This Week in Google 729, 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. Stacey Higginbotham is here. Ant Pruitt is here. Jeff Jarvis is here. We'll talk about the NFL Sunday ticket. I think it might not be selling all that well on YouTubetv. They've got <laugh>, they've got some discounts. We'll also talk about the Robo Taxi victory in California. Looks like maybe a loss from people who live in San Francisco and why broadcast and cable are in deep, deep trouble. That and a waffle party coming up next on Twig.

(00:00:47):
This is Twig this week in Google. Episode 729 Recorded Wednesday, August 16th, 2023. Waffle Party. This weekend, Google is brought to you by ACI Learning acis. New cyber skills is training. That's for everyone, not just the pros. Visit go dot aci learning.com/twit twit listeners, or receive at least 20% off or as much as 65% off an IT Pro enterprise solution plan. The discount is based on the size of your team, and when you fill out the form, you'll receive a proper quote tailored to your needs. And by the Building Cyber Resilience Podcast, a show about tech and security from the prospectus of a data scientist, Dr. Anne Irvin, and career CISO Rich sson regarding the intersection of data finance and cyber risk management. Search for building cyber resilience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

(00:01:52):
It's time for Twig. This week in Google the show, we cover the latest from the Google verse. We are, aunt Pruitt is here, and I am here. And we are wearing the brand new TWIT t-shirts, twit TV slash store. What do we call this? The Rainbow Cloud is either that or the enemy, or the C enemy. <Laugh> Menini. I Menini Menini. That's Stacey Aba Stacey on iot.com. Iot podcast with Kevin Tofl. Hello Stacey. Hello, y'all. Wonderful to see you. And ladies and gentlemen, now wearing a blue No. Is that gray? Gray jackets? Woo-Hoo. Gray. The hobo jacket from last week. Just <laugh> didn't help. <Laugh>. I give you Jeff Jarvis, the director of the town night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Doves Aren't gray. They're white. Newmar Graduate school of journalism at the City. University of New York. I'm sorry. Doves aren't white. They're gray. <Laugh>. I want to, so it's Craig, I wanna, Craig sent a picture to prove it, issue this retraction. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:59):
So is that a dove covered jacket?

Leo Laporte (00:03:01):
Oh, oh, <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:04):
Give her a rim shot.

Leo Laporte (00:03:05):
I,

Ant Pruitt (00:03:06):
Oh

Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
My, actually this segue we did make use of the last week's jacket, or I should, should I say Joe Esposito made use of last week's jacket for our sticker of the week. Yes. Reo Jao says you all so funny. I like the hat and the, and the corno, the gold corno. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (00:03:26):
It's just beautiful. <Laugh> <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:31):
Jeff doesn't look amused.

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
It doesn't on the sticker either, frankly. It's yeah, he looks bemused <laugh> as opposed to amused. Isn't that strange? That amused and bemused. Is there a Seamus?

Ant Pruitt (00:03:50):
I don't know. That's a good

Leo Laporte (00:03:50):
Question.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:51):
Amused. Mr. Jamer. BEUs. No, it's not Seamus. Its, no, it's not. Just move on. Okay. <laugh>. Okay. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
N F L Sunday ticket. I'm gonna read between the lines on this one. Google was charging. What did you, you said it was too much for you, was it?

Ant Pruitt (00:04:06):
Yes, it was way too much. It's

Leo Laporte (00:04:07):
300 bucks. 300 bucks. Yes. 2 99 for the season. It was, you know, you get all the N F L games of Sunday Google paid. We expect multiple billions. Billions of dollars for this privilege. But you know what I'm thinking? Maybe people didn't sign up because they're suddenly <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:04:23):
Imagine that.

Leo Laporte (00:04:23):
Offering flexible billing student plans.

Ant Pruitt (00:04:27):
Well, the thing is though DirecTV used to do the same thing. They figured out like a little installment plan for it, because it was still three, 400 bucks. Yeah. Back in the days with them too. So

Leo Laporte (00:04:39):
It's 2 9 9 right now. If you wait till the season starts, 350 bucks we ordered immediately because Packers fan Sun wants to see all the Packers games. 'cause We see the local games. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we don't need it for that. We see the Niners on tv. Right. But if you wanna see all the, all the teams. So now YouTube is now payment, monthly payment plans, student plans. They're gonna add some technology. I think it's interesting. Live chat polls. Realtime. N F L highlights time in YouTube shorts. They're really beefing up shorts. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> multi-view. So you can have multiple games on the screen at the same time. And a key plays feature, which tracks the most important plays in the game. They did that last season. I loved that. Yeah. Because if you're catching up with a game and you missed the first half, you could see all the mm-hmm. Important things that happened up. And, you know, in an N F L game, there's really <laugh> only 11 minutes of action.

Ant Pruitt (00:05:35):
You watch your mouth, sir. It's true. You watch your mouth talking about football.

Leo Laporte (00:05:39):
It's 11 minutes of action. So you can really sp zip through it if you want. Oh, do you To watch all three hours. Oh, I watch all three hours. I like the ads

Ant Pruitt (00:05:47):
Too.

Leo Laporte (00:05:47):
<Laugh>, YouTube is doing a flexible billing plan, except in Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, and Tennessee. I don't know if it's the law or something. They're not gonna offer it there.

Ant Pruitt (00:06:02):
I was wondering if it's taxation, but Georgia has state tax. Tennessee does

Leo Laporte (00:06:08):
Not. Well, California's got the highest income tax. I mean yeah. Sales tax. I don't know why these states are left out. Sorry, Jeff. You're in New Jersey. You can't, Jeff doesn't seem like the kind of guy that's gonna buy the N nfl. <Laugh>. <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:06:22):
He's like, and I care because <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
I

Ant Pruitt (00:06:28):
Like what they're trying to do, but I don't necessarily care for having the endgame chat while I'm watching it. But I guess people that are far from their families that they grew up with in Green Bay, Wisconsin now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:06:41):
It's also trashing trash

Ant Pruitt (00:06:42):
Talk. Trash talk.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:06:43):
That's, that's fun. I think that's like watching live television. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like remember when we all got excited watching live television and using Twitter to talk Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:06:53):
Remember, remember

Ant Pruitt (00:06:54):
Twitter? Yeah. Do remember that? Live tweeting. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:06:57):
Remember that?

Leo Laporte (00:06:58):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:06:59):
And that was fun. I think that, I mean, there's that sense like, watch party. Have y'all done a watch party with anyone, like on Netflix? Or have we did the other services?

Ant Pruitt (00:07:06):
Yeah, we, we did one with TWI back in the days. Twi after hours. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:07:10):
We did. That's

Ant Pruitt (00:07:10):
Right. We watched that Crazy Tiger. Something otherwise. Oh, that

Leo Laporte (00:07:14):
Was so horrible. It was horrible. Was

Ant Pruitt (00:07:15):
It was horrible. But we had a good time as a community was it

Leo Laporte (00:07:18):
Was kind of towards the beginning of Covid and when, and we Lisa and I put streamed out of our living room. We were watching it. Yeah. Did you, you were at home?

Ant Pruitt (00:07:26):
I was at the house,

Leo Laporte (00:07:27):
Yes. Everybody was watching it and we were all kind of, it was trash talking it most of the time. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:32):
Like, what the heck is this crap? But we, we had a good time as a community. I

Leo Laporte (00:07:36):
Forgot we did that.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:37):
Yeah, I remember the, that was a lot of

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:39):
Fun. I mean, yeah. So I feel like sports are kind of another area where it might be fun for Exactly. That. The trash talk, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> when you're, or with your friends. I, I don't know, but I could be wrong. I don't watch sports, so I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:07:51):
Oh. But

Ant Pruitt (00:07:51):
It makes sense. I I, I know I'm a bit of an outlier on it because what, for me, when the football game is on, I don't even know where my phone is. I assume the family is in the house. I, I totally, I totally shut down and, and, and just focus on the game. I don't Is it

Leo Laporte (00:08:07):
Don't bother dad time?

Ant Pruitt (00:08:09):
Yes. I and, and trash talk. I have officially finished paying my dues for the year as of last weekend. 'cause Football season is getting ready to start. So yes. No one will be bothering me for the next five

Leo Laporte (00:08:21):
Months. My trainer, actually, he's not my trainer. My stretcher, he's <laugh> <laugh>. You can't really call it a trainer if you're not doing anything. If you're just lying there and he's stretching you. That's not a trainer. He's like a, he's physical, physical

Ant Pruitt (00:08:34):
Trainer. He's still a trainer. That's mobility is

Leo Laporte (00:08:36):
Important, man. It is.

Ant Pruitt (00:08:38):
That's still a trainer. I, I,

Leo Laporte (00:08:40):
He's your, he's your Gumby. This might be t m I, but I, three times a week I go and get stretched for half an hour. Nothing. Anyway, the guy who does it, let's call it pt. Yeah. It's, I'd call it pt. Yeah. <laugh>. The guy who does it, says I, yeah. I'm not allowed TV in the football in the house. 'cause He says, 'cause I I zone out. I can't watch. We don't have, they don't allow me sports. Wow. I zone out.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:00):
I earned those five months outta the year I earned them.

