This Week in Google 719, 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 with Jeff Jarvis, Ant Pruitt, Stacey Higginbotham. The SEC is going after Binance and Coinbase, but should they, Minecraft comes to the Chromebook. Jeff's really, really happy about that. And we'll talk about the state of media today. It's all coming up next on TWiG podcasts you love

Stacey Higginbotham (00:00:27):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:29):
This is TWiG This Week in Google. Episode 719. Recorded Wednesday, June 7th, 2023. Bromides and Bluster. This Week in Google is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free. And melissa.com/twit

(00:01:09):
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Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:14):
Was about to say which Apple is going to put on a watch. On a

Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
Watch. There you go. Look at that from hands on photography. Hi Ant. That was Stacey Hiat them from Stacey on I o T. Hello, Stacey.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:26):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (00:02:26):
What's show me your band on your wrist

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:30):
Bracelets. Oh, by bracelets. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
That's pretty, is that pride? Oh, that is. Yes. I really

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:34):
Like that. No, they're like it's pride

Leo Laporte (00:02:36):
Ish.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:38):
It is. I mean, I am proud <laugh>, but <laugh>. So yeah, there, this is actually a good gift for people. Y'all, if you have women in your life or men, who,

Leo Laporte (00:02:49):
Is it a USB key? In a bracelet?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:52):
No, it's just a nice looking bracelet. Oh, <laugh>. It's by a woman named Roxanne Aine, I think. Els I dunno. I

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:59):
Bet there's a secret code to it. That's what I'm

Leo Laporte (00:03:01):
Talking. Oh yeah. Maybe could be. That's Aline, that's her, that's her name. It could be a, they're, they're great. It could be a barcode. It can't just be a regular bracelet. No, we're trying really hard you to make it, give it a tech angle of some kind. It's not, it doesn't have a tech angle. It just looks nice. Is his happen? Anything you can't control,

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:20):
You hit the turquoise and something happens, you have to wait until something else happens. That

Leo Laporte (00:03:23):
Is Jeff, what

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:24):
I'm expecting you

Leo Laporte (00:03:24):
Stacey, he's the letter tap professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Numar Graduate School of Journalism at the city University. Well, I'll

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:34):
Be seeing tomorrow,

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
New York. He, he's a company, an

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:37):
Autographed copy of

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
My book. Oh, nice. The Gutenberg parenthesis. And happy birthday to Mr. Newmart. Oh, his birthday today. It's not today, around this time. Think I missed it. Jeff, I wanna say and I know you wouldn't bring this up cuz you're not that kind of guy, but I do wanna say that I am hurt and chagrined that the the school is dropping the engagement journalism program. Thank

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:05):
You very much. Yeah, we're not, I'm not talking about it. They're, they say they're pausing it. But I'm not sure exactly what that means.

Leo Laporte (00:04:12):
Tell us what engagement journalism is and why it's important.

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:16):
So, engagement journalism is a program that I, it's the proudest accomplishment of my career to start this program. And the idea is that you don't start with the journalists and our ideas. You start by listening to and observing and understanding and relating to communities. And only then can you imagine what journalism they might need. And our students come out and they get the most amazing jobs. They are changing newsrooms. They're the Trojan horses to change the relationship of the journalists to the public. And they're just great.

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
Oh my God.

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:46):
And they were talking about this. And it's a great, great program and somehow some way the flame will continue. Dammit. Good.

Leo Laporte (00:04:55):
Yeah, it's too bad. And and was it, this wasn't the entirety of your job there at

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:01):
No, no, no. I started, I've started three bachelor's degrees and I don't have a bachelor's degree actually.

Leo Laporte (00:05:06):
That's hysterical. Wow. But you're a working I

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:08):
Started entrepreneurial journalism, but that's now a, a, a slightly different program though. I would love to see that become something different. I started our executive program news Innovation Leadership, which is phenomenal. It's people, the order of managing editors and editors and CEO o vice presidents and such the next leaders. And then I started engagement with my colleague Carrie Brown, who's just

Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
Brilliant. And I, what I admire, of course is that while everybody is talking about the death of journalism and death of local news and death of newspapers, you're doing something about it, which I think you deserve some praise for. You're really looking for new ways for journalism to be relevant.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:48):
Yeah, exactly. And, and the students do that. They, they do, they spend the entire year and a half with one community. So they get very much in depth with that community, understand that community's needs and they do creative things. One of our student, one of our brain students, for example, used the Theater of the Oppressed to get women who have been abused to be able to tell their own stories and change their endings. One student was recovering addict and she found ways to serve addicts with data. Another student lost of, of sister to addiction and found ways to bring their families together.

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Oh, that's great. Wow. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:23):
It's, it's journalism of a very different stripe. So I thank you for noticing. I really am grateful. I'm very, very proud of everything the student has done. The school says it's gonna come back in, in some form. We're gonna have to see what, what they say. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:06:34):
I put in my vote to to support it. Thank you.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:37):
Thank you very

Leo Laporte (00:06:37):
Much for that. Yeah. It's, it makes a lot of sense. It's, and we need these new ways to to become, to be relevant because we need journalism for crying out loud. And speaking of which big changes, CNN <laugh>. Hmm. You know, you know, I read The Atlantic. Oh, that's what we're leading with. Yeah. Well, I thought we could do a whole journalism block. You're a journalist. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, sure. It seems relevant. It all started with an Atlantic profile. And actually, here's why I'm, I'm interested in this. This is Christopher Lick, who is the ceo, was the ceo. Teo was embedded with him for, I think more than a year, and got really unprecedented access. So much so that he was able to write a long profile in the Atlantic, which pretty much caused Chris Lick to lose his job. <Laugh> I would say <laugh> it, you know, begins, was taking,

Jeff Jarvis (00:07:29):
Brian Stelter said that no one was surprised by what was in it, cuz they were living it. Right. But once the world saw what they were living, then that was it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:38):
Well, I don't, I don't know if David Zaslav had a choice at that point. So it's because at cnn Jeff Zucker right before Zl took over or maybe shortly after he took over in the merger Jeff Zucker, who had been running CNN quite effectively had to leave because he was engaged in a relationship with a subordinate. And Chris Licht was brought in without experience running a, a giant news division, but he had experience running. He created Morning Joe for msn b c and what he worked at Conan party, he worked at Colbert and oh, Colbert, that's it.

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:13):
He worked at the Morning show on cbs.

Leo Laporte (00:08:15):
Right. So he had some experience in news, but apparently just, it wasn't a good mesh. And the final straw. And of course, that's all part of this, I think really well done article by Tim Albert Alberta, assuming that it's accurate. It ended with, of course, the Trump town hall, which all the people at C n n you know, the insiders were appalled by apparently <laugh>. They hit it fairly well, not all of them but they hit it nevertheless. It was the be I think the beginning of the end. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:49):
Perry Bacon Jr. At the Washington Post, had a superb column today about it when he was talking about licked as a an effort to create anti woke centrism, then, oh, we're centric and we're not gonna, we're not gonna deal with this or that or that. And, and, and, and, and we're gonna hide a a doctrine under this idea of centrism as if there's any such thing, especially in a world where, where we are so unbalanced to find a center between one extreme and something that's not extreme is not a center. Yeah. It's closer to the extreme. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
Right. Well, let me, let me channel an Pruitt. I don't really need to. He's sitting right here. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (00:09:27):
Boy. <Laugh>. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:09:28):
Boy. <Laugh>. I can't wait. <Laugh>. I'm gonna, he's

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:32):
The, an Leo is the, it's a little alone fact. He's the ant whisperer.

Leo Laporte (00:09:35):
I'm the ant

Ant Pruitt (00:09:36):
Whisperer. Oh, okay. So you say, anyway, let me,

Leo Laporte (00:09:39):
<Laugh>. I just, I I think that probably you are fed up and frustrated in general with 24 hour news.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:48):
I am. It's really, really hard for me to keep up with pretty much anything going on today because of the way news is reported. It, it's so sensationalized and then there's a whole lot of slant to it that doesn't necessarily have to be slanted. Just give us the facts, give us the news. There's a fire that's happening in Canada right now that is news. It shouldn't be a story that says there's a fire in Canada that's happening because of this vaccination or this whatever, propaganda, whatever. It's always some type of weird slant to, to everything that's presented to us. And I can't stand it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:28):
You can't give people news without giving them context, though. You can't say there's a fire in Canada without explaining why that fire exists. Because otherwise you're never gonna help solve a problem. So I think that's what true people get into trouble.

Ant Pruitt (00:10:41):
Yeah. This

Leo Laporte (00:10:41):
Is true. Well, but is it your job to have them solve, to solve the problem or, I mean, I understand the real

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:47):
Problems context.

Leo Laporte (00:10:47):
If you have a 24 hour news channel, you got, you got a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:51):
Lot of space

Leo Laporte (00:10:51):
To fill. Yeah. I I, I remember when we decided to do eight hours a news, this feels like it's a

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:55):
24-Hour news

Leo Laporte (00:10:57):
Show.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:57):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:10:57):
It really does. I learned my chops there. <Laugh>, I can, I can fill hours with nothing but you. So I understand that that's probably a particular challenge. Hmm. But are the days when a newspaper would just, or did it never exist? Just the facts. Right. Which is what Ant wants. Right. That's all

Ant Pruitt (00:11:14):
I need. Just the facts of the matter.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:16):
Just the facts.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:18):
Go

Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
Ahead.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:19):
Just that you don't, I imagine that if you had just the facts, you would not, they would not be as valuable as what? That's not exactly what you're

Leo Laporte (00:11:29):
Looking for. It's insufficiency, I think

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:30):
Most Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:32):
In some instances, right? Yeah. In some instances. Yeah. I, I would watch some.

Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
You wanna know why even

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:37):
With sports? Yeah. Yeah. But even, even think about, think about a sporting event mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, when you watch someone broadcast sports, obviously you want the facts. You want the, you know, the scores and the, the stats that go with the person. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But there's a tremendous value in having a commentator who knows team. It could be like, oh, and Ricky, Bob has just lost his father last week, so he is probably playing pretty poorly. Let's see how he's gonna handle this. Ricky

Leo Laporte (00:12:02):
Bob.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:02):
Right, right. I don't,

Leo Laporte (00:12:03):
I'm just, that's a cricket. It's a cricket player. You don't know the cricket.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:06):
That's

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:07):
True. Actually. Probably is. And I wouldn't know <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:09):
That's good. You know, but what I don't necessarily want is if I turn on n NBC to watch the game of the week, and it's say, Oklahoma versus Texas, and the broadcasters are clearly for the Oklahoma Senior. No, that's awful.

Leo Laporte (00:12:25):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:25):
That's, that's the problem. I agree. Neither one of those are my teams. But you don't want to enjoy the fact of the matter that this is a competitive

Leo Laporte (00:12:32):
Football game. Here's the proof of what Stacey said. You could just watch the game. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but you, but you want commentary. You could just turn the sound off and just

Ant Pruitt (00:12:40):
Give me, give me the commentary of first and 10, the color that, the 28 yard line, and it's a little warm out here today. So expect a lot of, of drop balls and humidity.

Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
I like, I love it when Tony Romo does his color because he was a quarterback. And I say, was he here? They're looking for the, you know, they're playing the pre

Ant Pruitt (00:12:58):
An eight man front, so they're probably expecting to run on third and two. Yeah. You know, so I I I love

Leo Laporte (00:13:03):
That. Let

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:03):
Me try this out on you. Not sports, but, but by

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
The way, that's what I have Lisa for. I turn the sound off <laugh>, and I say, Lisa, what's going on? Said, <laugh>. Only if the Niners are not doing well. Oh gosh. Go ahead Jeff. I'm sorry, Joan.

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:18):
There's a movement called Solutions Journalism. And the idea is that the journalists don't, don't solve anything, but that, that when you report a problem, if a community is working on a solution, you should also report that. Yes. You should let people know what they're working on, and we can judge that, and we can judge the successor failure. But to leave it alone with saying the world's effed up here and effed up there and effed up here is insufficient.

Ant Pruitt (00:13:41):
The fact that there's, they're mentioning that there is a solution out there that's factual, that's giving me the facts. All

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
Right. Yeah. Let me channel you one more time, man. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (00:13:49):
Good.

Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
Because what news does now, and it's all about ratings. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's the same reason Twitter is the way it is, is you're gonna stick around longer if you're upset. Yeah. If you're outraged. Right. And so, what, whether it's MSNBC or Fox or cnn, if they want ratings, the thing to do, they admitted that. They know that. Yeah. The thing to do is get you pissed off. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:14:09):
And

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
Then

Ant Pruitt (00:14:10):
You, that's

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
Wrong. Yeah. And you don't, you're tired of being pissed off. But that's

Ant Pruitt (00:14:13):
The thing. Why aren't, I'm not saying everybody needs to be an be like Ant Pruit, even though there's nothing really wrong with that, but <laugh>, why? Well,

Leo Laporte (00:14:21):
There's more piece lot right?

Ant Pruitt (00:14:23):
With you saying, yeah. Hey, yo, know this, this is not good. Stop giving us this garbage.

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
You, I bet you, you feel manipulated by these guys.

Ant Pruitt (00:14:31):
It's, it's, I it's very easy to be manipulated. Yeah. Very easy. It

Leo Laporte (00:14:35):
Is. They, and they know how, and they've refined over years. And it's a challenge. Now, the reason I'm bring it up there is a tech angle mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, although I, I'm fascinated by the, the soap opera as well. But there is a tech angle, because sometimes I saw somebody say, you see what Alberta did to licked watch out because Michael Lewis has been embedded with Elon Musk for the same amount of time. Watch out. Right. The, this is an interesting new form of journalism where you spend a year with the subject, a long time with the subject and create a profile. And there's a high risk level to giving that person that kind of access. Mr. Smith, Michael

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:11):
Has been, no, it's, no,

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
I'm sorry. Samuel. Samuel Bankman Fried. He was embedded with Oh, okay. Who was embedded with somebody else was embedded with Elon Elon's giving

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:21):
Hold on. Walter Isaacson.

Leo Laporte (00:15:22):
That's it. Isaac. Now Isaacson is not gonna do, Isaacson is a Hey Geograph. No, he's a Hey geographer. He's good.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:29):
He's not, he's not gonna, but Michael Lewis will make you look both Sbf

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
Dramatic. That's who he's with. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:35):
Oh, well, that'll be good. That'll be like,

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:38):
Yeah. Missed. Who's he with?

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
Sbf Sammy van.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:41):
Free Sam

Leo Laporte (00:15:42):
The whole way. Oh geez. From the tip of the top of the pops to the bottom of the barrel.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:50):
Well, your Honor, I'd prefer not to hand over my recordings, but

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
Anyway, I guess I have to. So that's of interest from a tech point of view. Yikes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:59):
You know, speaking of, speaking of him, if I may for a minute. Yes. Leo? Yes. I was doing research this week for the internet book I'm working on, and I was on the AI chapter, and I started digging into long-termism. Whoa, what a rabbit hole. A rat hole that is. Have you looked

Leo Laporte (00:16:14):
At that much? What is long-termism? Are

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:16):
Those like the long, the clock of the Long Now type people?

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:19):
Or not really? It's more than that. Okay. So it's, it's, it's what Peter Teal believes in. I think it's a little bit of Sam Alpen. Frid was also there. It's related to effective altruism. Musk is into this. So the deal is, is this is

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Where, by the way, from, from previous shows, the term existential risk comes from. Right, exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:40):
This

Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
Whole notion of AI being an existential risk, when you see that in that 20 word statement mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, that's long-termism.

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:48):
Right. So, and it's related to a whole bunch of things. I've got a let me find it here. My, my write up. But so they believe that in the future there will be 10 to the 54th human beings if we do a good job, and if we populate the solar system, and maybe the universe the future has so many more people than we have today or in the past. So that really changes our priorities about, about things. And we should really about worry about our obligation to that future. Which on the one hand sounds okay, cuz like, let's get rid of climate change cuz we wanna be nice to our great, great, great, great, great, great great grandchildren. Okay. But it brings with it all kinds of things. Like so it's, it's in the, here I'll, I'll give Tess I'll

Leo Laporte (00:17:32):
Give you the real problem here, which is it ends up becoming something the Nazis used to say. The ends justify the means.

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:40):
Exactly. And it's, and it says that, but it also, it means other things too. It's like enhanced human beings as part of this so that you can move ahead. Well, that starts to look like eugenics pretty quickly, which is another Nazi thing. Yep. the idea that you should maybe you should push resources and money to rich people cause they're more likely to improve the

Leo Laporte (00:17:59):
Future. Yeah. It's very beneficial to billionaires <laugh>. This is the first is all you really need to know, and you can stop.

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:05):
So there's, there's a an acronym Tess Creel. So it's a combination of, of transhumanism, exrop pianism, the belief that technology can make us immortal Arianism. Right. You know what that is? The sing singularity. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> cosm, a cosmic belief in, in promoting life off earth rational. We know what that is from our, our philosophy courses, effective altruism. It's good to make a fortune and long-termism, which also a little uter utilitarianism in there too. You start digging into the beliefs and it gets wacky.

Leo Laporte (00:18:42):
It ends up justifying a lot of,

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:44):
A lot of means. And, and, and the, and the things that happen like the Holocaust are just ripples. Yeah. In the bigger context,

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
It justifies a lot of bad behavior in the present because you're projecting down the road and Oh, it's all about, trust me, it's okay for me to be rich and build a house in a silo because it's all about the future and not the present. And that, I think it really is a terrible point of view. And I'm

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:07):
More about this, there's a guy named Emil Torres, who was a long termist, who's now a a non-believer, and he's written a they have written, pardon me, a lot of really interesting things digging into this, but it's so informs tech boy boys. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:23):
I, I don't think, I think, you know, it's appealing because the principles aren't wrong. And so it's very appealing, especially if you have kind of a sci-fi futurist mindset. Right, exactly. But it's used to justify really poor behavior. I mean, it's really why Elon Musk and Peter Teal, and I mean, why would, why would all these guys poor rft, why

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:40):
Does he think that everybody has to have babies? Yeah. Why does he think, why does he wanna go to Mars? Yeah. It all fits into this.

Leo Laporte (00:19:45):
Yeah. And it's a great way of avoiding responsibility for what's happening Exactly right now in your factories. Mm-Hmm. Hmm. <Affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:52):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
Oh. But I'm thinking of the future. So, you know. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway the other side of this that I thought of when all of this came out, because of course one of the, one of the issues, the great issues that Jeff Zucker had to face and Chris Licht had to face at C n n and is this issue of 2020 denialism 2020 you know, the election was a lie. And Trump won. And of course, the very first thing that happened in the Donald Trump rally that c n n hosted was you know, Kaitlyn Collins said, well, who won the election in 2020? And Trump said, I did <laugh>. And as much as she would try, there was no way she could interject on that, which they knew was gonna happen. They knew this was gonna happen.

(00:20:43):
So they knew. You may remember Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, all blocked election denialism. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. What is, how, what is the term for this 2020 lie? Big lie. Big lie. The big lie they have now. And this is a article from Platformer Casey Newton, all given up blocking those YouTube announced this week. Yeah. We're not gonna block videos with the Big Lie anymore. Twitter has long, has long blocked stop blocking that. There's this huge movement. And one of the things Casey says, which is really interesting, is that Elon has been the stalking horse for all this. Companies like YouTube and Facebook watch carefully what Elon gets away with it, twi Twitter and go, oh, Hmm. Okay. We can do it now too. This does not bode, if you ask me, bode well for 2024, forget the future. What's your

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:39):
Rationale? I didn't, I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing. Leo, what's, what's the platform's excuse?

Leo Laporte (00:21:45):
That's a, actually, I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:47):
I couldn't find any.

Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Yeah. Casey says, one function Musk now serves in the tech ecosystem is to give cover to other companies seeking to make unpalatable decisions across a variety of dimensions. Musk has moved fast and loudest, and when others have followed the responses been Bailey whimper because we're all paying attention to Elon. Right. Mass layoffs. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> stricter job performance requirement. Remember Twitter laid off almost more than half Yeah. Of its death Damn near everybody. Stricter job performance requirements. You will show up or death, a war on remote work, paid verification for social accounts, Twitter checks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, all of these served as a kind of afro. This is Casey Newton writing aphrodisiac for other Silicon Valley CEOs who proceeded to implement their own slightly softer versions of Musk's cultural reset. In effect, he moved the Overton window, I guess. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know. Yeah. He, he was so extreme. Although

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:41):
Didn't the Wall Street Journal just have a story about Elon Musk and why he's focused on the grind and it was kind of, I was surprised cuz it was in the Wall Street Journal, I have to say. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:22:50):
It was like, I have stopped paying attention to the Wall Street Journal. Did they show him in a good light really in the last few months? The Rupert Murdoch? No,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:57):
No, no. They were, they were saying his focus on the grind is he, he's basically focused on this despite the fact that employees hate it and he's trying to convince them to work more than they really should. Again, I was surprised to see it in the Wall Street Journal.

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:12):
Leo's right. They've been, they've been promoting Musk, they've talked about the Musk doctrine. They've been trying to make him seem more serious than he we know

Leo Laporte (00:23:19):
He is. Elon Musk is all about the non-stop grind and he can't stop talking about it. Yeah. I'm not sure this is, is this negative billionaire tries to motivate workers with focus on sacrifice. Yeah. Journal. We're talking about as many push for work life balance. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So this is kind of negative. It

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:34):
Was, it was a little skeptic. It was skeptical of his focus on the grind. It basically saying that it's really just designed to make employees work harder without any sort of compensation. Basically, it's, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
Musk says he works 120 hours a week. <Laugh> works on what asked at the Wall Street Journal, c e o Council Summit in May about managing his workload. Musk says he tries to divide his time predominantly between one company each day. So Tesla's Tuesdays, <laugh> kidding. He thought it was Taco. No Taco Tuesday. Tesla say Tesla Tuesday, though. He might end his day working on Twitter, which also has a T so it could be Twitter Tuesday. Musk says, with the acquisition of Twitter, his work has exploded to more than 120 hours a week.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:20):
I don't, how is that possible for all

Leo Laporte (00:24:22):
17 hours

Ant Pruitt (00:24:23):
A day?

Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
Leadership, 17 hours a day. I mean, thanks for the math. We needed that Jaber B seriously <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:29):
I was like, oh, let me calculate that real fast.

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
<Laugh>, he says he takes off Jimmer B or was there a calculator involved? No. Gemer B'S very good. He's got a mine. I know. Steel Track. A week earlier, Musk suggested to see N B C in an interview. He takes off two or three days every year. Well, it's kinda like my life. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:48):
I, I don't know, man. It, it's, I I there is a fine line between the quote unquote grind and, and just stupid idiocy. Yes, you should work hard and try to, you know, improve your, your company, improve yourself or what have you. But you should also

Leo Laporte (00:25:04):
Sleep <laugh> just to stay alive. Reasonable management. We are always telling you to take a vacation. Right. Reasonable management should include employees wellbeing. Yes. In the equation. Unless you're all interchangeable. Cogs Wait. Well, this

Ant Pruitt (00:25:19):
Is, wait a

Leo Laporte (00:25:19):
Minute. <Laugh>. <laugh>. Stop talking. Stop talking <laugh>. Anyway, I don't, I don't trust anything Elon says. I find that hard to believe Elon, but okay. Maybe he is. I mean,

Ant Pruitt (00:25:34):
We've all, well, maybe I shouldn't say we've all, but I've done a lot of time with, with just working ridiculously long hours. But it was,

(00:25:44):
I, I saw an, I had an end goal and I could see it and said, you know what, when I get to that goal, all of that is gonna change. I don't have to work as hard because, you know, we, we, everybody on the team was working for that same goal. We knew it's just gonna be a little bit of a, a, a rough patch right now, but just get there and then things will even out. And we all agreed on it. It wasn't something that was just forced upon us. It was, you know what? It is worth it to go ahead and push these extra hours to push this extra 20 hours a week in overtime or something, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:26:12):
Hear from yeah, Ant, go ahead.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:15):
Oh yeah, Andy, that's Elon's own companies. Like if Elon work wants to work 17 hours a day, go for it, man is your

Leo Laporte (00:26:23):
Companies, because he gets the, that's what makes him the richest man of the company. Yeah. But your workers mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta work for me really, really hard so I can reap the benefits. No. Of your ruined life. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:26:34):
No, I can't do that.

Leo Laporte (00:26:35):
Here is YouTube's official blog post an update on our approach to us selection misinformation. We craft our policies. We always keep two goals in mind, protecting our community and providing a home. Oh boy, here you go. For open discussion and debate. These goals are sometimes intention with each other. They, they feel it's important to be able to openly debate political ideas. Is it really a fair thing to say that a political idea is Donald Trump's assertion that he did not lose the election four years ago? No, it's not Three years ago. That doesn't seem like, that's like flat earthers saying, well, you know, if you had an open mind, you might consider anyway, when we first

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:20):
Go two ways, you can, you can say this is a place where, where anybody can say anything, and it's up to you to judge. And, and we're not gonna do that. Or this is a place where we're gonna try to have a quality conversation and we're going to act upon that and put the investment into that. But you can't kind of be in the middle of that. You can't, you know, and that's where, that's where section two or 30 came in as you is. You can't kind of say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna warrant that I have a good place, but then I'm not gonna do anything. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:27:45):
So, YouTube is saying, we have taken down tens of thousands of videos, but we decided to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape in the current environment. Now listen carefully to this logic. We find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, some, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real world harm. What did, what debate does that mean? I debate, I debate all those points. First of all, a lie about something that happened three years ago is not, I mean, that's misinformation, right? Is that, is that, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:27):
You also were making, we

Leo Laporte (00:28:28):
Want you to That's not political speech. That's not political speech. Maybe it is. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:31):
Political speech is women deserve the right to vote. Which at long ago in the past, and actually not that long ago, was a crazy assertion. People were like, what? No women, they're all

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):
Addled in such, they even say, so they even say, but

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:45):
There's no fact there. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:28:47):
They even say, we will stop removing content that advances false claims. So they, as they stipulate, these are false claims that widespread fa fraud errors or glitches occurred in the 20 20 20 and other parts. I think

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:00):
That's wrong. But let me play Leo for a minute. Okay. Just to say, devil's have,

Leo Laporte (00:29:03):
Are you gonna be the Leo whisperer? Listen, listen. Pruit might have something to say about that.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:07):
<Laugh>, I have to, I have to touch your thigh and get the vibrations.

Leo Laporte (00:29:10):
Oh boy. Did

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:12):
Ah, catch that

Leo Laporte (00:29:13):
In pre-show on Twit Plus.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:15):
Yeah, that was show. See, this is why you wanna be around for the club folks. You got all the fun moments, <laugh>, <laugh>. So when this stuff is taken down, the paradox were stuck in is that it amplifies it itself. See, they don't want you to know, they don't want you to know this stuff. Okay. And so, duh, I'm, again, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm not, I'm not necessarily believing this. I'm not good at this as Leo is. But one could argue that you're better off to leave the crap up and let the best stuff win. That's kind of the argument about the, the, the, you know, marketplace of ideas. And that by thinking that we can get rid of all wrong and stupid and bad things we're gonna constantly fail against that. And so why try That would be an argument.

Leo Laporte (00:30:03):
I'm channel ant in response to that. Go ahead. You can't fix stupid <laugh> <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:10):
That sounds like me. <Laugh>. That sounds exactly like me. I

Leo Laporte (00:30:15):
Mean, you, you can't win on that one. If we, if we take it down, then people say, we see. That proves it. If you leave it up, it just convinces more people that It's true. Yeah. You just can't, you can't win problem. The only

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:26):
To this is, is what the, what the, what the certain part of this country is going against constantly is education. People who are educated tend to believe fewer stupid things. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:37):
All of our election misinformation, this YouTube, again, misinformation policies remain in place, including those that disallowed content, aiming to mislead voters about the time place means, or eligibility requirements for voting. That's good because one of the voter suppression is a very big issue. Right. False claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail and content encourages others to interfere with the democratic processes. So they're gonna keep taking that down.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:05):
Does any of this discuss what their tools are for, for fact checking? What is, what they're assuming is misinformation? Is this humans? Is this just some

Leo Laporte (00:31:17):
They have these infr, they have in, they have panels, death panels. No, that's a different kind of panel they have. Okay. it sounds li So we have an election focused team, including members of our intelligence desk trust and safety and product teams. Mm-Hmm. Monitoring real-time developments and making adjustments to our strategy as needed. So maybe they're saying, look, if this really does get to be outta control, maybe we'll change this policy. We'll have more details to share about our approaches. The election comes, I think all social networks evolve.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:52):
It's going evolve.

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
Really, you're gonna have to pay attention to what's going on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because it is gonna be a very changing landscape with AI misinformation and all sorts of stuff. Yep. so it, it's absolutely prudent to say we're gonna watch this closely. I don't think, do you so remember that we just recently had a Supreme Court case where the, the plaintiffs asserted that YouTube by recommending terrorist videos, was in fact liable for terrorist attacks. Right. They, by the way, YouTube was protected. The, the plaintiffs lost that case. Right. as did, and Twitter won as well. It's both YouTube and Twitter one in those two cases. So they're not liable. That's, in a way, that's the section two 30. That's good. That gets them off the hook if they do recommend election denialism or if they take down election denial videos. So really basically all that happened is you could do whatever you think is right. I

Ant Pruitt (00:32:53):
Don't want to be in any, any of their shoes when it comes

Leo Laporte (00:32:56):
To Oh, content. We know that, right? Yeah. I don't want no part horrible job because you have

Ant Pruitt (00:33:01):
To give her to figure this stuff

Leo Laporte (00:33:02):
Out. You can't do it only to fly. Yeah. I, you know, I don't know how I feel about this at, you know, when I read the headline, it was like, why, how dare they mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but maybe, maybe there, maybe you're right, Jeff. Maybe it's, you know, doesn't,

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:21):
I mean, what, what do we expect? I I think we've got to set the expectations. I think Blue Sky is starting from scratch. Right. And Blue Sky has the opportunity to say, we are not gonna tolerate Nazis. They're

Leo Laporte (00:33:33):
Struggling like hell with moderation, but it's

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:35):
Already figure out they're own moderations hundred thousand users.

Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
And by the way, I just opened Blue Sky and what do I get?

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:42):
Oh, no

Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:45):
It's Yu Leo. It's not the internet. It's huge.

Leo Laporte (00:33:49):
If it starts recommending mushroom. Wow.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:51):
This and this is under following though.

Leo Laporte (00:33:53):
Yeah. No. These are people. Well, okay. <Laugh>, they're following. That's you your

Ant Pruitt (00:33:57):
Fault. That's under, that's, that's on you right there,

Leo Laporte (00:33:59):
Brother. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:02):
I'm like, you know what I get, I get a cat. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Mine is a cat. John John Kitty cat. Yeah. That's popular with friends.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:11):
Mine. Mine's

Leo Laporte (00:34:12):
Following you. Why am I following this guy? Wait a minute. Let's see who this guy is. I've got the

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:16):
Same cat I got Skull's cat.

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
Yeah. Scaly is popular right now. No, I guess I could unfollow this guy. He's got a nice butt. I gotta admit <laugh>. Oh, oh, you know what's number two right after is John Scally's Cat

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:29):
And look What's three look one's Three. Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
You same thing Mr. Gutenberg parenthesis. Jarvis same, same thing except

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:36):
I don't have the guy spot. Yeah. It, it is very much, it's very small. It feels very small town

Leo Laporte (00:34:41):
Still. It's not though. Cuz it's a hundred thousand people. It's pretty big. I don't what Blue? I don't know about Blue Sky. I really, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:48):
Here's, here's the question. If you are, and you've made this decision, Leo, when it comes to your instance on Master Dun, and you're able to do it because it is small and because it is Right. Somewhat homogeneous. Yes. In desire and intent. Yes. That may be the model where this works in the future. And if you wanna go off and do eight chan and you wanna go off and do Musk's Twitter and you wanna do crazy stuff on YouTube and the big places it's

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
There. I'm increasing increasingly a fan of decentralized. Our Discord is fantastic. I mean, I love hanging out there. I love hanging out at twi social our, you know, our forums are not very active. I wish they were a little more active, but you know, I don't know. Now you're, you're in there a lot, which is great community. Yeah. I like Twit Duck community. Yeah. I I it's kind of, it's the kind of the place that we think people will go to comment on shows mostly, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> scale

Ant Pruitt (00:35:39):
Different Sunday <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
Yeah. Yeah. You noticed that didn't

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:42):
Every Sunday. You know, the, probably it's a technology story. It's when watch out Gru is history moment coming up right now. Get it. When Steve Power presses and Linotypes and stereotyping came in, the average circulation of a daily newspaper in America before that was 4,000. It was a CK newsletter. It was, it was smaller than your, a newspaper was smaller than your instance. And then it went into the millions. And that led to mass Median led to a whole attention economy and advertising and this presumption that everything had to be huge to be worthwhile. I think that's what corrupted so much of our worldview mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it came from media and it went into the internet. And now we've gotta try to get rid of that.

Ant Pruitt (00:36:25):
So you're saying niche down is more effective,

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:28):
Isn't it? Yeah. Change the scale. It, it, everything doesn't need to be Mass. Mass itself is an insult. It, it just puts people in buckets. It's a way not to hear them and not to listen to them. Not recognize their, you can't

Ant Pruitt (00:36:38):
Make gaining money if you're not going

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:40):
Big. Well, if you're trying to make money the old way, but you gotta find new ways.

Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
Well, we're not met, would you? And there's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:45):
Changers. Go ahead. In niche. Well, I, I was just gonna say there some things have to be mass. Like we should be talking about climate change in mass media because we need to have everybody participate and understand. And also if weird sub-communities start niche and then they come out and start affecting things. And that's where we are with some of these like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, weird Q sub chan

Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
And h chan

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:09):
Communities and Yeah. So I I, I mean as a, as a niche publisher myself, I'm all about it. But I'm also

Leo Laporte (00:37:16):
Like, yeah, we're both niche. Niche, right? Yeah. Super nichey, super nichey.

Ant Pruitt (00:37:21):
I'm of the mind that you can be niche but still every now and then, have a couple of those nuggets out there for, for everybody to potentially help grow your, your your, your

Leo Laporte (00:37:31):
Reach.

Ant Pruitt (00:37:32):
Does that make sense?

Leo Laporte (00:37:34):
I, I am, you know, actually that's interesting. I, so obviously we're not gonna become billionaires at twit <laugh> NORS Stacey on iot gonna make you you're not gonna be buying a 60,000 square foot mansion covering the entire Bainbridge Island.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:53):
But that would be horrifying from a climate perspective. <Laugh>. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:37:55):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Who knew that cement is actually one of the big polluters. But I think I like stuff at that scale. And that's kind of what humans are built for. We're not built for mass scale. How do we, how do we get Gutenberg, Mr. Gutenberg parenthesis, how did we get to this mass, mass

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:20):
Thing? I can tell you exactly. I can tell you exactly how did I cover that in the book in a whole chapter about the mass. Cause the real idea I wanted to write about was the death of mass. Cause I think that's what the internet potentially.

Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
I think you're right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:30):
Yes. and, and it came from that again, there's a technology story. It was because of number one, the steam powered press number two cheap paper made from wood. Three paper made into rolls for machine. But

Leo Laporte (00:38:44):
That made it possible.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:45):
Or the Linotype.

Leo Laporte (00:38:46):
But who made it happen? Why did it happen?

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:48):
It was that combination of, of, of events that came together. And

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
Then Oligarchs came along and said, if we could sell a million newspapers, now we got some money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:57):
Well before the Linotype, all of the text in the entire world was set one letter at a time by hand. And there was only so much you could set in a day. Yeah. And before cheap paper, you couldn't afford to have more than four pages. You couldn't afford to make a million copies. You didn't have advertising at that scale. You charged a penny for it. And that's what you got in this book is the directory of American newspapers in 1900. And when you look at the time, and this is to your point, Stacey, the reason I ran away to get this is cuz if you look at New York City, I mean, it's just phenomenal what existed together.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:35):
Got these small neighborhood papers and then the Jewish community papers.

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:39):
Exactly. Yeah. So the Times, the Tribune, the folks ung, the Florida Vets, the Wall Street Daily investigator, the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street News, that's the Ws the news metal market report, Jewish Herald and on and on. It's

Leo Laporte (00:39:54):
He interesting. Kind of what you're promoting with engagement journalism is this notion that yes, a journal should serve a community, not just a mass market. Yes, it's a mass community market's good for the, the gannets of the world, but it, but but really for the people, it's better to have a, a a local market, an engaged market. I sure what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:16):
You have both.

Leo Laporte (00:40:17):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:17):
Because there is, there's value in stories

Leo Laporte (00:40:20):
Like a Joe Rogan, for instance.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:23):
Okay. I was gonna say there's value in pulling Wow. Small stories and niche stories up from those places to the mass. Because normal people aren't going to care about a particular topic. But it could be like, let's look at a solution. Maybe a small community in New York has come up with a really cool solution to stop people from idling at schools, which is terrible for air pollution. Yeah. It's bad for kids. Yeah. So they've created a great program. It's really important that a mass media picks up that niche solution that has been written about in a local paper to broadcast it other places.

Leo Laporte (00:41:01):
Does it have to be mass media or can it just be an idea whose time has come that spreads through the small Well, how do you think it's like mass media is gonna help it spread, spread, spreads

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:09):
Everything spread. That's how things, how did, how did Wal how did Black Lives Matter? And Me Too Spread? Mass Media came late to that party, and Mass Media did not cover those stories that have existed for decades and generations. It spread because the people had the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:22):
Mechanism, but it's spread through social media, which we're kind centralized in this era of Yeah. Yes. So we're trying, we don't have a mechanism that's good for the viral flow of compelling stories. And, you know, there's always going to be a, a culture. There's gotta be a point in the culture or a positions in the culture that decide what the culture wants to care about. Yes. And that is mass. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:53):
No. Why really? I, I'll disagree there. I disagree with you. Again, that comes to the, the economics of mass, which is what Ant was saying, is how you make money. You make money by getting as many people as possible Before broadcast, before mechanized print. That wasn't the case. And it was big enough to have a vaudeville show. It was big enough to have a newspaper that covered your community. It was big enough to have a magazine. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:17):
Maybe it was before today's economic climate and the desire of PE and the, the stage we are maybe in capitalism.

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:26):
Capitalism. Yes. Absolutely. Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:28):
I cannot believe we're participating this much time on media. I really wanna talk about Apple <laugh>. We're

Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
Gonna talk about Apple next. And by the way, what about the UFOs? Adriana Langston says, we have to talk about the UFOs. Oh, she is she on tweet? We'll talk about the UFOs. Oh, we gonna

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:44):
Talk about golf. I wanna hear Anne about, about the pt

Leo Laporte (00:42:47):
PGA plus L I V. That's scary. What the hell happened there anyway? Capitalism. Capitalism. C Mass. Yeah. Mass. You don't, capitalism hates local. It hates small businesses Business. It hates Ant Molly's huckleberry jam roadside stand. It wants Smuckers. And that's a problem I think because Ant Polly's is better than Smucks.

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:12):
And the internet enabled Ant Polly to advertise on Google and change all that. And finally get on market an audience.

Leo Laporte (00:43:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I I, I knew Mrs. Fields and let me tell you, it was a sad day. Sad, sad day. <Laugh> when Mrs. Fields started making her cookies for the world. Oh

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:29):
Gosh.

