This Week in Google 724, Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Twig this week in Google. Stacy Ant and Jeff are here. We're gonna talk about Threads. 100 million users strong. Now, what does this mean for the Fedi? We'll also talk about Amazon Prime Day. You won't believe how much money Amazon made yesterday. Oh, and by the way, it's just a little online boutique, right? That's what Amazon's telling the eu all that and more. Coming up next on Twig

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This Is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:42):
This is Twig this week in Google. Episode 724 recorded Wednesday, July 12th, 2023. Thirsty Grind Flu. This week in Google is brought to you by a G one. Take ownership of your health with a simpler, effective investment with Ag One. Try Ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free Ag one travel packs with your first purchase of a subscription. Go to drink ag one.com/twig and buy twit. Thank you for listening. We're an ad supported network, so that means we're always looking for new partners with products and services to benefit our audience. With our tailored host Red Ads like this, you'll get an authentic and proper introduction to your brand. With every ad read you wanna know more, visit twit. Do TV slash advertise and launch your campaign today.

(00:01:37):
It's time for Twig this in Google the show we get together with couple of my favorite friends and talk about whatever the hell's on our minds. Stacy Higginbotham is here from Stacy on I o t and the IOT podcast with Kevin Tofl. Hi Stacy. Hello y'all. Hello. Good to see you. Also with us, Mr. An Pruitt of Hands-on Ant. Where'd you get that shirt? I don't know. It was on the top of my stack in my closet. That's a right shirt. That's all it matters. Look at that. It says this week in tech. It's got the twit logo on it. Really? It's quite, it's quite nice on Do we sell those? I don't know. We should are nice. I mean, if you need a model, I'm your man. Yeah, no kidding. <Laugh>, they only come. It's true. They only come in beefy size. B <laugh>. Size B. No, they'll just

Speaker 2 (00:02:30):
Make you look like an

Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
Are you an Arnolds Doesn't want that Pump Club? Yes. Yeah, this is true. Yeah. He's an Arnolds Pump Club and also with us. Would you hand me the card? I can't read his his intro without the card. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeff Jarvis, the Leonard Tow professor for journalistic innovation at the

Speaker 2 (00:02:51):
Craig Craig Newar.

Leo Laporte (00:02:54):
Craig Newmar Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Hello, Jeff. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. You're all over the, your Threads game is hot. Oh, yeah. Oh, author of the Gutenberg parenthesis. How quickly we forget gutenberg parenthesis.com.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:10):
It is, it is number one in, don't you love these Amazon category? Like every book has its own category. What's So what do they say? It's,

Leo Laporte (00:03:17):
What's the category?

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:18):
It's number one new release in general books and reading.

Leo Laporte (00:03:23):
Oh.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:24):
Oh, that's pretty good.

Leo Laporte (00:03:25):
That's like, as I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:26):
Thought it was gonna be like books about 15th century printing <laugh>. You know, that's, that's a smaller

Ant Pruitt (00:03:31):
Category. Yeah. Not, not as a Followed

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:33):
My Ran

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
Lisa is is mad that there's no audio book version

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:39):
Audio book yet. I, I, but because of Lisa, I bugged the publisher. Nothing has happened. But they say there's an audio book. I, I, because of Lisa, I went

Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
To editor, so I, she's making me read it to her now. <Laugh>. So there is an audio book version, but it's at our house. And invite you all to come over for Well, you got the pipes

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:59):
For me Elite audience. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:04:01):
You got the pipes to an audience of one.

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:03):
Do you do it in my voice?

Leo Laporte (00:04:05):
No, but you know, it's funny when I read it, I do hear your voice when I read it, which is interesting. I think a good writer you kind of hear their voice when you're reading their prose, their text. And I definitely hear your, I hear your voice too, Stacy, when I read your Yep. Website.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:23):
Oh yeah, that makes sense. I, I I write like I talk.

Leo Laporte (00:04:26):
Yeah. Devork taught me that. He's, he says I always he says, I always read my stuff after I write my columns. I read it out loud mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to see if it's in my voice. And

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:35):
That's, that's so funny as though to imagine Deak. Well, and then

Leo Laporte (00:04:38):
I know <laugh>, I got angry about that. So he had a very distinctive voice, doesn't he? So I guess it makes sense. Yes. So I guess we have to talk about threads cuz it launched right after the show last week, right? Right after. Yep. In less than a week. Almost as many listeners as this show has 100 million users. That's pretty fascinating. 100 million users. Half on iOS and half on Android as best we can tell. Which is interesting. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:08):
That is interesting cuz you know, the brands are all on iOS and

Leo Laporte (00:05:13):
People are on brands there. Holy cow.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:16):
Yeah. What percentage of that a hundred million is brands?

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
It felt like they were just waiting. But what percentage for Somewhere to Be Right?

Ant Pruitt (00:05:23):
What percentage of it was meta nudging folks into getting into it versus people saying, huh, I'm actually curious about this. Let me go ahead and sign up. Cuz I'm pretty, she

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:35):
You ask my

Ant Pruitt (00:05:36):
Sister-In-Law the nudge that's happening.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:40):
Yeah. My sister-in-law who's on Instagram knew about it, which was unusual cuz normally no clue. Right. it's not, it's not her thing. But she hadn't signed up.

Leo Laporte (00:05:52):
She, oh, that's interesting. She didn't know about it. Instagram does kind of encour encourage you Yeah, I think, yeah. To join Threads. Yeah. And this is the strength of it Threads is a Twitter clone created by Meta, really created by the Instagram division. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> of meta and has taken off. It's pretty obvious why it's taken off. One because of Instagram. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. And the, the signup process very straightforward. Maybe even too straightforward cuz you have to have your Instagram username as your threads username. Yep. and it also brings over the people you follow and who follow you. So you, if you allow it, and I'm sure most people do, that's the default. So you, you kind of instantly have a group of people to follow. That's one of the downsides to Twitter. And even more so in Mastodon, is if you can figure out how to get in and sign up mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then what, who do you follow? Right. Who do

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:41):
You follow? Which is why portability of your social graph is gonna be so important. And, and, and once things are really federated, if they really are, it opens the door for other small networks to start. Because you could have the starter kid of friends and move over there.

Leo Laporte (00:06:54):
Well, and, but that's an interesting point. We're gonna get to that actually, because there are some interesting mismatches in, in the Fedi verse and, and, and activity pub and, and, and threads. But threads also learned a lesson that meta wasn't available to meta or even Instagram when they launched, which was the algorithmic feed, the TikTok style feed. And so, unless you take steps to avoid it, and it's not, not obvious how to do this. When you are on threads, it looks just like Twitter. Except you see people, you're not

Ant Pruitt (00:07:26):
Following. Wait a minute. So there is an an there is a non-obvious way to fix that because Yeah. That's the problem I have with this platform. It's pretty, and, and, and I'm not seeing a bunch of junk, but I'm also not seeing things that I'm truly interested in. I think

Leo Laporte (00:07:43):
For the beginning it's a, it's a good way to do it because you immediately have a feed that's full of stuff.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:49):
Okay. And it's

Leo Laporte (00:07:50):
Probably interesting. Plus there's people to follow. Yeah. And so I, there Maser Adam Maser who runs Instagram and is kind of the lead voice. And this says, yeah, we're gonna have a, what they call a following feed Twitter added that for you feed. And it's horrible. Same thing. It's horrible. Hate it. But it was the same idea. And it all, people learned this from TikTok. Even when YouTube started, there wasn't really an algorithmic feed mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But once everybody saw how effective that was on YouTube and then TikTok adopted it, I think it's, it's the, it's the thing everybody does. Cuz you, you, you know, when you first, in the early days of Twitter, you join it and then it's like, well, okay, now what? There's nobody what's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:26):
Yeah. It's like blue sky. I came to a party and nobody's there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
It's like blue sky. So, so it really threads instantly feels like something's going on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, let me I'll show you how to, I think I've been told how to do this. Let me turn on my screen mirroring. So I'm gonna go to Airplay one bonito. It's spinning still, but as soon as I can. Yeah. There it goes. So now let me show you I'll go into threads. Can you see my threads here?

Ant Pruitt (00:08:53):
He's trying to change. Still happening.

Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
Still happen. It takes a little while to, to get going. So Yeah. All the brands. So the, so it was that. And then the second part of the equation was everybody Elon's just been, you know, driving, driving the, the airplane into the ground. Right. And so people were looking for it. So this is, this is threads right now. This is my threads by the way. There is no desktop version. That's why we had to airplay it from my iPhone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. See it. You can run it on desktop. If you're running Windows and you install Android. Interesting. The Android subsystem. You can all Android.

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:27):
Android. Yeah. My Chromebook. It's no problem. I run it.

Leo Laporte (00:09:30):
That's right. Android. That's right. So anyway, this is how you do it. An gotcha. You go to your account and the, and you hit this menu in the upper right hand corner, which is settings. Okay. And then you go to notifications. Okay. Threads and replies. Okay. And I'm told, and I think it does work cause it seems to be doing it from, from me, is you make everything for people you follow from people you follow from people you follow. I don't wanna see anything from anybody but people I follow.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:58):
Oh, but then I also have to turn on Android's notifications.

Leo Laporte (00:10:03):
No, you don't. No, no, no. Cuz I don't. Yeah. See I have my notifications paused. I don't, I don't want notifications. Okay, great. But it, see, this is why it's not obvious. That happens to change also what you're seeing now on threads. Except I am. There you go. You saw that thing that was at the top is gone. That was somebody I wasn't following. These are all people I'm following now. Okay. Well, a minute not carnage for life. So maybe not that's, oh no, that's because Alex Stamos, who I do follow, replied to it. So that is one thing that'll happen. I don't wanna see that. Well, I don't care to see. They'll give you a following only fee reply. I agree. But, but right now I'm only seeing stuff that is either people I follow or has been replied to, or re retreaded, I guess you call it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> by people I follow. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (00:10:46):
So far I'm seeing that.

Leo Laporte (00:10:49):
So it is a lot of brands. There's the New York Times npr, which famously left Twitter after Elon accused it, of being government funded media immediately joined Threads. There's a lot of people who have been looking like Reuters there for, for somewhere to be That's not Yeah. Tons

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:06):
Of those kinds

Leo Laporte (00:11:06):
Of places. And there's George Decay. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:09):
Didn't show up on Mastodon yet.

Leo Laporte (00:11:10):
Yeah. It also does a good job with video. You could see it's Instagram heritage, and I think aunt, you probably appreciate the images look good, how good the images look. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> images look good the way it does the image slideshow. You can do panoramas with it, which is people have been playing with that a little bit, so you haven't done yet,

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:26):
The images. Somebody read the book and they put up screenshots with things underlined.

Leo Laporte (00:11:33):
Yeah. See that? And they had like

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:34):
Six screenshots.

Leo Laporte (00:11:35):
Yeah. Isn't that gray? Wow. Nice. So lovely. So it's like a Twitter with a very good graphical interface, you know, for video and for for pictures. I don't think it does audio standalone yet. And there are no, there's no spaces. There's no, but, but see a lot of the features that we love, here's Patrick Mahomes, the, I gotta tell you, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:59):
I'm, I didn't expect you here to be following Patrick Mahomes, but looks like you are

Leo Laporte (00:12:03):
<Laugh>, you know why? Cause this was his first tweet was a video of him going, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, <laugh>. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna follow you just cause of that. Gotta follow notice, by the way, these plus signs. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's Jim Costa's. I can't make that bigger, but there's a little plus sign in his head. If I, and this is also smart, I'm looking at this feed and I go, oh, you know, I didn't know Jim Costa of CNN was here. I could just tap it, follow him. And so it's very easy to add people, your followers. So I think that this is it's, it's cleverly done. It's cl I think it's well done. Now here's the question, <laugh>. Okay. First of all, did this rehabilitate Zuck, some people are calling it Zuck 2.0.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:48):
I didn't wanna join this and I haven't joined it because I don't like the data grab that's happening. Right. I hate being like, I'm not on Facebook like grabbing.

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
I mean, I'm not either. My

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:59):
Business is on there.

Leo Laporte (00:13:00):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:00):
Yeah. I'm not. I am on Instagram, but I'm, I don't have the app downloaded. I have none of this cuz I don't wanna be part of that. And I was kind of shocked at all these people were like, wow, there's so many people. I'm like, can we not talk about like how Europe's like threats doesn't really handle privacy to the point where we're comfortable with it.

Leo Laporte (00:13:18):
It's a little different. We like it's threads saying we don't want to be in Europe because we are concerned about the data pro rules in Europe and we don't want to deal with that yet. So it's not Europe saying you can't be here. It's threads saying, well, right, we're gonna hold

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:33):
Off. Well, is Europe saying you need to abide by these rules in Facebook, San Stacy, I don't know if I want to play your game.

Leo Laporte (00:13:39):
Yeah. And that's not clear by the way. That's not gonna, that they're not gonna figure that out. Out. It could change. Cause it can't really, I mean, you can't see not being in Europe is a big deal, right. For a, for any social. Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (00:13:51):
I think so.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:52):
But, but you could also see

Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
Here, here's the data links to,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:53):
To you grabbing a lot of data.

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
Yeah. Here's the, you go, here's the data. This is, thank you. I Apple, because Apple does force companies to publish this. Right. Including health and fitness, financial info, contact, info browsing, history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location contact, search history identifiers, sensitive info and other data. In other words, everything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, everything.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:19):
Yeah. That's a lot of data that, and I'm not, Facebook is not, I mean I know it's Facebook. I know they're grabbing everything they can, but that's why I got off Facebook in the first place. Yeah. So I'm kind of like, Hmm, yeah, maybe I'm just not a

Leo Laporte (00:14:33):
Well,

Ant Pruitt (00:14:33):
Where is the outcry from dam masses about this collection?

Leo Laporte (00:14:37):
I think people were so desperate for replacement to Twitter. Really? That that's what

Ant Pruitt (00:14:41):
It's okay. We'll just give it all up. That's what it's,

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
You know, you know, there's a couple of,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:45):
I think it's our job as journalists. Yeah. But we're all like, I think we're sitting down on the job because we're not explaining this to people. Oh. And I also think people don't understand the risk to their, I'm actually writing about risk and data privacy right now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it's a freaking nightmare cuz

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
Yeah. But Stacy, it's a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:02):
Lot,

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
Most people <laugh>, a lot of people do what I did say, well, I won't have Facebook on my phone. But then they put Instagram or WhatsApp on their phone. Uhhuh

Ant Pruitt (00:15:10):
<Affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
Right. Do you have WhatsApp on your phone? I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:13):
I do have WhatsApp on, but WhatsApp is encrypted and No, no, no, no. Whatsapp actually, no, no, no. My

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
No, no, no. Look at the health. Look at the health notice on WhatsApp. On the iPhone. Well, you don't have an iPhone, but I don't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:26):
Have an iPhone.

Leo Laporte (00:15:26):
It's the app itself is grabbing the same information.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:30):
Dammit Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
But that's my point is that yes, you're absolutely right.

Ant Pruitt (00:15:35):
I don't like it.

Leo Laporte (00:15:36):
Again, you're absolutely right. But most people, most normal people are already giving meta all that information. Anyway,

Ant Pruitt (00:15:43):
Can you get in touch with all of these Congress folks out here and share that screen that you just shared with our TWIT folks because all they're worried about, all they're worried about is TikTok and what it's still

Leo Laporte (00:15:52):
Isn't that hysterical?

Ant Pruitt (00:15:53):
And this is this Yeah. Just as egregious. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:56):
So that does bring me to, to the second point, which is this is I think good for the Fedi verse because for somebody like you, Stacy, you could, you could put a Mastodon app for instance on your phone. And if you look at the, the privacy card for Mastodon zero mm-hmm. <Affirmative> nothing. Right. And, and this is the beauty part. Thanks to if and we'll this will be a good question if they do this. Yep. If Threads goes ahead and, and, and as they have promised incorporates Activity Pub, then you could follow. Let's say you did wanna follow Patrick Mahomes. He's on Threads, he's not on Mastodon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you could follow on your Mastodon and since get all of his threads, he could follow you from, from Twits Social or Mastodon or any other Mast nine since not any other, cuz a few have said we're not gonna have anything to do with this. But the, the ones that are not De Federating meta and, and you would have a perfect back and forth conversation.

Ant Pruitt (00:16:53):
I was wondering how that was gonna work. Cause I heard you talk about it briefly on, on the show Sunday. Like what is meta getting out of this joining activity pub? Nothing. So seems like it goes against their business logic. Right. It

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:06):
Kind of, maybe if you wanna like really screw Elon Musk, this would be a good way to do it. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
So here's an interesting post from the new staff. Get better pr. This is Richard McManus writing Threads adopting Activity Pub. Makes sense. But it won't be easy. And I'll go to his, his conclusion it's early days, but in my humble experience, Richard McManus, senior editor of the New Stack writes threads feels like a text-based version of Instagram that's accurate. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the content is a mixed of aspirational and motivational. And the current algorithmic timeline is peppered with celebrities and influencers pedaling their memes. Perhaps the biggest challenge integrating with fed averse apps like Mastodon will be the cultural differences. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> between the two communities. But, but I'm not worried about that because like Parallel Rivers, just cuz you tap into something from one doesn't mean the whole river comes through that. Okay. That pipeline. Sure. He said I hope Meta does successfully adopt the protocol so that Masson users like me can add a few thread users to their feeds.

(00:18:05):
The ideal outcome would be a bunch of new apps getting built that tap into both Mastodon and thread social graphs. But he does say it's in the interest of Meta, he's promised it. And Meta has actually put a software engineer Ben Savage on the activity pub working group in the W three C. Oh. they have continued to make the steps that they would need to make. There are some technical issues, but I think at this point they've really promised that they would do this. It doesn't, let's face it, does it hurt meta if Stacey who's never gonna have threads on her phone follows Patrick Mahons on Mastodon, it actually

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:46):
Helps, makes, it makes threads more valuable to Patrick Mahome.

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
Exactly. Because he

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:50):
Get more

Leo Laporte (00:18:50):
People. Exactly. Okay. And maybe Right. All those brands will be super thrilled. Yeah. Okay. Sure. And maybe even at Patrick mahomes@threads.net notice, you know, somebody on Mastodon says, oh, he is on threads and goes over and follows him on threads. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't suck enough. DA enough people for away mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, those are people like you Stacy, who would never join it in the first place. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:13):
Here's another thing too that from the business perspective, is that a brand that's gonna be scared of going on mass done or just simply not understanding it Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:22):
They get it for free

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:23):
Threads. Yeah. And you know, if you wanna complain about your Delta flight, then you'll do it through threads and they'll, and that's how they'll, you know, kind of recapture that old threat Twitter customer service angle.

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
Okay. Yeah. They wouldn't have to follow. See that's interesting. And we don't, that's kind of an unknown if I at reply Delta on Mastodon, do they see it on Threads not clear it that could be implemented that way and it might not be. I would hope it would be. I would hope it would be. And I think you're right. There's a value isn't

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:54):
The whole charge like thing. Yeah. Meta couldn't charge like API access for this. No. Right. Cuz it's Activity

Leo Laporte (00:20:00):
Pub. Correct. It's Activity Pub. Yeah. Okay. So here's the, here's another contrarian point of view that will make you feel better, Stacy, from the jog blog jog is Jason O. Gilbert. Facebook's threads is so depressing. I saw that like a $19 Turkey sandwich at an airport. God, I couldn't on it. He writes Threads is depressing.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:21):
I couldn't click on it.

