This Week in Google 705, 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. Ant Pruitt, Jeff Jarvis are here. Stacey's got the week off. But Jason Howell from all about Android fills in and we had some great conversations. It could be the end of the line for TikTok. I'll play devil's advocate and say it's about time. We'll also talk about Microsoft. They say they've got new, the new Bing powered ChatGPT in Windows 11. They lied. And, and we'll talk about Twitter cuts and who is in and who is out. We may even have a inkling of who the next CEO of Twitter will be. It's all coming up next on TWiG.

Speaker 2 (00:00:39):
Podcasts you love, From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:48):
This is TWiG This Week in Google. Episode 705 recorded Wednesday, March 1st, 2023. I Was merely Fluffing. This Week in Google is brought to you by Fastmail, reclaim your privacy, boost productivity, and make email yours with Fastmail. Try it free for 30 days at fastmail.com/TWiT. Fastmail's also giving TWiT listeners a 15% discount on the first year when you sign up today. 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.

(00:01:37):
It's time for TWIG, This Week in Google the show, we cover the latest news from the Google verse. Ant Pruitt's here in his pink hat. It's not pink. Pink. It's orange. It's orange, right? Yes, sir. Okay. Clemson Orange, Hands-on Photography Host, also the community manager for our club. And just a man about the TWiT. He's always here, which is nice. Runs our floss show. I see every Sunday now. And I ask the tech guys, in fact, we're gonna do a thing with you on Sunday. Yes sir. I am. We're gonna have a therapy session on Sunday, sir. That's what I'm calling it. So can we get stay tuned. Are we gonna get a couch or anything here for and he can lie on <laugh>. He's switched from Windows to Mac and he needs therapy. Oh, that's what it is. I was like, who's giving the therapy and who's receiving therapy? I have to know. So I think Micah's gonna talk him off the ledge. We'll see. We'll try. Oh boy. We'll try also with us. It'll be fun. The director of the Tow Night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark.

Speaker 2 (00:02:37):
Craig

Leo Laporte (00:02:39):
Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York. Mr. Jeffrey Jarvis. Hello, Jeff. Hello there. And I will call him to the show to convince Ant that he did all wrong. He just come to the Chromebook, come to follow the light children. <Laugh>, come to the Yeah. Was that ever an option, aunt? Was that ever a consideration for you? No. Never come Last Sunday in Ask the Tech Guys, I demoed that new Ace or gaming laptop. Was that at all intriguing to you? That was a nice Chromebook.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:09):
It was a nice Chromebook. But that did not intrigue me at all because the most I could do would be Da Vinci Resolve on a Linux partition.

Leo Laporte (00:03:17):
Yeah. That wouldn't work.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:18):
That's it. Yeah. That's, that's, no, I just need to be able to turn it back, back on computer on and get the

Jason Howell (00:03:22):
Work as a production machine and not just like producing words on a screen in a, you know, in a doc or whatever you need. You need more than incredible.

Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
And I think the Mac is a good choice.

Jason Howell (00:03:31):
I do too. Yeah. Yeah. I think you'll like it.

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
Sorry, Jeff <laugh>, although you can

Jason Howell (00:03:38):
Play. I'm sorry for Ant. I feel bad for Ant having to go into it from one empire into the

Leo Laporte (00:03:42):
Other. You can play Son of the Forest on it though, which is pretty cool. All sure. Normally Stacy would be here. Stacy's a little under the weather, but that's good news for us. Cuz we've got Jason Howell from Hello Hall about Hen

Jason Howell (00:03:56):
All About Android

Leo Laporte (00:03:58):
You got Carl Pei coming on the show.

Jason Howell (00:04:00):
Yeah, we yes. Big announcement <laugh>. Oh, I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:04:06):
Was it a secret?

Jason Howell (00:04:07):
I don't know if it was a secret, but Yes, we do have Carl Pei coming on the show in a couple of weeks. So

Leo Laporte (00:04:11):
From of the Nothing Company

Jason Howell (00:04:12):
Yeah. CEO of Nothing. That's

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
A big deal. He was Big Deal. He was at OnePlus for a long time.

Jason Howell (00:04:18):
Yeah, he was, he was kind of the one plus guy for the longest time. And

Leo Laporte (00:04:22):
Then the parent company kind of sucked it back in Oppo.

Jason Howell (00:04:25):
That's right. And a lot of people have not been very happy about that, the reverberations of that.

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Yeah. And so I think Pei said, oh, there's an opportunity here with Android, and he created The Nothing Company. Yeah. And they had the Nothing Phone. Which did they sell that in the US yet?

Jason Howell (00:04:40):
Nothing Phone(1) Now you can get it in the US Of course, you're not gonna get it in like carrier stores and everything, but they are selling it. You know, online you can get it. They've announced though that the Nothing Phone(2) officially comes to the US Like you can get the Nothing Phone(1), but I don't know, you know, you're probably gonna have to jump through some hoops. Nothing(2), they're bringing directly to the US and I think they even had announcement at Mobile World Congress that they're gonna have the, the latest Snapdragon powered in there. Nice. So it's gonna be a higher powered.

Leo Laporte (00:05:08):
Well, they still have the LEDs on the back.

Jason Howell (00:05:10):
I mean, why wouldn't they? That's that's their trademark should be the big trademark Yeah. Of this device. Whether it's a good trademark, I don't know, but it's different. I'm glad

Ant Pruitt (00:05:20):
You said that part.

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
It's just a thing. It doesn't, it doesn't do anything. Right.

Jason Howell (00:05:24):
I mean, it's, well, you know style of course, but also notification there, there's some integration into the system with, you know, notifications, alerts charging status. That's right. It'll show you how much your battery is charged based on the, but

Leo Laporte (00:05:38):
It means you can't put a case on it.

Jason Howell (00:05:40):
I suppose not because you

Leo Laporte (00:05:41):
Wouldn't see

Jason Howell (00:05:42):
The glyph. Does it drain the battery, Jason? Well, I mean, I have not used device

Ant Pruitt (00:05:50):
Its LED, so it shouldn't be too much. Right.

Jason Howell (00:05:51):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, does it drain the battery more than if the LEDs were there? Yeah. But don't know how much, how much it's really, you

Leo Laporte (00:05:59):
Know, impacted. And I'm gonna guess it's not even though it looks like it's lines of LEDs, it's probably just one LED with a kind of light conductive tape. Yeah. Good. So it's not good, you know, maybe three LEDs, but the phones used to have those notification lights. In fact, I missed those. Yeah. To be honest,

Jason Howell (00:06:16):
Little alert light. I did enjoy that display.

Leo Laporte (00:06:18):
Yeah. Bring them back. So this is, I understand. Anyway. Yeah, it will be, it's a big get and it'll be exciting to see what Carl has to say.

Jason Howell (00:06:25):
Yeah, definitely. Looking

Leo Laporte (00:06:27):
Coming soon to All About Android. That's right. Say when you know what's coming soon to the United States. I think a TikTok ban a real live, ugh, honest to goodness TikTok ban. The story of course a couple of days ago was that the federal agencies are now have 30 days to get TikTok off devices. Now these are devices that are owned by the federal agencies and then used by employees. I think employees could still have it on their personal device. I would think Chris Wray, who has been kind of virulently nasty about China, and, and especially, you know, he's, he's one of the people who's saying COVID was released from the Wuhan Labs despite the fact that, you know, there's disagreement among the intelligence agencies. He's, he's acting like, oh no, it's a Chinese. And now I think he really he's been going hard against TikTok and now he might be getting his way because the house committee approved PA has passed the bill along. The Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday along party lines to give Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok in the US.

Jason Howell (00:07:41):
But when you say that it's like in the us.dot on government devices. No. Right. No. No ban. No. This is like bann like, period for everybody, for everyone. That's no more TikTok Corner for us. No kidding.

Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
The build does not precisely specify this according to Reuters, how the band will work. Wow. Gives Biden power to ban any transactions with TikTok, which in turn could prevent anyone in the US from accessing or downloading the app on their phones. It would effectively Wow. Ban it because Right, right. They would force the Android Play store and the Apples store to get it, take it off the store, just as they did with Huawei. By the way, they've kind of basically put Huawei at of business in the US by saying no company could do business with Huawei. They could do this similar thing to TikTok. You, you would still have it on your phone if you had it on your phone,

Jason Howell (00:08:29):
You could probably still side load it. Right. Like that's, that's one way possibly that these, these things, you could use it on the web. You could use it on the web. Yeah. Right. They're not, they're blocking website access, I

Leo Laporte (00:08:40):
Wouldn't think. And TikTok wouldn't have any way to be the First Amendment case here. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure. Well, I don't know. We've banned, we've banned Huawei yeah. Cfis this

Jason Howell (00:08:51):
Is the user's own platform for speech.

Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
Well, it seems to me, and I, and I have to say, Mike Masick Tech Dirt used the phrase, you'll be happy to know. Moral panic.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:01):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And,

Leo Laporte (00:09:02):
And thank you

Jason Howell (00:09:03):
You Karl Bode Actually, don't this article

Leo Laporte (00:09:05):
Karl Bode

Jason Howell (00:09:06):
Machine. Yeah. It's in there.

Leo Laporte (00:09:08):
<Laugh>. Our growing TikTok moral panic still isn't addressing the actual problem. The problem really being you know, and honestly, I understand why a company or government agency would say ban TikTok just like, for instance, the military ban, Strava, the running app, because it turned out a lot of military were using it to map their runs. And you can't

Jason Howell (00:09:34):
Inadvertently

Leo Laporte (00:09:35):
Giving a map of the inside of the Pentagon to you understand why the government, they banner for government users or for everybody, they, for government. Oh, government users. There's, and, you know, I understand that, and I think that's, you know, certainly within their purview, and I guess you could make a case, but honestly, do they ban Facebook? Well, and

Jason Howell (00:09:53):
I think that's a, that's a a point that Karl really makes in this article. That is absolutely true. Which is, okay, so we can look at TikTok and we can say, Hey, you're doing all this stuff. You're collecting all this data. You know, we don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes to that data. Is that transferring over to the Chinese government, blah, blah, blah. A lot of people assume or think, you know, that they have the details that point to that actually happening. But then we've got all of these other apps that are on our phones, Facebook Instagram, they're all tracking our location. They're all doing stuff with our data. Why is it different over here versus over here? I mean, you, it, it really doesn't seem to solve the problem. If, if you have a problem with this kind of information, you know, data brokers and everything having access to that information, then do something about that. Why is it so lucrative to trading people's data? And maybe that's the problem.

Ant Pruitt (00:10:41):
You said, you said another key phrase in there as far as TikTok. You said that we don't know what they're doing with that information once it goes back to China. Heck, we don't know what they're doing with the information on those three platforms you just mentioned that are here in the Yeah. In the us. So, so why aren't we, which is Carl down those folks other than just Carl writes a couple months.

Leo Laporte (00:11:01):
Carl writes right down. That's what Carl says. Carl writes, yes, TikTok plays fast and loose with consumer data. So does nearly every other foreign and domestic app and service on your phone from apps that track and monetize your every waking movement in granular detail to apps and services that casually traffic in your mental health specifics. Huh. And that's before you get to the telecom industry, which is pioneered irresponsible collection and monetization of user info. All this data fed into a massive and intentionally confusing data broker market. Remember those two words, data broker that regulators have been generally disinterested and seriously policing last US companies, CASP lose money. Oh no. We don't wanna pass a modern in their, their privacy law. Be tough on data brokers, app makers, OEMs or telecoms, cuz rampant surveillance and data monetization is simply too lucrative. So in a way, this is hand waving. It's saying pay no attention to what's going on in the us It's China. Right? China political, yeah. Political points.

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:02):
We had another distraction and, and, and data brokers. Axiom has been around long before the internet. You know, I've talked about this before. Where, where I've freaked out students by showing how I can get the names and addresses of women two miles from me who have these characteristics, which you can't do otherwise. You, you Google doesn't know all that. But, but Axio does. And it's supported and used by magazine companies and media companies

Leo Laporte (00:12:26):
All over. Well, and as Carl points out industry, it's e trivially e trivially easy for the Chinese or Rain or any other government intelligence agency to buy, to buy this data from the data broker too. That's a really great point. They don't need TikTok, <laugh>. It's all available if they want it. The other claim problem he says is, the Chinese government will use TikTok to fill US kids' heads with gibberish and propaganda. But not only, I love Carl, he's been on the show. We gotta get him on again. Not only is there no evidence that's actually happening at scale, it's a rich concern coming from a country so inundated in authoritarian propaganda across AM AM Radio, Fox, Sinclair, the internet, the residents increasingly engage in widespread domestic terrorism. Yeah. It it's coming from within the house. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it's really I think far too easy. And I think Chris Ray is, is an example of this to just, you know, deflect, blame us and blaming China. There's also the FCC commissioner who's been calling for TikTok ban. Oh. He's, who notoriously lacks on regulating telecom because he takes money from the telecom industry. So I I think this is lip service only to privacy. It's, it's politically expedient because mm-hmm. <Affirmative> blame China seems to be the popular thing right now. Yeah. Right. Even when we say this, people say, well, why are you giving Aiden support to the enemy? 

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:47):
Well, like El Well, I'm giving Aiden's support to Elon by being there

Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
<Laugh>, not me. I withdrew my Aiden support to Elon A C L U on Twitter, though. Did did tweet This bill is a serious violation of our First Amendment rights. Congress must vote no on this vague, over broad and unconstitutional Yeah. Legislation somebody in the chat room has pointed out, and I think it's, it's true that yes, there's First Amendment rights, but as soon as it comes down to national security, the court, well, look at the, what just happened in the Supreme Court. They decided to not review the wiki media's lawsuits against NSA's collection of data. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> blanket collection of data saying national security. It would, in Thea's defense wasn't, we're not doing it. We're not, we're only, we're not only targeting international people, and that they didn't say any of that. They just said, Hey, national Security, if we were to stop that national security, think of the children. So that think that's the problem, is that, yeah, the A C L U could fight this. They could take it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court would say no national security.

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:58):
And without any evidence, without any known evidence, without any actual discussion of what's happening. What is the problem with all of this is we don't talk about actual harm. We talk about fears, we talk about could be right. But the evidence of harm is not

Leo Laporte (00:15:12):
Here. All right. I am gonna be, because somebody has to argue this <laugh>. And I think there are people, it's a legitimate point of view. There are a lot of people in our audience who say, no, wait a minute. A, it's just a social media app. What's the harm in banning it? B it's pretty clear the Chinese government has access to anything TikTok has access to C we already know TikTok employees were using location information from TikTok to find out what journalists were meeting. They were trying to track down a leak. So they, so they looked at where journalists, American journalists were on their TikTok app to see if they were meeting with any TikTok employees. So we already know they've breached that boundary. So why shouldn't we ban TikTok? I mean, this is, this is pretty clearly a hazardous app. Yeah. There are other pro that, I don't even say this, that doesn't, there are other problems. Yeah. Yeah. We should, someday, let's take a look at Facebook and telecoms too. But right now we got this proximate problem with the, with, with TikTok. What's wrong with Bann? That

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:10):
Doesn't answer the national security.

Ant Pruitt (00:16:11):
Now we have national problem with Facebook and Instagram and everyone elseand tracking we'll to that, our own people, our own citizens in, in trying to target stuff for us for their own profitable gain. So that's a, right now,

Leo Laporte (00:16:24):
Yeah. Well, okay. So fine, we'll get to that. But, but right now we're, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. This doesn't mean you get in line. It's not a defense to say, well, everybody does it care

Ant Pruitt (00:16:36):
A defense's our own backyard. That's the stuff that I've always been bugged about with our government, is we do so many things that are in, in, I'm, I'm gonna piss some people off. We put our nose in a lot of different business elsewhere, but we really do a really crap test job of taking care of our own backyard and the issues right here.

Leo Laporte (00:16:57):
Yeah. But why should we let a foreign government have access to all of that

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:02):
Information? Well, but, but to your, to your Mr. Devil's advocate your argument about the employees going after a couple of reporters as a reporter, I shouldn't like that, but A, they got fired and B, that doesn't, they

Leo Laporte (00:17:14):
Got fired when they got caught call, they got fired when they got, they got called <laugh>. Yeah. And what it demonstrated, you're right, it doesn't affect national security, but it demonstrated they have the ability and the will someone had the, the ability to

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:23):
Do that. Somebody did.

Leo Laporte (00:17:24):
Yeah. Within TikTok. Now, let's say president, she or his proxy goes to Mr. Tiktok and says, Hey like, like, like that same information. Please. Yeah. I

Ant Pruitt (00:17:34):
Noticed you did that.

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
Well, here's the other course. You can't say no to

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:38):
Him. The side of this coin, Leo Mr. Devil's advocate, is that we're setting a precedent here, devil to be used by every

Leo Laporte (00:17:45):
Appreciate devil. You saying that over and over, so that nobody thinks I actually espouse this point of view. I know. Exactly. So, but I, you know what? I do have to, I should probably recuse myself because my son makes a living on TikTok. This is, he's an example's, an impact, and this is what some people say is, yeah. But think of all the creators who use TikTok. Yeah. Legitimately, he's hurt somebody like my boy who has made a very good living. He's now got a cookbook. He's talking about TV show. He was, he was in Miami making Cubana sandwiches with Guy Fieri all because of TikTok. Yep. Yeah. But don't worry. Youtube shorts just crossed 50 billion daily views. Please. So he could just go over, he's on YouTube, he's on Insta. It's TikTok That really drove his success. Yeah. 2.1 million followers. And, but the other thing too, he, he actually, you know, he was very smart. He, he, he, you know, I, we had this conversation. We went to lunch, it was like a year and a half ago. And he said, dad, I got about 30,000 followers on TikTok doing these cooking things. What do you think? I said, I think you should go all in and, and push it. And he studied the algorithm. He figured out what people wanted. He looked at comments. He really got involved carefully tailored something to TikTok. And it was a huge success. He was able to do that and did it really

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:57):
Well. Well, and he's created a career

Leo Laporte (00:18:58):
Around it. And he's, and it's, it's given him a living. Yeah. So then, so now, oh, I'm sorry. Wait. I took off my devil's advocate hat. Where'd I put it? So, but I actually asked him, I said, what are you, are you worried about TikTok being banned? He said, no, I'm, I, I got, I've got the Instagram now that I make more money than get more engagement on Instagram. So he was, which does not mean that t that he didn't, he used TikTok to get to the next level.

Ant Pruitt (00:19:23):
That's,

Leo Laporte (00:19:23):
That was his entrepreneur.

Ant Pruitt (00:19:24):
That's, that's the whole part of being a content creator though, sir. It is being able to not necessarily depend on one particular product. You sort of market yourself everywhere, because stuff goes away. Especially when there's companies like Google involved, and all of a sudden it kills something off. You still wanna be able to have something.

Leo Laporte (00:19:42):
My point. Exactly. That's why we should ban TikTok, because there's other avenues. It's not like we're gonna lose anything <laugh> why should we let her go all? Why should we let the Chinese spy on our people? It's not like it's the only way that they, that people can create and, and put stuff out. Let, let's ban the

Ant Pruitt (00:20:02):
Problem. Why Montesorri Montessori or whatever his name is, Adam Masori Instagram. Why should we allow him to dig into the analytics of us? And, and

Leo Laporte (00:20:11):
I'll get to that. Assume that we we're gonna legislate that later. We're

Ant Pruitt (00:20:15):
Gonna get to that. We're on Instagram and the

Leo Laporte (00:20:16):
Committee's looking

Ant Pruitt (00:20:17):
At it platform, you know, but we, we feel that you all really want to see more videos, and we notice that you all are not watching these private, so we're gonna dial it back just a little bit. So I

Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
Do watching him, A Chinese company should have the same rights and privileges as a US company. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:33):
Here's the issue, Mr. Senator Devil, is that other countries have said the same thing about us. So by

Leo Laporte (00:20:42):
The way, they're rights. Yeah. Germany,

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:44):
You, Canada, Brazil have all tried to pass laws saying that America does horrible things with data. That number one, at least data should be stored locally, though, of course, that's so the government can get hold of it in that country. Or number two, that we shouldn't trust America at all, and we should ban American apps.

Leo Laporte (00:21:00):
That's fine. If we're

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:01):
Setting a precedent here, let them China,

Leo Laporte (00:21:03):
Let them try this us because we make the darn best apps in the whole wide world. And if, and let them try it. Just like France try and Spain tried to ban Google. Let them try it because they'll come crawling back to us because we make the best damn apps in the world.

Ant Pruitt (00:21:18):
Boy, you really do a great demo's advocate. Yes. I'm fired up right now.

Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
<Laugh>. See? Yeah. No, I see. It's a good argument. Great

Ant Pruitt (00:21:30):
Devil's advocate. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:31):
Well, I'm running for Congress, and I'd like to have your vote, Mr. Pruitt. <laugh>. You know, black people love me too. They love me. Right? I just want you to know. Right, right. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:42):
Was the Trump said the black

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
People. I should say the blacks. The blacks, the, the blacks. There you go. Yeah. They love me. So just warning you, you know. Oh my gosh. Actually, Biden didn't, didn't Biden said it. He said, if you don't vote me, me, you're not black. There's another, that's another good one that

Ant Pruitt (00:21:58):
Yeah. Good one. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:21:59):
<Affirmative>. Geez. You ain't black. What are you talking about? Yes, I am. Well, I'm not. But anyway <laugh> very good. Okay. I think I, I think IED all, I think you stu Yeah. I think you stumped.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:11):
You did your best. You did your best. But didn't win the day.