Leo Laporte (00:43:30):
<Laugh> our <laugh> our show today.

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:34):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:43:36):
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Jeff Jarvis (00:46:14):
Ooh, Tucker Scooter. Rex has another media story. Oh, Stacey left <laugh>, she just disappeared.

Leo Laporte (00:46:19):
The truth you just killed Stacey, you, you know, that should be a new thing we could do on every show you killed Stacey.

Ant Pruitt (00:46:25):
Killed Stacey. We need a new Stinger <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
Every show we could have. That would be very funny. It'd be kind of our trademark. What does Scooter X say? Tucker did his first show last Fox Night, Fox

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:35):
News as Tucker Carlson breached his contract by putting his show

Leo Laporte (00:46:38):
Up. Yeah, we knew that would be the case, right? He was and he non-competes. That'll we'll see that. I can hear y'all.

Ant Pruitt (00:46:44):
I mean does it, does it matter to Tucker Carlson? Probably not because I'm sure he wants

Leo Laporte (00:46:49):
Ahead. You know what I thought was interesting? So he posted a 10 minute video and somebody said, Tucker's gotta get some producers who understand that social is not Fox News. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. He's gotta have some jump cuts. He's gotta have some. It's gotta be less of him just talking. You know, he's gotta say, smash the bell and hit the subscribe <laugh>. He's gotta

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:11):
He's just not, don't give him many hints, Leo. Don't tell him how to do it. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:47:17):
I actually went to our staff today and said we've gotta get the smash, the dung, the red, the thing going. <Laugh>. Hi guys's. Let's talk about the Vision Pro helmet. Can't do it, sir. Sorry, <laugh>. I can't either. I know, I know. It's so hard. I think we need a bell that goes off on the show whenever a new member joins. I could do that. Wait, what about

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:41):
The punch Leo thing? That would be perfect.

Leo Laporte (00:47:44):
<Laugh>. Perfect For whom? Perfect for you. Just just give me the signal. Just give me the signal. Oh yeah, you got an now <laugh>. Go ahead. That's right. We got an ant Go's, right? That's, that's, that's a lethal weapon. That's a registered weapon. Sorry, I don't want, I don't want, yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:57):
I need, I need a button though. I really want the button. So if I have a button that vibrates that clicker, something like

Leo Laporte (00:48:03):
You need that a little, just a little cl you know, one of those cricket things he goes and it's just try it. Go with your voice and go ahead. Let's see.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:11):
Oh, I do have a clear,

Leo Laporte (00:48:13):
Oh, <laugh>. It's pretty,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:15):
It's a little latent, but

Speaker 5 (00:48:17):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
I'm glad I wasn't wearing the Vision Pro. That might have been very realistic. You said you wanted to talk about Apple, miss Stacey.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:32):
Oh man. Like, so like 40 minutes ago. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:48:36):
<Laugh>. 46 minutes ago. Well, I'm getting a Well, <laugh>, why don't we, Stacey, I said before we get there, I just want your, your, your fingernail polished color

Speaker 5 (00:48:48):
Is great.

Leo Laporte (00:48:50):
Let's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:50):
See. It's orange.

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
Ooh. I know. It matches your shirt. It's really orange. It's the color of my style here. But you're doing a thing.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:57):
This is ut burnt orange. This is actually Clemson or University of Tennessee.

Leo Laporte (00:49:02):
Oh, somebody likes that. There you go. No, the Clemson Orange is not the same as the Tennessee Orange, but those are all three beautiful oranges. Miss Stacey <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:10):
I'm like, I'm,

Leo Laporte (00:49:12):
I like David as pumpkins. Orange

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:14):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:49:16):
Sorry. Apple, apple.

Speaker 5 (00:49:18):
Apple. Okay. Apple, apple

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:19):
Headset.

Leo Laporte (00:49:20):
Lot of oranges. I think, I think I'm suffering. Some brain. Nice. <laugh>.

Speaker 5 (00:49:26):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
Okay. I think Stacey needs. So were you, so you watched the we did a whole live stream of the event on Monday. Apple announced a lot of stuff, but I think you always are watching with an I towards i o t and Apples. They didn't mention Home Kit much

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:45):
So I watched it because I was like, if they launch a headset, I'm very curious because this has been, this has been marketed as the next generation of computing and ultimately I just care about computing. Right. So we watched Kevin and I watched it together. Sure. Home kit. Yes. We were definitely like, oh, do we care? Do we care? But we also watched it because, oh my God, was Apple gonna actually do a headset and would it be compelling? And we thought, well, yes they did. And it was compelling for, it was compelling. I'll, we'll, we'll throw out the caveats later, but I, I was really excited by this. I really thought

Leo Laporte (00:50:28):
You will buy this $3,500 headset when it comes out. I will next year.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:32):
I will not buy this when it comes out next year for $3,500. Will

Ant Pruitt (00:50:37):
You, Leo?

Leo Laporte (00:50:38):
I might have to. I don't have

Ant Pruitt (00:50:39):
Miss, miss Lisa has already said you have to, just so you know. I Yeah, I

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
Know I will. It's nice to have a wife that makes you buy. Yeah, she's

Ant Pruitt (00:50:45):
Already said it. I heard about

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:47):
Yeah. I want to buy it <laugh>. I, I wanna buy. She's

Ant Pruitt (00:50:50):
Hoping that you, when you don't like it, you sent it to her. That's what that's

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Case's over for.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:54):
They, they solved a lot of the issue. Like there is a role for this sort of device in our lives. And if you take it for that role and not for it is not an iPhone. Okay. It is probably more of an additional device like the watch and maybe even the home pod, which we're not sure if it's ever gonna be, but the watch is a success that we reverse like what the heck? But it's not, it's not a replacement for your phone. Okay. What it is, it's a, it's a device that will give you deep immersive entertainment. It's also a device that could really has the potential to change the way we work. And I think that's really compelling. And I also love the sensor integration. I think the work that Apple's doing there on low latency sensor integration on a computing device will be useful for robotics. It'll be mostly useful for robotics. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it'll also be useful for bringing a spatial computing that's like, not limited to a headset, but for computing and sensor integration throughout our bodies. Like devices on our bodies to a central device. So I, I think there's a lot of potential here.

Ant Pruitt (00:52:08):
But Miss Stacey, there's been a gazillion different headsets and things out there in these last, there have couple years. And I guess timing is everything that's the difference now after, no,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:17):
Let's talk about what did Right. I, no, I think Apple did a couple things that really addressed some of the issues. So I've tried both the Oculus, I've tried the Magic Leap, I've tried the HoloLens mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So those are the four headsets that I've had in my life. I have not tried this device. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I hate virtual reality and I hate augmented reality a lot because I don't feel safe in it because I can't see my environment around me. So I thought the fact that it lets me see the environment around me and, but

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
I thought, but I thought

Ant Pruitt (00:52:49):
AR did let you see. Okay. Alright. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:51):
AR does. So the hollow lenss does mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So,

Leo Laporte (00:52:55):
So did the magic leap. So do the magical leap.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:57):
Yes. Magically.

Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
And the fact that the closest to this, because you could go either direction and Right. And I was gonna say a little da digital crown that lets you tune in or out the background, the real world.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:08):
And I think that's really compelling that gives you a lot of power, is the ability to tune in and out Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (00:53:13):
I did.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:14):
So, and then it also gives, I think the context is pretty creepy. Like the fa like the little eyes, like the vision of my eyes is creepy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it is also, that is a way to, to clue people into what's happening. And then the ability to actually do smaller gestures and not have additional hardware. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think is important. That

Ant Pruitt (00:53:34):
Is cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:35):
And I also think this isn't something, I don't even think Apple wants you to wear this all the time, and I think that's really important. Well,

Ant Pruitt (00:53:43):
You can only do it two hours at a time, according to their specs. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:47):
Yeah. Two hours on that battery or all day plugged in or however long you want. This is not something you're gonna see people walking around with it on their face. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:53:55):
Scoble will be i

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:57):
G the difference. Yes. <laugh>. Because

Ant Pruitt (00:54:00):
I mean, we got battery packs out there that, that costs nothing that you can throw in your pocket.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:04):
There may be one, or I don't think normal people will walk around five years from now. I don't think we're gonna see people walking around with us on their face. Uhhuh, <affirmative>. I think this is gonna be like the iPad in the sense like, it's a great entertainment consumption device. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And some people like it for work cuz it lets them bring their work to like their couch or someplace a little more comfortable.

Ant Pruitt (00:54:23):
And see,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:24):
I think this is a similar type of

Ant Pruitt (00:54:25):
Device. And see you're, you're saying pretty much the same things that I was thinking the other day because when, when it popped up on the screen, and all I could think about was Google Daydream and how Google just totally ruined that because it was something from an entertainment standpoint, I thought was quite good. It could have been a little bit more refined down the road and, and not necessarily require you to have your phone right there and, and heating up on your forehead. I'm sure Apple has figured all of that out from a heat dissipation and all that stuff. But the whole immersion with, with entertainment, I, I thought that was brilliant. I used to love taking a break from work, just sitting in my workspace or whatever, and then take a little 10 minute break, grab the day, daydream, turn on Netflix and watch something and, and just totally forget about work for 15, 20 minutes.

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
I I've already spoken about this on Mac Break weekly and and windows Weekly. Now I don't want to inject myself into this, but you guys are fullest. Crap. <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:28):
All right. Say more.

Ant Pruitt (00:55:29):
Look here. Three grand is the

Leo Laporte (00:55:31):
Problem. No, I'm, no, that's not the problem because it, one, one thing people say is, oh, well it's three grand a day, three to 500 a day. But you know, in a couple of years it will be less and so forth. That's not

Ant Pruitt (00:55:39):
The problem. I get this guy

Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
Lot of fundamental, fascinating. I think there's a fundamental flaw. And to me, I've seen many technologies with fundamental flaws flop. Not because they, you know, a plus on the technologies. Yeah. A plus on execution. Mm. A plus on marketing. I'm sure they'll spend billions, literally billions over the next six months marketing it. That's, that's what they

Ant Pruitt (00:55:59):
Do.

Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
But no one <laugh>, maybe I'm wrong. You tell me. I have this visceral reaction to strapping a computer or strapping a screen on my face. Yes. I don't think anybody wants to do that. I certainly don't. I've done it. You've done it. Yeah. yep. It's cool. But I don't wanna do it. I don't, I don't like it. Think it's not even that cool.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:18):
Normal to

Leo Laporte (00:56:19):
Do. I think it's briefly cool. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:21):
Think you will strap a computer on your face for an immersive entertainment like luxury or immersive entertainment experience. Yeah. I really do. I think, I think some of the things they presented are so compelling that you will not mind strapping a computer. I have

Leo Laporte (00:56:36):
A pretty good 4K tv, same resolution by the way, as the mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Vision Pro with an excellent sound system. And I can sit within about six feet of it, so it's pretty immersive. Yep. And I'm very happy about that. I can also Yeah. Look around and see my family. Exactly.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:52):
<Laugh>. So

Leo Laporte (00:56:53):
I

Ant Pruitt (00:56:53):
Didn't wanna see my family. I wanted to be isolat isolated and it did. I lo I love that about this. It literally took me away for quiet time. I freaking there

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
Are people who hate other people so much. <Laugh>,

Ant Pruitt (00:57:06):
They like

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
Randy how of isolating themselves. But I think it's kind of counter to what really humans want. Yeah. I think that there's a visceral problem with this. You're

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:16):
Still gonna hang out with your friends and you're still gonna have the people reaction, but for something like and in your house.

Ant Pruitt (00:57:23):
Yes ma'am.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:23):
How do people watch tv? How does your family watch television?

Ant Pruitt (00:57:28):
About eight feet away on the couch. Is that what you mean?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:31):
Okay. So no, like, in my house, my husband will have an iPad every watch and he'll watch this. His own thing. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:57:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, they're either on her phone or a tablet or separate television.

Leo Laporte (00:57:42):
I sit next to my lovely wife every single night. I hold her hand, I rub her feet as we together watch a program. We'll pause it. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:57:50):
Better than me brother <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:57:52):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:53):
So maybe this isn't

Ant Pruitt (00:57:55):
For you. I don't wanna sit with their Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:57):
I'm just saying sometimes I don't, I think, I think maybe, you know, there's people maybe 10, 20, 30, even 30% of the, of the market that will do this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I'm not saying nobody will do it. I'm just saying

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:09):
I think young people will love

Leo Laporte (00:58:10):
It. Yeah. That's the good question is maybe a younger generation doesn't have the same aversion. I do. I don't think humans want to strap screens to their faces. No. And I think that's a I agreeable idea. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:20):
I don't think, here's here, I'm gonna say something surprising, which is the only use case that I can get out of all those things. You left one out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is Google class as asserted as it is augmented information to what I can see.

Leo Laporte (00:58:32):
It was cool. Still makes sense. I agree. Once the spectacles you're wearing right now, Jeff Jarvis or the ones I wear when I'm not on TV can have augmented reality. Fantastic. I will pay $5,000 for that. I'm not against that idea. Yeah. There's a big leap from what we've got today Yes. To that. Many of those technologies are not existent. So if the vision will be, be, furthermore there's a real risk that, just like the segue, which was a great technology mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But it was DOA because people said you look like a dork on that thing. Yeah. If, if enough people go, Ugh, I I don't like it, it could kill the real valuable pro technology down the road spectacles. If Apple says, geez, we spent 50 billion and nobody bought it, we ain't gonna develop spectacles. It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:21):
Ar winner. I wanna hear Go ahead.

Leo Laporte (00:59:23):
Ar winner. I like that ar winner.

Ant Pruitt (00:59:25):
Maybe if it was, so you're saying if the Division Pro was a quarter of the size form factor wise,

Leo Laporte (00:59:31):
If it was lightweight and it was like spectacles and you can see the world around it. Yeah. But they can't do that. They can't not,

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:37):
He doesn't watch, watch a movie that way, Anne. That's not, not a way to watch a movie.

Leo Laporte (00:59:40):
Well, it could be information. Be, you know, your glasses could darken Jeff and you could be watching eight

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:45):
Cable. Now you're getting close to that. I, I don't, I don't think I did. Stacey, I wanna hear your vision for work with the goggles. I don't, I don't get that. Sure.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:56):
So I was excited about this cuz I thought the fine resolution, the fact that I could start consuming more information and manipulating it, was really compelling because I deal with a lot of information in my day, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So,

Leo Laporte (01:00:11):
Oh, I love the idea having all those big screens, like 120 inch. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:15):
Yeah. So when I'm sitting down to do like a finance story is a great example. Cause I, I need a lot of information in front of me. Yeah. And instead of going back and forth, like having all of my relevant information while I'm sitting there and I tend to write and then leave a lot of TKs to fill in. But if I had, and I do that because it's too dis it's too distracting for me to go like find it. But if I, if I can organize a story like that and then just sit there and be like, okay, it's 60 million a year. Okay. And, oh, this happened in 1942. Mm-Hmm. Like, that's really compelling to me. Okay. So let me,

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:54):
Let me understand. That's very

Ant Pruitt (01:00:55):
Niche though.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:57):
It's niche, but there are lots of people who are trying to assimilate information. I understand. So let's talk

Leo Laporte (01:01:01):
About understand. When I was in Rome and we were wandering around on the the, the forum and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the, and, and on Niros palace. So I thought, I thought, and if I even said it out loud to our tour, our guidance to Lisa, probably the next time I come back I will be wearing some sort of augmented reality device that lets me go switch back and forth between what I'm seeing right now and what it looked like 2000 years ago.

Ant Pruitt (01:01:26):
It just can look, it just be like a vision pro is what you're

Leo Laporte (01:01:29):
Saying. Well, and it could look like a vision throw. And so there, I'm not saying there's no use for it at all. I mean, that would be cool. And I can see going up to the kiosk as I go towards the, you know, the Palatine Hill and say I'd like can I rent that for a day? Cuz that would be really cool. Okay. And I, so I agree with you, Stacey. There's some definite educational, valuable, you know, if you're gonna train a mechanic, if you're, I mean, there's a lot of possible, these are all very niche and I think in the long run aren't enough to sustain a market that Apple needs a big market for this to succeed. Was

Ant Pruitt (01:01:59):
It Fujitsu? Unlike AR stuff on the assembly line?

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
Yeah. We've seen this for years, for decade.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:07):
Fujitsu, Hershey's, there's tons of actual AR on assembly lines. But first off, I, I use this on the show and maybe this'll help. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like when they talked about like capturing moments and stuff that obviously this, think of this like your old school D S L R camera. So you had situations like maybe your trip to Rome where you would bring this in when it comes to capturing memories. Maybe when you like thinking about like, should I bring my headset on this trip? This is the device that you're gonna bring with you consciously because you want the features it offers. Okay. And you're gonna pick it up at, at decisive moment. So you're gonna make a dec It's not like a casual thing like your smartphone where you're like, oh, cool picture snap. Okay. It's gonna be like, oh, they're about to bring the cake into this birthday party. Let me grab my camera. I

Leo Laporte (01:02:53):
Wanna have spooky eyes and isolate myself from everybody. I want the kids to go back. But then you're,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:58):
It's the same thing with the camera to your face. And you're gonna take it off. No,

Leo Laporte (01:03:02):
This is far worse.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:04):
This

Leo Laporte (01:03:04):
Is far worse. <Laugh>,

Ant Pruitt (01:03:06):
It's worse than that.

Leo Laporte (01:03:07):
It's very isolating. I, you know, I understand what you's saying and I mean, and I may be completely wrong here. I mean, I, I, I stipulate that I, you know, and I think we won't know for five years, five years from now, I may be wearing them on the show long may also

Ant Pruitt (01:03:21):
Be a play of, of, of Apple saying, all right, we're gonna put this out here. Yes. 3,500 bucks. We're probably not gonna make a lot of money on it, but we're gonna get a lot of feedback. I would figure out how we can refine this to make this into the iPhone fold

Leo Laporte (01:03:35):
Based on the bill materials for Google's based on the bill materials. I would guess Apple's not making a penny on these. That's the first thing I understand. This probably costs them almost exactly what they're charging. Right. It's a, it's amazing stuff. They guess taking that It is, there's 11 cameras. Think about screens. It's a huge mm-hmm. It's 12 cameras. Not to mention 12 cameras. Sorry. And not to mention what must have been 10 years of, of sunk cost in developing it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, this is a massive effort. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I'm wondering if that thought this was a good idea as we all did five years ago and had, and has, do you believe Momentum made him put it out? Because I don't think there's a market for it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:11):
Yeah. Subc, do you believe the computing is going to be everywhere? That we're going to have smarter devices? So it does

Leo Laporte (01:04:17):
That though, by disappearing, not by, by strapping it. Hold on.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:21):
Yeah. Hold on. Okay. They designed the R one. This is a chip designed to deal at a low latency level with dozens of inputs from high powered sensors. It's a fancy data is, yeah,

(01:04:33):
It is a fancy dsp. But they've now have this. So when you look at that development and developing an operating system for that and understanding just the, the drama that's gonna come from like, trying to, to deal with all of that signal coming in and managing it, that's valuable for them. That's gonna be valuable. Even if this flops and Apple knows, I mean, apple builds stuff with an eye towards the future in everything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, look at the fact that they're like focused on vision for all the stupid things for Health Kit because of this stupid device or because of this device <laugh>. And I'm like, oh, okay. Go Apple. Yeah. And I think if you think about like a future with an Apple watch, think about the earbuds talking to something. You've got your phone on your body. Maybe you've got some health sensors that are like, maybe you're wearing a, a continuous glucose monitor. Imagine being able to take all of that data in processing it locally and privately and being able to, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:05:39):
I'm not arguing something against that at all. I completely agree with you. That will be great. But,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:42):
But this is not wasted development <laugh>. No, but this is, they're developing this to build, this is, this is a device that they filled is

Leo Laporte (01:05:51):
Using this. They can get there from here. That's great. And I'm sure that's what they're thinking. It's like the pilot device, but there's a lot of, you know what

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:59):
Again,

Leo Laporte (01:06:00):
Less what? Yeah. What about So is less what, how do you carry them? What about, I mean, there's all sorts of what abouts? There's technologies. Oh yeah. There's I understand you need to take the first step. And so maybe this is just the first step. I think there's a great risk though, that this first step is gonna be such a horrendous experience for everybody. That people don't take the second step. Apple might just, people aren't gonna pour hundreds of billions of dollars into this. I don't think they're worried about they might, but you know what, what they got into bank, I'm looking afford them <laugh> they can afford.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:28):
If you, if a bit, if you can find a technology to give you the AR glasses that you want, like the always on wear them forever glasses that might talk to your phone people. Even if this flops, people are still gonna develop that. Yeah. So don't worry about

Leo Laporte (01:06:42):
That. 20 years from, it's gonna be 20 years though. That's the problem. It's really a long.