Leo Laporte (00:09:04):
I, you know, what, five months

Ant Pruitt (00:09:07):
I give the family the other, what is it? Seven months. That's fair. Three months. So give me

Leo Laporte (00:09:12):
Five. Do you negotiate that? Yeah. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:14):
That is, that was the deal. Give me these five months. I'll give you seven.

Leo Laporte (00:09:18):
Has it started as pre-season

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:19):
Count? I'll listen to your musical.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:21):
I don't count the pre-season. You can be football. Okay. But I, I am officially out of my seven month period as of last weekend. So we're, we're good.

Leo Laporte (00:09:29):
I so we're lucky that you're even talking to us. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:32):
We're, yeah. No, y'all are not people. I

Leo Laporte (00:09:34):
Love y'all. We're lucky there's no game on <laugh>. That's, that's what's, there's nothing on Wednesday afternoon. Thank goodness. This is true. <Laugh> <laugh> when watching the Niners with Lisa is incredible because I've never seen anybody so engaged Right. In the game. She's not just sitting there passively watching. Right. She's hoarse at the end of the game. Yeah. She's screaming. It's like they, she thinks they can hear her.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:58):
Yeah. Been there. Get him.

Leo Laporte (00:10:00):
Get him.

Ant Pruitt (00:10:00):
Yeah. Been there, done that. Still do it. Makes

Leo Laporte (00:10:02):
It, I imagine that to say it makes it a lot more fun. Yeah. It's like so much fun to watch. And I'm kind of getting into it. I'll go, go get, get him. And it's, it's if, if stop him. You didn't do it. What are you, what are you doing, <laugh>?

Ant Pruitt (00:10:17):
No. Oh no. It's, it's usually a lot more expletive related lately. So, yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:22):
It's fun. Good news for Joan Donovan. Now we have kind of hesitated to talk about this, but Jeff, you might have more insight into it. She's certainly been hesitant. She, we've had her on the show. She's brilliant. Disinformation researcher. She was working for Harvard at the, was it at the Kennedy School? So part of the Kennedy School was a program she'd created, and I might point out, raised money for considerable millions of dollars, $5 million for a team of faculty, staff, and students to study disinformation and media manipulation. We've had her on many times to talk about that on the show. She's brilliant. She was director since 2019 of the Sorenstein Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard. They fired her summarily. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> their excuse was, well, we can't allow somebody who's not

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:18):
Not

Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
Faculty, fa full faculty to lead a program like this. That sounds like it was more.

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:24):
Well, and Leo, it's, it's worse. I know three other people in programs before who went through the same thing. And they went through before Joan went there. But Joan was just really wanted to go to Boston. I,

Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
I have, she must have known full

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:36):
Disclosure is I gave Facebook money to Data and Society when Joan was there for Joan's work in disinformation in the early days. And I'm, you know, a big supporter of Joan. And so other people we respect greatly left the Horenstein Center under similar circumstances where they just screwed 'em over. They made promises of what they're gonna be able to do. And then they said, oh no, you're not full faculty. No, you can't research this. No, you can't publish that. No, you can't have any access to your budget. Just really screwed 'em over. And then Joan goes and aware of that negotiates what we think is a good, secure passion. Package does phenomenal work. And then the same snotty thing happens to her. So God bless Boston University, BU one, Harvard Zero.

Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
The Washington Post says, the university cited a rule that research projects need to be led by full faculty members. But the decision came amid mounting political pressure on work. Like Donovan's two state attorneys general have won early rounds of lawsuits. Accusing academics. Accusing academics like another person who's been on this show, Stanford University's, Alex Stamos Stamos at the Internet Observatory at Stanford, who does the same kind of work on disinformation Yes. Of participating in a wide ranging conspiracy with government officials to censor conservative or anti-vaccine content on social media. This is that same Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:10):
They found their bludgeon and they're gonna use it everywhere

Leo Laporte (00:13:13):
Successfully. It's right wing B even at Harvard,

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:15):
You think they'd be immune from this crap? They're not. They Harvard, they're

Leo Laporte (00:13:18):
Far from it. Go ahead.

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:20):
Harvard has plenty of money.

Leo Laporte (00:13:22):
Stacey ahead.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:23):
Explain. Well have plenty of money. But they have a very conservative viewpoint, I would say. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I don't look to Harvard.

Leo Laporte (00:13:31):
They're

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:31):
Establishment to shake

Leo Laporte (00:13:32):
Things up. They're establishment. And I want

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:34):
The essence of

Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
Establishment, which is similar, but they, and yes, Harvard and Yale have massive endowments. They're never gonna want for money, but for some reason they still want more. They're always fundraising. They're always asking me for money. And I guess they don't want to offend their conservative constituency. Maybe. I dunno. Why aren't they

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:51):
Asking you for money?

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:52):
Really? They went to Yale,

Leo Laporte (00:13:54):
Huh?

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:54):
Yeah. You went to Yale?

Leo Laporte (00:13:56):
No, Harvard's not asking me for money.

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:59):
Oh. Oh. I thought Yale's

Leo Laporte (00:14:00):
Asking Harvard. I'm putting Yale. I know. It's not the same. My friend who, he's the Ivy

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:04):
In general,

Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
My brother-in-law who was Dean Harvard. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:06):
This is the transitive

Leo Laporte (00:14:07):
Property of Harvard.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:08):
The Ivy League. Transitive

Leo Laporte (00:14:09):
Harvard. Yeah. It's the transitive. It's all the same. Yeah. My, my, my, my brother-in-law's dean of har har of Yale Drama, but went to Harvard, says he works at the best school in New Haven. So <laugh>, he doesn't, as a Harvard man, he kinda looks down on a young man. But I think they're related in the sense that even though they have vast endowments, billions mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I mean literally billions of endowments, they're still always raising money. And they're very much beholden to their conservative donors. Their donors are older Ivy League graduates. Well, what do you think? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, of course, they're conservative. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, although Jeff, you and I are not too young to remember. J F K and the elite the best and the brightest who came from Yes. These Ivy League schools. They, they had this notion of a little bit of noble oblation. But that, you know, it's our duty to help the country. And during World War II and even into the sixties that's why there's so many presidents and Supreme Court justices from the Ivys, especially Harvard and Yale, because there was this kind of, and it was somewhat liberal at the time. Notion. Oh, yeah, yeah. Of, of giving back.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:21):
And Harvard still has, they have other things that are, that are didn't even Lab and Berkman Center, Brooklyn Klein Center now are, are amazing. And are great. But something is going on at Horenstein Kennedy Center that has been wacky for some years now. And they've changed some leadership there. And it's still, well, the Horenstein Center changed leadership.

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
The post goes on to say, Jim Jordan, who leads a house subcommittee on the quote, weaponization of the federal government that was formed after the midterms, has demanded documents and testimony from other researchers accused of bias, in this case, bias against conservative voices. Such Donovan Pierce as Kate Starbird at the University of Washington, have cut

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:02):
Back, who's brilliant. It was amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
Same, same thing though. Yeah. Yeah. Cut back on interviews amid that pressure and waves. And this is another issue of online threats harassment. So yeah, you already, you already gave us the, the punchline, which is Joan has gotten a great job at bu Boston University, which is an excellent school. She's gonna be working in the

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:26):
Comm school.

Leo Laporte (00:16:27):
The communication school. The communication school at

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:29):
You're position.

Leo Laporte (00:16:30):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:30):
She's been an independent researcher going back before Data Society. So now she's on the tenure track where she should be. She's Dr. Joan John Donovan. And she should be a tenured professor.

Leo Laporte (00:16:41):
They say, they say that she's on the tenure track, but, you know, they say that's a lot, a lot of things gonna happen. The post says so that bu in fact, she says that BU has has put up with a lot of bss, so to speak, and has stood up to a lot of this, Donovan noted that Boston University has gotten used to coming under fire. One lightning rod for the foes of racism studies is Irem Kendi the author of How to Be an Anti-Racist. IREM runs BU center for anti-Racist research. Donovan says, BU is a great place to do this kind of work. BU is not as tied up with tech company money. Oh, that's interesting.

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:22):
That's those other university systems. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did Joan say that in quote? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:17:26):
That's a quote.

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:27):
Ah, very

Leo Laporte (00:17:28):
Good. So she's kind of

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:30):
She's freed up a

Leo Laporte (00:17:30):
Little bit now, giving us a hint. We have tried since her firing to get her on the show, and she's just, she wanted to keep a very low profile.

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:37):
Yeah, no, she needed to.

Leo Laporte (00:17:38):
And I understand. Completely understand. But I do hope we can get her on. But

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:41):
Now that she, now that the gag is off, yeah, let's get her on.

Leo Laporte (00:17:46):
So what's the tech, I always thought of Silicon Valley being liberal.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:51):
Oh, no, they're, they're like these weirdo libertarians. What is it? Effective altruism. They're those people

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:58):
Riel, well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:59):
Not all of them, but they're not all, but they, they, they're liberal in this maybe social categories to some extent. Although there's calcification

Ant Pruitt (00:18:10):
There. I always thought it was more conservative when it came to the dollar and cents side of

Leo Laporte (00:18:14):
Things. As they get richer and richer, they become more, more conservative, let's be honest.