Leo Laporte (00:20:22):
<Laugh>, I couldn't

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:23):
Click on it.

Leo Laporte (00:20:23):
Well, you're gonna get it anyway cause I'm gonna read it to you. <Laugh>, every part of Threads existence makes me shake my head. Twitter selling itself to Elon Musk because he offered a stupid high price. Elon Musk promptly ruining Twitter so badly that any alternative looks palatable. Even one run by Mark my other platform enabled a little literal genocide. Zuckerberg, he's talking about Myanmar. Of course, man. The bland market tested design. The Thirsty Grind flus, by the way, I'm adding that to my category. Grind flu. Love that. Thirsty Grind. Flus thirsty. That's really looking for Halloween. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the ones who are influencers, who are grinding hard to create thirsty content. So you'll follow them. I'm, I'm going to update my profile with that. Right. <laugh> <laugh> posting. Well, it's not a done thirst. The Thirsty Grind influencer is posting with the energy of a puppy with Zoomies <laugh>.

(00:21:19):
Okay. The looming heavy breathing presence of Zuck, the corporateness of it all. Just all of it. Man. Every part of it sucks. Here's Johnny Bones threading. What's up everyone? To which Zuck says one thing that's up is the number of world champion MMA fighters on threads. Especially now that you're here. Yeah. It does make me kind of IP up in my mouth. <Laugh>, what does threads feel like? He says Johnny, John O. Gilbert Threads feels like when a local restaurant you enjoy opens a location in an airport. Oh, oh, oh. It feels like a Twitter alternative. One, one post they should have picked the best. Okay. It feels like a Twitter alternative you would order from Brookstone <laugh>. It feels like if an entire social network was those posts that tell you what successful entrepreneurs do before 6:00 AM you know, see why did he put this, this headline on here? Because if, if it had been something else I probably would've read. It's very funny. Yes. It feels like watching a PowerPoint from the brand research team where they tell you that Pop-Tarts is crushing it on social <laugh>. It feels like casual Friday on LinkedIn. We've seen those <laugh>. We've seen those.

(00:22:43):
Then here's a, here's a, he he really dresses this up with some actual threads. Here's Mark Cuban posting. What up Mr. Beast? To which Jake Paul says, giving $5,000 to someone who rethreads this. Oh gosh. To which Gary v replies Oh my. Focused as if Oh. And then apparently posts a emoji that cannot be reproduced. So <laugh>. Oh, I was like, is that a question mark? Like, no. Why Gary v. Gary Gary v never asked questions. Yeah. Don't think it was only statements. Only. Why? Wow. Currently there's no way to only see posts from the people we were following. Continuous Jog. You click on your homepage to see where your friends are up. But guess what? It's time for an epic meme from the official Salesforce account as young Sheldon once said Bazinga. So it's a, it's really Here's some more Backstreet Boys. Oh my God. We're back again. Mcdonald's. Hi from Grimace. Say it back please. Ellen DeGeneres. Welcome to gay Twitter. Netflix Threads is kinda like, love is blind cuz everybody is all about the engagement. Oh my gosh.

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:59):
Gosh. Oh, fire that intern.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:00):
Oh my gosh.

Leo Laporte (00:24:01):
You know, it's funny cuz there, there's so much of this like, brand content, trying really hard to, to do outdo everybody else. Thirsty,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:09):
Grind fluency,

Leo Laporte (00:24:10):
Thirsty Grind, influencing. And it, I, for some reason, I can see behind the brand to exactly what you just said Jeff, it's like I can see some, you know, 20 something mm-hmm. <Affirmative> saying, oh yeah, I I got the Wendy's account. I'm so excited. I'm

Ant Pruitt (00:24:27):
On it. I'm, I'm on

Leo Laporte (00:24:28):
It, boss. I'm on it <laugh>. And so in a way it's more personal than a brand to me. Like, I see the person behind the brand and it kind of, it's kind of funny, you know. Anyway,

Ant Pruitt (00:24:40):
Those tips you gave me about potentially, did I fix it? No. When I, since I've refreshed it,

Leo Laporte (00:24:46):
It takes a while. Maybe it's back.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:48):
No, it's back to showing me all of these, these

Leo Laporte (00:24:50):
Plus marks. It's funny. I know. And but but be patient. Cause I think it takes a while to take. Okay. I think it does actually work. In fact, I was, I was kind

Ant Pruitt (00:24:58):
Of missed. I'm not following Google.

Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
I had the same experience

Ant Pruitt (00:25:00):
This week in Google, but I'm not following Google on

Leo Laporte (00:25:02):
Anything. What does Google say? Anything interesting? It's

Ant Pruitt (00:25:05):
Cereal soup.

Leo Laporte (00:25:07):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:07):
You

Leo Laporte (00:25:08):
Serious?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:10):
It's a hot dog, A sandwich. I don't knows the most soup banal stuff.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:15):
And it has 122 replies.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:19):
Yeah. People love those questions,

Leo Laporte (00:25:21):
But you can't so I can understand why a brand wouldn't, isn't gonna want to post that inanity on Twitter anymore. No, because they're gonna say, will our white Supreme Oh yeah. You know, mean it's gonna, it's you don't want, it's gonna devolve. So I think brands were thirsty for this. Oh yeah. I

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:39):
Saw a story. I didn't put it in the rundown. Oh dude. But I saw a story just saying exactly that the headline was that brands can't

Leo Laporte (00:25:44):
Wait. Oh, they're so happy Dying for no purpose. They're so happy. He says the vibes on threads are bad. Have you ever been high or drunk? And you walk into a CVS and the security guard is staring at you. <Laugh>. Yes. Just maintained man.

Ant Pruitt (00:26:00):
Everybody Not, not speaking. Once

Leo Laporte (00:26:03):
<Laugh>, that's what Threads is. It's deodorants locked behind plastic. It's TikTok Hype Houses. It's Joe Biden's reelection campaign. It's a sneaker collab between Nike and JP Morgan. It's your favorite standup comic showing up in a commercial for Carvana. Okay, we

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:24):
Got it. We

Ant Pruitt (00:26:25):
Got it. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:26:26):
It's better than Twitter. Of course. Course he needs an editor. No, I think it's great. I love it. It's better than Twitter. Of course. Maybe I was his editor. Maybe that's why. Which has Berlin 1937 vibes. This this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:38):
Guy has no chill. He just needs like a little, he just messed

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:42):
A dial it back. How funny. I'm Yeah, it's the, it's the worst

Leo Laporte (00:26:44):
Open. But he's funny.

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:46):
Some of it.

Leo Laporte (00:26:47):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:47):
He is funny, but then he like keeps going like, yeah, you gotta know, part of being funny is knowing when to

Ant Pruitt (00:26:52):
Stop. No, when to stop.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:53):
Jeff and I are, my God, Jeff, you and I, same page.

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:56):
We're still agreeing this

Ant Pruitt (00:26:57):
Week. Something's wrong here. <Laugh>. Something's very wrong

Leo Laporte (00:27:01):
Here. Final story. Twitter. Twitter is so threatened by this that they're threatening to sue.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:08):
Yeah. It's just hilarious. That

Leo Laporte (00:27:09):
Threats intellectual

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:10):
Property. Like theres any intellectual property involved in any of this.

Leo Laporte (00:27:12):
No, of course not.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:14):
Plus, plus he's going employees who left and Well, you fired him.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:19):
Yeah. When you fire people Yeah. They're extra motivated to go screw not just

Leo Laporte (00:27:23):
Fired them, but didn't give them the severance.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:26):
Yeah. So no non-compete. They're they can

Leo Laporte (00:27:28):
Yeah. Threads has been very clear. No, there's no former Twitter employees working on this product. But if, if there were

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:35):
Sure some would volunteer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:27:36):
What would be wrong at that? <Laugh>? So, you know, Elon fires you denies you severance and then gets upset that you go to work for Meta.

Ant Pruitt (00:27:44):
My question, the lawyer or or a group of lawyers that decided to send that information over to Meta, did they actually send that thinking, okay, Twitter has a leg to stand on in this situation? I think they, or is it just they took

Leo Laporte (00:28:00):
The check? I think they said you're gonna pay us in advance. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:03):
Yeah. Just take the check. Okay. All right. Cool.

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
Cause that's the other thing. No one wants to work for Elon because he doesn't pay his bills. Right, right. Right. He didn't. Yeah. So Larry Ellison gave him a billion dollars of Oracle. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But he's not paying his Oracle bill. Like this guy will, Elon will bite the hand that feeds you. He is another Trump. Right. So I wouldn't work for him for free. I'd make sure I got the money up front. Anyway. Yeah, that's ironic. He's, here's another one. He's suing Wael, the law firm that Twitter hired to make him buy Twitter because

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:39):
<Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (00:28:40):
Okay. He's,

Leo Laporte (00:28:41):
He's suing them because as the Twitter board left, they gave, they paid Wachtel 90 million. They said, thank you. He just paid 44 billion. You made him pay. Here's your money. Elon, who is required by the way, to pay them. The, the, when you buy a company, you, you absorb all their contracts,

Ant Pruitt (00:29:01):
The debts.

Leo Laporte (00:29:01):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is furious that he, they got paid 90 million. So he's suing them to get the money back.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:09):
He's so Trump,

Leo Laporte (00:29:10):
I I don't, you know, I'm actually starting to worry about his mental health. I think there's something bad going on, to be honest. But anyway,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:17):
I think it's, people realize that there actually are no real consequences to behaving like total

Leo Laporte (00:29:22):
Douch. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:23):
Preach. And if you realize that, then sure. Why wouldn't you be that

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:29):
Way? Yeah. Douche day on Twig. I don't think we've ever used that word

Leo Laporte (00:29:33):
Before. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:34):
It might've been the first time.

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
Well, it is Wednesday, but, okay. We can do the show on Douche day if you want. <Laugh>. All right. I wanna take a, I guess we could take a little break.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:43):
Can I

Leo Laporte (00:29:43):
Mention one thing? I'm exhausted.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:45):
That's, that's the note we're gonna end on Beach Day.

Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
Really? It

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:48):
Your fault? You

Leo Laporte (00:29:49):
Did it.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:51):
Oh, I am so ashamed. I think it's a show title.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:53):
Personally, what were you saying, Mr. Jarvis?

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:56):
Well, I was just, I I just wanted to note have you looked at the, at the alternative algorithms on blue Sky recently?

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
You mean the

Ant Pruitt (00:30:05):
Lists? What's Blue Sky?

Leo Laporte (00:30:06):
Those are lists. The

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:07):
Lists. Yeah. The lists. The lists.

Leo Laporte (00:30:09):
I know what they like

Ant Pruitt (00:30:10):
To call what Blue Sky

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
Is. You know, what Blue? So this is the, to me then in ways, the sad thing is that Byebye t2, blue Sky spill, which was gonna be the new black Twitter. I know. You think they'll continue on.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:21):
I think there's a lot of loyalty to Blue Wish

Ant Pruitt (00:30:23):
I wished them. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:24):
There's loyalty to it.

Leo Laporte (00:30:25):
So

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:25):
There's all kinds of, of weird lists in there. Right? It's, or,

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
Or let feed, let me look here. So here I am on Blue Sky. There's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:31):
There's, there's furries. And you go to, you go to my feeds on the left,

Leo Laporte (00:30:34):
My feeds, and

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:35):
Then, then you go to settings on the upper right.

Leo Laporte (00:30:37):
And the upper right, this is the ones I'm following. You say

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:40):
Discover

Leo Laporte (00:30:41):
New feeds. And then there's some other feeds that people created. What's science, what's hot Classic Black Sky Home Plus.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:50):
But there's things like furries as you keep on going down it gets, gets, gets buried.

Leo Laporte (00:30:53):
Of course. Are you surprised Jeff <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:56):
Really? No, not

Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
At all. News skis not at all. Which is not about bacon, but at first posts from new users,

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:02):
Nor about news

Leo Laporte (00:31:03):
Nor about news art.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:05):
There's a lot of

Leo Laporte (00:31:05):
Stuff in here. Gardening Japanese cluster. There's one that's just a picture. A better film feed for movie lovers. Film Sky. Yeah. This is interesting. I mean, these are lists, right? That's all they are.

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:21):
Yeah. But what it shows is the possibility I think of rent your own algorithms.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:27):
Yeah. I,

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:28):
That's, and so I could imagine blue sky being really good at this and aunt saying, finally, my people are here. My photography and football and dad, people are all here because I can finally find them.

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
Do you think maybe what'll happen is we'll have niche social networks that that blue sky will be for a certain certain, eventually become for a certain kind of person?

Ant Pruitt (00:31:50):
I hope not. Because wouldn't that be a bit of an echo chamber and,

Leo Laporte (00:31:54):
Well, people want echo

Ant Pruitt (00:31:55):
Chambers put us right down the road that we're going right now, far as all of the, the stuff that you see on the Twitter verse. And,

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:03):
And nobody ever sees all of Twitter as all right. No two people see the same Twitter. You, the, and, and so the idea of trending is so ridiculous because probably the biggest trend is a tiny, tiny percentage 0.0, zero zero something uhhuh of the total of Twitter. We're all seeing a tiny window. And it's better if we do actually, you don't wanna see everything. Okay. Right. That's what people get mad when you see too much. So, no, I think we're already there. And Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:32:32):
People also don't want to post to 15 different social networks. Nope.

Ant Pruitt (00:32:36):
That's why there's tools out there. So you don't have to do that. I guess

Leo Laporte (00:32:40):
Brands have to use those tools. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like Hootsuite and stuff. But

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:43):
If there's an api,

Ant Pruitt (00:32:44):
If there's an api,

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
If you're a normal affordable api, you pick one eventually or no. Do you think, what do

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:50):
You think that that threads has no hashtags?

Ant Pruitt (00:32:53):
Yeah. I tried that out just to see if, if hashtags are working. Nope.

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
They say they're gonna add that too. If you are an Android, you can turn on the beta version of the Threads app and some of those features will appear cool. Because they're trying them out. I think they'll probably have much of the feature set. They, they have quote tweets mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which is something Mastodon has refused so far. Yeah. And that's been used to good purpose, I think on threads. Yes. I think the quote tweets are good. I

Ant Pruitt (00:33:24):
Wonder what their moderation strategy is. Because, you know, when, when Musk came around for, for Twitter, his whole free speech pitch was big. But he also talked a lot about, you know, how many bots are here. That was like, his reason for not wanting to buy was because of all of the bots. And he said he was gonna fix this and that. But I haven't heard any mention about bots on threads, even though my feed had a ton of them.

Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
Were they bots or brands?

Ant Pruitt (00:33:54):
Bots. Not brands.

Leo Laporte (00:33:55):
Like

Ant Pruitt (00:33:56):
Just random. Huh? Joe 98, 7 43 star with gibberish on it. Or even nothing at all.

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Well, that's a, see, that's a thing that it's, you know, it, Instagram has that new car smell, but that's gonna wear off pretty darn. I mean, threads as that car smell is gonna wear off pretty quick, isn't it?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:16):
You should just call it Instagram. Cuz that's

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
It really is, isn't it?

Ant Pruitt (00:34:19):
It is. It's, it's,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:21):
It's, and what happens when people stop? I mean, like, it feels so thrown together. Is this like something Facebook's really gonna be behind for the next

Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
Year? Like, well, they are now <laugh>. That's the fa it's the fastest app launch in history.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:36):
Yeah. I think it's, and it's a thumb in the eye to Musk. It's an opportunity to grab advertising revenue from there when they figure out absolutely. How to do that.

Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
And it's rehab rehabilitated Zuck, right?

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:49):
Yeah, I think so.

Leo Laporte (00:34:50):
Nobody's talking about his failed metaverse. Nobody's talking about you know, Facebook. Well, some people are talking about Facebook and genocide, but yeah, I

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:00):
Think there's a great piece in the, she'll get to later in the rundown about, about Facebook and the Metaverse. Yeah. It makes you forget that.

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
Yeah. I saw your your thread about that as a matter of fact. And I bookmark it because of it. All right. Now we can take a break. Now that Stacy has provided a buffer between Douche Day and <laugh>. Oh, wait a minute. I said it again. That's

Ant Pruitt (00:35:22):
Not how that works, sir, but <laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:25):
Oh, we gotta go on for another five

Leo Laporte (00:35:26):
Minutes. That's interesting. If I, every, if I every time I say Duch day, we have to do another five minutes on the show. That's interesting. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:35):
My gosh. That would be like my literal nightmare.

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:38):
Oh, that's so much fun to imagine. We're almost at the end. Stacy can see the waffle. She can smell it, and then we say Douch day.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:47):
Oh, that would be the worst. And it came from me initially. It's

Ant Pruitt (00:35:50):
The reset button and

Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
It's then when

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:52):
We do that, she accuses us of being douches. And it just, it's a beautiful thing.

Leo Laporte (00:35:57):
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Ant Pruitt (00:37:59):
I appreciate them sending us the travel paths, cuz Hardhead That's great. And the family went back east to go visit relatives and Hardhead tried to take my container of AG one <laugh>. No, dude. That's not yours, dude. No, that's not how this works. <Laugh>. He's like, what? I gotta take my ag one. I said the trauma packs over there. You're not taking the whole dgu jar. That's hysterical. It's wrong. You, he was packing it. Literally went and grabbed it. You

Leo Laporte (00:38:24):
Do. I have to say you do kind of get used to having that every morning and you kinda look forward to it. It's really interesting. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:38:30):
Hardhead approves

Leo Laporte (00:38:31):
Too. We are in the middle of Amazon Prime Day. Oh yeah. Day two. It's a 48 hour event. Started yesterday already in the first 24 hours. Prime Day has pushed us online sales up 6%. But get ready for this cuz this is the number I like Amazon. It's estimated worldwide. Amazon will ring up 12.9 billion in sales. Dang. Over the two days. Yesterday was already 6.4 billion. Dang. In one day, two days. 12.9 billion.

Ant Pruitt (00:39:09):
Wow. Did they have a breakout of what most people are buying? I haven't seen a lot. The one thing that I did see was like a a 47 inch television that was like $150 or something like that. And I'm not saying it was the best television, but it, I thought about it <laugh> cuz it could go in the garage. You could watch things on it. Right. You know, I was like, for 150

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Bucks. It's kinda tempting. You know, it's like the doorbuster deals on the black Friday, right? Yeah. And then people would line up This has taken completely taken over. Yeah. from Black Friday. 6.4 billion yesterday, 42%

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:44):
Off my N 95 masks.

Leo Laporte (00:39:46):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Do you still wear masks around? Do you? Oh yeah. He does. Yes. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:51):
Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. I was the only person in all of England in a mask. Yeah. I wore a mask. I was on the plane. Plus I get to the airport. I, you know, I'm, that, you know that onion story. Dad gets to airport 14 hours early. Yeah. <laugh>. I'm not bad. Yeah. So I wore my mask for 12 hours solid. Except

Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
When I flew back from London, I first know's funny when we went to Europe, I did wear my mask in the airport and on the plane and got there and then Lisa said, what? You look like an idiot. Take it off <laugh>. And I'd never wore it again. Even in I, there it was this, the press of the crowd at the Vatican to see the right Sistine Chapel from, and it's people from all over the world.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:30):
Oh. I'd be, I'd be paranoid now.