Leo Laporte (00:22:15):
I did win the day. You're all shut up. No,

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:17):
You didn't. Well, so

Leo Laporte (00:22:18):
What happens then in this world where the devil wins? Yeah. And TikTok is banned in the US now we go after Facebook next. Is that what happens? Because told Antwe would, or, or China is still as much as they did. No, I, no, I think it's a, a mistake to say that a Chinese company should have the same rights as an American company. If you're an American company, that's different.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:42):
Protectionism, man. Protectionism all the

Leo Laporte (00:22:44):
Way. Well, no, but also those are, those are bad guys. We're the good guys.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:49):
Hmm. No Chinese rice. Only rice from Sacramento. No,

Leo Laporte (00:22:53):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:22:54):
So when, so an I, so an immigrant comes in and breaks into my home and decides to steal some of my stuff, that's a problem. But if my neighbor that's been here for all of their life decides to come in and and steal my stuff, that's okay, because he's been there all this life. Is that what you're saying?

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
Well, now, if you really want to get down to law and order, that's another conversation. <Laugh> <laugh>. Hey, he's an American, so it is Okay. No, no, but different. But we're not talking about individuals stealing stuff from you. We're talking about companies doing their job. Companies owe a bunch of, but I don't trust Look at, don't you know that any Chinese company has to do the bidding of the Chinese government? That's the way it's constructed. Right? The CCP gets,

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:43):
And the American company does the bidding of people like Elon Musk.

Leo Laporte (00:23:46):
Well, that's different. He's a private citizen. It's not like they, I mean it's pretty obvious that the federal government told Twitter what to do. But we've investigated that. Thank you very much. I just, I think you could say on the face of it that, that you're asking for a ch the rights of a Chinese company to invade our privacy to you know, propagandize our youth. You saying that they have the right to do that. I say they don't.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:19):
Are are you done with your, can you take your hat off now?

Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:22):
I think the hat's permanently stuck on at this point. I'm a

Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
Little, I'm start to like this. I think I might run for Congress. I got the

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:28):
Tie. Yeah. You're, you're incredibly UA badge on. Also have the coffee stains on the shirt. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:24:37):
I didn't go to Harvard for 18 years to be treated like this. Do you know, I'm a professional ice skater, don't you? All right, moving on.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:48):
<Laugh>. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:24:49):
It's, it is funny though, that when you dress like this, it does kind of make you more of a Republican. I just, I'm

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:57):
Not kidding. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
Not kidding. I just feel more, I feel like I'm right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:04):
<Laugh>. Oh, gosh. Ah, dress for success. That's what they said.

Leo Laporte (00:25:07):
So, do you think So I don't know if this is related or not, but, but they were asking last week the International Trade Commission banned Apple Watches, and they're potentially gonna ban the import of Apple watches because they believe Apple infringed on a patent with a company called Live Corp for the E kg. This thing that you, you use the Alive Corp Cardia, Jeff, right? Right. Mm-hmm.

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:37):
<Affirmative>, right Card ban. Where, who who, who, where, what C Is it? International US

Leo Laporte (00:25:42):
Country? What? Us,

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:44):
Us, us ban,

Leo Laporte (00:25:46):
They Wow. They would ban the import of Apple watches because they say they violated a live course. Patents. Now, it's interesting. It's more complicated than that because the US patent and d trademark office invalidated live course patents, minutes before <laugh>. The I D C said, we're gonna ban it. But that's another thing. That's another thing. So, so the Apple went to President Biden said, would you please veto that ban? We don't, we, you know, this. And he refused to. So I dunno if that's re related or a piece of evidence, but he refused to. Do you think Biden, who now has the encouragement of of the US Congress to ban TikTok that he now has the power to do that? Do you think he will do that?

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:28):
Biden Biden's a a Luddite at his core. I like, I like Joe Joe's, my man, but Biden, on section two 30 on TikTok on this kind of stuff. He, he's got people in his administration who are reflexively moral panicky.

Leo Laporte (00:26:42):
Yeah. Remember Biden's administration sent a brief to the Supreme Court against Section two 30. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He said anybody was campaigning, he thought 30 should be overturned, which is protect the, the 26 words that created the internet. So yeah, it's unknown, but I, yeah, I'm worried about Biden attack. I think he could actually do it. I think he'd actually ban TikTok. What would that, but really, what would be the real consequence of that, besides the fact that we'd have to stop our TikTok segment? Oh, shucks.

Jason Howell (00:27:15):
Hey, hey, hey. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm authentically like curious to know, like, obviously if you can't get a TikTok app in the US anymore, like if it's truly in, completely cut off, like people are gonna have to stop using it. But I mean, man, it is so popular when I think of, of kind of like teenagers, like the, the youths of today and TikTok is ingrained into the fabric of being a teenager right now. It's, it's part of the technological experience if you're a kid. True of your kids, Jason? No. My kids do not have access to too young talk. Yeah, yeah. Too, too young at this point. But he's a good parent at the table, <laugh>. Trying, trying, failing sometimes, but trying. I mean, the, the but the drive is there. The desire is there. And actually, yeah. Even if TikTok is banned <laugh>, although TikTok content ends up on YouTube anyways, <laugh> Right. Show Instagram. You know, it's not like, it's not like the content goes.

Leo Laporte (00:28:13):
So process the same. So there is, we do know we have some experimental data. K I V and Alabama banned TikTok on government devices, which also banned it in state run university. So, okay. University of Alabama. Oh, that's right. Ain't no TikTok Texas as well. The

Jason Howell (00:28:31):
Researchers I know are now having problems with this at the University of Texas. So that means TikTok on the local network at the school is, is completely inaccessible. Yeah. They block it still, obviously getting it through their cellular.

Leo Laporte (00:28:43):
Well, and of course, and, and I think that's one data point, which is didn't really phase the students

Jason Howell (00:28:49):
Well, because they already have it on their phone anyways, through the data connection.

Leo Laporte (00:28:52):
They just, they just use the phones data.

Jason Howell (00:28:54):
Right. But if they can't get it there, I don't

Leo Laporte (00:28:56):
Know. Auburn Band, TikTok, and students can't stop talking about, it says the New York Times, this is last month, is

Jason Howell (00:29:03):
Auburn State School? Or how does a private school,

Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
Well, I don't know. Anne Auburn's.

Jason Howell (00:29:09):
A Auburn State. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:10):
Oh,

Jason Howell (00:29:10):
Alabama.

Leo Laporte (00:29:12):
Oh, okay. I didn't even know that. Right. So a senior at Auburn so surprised last month about a new ban on TikTok. She read the news alert about it aloud to her friends. We were like, oh, that's weird. Why would she do that? And laughed it off and moved on. She is the editor in chief of the campus newspaper, which has its own TikTok account. <Laugh> <laugh>. I think they're gonna stop posting on TikTok, but I don't think the, the students are gonna stop using TikTok. Right. 19 governors who've, who've banned TikTok,

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:42):
But, well, and, and, and what, what, what do they have in common?

Leo Laporte (00:29:45):
They're all Republicans. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:46):
Conservatives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're banning abortion too. So, which we get more

Leo Laporte (00:29:50):
Head up on. Well, and, and I should point out that the, the Congressional committee that banned was pretty much party line vote. Mm. there, there

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:58):
Wasn't a hundred percent party line, right?

Leo Laporte (00:30:00):
Wasn't, no. There was one, or one or two. Democrats voted in favor as well. I think. Let's see, lemme look at this. This is the the house Foreign Affairs Committee. 24 to 16.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:13):
Yeah. So that's not pure party

Leo Laporte (00:30:15):
Line. Yeah. Democrats opposed the bill saying it was rushed and required due diligence through debate and consultation with experts. They don't have the actual vote count here, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:28):
Was,

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
They said along party lines. So I, as I remember, I read another source said, I think one Democrat voted to ban as well. But I, is it, it's not really partisan. It's not a partisan issue, is it?

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:43):
What is it partisan today?

Jason Howell (00:30:44):
Yeah. Fair. Good point.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:47):
Well, this is the anti-China. You gotta be tougher on China Wing shtick.

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Right.

Jason Howell (00:30:53):
I've kind of, I've kind of felt like the, the big tech, you know, anti-tech movement kind of crossed party locks, to be honest. No, I agree with Oh, it has. Yeah. It seems like it's kind of in vogue right now to be very anti-technology. And this kind of falls falls

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:09):
Firmly

Leo Laporte (00:31:10):
Into that. Is it our duty to defend tech as a tech

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:13):
Network, defend the freedoms that the, that the internet gives us? It's not the tech. Yeah. It's, it's, we're defending the internet and the freedoms we get. That's my next book. Because the internet isn't tech, it isn't wires, it isn't tubes. It isn't these companies. It is the ability of people who never could be heard in mass media to now it's

Jason Howell (00:31:36):
Voices. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:36):
It's speechs. It's the voices, it's the communities. The, the, the, the black Twitter event that we held at the school two weeks ago. You know, you look and, and, and the, the peril that it's in, in Musk's hands now, but you look at what we lose there, the power of the movements that came there. And those movements are precisely what scare the old white guys who look like me.

Leo Laporte (00:32:02):
I think it's also our duty, those tech journalists to weigh the evidence and to be honest about when tech isn't necessarily right or good. Mm-Hmm.

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:16):
<Affirmative>. Oh, yes. Right. Oh, for sure. That's what I, oh, I agree with

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
That. I don't agree. I don't wanna unilaterally defend big tech and just say, oh, no,

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:22):
No, no. I totally agree. In fact, we need to criticize them. Absolutely. But we also have to separate out those things which are tech's fault, or the Internet's fault, versus those things that are innate in our society. Tech and the internet didn't make us racist, didn't make us misogyny. We came in, say it again, sir. Say it. Tech did not make us racist. We already were. And so when we blame the internet for saying, oh, it increased racism in America,

Jason Howell (00:32:46):
Uhuh. Nah, it was always, it brought

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:47):
Out the opposite. It brought, well, it brought out voices who were not heard in a white hegemony. And the white hegemony wants to burn the place down. Now as a result, that's what's really happening.

Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
Mm-Hmm.

Jason Howell (00:33:01):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:02):
Test. It is certainly something we, we on all of our shows we are always struggling with is to find the truth, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think we try to be honest and not partisan. I know people, a lot of people think we're partisan cuz you're such a lefty. Jeff Jarvis, Jeff, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:19):
<Laugh>, well, well, Senator Devil

Leo Laporte (00:33:21):
<Laugh>. But I think really, we know that it's our, our mandate to dig and, and, and because we know tech to dig as criticize as we can, it'd be critical of it, but also to defend it as needed. And, and, but to really look for the truth of it, and the truth isn't always obvious. But, you know, tech is a double-edged sword. Like, like many things, it can be used for good or ill mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Jason Howell (00:33:48):
And it used to, tech used to be a cool thing that I, that, that people were into. And now it's an integral integrated part of the fabric of life.

Leo Laporte (00:33:58):
It's society. Yeah. It's, it's everything.

Jason Howell (00:34:00):
Yeah. So it's imp So it's important, I guess is my point for us to look at both sides, right? Of that coin. I want tech to be better. I want <laugh> because I love technology. Right. I love it when it works.

Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
Right.

Jason Howell (00:34:14):
And if it's not working, that's why sometimes with the TikTok story, it's hard for me because it really goes back for me to, okay, I get the argument that you're making against TikTok, but show me the proof. Show me that this horrible stuff is actually happening before we vilify and, and remove.

Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
Well, okay, Senator Devil

Jason Howell (00:34:34):
Here. Oh God, he's back.

Leo Laporte (00:34:36):
<Laugh>. I do not, no. If, if we would know

Jason Howell (00:34:42):
<Laugh> Yeah. How would we know? I, we would,

Leo Laporte (00:34:44):
Know's a good, well if China was using TikTok, how we against

Jason Howell (00:34:47):
All people? It's behind the scenes.

Leo Laporte (00:34:48):
We can't tell. We can't tell. And and by the time, you know, it may be too late. Yeah. So why not cut it short? Why not just say, look,

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:58):
You've been watching the

Jason Howell (00:34:58):
Murdoch. Where do you draw that line?

Leo Laporte (00:35:00):
We don't need TikTok.

Jason Howell (00:35:02):
Because you could say that about a million different things and you could draw a line anywhere you want and

Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
Kill it.

Jason Howell (00:35:07):
Can't fill out a bunch of different things that

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
Have, it's a pretty easy thing to do if it's something from an enemy nation. Yeah. We don't allow Russian social media in the United States. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:21):
Oh, we can all I can use that today. Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:35:24):
I can. What's, what do you, what is Russian social media? <Laugh>? It's

Leo Laporte (00:35:29):
<Laugh>. There used to be Pav Valora created the Russian Facebook. They, in fact, that's why he left Russia because, and, and found a telegram, because Telegraph Telegram, because he was it was taken from him. Right. So what was, is that still around

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:46):
Vta? Vta. Vta. That's gotta Beed vk.

Leo Laporte (00:35:49):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:35:50):
V can you

Leo Laporte (00:35:51):
Use it now?

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:52):
Yeah, sure.

Leo Laporte (00:35:53):
Well, that should be

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:54):
Better, says

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Teller Telegram. How about, you know, in fact,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:58):
I can, I can, I think I can get it on. Let's see if I can get it on my phone.

Jason Howell (00:36:02):
656 million users as of May 21st. Oh, 2021. You talking about

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
Telegram? No, Phil contact.

Jason Howell (00:36:08):
Yeah. Oh, he contact,

Leo Laporte (00:36:10):
Which was his Dre's original creation was taken from him. And then he went off and

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:17):
Yeah, I can install, I can install it from my my

Leo Laporte (00:36:20):
<Laugh>. By the way, notice they call it the largest European social network. <Laugh> Russia has always wanted to be European, haven't they? Well, all right. I got a better example. Wechat.

Jason Howell (00:36:33):
Wechat.

Leo Laporte (00:36:33):
And we know, we know WeChat is used by Chinese military and Chinese government officials to contact overseas Chinese to say, Hey, we know you have family in China. You, you, you might want to consider what you're saying. We know they use it that way. We chat as a, and we use it,

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:54):
We use these services in Iran to try to undercut an evil government. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
So why don't we ban WeChat? It's available on the App store,

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:05):
And what's it gonna accomplish if we do? That's the, that's the funny thing.

Jason Howell (00:37:08):
Same thing that it would accomplish if they got rid of TikTok. I mean, and that kind of, that's kind of part of my point that I was making earlier, is if TikTok goes, I think that line gets drawn further and further potentially, you know, the WeChat or whatever. And, and I, I guess the reality is, I don't know whether it's, whether it, it is a good idea to do it or not. Like maybe, you know, maybe there are reasons and everything, but it just seems like that line is nebulous and continues to stretch out. If, if you go there.

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:37):
I, I got another question, Jason. Out of that is, you were talking starting before, before, but the, but the companies that now are proprietors of the net, I'm curious if, if we go 10 years forward, do you think that Facebook will still be around? Do you think Google will still be dominant? Do you think Amazon will still be dominant? Do you think that some of these companies are, are really long-term, or are they like friend feeded and MySpace that they are evanescent? Ooh. What do you guys think?

Jason Howell (00:38:09):
I mean, I, I think I place a Facebook and a Google and an Amazon in the same category as a Microsoft and a Microsoft has been around a very, very long time and has changed and transformed

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:21):
Over the years, but less powerful than

Jason Howell (00:38:23):
It. Less powerful than it was, but still around and still actually pretty powerful. Like, Microsoft's not a, you know not a, a small company. They may, maybe they're not as powerful and influential as they once were, but they've certainly turned things around. And I think, I think Google's kind of in that, that part right now. Mm-Hmm. I don't think Google's going anywhere. I think 10 years absolutely. Google will be around. But do I think that Facebook TikTok is going to be the next Google in 10 years? I, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:38:52):
So the reason they're

Ant Pruitt (00:38:54):
Being, I don't put them in the same class. I put Amazon and Microsoft in the same class. I don't necessarily put Google and Facebook in the same classes. Microsoft, that's, I think Amazon has their long Why that the long tail, you know, they've, they've started out just selling books and it continued to grow with this very, very long vision to get to where they are now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, you know, before Bezos was out, I'm pretty sure the vision was, was put into Chassis's that the current c e o Yeah. Put into his head and, and the leadership to figure out, hey, we can still continue to grow and continue to just do all the things the right way from a data analytics standpoint. And just, just quietly keep growing and quietly just keep gobbling things up all while continuing to have like some small businesses be on the platform and they can benefit too, and just keep taking over the world one bit at a time.

Leo Laporte (00:39:48):
But what's your point, Jeff? What, what is it? I don't, I don't understand

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:51):
That, that we, we, we demonize the present proprietors. We say these companies are ruining the world. No, no, no. We gotta get rid of, we gotta do something. Right? Microsoft, we, the browsers, they're, they're screwing everything up in the eu and so on and so forth. And I think that we end up fighting yesterday's war all the time. And there's somebody new out there coming

Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
Maybe. But remember in the teens, and I'm talking about the 19 teens <laugh> antitrust law was created because of the Robert Barons, because of the extreme power of standard oil and the railroads. And they had such dominant market positions. There was, nobody could compete with them. Nobody checked them. So the government decided that it had to, and that's when that's when Antitrust Law, Sherman antitrust LA act and so forth were enacted is in an appropriate that it that as big, let's say Google and Amazon I think you probably have to include, maybe include Microsoft, well, you could pick who it is, but as these four or five tech giants become bigger, more dominant, more powerful, isn't it appropriate just as it was in the 1910s to, to cut down the robber burns? Isn't it time to, to cut down them dec size so that we can, so that we can have something new? You're, well, I guess you're saying they're gonna, they're gonna die on their own, is that

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:06):
They're gonna, you're they're gonna, yeah. Microsoft faded in, its in its overarching power on its own.

Leo Laporte (00:41:11):
But nobody argued that standard oil was gonna die on its own. I mean, we broke it up.

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:17):
Well, bell, bell telephone too.

Leo Laporte (00:41:19):
Same thing. Yeah. In the

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:20):
Sixties. But I, I think, I think that, that these things are, are the, the arc is quicker for them. I agree with you, aunt, that I think that Amazon and I, I wouldn't say Google are Jason, what you're saying, that they're Microsofts they'll, they'll go up and down. They'll be around. They won't be as powerful. They won't be as scary. I think Facebook could disappear. I, I, that's who I think would disappear. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:41:40):
Facebook is on the, that's an easy, easy prediction since they're on the imminent cusp of disappearing. Right. Even as we speak.

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:47):
Yeah. They're, they're out of the discussion. I mean, I, when I go there occasionally, which I do, I thought I really is off, like often as I used to. I still find with someone with that friend. I miss that friend. I miss that friend. Yeah. I still actually have engaged in it. But it's less than the public conversation. It's less than the fear conversation. The meta stuff I think is kind of, metaverse is kind of a joke. So it's going away. Twitter is gonna go bankrupt one way or the other. And so I think we, we demonize these corporations, and this is part of Carl's point, I think, and his piece about TikTok. Without looking at the principle level, we're not, we're not defending the privacy of American citizens. Instead we're going after TikTok. Do you

Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
Think it's even possible that that's why these members of Congress are doing this? Because it distracts from the real privacy issues? Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:36):
Yes, yes. Mm-Hmm. I think so. And I,

Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
It's easy to blame China for our woes. Oh yeah. And and not address the issues, the real issue head on. Especially when, you know, unfortunately money is so important in in our government. And, and they need the, they need the, the contributions of these, of telecom companies. And

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:59):
It goes back to what Jason was saying earlier, the, the convergence of left and right attacks on the net. It's, it's, it's a, it's a pinster movement. And, and you know, in two 30, the sword and the shield, the Democrats go after the, the shield because they think that the, the platform should be better at taking down hate speech. The Republicans go after the sword, cuz it's their hate speeches being taken down. They find themselves in this, you know, strange bedfellows conspiracy now against the tech companies. Cause the tech companies are easy targets. They are folk devils for everything wrong with us. And so you're not just distracting from the tech companies and money and privacy and that you're distracting again from these higher societal ills we have that we're not facing, you know, when, when ChatGPT spits back stupidity, it's arm stupidity, it's spitting back. And we're not dealing with that. Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
Tiktok has been, you know, they've seen this coming and they've been, they've spent more than a billion and a half dollars so far trying to respond to this. Moving their data centers to the US to Oracle <laugh>. This is another one that cracks me up. That, that, that, you know, we trust Oracle more than we trust TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. No you know, they, they, they, they understand that this is an existential threat to them. They have a business in China, but if the US cuts off TikTok, it's probably, you know, not good for TikTok in the long run.