Ant Pruitt (00:18:19):
Yeah. I, I've had to have this discussion with the family. You know, when we talk about politics, and I know this isn't a political show, but I had to tell 'em, look, most of the folks on that conservative side, you notice they tend to have a lot more money than you and I do. There's a reason for that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:33):
They're also not the same color as

Ant Pruitt (00:18:35):
You. Oh, yeah. Then there's that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:36):
Yeah. You know. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:37):
And the Republican Party did a really good job up until eight years ago, I guess. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> really making it possible for you to be fiscally conservative. Right. And socially progressive. So you didn't feel bad about how your policies were hurting other people. And now the Republican Party has just, you know, just abandoned the dog whistles and are going straight out on that. So it's much harder. But there's definitely a role for people who are like, it's kinda like the prosperity gospel of politics.

Leo Laporte (00:19:11):
Yes. Isn't it? Yeah. You nailed it.

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:13):
I mean, the other piece of this is that misinformation research tends to be critical of platforms.

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
So you think the platforms like Facebook and Twitter are also, I in part don't, partly guilty. I

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:29):
Don't think that, I don't think that Google would do that. Facebook has pulled back funding in all kinds of areas. And, you know, full disclosure is my school got a lot of money from Facebook to give away. In fact, it was Facebook money that I gave to, I granted to Data and Society for Joan Donovan's work 500,000 bucks back in the day. But I,

Leo Laporte (00:19:52):
I'm gonna guess Mark didn't have any input into what those No,

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:55):
No, no, no, no, no, no. And they wanted to give away the money, then. That's what they could, they couldn't figure out how to, that's why they came right to us to do it for them. And so we, we almost all the money went back, right. Back out. It was Regranted. But that was the point, was to find a, after 2016 ways to do this. And Joan was the first person I thought of along with Dana Boyd when she was still Data Society.

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
Anyway really happy. That's news for John. It's really good news.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:22):
Jones says, in the press release, I was looking for a place that would offer me the most academic freedom.

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):
Yeah. That is a little dig at Harvard. Her deal with Harvard ends at the end of the month. And that's why none of this came out until right now. Right. She's gonna go immediately from the end of the deal at Harvard to be you the next day. Yeah. Good for her. I'm very glad to hear that. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:45):
I, I had a DMM with her and I'm very happy for

Leo Laporte (00:20:47):
Her. Yeah. We were I, I, I, you know, I figured that she didn't wanna talk about it. I, and I figured you knew more, but I wasn't gonna press you. So now we can, now it can be told. That's good news. Speaking of Twitter, did we speak of Twitter? Feels like we did. Maybe we did. You mentioned it

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:06):
In,

Ant Pruitt (00:21:06):
We mentioned platforms. We, we mentioned it in the N F L segment. We

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:10):
Can make this segue work our

Ant Pruitt (00:21:11):
Sports segment.

Leo Laporte (00:21:12):
Actually I missed Twitter. Oh, that's right. Not for the N F L, but for the Oscars. Oh, yeah. Used to love watching. Oh. And you know, even better, the, the foreign press

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:22):
Globe Foreign for the Golden

Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
Globes. Golden Globes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because everybody was drunk. <Laugh> <laugh>. And there was so much fun just sitting there going, wow, is Ricky VESA drunk? Or just crazy <laugh>. And it was really fun doing that on Twitter. That all of that's gone by the wayside. Twitter now x the company formerly known as Twitter. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And this week one more strike against Twitter. He was, Elon was throttling traffic to websites. He doesn't like if you use the t.co URL shortener to point to

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:55):
No, it's, you don't even have to use it, Leo. It would just do it and re redirect. Yeah. Every redirect goes through t Co taco so that they can see where you go. So they gather that data.

Leo Laporte (00:22:03):
Ah, so if you did a link to the New York Times, to Facebook <laugh>, to Instagram, to Blue Sky, to CK to Reuters, you were the link. You'd click the link. And 5, 4, 3, there was a five second delay. Wow. Which by the way, I know how people use the internet. That's enough for people to go off. Forget

Ant Pruitt (00:22:25):
It. Yep. Yep. Wow. That's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:26):
That's too much of a David. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:29):
Tuesday afternoon, after this was discovered, X began reversing this. But wow. That is just blatant, like,

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:38):
How was it discovered? Who was who?

Leo Laporte (00:22:41):
I think people just said, Hey, what's going on? I think

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:44):
One of the news organizations kind of, maybe they

Leo Laporte (00:22:46):
Think the post, I dunno, this is enough to continue the post analysis found the links to most other news sites were unaffected, including the post itself, Fox News, social media services, like Mass on YouTube with the shortened links routed to their final destination. And second or less a user first flagged the delays early Tuesday on Hacker News. And then the Post went in and and said, whoa, what's going on? Here it is. This is Tell Hacker News from Tuesday. Tell hn Taco is adding a five second to latest some domains, threads, New York Times, I can believe Threads and Instagram. You saw what Elon did over the weekend.

Ant Pruitt (00:23:28):
I didn't. I quit paying this dude.

Leo Laporte (00:23:30):
He's tweeted I'm coming over to Marks for We're I'm gonna, we're gonna, he said, I'm on my way.

Ant Pruitt (00:23:38):
Oh, I do remember seeing headline

Leo Laporte (00:23:40):
About

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:41):
Zuckerberg

Ant Pruitt (00:23:41):
Text we're done with this whole fighting stuff or whatever, or it ridiculous on Zuckerberg acting like the grownup in this scenario. I was like, yeah, I got a business to run.

Leo Laporte (00:23:53):
Yeah. He says I wasn't home. Anyway. Is he having a break for the test? F s G test drive in Palo Alto tonight? I will ask the car to drive to Fie, which is Zuckerberg's Twitter handle to Zuckerberg's house. I will also test the latest X livestream video so you can monitor our adventure in real time if we get lucky. And Zuck actually answers the door, the fight is on. Then he tweets thought you might want some tea. So I brought the bags. Is he talking punching bags? No, no, no, no, no, no. Teabag. You know what? Tea bag? Oh yeah. Okay. Gossips. No, don't Google it. People don't want Google it. Teabagging is something a 14 year old kid does when he wins in a video game or talks about yeah. It doesn't do God heaven, no. Knock, knock. He tweets challenge accepted, open the door to which Zuckerberg said I wasn't even in town. But that's just, that's, that's just stalking behavior. What if I, what if I said that? Yeah, I'd be arrested. Yeah. Someone, this is unbelievable on your door. He, in, in previous years, he would've been banned for Twitter for that. Right.

(00:25:01):
<laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:02):
Do you know, do you think he's having some sort of like, yes,

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
He's in trouble, right? There's something wrong going on. Yes. Or he's always been like this and he's so rich that it's been hidden from us. Then he bought Twitter and nobody could stop him. Right.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:19):
Well, it is his

Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
Business. I, but you know what, Stacey? God bless you. Because what did I do?

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

Leo Laporte (00:25:26):
<Laugh>. You're looking on the suspicious Stacey. No, you're looking on the, on the, you're being generous. Humane. You're, you're being humane. No, I I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:34):
I'm, I'm just, it is unfathomable to me. Yes. It's that someone would act like this consistently for the last, like, and he's under a lot of pressure.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:46):
Really? It

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:47):
Just,

Leo Laporte (00:25:47):
It's

Ant Pruitt (00:25:47):
Kanye. Like you think he's under pressure? It's Kanye.

Leo Laporte (00:25:49):
Like Yeah. And Kanye had a break, that's for sure. You

Ant Pruitt (00:25:53):
Think he's under pressure? I don't think he's under pressure, because I don't think he cares. I, you,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:01):
I think his ego's under pressure. Yeah. I, I think he's an ego driven person who is

Ant Pruitt (00:26:06):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:07):
Who doesn't have much to fall back on. And then it's just all of that is being threatened. Okay. I don't know. I mean,

Ant Pruitt (00:26:14):
Well, see, that's the thing

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:14):
Though. He's clearly also not a nice person.

Ant Pruitt (00:26:17):
No. And I guess I'm thinking about this too much as like a poor dude.

Leo Laporte (00:26:22):
He's not, he's not like you and me. Yeah. When

Ant Pruitt (00:26:24):
You, when you say all of that is being threatened, as in what they're gonna take away his billions of dollars. No. And who is that? They, people are gonna gonna do it. 'cause Far as I know, he's still gonna do, continue to live his best life and go out and just do dumb stuff because he feels like he can. So I don't, I can't say that he

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:42):
Feels he needs public acc claim.

Ant Pruitt (00:26:43):
Oh yeah. Attention. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:45):
That's that. Like, he's a person who, that's their oxygen. That's how they Yeah. In Kanye is too control.