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:45):
So I have a suggestion and a question suggestion. Jason, can you put in the rundown for a year from now Yeah. That we play a little bit of this and see

Leo Laporte (01:06:54):
It won't be a year. It'll be, well

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:56):
This device is in, it gonna be out till

Leo Laporte (01:06:58):
Next year. Believe me, I have been so outspoken on this that there will be many people who will post on <laugh> the successor to Twitter, the video of Leo saying these things. Are these here, I'll give it to you right now. It's gonna take a couple of years. Vision Pro. This sucks. <Laugh>, no one's gonna buy this. This is a product that's dead on arrival. Ha, <laugh>. Go ahead now you got it all. And just save that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:19):
Well, somewhere there's a, there's my Rebox

Leo Laporte (01:07:20):
26, the iPad <laugh>. You know what people, it really makes people mad for me to say this. So I apologize for, you know, as I said, pissing in your Corn Flakes. But I think as a, it's my responsibility as a tech journalist to say this is, what are you talking about? The emperors wearing is nuke. Naked? Yeah. Naked. Yeah. I see his TWiGging berries swinging in the wind. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sorry, I don't, that's just, it's my job to call him as I see him. Yeah. And you know what? I hope I'm wrong. That's how you should be. I hope I'm wrong. And I hope at five years I'm wearing spectacles that are full ar with, with earbuds in that are detecting my blood glucose. And, you know, I mean, I, I pray that, that that

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:07):
No we'll need new battery technology before we

Leo Laporte (01:08:09):
Get there's a problem. This is just a launchpad, right? Yeah. But there's missing pieces. Listen for the

Ant Pruitt (01:08:14):
Launchpad to get to that potential.

Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
Is this, so this is Project Mercury, you know, you're launch or you know, you're launching an astronaut hoping that you're gonna get to the moon in 10 years. We've done it. Yep. Took an entire country <laugh> and and a huge national debt. <Laugh> from

Ant Pruitt (01:08:29):
From from

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:30):
Apple has the resources of a country, a pretty good sized

Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
Country. Only Apple could do this. And we actually talked about that yesterday at Mac Weekly. This is something only a handful of companies could do this. Far as this is the argument for Mass. This is the argument for massive giant corporations. Cuz no individual guy in his garage could create this. No. You needed a giant entity with lots of money

Ant Pruitt (01:08:53):
From a, from a Google standpoint. Would Google be interested in partnering up with several different companies to, to try to compete with this?

Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
I think we have already seen,

Ant Pruitt (01:09:06):
Especially being in the information and data business.

Leo Laporte (01:09:11):
Let me, let me post a little an image here of what I believe Android users are gonna look like. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, did he take it down? Somebody, somebody sent me this this image. Oh shoot. I should have kept it up. Nevermind. Forget it. There was a great joke in here, but it's, if latency, let me click it again and see if it comes up. Now this is what Android users are gonna look like. <Laugh> Envision Pro. Thank you Adam Singer. It's a picture of Yes, I get Jim Carey is the mask. I get it. The big green face. The green. I'll tell you that is true. I'll tell you honestly, that is true. As an Android user, this is an absolute ecosystem. Lockin to use Vision Pro. You scan your face with an iPhone. Yep. This is have to, this is, yeah. This is never ever gonna be available to Android users. You will not be able to call an Android user messaging. And we're

Ant Pruitt (01:10:13):
Gonna laugh. That's their prerogative. Yeah. Apple. Good on you. Apple. That's, that's

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
This part of the benefit for Apple is this is massive ecosystem lock-in

Ant Pruitt (01:10:22):
For, for 10 people. Yeah. We're already Apple fanatics

Leo Laporte (01:10:26):
Anyway. Well, that's why they could charge 3,500. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:10:28):
And that's the thing.

Leo Laporte (01:10:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Scooter X, you do not scan your face with a Vision Pro. You should read the articles. No. That thing first they do, is they scan your phone later to create your avatar. You scan it with a vision pro. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But in order to do the IRIS scan and stuff, they need the you have to have a late model iPhone with the LIDAR on the front of it. Yep. Now that may change when it comes out. Who knows what the requirements are. But think about it. Is Apple gonna allow you <laugh> to Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:51):
No. I mean, look at what they did also just to screw over Android users. Like, I was like, oh, my little new contact poster will just be like, Stacey is lame when I call someone with an iPhone. Yeah. I'll be like, damn it man.

Leo Laporte (01:11:05):
The world will be a better place if you just would let go and let Apple

Ant Pruitt (01:11:09):
<Laugh>. Sure.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:12):
Oh, final thing will say, the other benefit to this is the user interaction information that they're gonna get. So the work they've done on gaze detection here is very compelling. I actually thought Google solely would be amazing for the gesture sensing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they're using camera data. Yeah, that's fine. But that's gotta be really important for what I would call true s spatial computing, which is when the computing's actually all around you and you're trying to interact with that. But sure. They can call this face computing, spatial computing too. So I just want, like, in a real world of s spatial computing, the user interaction data and work that they've done here is also gonna come in super handy. That's all.

Ant Pruitt (01:11:57):
And I, I do wanna say, I, I enjoy watching some stuff with my family together. We, we do have those moments. Oh yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:05):
But you, you'll

Ant Pruitt (01:12:05):
Still, but every now and then, like post, post TWiGs, sometimes I just need to decompress and that usually means let me go to the den by myself or let me go to the, the back porch with a cigar by myself. You know? So Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Sorry.

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:21):
Let him be, let Paul

Ant Pruitt (01:12:22):
Be <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:23):
He's had a rough day. Just, just let him

Leo Laporte (01:12:25):
Be. Yeah. And you can do that now. He's way just going into your man cave. I mean, you've gotta What should I do? <Laugh> Those, you know, there, we, we gotta have

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:32):
Many of us, many people do not have man caves. We're, we're cramming people into smaller Smaller

Leo Laporte (01:12:39):
Oh, I agree places. This is not for the mass audience. No. This is for people who can afford to have a woman cave. Yes. I have a man cave animal. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:47):
Called a she shed. She a shed. It's called a she shed.

Ant Pruitt (01:12:52):
That's right. She shed.

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
Oh, what a she shed. That's good.

Ant Pruitt (01:12:55):
I was supposed to build one a couple years ago. Were you? That never happened.

Leo Laporte (01:12:59):
So Queen Pruitt said, where's my She shed, yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:13:01):
She wanted a she shed. That's funny. You bring that up, miss Stacey. I totally forgot about

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:06):
That. Thanks a lot. Stacey. How are you? Got in trouble. <Laugh> gonna watch this show and say, where's my, she Shed

Leo Laporte (01:13:12):
Save

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:12):
That podcast fast.

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
<Laugh>, do you wanna talk about UFOs?

Ant Pruitt (01:13:17):
I'll probably talk about it Friday on this week in space, but Sure,

Leo Laporte (01:13:21):
Yeah. I'm curious what Rod and will think of it. The whole thing is this unnamed Air Force guy said, I saw parts of dead U Ffo dead e ets and parts of U F O technology at the air, at the, when I was at the Air Force. They're hiding something from you. This comes up, I go get a waffle. Oh boy. Yeah. I don't know. U f o whistleblower. Let's see. Should I get it from the New York?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:51):
We're talking about it. You should just do it.

Leo Laporte (01:13:52):
Should I get it from the New York Post or the Fox News or News Nation? I got a choice of fine US collect intact UFOs as part of secret program. Oh. Oh, he's not Unna. There he is the Air Force whistleblower

Ant Pruitt (01:14:09):
Showing his face. He's an air

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Veteran and former intelligence official claims the US government has been collecting intact extra terrestrial aircraft for decades. David Charles, former intelligence is the operative. He's only 36. Why isn't he still intelligent? He told News Nation, he recently turned over, quote, proof end quote of the alleged covert program to Congress and the Inspector General of the intelligence community. These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft, if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed. I don't know. I'm skeptical. Could be <laugh>. I'm skeptical

Ant Pruitt (01:14:50):
<Laugh>. All I know is they come to my house, they're gonna be like, yeah, no, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see y'all later. We want no part of this stuff, but these two dogs and these hardheaded kids, no, we want no part of this.

Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
He says he's seen evidence of a secret crash retrieval program and alleges we've even retrieved bodies from other species, all according to News Nation and his interview with News Nation. I call on the United States Congress to stop hiding the truth. Oh, wait a minute. They're busy <laugh>. I hope

Ant Pruitt (01:15:22):
He is. I hope he's wrong. I

Leo Laporte (01:15:25):
Don't,

Ant Pruitt (01:15:25):
But if he's not wrong, I'm glad. I don't know anything about it. There's

Leo Laporte (01:15:29):
No ets <laugh>. Can I tell you how far away the nearest habitable planet is? Can I just say, ask ask your your buddies this weekend, Smith. It's so far away

Ant Pruitt (01:15:40):
A gazillion, gazillion last years. And I think

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
We've proven that a, as an a civilization evolves and becomes close to space faring. It destroys itself with pollution. And that's that. And I also think we're probably one of the few, if any, intelligent mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I mean, that's hard to believe. Maybe it's just a, you know, a weird co winky ink that we even exist. But

Ant Pruitt (01:16:00):
You don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:16:02):
Put that in the same bucket as the tape of me saying <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:16:07):
Vision

Leo Laporte (01:16:07):
Pro. Is d o a <laugh>? I'll say it now. You can record this. Put it on Twitter. There are no ets. That's nuts. There's no Do your et.

Ant Pruitt (01:16:17):
Voice of the Alien

Leo Laporte (01:16:18):
Coming to look for Leola Port Leo. I'm here. <Laugh>. Ouch. No, there's no aliens. There's no ets. You know what? We're not going to Mars either. We better fix this planet or we're donezo in a hundred years. Look here. Thank you very much. If

Ant Pruitt (01:16:36):
Everybody wants to go to Mars, I'm fine with that too. But don't, but you're gonna

Leo Laporte (01:16:40):
Stay here. Don't here in your man cave.

Ant Pruitt (01:16:42):
Yeah. Let me stay here. Okay. I'm fine. If you wanna try

Leo Laporte (01:16:44):
To get, this is your plan, isn't it? If you wanna try get their

Ant Pruitt (01:16:46):
He at, but don't make it cost me anything.

Leo Laporte (01:16:51):
Just go. That's good, byebye. Bye-Bye. <laugh>. Just go all the phone sanitizers, all the admin, all the PR reps. You just go, you go on, you go on. Yes, I know my auto warranty will expire. Will expire, <laugh>. But you just go on and have yourself a good time. Let's take a little break. We're gotta come back in a second. We got some more stories to talk about. But first I wanna show you, I'm so excited. My brook linen is here. My brook linen is here. Ooh. I've been waiting for this Brook linen. I love the name like Brooklyn, but with linen. Right. Brook Linen is a home essentials company. Their mission. Yes. I need a special device. This has my my face on it, so I know it's safe to use. <Laugh>, did you know I had this <laugh> a box opener with my own face on it?

(01:17:42):
Brooke Linn's mission is to provide you with hotel quality, luxury linen delivered directly to your door at a fair price. Founded by lovely husband and wife, duo Rich and Vicky, they founded about eight years ago in 2014. Brooke Linen has everything you need to live your most comfortable life. Easily upgrade your home with quality products and curated designs that will leave your guests swooning. Now Micah decided he wanted the lightweight hotel quality ones. What did you order? Did you order some Ant? I didn't. You didn't get your brook linen yet, nor did any. Aw, not yet. Anyway. We offered it to you, didn't we? I thought we did. Brook Lennon's been making a dream spaces reality for almost a decade. They're the obvious choice. We're making your home a home. We have lovely comfy Brooklyn and towels. I love them. I dried myself off today with a Brooklynn towel.

(01:18:35):
<Laugh>. if, if you're unsure to start, do what I did. Get a Brooklyn in bundle. This is the bundle of sheets. So it'll save you time and money, whether you're outfitting a bedroom, a bathroom, or boat, a boat. <Laugh> boats or boths or all three. They're bestselling looks. Satine sheets. That's what these are. Have you wanna feel 'em? I wanna just have you feel these. They're the soft, smooth, ultra Luke's pillowcase. I got the whole bundle. So I got sheets, pillowcases, the whole thing. Now just rub that up against your balded paint and see <laugh>, how soft That feels good on my hands. I know. Oh, dude. They also, they just launched an organic collection. Nice. With all organic cotton. Check out brooklinen.com to learn about their different styles of sheets in your perfect match. We even got the beautiful do Luke's duvet cover that goes with the whole thing.

(01:19:27):
Nice. So we got the whole nice. All, all you have to do is add a mattress in you. Mm. And you've got everything you need. Brooke linen.com, all the different styles all the different stuff. I have some beautiful, Lisa got 'em for me. I think an early Father's Day gift. Striped jammies. They're so cute. <Laugh>. Oh, nice. She says, you look like you escaped from San Quentin. Every occasion deserves a gift. <Laugh>. So whether you're celebrating your favorite newly wets, this really would be great for a a shower. A wedding shower. Maybe if you've got you know, a home home coming gift for a first move or just making it through the week. You know, these days, making it through the week. You deserve something nice and soft. Nice wire cutter and good housekeeping are both awarded brook linen for their outstanding bedding. So they're winners. More than a hundred thousand five star customer reviews. One reviewer said, oh, and this is important, right? I seem to get that wonderful sleeping temperature very quickly. Oh good. And stay there throughout the night. Versus my older cotton sheet sets. Best sheets in the world, like Butta said another one. <Laugh> like butta. Now these as I said, these are the Luke's, I, I don't, you know, I think thread count is kind of bs. I'm not a big thread count guy, but I think I was

Ant Pruitt (01:20:43):
Getting ready to say you didn't mention thread count. But it doesn't matter. I can

Leo Laporte (01:20:46):
Feel it. You could tell it's high a thread count. I'm looking. Sometimes you can get, I have gotten in the past very expensive sheets from other companies with a very 600 thread count. And they're not great. I don't know what this thread count is, but it feels like it's as high as you can go. Right? You can't. It's very soft and beautiful. This is very nice. These, and these these are the Luke's sheets. But as I said, Micah says, I sleep hot onto something a little lighter, right? So he got the lightweight sheets. Check out the sheets, the pillows, the towels, I swear by those. I love my towels, bath rugs, totes, tops, robes and more. What are you waiting for? Shop in-store or online? Yes, they have stores You can go@brooklinen.com. Gift yourself for your loved ones. The rest they deserve. Very nice.

(01:21:29):
B R O o k. That's the brook. L i n e n. That's the linens brook linen.com. When you're there, there's the offer code TWiG, t w i g for $20 off, plus free shipping on orders of a hundred or more. $20 off on orders of a hundred dollars or more. I've been holding onto these cuz I wanted to open 'em up for you on the show. And and I am just so thrilled. And by the way, the other thing I love about these, they hold up really well when you wash 'em so they don't wear out fast. Brooke linen.com offer code is TWiG. T w I g. Oh man. <Laugh>. I might just, can I just wear this for the rest of the show? And then if you punch me, at least I'll have a rule of something to you. Have a

Ant Pruitt (01:22:18):
Little cushion there

Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
Now. Little cushion brook linen.com/TWiG. I'm just gonna put this around here.

Ant Pruitt (01:22:27):
<Laugh>. No falling asleep.

Leo Laporte (01:22:28):
This is so this is like satin,

Ant Pruitt (01:22:30):
No falling asleep. I love this. Cause you're gonna get a little too comfortable.

Leo Laporte (01:22:33):
I'm so comfy. So comfy. Thank you, Brooke. Linen. Thank you. Brooklinen.Com. Use the offer code. T W I G. Hey, good news. Google Workspace. Users can now log in without a password. Thanks to Pasky. Jeff was so jealous. Oh really?

Ant Pruitt (01:22:51):
We can

Leo Laporte (01:22:52):
Now. Jeff was, well, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff was so jealous. Tried

Ant Pruitt (01:22:55):
Yesterday and couldn't.

Leo Laporte (01:22:56):
Well, I had, I went to Patrick Delehanty our esteemed guy, and I don't know what he does, so I just call him our esteemed guy. Yeah. He's our workspace admin. And I said, can you flip the switch? Not everybody's, I think we don't have it yet. Not everybody's got it. Okay. Paul Throt didn't have it yet. So, because I tried yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Be patient, the administrator, your workspace administrator has to enable it first. Okay. And then yeah, we use Google Workspaces here. So then you'll be able to use PAKEs as we already do. Have you tried paske? Yeah. I, I love it from my personal. I know. It's great. It's really great.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:30):
Remind everybody what, what, how they use a paske.

Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:36):
Okay, nevermind. No,

Leo Laporte (01:23:37):
No. So the whole idea is that your device, especially nowadays, modern smartphones with their biometrics, whether it's fingerprint or face recognition, sometimes iris recognition, these things are super secure devices. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the whole idea of pass keys is this becomes your authentication device. Your smartphone does. So when I go to google.com and I haven't logged in yet, it'll, it'll, it'll either, there's a couple of ways you can do this. It'll either by Bluetooth communicate with my phone. If I'm on a pc, if I'm on my phone, it doesn't have to. But if I'm on a pc, communicate with my phone. Say is is this Leo authenticate? And it is. I I may have to authenticate on the phone, but I may not. If because if I'm already logged in and authenticate, it'll say No, he's, yeah, he's, he's Leo. Yep. This hand. And then I don't need a password or anything. Which is, thank you. Which, which is what is going on. Dmx,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:26):
Who's behind you? The aliens have arrived. What is happening? Take you away, Leo. Oh man. Et get out from back there.

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
I told you there's no alien and <laugh>, is the DMX just collapsed? Is it just I'm working. I'm the ladder Burke's working on it. Oh, Mr. Berks. No wonder up into rafters. What is he? <Laugh>? Yes he is. Don't go up there in the Burke. Get down from there. <Laugh>. What are you a monkey? <Laugh>. All right. Okay. He luise. . Alright, so what else? What other, oh, good news for you, Jeff. You can finally play Minecraft in your Chromebook.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:04):
Oh boy. I can't wait to do that. <Laugh>. I have been waiting all my life. It,

Leo Laporte (01:25:10):
You know what? That's, don't you be knocking Minecraft? It is now available for many late model Chromebooks. It has to be in the last three years. It is the bedrock edition, not the Java edition. Actually can download it from the play store. A mere $20. That's a lifetime. Pass. Not bad. Yeah. you'll also get Android Minecraft at no extra cost. That's a $7 value. And if you already bought the game on Android, you can just get the, the Chromebook version for $13. So I like Minecraft.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:48):
Not my thing, but that's still

Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
Pretty cool. You know, we have a a Java, Minecraft, Java server running in our club. In fact, I, sorry, I haven't, I I know people have been asking you have you rebooted it? <Laugh>? I dunno. Probably. I know. I've seen those messages from time to time. Yeah. No, I have to, you know, Hey, hey. You're not the only one putting effort into the club every once in a while. Let me just, here we go. Ss h Leo. Lemme just log into the server, see if everything's up. Team attach. I could tell ya. Bn. Yep. The server's running. That's the that's Michael server. There's the Twitch server. And here's the survival server. That's a tough one. If you go on the survival server, you better be a good Minecraft player. Double oh 11. Wow. Just just left the game. Yeah, they're all up and running. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, you're welcome. Members. I just checked <laugh>. <Laugh>. what else? I guess I was hoping to do you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:53):
Wanna talk about air quality?

Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
What is, what is the air quality right now, Jeff in beautiful Bedminster New Jersey. It

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:00):
Was 4 37. It's down to 3 88. So I'm just gonna take a deep

Leo Laporte (01:27:03):
Breath. Anything over a hundred is risky. Right. Stacey, what is the, what is the,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:09):
Oh, I thought it was like 250. It depends. It's different classes. So like babies and immuno suppressed people have, are at one level. Well man,

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:18):
You're trying to avoid saying that. Thank you.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:20):
What <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
Oh yeah. Actually Jeff, probably, you should be really careful. Come to think of it. According to the e p A here's your A q i fact sheet for oh oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:33):
101 to 150 is unhealthy for sensitive groups, which you might be in.

Leo Laporte (01:27:38):
Very sensitive. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:40):
Purple. So 3 0 1 is anything higher than 300 is hazardous to everybody. Like, just everyone's gonna be affected. You should not go outside.

Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Yeah. Anything over hundred 50 is unhealthy. Period. 200 is very unhealthy. 300 is hazardous. And your pets should be inside too. Do not let your pets is I know that, but

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:00):
Do they smell it? Do they know that? Oh crap.

Leo Laporte (01:28:02):
The, the wolf

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:03):
On fire. Yes. Birds were dropping out of the sky. Like in Washington state.

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
That's why, that's why if canaries in the coal mine, they don't like bad air. Wow. I learned that from a minor. From mine. <Laugh>. So Stacey is an expert on all this, believe it or not,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:22):
Because I live in Washington state. You were probably an expert too.

Leo Laporte (01:28:26):
Leo I b we had to, a couple of years ago when the wildfires hit Northern California, we were six miles away from one of the biggest fires in Sonoma County. And in fact we had our go bags packed. It was so scary. And we had a backup plan for the studio in case it burned to the ground. And at that time I got purple air sensors in the house. Cause I wanna know what the air quality inside was as well as outside the house. I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:50):
Remember. And the benefit of Purple air is these are expensive. Like, and outside air quality monitor is like 200 bucks. Yeah. But if you put it outside, you're actually contributing the Purple Air network, which takes data from all of those sensors. And that's how I can

Leo Laporte (01:29:06):
Find out one that's three miles from me. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:09):
Yeah. So there, there's actually one down the street from me. And air quality dramatically differs based on distance, based on all kinds of things. Like if you're at a a lower elevation, you're gonna have poorer air quality typically. You know, so like I live on an island and the air quality across the island can differ on the air quality index by like 50 or even 60 points sometimes. Wow. So out outside. That's great. Right. The purple air quality sensor that data feeds into things like Google, Google on your displays has a air a q i air quality index measurement. It has both a color and a number. And your color you're looking for is green or maybe yellow <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Jeff, he should, should stick with green being sickly and all. Yeah. Okay. And elderly <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:00):
Yellow is, it's acceptable. And if you're really sensitive, usually that's asthmatics. Okay. Yeah. Or kids, because they have developing moms, you

Leo Laporte (01:30:07):
Know what, it's so awful. You don't want to go out. Now I have to point out that the purple only measures particulate pollution. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:14):
Right. So let's talk about your inside. So that's measuring things outside and being a citizen scientist, yay for you if you decide to do it. Yeah. But let's say you're just a normal person and life is just sucky and you're looking for a good air quality.

Leo Laporte (01:30:27):
Well, and I wanted to know what it was like inside because we fled the outside cuz it was unsafe. But I wanted to make sure it wasn't getting in right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:35):
Yeah. So some things you need to know about, you need to close. Like I was talking to somebody who had their windows open today.

Leo Laporte (01:30:42):
Oh, close the windows here,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:43):
Their area. And I was like, close your windows.

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
Normally fresh air is your, your friend. But if it's smokey outside, it's not. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:50):
Yeah. Your air conditioner is gonna pull in outside air. That's what your air filters for. If you're having like wildfires, like we would change our, like when it was bad, we would change our air filters like every week. And they were, they needed it. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:04):
So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:04):
You needed to keep an eye on that. Not every three months. That is not like when it's this bad. You need to change 'em more often. Is it

Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Visible? Is that you can look at it and it's yellow and think you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:13):
Can see, I mean, it's, it's mucky.

Leo Laporte (01:31:15):
We got, and I think maybe we got suckered, <laugh> <laugh>, we gotta say that. But we had the guy come out and he ga we bought a thing that goes on the furnace, on the heat pump on the first slash air conditioner that does some sort of static charge. And then we bought filters that are electrified. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the idea being the ionize and, and as a result of track particles and do a better job than regular filters. I don't know. But you know, at that point I was just like, whatever we can do to be, cause it's so awesome.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:48):
Ionization does. Yeah. It does help. And so once you're inside, so there are air quality monitors for indoors aware makes one air things makes them. Amazon even has one usually. So for fire damage you need to check for one that measures particular particulate matter. PM

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
And not everyone does. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:11):
Yes. And that's, that's your big, so cuz the, the big things they're gonna monitor is temperature and humidity. Almost every single one will do that. Some of them will monitor carbon dioxide and the ideas. If carbon dioxide gets high, you wanna open a window because it's gonna make you sleepy. But not in the case of fires. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:32:31):
It's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:31):
Particulate matter. And then you see Yeah. Vocs

Leo Laporte (01:32:34):
Volatile organic compounds. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:37):
And that's another open the window situation. But a lot of them don't measure VOCs or they won't measure a particulate matter. So you, you really, in this case, look for a particulate matter cuz that's what you're looking for.

Leo Laporte (01:32:50):
If you and the 2.5 and PM 2.5 is the, is the microns the size of the Yes particles. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:57):
They're very

Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
Bad. You can get PM 1.0. Those are gonna be much more expensive, I think because it's smaller particles.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:04):
Yes. And your filters may not tackle that. So these are just like warning systems. Right Now we're gonna talk about filtration. So you got your filtration of your indoor air. I can tell you there's tons of great smart options that'll be like, oh crap, your air is terrible. Boom, take it out. But what Leo's about to show you is the cowe. This is like my favorite air filter.

Leo Laporte (01:33:26):
You know what?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:26):
Really? And it's expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
It's funny, when we had the fires out here, a lot of people made tos on how you can make your own HEPA filter by those furnace filters and build a box around a fan and strap it in. But that's kind, you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:38):
Actually

Leo Laporte (01:33:38):
Just need to Yeah, that's where take this is. Yeah, this is basically inside here. There's a, there's a physical filter which is capturing dog hairs and things like that. But inside the physical filter there's a HEPA filter, which is a kind of a paper corrugated paper filter. And that's what's catching the p the we gotta clean this. This is <laugh> that's not so,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:58):
And here's the next thing. So, so there there's two things you need to know. When you have these air filters, the co way, most of them will have the air omegas. I have an Air Omega that is also really good.

Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
The air Mega insider house at home. Cuz that's, that's a vast area, right? It's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:12):
A bigger room. So

Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
This has a little pep, you've

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:14):
Gotta wash that.

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
Yes. Oh man, I washed this. And this is this you replace, this is for smells. This is an activate

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:21):
Charcoal. Yeah. There's, youve got two filters there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:23):
Imagine off the bat. This is the hepa the helper, right? Yeah. Yeah. If I take this out, you can see it. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:28):
You wash that screen. One

Leo Laporte (01:34:30):
Looks just like a furnace filter. Really? Yeah, yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:32):
Yeah. You replaced that guy.

Leo Laporte (01:34:35):
And and, and co always have a reminder when to replace and all of that stuff. I think it, oh, is this the same stuff people were putting in because of Covid when we thought Yes. What? Yes. That's effective. Cause the

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:48):
Virus, yeah, virus particles are also, they're, they're smaller than the PM five. But the PM five s are what people were, or 2.5. Sorry. 2.5. So once you have these, so I have used and like, oh, the other important thing you need to know about this is these are sized for rooms. So if you have one running in your room, you need to close the door. So that co way that Leo has is about, what would you say, a 10 or fif 10 by 15 room. 10 by 10 room.

Leo Laporte (01:35:17):
Yeah. It's probably too small for this, this room. I have one in my other studio's. Exactly the right size and the mega, which is a big cube that'll do 600 square feet. That's a pretty big device. Yeah. I think this is 150

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:30):
Feet. So, so square feet. Yeah. So you wanna close off those areas if you can. And you wanna sleep with that running. And a lot of them will have a, if you're buying one, you wanna look for, some of them have a smart mode where it'll be like, oh, I detect problems. And then it'll go

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
Start really harder than all of these. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:50):
And it's that, that doesn't mean internet connected. That's just a nice feature. And the other feature you wanna look for is the ability to turn the LEDs off at night. Yes. So they'll have a sleep or night mode. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:35:59):
Yes, I agree. Ah, so this is good. We have co ways all over the place. And, and we're very happy with those. There is this secondary issue of ozone, which these things don't take care of. Some of these fires are so nasty. They're actually putting not only particulate matter in the air, but ozone in the air. And I don't know what you do for that. I really don't. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:20):
You don't wanna say, well, don't you have something The

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
Molecules help with ozone. They're really more for things VOCs like formaldehyde. They're more for that kind of stuff. So I don't know how you get rid of ozone, to be honest with you. One of the problems with a lot of filters, and you should always look and see, is they put more ozone into the ear than they take out. Sometimes it's a side effect of the filters. So you know, the, you wanna be careful about that. And wire cutter did a very good job at least talking about these particular, the HEPA filters and they recommended the cowa. So that's why we got Cowa. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:56):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
So, or get yourself some face and face filter headphones, <laugh>. And if you wear them with a vision pro, you don't have to worry about people cuz they're run when they see you <laugh>. Cause doesn't work. <Laugh>, I wanna say I saw a story someone tried those was on, on a flight recently. They

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:16):
Oh, I know. Someone wandered around trying it, but yeah, I don't know where that is.

Leo Laporte (01:37:21):
You know, it's funny because of COVID, I think we actually are better equipped for these kinds of, you know, bad air condition situations.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:29):
Joe and Club Twit had actually a really good tip. One that I have not followed and because of my life, but his pro tip is, if you're gonna get multiple air purifiers, get the same brand so you can stop up, stock up on the same filters. Oh yes. And your air purifier y'all is only as good as your filters. So you, when it, and they'll all give you a notification, say, Hey, watch that screen. And that happens like every probably couple weeks in my house. And then they'll be like, okay, it's time to change the filter. And that's, that's what's filtering your air. So you actually do need to have

Leo Laporte (01:37:59):
Those <laugh>. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:01):
Oh. And if you go outside N 95, not a surgical mask. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:38:04):
Yeah. But again, if there's ozone, thank you for all that. And, and unfortunately the purple air doesn't tell you, but if there's ozone in the air, the N 95 does nothing. Oh. Doesn't help you at all. It goes right through it. Cuz there're, cuz it's really a, a just, it's not even a particulate problem, it's just bad air. Ugh. I know it's problematic. I don't know. Here's a a, a Insta from Yankee Stadium from MLB on Fox. It is nasty and looks pretty. It's,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:33):
I hope the weather changes for y'all cuz it's, it's awful. And you'll, you'll wake up in the morning and you'll see that really orange sun and you're just gonna be like, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:38:43):
It feels apocalyptic, doesn't it? It's like, it it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:45):
Does.

Leo Laporte (01:38:45):
It's the end of, I saw somebody

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:47):
On loose sky said, my wife is from Latin America. And, and the pictures of that sky is how they always depict Latin America in TV and movies as if there's, and that's true. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:38:59):
US has sued Coinbase and Binance. The s e c says, these crypto exchanges are basically fraudulent. They are subject to s e C rules. They haven't registered. Coinbase said, wait, what? Hold on. We wanted you to tell us this a long time ago, but you refused <laugh>. I saw Jim Kramer, not that I trust Jim Kramer say this is, he knows at all, this is the time to get out of, to get outta cryptocurrency. Yeah. You know, that's probably right. And then I don't know if you saw this Financial times piece it's unfortunately behind a paywall. The s e c is wrong about crypto exchanges. This is a guy named Robert Armstrong who says, no, let me <laugh>. He says it's a sh let's see. He says I, on the other hand can only die on the hill where I planted my flag back in November.

(01:40:00):
Cryptocurrencies are not securities. And so the s e C should leave them alone. This, by the way, not based on a view that crypto has a special value that needs to preserve. On the contrary, cryptocurrencies are dangerous nonsense <laugh> one, the market can be trusted to kill before long if this does not happen. Cryptocurrencies should be regulated like smoking, gambling or pyramid schemes. Is that Leo LaPorte or someone else? Sounds like me, doesn't it? <Laugh> in neither case, this stuff should not be granted the dignity of regulation under securities law. I kind of agree with them. They're not securities, they're magic.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:35):
Oh. But people are losing their shirts on it. I

Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
Know. You gotta you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:39):
Can't just let people be.

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
No, no. I think the s e c is right to go after these guys. And I hope people take it if they haven't already realized Yeah. The danger of this stuff. And of course, just like all kinds of conspiracy theories and election denialism, the more people get cracked down on the more they say, see, see governments, they, they wanna preserve their fiat currency. They don't want they don't want this much better system. Yeah, I've seen a little bit of that. Yep. I've seen a little bit of that. So the s e c has sued Binance, the world's largest crypto trading platform. And now Coinbase accusing the firm of mishandling customer funds, inflating trading volume on the site and taking steps to evade US regulation. In addition, yesterday, financial regulators from 10 states, including California, also filed legal actions alleging Coinbase was operating as an unregistered securities dealer. And I understand the fts point that it's, you shouldn't even think of it as a security. It's just gambling. It's all it is. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:50):
Yeah. So, but you shouldn't

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
Regulate it then there be more reason to regulate it. Yeah. Well, but the problem is, I, I think he's worried that what will happen is there'll be a settlement between Coinbase and Binance and the S E C that says, yeah, we're securities. I see. And we're regulated as securities will pay a big fine and now will continue to operate now as regulated securities. And he's saying, no, they're not. Don't do that. Got it. Which I agree they, they really shouldn't be thought of as securities. I don't know. I mean, is it more risky to invest, you know, your thousand dollars in Bitcoin than it is put your thousand dollars in McDonald's stock in

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:26):
Lotto tickets? No, it's still, well, it's more,

Leo Laporte (01:42:28):
It's more like lotto tickets in McDonald's stock. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:31):
Yeah, I was like, McDonald's stock is infinitely safer. <Laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:42:35):
Is it though? I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:36):
Yes. Okay. Yes. Really? This is not a straw man. You wanna toss up, because McDonald, they're, they've, they're regulated by the S E c. They have to follow gap accounting state.

Leo Laporte (01:42:45):
They're not gonna lie to you. They

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:46):
Yeah, they can't lie to you.

Leo Laporte (01:42:47):
Not too much anyway. They can't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:48):
Obfuscate, but but the ice

Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
Cream machine breaks down. Yeah. They never

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:51):
Have. That is, yes. Mcdonald's is infinitely more safe than, yeah, you're right. That don't even ask that question.

Leo Laporte (01:42:57):
I can't believe in now if I can't walk in here,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:00):
Mcdonald's ice cream.

Leo Laporte (01:43:01):
Has McDonald's ever passed your lips whenever I want. Oh, you, you're talking about the McClury machine. Yes. They're always broken. Yeah. Yeah. Can't trust them. They can't keep that. Right. So this is gonna be,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:11):
It's a right to repair issue right there.

Leo Laporte (01:43:13):
That's right. This is gonna be really interesting. This story from En Gadget says that Amazon is preparing to offer prime subscribers, free cell phone service free

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:26):
Or, okay, stop. Stop. Because I have seen in all of my telco coverage, no one can find a carrier. Wireless operators are flat out denying this as is Amazon,

Leo Laporte (01:43:41):
According to Bloomberg. Scott Martz. Matt I know. But Spencer Soaper, the company's negotiating with Verizon T-Mobile and Dish to get the lowest possible wholesale prices. So they want to be an MD and O

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:54):
According to Reuters T-Mobile. Verizon and at and t have all they've denied vehemently denied th this. Yes. So,

Leo Laporte (01:44:04):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:04):
Dish has not responded to Reuters for comment. Yeah. So, but at and t says at, and I quote, at and t is not in discussions with Amazon to resell wireless services. And Amazon, Verizon

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Says, spokesperson told Bloomberg, we don't have plans to add wireless at this time. They denied it as well. What if

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:21):
This is a super micro situation?

Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
Another Bloomberg McGuffin could be. They never, you know, they've never, ever super,

Ant Pruitt (01:44:31):
Super micro. How long ago was that?

Leo Laporte (01:44:34):
It was a couple of years ago.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:34):
I dunno, but it sticks in your brain because it does. That was horrible.

Leo Laporte (01:44:38):
Yeah. sorry. Am analysts say Prime membership has stagnated since Amazon boosted the price to $139 a year? That is a lot.

Ant Pruitt (01:44:49):
It's a lot. But at the same time,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:51):
A hundred million people

Ant Pruitt (01:44:52):
Knows somebody that has Prime and, Hey, can you order this on Prime for me? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:56):
Thanks. According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, 167 million Amazon Prime members, as of March, I'm

Ant Pruitt (01:45:04):
One of those

Leo Laporte (01:45:04):
Poor suckers. Amazon doesn't say, of course,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:06):
There's 360 million people, and that includes children and people who don't even know what Amazon is. <Laugh>. How much bigger are they? <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
That's why it's, that's why growth is slowed. Everybody has it. Everybody already

Ant Pruitt (01:45:19):
Has it. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:21):
I'm just saying that like,

Leo Laporte (01:45:24):
Holders

Ant Pruitt (01:45:25):
Are upset

Leo Laporte (01:45:25):
That I would, this broke this horrible, I I don't know if I would switch, but that's gotta be pretty compelling if you get free mobile phone service in addition, I mean, Amazon gives you a lot of

Ant Pruitt (01:45:35):
Benefits. I guess it would depend on the truck, right? Like depends on Yeah, if

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
Like they use T-Mobile or, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:42):
Now would I believe that Amazon is talking to wireless carriers about doing backup for like, some sort of commercial like Iott network or other like addendum to aw w s a hundred percent. But

Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
Bloomberg says the economics carriers aren't really in a position to say no to Amazon, because despite having poured billions into high capacity 5G networks, they've little to show for the effort. They're looking for new ways to utilize those networks. They spent so much money to build.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:13):
But isn't they, if Amazon takes a customer, don't they lose that customer? No,

Leo Laporte (01:46:16):
No, no, no. They're, they're, no,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:17):
Because Amazon pays them. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:19):
Understood.

Leo Laporte (01:46:20):
But it's, Amazon buys it at wholesale from one of these companies isn't,

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:25):
But it's not, it's not a net growth. It's not a, it's, the industry doesn't grow as a result.

Leo Laporte (01:46:29):
It is gross. No, it's just how, it's just a discounted growth instead of getting used as a retail customer. I'm getting Amazon and getting a smaller amount of money per customer, but I'm still getting Right. If, if

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:40):
At t gets a Verizon, it doesn't, it's growth for at and t, right?

