Seattle, they're facing a victim. And so Yep. They're sort of, it sounded like they're shutting down the office here. Yep.
Ant Pruitt (02:03:21):
Mr. Lepo, you said you don't feel sorry for him anymore. You felt sorry for him.
Leo Laporte (02:03:25):
Don't you remember two episodes ago? Two episodes ago. I felt so bad for Ilan
Jeff Jarvis (02:03:29):
And I kept, I kept going after him as a result.
Glenn Fleishman (02:03:32):
Oh, man.
Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
I honestly,
Glenn Fleishman (02:03:34):
That's good.
Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
I mean, look, he's going through something <laugh>. He's a human. He like, he's a human. Okay. He's a human being. Okay. I feel bad for him. He's obviously having tr you know, he's upset. He's, there's something wrong in his brain. It's sad. I mean, I feel worse for people who love Twitter and who have lost something very, very valuable. Yeah. that's a, that's a terrible shame. But
Glenn Fleishman (02:03:59):
Do we have bets on how long he's still in charge of it? In terms of the debt thing? Like, is he, he's been selling off between son off Tesla stock after promising not to the decline Tesla. Value
Ant Pruitt (02:04:11):
Mr. Fleischman. Only because he can, and no one's gonna hold his feet to the fire for
Glenn Fleishman (02:04:15):
Us and f No, the banks aren't gonna come after him. You
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:17):
Know. Well, wait, wait, wait. Now here's where I think happens, right? The, the equity holders lose, the Saudis lose, but the banks put in $13 billion. Yeah. Which is about what Twitter is worth. And so at the end of the day, if the, if the debt holders end up outta bankruptcy owning Twitter, oh, and ain't a bad deal for them. How did Alden take over the newspaper industry in the us? They bought their bad debt.
Ant Pruitt (02:04:41):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:04:43):
Meanwhile, Mastodon now is up to 9 million active users or
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:49):
Users You accounts. I don't think that's active,
Glenn Fleishman (02:04:51):
Right? You, I don't know if they, do they have a I mean, there's no central anythings, we don't know. No necessarily the,
Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
The way this information comes from scraping I mean, you can go to, you can go to Twit Social and see how many users we have. I know how many active users we have. That is information is available to MA administrators. So I don't know. I don't know where they're getting that 9 million. What's the report like, Leo? Well you could see right here and every Master Administer has this, this dashboard, we have almost 5,000 active. Oh, that's great. Users, which is, you know, it's it's up 2% from last week. But if, but you know, this is just a week's worth of information. But how many
Jeff Jarvis (02:05:31):
Accounts
Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
That information Yeah, I can tell you. So that, so what was that? Remember that almost 5,000 and the total account number? That's personal. Let's go to the administrative in interface and look at the accounts. Oh, I gotta, I can't remember how to do this. Let's see. I go to this dashboard here, here, I'll, I'll go to subject, click this button button here. Yes. Jake's running his own, isn't he?
Jeff Jarvis (02:06:00):
He's running his own. And he is working for Hugo too.
Leo Laporte (02:06:02):
Yeah. Oh, he is the runner owner of Mato host.
Jeff Jarvis (02:06:06):
Mato host.
Leo Laporte (02:06:08):
Oh, okay.
Glenn Fleishman (02:06:10):
Yeah. I It's messed it on his last time's becoming a lot like the best parts of Twitter. It's a little
Leo Laporte (02:06:16):
Quieter. I love it. It's not even quiet here in summer. Respect, eh?
Glenn Fleishman (02:06:19):
Well, yeah, you're right. It's not, I don't find it as much of a, I mean, I'm following. Well, I'll tell you the funny thing is, you know, look, I I have no, I, my social media presence is you got a Glen f you look down there, there's an at Glen F there. Oh, that's my old, well, it's at Glen f f You have a lot of Glen f
Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
Well, Glen F's everywhere.
Glenn Fleishman (02:06:34):
Yeah. At Glen fwi.social, I should say. But I have, I'm now at like, closing on a third of the number of people following me on Maid on as on Twitter, which is bizarre to me. It means that they're mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I mean, people are finding me or following me or whatever. And it's, it's great. But I p I post something, I tweet something on Maid on that I think is mildly interesting or funny or whatever, and it's like, whoa, like dozens of people, hundreds of people respond. And I'm like, this wasn't happening on Twitter. Yeah. People are a little more bored. There's less going on. So if you could do something
Ant Pruitt (02:07:06):
<Laugh> Yeah. You
Leo Laporte (02:07:07):
Get a little more
Glenn Fleishman (02:07:08):
Response every too, but
Ant Pruitt (02:07:09):
More like an autopilot far as social media goes, I, I'm literally just throwing stuff in an automatic queue and walking away. I'm not really checking. You
Jeff Jarvis (02:07:19):
Don't see that. I, but I boost you. I boost you all the time. You don't notice
Ant Pruitt (02:07:23):
That I, I can't say that I've been looking, sir. It just, it's just the, I guess it's a mood. I've been in here recently. I just sort of staying, just staying away because it just don't feel
Glenn Fleishman (02:07:34):
Right nowadays. It's healthy though.
Jeff Jarvis (02:07:36):
I signed up for FrieNDA too today. To whom? Frienda, which is their version of the, the,
Leo Laporte (02:07:42):
It's also Activity Pub. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. No version
Jeff Jarvis (02:07:45):
Of stuff. It's, it's pretty nice. Actually. So I, I'm friendly. Jeff Jarvis
Leo Laporte (02:07:49):
There. Yeah. We ran an Iica server for a long time. That was the, I see. TWI Army server. So Activity Pub is, is, you know, been around since 2007, I think. Almost as old as Twitter. And there have been a variety of Twitter, like iterations, including ika, then status net and oo, social is activity pub. There's a lot of, this is a very rich arena. Yeah. Actually, as it turns out, ma son gets all the attention. There's
Glenn Fleishman (02:08:17):
Fica sounds like a, sorry, FrieNDA sounds like a very mellow strain of marijuana.
Leo Laporte (02:08:22):
Yeah. <laugh>. It does. <Laugh>.
Glenn Fleishman (02:08:25):
I, I'm Onica right now. It's makes me feel,
Jeff Jarvis (02:08:27):
It makes me happy.
Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
Ah, it's very relaxing. Hey, let's do a quick oh, I, one other ma stunt story I should mention. Of course, VCs have now flocked to Meson mentioned that Yes. And the creator of Meson who has so far turned down all offers and says he has no plans on selling out.
Jeff Jarvis (02:08:48):
And he pays himself only, I think 3000 euros a month. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:08:53):
Which
Glenn Fleishman (02:08:53):
Is, they are a appropriate A G G M B H, which I had to look up. So the GBM H is the Gam Beja, right? It's the German, it's like a InCorp, like a, a limited liability company corporation. But A G G M B H is a gbm h sorry. It's, it's company with limited liability is the nonprofit version. I was like, oh, I didn't realize that. So it's like a, I
Leo Laporte (02:09:15):
Think it's, is it a public benefit corporation style, or is it 5 0 1 [inaudible] or
Glenn Fleishman (02:09:20):
It seems like a slightly different animal. So it's, it's, I don't think there's a direct, I mean, it's nonprofit. I think they have to conform to different rules than a, a corporation does, but it's kind of, it seems more similar to like an LLC than a nonprofit company would be an America, a nonprofit organization would be here. So I think they have more flexibility in what they do, but it also, they have to conform to, to rules that ensure they're not spending money in
Leo Laporte (02:09:44):
Ways. The other thing that's very good news and you should keep in mind is even if Hogan decided, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cash out and I'm gonna get Mark ees and to gimme a billion dollars, nobody would care. We would fork. Yeah. It's open source, right? We'd fork it and we'd just go on and say, fab. Fun. No, again, take your money and run. But we will continue to run an open source version of Mastodon without mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I think there'd be plenty of people who would take it over and, and keep it running, including Hugo who runs Masto host. I think that's And your, your son. I don't, don't think that's a problem. So here's FrieNDA. So you said you liked it.
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:20):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's different. So but you can't see it unless you sign in. Right? Oh you should sign up for it cuz it's, it, it does have Facebook pieces, right. You can put up photos and media and, and, and, and so on. I mean, I don't, I don't want to confuse people and have, when they search for Jeff Jarvis, they've, you know, they, they, they finally followed me there. So I just, I'm kinda keep it pretty sparse. Oh, I see. But I wanted to see what it was like, and the only way I could see it was by signing up. Nice. it's nice. I signed up for forgetting now what the, what the name of it is. So, so I was very egotistic. Let me know. I followed myself twice.