Ant Pruitt (00:26:52):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
There're plenty of people's who have gotten to the point in their lives where they don't have to ever worry about money again. Right. It's not gonna have to ever worry about again. Right. But what's, and by the way, this is a horrible rev revelation to them. What they realize is your life is the same. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you don't have to worry about money. So that, that is part of, it's not there, but you're still unhappy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> people still treat you <laugh>, you know, thing. All the things that made you unhappy don't go away suddenly. 'cause You don't have to worry about money. This is true. And so I think it's almost worse. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, same thing with fame people. That's why fame is hard, because you get to the top of the mountain and you go, no. Dana Carvey said, getting rich just means you have a bigger bedroom to watch TV in. It's not <laugh>. I

Ant Pruitt (00:27:31):
Take

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
That. Yeah. You're very lonely. <Laugh>. It's not changing your life. And, and people think, I'm gonna, if I only could be rich and famous, I'd be happy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then they get there and they're not happy. And they go, what the hell? Somebody promised me this and I'm not getting it.

Ant Pruitt (00:27:45):
Mr. LaPorte, I still wanna try though. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:27:47):
Oh, it's worth it. <Laugh>. No, you, you know what you don't ever want. And I've seen a little bit of it and it's is being so famous that you can't walk down the street. You can't eat a restaurant. You can't. Yeah. I think that can ruin your life. Makes crazy. That's why people

Ant Pruitt (00:28:03):
Live crazy in the hills. Crazy. That's why people in Hollywood actually live up in the hills and not down in the city.

Leo Laporte (00:28:08):
You know, I remember, oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:09):
I was thinking like Hill people and I was like, let's talk about the Hill

Leo Laporte (00:28:13):
People. That's hill Billy Elegy. <Laugh>. anyway yeah. I don't know what's going on with Elon. Apparently. Some say that the Elon flight tracker said he wasn't even in the Bay Area when he tweeted that.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:26):
Wow. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:27):
Well then he's just trolling.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:28):
That's trolling.

Leo Laporte (00:28:29):
Yeah. Well, that's not anything new for him, is it? I think, you know, and more and more you gotta kind of realize that he's just trying to get the kind of attention that we are happily giving him.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:37):
I, I think I blocked that him on x.com. And I know I have filters in place because I don't like feeding into this ego that he clearly has and he's coming after you. Next, I

Leo Laporte (00:28:52):
Would say don't, don't go to x.com. You know, that would be a better way

Ant Pruitt (00:28:56):
Handle. Right. And then there's, then there's the other, the hypocritical side of it is, I, I go there because that's where traffic is. That's gonna help me out with my, with paying my bills.

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
Yeah. I understand.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:08):
You know, and I think about journalists out there that hate the platform, but that's where their audience

Leo Laporte (00:29:13):
Is. But I say this with love and respect as somebody who has half a million followers on Twitter. But I've abandoned them. Yeah, you

Ant Pruitt (00:29:20):
Did. You did.

Leo Laporte (00:29:21):
Because I just don't want to support that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I just don't want to be part of that. Now I have to say, I tweeted last week. 'cause We're still trying to figure out if we should have an event in Green Bay when we're out there. You should, I don't think anybody responded. <Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:34):
We should. I don't.

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
Somebody's, I think Elon's blocking me on Twitter. <Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:38):
I, I, I blocked him.

Leo Laporte (00:29:39):
<Laugh>. No, I mean, I think he's, he's reduced my

Ant Pruitt (00:29:42):
Yeah, he's pushed you down.

Leo Laporte (00:29:43):
Yeah. I don't know.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:44):
He's, he's Shadow. Is that shadow Banning? I'm

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
Shadow. If it's written you I'm shadow banned. Sorry. It would be only reasonable to do so since I've told everybody I don't tweet here anymore. So. Yeah. Nobody responded to it. None. Zero zip. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe you

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:03):
Should ask on

Ant Pruitt (00:30:03):
Wait. That, that's Discord. That's a few

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
There. I have asked on Mastodon, I've asked on Twit doc community. I've had a little poll. We had two votes.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:11):
<Laugh>, wait a minute. And then also, Mr. Laport, you, you realize most of our fans don't care about sports like I do. Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (00:30:19):
Know, <laugh>. Well, I thought some of them might live in Green Bay. Anyway. They're nerd. You know, it's, it's like me, you know, near Chicago and stuff, but yeah. No, I'm not talking about the Packers. I'm just saying we wanted to go to a bar on the 29th. Go to Milwaukee in Green Bay.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:34):
Go to Milwaukee Cheese,

Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
Go to Milwaukee. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:36):
Went to a bar in Milwaukee.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:38):
Yes. Milwaukee's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:39):
Awesome. Where La Vernon Shirley was, is that Milwaukee? Or

Ant Pruitt (00:30:42):
You went to

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Schlemm. Schmale ha re park Corpor.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:47):
I know that brewery. Dang it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Duff,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:51):
It was nice.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:53):
Lake Lakefront Lake. Something is

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:55):
Lake something? Yeah. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:56):
Yeah. How did you, did I tweet from there? I've been, I I've been, I think I recommended it to you. Now that I think about it. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:02):
Yeah, maybe you did. Yeah, it was good. They had cheese curds.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:04):
Yes. The squeakers. It was nice. Ride cheese curds.

Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
Tell the folks why they call 'em squeakers.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:10):
Well, 'cause literally when you bite into 'em and they squeak in your mouth,

Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
It's so horrible. <Laugh>. I do not want, it's not horrible. It's just que that squeaks in my mouth.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:19):
But that's, but that's not fried one's.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:21):
The of the cheese against your

Ant Pruitt (00:31:22):
Teeth. The fried ones don't squeak like that. The fried ones don't squeak. The fried one's just melting your mouth.

Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
Yeah. But if it's squeaking your teeth, it's because it's, the texture of it is like,

Ant Pruitt (00:31:33):
You're right. But it's still cheese. It's delicious. And it's right up there with mayonnaise, if not mayonnaise,

Leo Laporte (00:31:40):
<Laugh>, <laugh>. All right. Broadcast cable is in a world of hurt. But then so is streaming. So I don't know what's going on. The linear for the first time since, since they've been keeping track of this linear TV viewing that's broadcast and cable. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> fell below 50% of all TV use. All overall TV went up because there's a lot more streaming. But linear TV broadcast networks, 20% of viewing in July cable, 29.6% viewing both down from the previous month, a low point since Nielsen began tracking this. Now they've only been tracking it for a few years, but I have to think, you know, when they started in June, 2021, it was at a peak. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because of Covid. Right. It's been just going straight down.

Ant Pruitt (00:32:36):
I can I say

Leo Laporte (00:32:37):
6%?

Ant Pruitt (00:32:39):
I don't, I don't like this stat. Especially since you threw out that it was first track around the Covid times. People are way more liberal with their free time now. And it's, so they're going

Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Out to traveling and stuff. So maybe it's meaningless, huh?

Ant Pruitt (00:32:53):
Right. I mean, even, although you don't have a, I haven't a ton of money. You still, what

Leo Laporte (00:32:56):
If I throw this in outta the house? Streaming grew from 26% a share of viewing in June, 2021 to 38.7% in July. That's a 48% jump. So it's not like we're not looking at the screen.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:10):
That screen is in the, in the backseat of the car and some Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:33:14):
Teenagers on mobile hand.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:16):
Yeah. You know, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Yeah. Well that might, I haven't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:18):
Watched linear TV since, gosh, like 2010 or 20 2009 YouTube, because I haven't been able to access it.

Leo Laporte (00:33:28):
Right. Youer, you're a cord cutter. <Laugh> YouTube led the way, 9.2% of all TV use that is kind of mind boggling. Wow. Netflix, 8.5%. Tubi Fox's advertising supported video on demand. 1.4%. That was his best month of all timed with H B O Max. Now just Max. So what's happening, it's very interesting. Oh, this, try this with a study. The Financial Times did that said for the first time this year, it costs more to be a cord cutter than not cable. Your cable bill, which is about 83 bucks on average streaming, went from 73 bucks last year. If you got a package of kind of the most popular streaming things like Max and Netflix and whatever, I don't know what the list was. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but this is sort of an average to $86. 87. 87. $87. So it's, you're for many people, because the cost of the internet plus the cost of the streaming is actually more expensive than your cable bill. And yet people are, more people are watching streaming than they're watching cable now. And, and well, as

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:43):
Prices go up, that's gonna shift again because they can't make money on the streaming. They're Exactly. This is YouTube, Uber, Alices man TikTok, Uber, Alices. It's gonna be a, a free for all out there. And the big old studios don't know what to do. Meanwhile, the strikes are on. Meanwhile, if that goes on much longer, it's a

Leo Laporte (00:35:00):
Perfect storm. This is a perfect storm. It's Disney plus by

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:05):
Mass. 50 plus

Leo Laporte (00:35:05):
Media has gone up 48% in the last year. Almost, almost 50% in the last year. And

Ant Pruitt (00:35:12):
No one bad.

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
And that's because they've been pouring billions of dollars into con content. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they're trying to make it up. Some say and might be true conspiracy theory. They're also trying even driving to drive you to the ad supported tier. So ad supported Netflix or Tubi or Amazon. Pluto TV or

Ant Pruitt (00:35:30):
Amazon's got one too, right?