Leo Laporte (00:40:32):
Didn't, didn't catch anything. Didn't even get a cold out of it. I don't know. I, I don't know what to think. Anyway. Get your masks cheap. The growth year over year in prime day. 5.96%. It's the single biggest e-commerce day. This, this year so far. Well that's obvious, right? Categories that were up appliances up 37%. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (00:40:59):
That makes

Leo Laporte (00:40:59):
Sense. I guess it is a TV and appliance. I don't know. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:02):
Was gonna say blender, robot vacuums. That's what

Leo Laporte (00:41:05):
People are buying. Oh, I bet. Toys up 27%. Apparel. That's also robot vacuums. 6% <laugh> electronics. Were only up 12%. So, you know, in days gone by people you would've, I would've thought you go to Amazon to buy books and electronics. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but no clothing. Boy, that's not what I would've thought. Toys

Ant Pruitt (00:41:26):
Gone in for clothes. Yeah. That's hard.

Leo Laporte (00:41:28):
Here's the, maybe a little scarier stat. Buy now, pay later. Oh, 6.4% of the total orders. 461 million. That's up almost 20% over last year. Buy now. Pay later.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:42):
And y'all talking to your kids about buy now. Pay later. I think it's really important. Like my parents, I remember having the credit card talk with me about that, so Yeah. Yep. I'd be talking to your like grownup. Yeah. Like aunt your age, I guess.

Ant Pruitt (00:41:55):
Jeff. Yeah. Colleges boy, I have to get in his ear quite often cuz boy he likes to buy stuff. And I'm like, dude, stop it. Nope. You're not doing that. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:04):
Fun having the box arrive, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (00:42:06):
It's, it's addictive. Mm-Hmm. That's the problem. Yeah. Michael, before this

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:10):
Was Q qvc, my father-in-law used to buy capital and stuff from qvc.

Leo Laporte (00:42:14):
Oh, that's, I never got that habit.

Ant Pruitt (00:42:16):
My mom did. No,

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:17):
I'm surprised you didn't actually

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:20):
<Laugh>. Yeah. You were Taylor made for Q City.

Ant Pruitt (00:42:22):
Mr. Instagram shopper.

Leo Laporte (00:42:24):
<Laugh>. They couldn't reach me through the tv so they found another way. They did, they reached out and they got me in Instagram. Instagram <laugh> shoppers will find deals for electronics. Six peaking at 16% off listed price. That's not a huge,

Ant Pruitt (00:42:42):
That's not, that's why I was said the most

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:44):
Well the deals are not that great. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:42:46):
No.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:47):
Yeah, they're not. And Amazon seems to be taking a page out of Albertson slash Safeway and marking up their prices before

Leo Laporte (00:42:54):
Dropping up 10 prime

Ant Pruitt (00:42:56):
Day. I saw a, a Kenon R six deal for 20% off listed there. But I know that's baloney because last month, that same canon, R six was 20% off just on a random day. So

Leo Laporte (00:43:10):
Yeah. See? Yeah. Curbside pickup was used in one fifth of all the orders yesterday.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:18):
Y'all, this is basically just a way to get you to buy stuff you don't need. Like, if you need something, I know I sound like your grandma, but bear with me. <Laugh>. If you think you need something, write it down, shave

Leo Laporte (00:43:30):
Up for it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:30):
Come back a week later,

Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Put a dime in that piggy bank every week and by the time you're lying,

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:36):
Put it in the back of, of your grandma bicycle. And then when you get outta your rock,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:40):
Go back and look at it. Keep an eye on it and if it gets better price, then you get it. And if you're going to prime day, look at your list, see if things are on sale. But otherwise,

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:52):
Stacy's practical life acts.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:54):
I know, man.

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
I'm just

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:56):
Wait, wait. Go back Leo. You said 20% were

Leo Laporte (00:43:59):
Curbside pickup. Is that wild?

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:02):
What do you mean curbside? You mean going to the

Ant Pruitt (00:44:03):
Box? You go to those lockers I guess, right?

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:07):
You can't watch volume. No. That can't

Leo Laporte (00:44:08):
Be. Shoppers will find Nation.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:09):
I live in Seattle and I'm not picking anything up. Curbside. No, what's happening <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (00:44:14):
What is that? I'll get that. This is from Adobe, which does the analytics for this, weirdly enough, Adobe Analytics insights, curbside pickup was used in 20% of online orders on July 11th, yesterday for retailers who offer this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:29):
Service. Oh. But that could be like Best Buy.

Leo Laporte (00:44:31):
Oh, it's, oh, it's not just Prime Day.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:34):
Yeah. Oh. Like Best Buys. So, cause there are some retailers

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
There. Ah, so like targe and stuff like that. Ah, you're right. In fact that was kind of the part of the point of this Prime day is becoming one of the biggest e-commerce moments of the year for everybody. But Yeah. But as consumers latch onto major discounts from a number of different retailers. So it's becoming like Black Friday, it's becoming a national Okay. Holiday.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:01):
Okay. It's not becoming a national holiday. It's becoming a marketing extravaganza for companies that want to get you to buy stuff you don't need. I'm done. I'm done. <Laugh>. Gimme my chair. I've gotta yell at some paintball.

Leo Laporte (00:45:15):
<Laugh>. I like the, I rrc. This is Burke saying l e d tape on sale for $37 down from $50 is still a crappy deal. <Laugh> Burn. Burke, you burn. Sound like you were burnt sometime and haven't gotten over it. So yeah, the curbside pickup was for retailer, other retailers. Amazon doesn't have curbside. They have those whole Foods, locker Foods, lockers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. smartphones. Almost half of online sales people are becoming sh comfortable shopping on small screens as Adobe. Anyway. Very kind.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:54):
Yeah. I mean, I shop,

Leo Laporte (00:45:55):
Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:57):
I shop on the couch when I'm bored. I'm like, oh, let's see what's, let's see what Nordstrom

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Has. Do you shop while you're watching TV or, or doing a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:06):
Podcast? No. <laugh> during this podcast? Yes. All the time. I'm like, ai, blah, blah, blah.

Leo Laporte (00:46:14):
And Jeff, when you talked

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:15):
About size

Leo Laporte (00:46:15):
Eight my grandma bike. Were were you the, were you talking about me? Were you like, was that a little swipe at my tricycle?

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:24):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
<Laugh> in a word. Because,

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:27):
You know, we look for those things. It's like the Howard Stern show. We bust each other. <Laugh> how we show love.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:35):
Aw, buy that on

Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Amazon. No, I did not buy that on Amazon. You you need a little

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:40):
Horn on

Leo Laporte (00:46:40):
It. I do need a horn. All right. It has a bell, but that doesn't do anything. Yeah. Well, Lisa,

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:49):
I I love, I love the fact you're going so fast. You need the rear view mirror. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:55):
No, the rear view mirror is important when you're biking because you wanna see that car before it wax into your back. <Laugh>. Oh, okay. Trust me. No, you really do. I

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
Do. I use the rear. That's a, that's a safety, yeah. Safety thing. Yeah. My helmet. I should show you my helmet. My helmet also has lights blinking on it and it has a blinker. So I could push a button. There's a button on the thing. I push the button and it goes left, left, left. Right, right, right. I remember seeing that as C Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:22):
Yes. I want that. I want

Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
That. Yeah. It has Bluetooth in like, what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:25):
Is it?

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
Where'd you get it? It's, it's a leval. L I V A L l Burke or somebody. Would you bring me my laval helmet out there? It says Bluetooth so you can listen to your, or you can take phone calls on it. <Laugh>,

Ant Pruitt (00:47:40):
I can't hear you. I on my tricycle, like the wind is rushing by what? You're on the helmets. Slow down phone. Speak up, slow down, Leo, so I can hear you. How about this? You'll never believe where I'm calling

Leo Laporte (00:47:55):
You from.

Ant Pruitt (00:47:57):
My tricycle. My

Leo Laporte (00:47:59):
Tricycle. I want to ride my tricycle. I love these Laval. L l I v A L L A helmets. First of all, they don't look Oh, too geeky, right? Yeah, it's got a little vice. Unless you're on a, a

Ant Pruitt (00:48:11):
Little visor. I like it.

Leo Laporte (00:48:13):
And then here, if I push,

Ant Pruitt (00:48:14):
Look like a riot,

Leo Laporte (00:48:15):
Cop this, it looks like a riot cop. If I push this button, it'll talk to you here. Brain

Ant Pruitt (00:48:21):
Protection power on.

Leo Laporte (00:48:23):
Oh wow. Yeah. And then it has little blinking blinking lights in the back. No, I really like this thing. Oh man.

Ant Pruitt (00:48:29):
Is that on sale for prime day?

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
I see. I dunno. But check it out. Yeah. Well, because I'll tell you what I feel so unsafe riding a bicycle on city streets. I agree. Well, especially to get your office. One of the reasons I I got the trike is cuz I thought well, it's, it's a little bit more of a visual presence on the, on the street.

Ant Pruitt (00:48:50):
Don't run over

Leo Laporte (00:48:50):
Grandma. And yeah, that was part of it is like senior citizen here. Yeah. I used to have a recumbent trike. I still have it actually.

Ant Pruitt (00:48:59):
Prime day deal. I didn't

Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
Know. You don't 30% off, 30% off on the Laval. That's

Ant Pruitt (00:49:03):
Which isn't really a,

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
But the recumbent bike is really low. Like your head is like down here and yeah. And you have to have a big flag so that people even see you. And I thought this is really, I stopped riding when somebody threw a bottle at my herd. It was definitely a nerd. Right. <laugh>. But this is pretty nerdy.

Ant Pruitt (00:49:20):
Oh. Oh, these are not unreasonable. No, they're

Leo Laporte (00:49:23):
Good. Normally dudes, highly recommend them. Love them. That could be my pick of the week. All right, let's see what else is going on here. Lena Conn is taking on the world's biggest Loser tech companies and Loser Loser. This is of course the Wall Street Journal. I have, I know every, you tell me they're good. The news department's good, reliable, trustworthy journalists. No, don't think, well, Stacy says it. I

Ant Pruitt (00:49:53):
I have friends who work for the

Leo Laporte (00:49:55):
Journal's. Not, it's not the, I understand it's not the opinion section, but I have to say that a lot of times you feel like they're kind of got an ax to grind against big tech. Yeah, I feel like that, and I feel like this is a little bit slanted when it says, well she's losing. So there, but she did lose a big case yesterday. Microsoft is trying to block the acquisition of Blizzard. Activision, a big gaming company by Microsoft. It's one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time. And they sued in court. They asked for an injunction to prevent Microsoft from going ahead and doing it because even though they're under investigation, Microsoft could just move ahead with the acquisition and then say there, now you break it up, you do something. Mm-Hmm. So my so the FTCs thought, you know, they are gonna continue this investigation and there's a hearing in August with a administrative judge to decide whether they should actively block it. But this might have been a mistake on the part of the FTC because when they asked for the injunction, Microsoft fought back and fought back hard. And a judge in San Francisco has now ruled against the FTC in such a dramatic way that people like Paul Theat said, it's over. This acquisition is gonna happen. UK

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:17):
Is still out there

Leo Laporte (00:51:18):
Trying to Yeah. And I think, think the thinking is that the, the deal has a breakup clause on the 18th less than a week. And so the thing is, they, they'll just do it now and, you know, in the next week and say to the UK, ne ne near Sue us fire, fine us do something. Who cares? We don't care. It's a lot harder, I guess once it's happened. The judge was fairly brutal. <Laugh> in this case saying I gotta

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:49):
Ask these days. What kind of judge was

Leo Laporte (00:51:51):
It? Federal District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Yeah. Appointed by don't know.

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:57):
That's what I'm just, I think we have always have to ask now.

Leo Laporte (00:52:00):
Oh yeah. The federal judiciary is getting more and more suspect. But anyway she wrote that the FTC failed to show evidence backing of its claim that Microsoft was likely to withhold Activisions blockbuster games from competitors such as Sony. In fact, Microsoft has made 10 year deals with Sony and others to make sure those games are still available. The judge noted those deals which would expand consumer access to its biggest game. Franchise Call of Duty. The judge was pretty clear that the FTC had not proven its case and is allowing it, you know, did not give them that injunction. Andy trust experts expect that the FTC will appeal. But the pundits I've heard talking today don't think there's much merit in that. And they think now because of this judgment that the administrative court judge in August will probably just say, yeah, you got no case.

(00:52:54):
And that's that. And the uk, which is fighting it over grounds that it would somehow monopolize a non-existent cloud gaming business. <Laugh> really is not a business. You know, Google just killed Stadia. Yeah. Stadia. Yeah. So I think this is probably Amazon still has what, what was Amazon's cloud caving? Luna, Luna. Luna, Luna. And, and, and Vidia has G-Force Now they're a few, but they're all tiny. They're not, oh yeah. It's not a, it's not a big business. And so, you know, some people said that the the FTC forgot to bring its crystal ball or time machine to the court because it's all about the, you know, well this is what might happen. Or what if this happens in any event the real question is, does this hobble Le Conn in her attempt to go after check?

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:47):
What else she lost? I was trying to think back. What, what other cases?

Leo Laporte (00:53:49):
Isn't that funny? She's on a

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:50):
Losing streak.

Leo Laporte (00:53:51):
Yeah, for sure. She said, I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record. If you never bring those hard cases, there's a cost to that. You know? Good point.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:05):
Know VCs only win or hit it out of the park, what, 30% of the time working keen on that. So, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:10):
Prosecutors are supposed to, the, the word on them is they should only take cases. They don't, they, they are confident in winning.

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
But there's a difference in

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:16):
Any trust. We actually trust have a lot of issues with that. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:54:19):
There's also difference in antitrust. Cause I think bringing these cases by itself forwards the notion that you gotta be thoughtful about these mergers and, and, and that you, there's some not, if fail, oversight

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:30):
Fail, that actually is a greater ah, I think it's a greater danger if you bring the case

Leo Laporte (00:54:35):
And lose. Cause you're like,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:35):
Warning,

Leo Laporte (00:54:36):
Does that embolden em

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:37):
Only is warning if you back

Leo Laporte (00:54:38):
It up that emboldens people. Yeah. Yeah. I think there are a lot of companies though that, like Microsoft certainly Apple, that don't want to go to court if they don't have to. Cuz there's discovery stuff comes out. Oh yeah, yeah. And so there is it, it is a little bit of a threat, I would say. But you're right. If they ne if the FTC loses every case, then it's not, then it doesn't have so much power. I'm trying to think of what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:03):
Else. I mean, I really don't know. And I would like the FTC to be a little bit more activist here, cuz I think we, our antitrust regime has been very, very backward, like very old school.

Leo Laporte (00:55:15):
I agree. And, and, and, and as much as I love technology, I think it's really important that big tech's not gonna regulate itself. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:25):
And you know, what do you love? I love technology, but in the last like year or so, I've been thinking about it. I like engineers. I like solving calmness. I

Leo Laporte (00:55:36):
Real hard. That's right. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:38):
But technology today is really like the financial, like the financial industry was back in the eighties. Like, oh, when we were all like reading Tom Wolf books and it was people who were gaming the system. The system doesn't feel Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:55:51):
Really. Very,

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:51):
Really good point, Stacy. Really good point. Culturally, I, I like that play with a little more. So, so it's bonfire of the vanities. What?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:02):
I'm like, you're like, you're like, I like it. Say more.

Leo Laporte (00:56:04):
Professor Jarvis has asked. No, I was like, talk to the class about your premise here. Would you explore that? Would you,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:12):
Sorry. All right. Bonfire the vanities. Let's go <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:56:15):
No, I'll give you some ammunition culturally. I'll give you some ammunition. Alex Kitz, who does the big tech newsletter, has complained about the financialization of technology. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think that's what you're talking about. And that's as VC money. Well, it's also the

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:30):
Ification of technology

Leo Laporte (00:56:31):
Too. Well, it goes hand in

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:33):
Hand. It's a couple things. Mm-Hmm. I, I think what we've had, and we have lionized tech and given it a pass for far too long, based on the fact that they, they used to be building things in their garage. Right. And that hasn't been true since <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
Since

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:46):
The eighties forever. And you, I mean,

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:49):
And how the garage in Silicon, Silicon Valley costs 4 million to have So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:53):
True. Yeah. And when I think about like, the, the people I talk to, even, I would say it started happening around 2006, 2007 is when people started talking. I mean, there was always like, you know, the stock option people, right? Those, the sales culture in tech has always been the sales culture in tech. But those people are now in charge and that has kind of eaten over everything. And you get these people who are doing like, it's like the app for, it's like the Uber for this, this, right? So it's like building these apps and things that are very divorced from the infrastructure itself. And some of that might have come about from things like, you no longer had to come construct a server rack to run any tech thing. You, you've made tech very accessible to people who are not necessarily technically savvy. I

Leo Laporte (00:57:44):
Don't know. Well, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:47):
No, I don't think it's a bad thing. But I do think it when, I mean, it's kind of like when people are like, well, it used to be so cool, you used to have to build your own Mastodon server if you wanted. Now look at all these losers who don't really wanna be here. There's good point. Yeah. There's pluses and minuses to that accessibility.

Leo Laporte (00:58:04):
I, I would argue that's not the problem. There's a big plus to No. That that's not the problem. Anybody who has a vision for how something could be, it used to be, yeah, you'd have to know Pearl and, and be able to, you know, write a CGI script or something. I mean, you, there was a much higher barrier to entry. The fact that the barrier entry is lowered is good. I, I don't think, however, the entry of big money and VCs and the per perverse incentives that they bring with him is a good thing. Agree. Because they force you to quick exits. They force you to quick capitalization. I mean, it's not, it's not as good.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:40):
But that's one of the, they're driving like the ex, they would never be in there driving this if it weren't easy to do. Now that everyone can do it, they're like, well, shit, everyone can do it. Let's throw a bunch of money at this guy. But

Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah's, but it, but I think it's good for a, for a small person, small, you know, two man shop or whatever, two person shops for

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:00):
I have my own company because

Leo Laporte (00:59:02):
Of that. Yeah. Look at this exactly. Like I am exactly what we're doing here. I couldn't have done 20 years ago because it'd have to have millions of dollars for a grass valley switcher. And you know, you'd have to have a TV tower and all sorts of stuff. Right. By the way, I like the new Stacey Higginbotham's bougie seal of approval. I just saw that, like, I dunno what it means. But thank you Joe Esposito for once again, providing us with graphic amusement in our club. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:29):
Actually, Leo, maybe once in a while, you shouldn't show it on the screen. You should let the people who aren't in the club,

Leo Laporte (00:59:33):
If you were in the club heal what's missing. You'd know. Yeah. Oh, good stuff. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:40):
You could sell sticker packs.