Leo Laporte (02:10:55):
That's crazy.
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:56):
Yeah. That's what I had to do with oh, pixel Fed. Pixel
Glenn Fleishman (02:10:59):
Fed. I had to do that.
Leo Laporte (02:11:01):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm on Pixel Fed. Frana has a lot of servers. Actually. There are 238 server. There's not as many as Mask On, which is up to I think 9,000 or something. 123 English language servers. Many of which are a, actually not in the us. But it looks like a lot of German hosts. Interesting.
Glenn Fleishman (02:11:25):
This is a very interesting, I mean, I saw someone post a chart of the Federated or the Fed averse. Oh, yeah. And it was one of those very diverse, I mean Yeah. When they post, people put those large charts together of like the advertising infras digital advertising infrastructure. And sometimes you're like, I don't even understand what some of these tiers are. Right. There's 47,000 companies, and the Fed averse is nowhere near that big, but it's kind of the delightful to start seeing these different kinds of aspects of it. Yes. Built out all of with that same, I mean, I don't know. It's, I, people are very dubious about it because of onboarding, and I think onboarding seems to be a problem that will be solved if it reaches a certain point, because people will make their own kind of thing, probably with paid options. That is an easier onboarding process and people will migrate. The big head always winds up in the places where things are easier. So you'll have some very, very large instances of everything where they've made a very easy onboarding process and they're charging something to offer tech support and some other limited features.
Leo Laporte (02:12:21):
Yeah. Here's the, so here's, here's what the many branches of the Fedi averse that you were talking, that's
Glenn Fleishman (02:12:26):
A great charge. That's the, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you for
Jeff Jarvis (02:12:29):
Finding that. So, and you have WordPress on there, so, so let me so, so Tony Stubbe, who's the now the CEO of Medium he came on this last week and said, because they have a medium social, people said, Ooh, what are you gonna do? And he said, well, we're trying to figure this out. Yeah. That's, and what would you, so I said, what I would want is to be able to have an account similarly as to FrieNDA or Pixel Fed, that my medium account is on Activity Pub. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but it posts maybe a sample of a post or something like that. Yeah, that's a good idea. I could subscribe to people on Medium. What a great idea. See when they do something new, I love it. So then I brought Kevin Marks into the discussion. Of course, Kevin went on and on and on and on and on with a hundred things that you should do if you do indie web properly. But it's good to educate them. And so they're trying to figure this out first. I just saw a hazard instance up Tumblr.
Leo Laporte (02:13:20):
Tumblr has said, which is of course, automatic as well. Matt has always been a supporter of open source. And and and, and the fe averse Tumblr said they're gonna be become part of the Fe Fed Averse. So a Tumblr account would be also an activity pub. And WordPress now has a very easy to use plugin. So you're, it's easy if you have a word plus blog to have it automatically post to the Fed averse, what
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:44):
Is it Post? So the 500
Leo Laporte (02:13:45):
Who get to choose. I mean, it's, it's obviously not the whole thing. Well, I guess it could be the whole thing.
Glenn Fleishman (02:13:49):
I haven't looked at it some instances. Yeah. there's also this sort of validates man and Reese's philosophy. He started a Micro Micro blog. Micro blog. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was years ago. He was like, people want something that's a blog that's a little like Twitter, and it's not Twitter, and this is this whole new thing. And now as the world, the Fedi verse grows like, oh, well, micro Blog is already plugged into it. You can just like, subscribe to people's micro blog feeds on your Mastodon client or whatever. And it's like, oh, this is neat. This is where you get different parts of these universes linking up.
Jeff Jarvis (02:14:18):
It was so great to watch Kevin at work upholding the standards of the indie web and saying, this is how you should do this, and this is how you should do that. And here's why.
Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
Manton has always been very active as well in the indie web yeah. Movement. I actually have a micro blog account. I've had one ever since day one. It was a Kickstarter, I think. But it, yeah, it's a great, I mean, it's a great idea. I, you know, here's some bells I heard in Valencia, Spain, and you put the, put the audio on. I said, you just, I said, well, maybe, maybe it's not working. But anyway yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's a really it's a nice idea. Here I am interviewing Bill Atkinson, so I haven't used it a lot.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:03):
There's a new writer. Leaf is, there's write this, write that. There's, there's, there's just some really simple medium, like, and for writing,
Leo Laporte (02:15:10):
I would argue it's better to use those in something like Post, because Post is owned by Andreessen Horowitz, basically. Yep. And it's central. And I see a lot of journalists going there, and I think you're just repeating the same old mistake.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:24):
Yeah. They're being, and I tried to convince Noel on, on federating, and he might do it eventually, but, but not now. And he argued,
Leo Laporte (02:15:34):
No, they're centralized. They don't want to, it's against their, you know their religion. <Laugh>. Yeah. Mike Masick wrote a really good piece saying, have we learned nothing <laugh> this is, and I think this one of the big lessons
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:49):
Really,
Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
As usual I was on floss Weekly this morning talking about some of the lessons Open Source has taught us in 2022. I know Ant you were, you were there. Yes, sir. And I think there were two big news stories towards the end of the year, but one was the collapse of Twitter. The other is the collapse of Last Pass. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that have, that, there's a lesson here that centralized closed source proprietary solutions aren't guaranteed to, to, to serve you, but open source distributed solutions will always serve you. And so I really think that there are, there
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:23):
Are. Or if they don't, you know, you know it, and you, and you can move on. People will know what to do about
Leo Laporte (02:16:27):
It. Yeah. So I agree with Mike Masnick that okay, let's learn the lesson of Twitter. If,
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:33):
If the world would just listen to Mike Figures would be a lot <laugh>
Ant Pruitt (02:16:38):
Mr. He's my,
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:39):
He's got my vote for benign
Leo Laporte (02:16:40):
Dictator. I totally agree. Yeah, yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:42):
Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (02:16:43):
Mr. Flashman was talking about the onboarding process, and it got me thinking about, you know, brands again, and I brought this up a couple weeks ago, but let's look at someone like the San Francisco 49ers or look at Manchester United, you know, big brands, a gazillion people follow those folks quite passionately on all of the different social media platforms. And they decide, you know what? We're going to go to the Fed averse. All right. So how are we going to get those folks from these centralized platforms over to the Fed averse? Well, what, what would their strategy be to get people over there? I don't even know. I don't even know where to begin just to get my family to hop off these centralized,
Leo Laporte (02:17:26):
So when you're talking to brands, I will tell you the lesson that I learned, which is a related lesson. When you're a broadcaster, you think in terms of audience uhhuh, and it's one to many, and you want to build as many people as possible. And certainly the 49ers wanna do that, et cetera. And, and of course that's a natural thing. But I have found, and Twit was the lesson here, that community Trump's audience and the Niners could, yes. And the Niners know this a little bit because the faithful and the tailgate, but they could really double down on community and, and Amen. I think in the long run, that serves any brand better, because those people are brand loyal. They're, you know, and I think a lot of brands try to have it both ways. They, they go, we've got our, what do they call them? The P one, you know yeah. Brand lovers, and we're gonna support them and encourage them and send 'em swag and whatever, maybe the season ticket holders. Yeah. And then we're, but we're gonna also use the NFL and have a broad network audience. And maybe that's fine. But for instance, if, if I think the N NFL probably shouldn't abandon Twitter or Facebook or anywhere or 49ers, but they should certainly, it would be very interesting if they created a Masto on for their superfan.
Ant Pruitt (02:18:37):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Leo Laporte (02:18:38):
Fans do that. The fans do that. They,
Ant Pruitt (02:18:41):
The fans. If you go to Reddit, it Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:18:43):
There's a 49ers subreddit. That's true. That is fantastic.
Ant Pruitt (02:18:46):
That's true.
Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
It's full of memes and fun stuff, and I love it.