Leo Laporte (00:35:32):
Yeah. Free V free something. Free v it's called maybe they make more money the advertising than they would I find this hard to believe than they would if you paid a Well, they

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:40):
Want, they want to hedge their betts. Right. They want more than one revenue stream.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean, we, like, I feel sad 'cause like I cut the cord in 2008 and it was a golden, I told my, my kid who's 17, I was like, you have grown up in a golden era of not seeing you're doing

Leo Laporte (00:35:59):
That already. You know? It was so great when I was young.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:02):
Well, no, I'm just, I mean, like, like, I still remember when they

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:06):
Was like, sausages, moms

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:07):
<Laugh>. They were 10 and they were like, I feel so sorry for my cousins. 'cause They have to watch TV shows when it, when they're on. 'cause They were still watching the TVs and we just didn't have it. No, it's true. And now they're like, we watched something the other night that had ads and they're like, oh, I hate this. Let's go to Netflix. Oh, yeah. So we just, we just dumped what we were gonna watch. They were just not into it.

Leo Laporte (00:36:28):
Oh. But I have to say, they've screwed themselves. 'cause They, you're right. People don't wanna see ads. So that's not really an option. But people don't want to pay 48% more for Disney. Plus. I, I feel like it's a perfect storm that this, this we're headed to collapse. And I worry that the writers and the, and the actors are gonna,

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:46):
And the subsidy for free. I mean, there's, there's a couple ways this goes. Right? And, and regulation comes into this too. So if ad targeting is, is is outlawed and so on and so on and so forth, so that everything goes behind a paywall. Well, number one, there ain't enough money to pay for everything that's behind a paywall now. So some stuff's gonna just die. And advertising was a support for free and cheap media that, you know, including news. It was wonderful. But it's gonna go away. And I think that the total old legacy mass media is what's dying. And they're gonna stay alive for as long as they can. I don't mean they're gonna die fall over tomorrow, but it's what's happened to the music business. They've gotta learn the lessons about that. What happened to newspapers. They've gotta learn the lessons about that magazine. Same thing. Now, what's happening to tv?

Leo Laporte (00:37:38):
We've learned, by the way,

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:39):
Movies are crappy too. There aren't that many good movies out.

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Oh, yeah. Look at, I keep going to the Apple TV movies thing. 'cause I don't want to go to a theater. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I look at the, the movies and they're, they're awful. And this is summer. Yeah. This is when the best. But their TV shows are pretty good though. Yeah, you're right. They're better TV shows. I did go see Oppenheimer by Yeah. Maybe people don't watch. Do you want me to Oh, you did. Oh. Give you my review of Oppenheimer in 70 millimeter imax. It's big. It's really big. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:10):
Thank you. Especially when

Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
You're that close. The first scene, we're in the fifth row. The first scene is a very tight closeup on Sian Murphy as Oppenheimer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just his face, just his face on a five story movie screen. And I'm about, oh, 20 feet away from it. <Laugh>. It's like, I hope the whole movie isn't like this. The worst. A lot of closeups. Oh. it's good. But the Imex kind of overwhelms the movie, so I have to see it in a regular screen just to see if I like it. Like, it's like <laugh> the experience. It is like a roller coaster ride. The experience is more mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I thought it was pretty good. It was way too long. Yeah. They can cut an hour. They could easily an cut an hour outta this without hurting anything. Yeah. Because they, this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:38:56):
Might be what? Oh no,

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
Go on. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:01):
Nope, nope. You were gonna do review. I'm so sorry. No, you

Leo Laporte (00:39:05):
Go ahead Miss Stacy. No, but I, we, I wanna hear from you much more than I wanna hear from me.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:09):
Well, I was just saying that a lot of movies do seem too long. And this might be kind of one reason that kids are like, or people are not watching movies even when they're on streaming. It's just, that's

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:20):
Exactly why I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:21):
Don't so much of an investment.

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:23):
That's exactly why I don't, I'm I'm giving you 90 minutes.

Leo Laporte (00:39:26):
Yeah. Lisa's the same way. In fact, I didn't mind going, I said, you sure you don't mind me gonna see Oppenheimer without you? She said, no, it's too long. I don't, I'm not gonna, I'll see it when it, when we get it at home. 'cause We can pause it. Yeah. Watch the second half the next night, or, yeah. Well, it's kind of both right Stacy, because kids are also watching a lot more short form content, so their attention spans shrinking while movies are getting longer <laugh>. I don't know

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:51):
If they're ing if they're doing it for like three hours, they'll watch. Yeah. I don't, it's tricky. Talk for like two and a half hours. And I'm like,

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I think their tolerance of the story, the hetty of the storyteller is lowered.

Leo Laporte (00:40:06):
There was a little too much Hege Inny <laugh>. That's my review. That's the thumbnail review. Christopher Nolan has too much hege in me. <Laugh>. He has, he has too much power. Nobody's gonna say no to him. He, so it's based on the book, American Prometheus, which I've started to read now as everybody does after they watch the movie. And the kind of the spine of the book is the last act of Oppenheimer's life. When they revoked his clearance, the Atomic Energy Commission. And they had a very long hearing and he had to go through his whole life story. And it makes sense for a book to have that be the spine. Mm-Hmm. Like flash black flashback. But it made the movie extra long. 'cause They keep going from the court, from the, it's not a courtroom, from the, the hearing Hearing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to the events, to the hearing and the events and the back and forth.

(00:40:52):
And I think that was a mistake to be too faithful to the book. It just, it's longer than it needs to be. But it's a good story. It's a very important story. The really important part of it is, I was talking to somebody who said, you know, it's the, it's really about ai. And I said, what? Oh, the explosion. And it's the issue of the scientists were more interested in whether they could do it than what the consequences of doing it would be, you know? Right. And, and, and really the story of the atomic bomb is they were worried Hitler was gonna get one. Oppenheimer was Jewish, as were most of the scientists working at Los Alamos. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> building the, or just trying to build the, A bomb. And they were very worried, reasonably. So Hitler would get it first, and it would be the end of the world.

(00:41:37):
And so there was a race to beat Hitler to get it first. But then it's VE day, the war is over, Hitler's defeated. And still the government wants to go ahead and develop the ABO and then eventually drops it on the Japanese. There's lots of questions of whether they needed to, whether they needed to do it twice. Oppenheimer feels a lot of guilt and regret. But he knew even as they were doing it, once we release this, there's no taking it back. Once we developed this, you can't say, oh yeah, don't use it. And he was very disturbed because then there was a push to develop the hydrogen bomb, which is a hundred times more powerful. And he said, no, no, no, we don't, don't do that because it'll create an arms race. And Edward Teller said, no, no, we need it. The government said, no, no, no, we need it. And we developed the hbo of course, as you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And A Arms was very upset about that. And that's kind of the, my friend likened that to the AI conundrum is, is you do it 'cause you're at, it's an eng interesting engineering problem, but consider what you're releasing.

(00:42:41):
There's no taking it back. There's

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:42):
Unintended consequences of damn near everything

Leo Laporte (00:42:44):
Today. Certainly technology, but some of it's more consequential <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I think it's all about the hegemony of the storyteller personally. <Laugh> <laugh>. Anyway it's a good movie. You should see it. And it raises very interesting. But you're not,

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:03):
It sounds like you're not a an imax.

Leo Laporte (00:43:06):
I, you know, aficionado, maybe find that farther back <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:12):
So could I, would I feel sad if I watched it later? No. On like, Netflix.

Leo Laporte (00:43:18):
That's how you should watch it. In fact, what I'm saying is don't regret that you didn't see it in imax. Great. It's probably better just to watch

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:24):
It. Well, there's an imax and then there's regular movie theater and then there's on Couch. It'll

Leo Laporte (00:43:28):
Be fine. The content is fine, is what really matters. It's not, you know, when the bomb blows up, it's, it's <laugh>, it's over. It's big, but it's not the most important part of the movie. Even Trinity, the actual

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:39):
Right. I don't think you were, you were on the pre-show, Stacy, when Leo realized that he thought he'd ordered his seats five from the back. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:47):
<Laugh>. No, I, I remember that. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:43:49):
Really front dude. That's not the,

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great. The, you know what the real thing is? IMEX is about spectacle. The first movies in IMEX were all nature films and short films. And watch was, we walked through space and stuff mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you're walking through space. It was, it was Nolan <laugh>. Yeah. It was Christopher Nolan and a few filmmakers said, oh no, this would be great for movies. Yeah. I think they were mistaken because it's really more, it's, it's a, it's, it suddenly becomes not about the movie, but the technology. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I saw The Dark Knight at the same theater. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> which is also partially IMAX and partially not. Yeah. I hate Height. That was terrible. Switched it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:26):
I think it's a theater Big enough for their ego. I

Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
Agree. They're like,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:30):
My movie so amazing. You need to watch it on film. And the biggest Yes. That's all this is

Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Actually, that's exactly what Nolan said is if you wanna see this the way it should be seen, you need to see it on 70 millimeter film on imax. And I believed him. And I, I I don't agree. And that is a little bit of ego, isn't it? Yeah. It's, it's like an amusement park ride. It becomes more about the, the, the, the screen and the size than it is about the content. Mm-Hmm. And I want to go see how was it for the story? How heard complaints? It's pretty loud.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:00):
It was also overwhelmingly

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:01):
Loud. Wait, amusement park rides have stories.