Leo Laporte (00:59:42):
Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:43):
And then, oh, oh, here's what it is. Ooh. Your Christmas card this year? Yeah. Okay. Ready? Yeah. Oh, is there an oh Oh oh. Cuz there should be, Ooh,

Leo Laporte (00:59:51):
It's next

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:52):
<Laugh> you give out when you sign up. This is your tote bag. You get a sticker pack and a your Christmas card is a bingo card. And then you play

Leo Laporte (01:00:00):
It. Joe's already hitting.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:01):
Yeah. He's already from your lips

Leo Laporte (01:00:03):
To Joe wants to be freaking Joe <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:10):
Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:00:11):
Oh my God.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:11):
These are

Leo Laporte (01:00:12):
Great. Oh my God. Can we figure out a way to make these happen? Pause, sir. Ty, ty.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:24):
No, you gotta redo Stacy's.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
Oh, Stacy her says mother pucker <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:29):
Oh, I didn't see that one.

Leo Laporte (01:00:32):
That dick. Oh, we could come up with some others.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:36):
That's Yeah. That was my, that was like my worst moment, Joe.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:39):
Oh man. At least make a douche day.

Leo Laporte (01:00:41):
Joe <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:42):
It's no things

Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
That she's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:44):
Famous for. He's, you know what? I said it, it's true. Maybe I don't want that to be my sticker, but, you

Leo Laporte (01:00:52):
Know if you're not a member of club, we gotta work on this. We really gotta make this happen. Yeah. If you're not a member of Club Twit, Mr. Joe, we need to talk. So don't join because we will get stickers in. No, I don't know. Do you think we can, how can we do that? I don't know. There's, there's gotta be a way. I'll tell you what, if you join, join now, there's gotta be way put a last risk next to your membership saying, I joined on the condition that there'd be some stickers. No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:15):
No, no, no, no. It's

Leo Laporte (01:01:16):
More money.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:17):
You said there would be stickers said

Leo Laporte (01:01:18):
There would be stickers. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:20):
The premium

Leo Laporte (01:01:21):
Membership. Oh. For $7 and 50 cents. 50 cents. Four. You get, there we go. Now we got it. We love we love our club, but sign up up for two

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:31):
Years and you just

Leo Laporte (01:01:32):
Do <laugh>. They make, they make it all possible. Club twit is increasingly important part of the way we stay on the air. If you are not a Club Twit member, I implore you to consider seven bucks a month. Get you ad free versions of all the shows cuz you're giving us money. We don't need advertisers. And we don't need their tracking or any of that stuff. So that's one benefit. But you also get shows that you don't get anywhere else. Like hands on Macintosh, hands on windows. We've got the home Theater Geek show with Scott Wilkinson. I know aunt, you do a lot of good things. In fact, coming up, we've got a big event <laugh>, that's gonna Friday. Yeah. I think I've been trying to talk to Lisa about this. We're gonna Oh, you're doing Tomorrow's the AI show. Hang with Jason. It's the beginning. And Jeff, you're invited to that if you can go to that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:21):
Yeah. Unfortunately I can't

Leo Laporte (01:02:22):
Tomorrow, but, but yeah, we'll try to find a time that works for you. Cuz we are preparing the AI show in mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. It's gonna be in the club, but then on July 14th, after tomorrow 5:00 PM Pacific. 8:00 PM Eastern. It's the inside to it. After hours. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now you can tell me, Lisa said, oh, we gotta go to that. I said, Lisa, I think it's better if the bosses aren't there.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:43):
Okay, well, let me just say this. I wanted to hang out with my squad.

Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
Who's your squad?

Ant Pruitt (01:02:49):
Everybody that works in here.

Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
Yeah. You don't want the bosses

Ant Pruitt (01:02:51):
Around. I wanted to hang out with the squad and just shoot the

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:56):
And we gonna do that. We going shoot the what? Shoot the stop. Oh, I'm sorry. I gosh. I I have the worst mouth. Mouth.

Leo Laporte (01:03:06):
It's alright.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:07):
Like, sorry. People

Leo Laporte (01:03:08):
Talk.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:09):
Have the worst mouth. So

Leo Laporte (01:03:10):
What are we gonna do, Lisa? We we're gonna come for half an hour maybe. Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (01:03:13):
You can come by. But we might, we

Leo Laporte (01:03:15):
Made a reservation. Here's why. We made a reservation at the Caviar Bar for

Ant Pruitt (01:03:19):
Six. Oh wow. Well, let me go with you,

Leo Laporte (01:03:22):
<Laugh>. So we're

Ant Pruitt (01:03:24):
Going, it's like, forget the squad

Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
Champagne and Caviar's at six. So we thought we'd come by, we'd say hello.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:30):
We'd wave, we'd do a little thing and we be hanging Graham Wellington while you're there.

Leo Laporte (01:03:35):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:38):
No, come on by. We'll probably kick you out. We'll

Leo Laporte (01:03:40):
Briefly be here. Yeah. The whole thing. No, no, no.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:44):
We just need a look on her face.

Leo Laporte (01:03:45):
We just wanna come briefly because I, I wanna It should be unfettered. Unchained. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:49):
We're just gonna have fun. Hang out and, hi Lisa. Wave. You're on the camera. You gotta wait. You What happened with

Leo Laporte (01:03:55):
Deak?

Ant Pruitt (01:03:55):
What? Oh gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:03:56):
What happened with Deak?

Ant Pruitt (01:03:57):
What happened with Dvorack? Oh boy.

Leo Laporte (01:03:59):
Now I'm be little chained. They can only make fun

Ant Pruitt (01:04:01):
Of us. Okay. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:04:05):
I don't know what she's talking about. But anyway if you are not yet a member of the club, these are the kinds of fun events you're missing. You're also missing access to the Discord, those special shows. It's seven bucks a

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:15):
Month. I don't, did I tell you about the club members that I met in Boston and London? You

Leo Laporte (01:04:18):
Said there were some of some club members there before. Yeah. Yeah. Did I say that on

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:21):
The show before?

Leo Laporte (01:04:22):
Oh, I don't know. Yeah, maybe you said it before. So you'll say it again. Tell us where you've been.

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:27):
So I was in SED Andrews, and then I was in London to do a book event with Berger Prospect. And then I was in Boston at al at the museum of Printing. And there were a lot of Twig fans at both events. And I said to them, are you remember of the club? And most of them said yes.

Ant Pruitt (01:04:47):
Nice. And the arrest said they

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
Would be nice. That's great.

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:50):
Well, I wanna thank all the folks who showed up at both events. It was wonderful to see you. Really appreciate it. And join the club.

Leo Laporte (01:04:57):
Yeah. And, and you know, I also wanna make sure that all, you know, if youre not a member of the club, that's fine. We love it. That you watch, you listen you'll get ads, but you don't mind that. And I, I appreciate anybody who listens at any time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the Club is just something we added a couple of years ago to kind of help out through the rough patches. Yep. And so far it's been vital. So but if you can, if you can afford it, if not, don't worry about it. We still offer all these shows for free, including this one. Unfortunately, you will not get the ribs that I'm bringing for the event. Oh. Or the stickers. Or the stickers. Or the stickers. I'm telling you. Ribs

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:34):
And stickers. Okay. <laugh>. Alright.

Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
Showtime, really? This

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:38):
Is so, I don't, I don't, I don't know what

Leo Laporte (01:05:40):
It's kinda down. Mark, what

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:41):
Were we doing before we, we got sidetracked by stickers.

Leo Laporte (01:05:44):
Okay. Okay. You were being bougie. I'm trying to remember bougie. Stacy, let me do an ad. That's how Oh, I don't have an ad back button. Wait a minute. I just did an

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:53):
Ad. I thought that was an ad.

Leo Laporte (01:05:55):
Well, it kind of was. Yeah. Yeah, it was. We would take that out for people who are members of the club. They wouldn't hear that, right? This is true. Yeah. We'll be we'll be back with more news in just a bit. Oh, there is no ad. So here we are, we're back. Oh, I love

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:13):
This. Oh, we were talking.

Leo Laporte (01:06:14):
Go ahead. This is kind of along the lines of the regulation thing. Cuz it turns out in some, to some, in some regards, we're letting the eu mm-hmm. <Affirmative> regulate big tech. There is something called a lop, a very large online platform. This is under the Digital Services Act. The EU has now added, there's seven have, they've announced the 17 companies that are v l ops that include Alibaba's, Ali Express. Oh yeah. Amazon, apple, and their app store, booking face.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, weirdly Wikipedia, YouTube, and a European retailer. Zalando. And then very large online search engines are Bing and Google Search. These are companies that have to Google is the Mondo lap. Yeah. Well, these are companies. So the DSA is about social and disinformation. So these are companies that have a large enough footprint in the eu.

(01:07:18):
I think 15% of the EU uses them. And it gives them responsibilities to protect their users from illegal content, counterfeit or illegal products. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> hate speech and so forth. Amazon <laugh> complains saying, we're not a V L O P, we're just this little obscure internet boutique. <Laugh> loyal. The, that's the headline from the register. Little, your internet boutique. Amazon Sue's EU for card, calling it a very large online platform. Amazon actually said, you know, we, we've done a lot to protect our customers. A vast majority of revenue comes from retail, which isn't covered by the dsa. And we have done, but Amazon's an advertising company, big advertising company. What a

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:15):
Social media company

Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
In a movie studio. Yeah. Amazon Spokesperson said the DSA was designed to address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue. And that distributes speech and information. We're, we are a retailer, so

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:33):
Amazon does more advertising than the magazine industry. I

Leo Laporte (01:08:35):
Agree. So yes. It's a, it's an no, I think so. And, and Nice try. Yeah, nice try. Basically. so we could tie this into our conversation earlier, Stacy, about regulating big tech. The EU seems to have no problem. Not only doing it, but winning,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:56):
Right? Well, I think, I mean, they wrote their own laws. So I, I think a lot of their laws around this are newer and more applicable to the era we're in. Whereas like the FTCs kind of run in with some old school anti compete, plus the EU has had a different metric or framework for anti-competitive behavior than the us which has been driven by consumer prices.

Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
And I do think Lina Khan and others have said, we need to up update our laws.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:28):
Yeah, we do. Like that's gonna happen though.

Leo Laporte (01:09:30):
Well, we can't even get a jaywalk. The,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:32):
The FTC has been asking for regulations on data usage and privacy since 2013. Okay. They've been anticipating problems from, so,

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:42):
And another story in this week, the EU just negotiated an agreement such that data can pass from the eu, the us. So they managed to

Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
Oh. Is is Thiss three now? I mean, where, where are we with shrimp? I knows <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:01):
Be noir of.

Leo Laporte (01:10:03):
Does that solve some of the issues? With Well, you know, there've been a lot of problems with, what was the most recent one with a company storing its data in not storing European users data in the country that they're in. I can't even remember. There've been so many of them. Jeez. Anyway, so there is a new, there's a new framework. Mother pucker <laugh>. All the air feels like it went out of the room. Did I say something bad? <Laugh>. It's like, all right. Did. No, Stacey did this. All of us get low blood sugar at the same time. No, no, no, no, no. Happened.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:46):
No, I just, I just, yeah, I was, I was reading about the eu so you know how I, I like try to fact check us live so

Leo Laporte (01:10:53):
Itrack sometimes. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. I appreciate it. Yeah. Alright. Well, let's, you know what, this would be better. Let's talk about Wimbledon. It's time for AI news. All right. Jeff likes this one. Jeff is a very big tennis fan, right? Yep. Jeff, am I right? You go to the US Open every

Ant Pruitt (01:11:13):
Year. That's the flushing, right? Used

Leo Laporte (01:11:14):
To, yeah. Play it. Wimbledon, which is on right now, is considering replacing line judges. Oh. With <laugh>. You like that? Is that good? Very good. Very good. That was good. That was very good

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:28):
With that was surprising.

Leo Laporte (01:11:29):
<Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:11:30):
Trying to wake everybody up

Leo Laporte (01:11:32):
With ai. So Yeah. Those are the guys who shout, you know, out.

Ant Pruitt (01:11:36):
You got a problem with that?

Leo Laporte (01:11:38):
No. In fact, I don't even understand why they're having humans do it.

Ant Pruitt (01:11:42):
Thank you. I think it's more, I think the people that would be against it are the traditionalists because sports are pretty freaking traditional's special at that level. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:54):
Ask

Ant Pruitt (01:11:54):
Only wearing whites at Wimbledon is a tradition. They

Leo Laporte (01:11:57):
Asked John McEnroe, who's of course famous mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for screaming at line judges. Yes. He says, I think tennis is one of the, he told the radio times in the uk I think tennis is one of the few sports where you don't need umpires or linesmen if you have this equipment. And it's accurate. Isn't it nice to know the correct calls being made? Right. He says, had I had it from the very beginning, I would've been more boring, but I would've won more. Right. He's still fighting. He's still litigating those, he's still the calls. Yeah. Wow. But I, but yeah, why not use those? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:32):
I think. Well, and is there an argument, I mean, you're either out or you're not out, but like with umpires and strikes and like, is there a place, I'm not making the argument for Wimbledon, because that feels pretty cut and dry. Is there an argument for other areas where it's kind of like a,

Leo Laporte (01:12:48):
If you could do it as accurately? I mean, umpires are notoriously Yeah. Inconsistent. I truly

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:53):
Don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:12:54):
In fact, that's why

Ant Pruitt (01:12:55):
We have

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
Replay, one of the things that happens with the baseball game is the batters get to know the umpires strike zone. Yep. From umpire to umpire. It, it can change, you know, really true. Technically it's from the letters to the knees. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but you know, and the, and the width of the plate. But the umpires often strike zone is higher or lower. Yep. And you get to know it. Right. So it would make a lot more sense if you had a machine do it. If it could do it accurately, I guess it would still have to do it.

Ant Pruitt (01:13:21):
But it's on. But it's based on the player

Leo Laporte (01:13:23):
Too. That's the problem. Changes saying, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I mean, you know, you can readjust. So the camera says, well, there's the letters, there's his knees. That's the strike zone. And then the player squats down

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:33):
One lower. Although some people could argue like, oh, well we have learned how to work with this system. Any of you change on Well that's, I mean, that's kind of

Leo Laporte (01:13:42):
Baseball's lot. There was a great story in the Atlantic this month about trying to save baseball because it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:48):
Turned out out there has never been a great baseball story. Never <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:13:51):
The

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:51):
New Yorker tries to make it so, but it's never been, God. Your

Leo Laporte (01:13:55):
Angel wrote some

Ant Pruitt (01:13:56):
Of the baseball, some of the

Leo Laporte (01:13:58):
Bests of all time. For

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:00):
Me, the only thing more boring than going to a baseball game is reading about it for thousands of words. In a

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
New Yorker, I, I bought Roger Angel's books Green. I bought George and Will's books. I love

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:15):
Baseball. Oh, oh, oh. Say no more.

Leo Laporte (01:14:20):
He's a great writer. Oh my. All right. Anyway,

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:23):
Too bad he's not a great thinker.

Leo Laporte (01:14:25):
The problem with baseball, just cuz he's a politics, don't agree with yours. The problem with baseball is the games have been getting longer every year by about three minutes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:33):
Yeah. Well they, they've, they put into the pitch,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:36):
Oh no, no. Didn't they just change the rules of disaster? Now

Leo Laporte (01:14:39):
This is what they had to do because they looked at the stats and, you know, in 10 years, games are half an hour longer. Yeah. On average. If you, if this keeps up pretty soon, there'll be all day. It'll be like cricket. Right, right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:51):
But there're more

Leo Laporte (01:14:52):
Commercials that Well, yeah. Maybe there's a Anyway, part of it is the rituals that both pitchers and batters go through in between every pitch. You know, the batter steps out of the out of the, they gotta

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:03):
Do their

Leo Laporte (01:15:04):
And spits spitting and, and the pitcher's going. It's a bunch of guys with ticks. So yeah, they instituted a, a 32nd pitch clock and it's games are now aging two hours and 27 minutes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's a good article if you like, baseball articles in The Atlantic about this. And that

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:23):
What you j you just just told us the whole story in about two paragraphs. <Laugh> Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:27):
Baseball's shorter. Cause they

Leo Laporte (01:15:29):
Don't let you do as many shenanigans.

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:31):
You don't, you don't scratch your groin as much. And

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
The not, and they made the bases bigger so that your chance of stealing is a little slightly better. But this is a perfect game because Oh, ho ho ho ho ho <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:46):
It's so

Leo Laporte (01:15:47):
Boring. Okay. Bunch of a bunch of baseball. Oh, you're Stacey. I think it is the end. I'm not a baseball here line for baseball, I'll be honest with you. I really do. I don't think this sport's gonna last much longer. They're trying. But tennis is tennis. Well, people still,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:59):
People still watch golf. They're gonna still watch baseball.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:04):
Well, but look at that. The, the, the fact that the Saudi money is coming into golf, it's coming into tennis. It's coming into all the sports. It's gonna become a sports washing industry. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:15):
What are they washing? Are they laundering? Their ill gotten oil gains? Cuz those are still legal. What? That

Leo Laporte (01:16:19):
That would be Yes. <Laugh>. They're not ill. They're Yeah, you're right. They're not. It's the things they do to maintain their power. Like dismember journalists from the Washington Post.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:29):
Yeah. Right. I mean

Leo Laporte (01:16:31):
Yeah. That turned dark.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:34):
We're just running into all kinds of d adss today. My gosh. We're every, every topic's a D-Day topic.

Leo Laporte (01:16:41):
New York Times fired their entire sports department. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:45):
Not firing them, they're moving other jobs, but they're clothes

Leo Laporte (01:16:48):
Off. Foreclosing it. Yeah. Oh

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:50):
Good. They're reassigning them.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:51):
It makes, it makes sense. Sense. Cause they bought the athletic and the athletic was way better. Right. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:57):
The athletics stole money. But didn't, didn't they have layoffs though, at the Athletic, didn't they? Yes, they did. You're right. They, they, yes.

Leo Laporte (01:17:03):
Yeah. So pretty soon AI will be line judges at Wimbledon. They'll be writing this story. How much, how long we get the AI tennis players?

Ant Pruitt (01:17:10):
That would be No. Oh my

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:11):
God. It'll be just a bunch of API calls from Derrick. Various different services fed into chat. G P T that'll generate a story

Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
For us. Poor humans. Humans. Oh, it was out Advantage. Ai McEnroe, Mac <laugh>. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't sound like fun, doesn't it? That

Ant Pruitt (01:17:31):
Sounds

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
Exciting. I actually heartened by, and I've said, I mentioned this before, I, I like chess to play chess pretty seriously. Did as a kid. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And for a while they thought that AI was gonna kill chess when, when deep blue beat Gary Kaspar off the world champion. And it, and it, and it is true that the machines actually now play chess far better than any human. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And at the time, I was worried a lot of people were worried that the people would stop playing chess. It's like, well, what's the point? If, if, you know, your, your phone can beat you? And no, in fact, more people play chess than ever before. Sometimes they do it with the machines. You know, if you're gonna be a world champion, you're gonna have to train with a computer and so forth. But

Ant Pruitt (01:18:09):
Is it also an accessibility thing?

Leo Laporte (01:18:12):
No, I think what it really

Ant Pruitt (01:18:13):
Chess is anybody can go to Walmart and pick up a

Leo Laporte (01:18:16):
Chess board. Yeah, that's right. And I think that we celebrate what humans can do, even if a, a machine can do it better. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it doesn't mean that we don't celebrate the human achievement of

Ant Pruitt (01:18:25):
It. Okay. Well, hasn't the machine taught humans new moves and new strategies too?