Jeff Jarvis (02:18:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a, there's a bunch of opportunities, right? One is just to have a presence and, and, and, and, and bring information and bring things to people. Two is to have a community I mean a customer service presence, right? I had problems with my Fios wasn't working, and I, and I couldn't get anybody to call. I go on Twitter, boom, boom, boom. Yep. New Year's Day. Yep. New Year's Day. Somebody comes, I said, I don't really need a New Year's Day. They're into it. Right? So customer service, we
Ant Pruitt (02:19:17):
Are, I should
Jeff Jarvis (02:19:18):
Say, then, I think the third is, in certain cases, brands like TWI to do exactly what Leo's doing, which is to share the load of the Fed averse and create a home for all his fans, like Glenn Fleischman. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is a great and generous thing to do. And does, as you know, community manager mm-hmm. Does more to bring the community together and, and gather around the fire. I think that's an opportunity
Leo Laporte (02:19:45):
For twit. It's the whole deal. It's, and for any pod, any, I think independent podcaster, that should be the whole deal. Obviously for the 49ers, it's not. But if your fans are, look at, this is the 49ers subreddit. If your fans, this is not the 49ers. If your fans are doing this support 'em and give him a home. You know, why is Reddit owning this? Why aren't the 49ers owning this? You know? Right,
Ant Pruitt (02:20:12):
Right. Set up an instance. Set up instance. I wonder who would be the first, that's big opportunity to do is with, with, with some actual plan, you know, and not just saying, all right, we're, we're on the fed averse. Here it is, but you know, actually have some type of execution plan to make it a community. I wonder who will be the first to do that.
Leo Laporte (02:20:31):
By the way, one of the great victories of the 49ers subreddit is this young woman who's, I think she's in Europe. Who when, oh my God. When Jimmy Garoppolo, who was our quarterback last year, the rumors where he was gonna be traded, and she started doing a drawing of Jimmy G every day until he gets traded, he wasn't traded. He became our starting quarterback. Yep. And then thank goodness got injured. Day 336. Every single day she's been putting up a new drawing <laugh>
Glenn Fleishman (02:21:00):
For her.
Leo Laporte (02:21:01):
Amazing. That's not the Niners. That, that's what community does. That's
Ant Pruitt (02:21:05):
Community. Yes.
Leo Laporte (02:21:07):
That's fantastic. <Laugh>. And then you see people like George Lucas trying to shut that stuff down. And you just go, you don't get it. You just don't get, don't it? George's, I think changed his tune, but he used to be, yeah. Oh, horrifically litigious.
Glenn Fleishman (02:21:22):
Well, he doesn't own the copyrights anymore, right? Yes. So it's Disney. Disney now Disney is, Disney has an interesting Yeah. Different relationship. Same thing
Leo Laporte (02:21:28):
With the I understand community, don't they? Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (02:21:30):
Yeah. Paramount too. Like Paramount and Star Trek was always a, there were a lot. They were like those fan shot Star Trek sequels. And as long as money wasn't exchanging hands. Right. Paramount kinda led
Leo Laporte (02:21:41):
For really sweet. It's good for you. One last Twitter story, one of the last remaining executives from pre Elon Twitter has left the building yesterday. According to platformer, Zoe Schiffer, they've really got the stuff. Ben Nam Reza, who is Twitter's head of product and engineering, worked there since 2017, has walked out the door. So there is now the
Jeff Jarvis (02:22:06):
Actually head of HR just walked out too,
Leo Laporte (02:22:08):
According to Zoe there. And Platformer there is now no longer anybody in in Power there who we used to work for. Anybody buddy Elon. Elon has what his goal was, obviously from Day One Storm that himself was sick
Ant Pruitt (02:22:21):
Of fans. Yeah. That happens.
Glenn Fleishman (02:22:21):
Yeah. Do you, do you remember when the Trump folks moved to the White House? They were so contemptuous of doing any transition stuff with the out going Obama people, they couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on in the room in which the cabinet meets
Leo Laporte (02:22:33):
<Laugh>. And I just thought
Glenn Fleishman (02:22:34):
That's kinda where the Musk is. Like, I just toured a bunch of
Leo Laporte (02:22:37):
Servers, oh my God,
Glenn Fleishman (02:22:38):
From this room, I'm gonna hit, you know, take an ax to some servers in New Zealand or whatever, you know,
Jeff Jarvis (02:22:44):
How do we flush the toilets of
Glenn Fleishman (02:22:45):
This place? That's right.
Leo Laporte (02:22:46):
Katie, mark the Jenners, who was a 10 year Twitter employee, and the acting head of human resources also left fun. And this is one of the reasons this is Casey Newton's tweet. This is one of the reasons it's gonna be hard to figure out who gets paid when <laugh> who know. Yeah. And, and maybe that they're not paying the rent only because no one knows how to write that check. I don't, you know, it's completely possible. Completely possible. I wouldn't want to be in HR at Twitter right now, so I don't blame Katie for for leaving. All right. That's, that's enough of that. But I guess we kind of still have to cover it a little bit. But
Ant Pruitt (02:23:22):
Again, it's, it's news.
Leo Laporte (02:23:25):
My a at this point, my attitude is it's a lost cause. What are you gonna do? Have fun over there. Yeah. but you, but you still use it an to great effect. I think
Ant Pruitt (02:23:36):
So. I, I will still continue to use it, but even, like I said a few minutes ago, right now I'm just sort of on autopilot just with social media in general. Yeah. that's the Right, regardless of it being Twitter or, or you know, I'm just sick of some of the
Leo Laporte (02:23:53):
It's not a pleasant
Ant Pruitt (02:23:54):
Mental stuff Yeah. That you have the battle with over there. You know,
Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
It was funny cuz Taylor Lawrence and you probably saw this Jeff came over to Masin on and said, well, journalists are never gonna use this if you don't have quote tweets and <laugh> Oh boy. And another feature, which actually Mastadon does have and I responded, okay, see ya. Because <laugh> my attitude ist come in here and say, well, hey, if you don't have this, I'm leaving. And then she did leave, you know, she's
Jeff Jarvis (02:24:25):
Okay. Alright. But let, let me, let me just make an, an argument back. Cause I've been in the middle of these discussions and I'm gonna have an event coming up on black Twitter mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And this is, I, you know, I saw what's his name? Oh hell. The, the, the Adam Curry mm-hmm. <Affirmative> spoke to one of the who, who runs, who has,
Leo Laporte (02:24:43):
Who runs an instance. He has no agenda. I know he does.
Jeff Jarvis (02:24:46):
Yeah. So he, I saw him live go after Dr. Jonathan Flowers, who's one of the experts on black Twitter. And the, the discussion about quote tweets is not just the affordance itself. The discussion is also about the reception that people have received from certain obnoxious white boy geeks on Mastodon. And, and that's a lot of the issue is that, is that both sides, yes, there's, there's things to respect in how Mastodon did it, but there's also things to respect in a community coming and saying, are you going to value the perspective that we bring?
Leo Laporte (02:25:26):
That's not how she came in. And if you don't, she came in and said,
Jeff Jarvis (02:25:29):
I'm not, I'm not talking about
Leo Laporte (02:25:30):
You're not gonna leave if you don't do this. And, and that's exactly the wrong way to do it. And by the way, what I realized, and we, I got in a conversation with her, but what I realized is she came with a Twitter mindset that what you social networks stir the pot. And she was happy to stir the outrage, and that's exactly what we
Jeff Jarvis (02:25:51):
Can, what happened instead though, there was a really good substantive discussion about the pluses and minuses. Yeah. By the way, Oregon said again today that he has changed his mind, consider yesterday considerably from 2018 and is very, he says, we are now discussing Good. Some version of quote. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:26:07):
I don't think that's the way it happens. Yeah. I don't the
Glenn Fleishman (02:26:10):
You can turn. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:26:11):
One way or the
Glenn Fleishman (02:26:12):
Other. I mean, people should have the ability to, like, there's one of the debates, I I'll say my strategy by the way, was when this rage was like one of the second, I think John Mataam was the first thing that filled my timeline. It was like, yeah, it was funny for five minutes, goodbye. And then the quote tweet thing happened, I was like, oh, I have a strategy because there's a lot of good easy granularity. I'm asked at them. I just muted anybody who brought up quote tweets, I just muted them for three days. Yeah. And I waited for the fever to pass suddenly.
Leo Laporte (02:26:35):
Beautiful
Glenn Fleishman (02:26:36):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Like, once it had burned out, then people were having slower and better conversations about it, and I could follow them. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:26:43):
Yeah, I mean, you, YouTube, Twitter must it on, you're really much more in control. And it, because it is small, every instance is smaller. It never gets overpowering. But I don't think that this, there's an argument about, oh, we want to take over for Twitter, or we need to have this feature of that feature that's not necessary. They're just little communities. And I would love our little twit social community.