Leo Laporte (00:45:03):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Some You haven't been to the latest Disney rides I could take You tell <laugh> They totally have stories now. No. Did you know that?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:11):
Oh, those are the boring ones. There

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:13):
You go. Go. I rollercoasters I'm for

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:14):
Saying it out loud. I'm like, I'm like, what are you

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:16):
Talking about? Small. Well, even a rollercoaster does to an extent. This is where we're gonna even who

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:20):
Cares about the story? I mean like, what was it? The California Adventures coaster. Yeah. Swapped it out to the incredible in incredi coaster. Everybody caress. Yeah. It's the rollercoaster that you're on.

Leo Laporte (00:45:30):
Yeah. Right. But that's what I'm saying is that you go to a theater like that, it's a, it's a ride. It's not about a movie. It's about a ride. Got it. It's an experience That's, it'd be better to see a nature film there, in other words, than something where you're supposed to think and so forth. Anyway. Good movie. Yeah. We're seeing very long. Watch it at home. You'll be much happier.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:51):
Are you gonna go see Barbie?

Leo Laporte (00:45:54):
You know what, Lisa won't go with me and I don't feel I should go home. No. I just feel like going dressing all that's kind of a by myself. I shouldn't

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:02):
You're gonna say, who's

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
That? Creepy. That's creepy old man in the all by himself.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:08):
What's he doing? Yeah. You probably shouldn't do that, sir. Dressed in pink and everything.

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
I really wanna see it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:13):
Where will Lisa go? It's a fun movie and it's, it's short. It's not that long.

Leo Laporte (00:46:18):
I think she's philosophically opposed to Barbie.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:22):
I get that.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:23):
I'm philosophically opposed to Barbie, but I enjoyed the movie. Did you

Leo Laporte (00:46:27):
Like the movie? It was fun. Oh, I'm dying to see it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:29):
It was like candy coated feminism.

Leo Laporte (00:46:31):
Yeah. I'm dying to see. I really wanna

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:33):
See it in Service of

Leo Laporte (00:46:33):
Capitalism. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:37):
But it was a heap of fun. Yeah. Just a, he just, and if you like, like old musicals and stuff. That was a lot of the Greta Gray's inspiration and and

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:44):
It's made for you.

Leo Laporte (00:46:46):
Ant you wanna go with me? Sorry. You and I, sorry, I dressed in pink. It's football season two of us can go. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:51):
It's football season. It's like,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:53):
Nope.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:53):
This football season. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:46:55):
Alright, I wanna take a break when we come back. I, Steve Gibson did something shocking yesterday. Oh yeah. Besides saying he's gonna continue doing the show after episode 9 99. That shocked me. Oh, okay. Word. But he, but he also gave his a seal of approval to the new Google Topics. This is their most recent attempt. Oh wow. Have ad tracking without tracking. So we're gonna talk about topics when we come back and why Steve thinks this is a good answer, a good solution to the problem. But f we got a great panel, Stacey Higginbotham, big announcement from Stacey coming up later in the show. Ant, ant, Pruitt <laugh> and the hegemony of college professors. Jeff Jarvis <laugh>, our show today brought to you by a c i learning love a c i learning. But I know a lot of you go, who's that? They sponsor the studio.

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(00:51:42):
Much better than I can. This is something new that is in chromium. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It will be in the nightly Chrome Canary builds. It will be in chromium, which means it'll be in a lot. I, unless they strip it out in, in all the browsers like Edge. That's what I was from Microsoft. It's available for everybody else. Opera brave. All the other chromium based browsers. We'll supposedly get it. You remember we had flock? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> didn't like it. <Laugh> trying to get rid of cookies. Yeah. Google has already said we're gonna delete, we're no, no longer to support in persistent third party cookies. Starting next year. We're gonna get rid of it. 'cause People don't want it. They turn it off. But Google also understands, 'cause they, their business, 79% of their revenue comes from ad sales. They understand that advertisers want information about who the ad is being displayed to but they also understand that we as users don't wanna be tracked, and we'll go to great lengths, including ad blockers to prevent that.

(00:52:42):
So I think it's reasonable for Google to try to figure out, well, is there some way I can balance the interests of both sides? And Steve says, topics is actually gonna do it. So now, now you've gotta spleen it. Yeah. Now I gotta spout. Yeah, <laugh>, it's a, there's a good blog po Well, actually there's a good RS technical article, which I'd recommend, but also you can read about it on the chromium blog. They call it Privacy Sandbox ad Relevance and Measurement Proposal. <Laugh>, formerly known as, what was it called? There was fledge flock, and then there was flock. It all has to do with birds this time. It's just topics. So the idea is when you go in a browser and you visit a site, that site is assigned certain topics. Like if you came to twit, it would be technology maybe smartphones consumer electronics.

(00:53:46):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, enterprise Technology, that kind of thing. Right now, Google has 349 topics. That number might expand to a larger number. That information is then attached to your browser. So when you go to another, so it aggregates over time. I think it resets every few weeks, but it aggregates over the period of three weeks. So when I go in this browser that I visited a variety of sites, it will say the person not my name, the person using this browser has an interest in race cars, smartphone, consumer electronics. And then add, I don't even know

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:25):
If it does that. Does it, does it say that Leo, or does it say, code number 67 can match with code number 67, and we're not gonna tell you kind of where it went? Isn't that kind of Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:54:35):
I think you, you're right. I don't think it, it says it out loud.

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:37):
Obfuscation. The big

Leo Laporte (00:54:38):
Difference between topics and flock the predecessor was that Flock would broadcast that information to all and sundry. This one's a little bit more constrained, but it supports interest based advertising. So let me read from Vivaldi, the browser, which we'll use it. How does topics differ from flock? Google limits the amount of information psyching gathered to a few topics initially from a set that might be as big as, well now it's 3 49 as big as a few thousands and only allows a single additional topic to be tamed every week. Oh, wow. Which is a severe limit. Right. They also limit the topics. Advertisers can see this is very important. Flock did not have this limit to topics offered by sites on which those advertisers are present. So I'm on ours, Technica, I can only see the topics that ours Technica offers, giving topics approximately the same reach as third party cookies. Without the privacy problem. Some random topics might be offered as well in Google claims. This lessens the chance that sharing a given topic will automatically be compromising or identifying it's fuzzed with random stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Google also claims this'll reduce the ability of advertisers to gather enough data themselves for building a profile.

(00:56:03):
Okay. I'm sure advertisers will try <laugh>. But that's their job.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:08):
It's not even advertisers anymore. It's, it's just it data brokers programmatic networks. Yeah. Yeah. It

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:13):
Is this close to like Apple. It sounds almost similar to differential privacy, some of the stuff that Apple's been promoting.

Leo Laporte (00:56:21):
Yeah. I mean, Apple's ISS trying to do the same thing. It Yeah. The only, I don't know. I like users are able to disable the whole system. So you'll have a, you'll have a optout and you can exclude certain topics in a way that can't be easily detected by the advertisers. So you say, I don't wanna see anything about smartphones, but it won't be no one else. The advertiser won't see that. They just won't get offered smartphones. Right. We expect that most users won't change the defaults <laugh>, but at least it's there, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is from Vivaldi. In addition, the wording and the specification is loose and ambiguous in a way that leaves it open to manipulation by Google to expose more or less information. This is especially possible for websites that cover a large range of topics, including Google and Facebook. They'll be able to observe the widest range of behaviorally profiled information. But Steve's feeling is, and, and actually he might be alone in this, Vivaldi says, we have no faith in the new topics. A <laugh> <laugh> strong statement. And I think E F F has also weighed in that they're not crazy about it. But Steve says, not surprising, and I think he's right. Steve says, we gotta find some system that'll, that makes ads supported content work.

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:37):
Right. Amen, brother.

Leo Laporte (00:57:39):
It's not for, by the way, it's not for podcasting because it's very simple. You buy ads on Twit. 'cause You know, our audience is, is tech enthusiasts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so anything tech enthusiasts mm-hmm. <Affirmative> you'd be interested in. So we kind of are already broadcasting that signal, but it's more for other sites like Google or The Verge or Facebook or whatever. Steve says this is a good compromise. It's, he really looked closely at, it feels like it protects privacy adequately for the individual, but gives advertisers some hook that they seem to really need. I mean, there's always that debate of whether targeted advertising works, but since advertisers think it does and want it and demand it and won't buy ads unless they get it, then this seems to be a good compromise. That's Steve's opinion. Vivaldi says, we believe that spying on people's behavior and profiling them is wrong, period. It's easy to get misled by this new variation of flocks since it does appear to have made some positive changes. But it still violates your privacy and pretending that behavioral profiling can be okay as long as you hide a few bits of information or sometimes add false information, is really missing the point. You shouldn't be profiling in the first place. And this is the problem I have. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:51):
So let's try to look at, and I know Stacy will have something to say about this, I'm sure, but let's try to look at the actual harm here. So gimme a scenario in which this system as described presents actual harm.