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:25):
What would the citizenry say,

Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
American or Chinese

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:31):
American voters, what would voters

Leo Laporte (00:44:34):
Say? Yeah. And I think that's probably the calculus that's gonna be, you know, Congress still has to vote on this. I imagine in fact, if you care about this, you probably should write your Congress critter. I imagine they're, you know, putting their finger to the wind right now saying, well, what's gonna happen if young people would vote a little more? They might <laugh> this might not be a risk, you

Jason Howell (00:44:53):
Know, <laugh>, but this might be the, the, the type of of thing that gets young people to vote. Exactly. And

Leo Laporte (00:44:58):
I'm sure that's what

Jason Howell (00:45:00):
Wait, I'm losing my TikTok. Yeah. You better believe I'm voting on,

Leo Laporte (00:45:03):
I'm sure that's what Senate unknown nothing is investigating is whether the people of must

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:09):
Younger vote though in

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
The last couple years. It's better. Doesn't uptick. It is. And I think as you, as you continue to eat away at things that they care about, Supreme Court yesterday looked like in the oral arguments, they were gonna vote to overturn president Biden's student loan forgiveness. That's another one. You, you do that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and that, that gets young people into the well, maybe not that young people in their thirties. Hopefully. Hopefully it does get 'em into the voting booth. Yeah. This is why you need to vote. It's things like this. And you're right. Yeah. I'm sure that this is every member of Congress is gone. Is this gonna cost us a lot of votes under 25? Yeah. Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:48):
Probably. Yeah. You know. Well, the other thing is, is that media should be defending TikTok, just like the question of whether media defends.

Leo Laporte (00:45:56):
Oh. But that's a hard thing to do. I even feel a little weird defending TikTok.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:59):
I know. But we should be defending the First Amendment and rights of speech on the internet. And as podcasters, I think we especially because, because what we are doing right now was enabled by internet,

Leo Laporte (00:46:11):
Obviously. Thank goodness. Tiktok. Oh, no, not TikTok.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:14):
Not TikTok. Well, your son is TikTok. Yes. <laugh> by the way, have I wanna hear more about the Cook the Cookbook? I wanna hear more about the cookbook and the

Leo Laporte (00:46:20):
Movie show. He got a big advance six figure advanced to write a whoa

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:25):
Cookbook.

Leo Laporte (00:46:26):
I don't know. I'm kidding.

Jason Howell (00:46:27):
I don't know. That is

Leo Laporte (00:46:27):
Awesome. And so that's amazing. One of the things he's doing is he's going I I, Mike Elgan, I talked to Mike Elgan, Mike Elgan, and as you know, we went down to Oaxaca last year for the Day of the Dead. And the Elgins. Mike and Amira know every chef in Oaxaca, including one of the most famous chef Alejandro Ruiz. And Mike is arranged for Henry to go down for a month

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:50):
<Laugh> just

Leo Laporte (00:46:51):
To chef Apprentice with chef Alex. Wow. To, it's a mutual thing cuz he's gonna do tos ofs Chef Alex. Right? Heck yeah. And that's so and, and that's gonna, and he says, I think I'm gonna do a Oaxaca chapter in the book, which is great by the way, cuz Oaxacan Food is, is the amazing, wonderful cuisine that, that has yet to really enter the United States. And once it does, people are gonna crazy. Oh, this is, that's Mo that's where Mo sandwich fire them, isn't he? Oh yeah. <Laugh>. Oh yeah.

Jason Howell (00:47:19):
Take the walk in cuisine OA and turn it into a sandwich.

Leo Laporte (00:47:22):
Into a sandwich. Well, it kinda is. It's a, you know, they, they got the taco thing. Yeah, I I'm saying that would be a great No, no, that's interesting. By the way, he wasn't originally a sandwich guy. That was a thing that he learned from TikTok, the algorithm to showed him when he made sandwiches. Huge difference. So he made sandwiches, you know

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:43):
See the Chinese or the Chinese are are controlling them. They're controlling all of our stomachs. It we

Leo Laporte (00:47:47):
Wouldn't be eating eating sandwiches if it weren't for China

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:50):
<Laugh>. Yeah. They were admitted there, weren't they?

Leo Laporte (00:47:53):
Now. Okay, so are you gonna go back Chinese to

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:58):
Your senator thing?

Leo Laporte (00:47:59):
Yeah. The changing, how did you know?

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:02):
It helps you use the voice. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:05):
The Chinese government is not known for freedom. They're known for repression. They're known for absolutely. Throwing their citizens into concentration camps. Yep. Should we not of try to keep that kind of ill feeling out of the United States of America?

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:28):
I love your filibuster <laugh>. It's quick

Leo Laporte (00:48:31):
<Laugh>. I mean, don't they deserve sanction? Just like we sanctioned the, the, the Rus, I'm sorry, the Russians against because of violations of human rights. I don't think we should just turn a blind eye at the Chinese just because No. Then we go, they make off phones. That's not enough. We want more

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:53):
Fist bumps to the Saudis.

Leo Laporte (00:48:58):
Well, I don't like them either, but that's another matter. Oh yeah. Jared can keep his billion dollars. I think we should keep the Saudis out of this. I'm a, you know, it's an interesting, because I'm a big F1 Antand I both big F1 fans, formula One racing. And this is a problem because the Formula One has told people, like Louis Hamilton, you, you can't wear that rainbow flag helmet when next time we go to Saudi Arabia. Right. th they're telling them, no, we gotta, you, you gotta run all that stuff by us first. And a lot of the races are in well, Bahrain rain's the first race, Bahrain rain's, the first one, <laugh>, and then there's Saudi Arabia is the second one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so this is a global sport. I love I know you love it, aunt, and we're very excited about it. Similar actions happen during the World Cup. Yep. At Qatar. Yep. They either act the F ones really bad. They won't even let Lewis wear his earring. <Laugh>. Geez. You can't wear earrings, dude. What the hell? It has a safety concern. Is this 1952? What are we talking here? Yeah. Anyway I I think you

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:05):
Can make us, wait a second. Are there women drivers

Leo Laporte (00:50:07):
In the f1? No, sorry. Not yet. There's one black driver. That's it. No women, female. See you. See, you

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:16):
Left Twitter and Facebook because of principal.

Leo Laporte (00:50:19):
Well, I know. I didn't watch and I I did not watch the World Cup because I was upset. That was in Coter. By the way. There's gonna be an F1 race in Co. I it's hard. It's hard. Yeah. I, you know, this, this is the same sort of thing with his TikTok. I don't, I, you know, I'm not in favor of how Chinese government treats its people. I think it's reprehensible, but I love

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:46):
Hank Chinese sandwiches are good there.

Leo Laporte (00:50:48):
<Laugh>. I have to look and see if he makes any Chinese sandwiches. He might be working. How

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:53):
Is, how is your Chinese these days?

Leo Laporte (00:50:54):
It's very bad. I, I lost it all. Sad to say, but I love the country. I love the people. I love its history. I'm fascinated by it. I think it is. I think it should be by all rights, one of the most successful countries in the world because it's got the resources, it's got the brains, it's got the people. And it's unfortunately, I think the ccp, which was, you know, I I have to say in 1945 UNG did lift the Chinese people out of a futile system into the modern world. But he made a lot of mistakes. Subsequently, it caused a great famine. 

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:35):
And the current regime is noxious. It's,

Leo Laporte (00:51:38):
I

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:38):
Know you're not a Southerner

Leo Laporte (00:51:39):
Sir. How do you know that?

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:42):
Because you didn't say Mao say Tong

Leo Laporte (00:51:44):
Mouth, say dung. Heard it. That Maung guy. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:47):
My life chairman

Leo Laporte (00:51:49):
Mao

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:50):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:51:51):
No, but I, but, but Mao in the early days did a lot for the Chinese people. And, and to this day, when we were in China in 2009, my son Henry and I went and we went to a small village and they all had big screen, flat screen TVs. And we were told by our guide essentially that's what happens every year. It's a new thing. It's air conditioning one year, big screen TVs. The next year they're slowly raising the standard of living. And this is a very poor Chinese village. You know, basically subsistence agriculture. But they have been lifted into the modern world. And so that's one of the reasons I think the Chinese people are very supportive of their regime because they get a lot of benefits from it. And, and it really was a vicious, futile society.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:35):
Right? Well, but, but the other thing is people say, well, the ch I I, the thing I hate most is, I hate people say, well, China's not ready for democracy. Or Listen to what the Chinese people say.

Leo Laporte (00:52:42):
Yeah, I don't think

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:42):
So. They don't have you. And it's wrong to say any people are not ready for Yeah. Their own ruling themselves and b opinion polls. Edelman does a trust index every year. And the repressive regimes, Russia Philippines China are all high on trust of institutions. Cuz what else are you gonna say? Right? Yeah. Some the stranger calls you. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I love them. I love them. They're, they're out for us. Absolutely. You can't separate that out very easily.

Leo Laporte (00:53:15):
And, and as somebody's pointing out, Mao probably has the highest death count of any dictator mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, he killed. We don't even know how many hundreds of millions people in the great leap forward. And the cultural revolution in the sixties was horrible. So that, you know, he committed a lot of crimes. You know, it's a, it's life is, this stuff is complicated. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and, and to say we're gonna ban TikTok, that's gonna solve everything. It, it's not gonna solve anything at all. Once

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:44):
Where media and politics come together and oversimplify the world and lose history and lose context.

Leo Laporte (00:53:50):
And, and we're not good with, don't deal with the real issues. We're not good with ambiguity in gray areas. Right? We wanna, we want good and bad. We wanna know good with the, who's the good guys? Who are the bad guys? We're the good guys. Tell, tell me who to hate. Bye. Tell me who to hate. Yeah. I hate Senator Devil <laugh>. Well, my friend, my colleagues. Dang, you brought him back against Jeff side of the aisle. <Laugh> would take his, his head outta his keya and start thinking about the real world we live in. All right, <laugh>, Senator Devil's gonna retire now.

(00:54:23):
Good <laugh>, now that he's efficiently and Senator Devil both go <laugh> into the alright. Let us take a little break. And there is more to talk about in just a little bit. But we do wanna mention our sponsor cuz I am a fan, a big fan, Senator Devil probably is too. Everybody loves Fastmail. I've said this for some time now. If you care about email, why are you using free email? Email that treats you as a product, not as the customer. Fastmail isn't free. It's three bucks as little as three bucks a month. It's not hugely expensive, but free mail isn't free either. You pay with your privacy for over 20 years. Fastmail's been a leader in email privacy because with Fastmail, you're a customer, not the product. Not only is it private, you get great support because they care about you.

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Jeff Jarvis (01:00:57):
This is not a democracy and you're in charge. We've just lost democracy. What's next? Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:01:04):
Actually, YouTube has a new leader. We talked about Susan Majeski moving along the the new guy in charge, Neil Moen wrote his first letter, and of course he's smart. Our 2023 priorities. It's aimed particularly at creators, right? Who's more, who's most important to YouTube after advertisers? Cuz they're the most important, the creators. Somebody's gotta make that content. Yeah. he says, I've th he says, A little over 15 years ago, I visited a company with an interesting take on digital video. As I walked through YouTube's small offices above a pizza parlor, I could see the promise of the platform. I've thought about that moment of the past few weeks as my longtime friend and mentor Susan Waki, transitioned to become an advisor to Google and Alphabet. And I took the helm as the new leader of YouTube. So what does he say? He he quoted, we

Ant Pruitt (01:01:58):
Need to do everything we can to make Marquez Brownlee

Leo Laporte (01:02:01):
Happy. Yeah. Well, that's number one. <Laugh>, definitely number one.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:06):
And Mr. Beast happy.

Leo Laporte (01:02:07):
He and Mr. Beast. Yes. Keep Mr. Beast happy. Probably more importantly, Mr. Beast. He he did say, he quoted a study from Oxford Economics that in 2021, more than 2 million creators, 2 million earned the money equivalent of a full-time job on YouTube. That's awesome. Wow. So you talk about TikTok and, and it's for sure true that TikTok has powered a lot of people, but nobody, nobody comes close to what YouTube's done. Right? YouTube has a shopping feature now, revenue sharing on shorts. The number of people subscribing to individual channels has jumped 20% year over year. 6 million people now subscribe to channels. It's not a huge number given the number of people use YouTube. I think that's also, cuz creators keep saying, hit the smash, the subscribe button during the

Jason Howell (01:02:58):
Never Gets Old.

Leo Laporte (01:02:59):
They have added under his you know, this is probably something Susan Wosk had in process, but they just added dubbing clips into another alternate languages. Right. How many languages do they have now? It's kind of cool. Wow. they of course, Mr. Beast started <laugh>.

Jason Howell (01:03:17):
My Can you It

Leo Laporte (01:03:18):
Was, it was tested by Mr. Beast first.

Jason Howell (01:03:21):
So this isn't this isn't caption. This is

Leo Laporte (01:03:24):
Dubbing dubbing. Wow. multiple language audio tracks. They built it in house. Oh.

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:30):
Can we do that? Can we do that from a clip from the show? Sure. I want to hear TWiG in German.

Leo Laporte (01:03:36):
Okay. We just gotta get somebody, we just gotta get a cast of people together. What is that?

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:43):
Can we, can we just put this on YouTube? Can we dub it there? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:46):
Yeah. But again, somebody has to speak German. Are you gonna do it?

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:49):
No. I thought, oh, I thought it was computer dump.

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
No, no, no, no, no. That's,

Jason Howell (01:03:54):
Oh, that's what I thought too, Jeff, at first. Oh, okay. You have to imagine that's coming at some point.

Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
Yeah. Actually, why not? You know what though? That's, that's

Jason Howell (01:04:02):
Not unreasonable.

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Not at all. Come to think of it. The AI could do it. Yeah. I mean, they're, they can translate pretty well already. They're doing the transcriptions. Yep. They're doing the trans translations. I guess all you'd have to do is have the voice. Just have

Jason Howell (01:04:14):
The voice.

Leo Laporte (01:04:16):
Yeah. The creator chooses which language. So there's now a and you could see this on the Mr. Beast video. Hindi Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic. He dubs into much bunch of different languages. Over 15% of the dub videos watch time came from viewers in a different language than the original recording. Wow. So that's big. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> viewers watched over 2 million hours in January alone of dubbed videos.

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:40):
So does Mr. Beast pay someone to do it or volunteers do it?

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
Well-Known creator, Mr. Beast, aka a Jimmy Donaldson, who has 130 million global subscribers dubbed his 11 most popular videos in 11 languages in an interview with YouTube's Creator, insider. Is that Renee? I don't know. Mr. Beast explained that should be, that should be the name of my senator. Senator Beast <laugh> explained why the feature was beneficial. Well, I don't even have to explain that. It's much easier to just run one channel than 12. You have to make 12 different, blah, blah, blah. So I'm looking to see if they explain where, how he got, I guess he hired, or YouTube probably hired

Jason Howell (01:05:26):
Youtube did.

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
Yeah. Somebody

Jason Howell (01:05:28):
Probably, if you do that, testing it out in a big splashy pr

Leo Laporte (01:05:31):
Laden who wants to volunteer? Any of our listeners proficient. Yeah. You pick the language listeners, you tell us you pick it. You'd have to have four people. Right. You'd have to have somebody doing my voice. Some, or do whoever does. My voice has to have, has to have Senate beast, <laugh> <laugh>. It doesn't have to be a, it doesn't have to be a fog horn, leg horn. It have to be something appropriate to your guy. It could

Jason Howell (01:05:55):
Be a Bavarian access.

Leo Laporte (01:05:56):
Oh, yeah. Talk like this. So, oh, boy. And there'd be, you have to have a Jeff once you have to have an aunt. Once you have to have a Jason. And next week you'll have to have us Daisy <laugh>. So Jason. Yeah. Good luck with that. Jason <laugh>. Okay.

Jason Howell (01:06:14):
Swamp Rat says to dub it and clinging on

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
<Laugh>

Jason Howell (01:06:18):
<Laugh> war version of War Swamp. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:06:21):
Hmm. Hey, south according to Mo's letter, a South Korean creator gained over 30,000 members after launching channel memberships. Just seven months ago, 6 million viewers paid for channel memberships on YouTube in December, 20% increase. So yeah, it makes sense that Moen would be focused on creators. He talks about top gaming creators. Youtube's always done that. Right? It's always been about the, the, the you know, I, yeah. And I don't, I kind of don't like this cause it's, it's, it's, it's, I think, a little deceptive to the rank and file creator who is never gonna make dollar one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But you go look at all these people making a living on YouTube. There's 2 million of them. You too could, but what you're really saying is, come on everybody. You gotta work for us. Make more content for us. We're gonna make the bulk of the money. I mean, they're not

Jason Howell (01:07:14):
Lying. Yeah. There are two millions people. No, it's true. They make doing happen. Happen.

Leo Laporte (01:07:18):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:07:20):
And you, and, and it's true that you could also <laugh>, are you likely to? That's a different

Leo Laporte (01:07:27):
Story. Oh. And here is Renee Richie, creator liaison in the, in that YouTube letter. What creators need to know from Neil's letter. So yay, Renee. They also talk about protecting kids. Looking ahead. This is a pivotal moment for our industry. We face challenging economic headwinds in uncertain geopolitical conditions. AI represents incredible creative opportunities, but must be balanced by responsible stewardship. This is what motivates me and everyone at YouTube to do our best work every single day. This is kind of an aine typical what you'd expect letter, but there's some facts in there too. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:08:14):
How does how does Salt Hank do when it comes to YouTube? I mean, YouTube as a, as a platform, has been around much longer than a TikTok, than an

Leo Laporte (01:08:24):
Instagram. You know, it was funny when he was doing TikTok, he said, why don't you do more YouTube? He's in there. Yeah. So he has done, since then, he is done some long form YouTubes. He does YouTube shorts. I've seen some

Jason Howell (01:08:33):
Of his long term

Leo Laporte (01:08:33):
Stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good. But Instas, his, you know, because of his style, which was TikTok inspired his slash Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:08:39):
That's fast

Leo Laporte (01:08:40):
Flash shortcuts. Right. it really lends itself to Instagram reels are effectively TikTok. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:48):
It's, it's, it's, it's not just cooking too. It's, he's flirting in a specific way with his audience. Right. He's, it's Rye. It's, it's Hank

Leo Laporte (01:08:56):
<Laugh>. Really,

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:57):
<Laugh> How many, how many proposals has Hank

Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
Had? Quite a few. He's a,

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:01):
He's, he'll be on The Bachelor next.

Leo Laporte (01:09:03):
Yeah. Yeah. He's got a girlfriend now. I shouldn't say this though. Probably, huh? Here he is. Here he is making, did he

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:10):
Meet her through the sh through

Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
Bon? No. She's an influencer though. I hear. I understand. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. He's done a lot of colabs. That's one of the things you do, right? Yep. Yeah. You, you're doing these these colabs, which is cool. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:25):
It's really a nice part of it.

Leo Laporte (01:09:27):
Yeah. There is. You know, and I think YouTube has this too, there. Where's this kind of collegial thing about it? Here's making a Chico pesto sandwich. This

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:36):
Reaction ever.

Leo Laporte (01:09:37):
This is an ad. Did you see that real quick? Yep. The mata peppers. It's an ad for mata. Oh. And this is, by the way, TikTok doesn't get any of that money, nor does this, nor does YouTube. And that's really how you make money on these. All of these platforms is selling your own ad. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:53):
That looks good. Oh, that looks good.

Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
Oh. And don't forget a mata <laugh>. Hes listen. Isn't that subtle?

Jason Howell (01:10:06):
Yeah. Yes. I freaking love's

Leo Laporte (01:10:07):
Amazing. Did I tell you about this one?

Jason Howell (01:10:10):
This one

Leo Laporte (01:10:11):
Did I tell you about, I can't play the music, but I take that off. But did this one, he got a partnership with a Los Angeles Company Shock You. L la They go around and do catering for big events or big company. They gave him that snow crab, it looked like about a pound of caviar.

Jason Howell (01:10:30):
Huge amount of caviar.

Leo Laporte (01:10:31):
Yeah. And he made a po boy a snow crab po boy with a caviar ramada. Oh my God. He said it. So it was a $7,000 sandwich.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:42):
<Laugh>. It

Jason Howell (01:10:44):
Just looks so delicious. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:10:45):
That's, that's $7 sandwich. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:10:50):
Oh, you made a $7,000 sandwich

Leo Laporte (01:10:52):
Today. <Laugh>. That's amazing.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:53):
Oh, capitalism, man. Capitalism.

Leo Laporte (01:10:55):
Capitalism.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:56):
As chef, you always chef reaction? Never.

Leo Laporte (01:10:59):
No, I don't think so. Oh, don't think so. I'll have to ask him about that. That's a good question. Okay, so notice by the way, here on his Insta link to his YouTubes, so Oh, okay. So, you know, they're cross do it. And this is a short, right? I think this is a short YouTube first. Youtube is up. Youtube two is up. Oh, these are little Insta. Oh, I see. Okay. Insta things. And then he has the link still on Instagram link. Visit the link to YouTube Cross promotable. Yeah. This is form this. Yeah. This is longer. So this is where he gets, gets you into his longer form. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, let's see what the views, I don't think he does. These do so as well. Where do I see the view? 39,007. 10 months. 10 months. Yeah. See, that's nothing.