Jeff Jarvis (02:27:05):
There was a really interesting discussion about, about search and you know, quote, tweets and search are the two things that, that the, the originators of Mass Don decided not to have because it would leave to bad
Leo Laporte (02:27:20):
Behavior. Search is technically difficult. There's other, there's actually good reasons. That's the other is not there,
Jeff Jarvis (02:27:24):
Especially in a federated
Leo Laporte (02:27:25):
World. Yeah. And so search, I, you can as a mess owner and I do turn on elastic search, which allows you to search within our twit social instance. And
Jeff Jarvis (02:27:37):
Within your own tweet, your
Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
Own tweet and your own stuff. And so that I think is adequate to search the entire Fed version. Most of the stuff would be very, very costly. Most of the Fed averse does not exist on my server. The only part of the Fed averse that exists is things people on my server have subscribed to. Right. So yeah, you could search that. That's a by the way, that is a problem with decentralization. For instance, I, people can reply to me and I don't see the reply if I, if no one on my server follows them. So there are, is that what's happening there? There are large technical issues, but if, think about it, it's like email. I only have on twit social stuff that people have fetched. I'm not going out and fetching the entire FEI verse. Because it's too big, it's too costly. So we only have stuff people have followed. So yes, if somebody on another server that no one follows responds to you, you're not gonna see it unless you follow. Let me ask another questions.
Jeff Jarvis (02:28:32):
Yeah. Since you always answer my metaverse questions so brilliantly.
Leo Laporte (02:28:37):
I am not an expert. Twitter started, I'll give you my best answer,
Jeff Jarvis (02:28:39):
But you know a hell a lot more than I do. Twitter started without search and had to buy it. And did but even so, the search was never great. And I often used Google to search Twitter. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Now for all the architectural reasons you've just gone through, this would not be easy. But if Google is Google, could Google decide cultural issues aside, protests aside, could there be a way in which they could scrape all of they already are.
Leo Laporte (02:29:04):
They are. They already are in your server settings As somebody who has a a Masson instance. Uhhuh, you can allow it to be searched or not. And
Jeff Jarvis (02:29:16):
So we don't Google
Leo Laporte (02:29:17):
Does it. And so, yes. So it's I'm trying to find where it is. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a little hard to figure out, but there is a there is a ability to say, no, don't make this here it is, allow unauthenticated access to public timelines. So
Jeff Jarvis (02:29:33):
That's what that means. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:29:35):
Logged out visitors will be able to browse the most recent public, unless that's turned on, Google can't Spider you. Okay. And then I think there are other, other settings. I, as I remember, there are other settings that you could turn
Jeff Jarvis (02:29:46):
On. Well, that's also what comes up on your just your, your, your, your homepage for unsigned in people.
Leo Laporte (02:29:51):
Yeah. If you're not logged in normally you would see that. But some sites say, I don't, I don't want people to come looking for content. So we're not gonna make that available. That's, I mean, this, look, everybody who, and, and Glenn, you started to refer to some sites allow 5,000 word posts. We don't because that's insane. <Laugh>.
Glenn Fleishman (02:30:11):
That's a blog. That's a blog. That's a good, that's a medium essay.
Leo Laporte (02:30:15):
There's an argument for that. You know, you, you can do anything you want with this. It's open source. You can change it any way you want. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (02:30:23):
I, I think the quote tweet thing, you know, given that I muted everybody, I should have no opinion on this, but it was <laugh>. It was, it was, I think something that's emerged is talking about, again, Mastin on control or fed averse and control, is that if there were an option that people could either, I don't either opt in or opt out maybe on an instance basis in terms of which is a default from allowing yourself to be quote tweeted, that helps, you know, the Masson has more and better visibility parameters than Twitter ever had in terms of when you post an item, how it gets, you know, indexed or shown to other people. And I think and Twitter, you know, has adopt, adopted some of those before it imploded. But I think the idea that you could say, I don't want this post, or I don't want my account to be quote tweeted, if you feel it's contributing to abuse, here you go. That's right. And, and I
Leo Laporte (02:31:10):
Suspect that's also debated. Probably do something like
Glenn Fleishman (02:31:12):
That. Yeah. Which would be great. Then you then an entire instance could be like, we are not enabling
Leo Laporte (02:31:15):
No quote tweets here. Quote
Glenn Fleishman (02:31:16):
Tweet. Yep. Here you're gonna have to,
Jeff Jarvis (02:31:17):
Or individual user or an individual post.
Glenn Fleishman (02:31:19):
Right. I love it. I love it. Why not? And then it's
Jeff Jarvis (02:31:22):
Proposals.
Glenn Fleishman (02:31:24):
So if you wanna be part of a broader discussion, you're a reporter, you're a news outlet, you're somebody who's a public intellectual, like Jeff Jarvis, the Craig Newmar offer, some of them <laugh>, I can't remember the whole thing. Then you can, you know, post things and you want that to be
Leo Laporte (02:31:37):
Repeated. So just Jeff, to show you that you can in fact use Google to search an instance I entered in Google site, twit social and Rust. And here's a lot of posts. Oh, from
Glenn Fleishman (02:31:49):
Twit Social about Rust. Russ never sleeps.
Jeff Jarvis (02:31:51):
Russ never. You should only do it instance at it by instance.
Leo Laporte (02:31:56):
Well, you certainly can do that. It means that it's in the index. So I don't know how highly Randy Weddell's post on Rust
Jeff Jarvis (02:32:05):
Will <laugh>. I guess what'll happen is when you search for Randy Wedell Google, there you go on Google for any purpose, right? Will it Ma Mass, Don item come
Leo Laporte (02:32:12):
Up? Yes. Yes. Good. There you go.
Jeff Jarvis (02:32:14):
But I haven't seen yet, but that's small.
Leo Laporte (02:32:16):
Yeah. it's being indexed, I guess is the point. And so whatever happens to stuff that Google's indexes let me see. If I search Google, if I search for Chief Twit, I'm gonna find Elon. Unfortunately. no, no. There it goes. It shows my Twitter account. It shows Reuters talking about Elon's chief Twit. Hit
Jeff Jarvis (02:32:39):
Your button, sir. I got it here. So, so journal.host John Legum is quoting me. I'm asking on it. And it came up with the first screen load. So yeah, Google is searching.
Leo Laporte (02:32:50):
Yeah. So that's good news.
Jeff Jarvis (02:32:51):
Yeah, I think so. It'll call some people to scream bloody murder, but I think it's good news.
Leo Laporte (02:32:56):
You can turn it off. That's the good news.
Jeff Jarvis (02:32:59):
Wow. There's actually a
Leo Laporte (02:33:00):
Lot here. As a Masto administrator, you just turn it off and then Google.
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:04):
So I just searched Chef Jarvis Ma dun, by
Leo Laporte (02:33:07):
The way, that's true for any site. You just put a no robots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No
Glenn Fleishman (02:33:12):
Robots
Leo Laporte (02:33:13):
Allowed. Yeah. Hacky
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:14):
Derm. I think this
Leo Laporte (02:33:16):
Is the beauty of Zf Ma
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:18):
World. You
Leo Laporte (02:33:19):
Get to do what you want. You get to, and if I decide, I don't like quote tweets, cuz it's really heating up the conversation onto that social. I'll turn it off and then I'll
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:27):
Be, and if I don't like you for doing that, I'll leave your server and you go anywhere else. Right.
Leo Laporte (02:33:30):
Go
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:30):
Somewhere else.
Leo Laporte (02:33:30):
Yes. Yeah. That seems like the right way to do things. That's the way it used to be. Before a few big companies dominated this stuff.
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:39):
So Elon Musk did us all a favor. Absolutely. God pointed us back
Leo Laporte (02:33:44):
To that world. Maybe that's his plan.
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:46):
Uhhuh, I think Jack's plan.
Glenn Fleishman (02:33:49):
Give him kudos for that.
Jeff Jarvis (02:33:51):
No, no. Between the two of you. Leo, Leo giving him sympathy and you giving him respect. No, no, no, no, no. <Laugh>, no.
Leo Laporte (02:34:02):
I think we should just stop this show right now. Goodbye. It's over. No <laugh>. All right. I'll let you do picks of the week and then, and then the hammer will fall. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I am the founder and one of the hosts at the TWIT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at twit because I think it's unique and I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do Here at twit, we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is twit, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Well already you should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you.
(02:34:55):
Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. And I hear from our audience all the time, part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers. We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity, and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us. And we have so many great success stories. Tim Broom, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since.
(02:35:54):
He said, quote, we would not be where we are today without the Twit network. I think the proof is in the pudding. Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that our other hosts will chime in on the ad saying, yeah, I love that.
(02:36:48):
Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>. That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really wanna see this stuff.
(02:37:41):
We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too. So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience. Visit twi.tv/advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary is the c e o of authentic. You probably know him one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted.