Leo Laporte (01:18:30):
To some degree, yes. I mean, mostly what you would use as a champion, what, you know, grandmaster, you would use a machine to investigate lines and stuff, but ultimately your judgment is, is going to be paramount. One thing that's happened that's kind of weird you know, one of this can happen cuz at chess game, even though it's very, very complex, is solvable. Right. You could say, well, this move, if you follow it all the way to the end mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you're gonna win. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> humans can't do that. They can only do, you know, a little bit ahead. But nevertheless, machines could solve it. So it could be theoretically solvable. It gets much less complex with fewer pieces. So if you get down to a handful of pieces, the machine can say in every possible position, this is a win. This is a win.

(01:19:14):
That's a loss, that's a draw. That's a win. That's won. So they have tables now of positions in the end game, all of which have been solved. Mm-Hmm. Like, just completely solved. Like, oh, you win here or you lose here. And Masters have started memorizing those so they know, Hmm, this is a win, this is a loss, and this is how you play. So it has changed the end game a little biting charts if you Yeah. But the middle is so complex in a machine is not quite as surpassing as as it, it is in the other parts of the game. And there's, you know, sure. A car can drive a marathon in 10 minutes. Right. <laugh> or a minute. But that doesn't mean a marathoner isn't that, that's not still a thing. Right? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the human running that 26,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:58):
A car cannot drive a marathon in.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:00):
It's not in 10 minutes though, at least not safely. Let's

Leo Laporte (01:20:03):
See what's, okay, wait a minute. Let me do three miles. Take less an half hour, 60 miles an hour. There you less than half an hour. There you go. It's 30 miles. Less than half. How

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:11):
Long would it take Leo and his grandma bike to of

Leo Laporte (01:20:14):
That's what I wanna know. 18. It would take 18. One hour. 18, 18 minutes. No <laugh> formula one vehicle could do a marathon in probably 12 minutes.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:24):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:20:25):
So, all right. Anyway, that doesn't mean people don't run anymore. Right, right,

Ant Pruitt (01:20:29):
Right. Good point.

Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
So I think line judges at Wimbledon. Okay. Yes, we agree. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:36):
Yeah. And Miss Stacy, going back to your argument about they're saying they, they had to make adjustments to, to understand the nuance of the umpire. So now you're making them retrain. My argument would be, are, are you against making baseball? Right. You know, are you against having the, the correct call in the games? And so if you want this AI here, you're gonna get a better call every time you come to the plate. So shut up and work with ai.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:05):
What is truth really?

Leo Laporte (01:21:07):
<Laugh>?

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:09):
Ask Elon.

Ant Pruitt (01:21:11):
Good one. Good one.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:13):
Yes. Yes. I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, that was some devil's advocacy

Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
On my part. Continuing in our AI segment and Thropic, this is the name that keeps coming up alongside of the big names mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that we all know about. Google's Bard and Open AI's Chat. G P t, Microsoft Bing Chat. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Thropic is another one of the big AI startups. In fact, they raised 160 people. They raised, I think over a hundred million dollars, no, I'm sorry, over a billion dollars to create ai. They are, it's just a few weeks before they're gonna release clu, <laugh>, the new ai. Just not a good name. The new Pierre, maybe, but clu, the new AI chat bot. They're into San Francisco, so I don't know why they're calling it clu.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:05):
There was maybe to get the EU on

Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Board. Oh, that's it. That's it. There's a great piece though, in the New York Times some, the headline is inside the White Hot Center of ai, doism Atropic. Apparently all the people working in Atropic are convinced that the AI apocalypse is just around the corner.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:25):
They're long-termers term, long-termers, long termers. And I'm glad, I'm glad Kevin Rus at last starts to write about that. There's more people he could have talked to, but at last, he's starting to acknowledge that these guys are, are cult members.

Leo Laporte (01:22:39):
He Right. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:39):
They're the ones doing this stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:22:41):
Anthropics employees aren't just worried that their apple will break or users won't like it. They're scared at a deep existential level about the very idea of what they're doing, building powerful AI models and releasing them into the hands of people who might use them to do terrible and destructive things. Many of them at Entropic believe that AI models are rapidly approaching a level where they might be considered artificial general intelligence agi. And they fear, if they're not carefully controlled, these systems could take over and destroy us. <Laugh> and pic's Chief Scientists, Jared Kaplan says it's five to 10 years away the AI uprising.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:23):
All right. Ai, if you come in for me, you better pack

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:25):
It lunch. Okay. Really? Is that what he, he unironically said that, or was

Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
Unironically?

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:28):
Yeah. No, that's the way they are. That's why these guys are super serious about this stuff. They, I, I, last week I mentioned Emil Torres and Tim Nick g are really on top of, of this also this week our friend near Weiss Blatt line 71 did kind of a taxonomy of these, of these folks.

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
Oh, that's interesting. So she's moved now from tech journalism to ai. That's interesting. Good for her.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:51):
Well, she's just watching, she's watching, she's been watching trends do this. Yeah. Moral panicking

Leo Laporte (01:23:56):
Ruth rights. And so, not every conversation I had at Anthropic revolved around existential risk, but dread was a dominant theme. At times. I felt like a food writer who was assigned to cover a trendy new restaurant, only to discover that the kitchen staff wanted to talk about nothing but food poisoning. <Laugh> one anthropic worker told me he routinely had trouble falling asleep because he was so worried about ai. Another predicted between bites of his lunch that there was a 20% chance that a rogue AI would destroy humanity within the next decade.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:30):
Then why are they doing what they're doing? This is the financialization issue. I'm like, guys, it's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:35):
Yeah, it's marketing. It's all, it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:36):
Con. If the cognitive dissonance is keeping you up at night,

Leo Laporte (01:24:39):
Quit, stop, come up.

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:41):
It's, it's, it's, it's big sw it's big swinging in Richards, you know, it's

Leo Laporte (01:24:46):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I think big, powerful. There's there to defend them. They're thinking, okay, so what we're gonna do is develop an AI with safeguards. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with guard rails.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:57):
No. They're thinking, I gotta get mine while I can.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:00):
Really. No, no. They're thinking, I'm gonna make a fortune because I'm gonna be worried about the future of mankind. And I, and, and, and your money is best in my hands as a

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
Result. Kaplan, Kaplan explained that the gloomy vibe wasn't intentional. It's just what happens, <laugh>. It's just what happens when anthro employees see how fast their technology's improving. It's just what happens. It does sound a little self-promotion promotional clearly, doesn't it?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:27):
My BS meter has gone way off.

Leo Laporte (01:25:30):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:31):
Way off. And the thing is too, so, so there's, if you, if you, if you do go to that thread and go down algorithm, watch reinterpreted near it's post to the companies involved. So you have panic marketing, open AI and Deep Mind Andro and Microsoft. They're really trying to say, look how powerful we are. Stop us before we kill mankind. And you have panic as a business in near its view where you have these charities that are here or, or not-for-profits that are hugely funded. Open Philanthropy, future of Life, future of Humanity Institute. This is what Emil Torres writes about. That's so, so good. And they're making a fortune on this, this kind of moral entrepreneurship of having all this money to give away. And then you have the people who are actually worried about the current problems of ai. Like Dare Institute, which is near Tim, Nick De and, and Emily Bender and Margaret Mitchell and those folks. And it's, it's ridiculous. Spread now. And, and, and, and, you know, I've been, I've defended geeks, I've liked geeks. I've written books about geeks. But these AI boys, these long-termers scare me, scare me a hell of a lot more than AI does.

Leo Laporte (01:26:44):
Here's the picture the Venn diagram, I guess, of from algorithm watch of promoters of ai, panic and anti panic Open ai. Is it under the term ai panic marketing, DeepMind Atropic, Microsoft, and Google Panic is a business, the Future of Humanity Institute Open Philanthropy Center for AI Safety, future of Life. Twitter, <laugh> <laugh>, Andy

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:11):
Panic. Well, Elon. Elon,

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
Yeah. Andy Panic data and Society, ai now Berkman Klein Center, Mozilla the ad, ADA Loveless Institute and the Human Rights folks. That's the Tim Nige branch algorithm watch, European Center for Nonprofit Law.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:27):
And again, this is inspired by New York Weiss Platt's structure. I think it's a very good structure of how to look at this.

Leo Laporte (01:27:33):
Yeah. well this is good. You know, this is kind of what I've been asking about is how is it that these people who are should know better than anybody? I mean, I'm not an AI expert, they say it's dangerous. Don't they have standing to know that it's dangerous? No. No. But it sure seems to me like, it's like, what are you talking about <laugh>?

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:55):
And why aren't you stopping

Leo Laporte (01:27:57):
This? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:58):
Well, part of this is their belief that they will reach a general intelligence and super intelligence. They keep up, up in it. And that's alone is bs. I

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
Think it's too much sci-fi part. Well, it's like,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:12):
It's also like hanging out with that one person who's like, oh my God, they're, they're like eating dessert with you. And they're like, oh my God, this is gonna make me so fat. It's so bad for me. And you're like, then stop eating it

Leo Laporte (01:28:24):
Down.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:25):
And yeah, it's just, it's a, it's annoying and it's especially annoying when it's like, oh, it's not that I'm just gonna, you know, gain a few pounds or this is gonna make me feel gross later. It's, oh, I'm just gonna kill the entire human race. I'm like, those are very different scales. It's annoying when it's small scale. And when it's large scale like this, you get no sympathy for that. None. Sorry, I have strong feelings.

Leo Laporte (01:28:50):
I just wonder what's going on. I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:57):
The

Leo Laporte (01:28:58):
Should we be, what do you think? Should we continue working on ai?

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:03):
Sure. Yes. Sure. Yes. You think

Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
Of course. Do you think my question is more like, do you think this is even meaningful? Like, or is it just spicy auto Correct.

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:14):
I think right now it is that. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:17):
No, I think it's very meaningful. I think it can be used to help. I mean, it's already being used to help lower increased productivity. So I've already used it today to lower the amount of grunt stupid work I do. Right. Which I'm all for. Cuz then I can spend more time. Right. Calling people dags. I guess

Leo Laporte (01:29:34):
That's, that's kind of the <laugh>, that's kind of the equivalent.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:38):
And that's a win for society.

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
Yes. That's the equivalent of using a combine harvester to harvest your wheat or, you know, a hoe to get the weeds outta your car. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:48):
Just spicy autocorrect also helps too. I mean like Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Yeah. It's a tool in other words. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:53):
But it doesn't, it doesn't take over kind. It

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
Doesn't, no one thinks that combine harvester's gonna take over the world.

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:59):
Right. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:00):
Eh, I mean if you look at,

Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
If you look, you wouldn't wanna lie under one. No, that would be dumb. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:06):
Well, if you look at Yeah. How people view robots, you know, I'm like, oh, well a spicy harvester or harvester combine might take over the

Leo Laporte (01:30:12):
World. Ooh. A spicy harvester. That sounds like

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:15):
Dinner. Spicy harvest,

Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:18):
God, I'm totally fine. Cut

Leo Laporte (01:30:20):
Off Google's medical AI chatbot. Chatbot is already being tested in hospitals. Mayo Clinic, this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:27):
A little, the story says there's a few errors

Leo Laporte (01:30:29):
Too. This seems like a bad idea, but there's a person involved right now. It's not an existential threat, but it just seems like a bad use of ai. Maybe why? If

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:37):
It inspires, why us New

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:40):
Diagnosis? Well, here's the deal. If you give people a tool that says, I can help inspire you to make better decisions, think that's good. What happens then is, oh, here's comes our old buddy financialization comes in and says, oh, this can do it so much faster. And then we don't need, you know, we can cut down on people

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:01):
By a waiting room in the er, X

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:03):
Percent

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:03):
Waiting room time in the

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:04):
Er Well, or nurses in the er. Yeah. And instead of having a doctor, we will just run this ai and that'll the nurse will do are have to, actually there was a nurse that was suing, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal about this. Oh, really? But like the AI made a decision and the nurse couldn't, couldn't question it even though she knew the call. It was, that was not

Leo Laporte (01:31:22):
The point. That's bad of Margaret Mic. But that's, we gonna get there ins stochastic parrots. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is Right. These things make errors partly because of the way they're trained and we gotta pay attention to that. But we also, the problem is humans look at a computer and say, oh, the computer gave us the answer. It must be true. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's the, that's the secondary risk of all this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:44):
Well it's the, it is the schmuck lawyer who, who used Chad G P t. Yeah. The person change, didn't do his own jobs.

Leo Laporte (01:31:50):
But don't, but see, here's the

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:51):
Risk. I think that's the primary risk actually, is that we stupid

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:54):
People.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:56):
It's not stupid people. It's gross financial interest that is going to drive people to say, to drive organizations or ownership to say, oh, well,

Leo Laporte (01:32:06):
Yeah, it'll

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:06):
Start at let's just let the AI do it. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:08):
It'll start there at the top.

Leo Laporte (01:32:10):
But, and I, I hesitate calling 'em stupid people. I think it's just normal people who are told computers don't make mistakes. They're Right. And they're, you know, and, and it's our job. It's incumbent upon us as tech journalists to say, no, no, that's not true. These are unreliable and you shouldn't trust them. Garbage and garbage. It's not stupidity. It's just, you know, ignorance. We haven't done the, it's Yeah. We haven't done the job we have to do of telling them, you know, again and again, computers make mistakes. Most people know that by now. I hope so

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:37):
This day and

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
Age. But they, but AI somehow seems like a superior kind of computer.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:41):
Right? Well, it's not just that we think that da, like you hear people talk about, we're trying to get to a world where human judgment doesn't matter. Where you can offset human judgment and the cost of it and the equi equi of it. The, the ability to make those fine, the nuance. Because not everyone's gonna make the same decision the same way. Right. So we computers, if you, it will make the same decision the same way every time. And we, we trust that because we're like, yes, that's right. When we start letting people make those decisions, they can be gamed. And we fundamentally hate when people get gamed. Right. It's kind of like talking about ai.

Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
But that's the mistake. Assuming that the computer doesn't have biases, that doesn't have flaw. It has, it's just

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:29):
Game

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:29):
Flaws. It's further up in the system.

Leo Laporte (01:33:31):
It's hu the humans that put it together, <laugh> put those flaws in. They built them in. Cuz it's made by humans. So maybe a computer could be a perfect line judge, but I definitely don't think a computer could be a perfect physician.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:44):
No, no, no. It shouldn't be used as such. Should be supplement. It shouldn't be promised as such. That's the other supplement part of this problem with the doism is they're over-promising the power. Yeah. Sorry Ed, I just heard you talking. No, I'm just saying it should just be supplemental. The AI Yes. Should be supplemental augmenting intelligence.

Leo Laporte (01:34:02):
Well, I'll give you an example. A physician is really two skills. One skill is a memory that can remember all the diagnostic information, remember all the possible illnesses, and put the two and two together and say you've got Epstein Barr syndrome. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's the second part is the person who is a human who can interface with house the human. Yeah. And talk to them and help them. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:27):
Dr. House could not talk to

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
People. Yeah. He had the pro, he had the, he was number, he was number one, not number two. I love Dr. So, and, and truthfully, a computer probably could do a better job of diagnosing, of remembering all the symptoms and all the diseases in place. Leo,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:40):
Here's where it really makes a difference, I think is, you know, when I had, I had vascular neuritis or something and, and, and, and, and I had fevers and I had a problem in temple. Right. And I took all the symptoms to end up four doctors and it was blind men in the elephant. Right. Right. The cardiologist says it's cardiology. The rheumatologist says it's rheumatology. Right. And finally it was one guy who, who happened to be the right guy. Whereas if you could feed all the symptoms in and maybe drive the cardiologist to say, no, this isn't cardiology. Actually it's something

Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Else. Well, there's a big if, but yes. That's the, that's the idea is that you, that's whole put in theory, create a perfect diagnostic machine. They might

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:20):
Argue with a machine and say, no, there's

Leo Laporte (01:35:21):
Stupid machine. I still think you'd want, you know, humans in the the treatment end. But, but, but you want

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:27):
Inspiring possible diagnoses.

Leo Laporte (01:35:29):
Exactly. Maybe the computer could say, well there's four possibilities given these symptoms. There's four possibilities. Here are the four. And that might make the cardiologists think a little harder about the others that weren't cardiology related, I guess. But,

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:42):
And the other thing that can happen, which, which LLMs right now don't do. But you wanna design it in such a way that it says, heres why this diagnosis comes up because there's n percent with this symptom. Yeah. Right. And you wanna start to tie it to that so that the doctor can be part of the logic of it.

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
So we're getting in our

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:58):
Yeah, that's, that's the key part cuz yeah, there, there are issues like if, if the diagnos, the computer diagnostic says, oh, I'm basing this diagnosis on the fact that they've got like high white blood cell counts. If they're on a drug that promotes high white blood cell counts and the doctor knows that they can discount that.

Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
Right. Well the computer should know it too. I mean the, the, all of this depends on if you're having perfect information. If it has the data, it's gotta have to, well, the

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:25):
Computer can ask. I think that's make the doctor ask for a new test, you know, and say, oh, but what about this, what about

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
That swer in our discord? It's a tool.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:32):
It's just, it's a good tool. It's good for looking at cancer x-rays and say, and seeing patterns that the human eye doesn't see. We should use the tool

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):
So swer in our use and, well, discord has a good example. He says, my optometrist has automatic machines that measure what your vision numbers are. We've done this. You go to the optometrist, they mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you sit down in front of the machine goes mm-hmm. <Affirmative> focuses, focuses, focuses, it comes up with a prescription. But then he still does it manually himself to double check and refine it and generate the prescription. Right. That's awesome.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:05):
Better.

Leo Laporte (01:37:06):
That's awesome. Does yours not do that better? Worse? I haven't a couple years.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:10):
I can't answer that, but

Leo Laporte (01:37:11):
I love that idea. Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea. That's a nice combination. Yeah. <laugh>, I went to the Optomest a couple of weeks ago, optometrist a couple of weeks ago and she put a, a quest on my head, a VR thing. Really? So they used to do, I don't know if this is better, I don't think it's better. They used to, you put your chin on the thing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you look through the thing and it tests your peripheral vision and you have a clicker. And when you could see the light Yep. You click it. Right. And it goes all around testing your peripheral vision. Now they put a VR headset on me and it do, I kind of do the same thing, but I don't think it's as good. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:46):
I think your optometrist is charging you way too <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:37:49):
That's not, you know, I wanted to say can we go back to the, the, the old school way of doing this is sometimes you move a little too far too fast. Can I see the big E please?

Ant Pruitt (01:37:59):
Yeah. What going on? So, well there's no tracking inside of the, the Oculus. Right. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:38:06):
Sure there's, well, I mean, I don't know, but let's, like eye

Ant Pruitt (01:38:08):
Tracking. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:38:09):
Not worried about it's definitely the privacy thing. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Well, if you move your head, I don't know,

Ant Pruitt (01:38:15):
<Laugh>, because that's the thing I'm worried

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:17):
About. They have to because how else are they gonna adjust? Adjust the thing when

Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
You they must. Right? They must. Hmm. I'm trying to think if I move my head around. I guess that's the point of it is you don't have to put your chin on a, you don't have to keep your head still as you move around. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:29):
You don't have to touch this gross thing even though

Leo Laporte (01:38:31):
They No. Instead your whole face is on, but

Ant Pruitt (01:38:32):
Peripheral is not because you moved your head to sea over here.