(01:11:41):
Oh, there's, that's nothing. Yeah. But then the salt, you're selling the salt, you're selling the cookbook. You're selling the TV show. You're selling the No, no, no, no. You're, you're selling your presents. Yeah. You know, I am hungry. I know. It's impossible to watch his videos and not get incredible hungry <laugh> my boy. Yeah. I'll tell you. He did I tell you he cooked a Cubana with Guy Fieri last weekend? I heard you mention Guy Fieri. That that's awesome. He was at, so how, what is that gonna be on Diner's Drives and, no, they have, guy doesn't do that anymore. They just rerun it forever. I don't think he's, no, no, no, no, no. Is he doing new ones? He, he just visited, he just visited places near me. Yeah. Oh, okay. So no, it was at a Miami Food Festival. Apparently. It's, it's a big one. And he, Hank did a couple of things. He was, he was at the Mr. Clean booth Making Bloody Mary's.

(01:12:36):
I, somewhere I have some video of that. And then guy Fieri was one of the celebrity chefs there, and he did a, and he was on Fii Fieri. He was on stage with Guy doing a Cubana Sam. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So, yeah, he's, you know, the, there's, there's this whole, they make the rounds basically these days. Yeah. Food, is it, you know, thanks to the food network, food is it. But it's style. Henry always wanted to do that. Isn't, you know, he, he grew up watching YouTube food videos. That's how he learned to cook. It wasn't from me. Oh, yeah. So he was always oriented in that. What does he think of your machines, your mini machines? He doesn't cheating or jealous? That's a good question. I don't know. He doesn't use machines. Really. He uses like a bullet, mostly chops his own.

(01:13:30):
I gave him my, yeah. I had a very, I had a very nice knife roll with like the best knives. Not that I'm a chef, but I, you know, at one point I said I wanted some good knives, and I gave it to him one year. And yeah, I don't think he doesn't use it. So, I don't know. <Laugh> <laugh>, if he won't use my knives, he definitely won't use my kitchen appliances. Microsoft Live, you see what Mr. Nielsen put it in our discord. You know, speaking of AI dubbing, oh, wait a minute. Now. This is the is this, we've been working on this sound on, we've been working on this. We're very excited about this. At some point, I can retire. And AI Leo could take over wa du himmel, bi alice lead un sch and stillest <laugh> is dopel mit quake fullest EZ Tribes. Muk was so alder schmertz un suer free com. Com Ande <laugh>. What did I just say?

Jason Howell (01:14:26):
I know. Do I need to bleep any of this? Anthony? Lemme know nothing. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:14:30):
<Laugh>. But it was real words

Jason Howell (01:14:31):
Right? In my breast.

Leo Laporte (01:14:33):
It was real words, wasn't it? He

Jason Howell (01:14:35):
Put the, were he put the transcript there for you.

Jason Howell (01:14:40):
Oh. In. And let me go look. <Laugh> thou, that's from the Heavens arch. Every

Leo Laporte (01:14:45):
Pain and sos every

Jason Howell (01:14:46):
Pain and sorrow still.

Leo Laporte (01:14:47):
Is that a, is this good <laugh>, almost doubly wretched heart. Doubly with refreshment pH I am wey with contending. Why this pain and desire peace descending. Come ah, into my breast.

Jason Howell (01:15:01):
Okay, play it again.

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
Now, now we got, now that you know, it's poetry Water Du von Himmel. Best Alice Lead. Un schmear. Stillest. But who's Doled Ellen is, that's my voice. Ung fullest. Ah, EZ Tribes. Muk was sol alder. Schmertz un lu fri com. Com. In Bruce's

Jason Howell (01:15:21):
Terrible pronunciation. Is it <laugh>? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That doesn't

Leo Laporte (01:15:25):
Sound like you. That's the dubbed version.

Jason Howell (01:15:27):
<Laugh> sounds like a young Leo. Yeah. Sounds like a young version's. Best Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:15:32):
Which, which which synthesis are you using? Was that Des or was it 11 Labs? I don't know which one.

Jason Howell (01:15:39):
11 labs.

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
11 labs. He's played with a, he's played with both. Yeah, he's getting quite proposition, though. An Anthony, the coffee stain is not on my shirt. <Laugh>?

Jason Howell (01:15:50):
No. See, AI removes those imperfections. Oh yeah. I like that. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:15:54):
I like it. Yeah. He's working on that. It's kind of the low voxel version of Leo, though. It's not it looks more like I told him we want kind of want a Max headroom thing. Right? It's pretty close, right?

Jason Howell (01:16:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Low poly. You gotta, but you gotta add the, the stuttering, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
Sure. <Laugh>.

(01:16:16):
Oh boy. Anthony Nielsen has become our king of ai. He really has. Yeah. Let's talk about it. About ai. AI is all the rage these days. In fact, Microsoft actually, they kind of, they kind of misled people. They announced they have a new thing they're doing. When they update Windows, they call it a moment. And Moment two came out yesterday, and they said that it would bring AI powered Bing to Windows 11. Not really. What it does is it puts a logo on your Windows 11 task bar that when you click, it opens up Edge and the Bing Chat. So

Jason Howell (01:16:55):
They gave you a shortcut

Leo Laporte (01:16:56):
Or an ad?

Jason Howell (01:16:58):
<Laugh>. Or an ad. Or an ad,

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
Right? Let's, let's call it spade. A sp Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an ad. Oh, boy. See,

Jason Howell (01:17:05):
There's, that's that a feature.

Leo Laporte (01:17:06):
Yeah. Here's the, if you look at it in the, in the little search pill we call it, there's a b, when you click it, it says, introducing the new Bing. But if you wanna do anything, it has to open up edge. And you can't just

Jason Howell (01:17:19):
Use that little

Leo Laporte (01:17:19):
Search bar. No. Plug it

Jason Howell (01:17:20):
In there. No. See, that would be an integrated.

Leo Laporte (01:17:23):
Interesting. I mean, there's nothing, there's no, they didn't do that except they want to, this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:26):
All performance. It's Microsoft is playing a game here.

Leo Laporte (01:17:29):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:17:31):
Well, Microsoft was Sure, sure. Touted there in the beginning as having made a really smart move with this whole ChatGPT thing.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:39):
Reporters are idiots. We're

Jason Howell (01:17:41):
A couple of weeks away from that. Now, has that proven to be the case? I mean, Google didn't, you know, initially, I mean, they, they had their, they still haven't, they had their barred thing, but they, but they out there. Yeah. And that's a terrible to actually be kind of a good thing by comparison, right? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:58):
Jason, in, in the, in the the annex in the kitty table, part of the rundown, I put in two stories that was, was interesting to me that, that there's already a tech lash against open AI now.

Jason Howell (01:18:09):
Oh, yeah. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:10):
So, and that's

Leo Laporte (01:18:11):
Kinda reasonable because open ai, which was funded in 2015, partly by Elon Musk, who parted company with them a few years later to be a response to the closed source development of AI by Microsoft and Google and others. It was to be the open one, the nonprofit one. But it's no longer that

Jason Howell (01:18:32):
Because Yeah. It's definitely not nonprofit anymore.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:35):
So this

Leo Laporte (01:18:35):
Is a motherboard art article. Yeah. Open AI is now everything. It promised not to be corporate closed source and for-profit. Hmm.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:43):
True. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
Yeah. Yeah. they, now this to me is a little nerve-wracking. Sam Altman at c e o wrote a blog post this week, planning for Agi and Beyond Agi I is the scary ai, the general intelligence, which would essentially be, as he says, our mission is to ensure that artificial and general intelligence, AI systems that are generally smarter than humans benefits all of humanity. If AGI I is successfully created, well, yeah, I don't know. <Laugh>, <laugh> I don't know. We don't have agi. I think that's pretty clear. But Blake Lamoyne and, and, and his, I noTWiThstanding it's not sentient. No, no. It's not as smart as a human. It sounds like it is. I once asked Ray Kurzwell, who was kind of the king of all of the singularity, right? He said, it's sometime in, in the next 20 years. He said, I think by 2035 there computers will be in, now this is his key phrase, indistinguishable from humans. And I said, well, but what, but will they be thinking and sending? He says, it doesn't matter if you can't tell the difference, they're indistinguishable from humans. That's, that's it. Hmm. It doesn't, it's foolish to say, well, are they thinking? That's not, if you can't tell, does it matter? I don't know if Jason's thinking. Right.

Jason Howell (01:20:15):
Well, thank you. Thank you for that. Well, but what is, but what is thinking to a computer? I mean, any, any operation that is determined by a computer is in essence thinking. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:20:29):
Not as we think,

Jason Howell (01:20:30):
Not as we think of thinking. But when I think of <laugh> Yeah. It's, it's getting weird. When I think of

Leo Laporte (01:20:35):
Thinking. Yeah. It's thinking.

Jason Howell (01:20:37):
I think of, you know, I want this thing to happen. I have to understand it. I have to figure out, I have to know how to how to do this thing or whatever. That's what a computer does when it's, when it's, you know, performing in action.

Leo Laporte (01:20:48):
I mean, it's the type of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. That's Ray's point. Exactly. Ksw said, if you can't tell the difference, doesn't matter what the internal process is. Right. If the result is the same now the real singularity comes when, and this is where it gets scary. When Agi, I can design better agi or can build better machines,

Jason Howell (01:21:09):
Can build a better version of itself,

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
Then they're faster than humans. Hmm. It becomes iterative and it gets faster and faster. Accelerates to the point where, you know, the, I don't know what, I don't know what hand. Yeah. What is, what is dis skys the limit. Yeah. In other words, right now we're holding it back. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But as soon as they can

Jason Howell (01:21:25):
Pe pesky humans. Pesky

Leo Laporte (01:21:26):
Humans, as soon as it can do it itself, nothing to stop it. A machine that can design machines, I don't know what takes over the universe. Yeah. So we can imagine a world in which humanity flourishes to a degree that it's probably impossible for any of us to fully visualize it. Yet we hope to contribute to the world says Altman and AGI aligned with such flourishing, and if not, well, we tried <laugh> <laugh>. I mean, really the first agi I will just be a point along the continuum of intelligence. We think it's likely progress will continue from there. Yeah. See, that's what scares me. Possibly sustaining the rate of progress we've seen over the past decade for a long period of time. Or he doesn't say, or faster. If this is true, the world, it could become extremely different from how it is today. And the risks could be extraordinary.

(01:22:21):
A misaligned, super intelligent agi, I could cause grievous harm to the world. An autocratic regime with a decisive super intelligence lead could do that as well. Yikes. Hmm. So what are they doing to prevent that? No, nothing <laugh> <laugh>, nothing. We think a slower takeoff is easier to make. Safe and coordination among Agi I efforts to slow down at critical junctures will likely be important. Even in a world where we don't need to do this to solve technical alignment problems slowing down may be important to give society enough time to adapt. So, so, so. Right. Don't be in such a hurry successfully. Transitioning to a world with super intelligence should add non-human super Intelligence is perhaps the most important and hopeful and scary project in human history. Success is far from guaranteed. And the stakes boundless downside and boundless upside will hopefully unite all of us. He's not really, hopefully all he's saying is slow down. He's not really giving us any tools.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:34):
He's also out there saying, we, this was in last week too. It was in the rundown last week where he's saying, regulate us so we don't have to make the decisions. You make 'em for us.

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
Yeah. That's not it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:43):
Kevin. Marks and I are both in the, in the rundown. Invading the rundown. Hi, Kevin. Oh.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:49):
Hi Kevin. Emily Bender.

Leo Laporte (01:23:50):
We invited him on, but I think it was such short notice that he couldn't, probably couldn't get in. Yeah. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:54):
Just, I just got an

Leo Laporte (01:23:55):
Email from Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:57):
So Emily Bender, who was one of the stochastic parrots paper authors. Co-Authors has a thread, which is in there, in which she's tearing a apart alt. She's amazing on, on, on her ongoing comments on the hype of, of ai.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
But she has been a naysayer, it's fair to say. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:15):
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Well just, just naysayer mainly of the hype, mainly of the overpromise. And so

Leo Laporte (01:24:23):
This is your reaction to Sam's post

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:26):
This piece. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:24:28):
From the get-go. This is just gross <laugh>. They think they're really in the business of developing, shaping agi. And they think, are they positioned to decide what benefits all of humanity?

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:39):
Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
. Where's her? I don't understand. That's the next one. How does this Twitter work to

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:48):
Get some That's not Twitter. It's mastodon, shush.

Leo Laporte (01:24:51):
Oh, how does Mastodon

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:52):
Work? That's her next post. That's that right there. Where you're, that's her

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Next post. Then Altman invites the reader to imagine that Agi I have successfully created is literally magic. Also, what does turbocharging the economy mean? If there's already abundance? More dollars for the super rich has to be also note the rhetorical, slight of hand here. Paragraph one has agi as a hypothetical, but by paragraph two, it's already something that has potential <laugh>. But oh, knows the magical imagined agi. I also has downsides, but it's also soso tempting and important to create that we cannot not create it. Note the next rhetorical slate of hand here. Now, a g i is an unpreventable future.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:32):
That's the essence of what she said. It's a really good post.

Leo Laporte (01:25:37):
I, I think I'm following Ms. Bender, but if not, I'm going

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:42):
Follow her. You should. She's, she's brilliant. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:45):
I'm pretty sure I am following her. 

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:48):
You, is the problem mastered on You? Can't you try to switch over from one page to another?

Leo Laporte (01:25:52):
It's the scene. Nope. Already, already following her. Well, if, actually, if I'd been following it as a follower as opposed to in that form, I could see it a little bit better. But yeah, she's a professor of linguistics at uw University of Washington. She runs the Master of Science and Computational Linguistics program. So she knows what she's talking about.

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:14):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. And again, she was co-author with Tim Nick Guru and Margaret Sch Mitchell and one other, whose name I forget, the fourth beetle. Fifth beetle of the sta stochastic parrots paper. Right. Warning of this.

Leo Laporte (01:26:27):
So what, yeah. I mean, this is a good question. I mean, talk about big tech. It's kind of like nuclear proliferation. We're in, we're in the era of AI proliferation and there's nobody, nobody talking about disarmament.

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:47):
But here too, to talk about, we must regulate this now. We don't know what it is.

Leo Laporte (01:26:51):
Well, you can't, yeah, I guess you can't. But what do you do then? Right? If you can't regulate it, what do you do?

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:56):
You, you, you educate people. You be cautious. You keep people accountable. You do what, what Emily Bender is doing and, and, and mock them when they're going overboard. That's what society does.

Jason Howell (01:27:09):
I mean, but what is being cautious? Cuz there's gonna be a lot of companies that ha, that see the poten, the upside of getting into ai and their bottom line is to make money. So like, where, like, how Microsoft to draw the line of what caution is because they're

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:29):
Probably gonna push it. Right. Microsoft threw caution to the wind. Google almost did, but then held back and said, no, we're the cautious ones. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:27:39):
Right. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:27:42):
Yeah. Yeah. I, so if we did an AI show, I don't know if we're gonna we're we're not really in a position. Please to launch two shows, please. But everybody wants to be on his show except for an Antwho is left.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:55):
This

Leo Laporte (01:27:55):
Is nothing. They don't wanna do it. It's not my No, but, but no, he's not gonna do it either. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:01):
We're gonna, we're gonna do a musical theater show. Oh, gosh, no. Geez, queen. There you go.

Jason Howell (01:28:07):
Yes. If you pass on the AI show, you have to do the next one. And that is musical theater. So there you

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:12):
Go. <Laugh> <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:15):
Oh my gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:28:16):
I, I fear that we would not have that much to, we'd have plenty to talk about. But it all be highly speculative, right?

Ant Pruitt (01:28:22):
Speculation. That's all it is. Every week you're speculating on what could potentially happen. And I think that's gonna get old. You

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:30):
Got stupid coverage. You got stupid companies. You've got smart things happening. You've got great opportunities. I, I, I, we talked about this. So in our, our management program, we have 23 amazing high level managers in the, in the executive program. I helped start at the school. We were talking about this just yesterday. I did a class on, on master do and, and the Metaverse and this. And one of the interesting things comes out, it's a very international group. They are using it for translation. They're using it to fix their work. It's making people who are shy about their English as a second language more confident. It's all these kinds of uses that you don't know people are, are putting it to and finding value in it. One person said she's using it to write grant proposals cause it's all the same bs. So she just turns 'em out with it. Right. there's, there's interesting uses, there's interesting dangers, there's interesting development, there's interesting business. There's bad media coverage about it. Oh, it's Rich, rich.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:28):
Hey, let me, let me put my Miss Lisa LaPorte hat on right now. Okay. So we are gonna do this this week in AI show. You gonna be able to talk about this for a year at least, you know. Oh, yeah. 52 episodes. Oh, yeah. Didn't get 53 episodes outta this. Oh yeah. Nah. Yeah. I feel like we might get six

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:44):
<Laugh>. I feel like three quarters of tech meme on a, on a daily basis has something to do with ai. Well, it's

Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
Clearly so.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:49):
And they don't say the same thing. Mr. Howell. Here.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
I have that same qualm, but my qualm is that this is just it's kind of irrational exuberance in that we're gonna hit another AI winner. We've done this before many, many times. Even in my memory, where we've

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:04):
Got Yeah. We free and NFTs and all that crap too. Yeah. We Oh yeah. Blockchain.

Leo Laporte (01:30:08):
But even about ai, we've gotten all excited about it. We thought self-driving cars were just around the corner. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we thought mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we've, this is not, and, and there've been many AI winners, and I just mm-hmm. <Affirmative> would hate to start a show about something. And then, then the AI winner happens. Hmm. And we all go, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:25):
Well, about a temporary show. What

Leo Laporte (01:30:26):
About have to be temporary? It'd have to be just kind of a, I think if we did it, it would be in the club and it would be just kind of a chat like this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I see, I do wanna talk to experts. I would like to, people like Emily Bender.

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:37):
Sure. There's lots of people who invite like Emily Bender. Yeah. Like that young woman I sent you. Whose name I can't remember. Jason. oh, yes. On TikTok,

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
Whenever people send me young women, I have to send them back. It's kind of a legal thing.

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:51):
Stacey, if Stacy were here,

Leo Laporte (01:30:53):
<Laugh>. It's a joke. It's a joke. Oh, God. And Aunts outta

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:57):
Here wants deniability. Rachel Woods.

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
Is that me? The name of a young woman? Let's be clear. Rachel Woods.

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:05):
Okay. Play, play a little bit of Rachel Woods, by the way, she's, she's really good on this topic. She's on, on TikTok.

Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
Oh, here you go. Yes. Okay. I'll, I'll You can't, you can't do it because it won't go on the, it won't go on the thing. Rachel Woods. She explains TikTok. Tiktok. So she's Aer who explains ai? Oh, she's an AI startup founder. Okay. So she has, I think it's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:28):
I think better.

Leo Laporte (01:31:29):
Yeah. Yep. So here we go. This is her most recent let me turn on the turn on the sound thing. Turn the Mach turn on the

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:37):
Machine. Can you get some real intelligence? Know how to turn on the sound? Can

Leo Laporte (01:31:41):
You turn on, can you turn on the machine? There's a machine. I have to push that button. I said I have to push that

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:50):
Button. I forgot any

Speaker 6 (01:31:51):
Subject in Quizlet. Okay,

Leo Laporte (01:31:53):
Here we go. Here

Speaker 6 (01:31:53):
We go. Chat. GBT API was announced and people are going crazy. It's 10 times cheaper than open AI previous model, which means we're about to have ChatGPT in every product. They already announced us in a new grocery shopping assistant for Instacart, a shopping assistant. Wow. For any Shopify store. A tutor on any subject in Quizlet and your own personal AI in Snapchat. Holy cow. There was a lot more in this announcement around privacy and restrictions of how you can use the api. We're gonna be covering all of us tomorrow in our newsletter. So drop your questions if you're not already on it. The link is in my bio.

Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
Wow. I think this is she's great. I learned from her a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's got a newsletter, so subscribe. Let me see if, I'll see if I can find the actually I need that too. Yeah. Let me, let me find her. Her link. The ai exchange.com/the Rachel Woods. And there's a link there to her newsletter. Interesting. All right. Jason can make that happen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because you know what? E despite all appearances, he can think it's true sometimes, despite all appearances. <Laugh>. Now don't, don't believe what you see here. I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. There's about this much. No, Jason's a great producer. Bottom my forehead. No, I'm teasing. He's a great, great producer. Is Jason Jason producing as he's hosting type it like crazy. Yeah, I'm producing. That's amazing. It's really impressive. Amazing. I have to say it really is.

(01:33:24):
We are very lucky. Extremely lucky that Jason's with us. <Laugh> also the host of All About Android's. I had mentioned the beginning of the show. Gets great guests on there along with his regulars. Yeah. Ron. And and when last night we had Flo on Flo came back. Nice. She came back for review. Michelle shows up from time to time. Michelle Ramon. Yes. You got a great super thrilled Pamela People Jr Ray Feel from Android. Didn't I love jr. Yeah. It's fun. We're having a good time. He also hosts Tech News Weekly. And actually I thought of a, cuz you were talking about what, what you should do tomorrow. Yes. I'm, I'm still actively looking for my interview indictment. I can't remember what it was. I should have written it down. Oh, you run that. Ah, I know who it is. Mike McCue.