(02:38:44):
I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertisattwit.tv, break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host red ads on twit.tv. Visit TWI tv slash advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now, I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. Do you have Mr. Glenn Fleischman, star of stage screen and typewriter a a pick of the week for us? I, I did. And then I've forgotten one <laugh>. No. Well, that was five hours ago. I don't blame you. I I come back to me and I'll get it for you. Okay. Mr. Mr what's his name? Jeff Jarvis. Do you have a number? Right.
Jeff Jarvis (02:39:36):
Alright. We
Leo Laporte (02:39:37):
Used one of them already.
Jeff Jarvis (02:39:38):
I, I, I did. I'm gonna also generous just say this, you know, people make fun of me on the show for not liking bridges. For being scared
Leo Laporte (02:39:45):
Of bridges. Oh, I don't make fun of you about bridges. That's, I understand wrong.
Speaker 5 (02:39:48):
The Golden Gate
Jeff Jarvis (02:39:49):
Bridge is in and I quote,
Speaker 5 (02:39:51):
Fair condition. Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:39:55):
Fair
Speaker 5 (02:39:55):
Condition. If you were in the hospital in fair condition, you wouldn't walk over somebody cuz they kind, you know. No, the Gold Gate bridge is in fair condition. I'm not insane people,
Leo Laporte (02:40:07):
But good news. The infrastructure bill has allocated $400 million.
Jeff Jarvis (02:40:11):
Tell me what it's done
Leo Laporte (02:40:13):
To retro. Nothing yet, <laugh>. Not yet. This is still in fair condition, but apparently now, actually this should scare you. It has not been retrofitted for earthquake protection. Yes. Yeah. I think you don't wanna be on the bridge if there's an earthquake, although on Earth five cross the 89 quake just fine. The Bay Bridge, I have to say. Did not.
Jeff Jarvis (02:40:33):
So did not. That's not, I will not drive over that. Never again. Never again. Famously I nearly had a heart attack. Just drive it across my, also in honor of Glen's presence here, I wanted to mention, oh, I didn't realize how much Google fonts had grown. I followed somebody on Masteron, who's works on Google fonts. Oh my lord. What a resource that is. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:40:52):
Wow. Great.
Glenn Fleishman (02:40:53):
It's great. They now coordinate a lot of open source
Leo Laporte (02:40:55):
Fonts. I think they're great fonts. It, it does slow a site down if you use Google Fonts on your site because they have to load from Google. Which I'm not crazy about.
Jeff Jarvis (02:41:05):
Well, you could load them. You can load them locally. Cash.
Leo Laporte (02:41:08):
Yeah, I guess you could cash them.
Glenn Fleishman (02:41:09):
Yeah, you can. Well you can, you can download them. They're I think all the fonts they list are free and
Jeff Jarvis (02:41:13):
Absolutely.
Glenn Fleishman (02:41:14):
So you can, you can put them on your own server and link them locally. Go, if you want
Leo Laporte (02:41:18):
There, 1,474 open source font families with APIs for convenient use via CSS and Android. Yeah, I've used Google Fonts in the past and I really, I really think they're great.
Jeff Jarvis (02:41:31):
I didn't know how much it had Gro
Glenn Fleishman (02:41:33):
Has you think about this as an Adobe subscriber. So I have all of your funds. It's, it's amazing. But wow, this is nice. Google has also spent, what I don't, they have not released the amount of money, but it is clearly tens of millions of dollars over the last, I think we're up to like nine years with their notto font project. N O t O stands for not, not tofu. Cuz you really, the little, yeah, there's a little rectangular box you sometimes get and people call it tofu if there's a character for it. Oh, so not tofu, no toe. And they've been producing glyphs for every language in the world represented in Unicode, little by little and in a uniform character design across all the sets. And they said Monotype in Adobe and independent font factories. And I interviewed people involved years ago, and they were like, well, we found Tibetan monks to talk to them about how you turn this telegraphic writing into something that would be representative to Tibetan readers. Cuz there was no consistent single version of Tibetan in like a font way. It was always written. And anyway, very, you know, very interesting stuff. And that's all free too.
Leo Laporte (02:42:38):
I will tie this
Jeff Jarvis (02:42:38):
And I wanna, I wanna give a shout
Leo Laporte (02:42:40):
Out with my pick of the week real quickly. I'll throw this in. You know his name Eric, speaker man, right? Glen?
Glenn Fleishman (02:42:46):
Yeah. He's, yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:42:48):
Oh yes. One of the great 70, just turned 75. He wrote one of the great books on fonts was anybody who's interested in typefaces should read just at least for the baseline knowledge. And he's teamed up with Google Design to give away. And I, by the way, I've bought four, two or three copies anyway of this book. I, I give it to people all the time. Stop stealing sheep and find out how type works so you can go and download this. It's a it and it, I mean, you should buy the book cuz it's a book and it's a nice book. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But if you're interested without spending any money on learning about fonts and typefaces, this is fantastic. And I know you, you agree Glen and this Thank you. Google. Google Design. Google Fonts for making this available. Very, yeah. It really did a nice show.
Glenn Fleishman (02:43:34):
I missed I was gonna get together with Eric in Berlin where he has a letter press studio called P 98 a. Of course. For Reasons. I think that's the address. It's at Potsdamer Plots or something. And but he is outta the country. He was outta Germany, so I did not see his shop on this trip.
Leo Laporte (02:43:50):
Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (02:43:50):
They, so, so I was gonna say that Glen has been giving me very kind advice on, on the topography for my book.
Leo Laporte (02:43:56):
Oh, good.
Jeff Jarvis (02:43:56):
Being a Gutenberg book. I care about this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I've, I've just selected, I'm gonna have the Doves font for the headings, which is a magnificent story we talked about before. And Saban, or Saban, I don't know how you're supposed to say it, Glen for the body type. But I've also wanted drop initials and other things. So I was asking Glen, where do I go? Where do I go? And I got all kinds of great advice from folks online and I've got two choices for the publisher now. And they're letting me do this, which is really kind of cool to have a voice in, in, in the font choices. And at the end of the book, I'm gonna have a CIF on describing all that.
Leo Laporte (02:44:27):
Yay. if you,
Glenn Fleishman (02:44:30):
I don't know that people I'm asking on, but have any opinions about typefaces or squashes or capitals? That seems impossible
Leo Laporte (02:44:36):
To me. If you go to design, design.google there's a link right there on the front page an interview with Eric, speaker Man, and a link to Google Fonts, very generous donation of of fonts. I'd rather his book all about fonts. And so you agree. It's a good, it's a good it's a good way to get started. At least in fonts. Yeah. Yeah. Creative comments license. Which class? Great. You can give it to your friends without guilt. So good. We, I don't know. I'll give you that pick Glen, if you want to use that for yours. <Laugh>. No,
Glenn Fleishman (02:45:10):
I remember, I remember Guy, you can take, take Ant first and I'll come. I, me.
Leo Laporte (02:45:13):
Okay. Jeff, are you done with your pick? I'm
Jeff Jarvis (02:45:15):
Done. Okay. Or I could go on if you want me to,
Leo Laporte (02:45:18):
But you No, stop. Just don't go on the Google Gate Golden Gate Bridge. It's not upgraded yet. But when it is, I hope you'll come up and see us. Cuz you do need to go over the Golden Gate Bridge to come visit Twit. I think there're, you can do the Bay Bridge, but you won't do that. You can go take ferry
Jeff Jarvis (02:45:33):
To
Leo Laporte (02:45:33):
Salsalito. There you go. Those almost never sink. So I think you're all right.
Ant Pruitt (02:45:37):
Oh, almost never
Jeff Jarvis (02:45:39):
Actually, this best guys getting flooded right
Leo Laporte (02:45:41):
Now. Yeah. Yeah. Never The best place to be in an earthquake would be on a ferry, I would think. Unless there's a tsunami. Unless
Ant Pruitt (02:45:47):
There's a tidal wave.
Leo Laporte (02:45:49):
<Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (02:45:51):
The best place to be is in
Leo Laporte (02:45:53):
New Jersey. In New Jersey. <Laugh> in Edin. And your pick of the week.
Ant Pruitt (02:45:59):
I had one in there, but we've already discussed it. And it was the whole TikTok ad at halftime. But my actual pick this time will be to watch Coach Primes docu-series on Amazon. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, I know you folks don't care about sports, but Deion Sanders love him. I hate him, is a fascinating man. Fascinating. So
Leo Laporte (02:46:22):
He's Coach Prime is Deion Sanders?