Leo Laporte (01:38:37):
Yeah. That's why though judging it moves with you. Right. Judging. So you don't, you can't do that want.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:41):
Yeah. I wonder

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
You can't say, oh, what's over there. Cuz as soon as you look over there, you're still looking at the same place. I wonder.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:47):
Yeah. I was surprised. Now you need to go interview him.

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
I thought it was a terrible idea. <Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:51):
Now you need to go interview. She's a good

Leo Laporte (01:38:53):
Optometrist though.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:54):
Speaking of, I need to get good optometrist or an ophthalmologist.

Leo Laporte (01:38:58):
Optometrist. Ophthalmologist is a physician.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:01):
I need glasses. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:39:02):
So you go to an opt you go to physician Oh yes. To get your eyes checked for your glasses. Oh yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:09):
He lives in New York or outside of New York. There. There's a lot of them there.

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
Okay. I don't need an ophthalmologist unless I have something going on that I need

Ant Pruitt (01:39:19):
Problem. But how are you gonna know what you have going on? Unless you have Well,

Leo Laporte (01:39:22):
The optometrist does all the diagnostics and then if my, you know, if my eyeball pressure's too high, she sends me to the ophthalmologist. Then she escalates for glaucoma test,

Ant Pruitt (01:39:33):
Then she escalates.

Leo Laporte (01:39:35):
I guess you can afford an ophthalmologist.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:38):
I do. You have eye insurance?

Leo Laporte (01:39:40):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. But it's terrible. That's why eye insurance is terrible. Do Oh, Jeff has good eye insurance. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:47):
That's what I'm guessing. If he's going to an up, up. I don't even

Leo Laporte (01:39:50):
Know. Speaking eye.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:51):
Doctor, doctor, doctor, did

Leo Laporte (01:39:52):
You see what the ophthalmologist, what the producers said about the writer's Guild? Strike. Who? I don't know which producer. Yeah, it was.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:01):
Were they, how'd they, how did they go on the record with

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
That? Yeah, they, in an interview. The w Okay, here we go. Hollywood Studio's. WGA Strike end game is to let writers go broke. One industry veteran, this is from Deadline Intimate with a point of view of studio CEOs said, I think we're in for a long strike and they're going to let it bleed out. The idea being want, you know, now that they're on Strike the End. This is a studio executive who told Deadline without, you know, revealing his name. The end game is to allow things to drag on until the Writer's Guild starts losing their apartments and losing their houses.

Ant Pruitt (01:40:47):
<Laugh>, that's what big businesses do to smaller businesses, right. When it comes to,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:53):
Yeah. I just can't believe they were like, who thought this would, like, that's gonna drive people

Leo Laporte (01:40:59):
Well, in a way,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:59):
Especially to stay out as

Leo Laporte (01:41:00):
Long as they can. They're, they're saying, yeah, we're gonna, or they think it would, we're, we're in this for long haul. Go ahead. Keep striking. You're gonna lose your place. That's why they're saying it. Right. Acknowledging the Es ice. This is deadline again. Acknowledging the cold ice approach. Several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it a cruel but necessary evil.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:22):
Is anyone surprise? You know, I can't wait for the guy who comes on and is like, well, at least we're not sending the pinkertons after them. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:41:28):
I think somebody did

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:29):
Say it could be worse. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:31):
The spokesperson official spokesman, the motion pictures picture and Television Producers Association said these anonymous people are not speaking on behalf of the, a amptp or member companies who are committed to reaching a deal and getting our industry back to work. There is a negative for the producers, of course, which is they can't produce anything but crap until the writers come back.

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:55):
So, well, even when the writers come back, a lot of it's crap, but

Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
Yeah. Well that's true. Yeah. okay. What else? There's

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:04):
So much AI stuff, there's tons of

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
More AI stuff.

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:07):
Have you, have you

Leo Laporte (01:42:09):
You pick

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:12):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
Well, Sarah Silverman

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:13):
Silverman, Sarah

Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
Silverman, these two

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:16):
Suits

Leo Laporte (01:42:16):
Here. Sarah is suing open AI and meta for copyright infringement. You know her as of course a comic. She says love her. She says authors Christopher Golden and Richard Cadre are also in the suit that some of her material is showing up. And the reason is, so she, she wrote a book called Confessions of a Bed Wetter. The book has unfortunately been pirated and is on what they call shadow library websites like Biblio, tick Library, Genesis Z Library or available in bulk via Torrent Systems. So she says she believes the AI is scraping these pirate sites because she feels that chat. G p she says here in an open AI suit, the trio offers exhibits showing that when prompted chat, G p t will summarize their books. Which it couldn't do unless it had seen the copy. Right. I didn't know about it. Silverman's sp we is the first book shown being summarized by chat g PT in the exhibits. Golden's book Era Rat is used as an example, as Cadre's book Sandman Slim.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:27):
So, oh, I like those books. They're fun. Yeah. I can read the book. In fact, some, somebody did this to my last books and they're gonna do it right now to the new one where they read it and they'd sell their own summary. They're freed to do

Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
That. Hey, that's this entire show, <laugh>. Yes. Just reading other people's enterprise journalism and summarizing it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:47):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:43:48):
That's not illegal. Or a copyright

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:50):
And trans for transformative. Yeah. I think it's transformative as can be. Now the question is did they buy the original copy? Did they have the right to go to the copy? That may be a question. Yeah. But once they do, so one is fine. One $20 book and now I've read it and now I can do with it what I want and I can summarize it for you. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (01:44:07):
So this will be interesting to see what the court says. Cuz you're right. The, the, it's not like they're reproducing actual verbatim passages from the book. They're summarizing it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:16):
It's the essence of copyright says that you can copyright the treatment of information but not the information itself. Because in an enlightened society you can't own information. Meanwhile, there's a Google suit. At the same time, line 67 just got filed as a class action suit, which tries to bring against Bard, which try unnamed complainants trying to come up with a class action with multiple different tax on this. All the stolen information belonged to real people who shared it online for specific purposes. So they're trying to argue that anything you shared online in public mm-hmm. And Google mm-hmm. Burns from it is

Leo Laporte (01:44:54):
Theft. Here's a, here's a hypothetical Wikipedia probably somewhere in an article about Sarah Silverman talks about events that are described in that book. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because some editor at Wikipedia read the book. So you read the book Yeah. And wrote the article. That's not copyright infringement is the only, so this is what the judge is gonna have to decide is the only difference that <laugh> that the web egg Wikipedia editor bought the book and read it versus chat g pt finding a copy of it online and, and not paying for the Wiki

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:25):
Editor may have gone to a library number one. Oh and yeah. And, and by the way, chat, G p t does not retain the book. Right. Once it maps the relationships. Right. The books meaningless to them. In

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
Fact, what we don't know is it may well be that chat g PT or any of these is regurgitating somebody else's regurgitation.

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:46):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
Yes. So it may be that chat gpt actually did ingest as it did Wikipedia and is repeating something it read on Wikipedia that is a repeat of something the editor read on in the book. So I think this is a ca gonna be a very hard case to prove. I understand Sarah Silverman's point of view, but I think it's a pretty hard case to prove. And if, and even if

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:08):
You win, has very lasek famously said, fair use is the right to hire an attorney

Leo Laporte (01:46:12):
If you win. What you, the damages might be the cost of the hardcover book. Right? Right. What? Right. What are you getting outta Yeah. What, what did you lose? Very interesting. Very interesting case. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:25):
The Google suit says that one is a New York Times bestselling author, unnamed, whose work was used to train Google's AI powered chat bot Bard. Another is an actor who posts educational material online and believes her work was used to train Google products that will one day make her obsolete. Two of the plaintiffs are minors, six and 13 year olds, respectively, whose guardians are concerned that their online activity is being tracked and harvested by Google.

Leo Laporte (01:46:50):
So this is purpose two completely different issues. One is the harvesting of mine's data, which is illegal. And there is a, there's a,

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:59):
But a six every service out there would not allow a six year old right on it. So Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:04):
You have to lie in order to get your stuff online.

Leo Laporte (01:47:08):
I think these are all gonna be thrown out.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:11):
Although that is like, I think there's an interesting using age of people to, to kind of differentiate more of these suits. And if you look at, like, when the FTC did actually win against Amazon, one of their suits was about collecting data from kids under 16. And then not dis disposing, not getting,

Leo Laporte (01:47:32):
Not, if they can prove that, then they got 'em, they got 'em under coppa. So that's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:36):
But that's a COPPA suit. Na, i,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:38):
I, I think what? But I think what people use that as a way to start these kinds of suits, but I think it does bring the 13 is clearly

Leo Laporte (01:47:48):
Yeah. But that's why it Shouldn should be too old.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:49):
Should be online.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
It shouldn't be in this, I don't think it should be in this suit. The other plaintiff, this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:55):
A SHA law firm.

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Yeah. The other plaintiff says, my work was used to train Google products that'll one day make my job obsolete. Well, sorry. Well, wham, wham to noogies <laugh>. That's completely D I'm different issue than the 13. Yeah. Right. All of us. That's a completely different issue than a 13 year old. So I, yeah, this is a ju this is a junk suit. I don't, I'm not gonna be covering that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:19):
Well, you just did my fault <laugh>. But, but meanwhile what's happening, I think is that, is that you're gonna see places come along and say, well, in the meantime, we're gonna do a clean version. So Shutterstock, I think we might have talked about this before. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
Adobe's doing this too,

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:35):
Right? They're doing that. But what's interesting, Leo, is that, let's say that, let's say that Sara wins

Leo Laporte (01:48:40):
Suit a training data set that is licensed. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:43):
Okay. Yeah. Oh, I got you. When you, cause I was like, what did you mean by clean? I got you now. Okay. But what, what if you wanted to clean up a learning set? If, if, if Open AI loses and they, they have to take out a hundred books, let's say. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you can't back it out. You can't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:56):
Say you can actually,

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:57):
You can.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:59):
How? So all you're gonna do is retrain the models and they're retraining models all the time. Oh, okay. Okay. So this is actually something I learned about, because again, that FTC lawsuit, cuz Amazon, part of the settlement was that they would have to eliminate any work product that used some of their Ill-gotten data. Ill-Gotten data. Okay. so yeah, I mean, it's expensive, but you're also retraining your models often. That's true. Now, is there a way to audit, to make sure that's happened? Not really, but going into this all the way back in like 20 16, 20 17, there was this kind of idea, they call it ML ops. And the idea is responsible companies, and they've been talking about this for a while, is you have to think about where your training data comes from, improving that out, that you have rights to it. And companies have been doing that for quite some time.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
Sorry, Bruce Schneier proposes that there be a fund that creators of AI technologies pay a small fee into without all our writings and photos that AI companies are using to train their models, they'd have nothing to sell. So we're owed profits as Bruce for data powered. That was an interesting article. Ai, I

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:14):
I, I, I respect the hell out of Bruce. I think it's the dumbest idea I've heard in years. What, because you're a tax on reading. In the end. It is a tax on reading that if this company comes along and it reads the open internet and then says, well, you gotta pay a tax on that to pay to every citizen, because you read what we said in the open on the internet. I think it's a terrible idea. You disagree?

Leo Laporte (01:50:36):
No, I agree. It's not, it's not, I think to make a tax on reading anthropomorphize. Is it, it's not that. It's just tax on scraping that if a, if a company writes a tool that scrapes the public internet for data, it should have to license that data. And since you can't say, well, that data is owned by ant, you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:54):
Just don't, you have a licensing account.

Leo Laporte (01:50:55):
You have a little licensing account. There is no, so what you do is you say, well, we're gonna pay a penny per megabyte, we're gonna pay it into a fund, and then everybody will

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:03):
Get the old copyright mentality of Earth. That, that, I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:06):
Don't know. You could think of it more like, instead of, instead of thinking of like copyright, think of it as like a gasoline tax for wear and tear on the road. Yeah, exactly. So the internet is a public road. There, there you go. We're all throwing our data on

Leo Laporte (01:51:17):
It. Perfect analogy.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:18):
Pay into a fund that comes out to us.

Leo Laporte (01:51:21):
Perfect analogy, man. Know. Yeah. All right. It's a

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:23):
Gas tax. So, alright, so, so, so I, I, I, I, earlier today I talked to Richard Ingris who said Google, who's the senior VP News, and he told me an amazing story from Korea. He had just been there. And in Korea, Google's this is gonna be relevant, I promise you. In Korea, Google's market share is much smaller, smaller than anywhere else. It's, they, they're lose to, I think it's called what's it called? A big CER site there, I forget the name of it. But the big site that has all the news. It's, it's more like a Yahoo. And everybody goes to it and all their news is in it, and they license the news. And Ingris said a few years ago, he went and he said, you're gonna regret this because you're gonna want to build your own relationships with customers and you're not building it because everybody gets the news from this big portal.

(01:52:11):
Right. And you're gonna hate this. Right? So he goes back and in fact, yes, they hate it. They said, you were so right. We don't have anything. And they tried to push the portal to link to them, to link to the news producers. And the portal came back and said, well, only if you will link to a certain number of pages where there's only four ads and you're not allowed to promote your brand. You're not allowed to navigate to anything. You're not allowed to sell their own tax. Basically the publishers are saying, whoa, they're trapped. And so it's the exact opposite of what's happening in Canada and in Australia where the publishers are saying, we want links. Give us links, please. We need links. They have value to us and we can't get them. It's the mirror image of the other places, which is kind of so hilarious. I think. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:55):
Well it just goes to show that like there's value in aggregators and you're gonna have to figure out how to get, how to monetize or figure out business models that work for that. Cuz people, I mean, I guess you could have our, why do we not have RSS feeds anymore? What

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:10):
Happened? I know, I know. Well, let's get, let's get Dave Wine on.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:13):
We still talk about, we still have RSS feeds out there. They're just, we don't have enough reader out there.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:22):
Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:22):
Because there's still, I'm, there's why don't have Google reader? There's service this up there. They're still Feedly and stuff like that. Still doing their thing that I still use.

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:30):
Yeah. You got other readers. The problem is you got, you got, I think, but you're both right. Stacy's right in the, in the big companies, Dave Weiner says that RS test was made successful in Martin Nien holds the senior VP news at the New York Times, chose to put RSS feeds out of the times. That's what made it popular. That's what made people realize the value, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if you don't have a lot of feeds, whatever reader you have is no good. On the other hand, if people don't have a convenient reader to use, like Google Reader, then the comp, the me the media company say, oh, let's stop making the feeds.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:00):
Yeah. We'll just stop with this RSS stuff. It's just waste of my time. Yeah, I get it. I, I hear the chief twit somewhere out there in the hall screaming <laugh>. But I don't know if it's screaming for joy or screaming of happiness, but something happened. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:14):
Can't take it anymore. <Laugh>. I just had to leave. Those of you who don't see you can, you can show the chair, I think. Yeah. There, there, there he is. Oh, there he is. It's mutiny. He's he's had, it's not

Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
Supposed to.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:25):
I heard you screaming. We're supposed break like that. You broke the rule.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:28):
I heard you screaming and I was like, whoa. I don't know what that screaming is.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:32):
The fourth wall has been

Leo Laporte (01:54:34):
Broken. Korea <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:36):
Yeah. As soon as I said Korea in a story, he's like, not unsafe. Did I miss it? Yeah. I got a bathroom break and coffee.

Leo Laporte (01:54:44):
Put my headphones in.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:45):
Yeah, we did do a Google story. Good on us.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:47):
Yeah, we did. We had to do it without you.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:49):
Now we can blame. The reason we don't do Google in this show, it's all Leah's fault.

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):
I just walked away. That's all.

Leo Laporte (01:54:58):
Have we concluded that story <laugh>?

Ant Pruitt (01:55:00):
We we did.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:01):
Yes, we did. Said it's over. In fact, it was over quite a while ago. And we had the vamp cuz you were off lollygagging around out there screaming things

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:10):
And we're terrible at vamping. Good lord.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:13):
I was gonna break the fourth wall, but I thought, no,

Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
No. I had to have a cup of coffee. I couldn't take

Ant Pruitt (01:55:17):
It. I wasn't gonna break it. I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:19):
Did that, I did that during our last

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:20):
A Oh no, a Jarvis story. See

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
You guys get ad breaks. I don't get nothing. I gotta sit here the whole time. And by the way, I'm gonna wrap this up cuz I gotta ride my trichome and it's getting dark. Oh yeah, yeah. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:32):
You have a light on the trach, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:55:34):
Yeah, but I'm not riding in the dark. It's bad enough. Right in the daylight. It's dangerous out there,

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:38):
By the way. How do you, how do you, does your helmet do left turn, right turn? It

Leo Laporte (01:55:42):
Does. Yeah. Yeah. That's why why's simple Have the whole thing on the handlebar. You press it, it goes do

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:45):
Do. Oh, it's on the handlebar. You don't hit the handlebar.

Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
Oh, oh, oh. Ooh.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:51):
Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:55:52):
Next time you're out here, I'm down for this cuz. Waffles, I'm hungry. Yeah. Next time you're out here, Jeff will ride across the Golden Gate Bridge on our bike. So much fun. It's wrong.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:02):
Just, well, okay. Alright, so I'm gonna give you one of my numbers here.

Leo Laporte (01:56:05):
Wait a minute, we of okay. You're gonna, but this is an early number. Okay. It's an early

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:09):
Number. Tiktok TikTok corner here. The scariest bridge in America. Frank Gari Jr. A fan of of Twig, sent this to me and he's so right.

Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
All right, here we

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:21):
Go. I nearly had a heart attack on this bridge. And it's a business opportunity that you will see that's necessary for people like me.

Speaker 7 (01:56:29):
Terrifying. To cross. First off, it's really high, nearly 200 feet in spots, and it's 4.3 miles long. Scary from end to end for some motorists getting behind the wheel and driving across the chest.

Leo Laporte (01:56:43):
Is this inside addition? It's gonna somewhere.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:46):
Keep going. Wait, wait, wait. It's going. What

Speaker 8 (01:56:47):
Happened was, I suffered a major panic attack. My peripheral vision went black. I thought

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:53):
It was, she's my spirit animal into

Speaker 8 (01:56:54):
Oncoming traffic.

Speaker 7 (01:56:55):
Carolyn and Casey is so afraid. She actually, here you go. Hires a guy to do the,

Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
Oh, this is so stupid. I can't even believe this Bay Bridge

Speaker 7 (01:57:03):
Drive.

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
This is the, the golden flat. I would hire him in a's flat go Bay Bridge. She's scared of the Bay Bridge. Doesn't looks like the Bay Bridge.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:11):
It's, oh, it's not the Bay Bridge. It's the Delaware,

Leo Laporte (01:57:14):
Oh, Kent Island Express. At seven o'clock I

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:17):
Would hire him

Leo Laporte (01:57:19):
To drive over the bridge. Would you feel safe if you were driving over the bridge?

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:23):
I would. Cause I wouldn't pass out from

Leo Laporte (01:57:25):
Fear. What's so scary about this bridge again?

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:28):
Because it, well, I was on this bridge. This, this is the one that finally did me in, I was coming back, it was icy. I didn't know my tires were pretty bold. The windows really high. And I was fishtailing around on the

Leo Laporte (01:57:38):
Road. Oh wow. Wind. That's scary. Okay. Chesapeake Bay,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:41):
That's the barrier is low. A truck has fallen off this bridge as the nice lady says,

Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Oh, I've been across Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Oh, that's a long one's. Two and 0.2 0.4 miles. That's pretty long. That's a long one. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:52):
It's a long load. And it's very high and very, very steep. Yeah. yeah. So he makes a good business. He does this every day. Driving people back and forth.