(01:34:08):
Oh yes. This is Flipboard. Yes. Mr. Flipboard. Oh, yes. Okay. I know because I, Mr. Mike Flipboard has joined the Fed averse. So Flipboard was originally created, Mike created it with the goal of being kind of a magazine based on you. People you follow on Twitter. Well, maybe that's not the best business model anymore. So they're moving kind of away from Twitter and over to Mastodon. They're even talking about creating their own Mastodon instance. Flipboard Dots Social. He did. Already did. He did. So this is really interesting. I mean, like a lot of people who have abandoned Twitter but now if you've built a business around Twitter, you might be very slow to do that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I'm I good for Mike. Mike is very active on on, on Media, on mass At the same time,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:56):
Tommy Tony Stubbe and Evan Williams have gone all in for Medium. And so the medium instance me, dm pretty cool, me dm is now up and I'm getting all kinds of followers from it. People are people who are joining that one as well.

Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Nice. So you've got Flipboard, you've got medium who was it though that decided not to the Financial Times or somebody?

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:20):
The

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
Ft. Yeah. Yeah. They, they had one and they said, yeah, this is a bad idea. This is legal liabilities and all this stuff. So I I for one, I'm not sure I, for ai, totally think companies like Medium and Flipboard should do this. I mean I guess we're kind of in the same boat. I shouldn't really You are. Explain cuz TWiThas its own masses on instance. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and it's made up of our listeners. Right. Our fans community. It's a community. Community. Yeah. So it makes sense. Actually, I take it back. I was gonna say something bad about it. 

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:48):
Would you question both Community Czars here I was talking to somebody the other day about, about the need for outsourced moderating services, for instance hosts. Is that something you think as you grow in scale you might need or

Leo Laporte (01:36:05):
Well, we don't actually

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:07):
Put people too nice.

Leo Laporte (01:36:09):
You mean moderators?

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:10):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:11):
Well

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:12):
So far I can, you're moderating right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
I haven't, I've haven't had to outsource it. I think just like our discord when you have a really tight community and you know, I have to approve you to go in there and I, I kind of, I'm pretty cautious. And by the way, if anybody acts out, I boot 'em immediately. So I think it doesn't take a lot of moderation. I, every day I make sure I check everything.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:36):
How long, how long every day do you spend doing it?

Leo Laporte (01:36:39):
Oh, an hour a day. Not more. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:41):
That's a, that's a, that's a commitment.

Leo Laporte (01:36:43):
Well, and and the one thing that everybody should know if you're on Mastodon, is that when you see a post you don't like, or a series of posts from somebody you don't like, you have total control too. You can mute or block anybody. And by doing so, you're keeping them out of your feed forever. So, and you're

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:01):
Gonna report

Leo Laporte (01:37:02):
Them to you. And, and then I would suggest if it's somebody that you think is really toxic, report them to me. I check every day. We don't, we get at most a reported day. And usually it's not people on our Mastodon instances, it's, you know, people on other Mastodon instances. So I, I think it, it's actually sustainable. I, I spent an hour there cause I'm reading stuff, not mo not Oh, that totally moderating. That's the total amount of time. So I have two. Okay. I'll just show you real quickly. The dashboard that I go, I see two pending reports and eight pending users. I won't show you the reports or the users, but, so I will review those every day. And if, if it's an account I, you know, I can suspend an account even if it's not on our instance. And that just means people in our instance can't see it. So, so the

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:47):
Account still exists, it's just

Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
Yeah, it's not acting. So one of them is, is one of them is pretending to be, you can show this the National Security Agency and I don't know, I think that's probably a parody account. This one's a little tricky. I will, I will look at it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:04):
But it's verified. There's a blue check <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:38:08):
It also says your

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:09):
Local from Zuckerberg.

Leo Laporte (01:38:11):
It also says your local friendly neighborhood surveillance agency. Yeah. Probably thinking a little, it's probably a parody account. I'll look at it. If it's clearly parody, I won't block it. But you tabs a new 24 7 because we care. Yeah. and then there's another one that you should not show that is kind of anti-trans. So that one, I'm just gonna press the suspend button. They get a notification that TWiTsocial has suspended them

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:39):
Suspended. Oh, they get a notification. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:38:41):
Yeah. Can

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:42):
You do it without notification? No, I guess you can't. Cause they're, they're, they, they into their account, they're

Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
Gonna, I think they get notified. I may be wrong on that actually. I don't know. But what happens as a result is even the only reason it showed up at TWiTthat social is cuz somebody in TWiTthat social was following them. Or maybe it's possible. No, no. It would only show up cuz somebody had followed them. So that, that person won't be able to see that those posts and no one else in TWiTsocial will, nor will anybody able to be able to follow them anymore. So that's it. Pretty easy. You saw I did it while we're on the air. That's

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:16):
So cool. That's great.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
It wasn't that hard. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:19):
We had O and Roko on Oh, did you? Foot or Summit? Oh, oh yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
Nice. How is

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:24):
Through video?

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
He's the creator. Mastodon, he's the developer who invented Mastodon.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:29):
So he blew mines there. And, and my, my management students were blown by this as well. He said that I don't think it's a problem to say that in the, in the life of Mask Don Rights from 2018 to today, five years. He said maybe I've raised including, including the latest rush, maybe a total of $500,000. So he has this thing that is challenging Twitter that is presenting and he's an invent activity pub. And, but he's, he's making Activity Pub come to life for more people. 10 million accounts signed up $500,000. It's nothing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
Wow. And that's through a Patreon. He has a handful of developers. I know he hired a new developer, but for the longest time it was just hired three people.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:12):
Yeah. He got 1700 applications for three <laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (01:40:15):
Bet The thing that remember is it's just one example of the fe averse in Activity pub. I always Yes, yes. Say this, but one thing that's become clear we had Mike Masick on on Sunday on Twitter, and he's he said there are a number of really good competitors to Mastodon that aren't really competitors. They're just they're similar projects. Have that work on activity pubs so you can follow somebody on Mastodon. We

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:38):
Also had Darius who, who started hometown. There

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
You go. In room. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:42):
And, and you know, he loves MAs on, he's got nothing against Maston. He forked it because he wanted to do some things differently. Right. And it's a great fork.

Leo Laporte (01:40:50):
I think more and more you're gonna see this. And I, for, I think this is a really good strong movement away from centralized social. You asked earlier, you know, about the, his, the future for Facebook. I mean, this is I think the future of social. I I love Discord. I think so

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:08):
Too. I

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Think so. Discords a a very good example, boy, that was an eyeopener when we created this in the club TWiT. Oh, this is a good, thank you. Mash potato. I love this diagram. Yeah. This is the Tree of the Fe averse. And it's actually out of date now. There are many, many more compatible pro projects going on. I mean, it's huge. So, you know, you can ha you couldn't, and if you have a Word press, you can have it be a equal partner on the Fed. Verse two. So there's a plugin for that. So I think more and more you're gonna see that. 

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:42):
And Mozilla,

Leo Laporte (01:41:44):
Oh by the way, take, take who? Or yeah, take is short for Quartermaine. So Ta I wouldn't say Chew. Say take Co. In our discord, he's in our club. Twitsays he has been suspended from Mastadon by accident. And you do get a message. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:59):
Okay. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:42:01):
And and I unders suspended. You didn't I say? Okay, good. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:05):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:42:06):
You do get a message <laugh>. Yeah, I'm, I'm really encouraged by all of that. I think this is, yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:13):
I learned it from you and I, very exciting. Cause it, it's, it's, it's given me hope. And

Leo Laporte (01:42:17):
Is it safe to say, I think it is for me, but is it safe to say for all of you that Maidan now kind of fills that itch, that Twitter itch or No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:26):
For me, not, not for me. Not an,

Jason Howell (01:42:29):
Yeah. I've, I've just noticed in general for myself, my desire to engage with a Twitter, like feed on a daily basis has dropped considerably in the

Leo Laporte (01:42:39):
Last two months. Yeah. I still go to Twitter and when I see it, I go, I, I don't want to hang out.

Jason Howell (01:42:42):
I open Twitter Yeah. A handful of times a week. Yeah. I open ma on slightly more than that and sometimes I post, but I'm just not sharing a lot. And that's been a general trend for me lately. And sometimes I feel a little bad about that because of what I do and, you know, being in touch with, with the community and everything. But yeah, I don't know. My desire to, to interact in that way has, has dropped a lot. And I don't know if it's just, you know, a result of the turbulence of recent months or if it's just kind of shifting interest. But there we

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:14):
Are. Have you, we, we discussed this before and, and, and you already know that I'm, I, I moved away from being an advisor to it. Have you guys tried post news? Do you have any opinions about it?

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
Have not.

Jason Howell (01:43:25):
No, I

Leo Laporte (01:43:25):
Haven't. I'm not a fan. Only because it's an Andreessen Horowitz, it's joint

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:29):
A at a centralized B. Yeah, I agree. I feel similar. Nobody's there, Mr.

Leo Laporte (01:43:34):
Really? Nobody's using it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:35):
I, well, I, no, that's not the case. People are, but I follow, you know, like 54 people. And now when I go to my people I'm following it's all George Conway. Literally all George Conway and George Hong.

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
Okay. That's not what I want, so, okay. Yeah. <laugh>, I'm fast. I think a lot of people went there because it was like Twitter. It was a centralized Twitter like place. And I think the, the people, it's sad because Taylor Lawrence popped in briefly at Mastodon, didn't like what she saw and went, ran back to Twitter. I think a lot of people really want Twitter. And you were, you were about to say

Ant Pruitt (01:44:10):
I, I'm fairly similar to Mr. Howell, where I, I I just haven't really had to desire to go in there and check either platform recently. I'm pretty much in broadcast mode and pretty much in campaign mode regarding my son. Every now and then, usually like on a Friday night or a Saturday, I'll go in there and check notifications from people that I, you know, that I know just to make sure I didn't miss anything. But now even they know that he's not really in here that often. So you may not get a reply quickly. It's just, I I, social media in general has just been a bit of crap mess and I just try to keep my energy clean and, and, and happy if you will.

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
I know every time I'm tempted to post on Twitter, fortunately I, I, I do. I could, but I, I don't want to break my silence every time though. It's because somebody got me angry

Jason Howell (01:45:02):
<Laugh>. Right,

Ant Pruitt (01:45:03):
Right. That's the thing.

Jason Howell (01:45:04):
I'm at this point. Have you learned one?

Ant Pruitt (01:45:06):
Nice.

Jason Howell (01:45:07):
You're just opening that,

Ant Pruitt (01:45:09):
That we have voices. It's great that we had the voice to be out, to be able to go out there and just scream that something has upset us and whether they're being injustice or, or, or something really, really small. But it's usually small. Swear. It seems like I'm seeing a lot of that stuff out there and it just brings me down. I'm like, nah. Yeah, me too. I'm step away. Let me go turn on some more old Mama's family reruns and yeah. Laugh for the rest of the day.

Jason Howell (01:45:32):
I'd say in the last couple of years, time and time again, when I open a feed like Twitter or sometimes maid on, although less so a mastered on, maid on for whatever reason, feels like a little bit more open and accepting to me right now than the Twitter universe does. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But in the last couple of years, I have many times had the experience where I open up my app, I'm like, okay, I got this thing. I gotta put this out there. I type it all up, I see it on the screen, and then I hit delete. It's like I don't even send it. Yeah. Because I'm like, I've done this too at a certain point. By the end of it, I'm like, is it even worth it for me? To put this out there because like, I kind of, on one hand I already did the thing that like I was moved to do, which was to put my thoughts into words. But if I hit send it so often, it feels like all I'm doing is inviting some sort of reaction. And yeah, you know, I hope that that reaction is good. Or I hope that people interpret my words in the way that I intend for them to. But then there's always that doubt that's there. And that's been keeping me from sharing a lot on social media lately. And, and again, it happens to me a lot.

Ant Pruitt (01:46:40):
Again, I'm really grateful for the community that I've been able to build on Twitter and, you know, as, as well as the twi that social platform here. I'm looking right now at Michael Kidd that gave me all of this great information about NAS that I totally forgot about. I forgot about True Nas. And it's just this long thread of just useful information. He's not yelling at me, he's not belittling me. He's not telling me I should have bought this system versus that system. And, you know, that's how this stuff is supposed to be. It's just gotten so farfetched with, with people just yelling and fussing about any and everything. And that's why I just stay away cuz I, I just don't want to pollute the good energy here in the four walls of,

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
I also, I also wonder especially for you Jason, cuz you've been doing this for a long time, almost as long as I have, if you're not just tired, as I am tired of sticking your head out and just say, I want to, I want to, I wanna be a hermit. Are you ready? Sometimes

Jason Howell (01:47:38):
Yes. Are you ready? Sometimes I absolutely

Leo Laporte (01:47:40):
Feel that way up a little small room, break it up and have people push food over the top to you. <Laugh>. That's cause I am, I ask

Jason Howell (01:47:48):
Have I even, even I get that once a while.

Ant Pruitt (01:47:50):
I, I haven't been doing this as long as you are, but I enjoy just the, the solitude from time to time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:47:56):
It's, well, so much

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
Our iPhone, sorry, go ahead.

Jason Howell (01:48:01):
Well, I was just gonna say, so much of my career has, has been sharing and, and, and putting my thoughts and my words and my feelings and, and everything out there. And I think you're, I think you're right to a certain degree, Leo. I, I absolutely feel that from time to time where it's like, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
There's a private citizen

Jason Howell (01:48:18):
That, that wants a simpler, sometimes I just want a simpler Yeah. A normal. And sometimes that doesn't involve sharing every piece of my life,

Ant Pruitt (01:48:27):
Which, amen.

Jason Howell (01:48:28):
I don't know. But I also feel bad admitting that on this show because so much of my career is built around being public and being kind of in that role. So then I feel like I'm kind of like retracting myself from this community that largely is incredibly welcoming. But it's just that one little portion that is, can be negative enough that it's like, well, why would I invite that negativity? Why not just not have it,

Leo Laporte (01:48:55):
You know, it's such a Leo. I don't wanna be ungrateful cuz it's such a privilege to get to do what we do.

Jason Howell (01:49:03):
100%. I

Leo Laporte (01:49:04):
Truly am. And, and honestly to me, what more and more it feels like when what we do is a conversation mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with, you know, our friends, the hosts, but also with our community. And even though the, I wish the community all had a seat at the table cuz it's, it would be great if we could do that, but we do as much as we can for that. We have a stage open now all the time. We have the IRC open all the time. I read the master on, I read the TWiTforms. I know you all do too. So I feel like we're, we're actually kind of privileged to be in a conversation. And I don't mind the conver I like the conversation. What I don't like in the community, within community, what I don't like is the general performative, well, basically it's what tweeting is, which is, is shouting out to the world. I don't think what I have to say is that important. For one thing, <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:58):
I think it's a, I think it's a risk of big old mass media where scale became Right. The goal and performing for the whole world became the goal. Well, and this is something I learned from the black Twitter event, is what's special about black, black, black, black Twitter is not even the movements that mattered. Like Black Lives Matter, which mattered greatly. But it's the what what I, what I learned in the room that day is the value of the community for the community's own sake. Yeah. to have joy in sorrow and everyday life there. And to feel a place of comfort. And it's not one community. It's a bunch of communities. It's some people don't like each other. That came out too. But that's so different from, I gotta speak to millions of people.

Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
That's a completely different experience. Yes. The

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:36):
Internet for this, but it's mass mediated. My favorite stat in the gut parenthesis coming out in June pre-orders available now is that before the mechanization of print with steam powered presses and the Linotype, the average circulation of a daily newspaper in the United States was 4,000.

Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
Whew. Which is just about the average number of active people in TWiTdot socials, ma on instance. Exactly. That's almost exactly the same number. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:07):
Right, right. It's like a Dunbar number. 

Leo Laporte (01:51:10):
That's really interesting. So that's the, right, in other words, that'ss kind the right number. Yeah, yeah. 4,004 active users so's exactly that number. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:19):
<Laugh>. That's phenomenal. So Leo, have you as the, as the iPhone user among us. Unless, unless s gonna get drawn into further into the Apple portion. No, no. He could matter. I do not like iOS. Do not like iOS. Stay there. Stay there. Ant Leo, have you signed up for the blue sky beta?

Leo Laporte (01:51:41):
Oh, let's talk about it. I haven't been invited. Find out about it. I haven't been invited.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:45):
You sign up for it can sign up to invited

Leo Laporte (01:51:48):
You. Sign up to be invited, I think. Right? Which, and I just sign up to be invited ages ago. Oh, you

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:53):
Did? Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
Yeah. But I don't think I've been invited. So this is Jack Dorsey's last act as c e o of Twitter. He, he funded I think he put 10 million into a research effort to come up with basically Mastodon, let's be honest, or the fed averse protocol. A a protocol based open Twitter. It was money that he put in that even when Elon took over, Elon could not take back. So the blue sky has continued. I'm sure Elon's not thrilled about it. He didn't like Mastodon either. But it is now close to being released. It's an invite only beta in the app store. So yeah, you know what, I guess I should go back in and join it. But honestly, I feel like it's solving a problem that that doesn't exist, which is, you know, trying to create a fe averse, but a fe averse already exists. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we need a

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:45):
Name. Well, the question is whether or not it, it, it federates with the Federers

Leo Laporte (01:52:49):
Will be interesting. Well, right now they have their own protocol, which is very similar to Activity Pub. It

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:55):
Said it's like, like scuttlebutt when we had rabble on who by the way, was also a like order event. Oh, nice. He came all the way from New Zealand for

Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
It. Yeah. Oh, that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:01):
Wonderful. Lane Cook. It was

Leo Laporte (01:53:03):
Great. Well, did you record this event?

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:05):
N no, that's a sore point. Nope. I

Leo Laporte (01:53:08):
Would, I think this is a shame cuz we, this is something that I think the world should hear. It sounds like it was an amazing,

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:14):
I I couldn't agree more. I was, I was told not to, not by the group, not by the group by, by my boss. But anyway, it was, we have a, we have a report on it coming out very soon, and it's, and it was an amazing event. But I think it's too soon to say that that activity pub or mashed on or, or hometown or anything, is it? I I think that if Jack comes along and invents and, and, and I'm suddenly forgetting her name. The the head of blue Sky, Jay Graber invent New Things. The world benefits. Right. It's, it, it, and, and the same with Scuttlebutt. It becomes people find more good ideas in that kind of open environment.

Leo Laporte (01:53:54):
Well, let me, I haven't downloaded it. So we'll download, you can, well, let's see. It's in the app store, which means you can, but you might have to, you might have

Jason Howell (01:54:03):
To, yeah. Have to code in order to log in or whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:54:06):
Blue Sky Mobile. Is that it? No, that's a staffing service. Blue Sky vpn. No, that's a vpn. No. <laugh>. This is the problem. Blue Sky Social. See what's next. That sounds right. Sounds. So let me download that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:20):
Or it's China.

Leo Laporte (01:54:21):
Yeah, it's China. This is by the way, a big problem on the, on the App store, but I, I think that is it. Yeah. Blue

Jason Howell (01:54:26):
Sky Social.

Leo Laporte (01:54:27):
That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. See what's, let's open it. See what's happening. Private beta. Create a new account. Sign in. Well, I don't <laugh>. I, I guess I could create a new account. Create a new account. Try to yeah. Oh, how do I get back?

Jason Howell (01:54:43):
It says private beta. The app is available for download, but you will need an invite code to

Leo Laporte (01:54:48):
Create an account. Yes. Invite code that's asking for an invite code. Which I'm, you know, I did, you know, way back in the day. I just, I feel like we shouldn't dilute our efforts at this point. We've got Activity Pub. Nobody's saying Activity Pub isn't good.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:03):
Yeah. I, I kind of agree. But then again, when we talk to Rebel about what he's doing with Scuttlebutt and Planetary there were all kinds of new ideas that were entirely different.

Leo Laporte (01:55:13):
Yeah. And, and I think that's for a while. I agree. I agree. Rebel had, for instance, the idea of this portability that your identity wasn't tied. You know, you had your own public key, the identity, public private key identity, which you could take with you,

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:26):
But also with the Maori that it works offline. Yeah. In a, in a, in a, in a closed network. There's, there's no, I think we, I think there's lots of room for development right now,

Leo Laporte (01:55:37):
So Yeah. I wonder how I would get an invite. Well, if you're listening, I'd like an invite. <Laugh>. So would we all, meanwhile, yeah. I'd also like an app for Android. Just saying. Yeah. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I'm the founder and one of the hosts at the TWiTPodcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at TWiTbecause 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.

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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 TWiT.tv/advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary, who's the CEO of Authentic, you probably know 'em, 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. 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@advertiseTWiT.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red Ads on TWiT.tv. Visit TWiT.tv/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. Have you tried? You've got a pixel there. Yeah. Have you tried that? Aliens video that's supposed to crash the pixel?