Ant Pruitt (02:46:24):
That is correct. So, oh,
Leo Laporte (02:46:26):
Deion Deion. All
Ant Pruitt (02:46:28):
Right. His story. You know, I, being a sports fan and following him since I was a, you know, a teen Oh yeah. He, I've always loved watching him play and watching his story and what he has done at Jackson State University, historically black college in university. And now what he's attempting to do at the at Colorado University in Boulder. I know you,
Leo Laporte (02:46:50):
Oh, that's my
Ant Pruitt (02:46:51):
Son there. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:46:52):
That's right.
Ant Pruitt (02:46:53):
The buffs. It's such a, it is such a fascinating story, and I hate that he has gotten just as much hate and, and, and, and vitol as he's gotten the accolades. Why? Especially from the black community. Because a lot of, a lot of folks are saying, he quote, sold out by leaving Jackson State, huh? To, to take the job to Oh, Colorado, when this dude had a gazillion dollars already. He's not there for the paycheck.
Leo Laporte (02:47:20):
Yeah, I was gonna say, going to Jackson State is you know, he could prob probably work at the front office of any football NFL team is a big deal. That's a great donation. That's a contribution,
Ant Pruitt (02:47:31):
Right? Yeah. He, he did a lot for that university in the, in the, the, the athletic programs there, as well as a lot for the HBCUs and the conference there. Just put a, a lot more positive attention on those schools. Hopefully they'll be able to get more money and, and, and make things better with facilities and so forth. And the next challenge was to go to a Power Five school and try to build a winning football team there that's not selling out. That, that's just someone that's taking another challenge as well as taking an opportunity to help enrich some young men and women's lives in the, in the world of football. You know, my son and I, we've been watching this journey and he and I have talked about it and I've told her straight up, I said, man, if you ever get the opportunity to learn from someone like Dion Sanders, I'm all for it. You know, so why would I hate on him? And seeing what he's done in his past yeah. He's got some, some funny, crazy stories. But <laugh> from a success standpoint, everywhere he's been, it's been a success.
Leo Laporte (02:48:38):
It seems appropriate that primetime should be on Amazon Prime. Amazon
Ant Pruitt (02:48:42):
Prime <laugh>. You know, he loved, he, he had e s espn n showing up at, at Jackson State University to do their college game day show on Saturday mornings. That's big freaking deal. Yeah. And he said, he is like, y'all, y'all not here for Jackson State. You here cuz I'm here and I ask you to come here because I need you to see this Good. You know, it's, I get it.
Leo Laporte (02:49:05):
And also a top 10 view on Amazon Prime. So you're not alone in watching it. I can't wait to watch it. You know, he was a niner and Lisa probably. Yep. As soon as I say this, we'll be watching it tonight, so <laugh> so that's good. Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know about it. That's great. That's
Ant Pruitt (02:49:22):
Great. And, and lastly, it's the beginning of the year, so it should be be mentioned. You know, I know a lot of you've twit listeners. Check out Wikipedia, make sure you donate. Give them two bucks.
Leo Laporte (02:49:33):
Hell yeah. Five
Ant Pruitt (02:49:33):
Bucks something. So go ahead and donate to Wikipedia.
Leo Laporte (02:49:38):
Single best example of, of what decentralization and community can do is Wikipedia. I mean, one of the best things on the internet, it's fantastic. And I donate every month because it's we use it so much. Yeah. I feel like I'd be it'd be awful of me not to give them, give 'em a little something every month. Yeah. Good, good advice. Wikipedia, they don't have they don't have the the the handout this month. They did last month, so, but you can still donate and I, yeah,
Ant Pruitt (02:50:09):
Just go down there somewhere.
Leo Laporte (02:50:10):
Just go to contributions,
Ant Pruitt (02:50:11):
Donate
Leo Laporte (02:50:11):
Something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's user contributions. I don't know. It is such a great site. Oh, I love it. In fact, a good place to go for news, by the way, if you go to the front page <laugh>, believe it or not, they do an excellent job covering the news. Do you remember now,
Glenn Fleishman (02:50:30):
Glen? I remember It's a great
Leo Laporte (02:50:33):
Story. Are you now, or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?
Glenn Fleishman (02:50:38):
It was, it was the answer is I refused to answer on the grounds. It may incriminate me. Have you?
Leo Laporte (02:50:44):
No shame Mr. Fleischman. Okay. Sorry.
Glenn Fleishman (02:50:48):
Representative elect as all, as we record this representatives the House of Representative are elect because they have not yet been sworn in because as we record this, only six votes have been taken for the speaker's chair. It may be a hundred by the time you, if you're not watching live by the time this goes out. So Robert Garcia, a very lovely person, it sounds like sorry, went around a couple days ago. He was gonna be sworn in. There's showed a stack of things that people would be sworn in on. Bibles family, Bibles there might be a Quran in there. There has been a Beers Pass. Oh, other things. Oh, I know where you're going. Superman. Issue number one. Not action comics, but Superman. And people are like, oh, ha ho who was there? Bababa? And I was like, oh, that seems, I, it seems a little trivial.
(02:51:28):
And then you're like, oh, well, it was borrowed from the Library of Congress, which con Congress people have direct access to borrow things. Well, that sounds, whatever. Then the whole story comes out and it's, oh my God, it's a lovely, lovely story. He's a democrat out of California. He was mayor of Long Beach and both hi, his parents, his father or his stepfather, and his mother died due to Covid early in the Covid Pandemic. And so he is being sworn in. Aw. He, he's a gay man. He's married gay man, not to be mistaken with another married gay man who has made up some of his history about being an immigrant <laugh> and so forth. George. So, so this guy is Robert Garcia. Don't get confused. He's an immigrated from Peru when he was five years old. And so he's, he is swearing in on Superman issue number one because it was so important to him. Oh. To see someone as a child who is an immigrant with a sense of justice, who had a secret identity. He thought it was because he was because he was gay and he wasn't out when he was a kid. Right. And he's, his, his citizenship certificate and a picture of his mother and stepfather. It is. And you're like, oh, okay. This is a beautiful
Leo Laporte (02:52:31):
Story. It is traditional for the Library of Congress to loan out articles to be sworn in on. Usually they figure it's gonna be a Bible or a Koran <laugh>. But they lend out the Superman. And as we should point out in Article four of the US Constitution says, no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. Thank you very much. That's good. Although, good luck getting elected president if you don't have at least professor belief,
Glenn Fleishman (02:53:00):
If you're not six feet tall. Yeah. And you don't have a religion. So this is not the super famous one. I once, when I was a kid, I saw Action comics number one, because the comic book store owner in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, had just bought it for some crazy amount of money in the eighties. And I went to the store and he was standing there and some of the people around, and they were like, can we look at it? He's like, sure. He pulls out a briefcase, silver briefcase. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:53:23):
My God. Click, click,
Glenn Fleishman (02:53:23):
Click opens it up. Doesn't let us, you know, touch it. Obvious touch, obviously. Wow. But we're like, oh, there it is. Whoa. Okay. So this is Superman number one, which came out apparently a year later and is only worth, like, action Comics is worth millions of dollars, and this is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's not quite as valuable, but also, but a very rare and delightful part of Americana. And to ruin people. That Su Superman was invented by two Jewish kids from New York, who had much of their credit and money stolen from them. But after a multi-decade rights and copyright and other battle, their estates finally got some justice.
Leo Laporte (02:53:56):
Joe Schuster
Glenn Fleishman (02:53:58):
And Jerry Siegel
Leo Laporte (02:53:59):
And Siegel. Yeah, Siegel and Chu.
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:01):
Yeah. A couple, couple Jewish kids. A couple of Jewish kids. And that's where Michael Chaban wrote there's a book
Leo Laporte (02:54:06):
Called Oh, I love that book.
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:07):
Cavalier and Clay, right? Yes. That's, that's a little bit of a takeoff of that
Leo Laporte (02:54:11):
Story. Yeah. I love Shevon. Well, I hope Representative Gar Garcia got to touch it as he got sworn in on it. <Laugh>. But I also,
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:20):
He hasn't been sworn in yet. He, he
Leo Laporte (02:54:21):
Doesn't wear white gloves or at least wash his hands and cover Nobody's over the surface.
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:27):
Leo, by the time you record, what is this episode? 6 97, maybe my episode. 800 or 900.
Leo Laporte (02:54:32):
You mean they can't, Congress will be sworn, can't swear in a new Congress until Nope. They figure out who the speaker is got paid. You can't do anything. Nope.
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:38):
Nobody is technically in the house at the moment. The Senate works differently. You have to have a speaker first order of business. They cannot do anything else until it's resolved.