Leo Laporte (01:58:00):
Scooter eggs. I have video of you on this page. Scooter eggs. No Good call a scooter. Egg <laugh>. I don't know which is worse. Riding a hoverboard or jumping off the bridge. <Laugh>, frankly. All right. We are. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:17):
Got my, my palms are sweating horribly right now. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:58:20):
Well, you, you're intentionally scaring yourself. I don't understand it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:25):
Oh, oh, you're so cool. I

Leo Laporte (01:58:26):
Think he's re trying to rehabilitate himself. Possibly. Okay. Let's do a quick change log make. Here we go. Play the, play the drums. Play the cattle drum too. Change log. The Google Change log notebook. Lm, this is actually a kind of dual AI change log story. Google's AI powered notes app is coming. It's technically launching today for a few people. This was Project Tailwind. It gives you an ai And they showed this, I think at Google io. An AI model trade. Yes. Are the documents you tell it to look at. Small group of users will get this according to a Google blog post LM and Notebook. LM stands for language model of course, but it's not a large language model. It's your language.

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:15):
Right. And notice Stephen Johnson, the famous author, is the editorial director. And they, so they hired a writer who's written many books cuz they wanted to know, well, how do you take all your notes and all your material?

Leo Laporte (01:59:26):
What a good idea. What would it

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:27):
Be? Helpful, smart. I'm gonna go down and visit his team. At his invitation on the 25th,

Leo Laporte (01:59:32):
I was hanging out with a couple of geeky friends. One who used to work at meta, another guy who's a coder, been doing it for years. And Brock was the former meta guy, brought out this little recorder, said you mind if I record this conversation? We're just sitting around the table talking. So we, he records like 10 minutes. And then he says, well, here's the notes from our conversation. And apparently he has it set up so that, oh damn, it loads in, it loads the audio to Dropbox, uses whisper AI to transcribe it uses chat G P T to generate notes from the conversation. And that's pretty cool. A a takeaway list, an item list of things to do based on it. So he says, here's the notes from our conversation. That's pretty cool. And it was,

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:12):
Imagine if it tried to do this show. Well

Leo Laporte (02:00:16):
No, let me say bad. No. This

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:19):
Conversation, the notes would be like five minutes. Yeah. And the show would be three hours.

Leo Laporte (02:00:23):
Oh no. This, this, this conversation that we had was just as discursive and stupid as our show. And, and it made a very, it did a very good job of it and really made me think, this is the future of show notes I have per podcast. I have

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:35):
Many friends Yeah. Who are using, who have a second character in Zoom.

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
Yes. To keep track of it with it. Oh yes. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:44):
Yeah. To do the notes. So

Leo Laporte (02:00:45):
That's the idea of notebook LM is you, you give it all of your texts or whatever, for instance, in your class. This is for a computer science class. And then it makes the notes and then it does a document. I think this is great. If it does a good job, it's fantastic.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:03):
And if it's using the data, you know where it came from. It's not making crap up. Right. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:09):
If, if, so my child is used this, my child has an audio processing disorder, so it can be very hard for them to take in information auditorily. Mm-Hmm. So they actually have used things like Otter has a service that does this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the challenge is they have to get the recording permission. They have to A, get permission. Yeah. But b then they have to get the recording close up enough to the teacher to get, or like access to a soundboard if you're in a, in a classroom, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Right. To get a good enough recording to make the notes worthwhile. Cuz otherwise it's a little, the transcription

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:44):
Does, it does talk in the classroom from other students. Confuse it or

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:48):
It can

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> Brock had a little this device was, you know, just a little wafer and you could put this up by the teacher. It had a good microphone. And apparently, I mean, we were sitting around a table. It was in the middle. It got the entire conversation. That's awesome. In fact, it was kinda, the insights it came up with were pretty, it even recognized that his Charlie's son came in and he's just graduated from Pritzker. He's, he's, you know, working as a intern and he's talking about a photo shoot that he did. And then, and the AI said a young man named Zack came, came in and started talking about photography. Here's the things that we decided he should do. It was really great. Brock Brock said, well, what are some tips for what you tell people when you're taking pictures? He summarized it. The AI did a great job of summarizing it. And then I said, well, who owns the ad agency? You're working for the AI said, do some research into ad agency ownership. <Laugh>. It was, it was pretty, it was actually really good. And I could see as a student, this would be revolutionary. Revolutionary. So, although

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:51):
Some of the value of taking notes is actually

Leo Laporte (02:02:53):
Is the process. I agree. The mental

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:54):
Process.

Leo Laporte (02:02:55):
Yeah. Yes, I agree. So you should probably do both. Right. Do your notes supplement, but then supplement. So it does, do they use Otter AI just or is there a special version of it that, that they use for? They've

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:07):
Used different versions

Leo Laporte (02:03:07):
Of it. There's one for education. Look at this. Oh. Oh, this is cool.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:16):
This is a good use of ai.

Leo Laporte (02:03:18):
I completely agree. This is, yeah. Destroy,

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:20):
Destroy Mankin not so much.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:23):
I mean, it, it kind of depends on your, I mean, some professors might be like, well the value isn't actually taking the notes yourself. Right. Which my child would reply with, but I can't do that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:32):
<Laugh> <laugh>, do they have a a special what do you call it?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:37):
They're not an IEP or a 5 0 4. No. Cuz they're not in a public school.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:41):
Oh. I thought, well, and I think in our state, I think even private schools have to offer that.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:46):
Oh, you know, my child is such a, like, non-disruptive and a pretty decent student who works very hard. So that's,

Leo Laporte (02:03:52):
No one has ever had a problem with this. That's

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:55):
Question.

Leo Laporte (02:03:55):
So don't be a quey. Wheel's a problem. Otherwise nobody would grease him down. It's so important. I think we had to be the squeaky wheel in our school. I agree. Yeah. Android 14, beta four Let's pixel devices automatically unlock when you type in the pin. Why is that a news story? Huh? I don't know. Sounds like that's how it works, but okay. Something

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:21):
Fell. It was the sound of a pin dropping.

Leo Laporte (02:04:24):
It was so quiet

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:25):
After that bit of the change log. You could hear a pin drop. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:30):
Oh, Google <laugh>. She's like, I got Google app rolling out fi You missed every, all, there's such good stuff

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:36):
You

Leo Laporte (02:04:36):
Can't miss. You missed some of the best stuff there. Google App is rolling out a finance watch list. Stock widget.

Ant Pruitt (02:04:44):
Who, what? Wait, what?

Leo Laporte (02:04:46):
Who cares? Google News offering free four month New York Times trial. I shouldn't poo this cuz Jason has worked so hard putting this list together. It's not his fault. Yeah. He's

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:56):
Sitting there back saying, yeah, yeah. What are you, what are you kicking me

Leo Laporte (02:04:59):
Around for? It's not his fault that Google's, you know,

Ant Pruitt (02:05:02):
Well he did, he did add some value to that first story there. He said it's small but not needed to hit enter after the pin. Has it been on the Android? On stock. Android. And yeah, I agree with him on that. Cuz that is

Leo Laporte (02:05:14):
A bit of having to hit enter. You put the pin, I turned that

Ant Pruitt (02:05:16):
On and it's like, and I don't need his extra step. I hit that

Leo Laporte (02:05:20):
Last distance. No, I turned that on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the enter having to hit enter because otherwise the bad guy doesn't need to know how long your pin is. He just keeps entering numbers till he accepts it. Okay. But if he needs to say that's all there is enter.

Ant Pruitt (02:05:34):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
All right. Security. Okay. Okay. in fact, I thought that was always an option. Maybe it's only an iOS. I thought there was always an option to turn, enter on and off. Get your four month New York Times trial for free from Google News.

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:49):
That's pretty amazing that Google's becoming a marketing agent. Sure. Subscription agent for the New York Times

Leo Laporte (02:05:57):
Google Play changes policy on tokenized digital assets allowing NFTs and apps and games. Well, it's about time. Okay. that's cray cray. I just don't think NFTs have a place in apps and games. Although I was thinking Spotify has announced that they're gonna allow artists to offer NFTs on Spotify that you could just buy. And I think that maybe fts,

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:26):
Are they still

Leo Laporte (02:06:27):
Around? Yeah, they're still around. But oh. But the mistake people made was assuming it was some sort of investment vehicle, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it was a speculative vehicle. But if you say, I like Taylor Swift and I really wanna support her, I'm gonna, or I like ants photos.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:40):
I said from day one, that's different. It's, if it's another way for creators to be able to earn

Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
It's a donation

Ant Pruitt (02:06:46):
Wages, I'm totally for

Leo Laporte (02:06:48):
It. Just don't buy it thinking, oh, I'm gonna make some money. Right. I'm gonna go make bank on this Taylor Swift de fee. Well, I mean, it's,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:54):
It is like, honestly,

Ant Pruitt (02:06:55):
Think about it. Earn some money.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:56):
I should say concert, concert merchandise or something. Some of that is worth money later on down the road. That's

Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
True. But really you wouldn't encourage people to buy beanie Babies and leave 'em in the box just cuz you know, in 10 years it's gonna be worth it.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:09):
No, I would not encourage anyone to buy Beanie Babies at

Leo Laporte (02:07:12):
All. Right. Right. And that's the Google change log. Thank you Jason Owl. Mr. Howell. I appreciate it. In honor of that, I'm using an all about Android mug for my my coffee <laugh>. Thank you. Don't shed it. Don't cry. Jason. We'll be back tomorrow. 1:00 PM Pacific in our club Twit Discord. We are doing more information gathering and research and brainstorming for the AI show. Which Jeff, you're

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:39):
Gonna be, I might be pulling off to the side of the road to do it tomorrow. I'm gonna see I have a one 30 appointment in

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
Jason would yeah. Well, we'll that's just this week. Next week. We'll, we'll work around your schedule. Cause I would, I would, you know, like you to be part of that. I'm very excited. I think we really do need a a AI show. I'm, I'm coming around to that. You had a great conversation in London with, we did a Alan Rusbridger, Rus Berger

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:10):
Former editor, Bridger, former editor of The Guardian, now editor of Prospect Magazine.

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
And you can see this on the Prospect Magazine website, prospect magazine.co.uk. Actually, it's a YouTube video, so you could also see it on YouTube on there. Nice. On their YouTube channel.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:26):
Nice conversation. It was, it was great. Alan is brilliant and it was a great

Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
Conversation. Thank you for the plug for this week in Google. I appreciate that. And Sue, what line is this on there? So I can go back? Oh, I found it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:36):
78. Oh. For 78. Got it. Thank you. And I think in the next week or so, we'll have video up from the conversation that March. March and Wicker and Glen

Leo Laporte (02:08:44):
Fleischer. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:45):
Good. And Doug. Crap. Doug Wilson. Sorry. Doug and I had with Frank Romano at the Museum of Printing in have Mass, which was just great. I also put up video. I got to actually type on a line of type for the first time.

Leo Laporte (02:09:03):
Oh. Oh, you're kidding.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:05):
That I broke it.

Leo Laporte (02:09:06):
Oh, come on.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:08):
I type

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
Wait a minute. No, the

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:10):
Guy fixed it. They're

Leo Laporte (02:09:11):
Messing

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:11):
With you. I was so scared. I was so scared. Where? No, I, it bent, it bent a a matrix, but he, we got it out. It was fine.

Leo Laporte (02:09:17):
Oh my gosh. Where is this on the rundown here? This, this is

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:20):
One of the type, this is one of the lines that I typed right

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
Here. Oh, look at that. What did you write?

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:26):
Publish or perish.

Leo Laporte (02:09:28):
Oh, good. I like it. That's good. Kudos to, sir. What would you, if you, so you, you get how many characters?

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:36):
Well, it depends on the line and the, and the, and the, and the font size.

Leo Laporte (02:09:40):
I would, I would really have to. It

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:41):
Depends on the line and

Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
On the type. Would you, what would you write? What would you, you know, you only get one line on this line of Well, you

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:48):
Do a name. Everybody does a name.

Leo Laporte (02:09:50):
No, I wouldn't. What would you write? What would

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:52):
You say? An dominate

Leo Laporte (02:09:53):
Create and dominate. Lead. Dominate. Yep. Period. Just dominate. Not create and dominate. Just dominate. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:03):
So that'll, that'll be up a little bit too. It was a great conversation about, about shift Happens and Marin's book. And then Glen and Marin went up to Maine to be on press for the printing of Shift happens

Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
For two weeks. Oh, fun. Oh wow. Very nice.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:20):
What, so what is, what is the idea behind being up for the, is it the entire print run?

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:26):
Yeah. They want their, their anal retentive. You

Leo Laporte (02:10:28):
Have

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:29):
To make sure it's beautiful. Done.

Leo Laporte (02:10:30):
Yeah. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:31):
Yeah. I, I I truly don't know. Like, did

Leo Laporte (02:10:35):
Okay. If it's a beautiful, there's a lot of photos. It's not just text. A lot of corrections, lot things like that. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:10:39):
Tons, tons of

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
Tons of photos. The the guy who does the Day in the Life books, what was his name? I've forgotten now. He's just down here in Sausalito. I love him. I was, I interviewed him some time ago and those are such beautiful books. He would go to China where they print 'em. Mm Yes, exactly. And check the proofs to make sure that they match Well Yeah. Don't they send you proof? Is Rick s Mullen. Rick s Mullen. That's it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. He's a friend of mine too. Love Rick. Rick. He Rick's wonderful. Oh, what a great guy. Yeah, just a wonderful guy. They send you proofs, but you really want to be at the press. You kind of have to keep an eye on it. Has aunt ever had a conversation with Rick?

Ant Pruitt (02:11:14):
I have not, but thank you for the

Leo Laporte (02:11:15):
Oh yes. That would be a great session. We'll get you. That'd be a great look. We'll get you hooked up. Rick's a sweetheart. He's, unless he's moved.

Ant Pruitt (02:11:21):
Sausalito. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned Sausalito Hardhead recently. He went down and to Sausalito for a photo walk.

Leo Laporte (02:11:29):
Love it down there. It's beautiful. Yeah. actually, you know, it'd be interesting to talk to him about national Geographic firing everybody. He used to be a photographer for them, so that would be very interesting. All right. I think that's a good, that's a wrap. Kids. I'm gonna get my trike here. Oh, before we do that, we've gotta do your picks the week. You stay tuned. Stay tuned. I was like, no, <laugh>. I wanna actually do a little pitch here for our incredible ad sales folks. Yeah. And our, and really in a way, a pitch for you, our audience. We got a great qualified audience. Nielsen says that 56% of podcast listeners pay more attention when a host reads the ad. That's why we do those host read ads. 72% percent of our listeners have a job function related directly to technology.

(02:12:25):
87% are involved with Tech IT decisions. We've got top earners listening. You guys, 66% of our audience earns over a hundred thousand annually almost a quarter of them over 200,000 and annually. Great people. And I know you have a great product. Wouldn't you like to advertise on our shows to bring your product to our audience? That's what we do. And I think we've got the best team in the world to do this. Not just Lisa, my wife. I'm a little prejudiced on that one. But I love Max and Ryan, our salespeople you can give them a call and then they will talk with you. They're really, I think, experts in marketing. They will help you market your products. It's not just, you know, you give us money. We read ads. It's a really great relationship. We also have an incredible continuity department headed by Debbie.

(02:13:16):
And we've got Viva and Sebastian. And they will give you full service. Everything from copywriting to graphic design. Anthony Nissen does great graphics work. All our ads are embedded in the content, as you know, means they're unique every time we guarantee over delivery on impressions. We have onboarding services, really white glove onboarding service. We give you detailed reporting free of cost when you're a direct client. You get courtesy commercials you can share on your social media and your landing pages. We also put you lots of freebies, like we'll put you in our newsletter that goes out to thousands of fans. We've <laugh> we've had some recession bonuses. Social media promotion of course comes along with it. And we even give you value ads that you don't have to buy shows and ads you don't have to buy. I I could give you testimonial after testimonial.

(02:14:06):
Let me pick one from you've probably seen the ads we do for the Thst Canary Roon me, who you know, is founder of that company, said quote, we expected twit to work well for us cuz we were longtime listeners who over the years bought many of the products and services we learned about on various shows. RO says we were not disappointed. The combination of the very personal ad reads and the careful selection of products that twit largely believes in. Give the ads an authentic, trusted voice that works really well for products like ours. 10 out of 10 we'll use again, thank you Roon. We love you and your product and we are really glad to do those ads. That's the, that's a big part of it is it's a genuine endorsement from people that you your customers will, you know, trust.

(02:14:51):
Our listeners are very intelligent, they're very engaged, they are tech savvy. It's a great place to advertise. So just a little pitch for our ad team. You can launch your campaign today, break outta the advertising norm and grow your brand by giving an authentic introduction for your products and services to a qualified audience by experts they trust. Check out what we have to offer at twit tv slash advertise. That's the call to action. Just go to the website, twit tv slash advertise. You can send an email from there. Fill out a form if you want. But learn more. And I think really, if you've got a product you wanna bring out to an audience of a great audience of engaged listeners, this is the place to do a twit TV slash advertised. Now it's time for our pick of the week. Let's start with Stacey's thing. Can I call a fang?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:43):
You can

Leo Laporte (02:15:44):
Stacy's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:44):
Thing not it's, it's not always a fang, as it were, but I was gonna show off a smart button and it didn't arrive in time. Oh, correct. So I can't show you a smart I know. That's how I felt. So instead, we're just gonna do a quick latency test and I'm gonna tell you about different ways I use sensors that might be surprising. So this is last week I showed you the Roku stuff. This is the open close sensor for that. And I was just, I, I don't know, I I ran outta buttons because I don't have a smart button basically. So I was like, oh, you know what? I need button. I need

Leo Laporte (02:16:21):
A button. Button can more

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:22):
Buttons I can press to like indicate like an on air or on a call light. Cuz my kids home from school right now. And they

Leo Laporte (02:16:29):
Do you have an on airline outside your your office?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:33):
No, and half the time my office is, my door is usually open. Oh. Because I'm not always recording right. But I am sometimes on Zoom calls and no one can tell cuz I'm like typing furiously on my notes, you know, and just whatever. So I have created, I use this Roku thing. So now you can check latency on this device. I open it.

Leo Laporte (02:16:55):
Oh my. And then

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:57):
Ta

Leo Laporte (02:16:58):
Oh look, the

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:59):
Lights change.

Leo Laporte (02:17:00):
Oh, nice. Is it, is this supposed to work that way or did you break it?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:05):
No, no.

Leo Laporte (02:17:06):
I,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:06):
I program, this is just a rule. So I use, I, you know, again, I'm, when

Leo Laporte (02:17:10):
Stacey takes you apart, turn on the lights. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:14):
Yeah. Well it's change color. And when I put you back together, now here's the issue. You're also seeing the latency.

Leo Laporte (02:17:20):
Yes. Wow. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:22):
It's a little bit, yes.

Leo Laporte (02:17:25):
But how do we fix that? Is there a way to fix that?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:28):
Use better sensors.