Leo Laporte (01:46:44):
You saying? Yes. Well, yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:45):
Every, every, everybody for themselves

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:48):
You course could see now, <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:50):
If, what did you think <laugh> business

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:52):
Is Business. It's possible that Amazon could do, like, I do think Amazon is interested in providing some sort of wireless service for device companies. So like, I could see them being an M V N O for like connected dog colors.

Leo Laporte (01:47:08):
Yeah. Maybe that's it, right? So not necessarily just a carrier for, well, analysts are pointing out the dish phones. Remember the whole T-Mobile sprint deal required, the government required that they offload a lot of their stuff to Dish Boost Mobile particularly. Mm-Hmm. And that they would support Dish in creating a, because the regulators are concerned, well, now you're down to three big carriers. So T-Mobile said, no, no, no, we're gonna make Dish the new fourth carrier. Right? but Dish has a lot of debt. They're struggling a little bit. They still haven't launched boosts Infinite Wireless service. Why just buy them? Yeah. Amazon. Well, I think there might be regulatory issues there too. I dunno. Oh, okay. And

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:53):
Who wants to buy anything from Charlie? Erkin

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Dish is already working with Amazon, according to Bloomberg, whose a w s division is providing cloud computing to run the core network for its wireless service, and is expected to start selling Boost Infinite Wireless service on Amazon as soon as next month. So maybe there is something there with dish, they talked to one analyst who said this is perceived as a lifeline for Dish for the three big carriers. Amazon's entry is troublesome. Yes, sure it is. Anyway, yeah, it's just a rumor still. It's from Bloomberg. Consider the source I said in Gadget earlier, but in Gadget is quoting Bloomberg. Okay. Oh, this is great news. This actually is a cautionary tale. There's a Menlo Park, California company called Grail that sold a very expensive $950 blood test to detect cancer. Hmm. Customers signed up, grail inadvertently told about 400 of them you've got cancer. They didn't the company said it sent a form letter to some customers who had bought its gallery test, which is text a marker for more than 50 types of cancer, stating incorrectly that a cancer signal was detected. I don't know if that means you've got cancer or not. Means you might have this gene means it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:25):
Means call your doctor and they'll tell you about it. Yeah, yeah. Because we can't,

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
A company spokesperson said E R C A that the company blamed a vendor for the error citing, oh, this is good. A software configuration issue. Oh, geez. <Laugh>. Well, we had this mail merge and then we pushed the wrong letter. I told them to use tabs,

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:47):
Not spaces. Yeah. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
They've started to contact the people who received the area erroneous letters. But I think this is something

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:57):
Fines coming.

Leo Laporte (01:49:58):
Keep in mind, no,

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:59):
No fines. You know, maybe it's nice to be like, you're gonna die. No, you're not. Oh, okay. Cool.

Leo Laporte (01:50:05):
Good news. We were wrong.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:07):
<Laugh>. The heart attack got me in the meantime, I think. Did you see this, the Austria story?

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
Leo? No. What's that?

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:14):
So Austria because of they a major party in Austria. I put it in the chat. Elected the wrong head of the party. <Laugh> because of Excel error. <Laugh>. Oh, this West column C, not column B. Ohs around.

Leo Laporte (01:50:33):
Oh, with a mistake. I'm sure. Shadi. okay. Okay. These things happen. What can we, what can we say? Yeah, this is from the Washington Post <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:43):
That's what you say. These things happen. Just told a thousand people. He just told

Leo Laporte (01:50:49):
He just a major Austrian opposition political party corrected the results of a closely contested leadership election after it announced the wrong winner. Someone had messed up an Excel spread.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:02):
Hey,

Leo Laporte (01:51:02):
Speaking of Excel, it's gonna be, I know this will be a good time to do our

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:06):
Google change. Woo. How does that relate to Google change?

Leo Laporte (01:51:12):
Bard now can export to

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:16):
Google Sheets. Sheets. Ah, how's that for S one transition Master?

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
Yeah. Bart has also added some features that will help you with programming. Actually this was an interesting example. So you give it this prompt. The present population of a town is 3,888 people will be the expected population for the next two years and five years. If the growth rate is 20% for two years and 30 for five, not only does it give you the answer, it shows you the formula and even can write code if you wish to demonstrate, you know, how you would, how you would do this in Python, for example. So this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:00):
Interesting. Unlike chat G P T, it can add.

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:04):
Well,

Leo Laporte (01:52:05):
I've seen people who've tried to get code written in Bard who've been very said, you know, chat G P T I can get the code, at least get the code to compile. It's, it's close to accurate Bard. It won't even compile, really. So Bart has, I think, been laggard in this. But this is a new feature that Google's ooh, touting Android 14, beta three is out customizable lock screen clocks and shortcuts. But you gotta have a pixel. Android tv 14 beta is out. And that means if you've got an Android tv, you will be ditching Android 13. So I don't, I guess I don't understand, but Okay. <Laugh>, I don't, you know, it fills a slot in the change

Ant Pruitt (01:52:53):
Log and we

Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Just, that's all we care about. <Laugh>. No, I'm confused because there's Google TV and there's Android tv and the latest Chromecast is Google tv. But, but I have Android TV on,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:04):
And they killed Daydream

Leo Laporte (01:53:07):
And they killed Daydream. It's just,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:09):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:10):
Google is so fragmented,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:12):
Confusing.

Leo Laporte (01:53:13):
I don't understand. And I am the host of This Week in Google <laugh>. So there, so whose fault is that? The

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:21):
Position you take very seriously.

Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
You could tell. Can't you? I'm really digging in

Ant Pruitt (01:53:26):
Here. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:53:27):
Google Assistant has added two new voices. Lines, yeah. And Indigo.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:34):
Ooh. I wonder what they sound like.

Leo Laporte (01:53:36):
Do you have one line around? You have to access the assistant voice and speech output page and then make a selection. Or try this ant say, Hey, you know who change your voice. Go ahead. Just, just try it. Hey,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:50):
Change your voice.

Leo Laporte (01:53:52):
See if it'll do it.

Speaker 6 (01:53:54):
Here's an example of one of my other voices. Would you like me to use this one? Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:59):
No.

Speaker 7 (01:54:02):
Here is another voice example. Would you like me to use this one?

Ant Pruitt (01:54:05):
Yes, please.

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
You prefer a female voice?

Ant Pruitt (01:54:09):
Yeah. Great.

Speaker 7 (01:54:10):
I'll keep you.

Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
Yeah. pretty neat. Was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:14):
That lime or indigo?

Ant Pruitt (01:54:16):
That's a good question. <Laugh>. They didn't say their names.

Leo Laporte (01:54:19):
You wanna hear? I'll play some, say their names. Lemme play some name to go for you. This is let me make sure my sound.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:25):
Yeah, that was Indigo what I selected. There

Speaker 7 (01:54:26):
Are lots of things I can help you with. For example, you can say, set a timer or play some music to see Moore. Just swipe the options on your screen.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:35):
It's very robotic.

Leo Laporte (01:54:37):
It's something weird about it. I don't know what it is. And this is lime. There are

Speaker 6 (01:54:40):
Lots of things I can help you with. For example, you can say, set a timer. Oh, that was pleasant place of

Leo Laporte (01:54:45):
Music. Yeah. So you just see

Speaker 6 (01:54:47):
Indigo. Yeah. Just swipe the options on your screen.

Leo Laporte (01:54:49):
So lime I kind of like lime. I love lime.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:52):
I kind like that too. Yeah. Let me have indigo. I don't need my phone being too chatty with me like a person. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
So good. So good. Google has started rolling out image generation and slides. That's of course an AI feature. And more. Oh, oh, they said they would. Yep. They said they would. And more duet AI for Gmail and docs. So if you want a giraffe standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in watercolor, you can get one in your slide. <Laugh>. That's very, very inspirational. So it's so as if

Ant Pruitt (01:55:24):
If PowerPoint wasn't bad enough

Leo Laporte (01:55:27):
Yeah. <Laugh> now it'll be worse. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:29):
Jeff, we're gonna find something for you to be positive around. Hold on. Let's give something to make Jeff feel

Ant Pruitt (01:55:35):
Positive. Catch you a baby.

Leo Laporte (01:55:37):
Catch <laugh> Google now will roll out. Catch you a Pepe Generation in Google Sheets. Duet AI for Google Workspace Enterprise hits pre-order for businesses. And that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:52):
Duet still exists. I

Leo Laporte (01:55:53):
Know the Google change laws So confused. Duet is the name of the ai So confused now. That's all There is now. Not Duo

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:01):
Duet.

Leo Laporte (01:56:01):
Not Duo Duet. Google ai.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:04):
Oh, right. Duet.

Leo Laporte (01:56:06):
Priceline is announced they're gonna use Google AI for their travel agent, their virtual travel agent. So you can say, oh, you know, I want a New York hotel near a Christmas market. And it will then say, wow, you know, you can easily find out that in Bryant Park, there's a Christmas market that runs from early November, all the way through the beginning of January. Try the and

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:31):
Stop talking. Has bake. Show me the cheese house.

Leo Laporte (01:56:35):
The baked cheese house is my favorite. What? It's the best part. At Bryant Parks Christmas. It

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:41):
Is the best. Yes, it is the best.

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
And then you go next door and you get a little donut. Oh boy.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:47):
Yeah. Some hot cider.

Leo Laporte (01:56:48):
Hot cider. And then you roll your way home. Okay,

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:52):
Please. And thank you Baked cheese house. I'm telling you people baked as the t-shirt says, put a little cheeses in your life. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:57:02):
Is it Raclette? Is it a raclette? It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:04):
Raclette. Yeah, it's Rale.

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
Yeah. It's just a little, it's, they don't want to call it raclette because people might, you know, think it's not, it's foreign. Oh, my, it's it's big part of the, by the way, house is spelled like h a u S. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:18):
Cuz it's

Leo Laporte (01:57:18):
German. Yeah. It's house style. By the way. I love the Bryant Park Christmas. .

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:26):
It's,

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
It's great. I love hanging out down there. Good food. Good fun.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:31):
There's a picture of me with big cheese house. I'll try to find it. Is there, yeah, it's somewhere.

Leo Laporte (01:57:36):
Probably shouldn't be eating baked cheese in your, at your advanced age, but, okay. <Laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:44):
What should I look for? Sam? Speaking of ai. Yes. I found it. I found it found.

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
Oh, put it in the chat in. I'll play it in Discord. I'll play it. I'll do it. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:52):
Hold on

Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
Google.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:55):
Oh, wait, actually upload a photo. I don't even know how to do that. Just do a link to it in Google Photo. Well, it's not, it's, it's, it's in my Google photo. Oh, I see my Google photos. I can do that. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. There you go. Got it. All right. Hold on.

Leo Laporte (01:58:06):
Keep automatic. The company behind wordpress.com has added, and a, this is gonna really improve blogging from the company that runs almost half of all the websites in Amer in the world. Mm. an AI assistant that will just, you know, write your blog for you. Fantastic. The company said the assistant easily integrates with wordpress.com and all Jetpack powered sites. When you're writing a post, a poster or a page, you can add an AI assistant block to your content.

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
Users can then type in a prompt. Oh. Oh. You don't do it. Your users do type in a prompt in a natural language in the AI system. Oh. Why will they go to your blog to generate AI content?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:49):
Oh, my husband would say, because I am way too wordy.

Leo Laporte (01:58:52):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:54):
He's like, Stacey, just give it to me as a bulleted list. I'm like, my God, man. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:59:00):
Well, wow. I think your husband is rude. He should be nice. What's the

Ant Pruitt (01:59:04):
Difference between this versus what CNET in Red Ventures

Leo Laporte (01:59:08):
Were? Well, by the way, that's also in the news. CNET has said it's got new guidelines for AI journalism to which the Writer's Union said no, you don't. Was

Ant Pruitt (01:59:18):
It journalism in

Leo Laporte (01:59:19):
Quotes? <Laugh>. Yeah. <Laugh>. as you may remember CNET got in a little bit of trouble because that about 70 articles were written by an ai. They didn't disclose it. And worse, the articles, which were mostly written for their personal finance section we're often wrong. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:39):
Think I, I've got a new law. I've got a regulation. You know, I'm not big on regulation. I think it is all AI text must be produced in comic sands, then everything will be okay.

Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
<Laugh>. Okay. We'll know it. Okay. It then it would like my

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:51):
Cheese sandwiches up on the discord.

Leo Laporte (01:59:53):
There is Jeff eating melted cheese in a sa. This this is wrong on so many levels. That's,

Ant Pruitt (02:00:01):
Man, I need that. It's so

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:02):
Good. Do they have Cornish, Seans in there? Is that what stick?

Leo Laporte (02:00:05):
Oh, of onions,

Ant Pruitt (02:00:07):
Man. I need that

Leo Laporte (02:00:08):
Baby. Oh, that's why there are no fat Swiss people. They're all dead and down. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. <laugh> oh gosh. RCL is a great tradition for the New Year's. Wonderful. I think everybody should have more cheese in their life. There are two broad categories of pursuits where C Net's responsible AI machine partner ramp will be deployed. The first, which cnet cause organizing large amounts of information. Actually, AI's very good at that, right? Yep. presides provides an example that seems more author though, than that umbrella descriptor. Lets on, this is in Gadget Writing Ramp will help us sort things like pricing and availability data, and present it in a way that tailors information to certain audiences. Without ai, this volume of work wouldn't be possible. This customization Okay. Wouldn't be possible.

Ant Pruitt (02:01:02):
That, that makes sense. They're using AI for prep, not necessarily to

Leo Laporte (02:01:06):
As it should be. And they'll always have a human associated with the article. C's Media Workers Union said the new AI policy at CNET Effects workers Before the tool rolls out, our union looks forward. <Laugh>. I look forward Mr. Mr. Pruitt to negotiating in my office. Mr. Pruitt. How and what data is retrieved <laugh> a regular role in testing and reevaluating tool Right. To opt out and remove bylines of voice to insurance.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:37):
How many, how many times a day? You may hit me in the

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Arms. <Laugh>. all right, well that reminds me what happened with the writer? Guilded still on strike. On strike. What's still going on? And now and others are joining. Actors May next actors are next. Ooh, if you don't have any writers, you don't have any actors. What do you got? Podcasts? Yeah. Boom. <laugh>. See, that's new guy. Let's see. Google. iHeartMedia says, don't use chat. G P T joining a long list of companies, including Apple, by the way, that won't let their employees use chat. G P T. And then there's the Wall Street Journal article about a chat bot designed to help prevent eating disorders. The National Eating Disorders Association created a bot. Hmm. and replaced of course, their operators on their hotline. Thoughts with the bots? Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:32):
This story is a mess.

Leo Laporte (02:02:34):
It is a mess. Thank you.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:37):
This story is like, the reporting is all over the place. It's clear that someone is not telling the whole truth on the timeline, but they started out with a, like a, a traditional chat bot that had a flow chart. Like, like set of predetermined answers. Yep. At some point it added generative ai. But it's unclear if they did that before or after they shut down their hotline and they shut down their hotline because people were waiting too long.

Leo Laporte (02:03:05):
Seven days and

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:06):
Probably,

Leo Laporte (02:03:07):
You know. Yeah. They said this is, you know, not, it's not, it's not like you know, a hel it's, it's just an informational line. It's not a crisis line. Okay. So it's still seven days if you're looking for help in your eating disorders. Way too long. Way too long.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:21):
So it feel, it feels like this is not as simple. Like they fired all their workers because AI was awesome. And then AI messed up. What it they had was they had a bad chatbot, or they had a chatbot and then they had a really slow a like hotline. So they fired the hotline people cuz they were like, it's no good to anyone. Somewhere in that time lane, they also took their chatbot and added generative ai. And then the generative AI started promoting things that is not good for people who have eating disorders. Like, yikes. Hey, you should count your calories. Which if you

Leo Laporte (02:04:00):
Have an eating disorder, not No, no, no.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:01):
It's not great. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:03):
Yeah. It is. It's real. It was a very confusing story. There is a paragraph way down that says, internet or other interests surged on the hotline because over Memorial Day, they had 600% increase in volume after news reports said that Nita Yes. Was using Tessa to replace the humans who were in the process of trying to form a union. However Nita says, no, no, that's not what happened. We decided to shut down the hop help line after a three year review from our board of directors because of increasing risk, risk factors and overwhelming demand causing long waits.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:39):
Well, how well did that work out for you

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Then? That didn't work either. But clearly the, the AI chat bot was a very bad idea. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:50):
Keep ai chats away from facts.

Leo Laporte (02:04:53):
Yeah. Doesn't work. Yeah, that's, that's right. But again, it's, it, I agree with you, Stacey. Not very unclear article. I couldn't figure out what happened. Really.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:05:01):
And you don't, you don't want AI or route, I mean, mental health is pretty nuanced. So if you wanna do it like, as a screening mechanism, right? Sure. But you can't actually deliver Yeah. Quality mental health through. And I know that everyone wants that to be scalable. Cuz how awesome would it be to have mental health be scalable. Yeah. But even working with a therapist, it's not scalable. You're gonna go in fits and starts. So Tech Solutionism does it again.

Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
Do you wanna talk about Jeff Beck? Poor

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:34):
AI below?

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
Yeah. Yeah. No, I see it. Do you wanna talk about archive.org? Ai killing the internet Archive with love.

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:44):
So just that poor archive.org has said, we've gotten hit with all these requests and they realize what it is is it's, it's, it's people putting together training sets sets for their ai. They're just saying, guys, can you just spread it out a little bit? <Laugh>, you know, we love you. But

Leo Laporte (02:05:59):
So tens. This is Brewster Kale writing ended last month. Tens of thousands of requests per second Wow. For our public domain. OCR r files were launched from 64 virtual hosts on Amazon's a w s. The activity brought us down for everybody for about an hour. Engineers scrambled on a Sunday afternoon on Memorial Day weekend to work on this. We got the service back up by blocking those addresses. But another 64 addresses started the same activity. A couple hours later, we figured out how to block the new set. He says, finally, if you're starting a large project, please email info archive.org. Because while we wanna help you, we, we can't, we don't have the bandwidth. Hmm. Gosh. I, you know, I love it. Archive.Org. I, I give him money every month. I gotta give him more. That's all I could say.

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:54):
You don't wanna talk about the Andreessen essay?

Leo Laporte (02:06:57):
Sure. Mark Andreessen says ai I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:59):
Didn't read it.

Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
Yeah. I don't believe anything Mark says. But AI will save the world. <Laugh> Mark, by the way, a venture capitalist with Horowitz, who has been promoting Web three. Yep. Among other things yep. As kind of an ax to grind.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:16):
So I, I tweeted, I I actually read the whole thing so you don't have to Thank you. You, and he gets, he starts off with Rick ridiculous bromides. Like, well,

Leo Laporte (02:07:25):
Ai, everything we care about better.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:29):
Right. And then he goes on about how we're all gonna have these wonderful assistants. Every child will have an AI tutor. Every person will have an AI or mentor. No. every scientist will have one. No, no, no, no, no. What he does, it's interesting in here. And get ready Anne. Get ready. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:07:43):
I, I

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:43):
Can't. Moral panic. There we go. There we are. God feeling about this. Love that. Thank you you Mr. Milito <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):
That one you have to see in the video that's head of Jeff floating through a sign that says Moral panic. It's beautiful. Saying, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:07):
So what he goes on, he, he says that there are the, you know, the religious people who are saying, I ask bad force. He calls the AI boys who are saying it's gonna kill everybody bootleggers cuz they're trying to promote themselves. Yes. And it goes through

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
That. He's right. Kills that. He's right there.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:20):
Absolutely right. And he said, and he goes to the risks. Will AI kill us? No. No. Will it ruin society? No. Will it take all the jobs? No. And he has backup for that. Some of that. Will it lead to quickly inequality? Well, we can debate about that cuz it's just capitalism. Will it lead to bad people doing bad things? Yes, it will. Hmm. okay. And then he goes on. Then his final, his final shtick is what's to be done? Well this is amusing because it's a vbc libertarian saying, well, don't regulate ai. Don't do regulatory capture. Allow open source. And I agree with that cuz we're gonna have more competition. I think we need more competition. I think that's true. And what we see happening in Europe is they're gonna try to regulate the hell out of it and stop AI from being open source, which I also agree would be a mistake. So I nice things about Twitter. You can't see it. Cause he mocks me. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
<Laugh>. No, you know what? I take back what I said. Cuz he's abs in this case I agree with everything he said.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:14):
Yeah. I I I I do too, actually. Yeah. Almost. But there is, there is a little bluster in it about how it's gonna, you know, it's gonna change all of our lives and, and save the world. It's not gonna do that. You know, I I occurred to me too that it's the mistake of, it's the problem of using the word intelligence with this stuff. It app modifies it from the start. It's not intelligence. It's an augmenting thing to help us do what we wanna do. And it will be more efficient and it will gain knowledge of all kinds of things. It will do neat stuff, but it's not gonna change, not gonna save the world, nor is it gonna destroy the world.

Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
I think we should have a new segment on this show called Bromide and Bluster. <Laugh>. I really like that. That's a show title. That's really good. If you get past the Bromides and ignore the bluster, what he's saying, he's actually, I think, a pretty good prescription Yeah. For how we should treat AI going forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:09):
La Bromide was inte human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes. Better. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:10:14):
No

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:16):
<Laugh>. The bluster, every person will have an AI assistant coach, mentor, trainer, advisor, therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful.

Leo Laporte (02:10:28):
If you, if you believe that, then you should go to this April Fool's ck the state of ai written by an ai by

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:37):
Ai.

Leo Laporte (02:10:38):
And read that I dare ya for a few weeks. And you'll say, wait,

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:43):
Wait, wait, wait. Go, go to that first. Go down a little bit, Leo. Cause the paragraph just amused the hell I made the well, right there. The last sentence there. Faster your seat belts for an insightful, engaging, and potentially worrisome ride. But the thing is, Leo, that paper natural selection favors ais over humans. That's a real paper. Oh. And I read it and it's ridiculous. <Laugh>. Like I know this long term termism thing that ais are gonna become their own bodies and then they're gonna compete with each other. And then the, you know, the, the, the Darwin time, it's, it's Daffy Digital Darwin that the most powerful AI will survive over all the others. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:11:19):
I do like this. In short, anything that people do with their natural intelligence today can be done much better with AI and will be able to take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without ai.

Leo Laporte (02:11:33):
Yeah. Open. There's some

Stacey Higginbotham (02:11:35):
Things people could have, but not all. Not

Ant Pruitt (02:11:38):
All. I mean, no, not all. But

Leo Laporte (02:11:39):
Yeah. This will be an interesting lawsuit. Open AI is being sued because chat, G B T accused a guy of embezzlement, whoops. <Laugh>. when a journalist online

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:54):
GBT can be made to say anything. Yeah. So people are gonna think they can sue open ai. It's just ludicrous. Yeah. But it'll be happening. That's, life is ludicrous. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:12:03):
Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. Don't believe everything you read when chat. G p G says it. We now have a new c e O at Twitter. Linda Yak Carino has taken over. She took over on Monday and everything's so much better now. So, thank you Linda. And bye-bye Elon.

Ant Pruitt (02:12:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:12:24):
She's really not the ceo. E O can I just say she's probably just really in, in, in normal times would be her title would be head of Sales Ad Sales. Right.

Ant Pruitt (02:12:35):
Well, that's what they need.

Leo Laporte (02:12:36):
Yeah. Yep. Ad Sales Plunge, 59% according to the New York Times. So

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:40):
She's not a Cheryl Sandberg to his z Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:12:43):
I don't think

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:44):
So. No. And they just handed over, as you can see in your feed the last two weeks, there was a story, we had a story on the rundown last week that they've handed over most of their ad re inventory to programmatic, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So there's crap about toilet pleading and that kind of stuff. The ads are awful. I bet if Leo write to Twitter be selling him mushrooms.

Leo Laporte (02:13:06):
Let me see. And

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:07):
Let's see.

Leo Laporte (02:13:08):
The problem is, and it really bugs me about Twitter, is they really need to put the promoted at the top of the tweet. I know it's, you don't know until you get to the bottom of, there's a nice Ant pruit.com/beer. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:19):
Thought that was an ad cuz it's so well produced. Yeah. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:13:23):
Yes. I'm looking for ads.

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:26):
I've got

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:26):
Coherent ai. I've got Wall Street Journal subscription. I have got,

Leo Laporte (02:13:32):
Don't have any ads. Maybe it'll be only in following. Cause I was like, I was, oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:36):
I have Outlander.

Leo Laporte (02:13:37):
Outlander the show. Just they know

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:38):
I'm a woman.

Leo Laporte (02:13:39):
Yes. Oh yeah. Women love Outlander. Actually, I, I read this. Mike loves Outlander. I did too. I read the whole Diana Gaden novel that's this thick. This thick. And I loved it. I, the TV show was okay, but I really liked the novel. I like time travel. Oh, I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:54):
Have a dog pool. This is fun. A sprinkler pool for my dog. I'm Dow but that does feel a little Sky Mall. Why am

Leo Laporte (02:14:01):
I getting no

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:01):
Retractable fountain pin?

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
They somehow know, know, they somehow know that I am showing this on the air. And I don't suddenly, cuz all I got was ads before. Mine's all right. Ooh. Mess is signing with Miami. Okay. That's a big story. Messi was going back and forth between was, I think it was a Premier League team and an MLS team. And he's going with mls. There was rumors that Apple would actually have to, shell say share of revenue to Messi just to, cuz they're of course a broadcasting mls. But getting Messi's huge. That's big. Okay. Getting Messi's huge. One of

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:43):
My students, one of my former students now one of our teachers covers soccer for espn. And there was a faculty meeting this morning. He said, sorry, I gotta go mess. Owns my life now.

Leo Laporte (02:14:54):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Right. you know what, I have no ads in my Twitter feed at all, which makes me think they really are suffering.

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:01):
I have a thing that's gonna correct my

Leo Laporte (02:15:03):
Posture. Maybe I have a blocker running.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:05):
Oh, I got that earlier today. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:15:07):
Lemme turn. You know what, honey?

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:08):
Tempe don't You think Stacey

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:10):
Got a luck? What'd you say? Your posture's lovely, Jeff. It's mine on the other hand right now is terrible cuz my migraine is killing my muscles. I'll bet.

Leo Laporte (02:15:19):
Oh, well let's get this over with then. We're gonna take a break. Oh, no,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:22):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:15:25):
Let's stay another hour. Ooh. New camera frame. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:27):
Mean, sorry, <laugh> today. I didn't wanna be the person complaining cuz I have a reason to complain. Yeah. We're trying when I don't have a reason. We're trying,

Leo Laporte (02:15:35):
We're trying to rehabilitate Stacey's point of view. Oh, we, oh, we are a rep. Right. We're trying to, because you, cuz you, last week you said, and I think this is true, you have now become pigeonholed as that waffle eating, complaining. Own it. <Laugh> always ready to go home. Own it. Host. And you're not, I know you're not, you're just playing it up. And so we're gonna rehabilitate Stacey's image. She's gonna become the Della Street of this show D Street.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:06):
If we start talking media to you again,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:07):
She's gonna become that person.

Leo Laporte (02:16:09):
And, and by the way, he's, he's Paul Drake. Jeff's Paul Drake. We're talking Perry Mason. And I'm Perry. Yeah. There

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:16):
Are three people.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:17):
Oh, okay. I'm, I'm, you're making me a secretary,

Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
Black and white. No, no, no, no. She's not, she's not a secretary. Secretary. She sits next to Perry at the, at the table of the attorneys. And she comes up with some of the best stuff actually in the new h Amazon Primary Mason. She's even more important. I would be running that table. Yeah, she is. Here's the virtual camera. This is just I think a

Ant Pruitt (02:16:42):
Stupid. Oh, this

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
Is so fun. I think it's, it's a con conceptual though. I don't think they plan to sell it. The p graphical, no. Yeah. The idea is it's a camera. It doesn't have a lens. It's really just a little computer. You enter in a prompt while pointing. It has a gps, I guess. Well, while pointing it. And then it will generate a artificial reality picture of what you're actually taking a picture of. So you see, he's trying different things. He wants to sit that can

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:11):
Get rid of all of his cameras. This look

Leo Laporte (02:17:12):
At this and it does it an AI graphic of where you are. The

Ant Pruitt (02:17:17):
Thing is though, you don't even have to go outside. Just go write your prompt in whatever generative AI that you using now. Yeah. <laugh>. It'll give

Leo Laporte (02:17:25):
You the same. I'm sure I could do that right now, couldn't I? It's kind. Yeah. But this is like one of those fun little hardware projects that Oh, fun. We all love as Oh yeah. It's also a comment on, it's a comment on AI photography, real life. I mean, it's kind of a commentary, right? Sure, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, I like, it's it's art. It is. It's really what it's Sure. P graphica. You can it's a, I'm not gonna give out the u URL cuz I can't even, this is some Danish guy.

Ant Pruitt (02:17:51):
Yeah. It was in my feeds and yeah, I was like, no, no thanks.

Leo Laporte (02:17:55):
Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't even know if you could buy it. I'll put it in there to

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:58):
Harris. I'll next, next week I'll look for some musicals for you. Instead of s

Ant Pruitt (02:18:02):
Like that. I'm supposed to find your special pick of the week. Dang it. Oh, won't get to that.

Leo Laporte (02:18:09):
Cause So actually you can try it. Press the trigger, take a photo of your location. It has to know where we owe it. No Clay location services are blocked right now, I guess. But if it knows where you are, you can actually, you know, do it on the web, which is cool. That's neat. It's just a, you know, it's an art project. It's a,

Ant Pruitt (02:18:26):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:30):
Our show today, we will be right back with our picks of the week. Our show today brought to you by the great folks at Cisco Meraki. They are the experts in cloud-based networking from hybrid work. Whether your employees are working at home at a cabin in the mountains or in a lounge chair at the beach, a cloud managed network is designed to provide the same exceptional work experience. Doesn't matter where they are, whether they're in the office or not. And by the way, you might as well roll out the welcome map because hybrid work is here to stay. Hybrid work though works best in the cloud and it literally does have perks for both employees and leaders. Workers love it, right? They can move faster, they can give you better results as long as they've got that cloud managed network so everybody's on the same page.

(02:19:21):
Leaders like it cuz they can automate distributed operations, build more sustainable workspaces, proactively protect the network. Actually that's really important. Meraki commissioned an ID g Market pulse report research report highlighting the top tier opportunities in supporting hybrid work. First of all, good to know hybrid work a priority for 78% of C-suite executives. Leaders wanna drive collaboration forward, but they also need to stay on top of or even boost productivity and security. And that's one of the big challenges. The I d G report raises the red flag about security, noting that 48% of leaders report cybersecurity threats are the number one obstacle to improving workforce experiences. So that's where you turn to Cisco Meraki for always on security monitoring. Part of what makes the cloud managed network so awesome, it can use apps for Meraki's vast ecosystem of partners. Turnkey solutions built to work seamlessly with the Meraki cloud platform.

(02:20:17):
They can do things like asset tracking and location analytics. You can gather insights on how people are using the workspace, right? In fact, at a smart workspace, environmental sensors can track activity and occupancy levels stay on top of cleanliness. You can reserve workspaces based on vacancy and employee profiles. So you can, you can, you can efficiently Hot desk employees can quickly scatter a place to work. And if by the way you have restricted environments, get the employees to book it in advance and then include time-based door access so they can only get in during that period of time. You also get mobile device management too, as well. Integrating devices and systems, which means it can manage, update and troubleshoot company owned devices. Even if the device and the employee are elsewhere at the coffee shop on the beach. You could turn any space into a place of productivity.

(02:21:09):
And these days you gotta look at this. Empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where your workers are with Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit. That's meraki.cisco.com/twit. I always feel a little guilty when I'm talking about that cuz we made y'all come back to work. <Laugh>. Yeah. You started talking about Hot Desk and I'm not gonna Hot desk. You got your own desk. <Laugh> it. You know, I, I really have mixed feelings about this, but I decided I I, I missed having everybody here and I think we as a group didn't, you know, it didn't quite work as well. I wasn't worried about productivity, but I think there is something that happens when everybody's in the same space. And I know that's been a little hard for people to kind of get used to it, but I think it's, I really think getting used to seeing you again.

(02:22:06):
Yeah. Well for instance, we, you know, we just, we had editorial meetings. There used to all be all on Zoom. Now we are all in the same room. Yeah. We're all in the same room. I think they're much more effective. There's, are you doing all every day back or is there a, is there a portion? But one thing that we did do, Lisa and her infinite wisdom turned to made everybody do four day week. So everybody's got a three day weekend or whatever that days those it be mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so I think that yeah, four days a week you come in. I, you know, we, we have, I don't know. I just think it's the right way to go. I, and I apologize if you hated Ant. I'd get in, get it, get it done. I go home. You're the one who wanted to get away from the family. That's what my home studio's for. Oh, <laugh>. <Laugh>. Sorry. Where's his man cave here? I still have a welt on my arm from having him work here. So maybe you should go home. You're gonna regret this report? Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:04):
At least there's, that's a, that's a, that's a perk right there. <Laugh>. Oh, it's

Leo Laporte (02:23:07):
<Laugh>. Wow. Stacey, what's your thing this week?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:13):
You know what, I'm gonna help y'all out if y'all care. I care if you're worried about your always indoor air quality. I am aware element for $209 measures all five of the things I told you it would measure. Which, if you care about carbon dioxide, VOCs, particulate matter at 2.5 humidity and temperature, this particular one is one of the only ones on the market that measures all of those things. And it's $209, which feels like a lot. Amazon does have one that's about 70 bucks, but it does not measure VOCs. And I don't think it measures carbon dioxide. I think it measures carbon monoxide.

Leo Laporte (02:23:56):
I have carbon monoxide by law. We have to have carbon monoxide detectors in the house. Yeah. And I do. And yeah, you definitely want that. Actually, we had a furnace. Guys come in, check the furnace. He said, you know, I have a big hole in your flu and your what? You know, the with an exhaust for the furnace. Oh. And I said, we have carbon monoxide detectors. How come they didn't go off? So now I'm worried that we got, we got, he sold you some new carbon monoxide detectors. <Laugh>. No, he sold us an new flu. Should

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:24):
Stop having people come to your house, man. He

Leo Laporte (02:24:26):
Said, he said, I'm gonna tape it up with duct tape. I said, you know what, can you gimme a new flu? It was in the garage, but that's where the carbon monoxide detector is. I was, oh boy. Anyway, what do you, what's the brand name? What do you recommend? Okay,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:38):
So this is the Aware is the brand name and their software is some of my favorite software for this. I used to have the Aware glow, which was fun. Now if you're like, Stacey, that's way too much money and it doesn't actually clean my air. I have another $200 option for you. That's really good. And this is the 3M filled treat. Smart air purifier and air quality monitor. Mm. Now this, the 1 99 99 1 is going to get your rooms up to 310 square feet. So that's gonna clean larger rooms. You will have to replace the filter with the 3M HEPA filters. But those are actually really good filters. And this is not gonna tell you things like VOCs or carbon dioxide or monoxide, really. But it will tell you particulate matter. And I think it tells you humidity. Most air purifiers, if they're running on the higher settings, they're pretty loud. So this one is kind of loud on the higher settings. So if your air's really dirty, you're gonna hear this. But that's the same thing for my Omega. I think the Kway is probably the quietest one I own.

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
Yeah. We have the kways running right next to our microphones and you don't hear 'em unless it get, it suddenly says Oh, and it goes up to high and then you're gonna hear it.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:52):
Yes. And, and the 3M s quiet when it's not. But the nice thing about this one is it has a display on the top that tells you the index and then it also gives you like a green, a red or Oh, that's cool. Purple light.

Leo Laporte (02:26:07):
And it ties to your smartphone as well. So you can see it on your smartphone.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:10):
Yeah. And it'll tell you, like, it'll give you the battery informa battery information, the filter change information and that sort of thing. So I, I've been running, I've run those and they're, they're good. They do clean the air and they have screen filters that help if you keep those washed, that helps trap more particulates before it gets to your

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
Filter. That was that thing we showed on the hallway as well. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:33):
Yeah. So that's that.

Leo Laporte (02:26:35):
Pretty cool. Fill treats. Those

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:37):
Are my things.

Leo Laporte (02:26:38):
The Aware is a W A I R, the Aware Glow and the fil treat Smart room.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:44):
Purify not the aware glow. It's the aware element that does all

Leo Laporte (02:26:46):
Five. Oh, you like the aware element? The

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:49):
Yeah, I, I had the, they don't make the Aware glow anymore. They don't support it anymore. Okay. But I did love that thing,

Leo Laporte (02:26:56):
<Laugh>. Oh, this one looks cool. It kinda looks like a little speaker.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:00):
Yeah. It's not,

Leo Laporte (02:27:02):
It's not. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:04):
That's, that's cool. That's a little thing to Yeah. Little design element there. Yeah. But good stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):
Jeff Chavez. How about a number of the week?

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:12):
Well, I, I think, I think given you've made all of your people come back to the office, I'm gonna make you feel bad and weird. <Laugh> because

Leo Laporte (02:27:21):
Castle sell it new buddy. What's new? <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:24):
Castle, which is a, I think does, does work in, in in office stuff and all those things. They have a, a regular back to work barometer. The 10 city average of office occupancy is 47.6%. If you scroll up,

Leo Laporte (02:27:41):
We'll get that. You will definitely see that in San Francisco. It's like a, it's just

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:45):
Like a San Francisco's down to 42%.

Leo Laporte (02:27:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:49):
Did you see that the, the Hilton, which is the biggest hotel in San Francisco, they just walked away. Yeah. They declared bankruptcy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:59):
They,

Leo Laporte (02:27:59):
Sorry. That's scary. That's really scary. That's 3000 rooms. It's two hotels.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:06):
They did a

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
Bit. Yeah. Actually they did with another hotel as well. So

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:11):
San Francisco occupancy is down to 42.7. San Jose occupancy is down to 37. That's probably, cuz Google took everybody out to rebuild it.

Leo Laporte (02:28:19):
San Jose's always felt like like kind of the city that everybody left <laugh> or forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. It's always felt that way. But it's really cool. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:27):
It's so much better than when I used to live there. It's way better a place than when I was there, but still. Yeah, it was a desert field. Yeah. Austin and Houston are relatively high. Austin has 56%. Houston, 57%, 58%.

Leo Laporte (02:28:41):
Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:42):
But but yeah, average is 47.6. 47.6%, 10 city occupancy. Less than a half. Which makes me worry a little bit about the coming real estate crash. Cause a lot of those are leases that are still on and the buildings are still getting paid. When those leases come up, they ain't nobody gonna want 'em.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:06):
Unfortunately, a lot of those people are, are complaining about the crime and homelessness that's happening in those areas too.

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:15):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:29:16):
Yeah, certainly downtown San Francisco is hard to work there because you gotta wade through, you know, a fentanyl market and yeah. An outdoor privy and it's just not pleasant. But now it, there's Hilton and Park 55 both Perfect.

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:34):
Five Right.

Leo Laporte (02:29:35):
Closing in San Francisco. Just walking away ceasing payments on a hotel, properties, let they're, they're going bankrupt. And say, you know, let the creditors have 'em. Mm.

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:47):
I had a friend who was in San Francisco last week going to a conference and he came out of the hotel. It's across Moscone that, that big one. And instead of turning right on fifth Street, he turned left on fifth Street.

Leo Laporte (02:29:58):
Oh yeah. Oh, oh. Fifth is really bad.