Leo Laporte (02:54:46):
Oh my God. Oh my God. They're voting to adjourn right now as we
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:53):
Close the show. Oh, they're not done Votes. We
Leo Laporte (02:54:55):
We're gonna adjourn after the House Adjourns.
Glenn Fleishman (02:54:57):
That's right. That's right.
Leo Laporte (02:54:58):
But somebody ama you
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:00):
Think the,
Leo Laporte (02:55:01):
Somebody Ama on said, I think the stock Orville Red Barker stock should go grow up, go up as people buy more popcorn to watch this happen. Roll in the Senate. Wow.
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:12):
I've got a big Vato Shad in my basement. It just keeps getting more and more full. You want a little, little George Santos Huber there on the rundown to
Leo Laporte (02:55:19):
Close it out? Oh sure. Why not?
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:22):
Long
Leo Laporte (02:55:22):
90, is he your member of Congress? No, no,
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:25):
No.
Leo Laporte (02:55:26):
It's Long Island's. Long Island. Long Island. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:28):
Long Island. Which nobody says by the way, but go on. I
Leo Laporte (02:55:30):
Know. Nobody says Long Island. No, I grew up seeing Long Island. They
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:35):
Say
Leo Laporte (02:55:36):
I grew up there.
Glenn Fleishman (02:55:37):
They say, they say New Haven though. So there you go.
Leo Laporte (02:55:40):
Oh, but bye myself. <Laugh> here. He, there were pictures of him yesterday. Oh my God. Sitting in the house. Cuz nobody wanted to come next to a stand next to him for fear that they would somehow be associated with this guy who apparently lied about everything and is in fact wanted in Brazil for pouncing a check. It's for fading a check.
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:01):
My, my children, unfortunately, as Mask stood on, has grown, my children have become obsessed with Twitter. And they tell me all of these stories from Twitter all the time. Oh boy. One of them is that allegedly there's an issue about Santo's immigration process.
Leo Laporte (02:56:14):
<Laugh>, oh my God. Be
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:16):
Qualified until sworn in the Congress. Yeah, Congress. But
Leo Laporte (02:56:20):
There is no mechanism for removing him. So anyway,
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:24):
Here he is. Well, until they're
Leo Laporte (02:56:25):
Singing singing a song, I have a feeling this is apocryphal <laugh>. It's amazing what computers can do these days, isn't it? Deep
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:35):
Fake <laugh>. That's very nice.
Leo Laporte (02:56:37):
That's really quite well done. It is. That lip sync is excellent Made with Revive. That's really good. Wow. I I wanna know how they do that.
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:46):
Look at the eyebrow, sir. Yeah. At some point too. Imagine what you can do with clips from the foot shows. Yeah. At some point you won't have to record this anymore, Leo, you're just Oh, that's,
Leo Laporte (02:56:55):
That's, I, I'm waiting for that day. <Laugh>. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (02:56:58):
Talking about for three years. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (02:57:02):
No, you know, I realized actually you all sincerity that I have no friends aside from the you guys. So <laugh> <laugh>. So story be all by myself. Myself if I if I didn't do this show. Yeah, yeah. You guys are my best buds. So thank you. Stand back. Thank you for keeping me company. It's really actually why I started Twitting the early days was I wanted to talk to all the people I worked with at Tech TV and Oh yeah. So it was an excuse to get them together. And honestly, this is my entire social life. So <laugh> I guess I'll keep doing it for a while unless I wanna start singing all by myself. Thank you Glenn Fleishman for filling in for Stacy. Should
Glenn Fleishman (02:57:42):
Back. Yeah. Hey, Glen,
Leo Laporte (02:57:43):
It is always a pleasure to see you always much fun act len.fun. Anything you wanna, you're on mini a podcast. I know you do a lot of stuff with the incomparable.
Glenn Fleishman (02:57:56):
Yeah, we just we recorded our best of 22, 22 episode, apparently in 2023. You know, that's how things go sometimes, but it'd be like that.
Leo Laporte (02:58:04):
Yeah. You're
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:05):
The compar.com,
Leo Laporte (02:58:06):
Mac 9 1 1 columnist at Mac World Magazine. A lot of fun.
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:12):
A lot of fun.
Leo Laporte (02:58:12):
You created a hundred tiny type, the 100 tiny type museum and time capsules and wrote and published the book. Six Centuries of Type and Printing. And everybody should go to the news site. Say it again. Sheet happens. Shift happens.
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:28):
<Laugh> Shift. I know we're a little, little worried about that. F it's shift. Happens,
Leo Laporte (02:58:33):
Happens Site,
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:35):
Site.
Leo Laporte (02:58:36):
And you can, that's
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:36):
A beautiful, there's a 3D interactive book you can look at. Yeah. This is my, who
Leo Laporte (02:58:41):
Did this? This is really well done.
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:43):
Marcine Wishy, the author of this book. So I'm the midwife, he's the author. He's giving birth to this 10 pound baby. Actually pretty good, right, Mike? It's a pretty good sized baby. Actually,
Leo Laporte (02:58:52):
I want, yeah,
Glenn Fleishman (02:58:54):
He designed this whole, he used some libraries and put this all together. But the site, there's a game, if you want to figure out how well you know, a keyboard, he built a game on this site you can drag as a timed process where you drag keys onto a Mac layout or a PC layout. Oh, that's to see how much you remember from memory. So it's just, and he, oh my God, he puts, this is eight years of his life so far. And it's great. It's really well written. It's very entertaining. You'll find a story's about Alger hiss in it. And wow. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist who became the guy who was one of the developers of the concepts behind Lasers became obsessed with creating a laser powered typewriter. Eraser
Leo Laporte (02:59:35):
<Laugh>.
Glenn Fleishman (02:59:35):
Not kidding. <Laugh>. Not kidding. Later to the book, he had a, we had to revis a chapter cuz my chin's, like, I have this, has to go in, you
Leo Laporte (02:59:42):
Will also learn the true identity of Mavis Beacon. So there you
Glenn Fleishman (02:59:45):
Go. Mavis Beacon. It's very, it's a very
Leo Laporte (02:59:47):
Interesting story. Yes it is. Wow. This is great story of the photo on page 688. Yeah. That's a basic program. No, it's a, yeah, it's four
Glenn Fleishman (02:59:59):
Trends. This goes back, this is even before that, it's it's, it's been fun cuz Marching's been hunting people down at one to, for photo rights and things. And one point he was trying to find the keyboard that was developed that had the most keys on it. And he had some candidates, I forget which one, I think there one in a Polish. He, he's originally from Poland. There might be one in a museum there. But he would, at one point he is like, I, I'd like to use this different photo that was taken of this physicist, but he's dead. I'm like, what if you contacted this fellow who is his friend? So he contacts this guy who's also in his seventies, was still alive, another Nobel Prize winner. He is like, oh, why don't you, here's how you reach his daughter. And the daughter's like, sure, you can use a picture of my dad. I mean, is that kind of journey <laugh>? You're like, he work on the photo clearance of this thing must have been awful. He's done, he's done it all. This is like I said, I'm been the editor. I'm the crowdsource crowdfunding manager working on the printing side of it. And he's, it's his big old baby.
Leo Laporte (03:00:53):
And this is hard. I where the hell does the end go? I can't
Glenn Fleishman (03:00:58):
Oh, you're trying, trying to figure out the keyboard. Yeah, I can't, I can't. It's a timed. Where
Leo Laporte (03:01:01):
Does, I'm losing, I'm losing
Glenn Fleishman (03:01:03):
Not looking at your keyboard.
Leo Laporte (03:01:06):
Qw e r in your head. Start typing now. Oh my God. I have no idea where the end is. There it is.
Glenn Fleishman (03:01:11):
He also found that a great study. He presents a study in the book, which explains that the reason that we use quirky is not any of the reasons that we've been mentioned. It's that when s Schuls, the inventor of the first typewriter that went into production, an early prototype, QUT was the best design for key bars not to hit each other. So that was a typewriters. Right. That hasn't existed except in prototype for 150
Leo Laporte (03:01:32):
Years. So that's not an ful story though. I like that they kip Yeah,
Glenn Fleishman (03:01:35):
He he did it. He created it. But it, there's no reason you can type typewriter on the home keys. Right. That was one thing. You only need the top row and all these stories have been invented or it's was supposed to slow you down. Not at all. He invented a keyboard there. The type bars didn't hit each other. And then that was a prototype and the keyboard layout remain, but not not the
Leo Laporte (03:01:55):
Keyboards b that
Glenn Fleishman (03:01:56):
Was back in the days we had a tight line you actually typing with. It's how, which
Leo Laporte (03:01:59):
Letters? I I don't use. I never use p <laugh>. So it's
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:03):
You know, all the dunno where the L is.