Leo Laporte (02:17:30):
Okay. <laugh>. I thought it was kinda maybe inherent in wifi, you know, in the communication.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:36):
No, this is, this is a proprietary signal that goes to a base station that then goes to the cloud that then goes to

Leo Laporte (02:17:43):
The, that's the problem, isn't it? Goes to the cloud is the problematic words. That's not problem. Yeah. But

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:50):
The point is, now you got to see two things. One latency on the Roku stuff that I've been testing. The review, the formal review will be out Friday. But then you also got to see, like, I actually, we, we have this deal where my husband's office is also our guest room. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and there are lots of LEDs on computer equipment. This man has like lights and buttons of bubbles and printers. And like when you, when you turn out the lights, it it's like,

Leo Laporte (02:18:20):
That drives Lisa crazy. She does not like it that everything has a light on it these days. <Laugh> drives her nuts.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:27):
So I, yeah, that's, that's one of the reasons why I got an additional smart button. And you can use any kind of smart button, but just tie that into, I like using a what are those called? The long ones? Surge protectors. Oh, okay. Doing a smart surge protector so you can program certain things. Like I don't actually love when our wifi goes off, but it's plugged in down there too. So I turned the l e D off on the arrow. I plugged that into the surge protector, but then I did the surge protector, so only certain of the outlets are turned off. And then I created a button. It sounds like a lot Jeff is yawning, but <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:19:05):
Now when you walk in,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:07):
You give the guests,

Leo Laporte (02:19:09):
My privacy has been violated. I'm filing a suit under G Piar.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:14):
You give the guests a button and you're like, Hey, if the lights bother you, boom. Nice. In this case you get an open closed sensor. But

Leo Laporte (02:19:24):
<Laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:26):
It's whatever I have lying around at the time. So

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:27):
There you go. You don't have a button, you have an open close

Leo Laporte (02:19:29):
Sensor. That'll work. Very nice. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:32):
Ta Stacy, what is it? Turn that off again. Open it up again while, while the camera's on

Leo Laporte (02:19:36):
You. Let's count. I was just curious. 1001, 1002, 1003, 1004, 1005. So five seconds. That's not the end of the world. It's pretty long though. I mean, I have some latency in my Hue lights, but it's about a second or two. It's not five seconds.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:52):
Right. It's, it's a, again, the Roku stuff I showed you last week, that's what you're seeing right there today. Yeah. That's the Roku. And do you close

Leo Laporte (02:19:59):
Sensor? Do you think it'll be better? This button that you that you didn't get yet? Will it, would it, will it be lower than

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:05):
Yes, because it's a matter certified button.

Leo Laporte (02:20:08):
Ah, yes. Matter talks about legacy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:09):
I have a matter controller, so it's gonna be boom, local.

Leo Laporte (02:20:13):
Interesting.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:16):
Maybe next week. We'll hope.

Leo Laporte (02:20:18):
Okay. Jeff, do you have a number of the week?

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:21):
I do. I have a number then I have a fun thing. Okay. The number very quickly from the Deloitte digital media trends, just to appall, old farts out there, <laugh>, they look at younger generations, online experiences have become a meaningful part of their lives. Yes. So Generation Z and millennials being the young kids. Yes. Generation x boomers and mature as being the old farts

Leo Laporte (02:20:44):
Us. Okay. Well the question

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:45):
Is,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:45):
I'm not an old fart.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:47):
Are now I'm

Leo Laporte (02:20:49):
Sorry. Are you, you're not a you're not a a boomer.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:52):
I was born in 78. No, I'm not a boomer. I'm a Gen X. I was a latchkey child. Gen

Leo Laporte (02:20:58):
X. Yeah. Gen X is old farts. No. Yeah. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:01):
Thought we were X

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:02):
That's what Jeff just said.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:03):
Well, you're about to see how old farty they are.

Leo Laporte (02:21:05):
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:06):
<Laugh>. So ask the question.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:08):
We're using Linotype,

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:10):
I believe. Scream <laugh>. I believe online experiences are meaningful replacements for in-person experiences. Old farts, 19%. Kids, 50% say they believe that online experiences are meaningful replacements for in-person experiences. So all the old farts are out there are getting appalled right now. Oh no. The internets are real life for No, this is, this is part of, so the

Leo Laporte (02:21:33):
Green is the Generation Z and millennials and the black is the old farts. Actually not fart

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:39):
More

Leo Laporte (02:21:39):
Time. I've seen Generation X. When does X begins? 60, 70. When does Generation Gen X begin? I know

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:47):
68.

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
68 70. Okay. Yeah. Thereabouts. So anybody, anybody 40 or under o over, I should say.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:57):
Millennials typically begin at 82.

Leo Laporte (02:22:02):
Really? Wow. Yeah. These are such, I I wonder if really real sociologists use these terms or if it's just us. Gen X includes those according to i i iola.com between 1965 and 1981. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. So,

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:23):
So I spend more time

Leo Laporte (02:22:24):
Interacting with others on social media than in the physical world. Old farts, 20% kids, 48%. The only thing that's weird to me is how low the 48% is. It's less than half of, of Gen Z and millennials spend time interacting with others on social media. Spend more time interacting with others at, at the physical. Yeah. It seems like it should a higher number, but okay. They still socialize a lot. That was my number. Then I had to just come back. I mean, they're in school. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. But that's interacting with others in the physical world. Right, right. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's why they Oh, I see. That percentage might be so high. Oh, I get it. So maybe the other half they're online and that's it. The rest of the time they're online. I specialize in having video games than I do in the physical world. 40% <laugh>, <laugh>. Wow. Yeah. See I'm in the green box on all of these. Not the black box. I should, but you're, you're weird. I am the opposite of of, there's other stuff in this which you might find interesting. I just wanted to Deloitte short. You can take a quick look down. What's, is your methodology good in your opinion? I don't know. It's 2000 people. It's, that's pretty good. It's good enough to fill a thing <laugh>.

(02:23:35):
So good enough to make a PDF over. You're good enough to fill a thing And that's all that matters. Alright. The fun moment I have is, and we'll have a Leo accent moment here having just come back from Scotland where they fry frigging everything. This is Tony's chip shop. Yum. And in this case, chips are french fries. Yes. Yeah. Huge amounts of french fries. Look at all his french fries. He's a whole Now you got the fish. Yeah. Got all, you can turn the volume up so you can do an accent moment here. All right. Here we go. Little

Speaker 9 (02:24:16):
Get into the box. Perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:24:24):
What happens after they put 'em in the box?

Speaker 9 (02:24:27):
Well then you

Leo Laporte (02:24:28):
Order them two hours. They're gonna get soggy in

Speaker 9 (02:24:30):
The box.

Leo Laporte (02:24:36):
They're frying everything.

Speaker 9 (02:24:37):
Oil chef. Everything.

Leo Laporte (02:24:39):
Everything is fried candy. They fry pizza slices. They fry

Speaker 9 (02:24:44):
All in the same oil that's done. The fish?

Leo Laporte (02:24:47):
No, it's different. They got bins, oil bins. It's a whole huge. Have you ever seen an oil fryer that huge? No. And it's an entire TikTok account. If you go and look at just the TikTok account, please take me. You're gonna see nothing but things. Tony fries. Oh, I got a thing. Did you know you can go to in and out and get your fries? Well done. Oh, why are you going to in and out <laugh>? The in and out's overrated <laugh>. Geez. Man, I never knew. I went with an in and out expert. He said you should get 'em well done. I said, really? He said, yeah. Can. He said, you can get 'em extra well done. If you really want to go crazy. I say, you

Ant Pruitt (02:25:22):
Should hit the accelerator in. They

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Burn your car. Keep going, keep going, keep going, going. No, they're not burn. They're just nice and crispy. Try 'em. Wow. You'll like them.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:32):
I don't have in and out where I live.

Leo Laporte (02:25:33):
Oh, I'm okay with that. I'm so sorry. Yeah. I'm okay with that too. What do you have where you live?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:38):
Nothing. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:25:42):
That was really sad. That was so sad.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:47):
I was like, I don't have good hamburgers. Okay. In Austin I had pizza. Terry's I got nothing

Leo Laporte (02:25:52):
Here. Nothing. Do you regret

Ant Pruitt (02:25:54):
Leaving breakfast

Leo Laporte (02:25:55):
Tacos,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:56):
Stacy? So much. But I don't regret living in

Leo Laporte (02:25:58):
Seattle. No. That, but the food in Austin, there was a great piece in I think the New Yorker about, about Austin and how it's changed. I dunno if you read

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:06):
That. Okay. We cannot be talking about food right now. Okay. Cause I

Leo Laporte (02:26:08):
Am <laugh>. Maybe aunt can give us a thing. Right?

Ant Pruitt (02:26:12):
Well, I'm gonna do my thing as a shout out. Well, my first thing is a shout out to the wonderful Twitch staff here, Mr. Jambe and Mr. Burke. Because I need a taller desk chair. Or just maybe a new chair, because apparently 230 pounds is too much for my chair. So I'm sh just sort of shrinking at the desk. And Mr. Jambe came up with this beautiful option here. A hydraulic gas lift cylinder that's gonna be to support my heavy ass up to 400. It turns pounds and it's gonna raise my chair. It's

Leo Laporte (02:26:47):
An easy thing to replace the hydraulics in office chairs.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:50):
So we're gonna replace that. Huh? Raise my seat up a little bit more so I don't have a sore floppy wrist while I'm typing.

Leo Laporte (02:26:58):
Will this work on my chair? Most chairs? Yeah. It works on most chairs. It's just simple. One size, one size fits all. Well

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:06):
No one size fits up to 400 pounds. And then you gotta go

Leo Laporte (02:27:10):
<Laugh> 400 should probably do it. An I think so.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:15):
I, I think so. I think

Leo Laporte (02:27:16):
So. Nice. I'm gonna order this because my, I have a oh, it's a nice, it's a good office chair. Is it a steels, what they call it? The Steelcase. Steelcase Steel. Steelcase. It's a nice Steelcase, but it's sinks. Oh, that's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:30):
What I'm in.

Leo Laporte (02:27:31):
Yeah. It's sinks like after a few years it just,

Ant Pruitt (02:27:34):
That's what's going on in my chair.

Leo Laporte (02:27:35):
It slowly sinks the air kind of goes out of it. That's what's

Ant Pruitt (02:27:38):
Going on with my knees.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
So this, I could just put this in my Steelcase. John. Where,

Ant Pruitt (02:27:41):
Where? Gonna find out. Look at that

Leo Laporte (02:27:42):
<Laugh>. Look

Ant Pruitt (02:27:43):
At that. We're gonna find out. Mr. Jim,

Leo Laporte (02:27:44):
I'm gonna buy this right now. So it just fits you just put it in and cuz Yeah. I noticed that, that that's the piston in that thing. Just seems like it just goes in yeah's.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:53):
That's all

Leo Laporte (02:27:53):
It is. Yeah. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:55):
My next pick is this morning I was on Floss Weekly with Mr. Docs. You were

Leo Laporte (02:27:59):
On?

Ant Pruitt (02:28:00):
I was on.

Leo Laporte (02:28:01):
Oh,

Ant Pruitt (02:28:01):
Nice. Mr. Phipps was, was going to be on, but he's been dealing with a lot of that Red Hats. Red Hat Lennox mess. Yeah. So I filled in and we interviewed Mr. Jonathan Bidden. He's the host of the Untitled Len

Leo Laporte (02:28:14):
Untitled Lennox Show. We love that show.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:16):
Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. So make sure you go check that out. TWIT TV slash L O ss floss as Mr. Jamee brings in a chair.

Leo Laporte (02:28:24):
Regular chair. Chair. That's a regular chair,

Speaker 10 (02:28:26):
But you add the extended cylinder becomes a drafted as

Leo Laporte (02:28:28):
High as a drafter. Oh, it would actually raise it up. Well, look how high it's, did I just buy an extended cylinder? I don't know what I just,

Ant Pruitt (02:28:34):
I needed the extended cylinder.

Leo Laporte (02:28:35):
Okay, so that's gonna raise it up. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:37):
Yeah. That's what I But you can

Leo Laporte (02:28:38):
Lower it too. Isn't that? How's it gonna fit behind the table? No. How's it gonna fit his? Oh, he's sitting on a crappy old chair here. This isn't the

Ant Pruitt (02:28:45):
Cylinder's from my desk. This

Leo Laporte (02:28:46):
Doesn't go up or down or anything. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (02:28:48):
I see.

Leo Laporte (02:28:49):
And you wanted to send out a shout out to Terrell Woods?

Ant Pruitt (02:28:52):
Yeah. And my last shout out oh, wait a minute. Actually I had the cylinder here.

Leo Laporte (02:28:58):
Oh, it just came <laugh>. It came. It's here. Thank

Ant Pruitt (02:29:01):
You again. Mr. Jamer. B let's, let's

Leo Laporte (02:29:03):
See if Ant

Ant Pruitt (02:29:04):
Can our visual aid pump iron with it or that.

Leo Laporte (02:29:06):
Oh wow. That, that's piece of cake. So that'll fit in. No, no, no. I mean, can you push it down and

Ant Pruitt (02:29:11):
Pull it up? Oh no. I'm not that tough. I don't think so. No. Heck no. That's nice though. Nice. Thank you Mr. Erbe. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:29:19):
And who is Terrell C. Woods? Mr.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:21):
Terrell c. Woods. he is a fan here at Twit and Nice. He's an awesome photographer and is probably one of the most supportive people I've met since coming to Twit. When I came out here, he was one of the first people to reach out and has been super supportive of me. Aw. Super supportive of the network. He listens to Twig.

Leo Laporte (02:29:42):
Hello? Terrell.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:43):
Regularly. Hold on there.

Leo Laporte (02:29:45):
Well, there's more,

Ant Pruitt (02:29:46):
But yeah, I tried to stay in touch with him. Mr. Terrell has had gotten sick. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:29:53):
No.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:54):
And I wanted to Oh, bring

Leo Laporte (02:29:54):
This. I have a bad feeling about this.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:56):
He sent this to me. Oh. Mac.

Leo Laporte (02:29:58):
Mac

Ant Pruitt (02:29:58):
About a year and a half ago. Yeah. Here at Twit Macallan. And I just wanted to say, Ms. Terrell, thank you for your friendship. Oh, he was late to rest this past Saturday. I'm sorry. And dude, I got all my tears out so I'm not gonna cry. But I just wanna say thank you for everything you've done for me and the family. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if you go to his Twitter page right now, his last tweet is of the Hardhead that just shows the support and the love that he had for

Leo Laporte (02:30:27):
Us. I am so

Ant Pruitt (02:30:28):
Sorry. And I'm so grateful. So Mr. Terrell, I'm going to pour this,

Leo Laporte (02:30:32):
Pour it out for Terrell for

Ant Pruitt (02:30:34):
You.

Leo Laporte (02:30:35):
Thank you. Aw,

Ant Pruitt (02:30:37):
Rest easy my friend.

Leo Laporte (02:30:39):
We have so few listeners. We don't like any of to lose any of them, so I'm glad that glad to know. I just, had he ever come up here?

Ant Pruitt (02:30:47):
He didn't come up here, but he was constantly in our social media feeds and he was always sharing our shows. Oh. Just super,

Leo Laporte (02:30:55):
Super. I feel bad. I I never met him.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:57):
Good people. Great photographer. I'll probably, well I'll tell this, I'll tell this in the post-show. We, I got more that I can share, but I'll, I'll say that for.

Leo Laporte (02:31:07):
Okay. Very nice.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:08):
Thank you Mr. Terro.

Leo Laporte (02:31:11):
And we're sorry to to his family and friends we're sorry to lose him.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:17):
Celebrate your life, sir. Look at that.

Leo Laporte (02:31:19):
He celebrates you. There it is. Yeah. Here's his

Ant Pruitt (02:31:22):
Yeah, most of his tweets are

Leo Laporte (02:31:24):
Twe stuff. Re

Ant Pruitt (02:31:25):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:25):
Mean

Ant Pruitt (02:31:26):
Or twit or,

Leo Laporte (02:31:26):
Yeah. Aw, nice.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:30):
Thank you sir.

Leo Laporte (02:31:31):
Yep. Well to his family. Condolences and I guess Lisa knew him. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> cause she follows him. Mm-Hmm.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:37):
<Affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (02:31:39):
Well that's on that note, I think maybe time to wrap this guy up. Yeah. I thank you all for being here. Stay well and stay healthy. We don't want to, we don't want to drink too much of this Macallan.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:49):
You're not touching that. Uhuh

Leo Laporte (02:31:51):
<Laugh>. That's mine.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:53):
That's mine.

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):
And Andy is of course our community manager and club Twit. And he is a great guy to hang out with. I try. It's one of the things that makes Club Twit so special. So thank you Ant. Yep. and of course his website, aunt pruitt.com. And if you wanna look at his beautiful photography, aunt pruitt.com/prince.

Ant Pruitt (02:32:12):
And for all of you Club Twit members, we are working on a photo walk here. Oh, fun. I'm trying to figure out some dates, but in the meantime, club Twit members, make sure you check out the event coming up August 4th for a live photo critique. And I'm calling it coffee time. That'll be fun. That's what it's gonna be based on.

Leo Laporte (02:32:32):
That's in the club. Check it

Ant Pruitt (02:32:33):
Out during the Discord. And

Leo Laporte (02:32:34):
I hope you do more of these. That's a great thing I plan on. Thank you. Jeff Jarvis is the director of the Town Night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism Wear at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. His new book is now available at everywhere, including Amazon Blackstone Books. It's the Gutenberg parenthesis. And if you go to gutenberg parenthesis.com <laugh>, you will find many ways to purchase it. So thank you. Congratulations. All the opportunity on that book. Yeah, absolutely. Great to have you Jeff. Stacey, Higgin botham, stacy on iot.com is her website. Check it out there. There's a great podcast too. She does with Kevin Tofl all about iot. It's called The IOT Show. Thank you Stacy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:21):
It's called the IOT Podcast. Podcast. Technically it's the Internet of Things podcast. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:33:25):
Ooh, even better. The Internet of Things podcast. Thanks to all our grind influencers for joining us. <Laugh> <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:33:34):
Grind, influencers,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:35):
Thirsty Grind influencers.

Leo Laporte (02:33:37):
Hello Grind influencers. Thank you for being here. We do this week in Google Wednesdays at about 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern 2100 utc. You can watch us do at live, at live twit tv. There's actually watcher listen, there's live and audio and video streams there. If you're watching Live chat with us in our irc open to all. You can use a browser, IRC TWIT tv, join the Fun Gang in there. Or of course, if you're club member, get behind the Velvet Rope in our club Twit Discord with Ant Pruitt seal of approval, <laugh>. And we gotta get some stickers. I think you're right. We got you. Come join <laugh> <laugh>.

(02:34:22):
All you have to do, hey, is go to twit tv slash club twit and find out more after the fact on demand versions of this show available. TWIT tv slash twig. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to this weekend, Google. And of course you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That's probably the best way to do it. And that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Thank you for being here, everybody. We'll see you next time. Bye-Bye. On this week in Google. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye. Hey there. Scott Wilkinson here In Case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week I bring you the latest audio, video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system product reviews and more you can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twi, which costs seven bucks a month. Or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only 2 99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater Geekitude