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:01):
And went way down. And, and at some point the cops came up to him and said, what are you, well what are you doing here? They get in the back

Leo Laporte (02:30:07):
<Laugh>. Really?

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:09):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:30:09):
Holy cow. So there's an Michelin two star

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:13):
Restaurant

Leo Laporte (02:30:13):
Shot. Yeah. There used to be. Maybe it's not there anymore. But there was a Michelin two star restaurant on fifth. Lisa and I went down there and it was like, we're never going back here again. The restaurant was amazing, but she walked two a block away. You know, we're we parked a few blocks away literally 50 feet from the front door. Some guy's defecating in the street. That really kind of puts you off your food. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:39):
Fifth. Fifth is where I used to work at. The the

Leo Laporte (02:30:41):
Is that Yeah. It's across the street from the, from the old Chronicle building. It's terrible. Yeah. It's very sad. You know, but I was mad when I saw the CNN Anderson Cooper, San Francisco is dying thing. But at the same time, it's hard to deny that there's trouble. Yep.

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:59):
What's interesting in New York is if you, if you midtown New York, you know, seventh Avenue, every restaurant and every business is closing down, you go to Brooklyn. Cuz it's a residential area.

Leo Laporte (02:31:08):
Right. Brooklyn awesome. Brooklyn's awesome. Right. Well then that's true of San Francisco too. There are certain, you know, the fifth, fifth admission don't go there. Right. But yeah, no, but there are, you know, there's lots of districts, twin Peaks and so forth that, that, that are fun bur, you know, going great. Safe Tiburon era. Well, Tiburon's not San Francisco, but Yeah. Tiburon, that's where they're rich people go.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:32):
Yeah. Tiburon. <Laugh>. That's

Leo Laporte (02:31:33):
Quite nice. That's for the rich folk. It is quite nice. That's,

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:36):
That's, that's where you have the brook linens in your yacht.

Leo Laporte (02:31:39):
<Laugh>. I was like,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:40):
I used to spend a lot of time in Tiran and it was lovely <laugh>. Yes. Nice. It's, it's Stacey Bougie approved

Leo Laporte (02:31:47):
<Laugh>. So I think part of it is these vacancies,

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:49):
Stacey

Leo Laporte (02:31:50):
Bougie. There's also, I mean, San Francisco's problem is also because of a fentanyl crisis. There's a really big problem with fentanyl. Massively.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:59):
Well, there's a problem with income inequality and the ability to afford housing. And once you're homeless, that sucks so bad. Why wouldn't you do fentanyl?

Leo Laporte (02:32:05):
Because Might as well. Yeah. Like

Stacey Higginbotham (02:32:07):
Yeah. What else are you gonna do? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:32:10):
Oh, sad. It really makes me sad. Yep. For the people as much as anything, you know. Yeah. We gotta figure this out. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:18):
Love that city. It was a, it was a wonderful it's place that I'm not saying is dead. It's still a great city.

Leo Laporte (02:32:22):
Anthony Nielsen says Mission district is still vibrant and happening and Yeah. I love the mission. Yeah. but you don't have to go far from the mission. Less than a mile. And, you know, it's bad news. Like the, the saddest irony of it is all is the civic center where the, where city Hall is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is among the worst areas, you know, so the mayor walks out the door, I guess she runs out the door into her limousine, but it's not good. Says a lot

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:49):
Because there's no's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:32:50):
An issue in Seattle

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:51):
Around there. It's always been kind of a dead space.

Leo Laporte (02:32:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and if you are a shop there, you're gonna be moving because you have

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:59):
The opera across the street. You have the ballet and all that stuff. Right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:33:03):
We would go, we would go to the opera or the, the, the Golden Gate theaters down there. We'd go to the theater and you felt like you were taking your life in your hands. I'll pass. Yeah. It's terrible. And I imagine it's happening in urban areas all over the country. I don't, I just Yeah. LA's taking a hit too. Yeah. Well now that you've really cheered us up, Jeff Jarvis <laugh> <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:26):
But, but Leo is doing his bit by getting everybody to come back to the office. <Laugh>. So Petaluma is fun.

Leo Laporte (02:33:32):
Eastside Petaluma is hopping and hopping. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:35):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:33:37):
Ant,

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:37):
We saw a lot of sushi at the gas station.

Leo Laporte (02:33:39):
Oh man. That gas station sushi's better than ever. Oh gosh. Don't do it. And give us a thing. My thing here is a Floyd Road, and I saw this a couple weeks. Youre just doing this to make Mr. You Jeff crazy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:53):
Oh, geez. Cause you shoulda have done a warden. Yes,

Leo Laporte (02:33:55):
I have been on this road. It is crazy. I have pictures of Lisa at the, at the, is this the one in Norway or no? Where's this? No, that's in China. This is in China. Give a second there. Oh no, this is China. Yeah. The one I was seeing before that was Norway. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:34:09):
That's okay. I'm okay with that. If it's floating. If it's down that low, that's okay.

Leo Laporte (02:34:12):
So this is a bunch of high up a bunch of different places. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:34:14):
That many people on a bridge. No, I'm not that happy. It it,

Ant Pruitt (02:34:17):
I was, I was blown away from the video.

Leo Laporte (02:34:19):
There's cars and

Ant Pruitt (02:34:20):
Yeah, cars go down the same bridge that the people are walking on.

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
This is the one I want to go to. The glass bridge will be a glass one. Oh yeah. Because you look through the floor and you see a hundred people. Oh yeah. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:34:33):
I was home. This is a couple weekends ago. Because again,

Leo Laporte (02:34:36):
Is that a walking bridge? The glass? Look, he's wearing special boots. Oh, you have to put booties on. Booties on. Yeah. Isn't that cool?

Ant Pruitt (02:34:44):
Not gonna make our glass dirty. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:34:47):
<Laugh>. It's so mean. <Laugh>. Here's the floating road. The number, the immortal bridges of floating. Oh yes. I've been there. Great Walnut. Great

Ant Pruitt (02:34:56):
Wall.

Leo Laporte (02:34:56):
Yeah. Tell me when it's over. <Laugh>. What else do you have,

Ant Pruitt (02:35:01):
Ant? He is turned around. It's over now. Mr. Jones. It's over.

Leo Laporte (02:35:03):
It's over. Promise me.

Ant Pruitt (02:35:05):
I promise you, sir. I

Leo Laporte (02:35:06):
Promise I trust you.

Ant Pruitt (02:35:07):
You can now. No, I

Leo Laporte (02:35:09):
Can't trust Liz. I've owed

Ant Pruitt (02:35:10):
You, I've owed you that for a little while. <Laugh>, I've owed you that for a little while. And I'm outside of my sister. And you're not

Leo Laporte (02:35:16):
A Bridgeton fan.

Ant Pruitt (02:35:18):
I am not a Bridger fan.

Leo Laporte (02:35:20):
Okay.

Ant Pruitt (02:35:21):
But this show, queen Charlotte. But you like this. Wow. Yeah. Queen Pruitt was watching it, and I kept asking her, do I need to know anything about Bridgeton to watch that show? Yeah. And she could never really answer it. She eventually binged it. I finally started watching it and I'm digging it. You love it. And I, I told her the other day, I said, don't get mad at me. But watching this, this reminds me of her the main character in there to me looks like Queen Pruitt from a, you know, I've, I've known her for 20 so years except

Leo Laporte (02:35:52):
For the hairdo

Ant Pruitt (02:35:54):
About That's a wig. No, no, no. Not that one. Scroll down. <Laugh>. The, the, actually look at the other link. The

Leo Laporte (02:35:59):
Queen to be looks a lot like queen Pruit.

Ant Pruitt (02:36:02):
The the young version there reminds me of Queen Pruitt. Yeah. The young version of Queen P. Good

Leo Laporte (02:36:06):
Job Ant.

Ant Pruitt (02:36:07):
And every time I see

Leo Laporte (02:36:09):
Her,

Ant Pruitt (02:36:10):
I keep looking at it. And, and she didn't take offense to it, but I was like, yes, she looks,

Leo Laporte (02:36:15):
That's just like, she looks just like

Ant Pruitt (02:36:17):
Right there, right there.

Leo Laporte (02:36:19):
Oh my

Ant Pruitt (02:36:19):
God. And so if you look at, I have a picture from about 10 years ago here in the rundown, you could see it.

Leo Laporte (02:36:27):
I've seen that picture of her <laugh> that looks so much like her. Yeah. So maybe she's a reincarnated queen

Ant Pruitt (02:36:34):
Show. And I'm like, I can't stop watching this. But it's good

Leo Laporte (02:36:37):
Royalty. Wow. It's a good show.

Ant Pruitt (02:36:40):
It's a good

Leo Laporte (02:36:40):
Show. I am amazed that she is Queen Pruitt. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You named her aptly. Oh, the link don't work. Oh, the link doesn't work.

Ant Pruitt (02:36:49):
Oh, my

Leo Laporte (02:36:50):
Bad. But I have to tell you, it looks just like that <laugh>. Yeah. <laugh>. That could be, yeah, that could be Queen Pruit. That's

Ant Pruitt (02:36:58):
Amazing. And I just got approval from Mr. Burke in the irc. Yep, it does.

Leo Laporte (02:37:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm never gonna watch a Bridgeston show. But

Ant Pruitt (02:37:07):
That one's pretty good.

Leo Laporte (02:37:08):
Is it? It's pretty. You liked Outlander, dude. That's true. Come on. That's a good point. <Laugh>. That's a good point. I

Ant Pruitt (02:37:14):
Couldn't fool with Bridger. Neither season, but this one. Yeah. I'm in so far.

Leo Laporte (02:37:20):
Ladies and gentlemen, that the last thing I'd ever thought we'd have a recommendation. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:25):
Yeah. That, that kind of blew me out of the water, by the

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:28):
Way, do you know an that there is Bridger the musical?

Ant Pruitt (02:37:32):
No thank you. It was on

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:33):
Tiktok.

Ant Pruitt (02:37:34):
How about you? I said to yourself, it got sued.

Leo Laporte (02:37:36):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:37):
But it's, yeah, you're Stacey, you're right. It's the perfect story. It's a musical and it's TikTok and it's an

Ant Pruitt (02:37:43):
No,

Leo Laporte (02:37:44):
It's everything. No, I want him to

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:45):
Show you more

Ant Pruitt (02:37:46):
Bridges. No. <laugh>. Yeah. Next. I got you. I'm trying to get, wow.

Leo Laporte (02:37:53):
I didn't even think of this. This is, this is Bridgeton and it's a bridge.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:00):
Here's a link. Irc.

Leo Laporte (02:38:04):
All right.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:05):
And here's one for Discord.

Leo Laporte (02:38:07):
Yeah. Put the, put the link in so I can show the the picture of the Queen in her court. And you can see. Yeah. Looks, that's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:38:15):
A cute

Leo Laporte (02:38:16):
Photo. Yeah, she's really cute. I saw a picture of you and her with somebody famous. I didn't know who that was.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:22):
Oh, fortune. Fortune Fester. I, I don't know why she popped in my head, but a couple years ago, actually it was right before we moved out here, we went to our favorite coffee house and the comedian, fortune Fester, just walks in, was having a coffee and telling funny stories. It, it was pretty cool.

Leo Laporte (02:38:40):
The light be recognized. Yeah. There's a great picture. Is it on Insta? Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (02:38:44):
Maybe it's Twitter.

Leo Laporte (02:38:45):
Twitter. It was a great picture of you. Three. And

Ant Pruitt (02:38:48):
She was just, just just as cool as as they come, as they come, man. But she also lives there in North Carolina apart up in the mountains. I believe.

Leo Laporte (02:38:57):
I am not familiar with her work.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:59):
She's a funny, funny, funny comedian. Yeah. Yeah. Did I tweet it? I thought I tweeted it. I'm sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:39:06):
Oh, is she the southern blonde lady?

Ant Pruitt (02:39:08):
Yes. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:39:10):
Curly hair. She's hilarious.

Leo Laporte (02:39:12):
Oh yeah,

Ant Pruitt (02:39:12):
I found it. Okay, here it is. Irc there. Copy <laugh>. Copy paste. There. There you

Leo Laporte (02:39:20):
Go. Irc. I felt very out of the out of the loop cuz I'd never

Ant Pruitt (02:39:24):
Oh, she's,

Leo Laporte (02:39:25):
Look at that. That's a better picture of Queen Pruit, frankly. It is too. Yeah. She looks just like the Brisson. Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (02:39:31):
She

Leo Laporte (02:39:32):
Does woman there. Yeah, she does. So it's Fortune, fester Queen Charlotte <laugh>. And the Ant man. Ant

Ant Pruitt (02:39:40):
And some bald black guy. Yeah. That's me.

Leo Laporte (02:39:43):
We we do this fabulous show every Wednesday. It's kind of just fun to getting together with your friends and Yep. Talking about stuff. It's round about media. We

Jeff Jarvis (02:39:53):
Love talking about media here.

Ant Pruitt (02:39:55):
<Laugh> excuse.

Leo Laporte (02:39:56):
Be very

Stacey Higginbotham (02:39:57):
Happy eating waffles. Talking about

Leo Laporte (02:39:59):
Eating waffles, waffles. And I'm all <laugh>. I came here to eat waffles and kick ass and I'm all outta waffles. The show every Tuesday or Wednesday, I should say 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern. You can watch us do it at live twi tv. There's audio and video there, so watch or listen while you're doing it. That chat with us at irc twi tv. That's open. All <affirmative>. Of course. We also have the what do they call it in a race track? The, where the elite people hang out. The country club area. Winners Circle the winners circle box. The boxes. The club. The club club seats. The club seats. Club level. Yes. At Club Twitch. Join the club level. You know, unlike the racetrack, this is only seven bucks a month. It's cheap. Yes. And what do you get? You get ad free versions of every single show. Plus shows we don't put out in public. Like hands on Macintosh, hands on windows. The entitled Lennox Show. Stacey's book Club. You also get, that's the twit plus feed with stuff that happens before and after every show. And you also get access to the, the box seats. <Laugh>, that's the Discord. Wonderful group of people. Nice. Always fun chatting. Sometimes we talk about tech, sometimes we talk about other nerd pursuits like cooking. Sometimes

Ant Pruitt (02:41:16):
Joe Esposito shares interesting memes with

Leo Laporte (02:41:19):
Us. I love Joe <laugh>. He's great. We got two Joes in there. A lot of fun. Gaming, hacking, ham, radio, science, sports, travel, all the topics you might be interested in. This is the future I think of social. Yes. Is as could you do virtual trivia? Like, could we do, like, we have a tri, wait a minute. Go to, let's play. There is a trivia game. You could play it Yes. Against other people even. It's in the Let's place. Oh, there's a lot of stuff in there. Right there Under fun and games. So what was the name of Singer Frank Ocean's Second Studio album. Do you know? No. nobody got one. So you, we can all play this together. Yeah. Off White <laugh>. No, that's a brand <laugh>. So this is, yeah, this is fun. It's like better than Jeopardy.

(02:42:07):
You can all play trivia. You are allowed to sell your soul on eBay. False. True. False. False, false. False. You cannot sell your soul. There's also a chess game. There's a mid journey. We have our little mid journey channel. So we, you, you can share your wordle scores to keep 'em out of Jeff Jarvis's speed. Oh, <laugh>. And then if you do, I still play Wordle. If you do wanna play on the Minecraft server, go on to the Let's Play Server. And I will add, all these people are asking to be added. I, I apologize. I will go home and <laugh> and and add them. Get the work. Get the work <laugh>, get to work, and I will update to the latest Minecraft two one point 20. I didn't see that came out. Seven bucks a month. Look at what you get. You get a whole life. Get, get Content talk TV slash club twit. And you also get this kind of satisfying feeling that you're helping us basically stick around. Yep. Because honestly keeps the

Ant Pruitt (02:43:07):
Lights on. Even the ones that flicker in the

Leo Laporte (02:43:08):
Background. Yep. Keep up in the <laugh>. Honestly, we need, we really need the support. So thank you for those of you who've already joined. For those of you who are not yet members, twit tv slash club twit, after the show is done, we hastily edit it and put it out on the website, twit.tv/TWiG. We put it up on YouTube. There's a this week weekend Google Channel on YouTube. Best way to get it though. Subscribe to this weekend, Google and your favorite podcast player. We have a few links at the website, but you can also just go to your, you know, go to Overcast or Pockets or Google whatever it is that you use for podcasts and search for TWiG. You'll find it right away.

Ant Pruitt (02:43:47):
Even though this is, this, we can Google. I do not recommend Google Podcasts. Sorry,

Leo Laporte (02:43:51):
<Laugh>. It's not the best. Apple has updated their podcast. They talked a little bit about that at the event. Anyway, whatever you use. I like, I What do you use? I use ice podcasts.

Ant Pruitt (02:44:01):
I still use my friend's passion project called Play a Pod.

Leo Laporte (02:44:05):
Oh yeah. Play a pod. Yeah, that's a good one. Doesn't matter. The, you just look for us. We'll be there. Yep. We're there. And then you get it. And you don't have to think about, there's audio and video of every episode. Thank you. Stacey Higginbotham. Stacey On i ot.com Is her website. The podcast with Kevin Tofus there every week. Great stuff. Anything else you wanna plug? Stacey, that's so much. That's all we have to say. Thank you for being here. Ant Pruitt is at Ant Pruitt dot com. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and his prints are at pruitt.com/prince. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. He's on the Twitter Ant underscore pruit. And you do tweet quite a bit. Yeah. Some You're a Twitter guy

Ant Pruitt (02:44:46):
Automated, but yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:44:48):
I tweet. Yeah. <laugh>. He's a tweeter. Look at that.

Ant Pruitt (02:44:51):
It's all about the hardhead. The

Leo Laporte (02:44:53):
Showcases baby. Look at this man. I would, I'd sign that boy so quick. Come on. You be in our college freshman class next year. Come on Hardhead. Come

Ant Pruitt (02:45:04):
On, come on. Come

Leo Laporte (02:45:05):
On Jacob. Come on. Good. Look at that. At spread the

Ant Pruitt (02:45:07):
Word.

Leo Laporte (02:45:08):
Beautiful. Pass. Good footwork.

Ant Pruitt (02:45:10):
Cuz Ant Pera doesn't have the cash to pay for college. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:45:14):
<Laugh>. Now they're gonna think I don't pay

Ant Pruitt (02:45:18):
You. No, it ain't that. Most people don't have the cash to pay. No. Most times.

Leo Laporte (02:45:22):
No, it's true. That's truly tragic. Yeah. thank you Mr. Jeff Jarvis, let's not forget Jeff. He is the director of the Town Night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. And coming out later this month, the Gutenberg parenthesis@guttenbergparenthesis.com. Get your copy. 2 29 pre-ordered soon. Jeff, stay inside. I'm I worry about you with that smoke. Yeah. Notice the, it's, it's why the inside is orange now. It is a little orangey. Is the air getting, you can smell smoke in there. It's the light. Oh. It's just change that Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well stay safe

Ant Pruitt (02:46:03):
There. That's better. Yeah. Ooh. Ah.

Leo Laporte (02:46:07):
He fixed it. Use said nasal wash. Not it won't help your lungs, but it'll help your sinuses. Tell me about that. Spray up your nose. Oh yeah, yeah, I do. We have the the the thing where you squeeze it, the neti pot goes the neti. It's like a NetiPot goes up one way and comes down the other. Yeah. And you go, ow. It doesn't quite magical, but it cleans you out. Yeah. The saline spray. Yeah. I don't spray it. Why? You can go far full kni. I hose it out. Yeah. I I hose it out. They're just ma <laugh>. That's a visual. Okay. Okay. A little too much information. Uhhuh, thank you everybody for joining us. We'll have fun time next week. I won't be here because I will have drowned myself with my mini pack. <Laugh>, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time on this week weekend. Google. Bye-bye. Ho it at

Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent (02:46:57):
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