Leo Laporte (03:02:05):
What is that? Is that a capital P? I guess it is. God, I have no idea there. Not Dear <laugh>. You know where the P is not
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:12):
There
Leo Laporte (03:02:12):
Either. I have no idea idea on. That's
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:15):
A s
Leo Laporte (03:02:16):
F you're right. I'm not supposed to look at that. This is good.
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:19):
This is great. But you can type how fast you type. You probably type like 70, 90 type words a minute. Exactly. I can type. So, but you don't know. Your brain
Leo Laporte (03:02:26):
Doesn't have No, my brain doesn't know. Oh yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:28):
For the people at home, type the word stewardess. If you're a touch typer and see what your fingers do, just type that. I know I can't spell it right, so I'm done. It's all, or it's
Leo Laporte (03:02:37):
All in the same area also. Yeah.
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:39):
Yeah. It's four. All four fingers. There's words. There's actually, there's some in the book, but there's, there's words that you can type with left or right hand only. Stewardess is really hard. Your finger, if you type it three times, your hand will cramp up.
Leo Laporte (03:02:50):
Yeah. Cuz this is, it's all the left hand and it's just right there. You're like, ah. It's like, oh,
Glenn Fleishman (03:02:55):
I used to type stuff for a magazine called Cascades Magazine and I would be typing Cascades.
Leo Laporte (03:02:59):
Cascades of Miami. Go. Oh, you can't claim the word new Mark. Wow. Thank you Glen. Thank you so much. Glen. Jeff Jarvis is the one and only Leonardtown professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig New Mark Courage School of Journalism at the City University of New York. A let's just pick one at random here. Lives in tomato fields. He l he's lived, lived <laugh>. He's, he's trapped in the jungle's Gym of Life. He's a disaster in the grocery store. And pizza menu cover Boy, which is hand handwritten. And I thought of somebody else who hated me the other day to s but I can't remember who. Nickel Millionaire Ray Crock Frank Sinatra called him a bum. It's all here. <Laugh>. Those are the classic. It's all here. Thank you, Jess. Oh, it's great. Ant Pruit twit tv slash hop. Hands on photography. When is, what's the next hop your first hop of the year?
Ant Pruitt (03:04:00):
The first one of the year we're gonna take a look at some creative product photography. So stay tuned for
Leo Laporte (03:04:05):
That grab. And we want to get
Ant Pruitt (03:04:06):
Your random product and get ready to
Leo Laporte (03:04:08):
Shoot. We want to get you answering some photographic questions on our new show. Ask the tech guys, which debuts Micah, Sergeant and I 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, this good stuff this Sunday. And we're gonna bring in as many contributors from twit as we can to answer questions. But I'll tell you what, I'll find a, I'll find a good question for you and I'll send it to you and you can either join us live or I telling people to record. You know, get out your phone and record the answer. That's cool. Yeah. It's gonna be, I cannot wait. You
Jeff Jarvis (03:04:37):
Got it. You got any lighter type questions? What if I can
Leo Laporte (03:04:40):
Probably do it. I if I, the next time typeface question, variable fonts, good or bad? Next time that comes up <laugh> I will, I will get you guys on what's a flung
Jeff Jarvis (03:04:54):
Along with you going don't just
Leo Laporte (03:04:57):
Long with you. I think we're gonna be kind of topical this week and I'm gonna show you how to move off. Last pass onto another passport. Oh, doctor, that's a good one. Oh, doctor, can
Jeff Jarvis (03:05:09):
I ask you an uncomfortable question,
Leo Laporte (03:05:10):
Leo? Sure.
Jeff Jarvis (03:05:13):
If last passports still a studio sponsor would
Leo Laporte (03:05:16):
All this Oh no, they wouldn't be. And I could tell you why they came back to us not so long ago and we w we turned them down.
Jeff Jarvis (03:05:24):
Wow. Wow.
Leo Laporte (03:05:27):
And the, and the, and it's really simple. When they were our studio sponsor, they really were the best thing out there. Yeah. They were. And Steve Beded them and I had every, yeah, yeah. I had every reason to trust Steve's opinion. I was using it myself. We still use LastPass Enterprise. I was very happy when Bit Warden approached us cuz I had already moved off last pass to Bit Warden. Cuz it's open source and I'm a big fan. And this is again, another, that lesson of centralized is not as good as decentralized. Open is better than proprietary or closed. And so I had already moved to Bit Warden, so I was thrilled. Unfortunately be as an open service project. They don't have much money to spend on advertising but <laugh>, whereas Last Pass had plenty. But yeah. You know, this is why you gotta join Club Twin cuz
Ant Pruitt (03:06:18):
Please, and
Leo Laporte (03:06:19):
Thank you. Please and thank you. Yeah, it's a of course we wouldn't do it now. Absolutely not. And you know why? The other reason I wouldn't do it, not because frankly I think it's probably better to use LastPass than no password manager. Right. And, and it, and there's no reason to think that if you use LastPass today, you would somehow be at risk. But the main reason we wouldn't do it is cuz we'd lose the trust of our audience. And Yes. Our advertisements have no value. If, if the audience can't trust that when I say something's good, it's, it's it's good.
Ant Pruitt (03:06:51):
Amen
Leo Laporte (03:06:51):
To that. So that would, it would devalue our company. Too much, much. So thank you for that. We are ready. Which is all also why you joined the Damned Club. <Laugh>. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he turns away people to protect you. Oh, we do it more often than I sh I should <laugh>. I'm very glad, you know, we, we had one crypto advertiser, which was a mistake in hindsight, but it really was for a credit card that paid rewards for crypto was block fi. And and I said, you know, I'm really uncomfortable. Let's not do that. E-Cigarettes, we've turned down gambling. Oh boy. I think we probably could have made a lot of money with you know, betting apps. I bet. But I just I bet there's some things I'm just not comfortable with. And thank God Lisa. Lisa Lisa doesn't overrule me.
(03:07:40):
She says, you know, okay, well what about those ads for pure uncut ever Clear? I, I feel those I love it. A little on the, I don't mind. I don't mind. You know, I I've actually thought about this. At one point I think we there wa we did wine ads for a long time. Oh, what? Wine clubs and stuff. We had a beer. Remember that? We had a, a beer thing that you could like, there's a little kegerators. It was a little kegerator. Was it USB rod? No. No. But the idea was that you would join a club and they'd send you a little little, you knows, a little kegerator. That's cute. What do they call it? Classic Dun John. What are they? Little thing of, of beer? <Laugh> A pony. It was before my time, but I remember seeing the sponsor on the show. That's great. And there are a lot of people, somebody in the chairman saying, well, don't forget you accepted manscaping. I still use Manscape. There's nothing wrong. We don't one, nothing wrong with keep in here. Your body is sleek for the swimming. That's why <laugh>. Hey, if I advertise it, I use it, man. <Laugh> <laugh>.
(03:08:46):
When when you got hair in your pit, turn to Twit <laugh>. That's a slogan we will not be using. Thank you Glen. Thank you Jeff. Thank you. We do Twitter every Wednesday afternoon. You see, it's when we get together with friends that we have the most fun. I hope you'll join us every Wednesday at 2:00 PM Pacific. 5:00 PM Eastern, 2200 utc. You can watch or listen live@live.twi.tv. Chat with us@irc.twi.tv open to all. And if you're a Club Twit member, of course you have your own special private chat where your feet will be massaged and <laugh> and you will be taken care of with a fine cocktail in the Discord. My Ant, himself Ant will make you a little something. And then yes, I'm keeping talking. So we get to the three hour mark's. Very important. We have every show, <laugh> Go, go to the point where you actually have to run to the bathroom. <Laugh>. Oh yeah. We got the GIZ fizz coming up. Get you on demand shows at twit tv slash TWIG. Subscribe in your favorite podcaster application. There is in fact a YouTube channel dedicated to this show, believe it or not. All of that usual, you know, thank you for your support and we will see you next time on This Week in Google. Now stay tuned. The first GIZ fizz for a Wednesday yay is coming up next. It's fizz time business stuff.
Speaker 6 (03:10:12):
The world is changing rapidly, so rapidly in fact that it's hard to keep up. That's why Micah Sergeant and I, Jason Howell talk with the people Macon and breaking the tech news on Tech News Weekly every Thursday. They know these stories better than anyone, so why not get them to talk about it in their own words? Subscribe to Tech News Weekly and you won't miss a beat every Thursday at twit tv.