Leo Laporte (00:59:09):
I don't think it does. I don't think it does either. Vivaldi says,

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:14):
Stacey's thinking,

Leo Laporte (00:59:15):
Revealing information about the user's interest to various entities, even slowly will allow them over time to identify political affiliation, sexual orientation, and other personal information about the user. I'm not sure that's clear. You'd have to say, well, everybody who's interested in smartphones and Shetland ponies is, there's a lot

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:33):
Easier ways to do about it.

Leo Laporte (00:59:35):
Yeah. And he said, they say, are they limiting, go ahead.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:38):
Sensitive categories. Yes. Like health data. Yes. So, okay. So I don't actually see this as being hugely problematic.

Leo Laporte (00:59:49):
Alii says this has been shown by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This kind of,

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:58):
This Cambridge Analytica was full of crap. They really didn't do anything. Yeah, they used the quiz. You told them more in the quiz. This is not the quiz. This is entirely different.

Leo Laporte (01:00:08):
Yeah. I, I think there are a lot of, and not, not to cast dispersions, 'cause I think a lot of people in our audience are this way, but there are a lot of people who just are really don't want any, they're suspicious for a reason. Yeah. They don't want any targeting at all. They don't frankly, want any advertising at all. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I understand that. But,

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:25):
But fine then the world is, the world is either fully disinformation or fully behind paywalls. And don't tell me that you use ad blockers and you won't pay subscriptions, and you complain on Mastodon, when I put up a link behind a paywall, I'm not gonna buy it from you folks.

Leo Laporte (01:00:38):
Mm-Hmm. Well, and that's the problem, is our content somehow I mean, I guess we could say only club twi. I mean, may, and this may happen if advertising continues to drift away and advertising does drift away from us because we don't have enough information about you. So they go to Facebook and Google where there's a lot more information about you. Right. Right. So we are losing advertising and advertisers do demand and want more, and we can only give them so much. And if all that advertising goes away, then it will be paywall or nothing. And Yeah. Then people will try to get around the paywalls. So I don't like paywalls. I get around paywalls. I know how to do it. I'm sure our audience is sophisticated enough to do that. Yeah. So it's not a, you know, if you want, I mean, somebody's gotta pay John Sellina somebody, somebody's gotta pay bonino. Somebody's gotta pay Ann. Somebody's pay Jeff, when you gonna say my name? Somebody's gotta pay ants. Somebody's gotta pay Jeff. Someone's gotta pay Stacy. Jason,

(01:01:33):
You know, the funny thing is, as an owner of the company, I'm the last, as, as is always the case. I'm the last person to get paid. Right? Now, if the company has a surplus, I'm in the money. Right. But if the company is not at a surplus, I get no pay. I haven't been paid in three months. Right. And, and that's, I mean, that's okay, I guess, but I'm, <laugh> kind of takes some of the fun out of it, let's put it that way. So at some point, you gotta pay for this stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, pg and e, the light bill has gotta be paid, or they're gonna turn off the lights. Right. my bandwidth bills have to be paid, or you won't be able to download a podcast. I could sit here and, and do it, but you wouldn't be able to get it. Right. So some, everybody needs to get paid. And the problem is, if people who consume the content say, well, under no circumstances can there be any system that supports that, I think you got a problem. So, I, I think Google is, I think they're trying, admittedly they have a kind of a dog in this hunt. They both buy and sell advertising. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:39):
A few times this

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:40):
Conversation. It's easier to pay someone.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:42):
Oh no, you go ahead, Ms. Stacy. Go on.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:45):
Well, I, I also, there's, there's a couple like, nuances that are hard to really think about in parse, especially in technology. One is the technology firms really value scale. So it's paying, you're paying a faceless someone something, right? Yeah. Right. So you feel like you're being sold to, you don't know what it's for. 'cause Creepy, it feels impersonal, right. People do tend to pay people they know and come, like, there's a lot of people who join Club Tut, and it sounds like it may not be enough yet, but, you know, so I, I think there's, there's a function of scale and then there's also the function of income inequality, I think is really hurting some of these people. 'cause You feel like, you feel like you're being nickel and dime to death for little to no value maybe. And you don't understand what you're supporting necessarily. And that's hard. I don't know. I mean, the answers here are,

Leo Laporte (01:03:37):
That's, that's one of the objections. There's also the objection quite reasonable that data brokers collect this information and put, essentially put together dossiers on everybody. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:47):
Actually always been doing it for years before the internet.

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
Yeah. And then sell that on, I mean, that's reprehensible. That should be

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:52):
Stopped with your name

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:53):
More, with your, more likely your name is all of your Yeah. And I will say, I mean, are we gonna talk about the consumer financial bureau? Yes. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:04:02):
Next.

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:03):
But I wanna stay on Stacy's point about scale four more minutes if I can. 'cause That's interesting. 'cause You know, I, I keep on yammering on about death of mass media and, and rescaling things. And I think scale is what's over. I think that's part of the TV story. I think that's what's true of music. I think. I think we reduce scale and, and the internet was never, the internet had to scale to become a huge network to enable it to be small. Right. And, and, and so that's interesting, Stacy, in, in terms of the future of advertising, is that if, if it stays, if the presumption stays scale, we have to have, everybody have to have huge numbers. Paradoxically, I almost wonder whether that's worse for privacy than you. Yes. I'm looking for a car. It's permissioned. I give you permission to do it.

(01:04:53):
It's more effective. I can now look at car ads for a few months, then I can turn it off. You know, where do we go with advertising? Right now? It's, it's, it's scale over everything. You have to have a huge audience so that you can happen to have that one person who might tick that one box to get that one ad, to get you your pennies. It's not a good business model in the long run. And, and so how would we reimagine a, if we need advertising to help support and subsidize creativity, how could we reimagine an advertising industry?

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
I think that's happening. I don't think it's happening

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:29):
With

Leo Laporte (01:05:29):
People. Yeah. I mean, if you look at how

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:29):
Influencers,

Leo Laporte (01:05:30):
But yeah. Look at Patreon, look at influencers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I think that's happening.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:38):
It's, it work. And, and part of what I'm talking about with scale is like a, a sense that, you know, someone like, like back when, and it, it wasn't even that long ago. Like, I mean, you banked with people who lived in your hometown. You bought, you know, you got your appliances from someone, you know, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Like, I also think there's just a, like, as, as people we're fundamentally like, I will give money to someone I know and feel okay about it. Like, I don't know. This is pretty, like, this is not, this is anecdotal, I

Leo Laporte (01:06:10):
Guess. No, no. But I think it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:11):
Relationships over relationships, over billboards. It's what relationships over targeting.

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
I feel really comfortable with our model, twits model. Mm-Hmm.

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:20):
<Affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (01:06:21):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Because it is about community. It's about a relationship. It's about whether you as a listener, trust, trust, what we say about our advertisers. And I feel very comfortable about that. I don't know anything about our audience except that they're interest in what we're talking about. That they're

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:37):
Very nice. People know that

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:39):
Like, they like you and

Leo Laporte (01:06:40):
They're nice. You, I, I'm, I fully copped up making a huge mistake by building an organization that's extremely expensive. Had I thought about it, I would've been much tighter with the dollar. I wouldn't be doing video. We'd do audio only. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We have much smaller staff. And, and frankly, if I had done that, the, the size of the club of the way it is now would've easily supported. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, a couple of p me and an editor, <laugh> <laugh>, and some bandwidth doing audio. I don't think, I think the quality of what we do wouldn't, would've suffered. But it, but it might be adequate. You have to kind of match the quality with the support. But I'm comfortable with our model. I think there are a lot of influencers. I'm, I think Salt Hank is comfortable with this model. I think you're right. I think the local bookstore where you know them, they know you and they know what books you like, and they say, oh, Stacy, we just got a new one. I think you're gonna like it

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:34):
New Jeff Jarvis book is in. I know you've been waiting for it. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
I think that's a great model. Maybe we, do you think we're going back to that? Is Mass Media dead, Jeff?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:45):
It,

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:45):
That's what I, that's what I, that, that, or that's the model that I think could be made to work again and again, there's the paradox of scale on the internet. Right. Your newspaper is at scale, and it doesn't know you as an individual. Google is at huge scale because of, of, of, of network economics. It had to be huge to enable small to enable. And I, and I think, I think what we see is post Twitter, we thought that Twitter was huge, but Twitter was always little, little, a whole bunch of little tiny communities. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And now you can find your community that's big enough on Mastodon or on Blue Sky, or I don't, I'm not on threads much anymore, but on threads and, and the scale is more human. Now what happens in advertising, I don't know. But I think that the, that that the scale of media necessarily has to change.

Ant Pruitt (01:08:35):
Do you think there's an issue of people feeling like media isn't personal?

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:41):
Yeah. That's part of it too. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (01:08:42):
So look, in my circles, and a phrase that's thrown around quite a bit from heck, even some of my relatives back home, is get a quote, real job. Those people should get a real job <laugh>. You know, and, and I'm like, well, people, people in, in, in journalism, they are working and you're telling, telling me that they should work for below minimum wage.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:07):
And they work hard, work very hard. I mean, like, when I started out in journalism, I was paid $28,000 a year to live in New York City. Oh. In 2000.