Jason Howell (02:00:58):
No, I was worried. Don't do it. Come on. Flow is talking about it. Oh, Jason, don't. No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna, last time I did something like this on this show, I ended up getting myself kicked out of a Google account. <Laugh> almost never got it recovered. <Laugh>. oh gosh. There is a particular video. It is and a clip from Alien that was on you. Youtube's a HDR clip, right? I believe so. I think they've fixed it. Like, oh, I think they fixed it on the YouTube side. And then Google's pushing out a fix. I, I, so well,

Leo Laporte (02:01:31):
Let's quick, so it's Alien, which, which, how do I

Jason Howell (02:01:34):
Find it? Well, that's a really great question. It's probably part of this,

Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
You know, I should just do a Google search. I and see, let's see here. If I can find a link. It is

Jason Howell (02:01:42):
This

Leo Laporte (02:01:42):
Clip. So, but nobody responsible would put a link

Jason Howell (02:01:45):
Alien, 4K hdr, get out of there on Apex Clips

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
Alien, here's your 4k H hdr hdr. Get, get out of there. There, apparently the minute you started it crashes. The, the whole phone, right? That one with a skull at Apex Clips. Yep. That one Apex clips. All right. So you, so you go ahead. Remember the shoulder shot? We gotta watch this crash.

Jason Howell (02:02:10):
Maybe

Leo Laporte (02:02:11):
<Laugh>, you think they fixed, fixed

Jason Howell (02:02:12):
It? Yeah, I believe that they have to. She

Leo Laporte (02:02:14):
Says two years ago it was posted. It's

Jason Howell (02:02:17):
4K. Yes. The same video. So we're looking at the same video. This is the video that was linked to from, all right, you ready? Ours Technica.

Leo Laporte (02:02:24):
Okay.

Jason Howell (02:02:25):
And the second it started playing, it was supposed to reboot your phone, so I think they fixed it, whatever it was.

Leo Laporte (02:02:30):
But what do they find out? Why it Yeah, what would've caused

Jason Howell (02:02:33):
That? Well, my understanding, my brief understanding from last night is that there is suspicion that had something to do with an HDR Kodak. Huh. And something happening with this particular video with hdr. I I, beyond that, I have no clue. At

Leo Laporte (02:02:47):
Least one person reported that not only did it reboot their phone, but they lost connectivity until they rebooted again,

Jason Howell (02:02:54):
Again, a second time. Right. And Flo Flo did not write about this for Gizmoto Florence ion, but she did experience this and her did, her colleague wrote about it. Okay. So you can kind of read her experience. It's

Leo Laporte (02:03:05):
Either fixed or, yeah, it doesn't impact all too bad

Jason Howell (02:03:10):
Because, but it was but

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
I, this could have been another great viral moment. Like you <laugh> knocking yourself off Google, like me sticking best pan upside. That was the best on my galaxy Note <laugh>. Oh, wow.

Jason Howell (02:03:22):
Yeah. But, you know, how long were you off

Leo Laporte (02:03:24):
Jason, before

Jason Howell (02:03:26):
Your Out of my account. Got you. Back on. Yeah. Out by Google account. I mean, all things considered, I think it was only a couple of days, but it was still,

Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
It was

Jason Howell (02:03:35):
Scary. It was still scary. I mean, it, it was a situation that made me realize just how dependent upon my Google account I actually am, and how much that valuable I really lose if I lost

Leo Laporte (02:03:45):
Access. Sunday, we had a guy call, he his family asked him to digitize all the family v h s tapes. He did? Oh, yeah. Oh boy. And included a a video of him and his sister as kids in a, and taken a bath or swimming or something naked. And Google determined it was a child porn. It wasn't, obviously. And he has lost his accounts and business accounts. All of his ac boom gone. Oh. And the pro. And he's appealed and he's, but the problem is, you know, Google, it's hard to get any, it

Jason Howell (02:04:14):
Really is

Leo Laporte (02:04:14):
Action out of them.

Jason Howell (02:04:15):
Every once in a while, I get a, I get an email Right. Very randomly from someone online to, you know, my personal account or my work account saying, Hey, I ran across your video on YouTube. This happened to me. How did you get it figured out? And I always hate, you know, to have to reply and be like, look, it's,

Leo Laporte (02:04:31):
I have connections.

Jason Howell (02:04:32):
Yeah. Like, because of what I do, I, I knew someone who was able to

Leo Laporte (02:04:36):
Really help me. And that's probably not an option for you. And I'm so sorry. I wish I had a better answer. Don't, don't be dependen.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:45):
I get people who come to me about Dell computers. About thousand five. I wrote Del Hell <laugh>. And to this day, someone come, I'm having a problem. Can you help me? You have a connection? No, I don't.

Leo Laporte (02:04:57):
No. Dell. Hell, is that the name of the article or the book? Or

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:01):
<Laugh>? Oh, you don't know that story.

Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
No, I'm not certain that I know that you're Dell

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:04):
Hell stupid. I complained on my blog. This is before Twitter about my, my laptop. I said, Dell sucks. And then all kinds of things. I was accused of dropping the stock price of Dell, honestly, but 20%. Wow. Michael Dell came

Leo Laporte (02:05:18):
Back to the company's

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:19):
Power who started their blog with Wiman Chaka. They hired, they, they, they transferred a bunch of technicians to go solve bloggers problems before they blew up. And this led to the whole kind of structure now of social media crisis management around companies and and jerk customers like me.

Leo Laporte (02:05:42):
What? Wow, what knowing you, <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:46):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:05:48):
Well, all right. So was there really an issue? I mean, in Oh yeah, there was, there was, there was my Dell hell, August 29th, 2005. I'm just a citizen, a consumer, a guy who has my own printing press.

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:03):
<Laugh>. I am obnoxious

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
And I get to use it however I want. Oh, so this was on Buzz Machine? Dell lies. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This, the headline was Dell Lies and Dell sucks. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:15):
Not my proudest moment.

Leo Laporte (02:06:17):
<Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:18):
Not my most mature.

Leo Laporte (02:06:19):
Wow. Wow. Well, wow. Good for you. <Laugh>. You know, one thing I realized, I I was watching tv. Somebody had passed away and it was the guy. Okay. So it was the guy who Dick Cheney shot in the face by accident. Oh, right. He passed away a couple of, maybe a few weeks ago. And the

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:40):
Port guy, this is his

Leo Laporte (02:06:41):
Oic, that's the OIT

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:42):
Thing.

Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
Yeah, that's the Obi. They don't talk about anything else. They don't talk about his life. It's just the guy, Jake Cheney didn't even, he was the victim. He'd even do it. The guy, Dick Cheney shot by accident. Oh. And I thought, that's the problem, <laugh>. Yeah. Jeff, when you die, that Hell

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:00):
No. Hell,

Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
That was it. You had your moment.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:02):
Yeah, that was my moment. What's

Leo Laporte (02:07:04):
Name? Yeah. What's mine gonna be? Profe Senator Devil? I don't know. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:08):
No, no, no, no. It's, no, it's gonna be that. You

Leo Laporte (02:07:10):
Were a a bad Has a whole robot. I'm an idiot. A bad robot. Yeah, that's right. It'll be <laugh>. Yeah, that's true. We do have it all written down. <Laugh>. Here's, here's Jeff. There you go. That's it. Yeah, it might be that I was dev null. That would be, thank you, Mr. That would be depressing. Yeah, that would be depressing. You may remember him as that crappy animated thing. I never, oh Lord. Pissed off. ETT O'Brien regularly. Yeah. So we should probably do a little Twitter update. Elon right now is on stage talking about master plan number three. It's funny, when his first master plan came out, I was very impressed. We talked a lot about it. Master Plan two as well. He was executing, you know, it was things like create a high priced electric vehicle to support the creation of an affordable electrical vehicle to save the planet.

(02:08:06):
It was stuff like that. It was great. I don't know if people are as quite as interested in Master Plan three <laugh>, like maybe the Bloom is off the Rose A. Little bit, but We'll, we'll give you an update as soon as it's released. I don't know if they've, if they've done it yet. Meanwhile Elon is still running Twitter, although according to Platformer, they're the, they're the, that's gonna, by the way, be Casey Whisperers. That's gonna be Casey Newton's obituary. Yeah. Is he, he followed the Twitter collapse in the mid two 2020s. According to Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, what's been going on at Twitter might give you some hint about the next c e O. So, <laugh> and clearly AI generated Bluebird. Yep. Dolly. Okay, Dolly. That's great. Yep. No surprise. So Davis, who was currently c e o of the Boring company, loaned himself out to Twitter.

(02:09:05):
When Elon bought it, it turned out he was one of that gang and has emerged as one of Musk's top lieutenants. Even. He had just, he had his wife had just had a baby, and I think he was bringing the newborn to Twitter. Big layoffs. Another were sleep sleeping in the office. If I, yeah. If I read, read that correctly. Another That's not a new baby. And the family was sleeping in the office. Can you believe that? Another, that's a little more dedication than anybody. Totally. I, I thought the same thing. Another round of layoffs on Saturday, another 200 employees, including some big names. Esther Crawford is the one most people talked about. She was the one who was sleeping in the office, posted on Twitter, the picture of her in a sleeping bag with a hashtag charge of blue.

(02:09:52):
Yeah. Hashtag live where you work or sleep where you work, which is not a good home. Hashtag never bad hashtag Don't normalize that. But also, Leia Culver who I have huge respect for, she was in charge of Twitter spaces. A a serial startup person did some really interesting stuff. I think she did Pounce Right. Which was a Twitter competitor in the early days. Oh, yeah. All was a pounce of all people on the Do Not Fire List. Martin Dick Kiper, who was the creator of Review, the newsletter program Twitter bought, and then under Elon has deprecated has gotten rid of the thought is, according to Platformer, it was gonna be so expensive to pay them that they were on a do not fire list. But there's some, some suspicion that perhaps Elon isn't planning on paying them out. <Laugh> bankruptcy. <Laugh>. Yeah. Or can't afford. Yeah. The company's Head of Sales, Chris Reedy. Cut. what's to Sell? And all, all of this under the guidance of, of Davis. So there's some suspicion that Davis is the guy. Elon is thinking gonna take it over. Although I'd hate to be. It's very much like the Poll Bureau under Stalin, you know? Okay, here's the next round loyalists who are, I'd hate to be the next one in line,

Jason Howell (02:11:16):
Right. Beyond that. Yeah. Do you ever learn I made it this time. Oh, I'm invincible. Eh, it just hasn't gotten to you

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Yet. In December, the information reported that Musk tasked Davis with cutting half a billion in costs. Instead, he cut close to a billion all while sleeping in the office with his partner and their newborn child.

Jason Howell (02:11:35):
There you go.

Leo Laporte (02:11:36):
His success in bringing down cost, by any means necessary, has led to growing speculation internally that Musco choose him to be the next ceo. O says Zoe Schiffer in Casey Newton has <laugh> father Robert tweeted today that TWiTthat social has been more reliable in the last six months than Twitter. Is that the case? Is Twitter? Been Twitter was down for a lot of people. Right. and then the, the timeline wasn't loading. There've been some issues. Yes.

Jason Howell (02:12:04):
I haven't had any accessibility issues like that with Twitter. Okay. I've noticed a ton of notifications. Like I had to mute, I basically muted all Twitter notifications, cuz suddenly it just ramped up. I was getting a ton outta nowhere. Like a lot of promotional, like, oh, in case you missed it, sort of things. Just seeing, it's very pluggy when I log into it. It's like, oh, it, it really wants to be smart and tell me what I wanna see. And that has changed significantly. So maybe that's part of the reason why I'm not using it this much. But I haven't, I haven't seen it being like you know, seen it broken in any, in any real major way. I haven't encountered that, which I, I'm kind of surprised about cuz I, <laugh> expected with all of the layoffs that things would get really choppy. And I haven't, that hasn't necessarily been my experience so far.

Leo Laporte (02:12:55):
Elon Musk's defense, according to Sva Vahan of Scott Adams shows why he is misguided and dangerous. When Adams makes a f Adam Scott Adams, a creator of Dilbert, makes a fool of himself. He mainly just harms himself. But Musk has the power to harm others said Siva [inaudible]. Scott Adams lost his syndication for the Dilbert comic Strip after a, a racist video on YouTube. But Elon's kind of been supportive. And Elon also is accused of racism, I might add.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:35):
Well, you can, as, as somebody said on Twitter, you can take Elon outta South Africa, but you can't take the South Africa

Leo Laporte (02:13:39):
Outta Elon. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>. Wow. Yeah. Musk said, I don't agree with everything Scott says, but Dilbert is legit funny and insightful. We should stop canceling comedy. Eh, actually Dilbert's not that funny. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:56):
The dri was a funny thing, but no. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:14:00):
He Musk also said you know, let's see. The, the media is racist. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:11):
Yeah. That was the other thing. That's

Leo Laporte (02:14:12):
Great. Okay. Musk said, without Evans, for a very long time, US media was racist against non-white people. Now they're racist against whites and Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges and high schools in America. Maybe they could try not being racist.

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:26):
Interesting. He's just purely out of, out of white supremacy, land pure.

Leo Laporte (02:14:30):
Yeah. Musk agreed with a tweet saying Adam's comments weren't good, but had an element of truths. By the way, this is what racists always said. In fact, it's what racists always think. Racists never say, I'm, I'm a racist. They don't even think they're racist. They just say, no, I'm telling

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:46):
The truth. My friends is black. Yeah. They just tell truth. Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm really close friends with

Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
A black person,

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:54):
Obviously. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
Geez. And of course, Elon's tweets in support of Scott Adams who responded to by Scott Adams, <laugh> saying, thank you, Elon. So he's still on Twitter,

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:09):
Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Elon's, go ahead. Go ahead.

Leo Laporte (02:15:12):
Well, you're gonna say the same thing I am.

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:14):
Yeah. You go

Leo Laporte (02:15:15):
Boss. He's gonna build his own AI that is not, is not too woke. <Laugh> Chatt GT is too woke. And we're gonna build an AI that's not woke. This is according to the information

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:29):
We're gonna dial back the

Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
Walkometer. He recruited

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:32):
A team.

Leo Laporte (02:15:33):
You'd have to be an idiot to go to work for Elon, but he recruited a team to develop open AI rival okay, fine. Who you gonna get? If what money?

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:42):
Where's the money

Leo Laporte (02:15:43):
To do that? Oh, wait a minute. He's the richest. Like, you know, this is the thing people talk about. Oh, it's going bankrupt. He's spending all his money. He's still the, he's now, once again, the richest man in the world has something like 197 billion. He could lose all 44 billion and still be in the top 10 richest people in the world. He's not at risk of anything.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:03):
Nope. Well, but Tesla stock, it's, well, but he's losing more than 44 billion. He's

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
Leveraged it all on Tesla stock, which is problematic. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:11):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, that's, somebody was saying to me that one of our students was saying me the other day, is I said, I think that Twitter will go bankrupt and the banks will own it for 13 billion. They said, yeah, but so much of Tesla is mortgaged on it.

Leo Laporte (02:16:24):
Elon's tweet about censoring you know, chat. G p t wouldn't tell a joke in the style of it would, would tell a joke in the style of Jerry Seinfeld, but would not tell Ato joke in the style of Dave Chappelle. Which is weird, but, okay. <Laugh>, some people said that's just cuz it's not as good. You can't, can't <laugh> you can't do it. But you Elon said, you know, we need, we need what was it? We need a nonw woke G p t chat. G p t in another instance, in response to a user asking open CEO Sam Altman to turn off the woke settings for G p t. Musk replied saying, the danger of training AI to be woke. In other words, lie is deadly. Now one thing I gotta point out, there's no definition of woke. Woke is you just, well, woke started certain things I disagree with. Right. Woke

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:17):
Started in black

Leo Laporte (02:17:19):
America. I know. That's ironic. You got co-opted. It's ironic.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:24):
Yeah. It's not just ironic. No, it's on purpose. It's on purpose. You co-opt the language of your opponent.

Leo Laporte (02:17:29):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Mozilla is leading Mammoths pree funding. Mammoth is an na masto on app, which I actually don't like very much. Oh, you don't? Oh no. On it's on Mac Os. But I guess it's also on iOS. It was originally built on iOS. Yeah. I think it's a terrible app, frankly. And I don't understand why you need one on the Mac since you could just use the browser, which is much better. But again, if, if it's a venture capital funded effort in the Fed averse, I'm gonna be inherently biased against it. Cuz I am woke

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:10):
Just,

Leo Laporte (02:18:11):
Just telling you right now, the devil is

Ant Pruitt (02:18:13):
Woke.

Leo Laporte (02:18:13):
The devil

Ant Pruitt (02:18:13):
Woke Communist. The devil is

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:16):
<Laugh>. The devil's woke. There we go. Show title.

Leo Laporte (02:18:18):
Show

Ant Pruitt (02:18:19):
Title Devil is woke.

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
What does woke mean, aunt? And is it being aw woke up?

Ant Pruitt (02:18:28):
I'm the wrong person to ask because apparently I'm not woke enough either. As a black man, I get a lot of crap thrown at me and people get Oh, really stuff at me. Because I don't always agree with some of the stuff that that's said in the quote woke community and stuff like that. Cause

Ant Pruitt (02:18:46):
Some things don't make sense to me

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
Is the, is the premise. If, if you're asleep, you're not aware of systemic racism, but once you wake up Yeah. You're aware of it. Right,

Ant Pruitt (02:18:57):
Right. Because I So then you're aware. Granted, I live in a wor in this world and I know that racism exists. I've experienced racism, but I'm the, I'm probably one of the few black folks that you're going to meet that says, you know what, not everything that, that happens to me on a bad note is because of racism. Some things is my bad decisions. Yeah. You know,

Leo Laporte (02:19:19):
That seems fair. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I would, I am

Ant Pruitt (02:19:22):
Not woke when I say stuff

Leo Laporte (02:19:23):
Like that. I, I would never dream to say anyone is woke or unwoke. I don't, I don't even like that word, to be honest with you. So, yeah.

Jason Howell (02:19:30):
I I don't really, it's gotten, like I said, I don't even really get into it too often cuz most of the time they, people just, it's not for me to say black people.

Leo Laporte (02:19:37):
You should feel Anne. Yeah. Right.

Jason Howell (02:19:40):
For the record, origins and police brutality, that's where the origin Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:19:44):
Origins. Police brutality. That's the origin. Yes. Bonito says, oh, I'm sorry, I missed, I didn't

Jason Howell (02:19:48):
Understand Bonita.

Leo Laporte (02:19:49):
So it's not about systemic racism. It's waking up to police brutality, Bonita,

Jason Howell (02:19:55):
Something along those lines. That's where it started. That's where the origin is from.

Leo Laporte (02:19:58):
I'm gonna have to take it over. Check the Urban Dictionary on this.

Jason Howell (02:20:02):
So the, the expert at this is Meredith Clark, who's also an expert in black Twitter. I put up something on the bottom of

Leo Laporte (02:20:07):
The window. I'm so sad that your black Twitter event Yeah. Is not somewhere saved.

Jason Howell (02:20:13):
Tell me about it. And I know he's feeling it.

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
Here's here's what the Neva AI says. Being woke is defined as being aware of social political issues, particularly those related to racism and social injustice. It's also used to describe somebody who's conscious of disparities between different demographics and socioeconomic standings. Yep. Someone's pretentious about how much they care about a social issue. That's the other side of it. Finally, it's used to describe someone who's asleep and uncritically accepting whatever nonsense social science professors dream up to advance Marxist goals. Oh wow. That's the that's the other side of it.

Jason Howell (02:20:51):
That's the everything, it's been piled onto world since, right? Yes. Right,

Leo Laporte (02:20:55):
Right, right. What

Jason Howell (02:20:59):
It was now that Neva result, was that the AI summarizing or was that a clip? Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:21:03):
That was the AI summarizing.

Jason Howell (02:21:05):
Interesting.

Leo Laporte (02:21:06):
It was officially added. The dictionary 2017. It's, I think this is one of the things it was summarizing. Alright. Anyway, enough. Enough, enough. Should we do a quick change log? Let's

Jason Howell (02:21:17):
Do it. Sure. What the Hey Google Change log. This is one of those weeks where it was like, God, I'm not finding much. And then suddenly now a lot. Oh, there's a ton. There's a ton in here. Mr.

Leo Laporte (02:21:29):
Change log. You should be doing this. Not me.

Jason Howell (02:21:32):
<Laugh>, go ahead. Okay. new changes coming to, to Android, a lot of mini like miniature changes. Things like a Google Keep note widget for storing like a single note on your home screen and, you know, always adding to or removing from it, whatever. So Waro has shortcuts for keep Chrome getting 300% Zoom. Which, you know, this was one of those updates where it's like, here's, it was timed with Mobile World Congress and we talked about it a little bit. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (02:22:03):
Why Nice. So much

Jason Howell (02:22:04):
On all that Android. And it's like, here's a bunch of announcements, but they're all like really small. Right. <laugh>. So it's kind of silly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:22:11):
And this is for the current Android? Or is this the next addition?

Jason Howell (02:22:16):
Android? No, this, these are updates that, that hit. I think everyone on Android. Okay. Because it's done through Google Play Services. Okay. So you're not waiting for a major Os this just kind of happens. Google's announced these, some of them may be, you know, in progress and some of them already rolled out noise

Leo Laporte (02:22:33):
Cancellation and meat. That's good.

Jason Howell (02:22:34):
Yeah. Noise cancellation.

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
P f animation and drive emoji kitchen combos.

Jason Howell (02:22:40):
A fast pair coming to Chromebooks. This was announced.

Leo Laporte (02:22:42):
Oh yeah. That quite a while ago. This is for Jeff. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:22:45):
That's

Leo Laporte (02:22:45):
Finally kinda like what happens on a Mac where you open up your Bluetooth headphones and it just goes. I

Jason Howell (02:22:49):
See that. I mean, you use, I mean, with a, with a phone. I, I interact with fast pair a lot and it's awesome. Love it when it works. Yep. and it works pretty well now <laugh>, so. Okay. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:23:01):
Awesome when it works.

Jason Howell (02:23:03):
That's right. Am I doing the rest of these or I'm, I'm happy to do

Leo Laporte (02:23:08):
It. Well, you know, you just checked off three out of the list, which is good. Yeah. Android's adding support for E Why don't we trade it off? I'll do one YouTube one. Okay. Okay. Android's adding support for eim transfer between devices. I didn't know it didn't have that. EIM is really a, a revolution in how smartphones work. So that means you can have an account. In fact, I, I, I've kind of did it already. I had an account on my Pixel six, then I got the Samsung Ultra mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And in theory, I could have EIM just, you know, just transferred over. Transferred over. Yeah. And then I let, and then you've got the Samsung for review, so I could've transferred it back, that kind of thing. Right.

Jason Howell (02:23:46):
But instead we have the how do you transfer? So we end up using that.

Leo Laporte (02:23:49):
It's, it's all done in software. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:23:51):
Yeah. It's all done in

Leo Laporte (02:23:52):
Software. But you know, actually you, if you have Google Fi account, it kind of does that for you anyway. When I got the Samsung Ultra, it says complete the activation install fi. Oh. Because I'm a

Jason Howell (02:24:02):
Fi you need to put in a sim. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. I've got Mint. So I've got

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
The physical. They also support em though. They can do the same too. No, they have

Jason Howell (02:24:10):
Em, I have em for Mint. Yeah. For, I mean,

Leo Laporte (02:24:12):
Our sponsor. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:24:13):
For whatever reason, I, I feel more comfortable having the physical sim. You know, it's just so easy to look at it and be like, I want this in that. You ludite, boom. <Laugh>, I'm done. You're such a Luddite. I know, right? I I'm becoming a Luddite as I get older apparently. Let's see here. This one I'm not super familiar with. Chrome is has improved memory use and battery life on the MacBook. We talked

Leo Laporte (02:24:36):
About this yesterday on Mac break. Weekly Chrome is Notorious Pig.

Jason Howell (02:24:40):
Well, yes, it is.

Leo Laporte (02:24:41):
On, on Max, no question. And so they're trying to along almost two. Is it really? Yeah. Yeah. So they talked about some things like the tabs, they can sleep 'em faster, eye frames, they'll sleep. There, you know, there is a power setting on Chrome, which only gains you 30 minutes. But they claim on a MacBook Pro 14 inch, you can get a 17 hours of, you know, video time. Okay. That's nice. Nice watching videos for 17 hours. All right.

Jason Howell (02:25:10):
About as long. For all those times that I'm watching videos for 17 hours. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:25:13):
As long as a baseball game, I think is

Jason Howell (02:25:15):
What they're trying to. Little bit longer. <Laugh>. Just a

Leo Laporte (02:25:18):
Smidge. Waymo's starting autonomous testing in LA with no human driver. Waymo, didn't they announce, was it Waymo or No, it was Cruise that announced a million hours without a yeah, it was Cruise. That's amazing. Everywhere. Now you're start. So I said earlier in the show that, you know, full self-driving was a kind of AI that hasn't taken off, but I guess it really

Jason Howell (02:25:40):
Has. I mean, in some ways it is. Yeah. Not taken off in the way of we're all riding around in vehicles every day that are driving themselves. But this is where it begins. Right? Right. This is where that, that trend

Leo Laporte (02:25:52):
Begins. Oh, it was Waymo. Waymo. 1 million miles with no human driver. Wrong on public roads. So that's a lot. They have even more with a safety driver. 8 million miles. Now they also revealed that they'd had a couple of accidents. Bunch of fender benders. But for a million miles, that's a lot better than a human. Absolutely. Why doesn't way

Jason Howell (02:26:17):
More get as much press as Tesla?

Leo Laporte (02:26:21):
Because you, cuz people can buy a Tesla. You can't Waymo's limited to a few markets. Phoenix. Yeah. It's like a concept. San San Francisco, la and so that's why I think most people don't have any experience. I don't, I've never written in a Waymo, have you?

Jason Howell (02:26:35):
Nope. You've never been in a But

Leo Laporte (02:26:37):
You

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:37):
Raise a really important point cuz, cuz Waymo actually does it. And Tesla. Tesla promising it.

Leo Laporte (02:26:43):
Well, Tesla's kind of admitted in filings that it's what so-called full self-driving is level two driver assist, which isn't really much. Yeah. So we now know that's just a marketing term. When Tesla

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:55):
Says, you know, we talk about regulation and I, and I sound like a libertarian in these moments when we do, if you're gonna regulate anything, self-driving cars seems to be the thing you'd want to regulate from the get-go.

Leo Laporte (02:27:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Well they are technically. Hmm. It's just

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:10):
Way, the way Musk gets away with stuff. They

Leo Laporte (02:27:11):
Haven't done it. Aggressive turning

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:13):
Crap on.

Leo Laporte (02:27:14):
A lot of people complain about Nitsa, which sets the national standards that they've kind of National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration has kind of given up to now given Tesla free pass. Not so much these days. They're getting more serious about it, but they should never have been allowed to call it Autopilot. Mm-Hmm. Oh, that was, that's not good.

Jason Howell (02:27:33):
No. Agreed.

Leo Laporte (02:27:33):
What else you got?

Jason Howell (02:27:35):
Magic Eraser defining feature of the Pixel devices coming to Google One subscribers via the photos, the Google Photos app. So it's not limited to Pixel.

Leo Laporte (02:27:45):
Everybody

Jason Howell (02:27:46):
Gets devices with a te tensor chip.

Leo Laporte (02:27:48):
You get Magic Eraser and tries. You get Magic Eraser. Even iPhone users on photos get Magic Eraser you can remove. Do we, do we have it yet? Should I try it?

Jason Howell (02:27:58):
Oh it says starting on Thursday. So that would be tomorrow. It's gonna be rolling out to Google. One subscriber is using the Google Photos app. But yeah, that's Android, that's iOS all Pixel users. Not just as, it's been limited to the six and the seven so far. So nice. There you go. Pretty

Leo Laporte (02:28:16):
Cool.

Jason Howell (02:28:17):
Remove items from your photos to your heart's content.

Leo Laporte (02:28:22):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah, I would,

Jason Howell (02:28:24):
Yeah. That's a feature that I never use.

Leo Laporte (02:28:25):
Does it work? But no, you don't use it. I

Jason Howell (02:28:27):
Mean, I never think to use, I I just don't spend a whole lot of time editing. It works well. Editing photos on my phone I guess. You know, I mean it

Ant Pruitt (02:28:33):
Works fairly well to be

Leo Laporte (02:28:35):
Lightroom does this Infinity photo, a lot of programs do it, right?

Ant Pruitt (02:28:39):
Yes sir. I would still lean on my trustee Photoshop for some stuff, but Oh, for sure. I've played around with it recently and you know, like say I wanted to take a picture of the living room or something, but Kylo was sitting there, right. So I'll erase Kylo, but Carlo's Shadow is still there. So now I need to go back in. You

Jason Howell (02:28:58):
Gotta erase the shadows,

Ant Pruitt (02:29:00):
You know, and then you're hoping that it fi gets that right. And sometimes it doesn't always do it, but the average consumer would totally be fine with the results that that happen, you know. But me on the other hand, I'm probably just gonna go into Photoshop and Yeah. Fix what I need to fix.

Leo Laporte (02:29:15):
Yeah. It, you know, I have to say it'll be on iPhones, but, and maybe this will be fixed, but Google Photos can't handle the iPhone format. The hike.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:27):
High efficiency. Oh, the Heath.

Jason Howell (02:29:29):
Heath. Interesting. High

Ant Pruitt (02:29:30):
Efficiency.

Leo Laporte (02:29:30):
Efficiency. I don't think it can, oh wait a minute. As a Google one member, you get access to extra editing features. Ah, so maybe they did add that capability. Maybe it's

Jason Howell (02:29:41):
Their

Ant Pruitt (02:29:41):
Own man. A quick tip, the Magic Eraser, depending on what you're trying to erase, it works best when you zoom in and then do the eraser. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:29:52):
Okay. Yeah, I have a bunch of stuff cuz I'm a Google one subscriber, but not yet. Magic Eraser on the

Jason Howell (02:29:58):
Cutting tomorrow iPhone

Leo Laporte (02:30:00):
Maybe. Yeah. Nice. But I already had that, didn't I already have that on the Pixel? Yeah, it was already

Jason Howell (02:30:06):
You, you would already have it on your pixel. Yeah. Yeah. The seven, the six, the six A you know, and, and on the pixel, God I think it's integrated into the camera. Not necessarily the Photos app

Leo Laporte (02:30:19):
Limited. Ross recorded even says I shoot a lot in raw. I probably shouldn't shoot so much in raw. Huh?

Jason Howell (02:30:26):
You gotta be eating up your photos. Cloud storage.

Leo Laporte (02:30:30):
Ah, what the hell? You know what? I still have

Ant Pruitt (02:30:33):
Free of those things. Free

Leo Laporte (02:30:35):
Unlimited

Ant Pruitt (02:30:35):
Originals capability

Leo Laporte (02:30:37):
On Amazon photos. So I just upload Amazon as well. There you go. And then I think I don't have to upload the originals or I can't upload the originals of photos. Right. It has unlimited, you have to turn it on if you I don't have

Ant Pruitt (02:30:51):
To turn it on. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:30:52):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:30:53):
It, it, they might Google might try and, and opt you into original size by default the first time you launch the app.

Leo Laporte (02:31:00):
Right. So you'd have to say,

Jason Howell (02:31:01):
Let's say you just, you know, specific rather do that or I think they call it high quality, which is like a lower res, but high enough in my opinion. How often am I most be photos outta my photo reel and and blowing it up to a wall size image? Like I'm never doing. Exactly. So who cares?

Leo Laporte (02:31:15):
Magic Eraser. There it is. Yeah. Tap to erase highlighted suggestions. Click or brush to erase more. Yeah. It doesn't have any suggestions cuz this is a perfect fit. Pop photo's like this is amazing, but remove it. Let's, let's erase my wife.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:29):
I dare you to try to erase her. I dare you. <Laugh>. No, don't do that. No, no, no. Oh boy. For that one. Just circle it.

Leo Laporte (02:31:36):
She Oh, just circle it

Ant Pruitt (02:31:38):
For that, for that instance. Circling would work totally fine.

Leo Laporte (02:31:41):
Oh, cause it, well, we'll see what it does. Oh. Oh, it's a ghost. She's almost gone. What am I gonna do? Okay, so circle it.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:51):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:52):
And then well that's, well, well, but now I can hit do some I would, I do additional And

Ant Pruitt (02:31:58):
Didn't you fine tune it, but brushing things? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:32:00):
Yeah, yeah. Oh, look at that. It's like she never existed. <Laugh>. Sorry, Lisa. Right now she's doing the same to you. She's mad now I'm, no, you should be

Ant Pruitt (02:32:12):
Ducking, sir. She's,

Leo Laporte (02:32:14):
She's erasing your phone number from her phone. Look at that. There's her shadow, but there's no right. No, that's cool. Yeah. There you go. Cancel. I didn't want to do that. Discard. I love my beautiful. But there are plenty of pictures. What I would like to erase some people in. Yeah. Oh. Oh, she told me. Okay. She said this is a good picture of these two guys with their solo cups on the rocks. But she said I should erased this guy. Yeah. And just keep the other one. So circle. Yeah, let's try it. Let's try it. <Laugh> They don't know they're being erased in first. You said zoom

Ant Pruitt (02:32:48):
In first. Zoom in. Just a little on,

Leo Laporte (02:32:50):
But, but at first I have to pick it right? Tool it's under tools. Yeah. Magic eraser. Okay. It's gonna suggest it has no suggestion. But now I want to zoom in,

Ant Pruitt (02:32:58):
In just a little

Leo Laporte (02:32:59):
And just

Ant Pruitt (02:32:59):
Erase. Yeah. And then circle. Because he wanted to still think about the,

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
He didn't know he'd be pixel, pixels, ex. Oh my God. Yeah. Would you, where even go? Would you even know if you didn't know? Oops. Undo that. That

Ant Pruitt (02:33:12):
One. So now when you zoom out and look at it,

Leo Laporte (02:33:15):
It it, it's like he never was there. That was was You should've named the tool Stalin. You Stalin. Look at that. There you go. Now it's a, actually it is a better picture.

Ant Pruitt (02:33:25):
Yeah. Guy. For most people, that's totally gonna work.

Leo Laporte (02:33:28):
No kidding. Fake news. <Laugh>. Wow. Keep fake. Well, now what I could do is save a copy. Yeah. So I have the original. Wow. So you have the original with that random guy. So I do it and then let's see, there's there's two guys there. There's guy two guys there. Yep. And go here. No, no. One guy. More random guy's pretty good. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty easy. That's nice. Now you'll be able to do that. If you more people will be able to do that. More people. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Gmail. Client sign encryption. Now available to more businesses. Don't get your hopes up. This is not encrypted email. Right. although it does hide it from Google. Goo the feature makes it so even Google itself can't see the contents of the emails it's hosting with data encrypted

Jason Howell (02:34:18):
Can. It's that plausible. Deniability. Yeah. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:34:23):
Customers have sole control over their encryption keys. So that's Yeah. You know what? That's good. Even. And users can encrypt emails are sending within their organization as well as emails are sending to other parties. Even if the recipient doesn't use Gmail. Wa I wonder what they're using for the encryption. Well, interesting client side encryption for Gmail. And even Google can't see what you're doing. That's a Google workspace feature. I think that's good. Yeah. Right. Of course. Turn that sucker on.

Jason Howell (02:34:56):
Yeah. Until encryption is illegal. Let's go all

Leo Laporte (02:35:00):
In on it. <Laugh>. So, and, and, and I think people know this, the data is encrypted at rest on Google's servers and in transit between Gmail accounts. But the keys aren't held by you. They're held by Google. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if they were subpoenaed or whatever, they still would have access to it. Wow. So all they're really doing is handing the keys over to the client and saying, we don't have

Jason Howell (02:35:20):
'Em, we don't have 'em out of our hands. Well, speaking of your hands and things being in or out of them, the Pixel watch, that was a horrible segue. We'll have hate for effort, Jason. Forever. Thank you. <Laugh>. Sometimes it feels right to try and segue. Fall detection coming to your pixel watch. This was something that we've known about for a while. You could have used that. None of the studio. Leo

Leo Laporte (02:35:45):
<Laugh>. Yeah. You know, my Apple watch did not say it did not just taken a fall, but the other day I was making the bed and it said, did you just fall <laugh>? No, I was fluffing. I was merely fluffing

Jason Howell (02:35:57):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:35:59):
So the worst thing is, so at first you'll say, did you just fall? If you, if you don't see it or feel of the buzz, it will then go, whoop whoop calling 9 1 1. No

Jason Howell (02:36:09):
Stop. It's really,

Leo Laporte (02:36:12):
So far I've been able to stop it. But it, it happens more than

Jason Howell (02:36:14):
An ought to kind of frightening actually. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:16):
What's the pushups You do a where you have barbells and you lift one and then you put it in and you do the other one like that.

Jason Howell (02:36:23):
That's you're doing a bent over row

Leo Laporte (02:36:25):
That you push up something with it. Something. And that's the one that sets it off every time I put down the, when I put down the dumbbell and it goes working on

Jason Howell (02:36:34):
Those lats.

Leo Laporte (02:36:35):
Yeah. Get my lats. I was just fluffing Google. Okay, so now you two and pixel watch owners will have that fine experience.

Jason Howell (02:36:43):
There you go.

Leo Laporte (02:36:44):
Finally, your Google docs are about to look a little bit different. Did you put this in here? I Is that a change log? Really?

Jason Howell (02:36:52):
I don't know. Sometimes. I don't know. A

Leo Laporte (02:36:54):
Small refresh.

Jason Howell (02:36:55):
Oh, okay. Well yeah. Little

Leo Laporte (02:36:58):
Material three. Design,

Jason Howell (02:36:59):
Design couldn't put that in early on when I didn't have many things. And then that's probably it didn't trim it out. That's what I'm

Leo Laporte (02:37:05):
It on. That's the Google change log. Now you know, now you know. It's him. It's all, it's all him.

Jason Howell (02:37:12):
It's all me. Well, good work. Me. And then sometimes you, you go off the rails and you take chatroom suggestions.

Leo Laporte (02:37:20):
We don't for some reason we, we, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do we have a scooter exchange log? I don't know. Let's see. Here's pretty active bullet group motor oil defy satellite. Vin, Motorola Defy satellite link. Unveiled it Motor Mobile World Congress.

Jason Howell (02:37:35):
So, so just for the chat room. Change log has to be Google related. That's, that's the

Leo Laporte (02:37:40):
Motorola don't count. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:37:41):
Motorola is not a, not a Google. Nope. Not anymore. Used to be not anymore. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:37:47):
Once upon a time. Oh, wait a minute. Here it is. <Laugh>. He's got a bunch of, here's the Scooter X one. I'll just read the titles. Youtube help form disable posting in new comments changes planned Android 14 will bring Pasky support for dash lane and other apps. Android 13 Q P R two beta gets final feedback survey before launch. Luma Fusion video editor now fully available for Android and Chrome os. And you can now access Google tasks on the web without using Gmails sidebar. Thank you. You've done better at scooter. That's the scooter exchange lock. There

Jason Howell (02:38:16):
We go. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:38:17):
You. All right. Get ready. Your picks of the week are next on our agenda. But first I wanna plug the club just briefly. Woo-Hoo. First of all, before I go into that, just thank you club members cuz you make so much possible here. And increasingly we're having a hard time, frankly, selling ads. It's not just us. Everybody's seeing a downturn in podcast ad sales. But unlike npr, which can, you know, fire 10% of its staff when it's down $300 million in ad sales we don't wanna do that. So that's why two years ago during Covid Lisa created Club TWiTand it has been a boon. Thank you. Club TWiTis seven bucks a month. That's all it is. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get special shows. We don't put out in public on the TWiTplus feed like HandsOn Macintosh with Micah, Sergeant Paul t's hands-on windows, the Untitled Lennox Show with Jonathan Bennett, the Gizz Fizz with Dick d Bartolo, Stacey's book club. We get so much extra stuff. Ants put together a bunch of great events coming up. I think Samal Salmon is is this Thursday right? 

Jason Howell (02:39:30):
That is correct, sir. In

Leo Laporte (02:39:31):
The club. That's gonna be a fantastic little Ama with Sam. He's our car guy. Stacy's book club is coming up next month. Victor will be the the under the microscope in our inside TWiTchat. He's one of our great editors. Alex Wilhelm, who you probably know well from TWiT. He is been on for years. Just had a baby. You're gonna do an AMA with Alex and then Sean Powers from Floss Weekly. There's a lot of fun also in this discord. I mean, I think the Discord is really more than just talking about the shows. It's all the stuff that you're interested. In fact, we've gotta add, let me do that right now. An AI section. I, I feel like we should, we

Jason Howell (02:40:10):
Don't have an AI section. We

Leo Laporte (02:40:11):
Should have an ai. Heck yeah, we should. AI baby. What, what should I just call it ai? Yeah. Okay. It's text. We're gonna create a channel. Look at that. That's how easy it is. Oh. And I have to alphabetically sort it, so I'll drag it up to the top. Wait,

Jeff Jarvis (02:40:25):
I was gonna say, where is it?

Leo Laporte (02:40:26):
That's how easy it is for us. <Laugh>. Yeah, you can't do it, but that's okay because Antis very active and so if you have a request, there's a request channel, you can add it. So there you go. There's our AI channel. See I'll tell you what it should

Jeff Jarvis (02:40:40):
Be. Wait, wait, wait. How did beer get above ai?

Leo Laporte (02:40:44):
How did beer not above, not above ai. How is it not above ai? Are you serious now? Oh my God. AI is already alive. It's alive. Oh. that's why we love the club because the people in the Discord are club members and it's, and it's just a great community to hang out in. We also I should add, have stuff that, you know we like before and after the shows, there's just a whole bunch of content that we don't have a place to put. It all goes into the club and it's just, I think, a great way to support what we do. I really appreciate it. And I think you get the benefits of it. Seven bucks a month, if you're not yet a club member and you're not, cuz you're hearing this, I guess. Please do me a favor and go to TWiT.tv/club TWiTand sign up. You could buy it for a whole year. 84 bucks. By the way, I should point out, when you do that single-handedly, you are guaranteeing another 12 months of shows. Cuz we can't stop now. You've paid for true shows through March 1st, 2024. We have to do

Jeff Jarvis (02:41:51):
It. Don't book sell. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:41:51):
You. Yeah. So by signing up for a year, you're in a way singlehandedly extending the life of TWiTby an entire year. <Laugh>. Wow. How about that? Talk about power that always resets Daisy's nightmare by the next person that buys the year subs. Oh yeah. Whoever bought it last adds another five minutes or whatever. We're gonna be here forever. Twitdo not going anywhere. Well, I will tell you this, it'll be the canary. If it goes away, then you know, you got one year, the clock is ticking. Oh boy. We hope we don't have to do that, honestly. But we don't have, you know, we don't have deep pockets. We don't have, you know, government funding. We don't have VC funding. I'm basically spending every penny I have to keep this thing on the road. So help us out a little bit. Just, you know, gas grass or cash. No one rides for free. <Laugh>, I think is is the slogan <laugh>? I think I heard something like that before, but I can't, I can't exactly remember the bumper sticker. <Laugh> TWiT. That, is that what you heard in the mean street? It's our new slogan for the club. I like it. Gas grass or cash? No one rides for free.

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:03):
So, Leo, go back to the state, to the discord screen you just showed a minute ago. I wanted to scroll down. There was a neat illustration.

Leo Laporte (02:43:09):
Not that

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:11):
No scroll. Scroll where you were. I I didn't see it on my screen. I don't know why. Keep going. It was somebody sitting at a desk with pictures over it. Oh yeah. That's Mr. Nielsen's handy. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's amazing.

Leo Laporte (02:43:23):
There you are, Jeff. The old, the young Jeff. There's aunt, there's Leo. And this should have that Lofi tunes going on in the background.

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:33):
Right? How did you do that, Mr. Nielsen? He

Leo Laporte (02:43:36):
He is a master. I think it's stable. Diffusion, right? Anthony's really good. Yeah. You know what we now did you

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:41):
See that somebody got stable diffusion running on a phone fully?

Leo Laporte (02:43:44):
Yeah, I have it. What?

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:46):
On

Leo Laporte (02:43:46):
Phone on my iPhone.

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:48):
On your phone? Wow. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:43:50):
I've had it for some time

Jeff Jarvis (02:43:51):
Offline. Wow. Yeah. I thought you had it on a computer.

Leo Laporte (02:43:54):
No. Well, I have it on a computer too, but I also have it on the phone. And the reason you can do that is because the models aren't that big and the iPhone has a neural processing unit. I mean the, you forget how powerful these things are in our pocket. Yeah. what was it called? I have to, I have to remember what it was called. It would probably be in my pictures. My, my pictures thing. But where is that not productivity, that's for sure.

Jeff Jarvis (02:44:22):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:44:22):
<Laugh> the opposite of productivity. Maybe it's in photos. Oh yeah, it is. Draw things. It's called, it's it's so, oh, nope, nope. Yep. <laugh>. So it's, this is a paper cut Christmas card. I, dr. I i drew withdraw things. If you've used stable diffusion, you'll recognize the interface. That's the stable diffusion interface. Yeah. And you can you can add different where is it? Here it is. You can add different models. So it has a lot of the stable diffusion models versions, but it also has, you know, cyberpunk and tron and there's an open journey style Eldon ring style. So these are just the models. Now they're, they're fairly big. You wouldn't add a whole bunch of 'em. Let me add Eldon ring. Oh no, I think I already have that need to download the selected model over the network. Proceed. And it is as they all are 1.6 gigs, but that model is now on the phone and the phone actually works pretty fast, almost as fast as it would on a GPU based Wow. System. Oh yeah. Impressive draw things. It's called, it's free. It's a stable diffusion for the iPhone. That's been out for a while. Alright. Right.

(02:45:36):
Picks of the week picks now Jason. Yeah, you, you don't have to do a pick. You were a last minute.

Jason Howell (02:45:41):
Oh, I, I have one in there.

Leo Laporte (02:45:42):
All right. Yeah. What is it?

Jason Howell (02:45:44):
Well, I just thought I would kind of throw a bone for the app artifact. I don't know if that's been been talked about.

Leo Laporte (02:45:51):
Much only peripherally, and I'm actually glad you brought it up. I've been meaning to, this is by Kevin Syk, the guy who started Instagram and his partner.

Jason Howell (02:45:58):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was just like a couple of weeks ago that they really opened it up and allowed everybody to kind of get in and start using it. We talked about it a little bit on all about Android last night. And I think the general comparison or consensus by us on the panel last night was that it's hard to tell right now what is different between artifact, which is like a, they're, they're billing it as like an AI-driven social news aggregator, right? Like, here are the news items that are, that are happening right now that you would like or you would be interested in. And it's hard for me to really tell the differences between what Artifact is doing and what something like Google News is doing. Cuz I use the Google News app on, on Android quite a bit, and Google, of course, is making the same determinations on the backend as far as what news it thinks. Whoa, what's up? Build by friend. Bill

Leo Laporte (02:46:48):
Gross. I was just about to share this to you. So, well, it's billionaire. That's different. Bill Gross. Oh, okay. And it's New York Post. That's, that's, but I will show you the disadvantage to this. When I share it to somebody else, send it to my mom, she's gonna really

Jason Howell (02:46:58):
Want, oh, and it's, it's rats. It's

Leo Laporte (02:47:00):
A link Yeah. To not New York Post, but artifact.news. Right. And that's what, it's the same thing. Apple News does this Google does not. Google News does not. No,

Jason Howell (02:47:10):
I

Leo Laporte (02:47:10):
Don't believe so. No. It's shared the actual article. And so I think that's kind of a negative on this. Yeah. To be

Jason Howell (02:47:15):
Honest, you gotta drive those users, right? Yeah. you get some stats after you've read a number of articles. You know, they, they actually, it's kind of gamified a little bit. Like if you go there, you've got 37 reads. I think once you get to like 50 reads, then it gives you kind of like a thumbs up and says, Hey, you've trained our system, we know you better and we'll start, you know, giving you more appropriate or accurate stories. But you can kind of see, you know, what are the topics that I follow closely? What are the publications that I tend to read most things like that. So, but, but it's still like,

Leo Laporte (02:47:48):
You can also follow friends. I'm gonna follow Renee. Oh, wait a minute. Is

Jason Howell (02:47:52):
It following or is it just inviting us? I think it's just inviting, inviting them to

Leo Laporte (02:47:55):
Use it. So I'm on a two day streak. I have 37 reads. Yeah. so they've gamified it

Jason Howell (02:48:00):
A little bit. Yeah. It

Leo Laporte (02:48:02):
Supposedly gets smarter as you as you read. Yeah. It's one of those things like TikTok, you wanna be really careful about what you open.

Jason Howell (02:48:08):
Yeah. Right. Be really sure. Yeah. because certainly they're, you know, they're tracking your scrolls and how long you pause on a certain thing and, and click into. And I, yeah. I don't know. I've, I've always, the link on Google News has done a really good job of, of giving me,

Leo Laporte (02:48:22):
Oh, you put up a, the wrong link. Oh, did I? Wait a minute. Catalog,

Jason Howell (02:48:26):
Identify and assess all of your art and collectibles

Leo Laporte (02:48:29):
In one place. Well, don't you have a lot of art,

Jason Howell (02:48:31):
Jess? Oh, shoot. I did. Oh, I linked to the wrong one. Look at,

Leo Laporte (02:48:33):
Look at all of

Jason Howell (02:48:34):
That <laugh>. Yeah, you're right, you're right. Here instead. Artifact.News. That's like their, that's why I was confused. I was like, this doesn't look like a feed at all. Yeah, no, sorry. I I did that last minute before coming in here. So artifact.news, if you want to go and check it out, there's no like, wait list or anything, you can just tell it was there. Was opened it up. Now they've opened it up. But worth checking out. You know, I think for me the jury's still out as far as you know, Google News is so ingrained in my, in my usage that I just use that all time. So will I start to use artifact? I, I don't know at this point. I don't know why I would, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it a, the

Leo Laporte (02:49:14):
Shot. So I agree. Artifact news, it's worth, certainly worth paying attention to. Yeah. Especially cuz if it's it's lineage Jeff Jarvis en numeral of, of

Jeff Jarvis (02:49:25):
The week. So I, I'd do anything, you know, for make fun of myself for the purposes of the show. I, I I, I, I try to put myself out there. So I've been watching with mixed views, the teenage look filter on, on TikTok.

Leo Laporte (02:49:43):
Yeah. I did it. It didn't, it didn't make me look younger. Did it make you a little,

Jeff Jarvis (02:49:46):
The same thing here, <laugh>? I I did. I was really

Leo Laporte (02:49:50):
Bummed. Put like

Jeff Jarvis (02:49:51):
I made a TikTok with it's,

Leo Laporte (02:49:53):
I can only do so much apparently. <Laugh>. Well, exactly. I've been seeing all these people on TikTok looking young, and then I thought, well, I try this.

Jeff Jarvis (02:50:02):
So that's mine.

Leo Laporte (02:50:03):
Let me see yours here. Do this is Jeff looking younger? Supposedly. no. Which one's? The younger's. Which <laugh> Which one's the younger? Yeah. Which one? Mine. Was it worse than that? I guess maybe the top one. Mine was worse than that. The top one was a little, I was so disappointed. So disappointed. I let me let see if I can get it to, to work here. So in order to do this, you, you have to swipe into your TikTok plus pictures and I'm gonna do a filter and I'm gonna do the the younger filter. Where, where, where do they stick that one? Is it Portrait?

Jeff Jarvis (02:50:43):
I, I, I came to it by Googling

Leo Laporte (02:50:45):
Original Sunny Vitality, warmth, vlog, dim peach, pink Use use. Look how much younger I look than I did. It's the Ute. It doesn't look any different. Turn it on. No, no. Turn it off. Turn it on. Turn it off. It doesn't change a thing. And I have it. Hundred. A hundred percent. Hmm. It's just darker. And filters

Jeff Jarvis (02:51:14):
Can, probably looks like a dashing, you know, high school.

Leo Laporte (02:51:17):
Yeah. It makes him look younger. Makes me look the same age. Oh. Oh, I you wanna try it? Here, here, here. You'd be my guest. See if it does anything. What is it? It's a effect. And then Yeah, that's off.

Jason Howell (02:51:31):
Okay. Is it even doing

Leo Laporte (02:51:34):
Anything? I'm not. Oh, maybe I'm not doing it right. <Laugh>. Is it under effect? How about, I don't even know where to look. Yeah, it's in the, it's in the filters. Let me see you though, Jeff. It's also posted his glamor look and that I No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:51:46):
That's, that's a controversial one right now as everybody's using the glamor one.

Leo Laporte (02:51:51):
Yeah, it's kind of that, that one made you look younger. You look beautiful. I just want to kiss your big rugged, handsome face. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:52:01):
Which went straight down my beard.

Leo Laporte (02:52:03):
<Laugh> teenage look.

Jason Howell (02:52:04):
Oh, okay. So you weren't in the right area. Oh. So there we go. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:52:09):
Oh, oh,

Jason Howell (02:52:10):
Oh. I dunno how Yes. I, I do look. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:52:13):
Let me try. I know how

Jason Howell (02:52:14):
To do that. I wanna look young. Oh, now you got it.

Leo Laporte (02:52:18):
I do look younger. Oh yeah. It's freaky

Ant Pruitt (02:52:22):
<Laugh>. What is the filter code? Because I, I, I don't see

Leo Laporte (02:52:25):
This. My hair is darker. Uhhuh

Jason Howell (02:52:27):
<Affirmative> a little darker on the top there. Yep. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yeah. It's a little strange. <Laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (02:52:32):
Look like Grandpa Munster. I don't know how that helps <laugh>. It does. Okay. Oh boy. Thank you. Thank you. I

Ant Pruitt (02:52:41):
Dunno to do so many filters in here. I know.

Leo Laporte (02:52:43):
I was looking the wrong one. I was looking at youth, but you was supposed to be teenage. Look, well,

Jason Howell (02:52:47):
There's, I think, I think you were you. Yeah. I think there's a difference between like, when you're in the general camera mode, there's like basic filters and then there's the filter section, which are like all of the like expanded, like trending things and stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:53:00):
That's what, oh, that was a basic filter. It wasn't a good one. Right. Well now I want, I want this all the time. <Laugh>. Oh my gosh. Ladies, gentlemen it is now time for Ant Pruitt and his pick of the week.

Ant Pruitt (02:53:14):
<Laugh>. Oh my gosh. Let me put this TikTok stuff down cause I don't know what I'm doing with it. My pick Aran and, well actually it's Aperture and their other brand Aran Day in out some new gear yesterday in particular, the affordable Amran C o b chip on board S series lights. I've spoken about them before. But these are their updated versions and they're still quite nicely priced. You can use these for photography. You can use these for video. Some of them are really portable if you can just attach a DTaP battery to 'em. And they work with a Citus Link mobile app, so you can do some effects and things like that or control the, the brightness and so forth. So yeah, check 'em out. M

Leo Laporte (02:54:02):
I n i I would like to have this for a trip cuz then Lisa could hold this. I would use my my Osmo six. And there you go. A selfie stick. And people would think I'm an influencer. Maybe we'd get they,

Ant Pruitt (02:54:14):
They, that's exactly what they would say. Let, I bet he's on TikTok.

Leo Laporte (02:54:19):
Especially if I use the teenage filter <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. He's the, the young H C O B lights. C s lights, S series, S series from a P U t u R e.com. You have a book too though, right?

Ant Pruitt (02:54:35):
Aperture. Yeah. And then my last pick is called How Y'all Doing by Leslie Jordan. I listened to the audio book and I really enjoyed this book. He talks about his struggles. He's a comedian. He died re recently had a car accident Oh. Down in la Oh no. But he's a comedian. He's from Nashville, I wanna say the Nashville area. And he's so southern.

Leo Laporte (02:55:01):
Well, let me play a little bit of the sound here. So excited to be playing Beverly again. Oh, he sounds like Truman Capote a little bit. Oh yeah. Great. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (02:55:10):
Yeah. And, and he is, I I love listening to a part where he, he, he, he's always talking about, it's just awful. It was

Leo Laporte (02:55:17):
Just awful. I'm downloading this southern accent. I can't wait. This sounds great.

Ant Pruitt (02:55:22):
Gets me every time. He's so funny. But again, he talks about his battles with alcoholism. He talks about his battles of being in the south and gay and the stuff that he had to deal with growing up back in the, you know, long time.

Leo Laporte (02:55:36):
But he became famous on Insta,

Ant Pruitt (02:55:38):
Right, on Instagram is when he blew up. Yeah. just a handful of years ago. Right, right when the pandemic started. And he didn't, he knew nothing about Instagram. He talks about it in the book and just, it's, it's a really good story. And some of his stuff talking about his therapy sessions were great and how people deal with fear and how people deal with manufactured fear and stuff like that. It's a really good book. And it's called How Y'all Doing by Leslie Jordan. And in, and a good book on dealing with acceptance and self-acceptance and being able to walk in a room and just loving you for who you are regardless of the room that you're in. And it's, it's, it's a good one.

Leo Laporte (02:56:20):
I love that. I'm, I'm, it's putting it on my list. It's so funny. I love his voice too. It's,

Ant Pruitt (02:56:26):
Yeah. He was on Will and Grace too, ah, years ago. If you've ever saw that show.

Leo Laporte (02:56:31):
Okay. <laugh> Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived and yeah. This is when you wanna listen to Yeah. You

Ant Pruitt (02:56:40):
Yeah. Listen his hear

Leo Laporte (02:56:41):
His voice. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:56:42):
Extra personality Nice. Comes through that way.

Leo Laporte (02:56:45):
Thank you, AntGood. Recommendations. And thank you all for joining us. Thank you for filling in for Stacey.

Jason Howell (02:56:51):
What? My pleasure.

Leo Laporte (02:56:52):
Fun. She feels better and producing at the same time. He's an amazing fella. Added a lot to the show I thought too. So yes. I really appreciate you coming in. Always doing the show. Yeah. I told him you don't have to work today. Said, I'm working <laugh>.

Jason Howell (02:57:07):
Yeah. What I said was like, we're doing a show. It's kind of not work.

Leo Laporte (02:57:10):
Like I, I'm here,

Jason Howell (02:57:12):
We're doing a show,

Leo Laporte (02:57:13):
Like Yeah. Oh yeah. You're right. It isn't

Jason Howell (02:57:15):
Work. We're, we're

Leo Laporte (02:57:16):
Talking. We shouldn't call this work. It's too much fun. Yes, yes, exactly. You'll catch Jason on all about Android every Tuesday night and tomorrow on Tech News Weekly. Maybe get Mike McCue on. That'll be interesting.

Jason Howell (02:57:25):
Yeah. Look into it once we're

Leo Laporte (02:57:27):
Done here. Nested on nice guy. Very nice guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:57:30):
Do you happen, happen to have his contact? I have his

Leo Laporte (02:57:32):
Masked on. He just, he tutored us.

Ant Pruitt (02:57:36):
Al al Pgan. I, I hung out with him not too long ago here in the Bay on his boat. Everybody, he

Leo Laporte (02:57:40):
Knows this guy. Yeah. He knows who we are. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. On his boat,

Ant Pruitt (02:57:44):
On his sailboat.

Leo Laporte (02:57:45):
Wow.

Jason Howell (02:57:47):
Oh, that, that guy. Okay. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative> <laugh>. Yeah. I remember hearing the story of the sailboat. Yes. I will reach out to him and see you about tomorrow for t n w.

Leo Laporte (02:57:57):
Very nice. Yeah. Thank you. We will see you then. Thank you to Mr. Jeff Jarvis. Should I read it all? I'll do it. What the hell? No, don't bother. He's the Leonard Town professor for journalistic innovation. We got the singers. They're standing by. We Yeah, they're there. I kept them staring at

Jason Howell (02:58:13):
Us, us for three hours

Leo Laporte (02:58:15):
At the Craig Numark. Craig Numark. That's it. Talking about not having a job. Graduate school of journalism at the City. University of New York. City of New York City. Thank you, Jeff. We appreciate you being here. And of course, Ant Pruitt catch him on hands on photography and wherever wherever he is, joy follows. He comes in on Sundays. We're gonna see a little bit more Ann on Sunday as we as it's gonna be fun to watch Micah try to help you understand how how the Macintosh works. It's all new, it's all different and we're gonna have to get you deep programmed. Geez. A little Mac handle. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:58:57):
I'm, I'm enjoying the system other than now I have to buy another dag gum monitor because my other monitor died. It's, that's the rabbit hole that I was afraid of. I buy this new computer and I'm gonna end up having to keep spending more and more money and sure enough, that's exactly what's happening now. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:59:14):
But, but at the end of the day, you're gonna have a, another new monitor that's,

Leo Laporte (02:59:20):
That's the TWiTway.

(02:59:24):
A little programming note. I will be back Friday, 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern for a special triangulation. You know, when we can get somebody really interesting, I like to bring triangulation back. The club will be invited to join us for questioning, and of course we'll put it out as a triangulation and a Twitter event. Feed George Church, widely regarded as the founding father of genomics. This guy has a lot to say. He's at Harvard, Robert Winthrop, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University at m i t founding member of the Weiss Institute for biologically inspired engineering at Harvard. How about that? He is, he's a serial startup guy. Serial entrepreneur. But I'm very interested in what he thinks about the future of biotech and particularly of genomics. The father of genomics joins us Friday for a special triangulation 9:00 AM Pacific. Get up early. I will. And we look forward to to talking to him. He's also a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the one that sets the, the clock, the hands on the clock, <laugh>. And it's, by the way, the clock is closer to midnight than it's ever, ever been.

Jason Howell (03:00:35):
It's ever been. Oh, that's, that's fascinating.

Leo Laporte (03:00:38):
That'll be an interesting conversation. Yes. we thank you all for joining us. We do TWiG on Wednesdays 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern 23 sorry, 2200 utc. You can watch us do it live. If you want to get the first edition at Live TWiTtv. If you're watching live, join us in the chat room, the IRCs Open. All you don't even need, need an IRC client, just go to IRC dot twi tv. We also have of course, that fun discord now with AI and <laugh> and if you're in the club, John <laugh>, everybody's putting up their ai creations. That's pretty funny. Is that me as Frida Kalo? Yeah. Okay. I yeah. I like it. I like it. If you're in the Discord, you can join us there too. We have a conversation going throughout the show after the fact on-demand versions of the show available to all ads supported at TWiTtv slash TWiG. There's a YouTube channel also Add, supported, dedicated to This Week in Google End. Of course, you could subscribe in your favorite podcast client and get it automatically the minute we're done. Fun show today, everybody. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time on this week weekend. Google. Bye-bye. Bye.

(03:01:48):
Bye-bye.

Speaker 7 (03:01:50):
Hey, I know you're super busy, so I won't keep you long, but I wanted to tell you about a show here on the TWiTNetwork called Tech News Weekly. You are a busy person and during your week you may want to learn about all the tech news that's fit to, well say, not print here on Twitter. It's Tech News Weekly. Me, Micah Sergeant, my co-host Jason Howell. We talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. And we love the opportunity to get to share those stories with you and let the people who wrote them or broke them, share them as well. So I hope you check it out every Thursday right here on TWiT.