Ant Pruitt (01:09:19):
Just wrong.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:19):
And I worked

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:21):
How nice was that box you lived in Stacy

Leo Laporte (01:09:24):
<Laugh>. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:24):
It was, it was special. It, it was nine to like six at my office. And then

Ant Pruitt (01:09:30):
Hour, you, and then you got home and you brainstorm. And still, once you got off, I'm sure. Oh, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:35):
And I mean, I, I worked, I, I did, like, I wrote three stories a day and I talked to probably a dozen people. Every, I mean, like, and I mean, part of this, like, I don't know anybody who is a journalist, especially starting out when you in, maybe not in today especially. 'cause Even at the big glossies, like when I was at Fortune in 2015, we had a couple people that I was like, oh, you really don't really work. I mean, they worked like 35 hours a week mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and they felt like their experience was enough to justify that or something. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But these are real jobs, and they can be dangerous and hard. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it is hard to show up to a, like a, a tragedy and write about it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:10:22):
But there's never been a correspondence between how people feel about the job being done, the respect they feel and how hard the job is. Oh. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:32):
The value to them. I

Leo Laporte (01:10:33):
Think I, I, I don't know. I think we should pay teachers more than we do corporate CEOs, but we don't,

Ant Pruitt (01:10:41):
But we don't <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:10:42):
So, I mean, that's, that's not how the world works, unfortunately. Get that. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:47):
It's a, like, journalism was public. Good one could argue.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:50):
Yeah. And CEOs get that money because they're governed, their pay packages are governed by their fellow CEOs who are all on the board and dictating this. And they're governed by how much money they make for people who already have a lot of money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you have a whole class of people who are like, who don't think in terms of like a six failure salary being enough to live off of, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they're like, if I'm not making more than Joe who's making a hundred million, I suck. Ah, my private jet isn't good enough. I mean, those are, that's how they're making those decisions. We're we're the majority of us. Yeah. It's really depressing income. Inequality's a big issue.

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:35):
I don't know how that relates to advertising <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:11:38):
Well, it does. Somehow it does. Because

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:40):
People, we're we're driving us all to, like, we're using that stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:11:43):
We don't value, society doesn't value I mean, if you read a blog post on the Verge, what is the value you ascribe to it? And is it, I don't know. I feel like people don't care. They're not, they, I think

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:59):
Society might value some, like, society clearly values teachers and firefighters, but they don't make money to shareholders. They cost money in terms of taxes, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so we have a different, like,

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:12):
But you know, so we're not gonna solve this. The, the moral entrepreneurs who are out there. I can see, I, I'm, I'm, I'm about to finish the manuscript, I think for the internet book. And so I was reading through it again, and I had to read through all the Shoshana Zubov surveillance capitalism quotes. And she's just way over the top. And so is Tristan Harris, just way over the top. And to them, advertising is the evil. Well, the the attention economy does corrupt things. Yes. And it has since, since 1900 in magazines. It's always done that. But again, it supports part of our culture. And if it goes away, do we understand what the consequences of that are? And, and so I, you know, if I were a, a philanthropist right now, which I'm certainly not, I would be supporting research to think about not new models for business models for news, which is what I've worked on in the last 15 years. But new models for advertising that may be permission based and acceptable and still have a role in supporting the culture.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:13):
Well, I think Shoshana Zuboff issue isn't really anti advertising. I think it's a fo it's a realization that the type of surveillance we're under is much more massive than it has ever been. It's also accretive and searchable and then sold and bought, which is very different than just saying like, I accept ads because they're good. I, I don't mind ad models, but I do mind that if every single 'cause it is possible for us to track every single thing mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and then sell that profile. And that's what they're arguing against. Well, first, first

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:46):
I argue it's not surveillance. Surveillance is what evil governments do with armies behind them. Second no, the data often is not sold. The data is used for targeting on the ad server. And that's part of the myth that she pushes here, is that, that that

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:04):
Data gets sold to data brokers, and then the government, which is a potential surveillance apparatus under your definition, can get access and has historically and is admitted to buying access to that data. Yeah. And the does. Yeah. And so it, and, and I think there's a lot of subtleties here, Jeff. I'm not saying all advertising is evil, but I understand their point. And I don't think you should belittle it in the way that you're kind of Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:28):
I could have my opinion, and I think my opinion to zoo off is, is I, I'm trying to find the paragraph right now. I have tons of quotes from her. She's just over the top. And I think a way that that, and, and then what I object to is it leads then to regulatory impingement on other freedoms. And it leads to the kind of of bad regulation that we're seeing as a result. And so she declares that surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of human's. Experience with no exit, no voice, no loyalty, only helplessness, resignation, and psychic numbing, which is built on this is all quotes weaponized virus of moral nihilism programmed to target human agency and delete resistance and creativity from the text of human possibility. All part of a cunning fraud designed to render us helpless and passive in the face of the implacable forces that are, and must always be indifferent to the merely human. Oh my God. Get

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:24):
A grip. I know it's a lot. Get a grip. But <laugh>, I, I do think, think we are experiencing, I mean, if you look at like, the dark, dark patterns to keep us scrolling and the waves of people who feel helpless and locked in these cycles of debt and consumerism and bad news. I, I think that resonates with a lot of people. Do I think it's over the top. Yes. Do I think it's like incredibly wordy for somebody who's like trying to speak to normal people? Yes. Mm-hmm. But she has, I see

Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
All that

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:59):
I's all

Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
That book. I think she's expressing the feels that a lot of us have. Yeah. I I think she might be, but

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:07):
She's pre she's presenting it as if it's not feels

Leo Laporte (01:16:09):
As I agree. She might be anti anthropomorphizing. Oh yeah. Kind of. You know, non, but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:16):
That's how you get people to care about

Leo Laporte (01:16:17):
Things. Yeah. Non it's thinking trends.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:19):
It's the essence of Get ready, get ready, get ready. It is the very essence of moral panic. It's more

Leo Laporte (01:16:24):
She's a queen's

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:25):
A moral, an entrepreneur. Yeah. Well, good timing. Good well done

Leo Laporte (01:16:28):
Feeling about this. But, but Jeff, you cannot deny that this what you, with that passage you just read describes a feeling a lot of us have. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:37):
How, what do they have that feeling? We've lost because its propagated media.

Leo Laporte (01:16:40):
We've, we've lost. 'cause It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:41):
Propagated media

Leo Laporte (01:16:42):
As well. No. We feel like we've lost agency. We get spam calls all day. We get text messages from people we don't know. There's this, this constant kind of bombardment of advertising on every page we visit. And we feel

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:56):
Spam is the opposite of targeting. No,

Leo Laporte (01:16:57):
But spam

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:58):
Has not no data it on.

Leo Laporte (01:17:00):
Hold on, hold on. You're, you're arguing as if this is logical. It's about feeling <laugh>. This is, this is the feeling we have, is that, is this, this, it's out of control data sucking monster. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:11):
But I've gotta argue, she's answered

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
From motivations of it. Chicken egg.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:15):
Man.

Leo Laporte (01:17:15):
It's happening. It feels like it's happening. Everybody feels that way. Well

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:19):
Be, be it's, it's just like the filter bubble argument, which the research says ain't the case. But media banged on the filter bubbles over and over and over again. And so if you do public opinion polling, they follow what media say. Yeah. This is what my whole book's about.

Leo Laporte (01:17:37):
By the way, we're gonna have Cory Dro and Rebecca Giblin take over twit on Sunday. Now

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:45):
I'm so jealous.

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Surveillance capitalism is one thing, but choke point capitalism is real <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:52):
And, and certification.

Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
And certification is real. And, and Corey and Rebecca are the authors of Choke Point Capitalism. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:59):
You're gonna sit there or not?

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Well, yes. That's what I'm calling it a takeover. We real, I've, I've had Corey on our shows. Oh yeah. For 15 years. He's not

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:08):
Getting paid. Y'all <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:18:10):
<Laugh>. No, that's not why Two Shade. I've had Corey on our shows for so many years. I love Corey. He's just one of the smartest people I know. And he's so quick. He's so smart. He's so articulate. It's very difficult. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:22):
You love listening to him and

Leo Laporte (01:18:24):
You love listening. So it's very difficult for anybody else to Yes. Get in a back. And with you, Jeff, I have no problem. But with him, <laugh>, it's hard to get in a a back and forth. I, I try to hold my own, but I, I wouldn't force anybody else to do that, and I wouldn't. So I, I figured if we have Rebecca, his co-author, and we, I've had them, I've interviewed them both together on triangulation, so I know they, they have a nice back and forth. I figured I could sit back on Sunday. I'm gonna bring a, you know, one of those big Turkey legs or whatever I remember and get some popcorn. Yeah. Popcorn.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:57):
Isco. Popcorn. Popcorn.

Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
<Laugh> and, and but, but definitely, here's the guy. I think we all agree. Here's the guy who has really both responded to how we feel about this stuff. And ex kind of explained the forces behind it. I think

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:13):
<Crosstalk>, he was much more constructive

Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
Zubo per Yes, he is. And that's, by the way, his new book is Had to take it back. You know what to do about it. Zu I think Zuboff has maybe kind of ascribed motivations. She, she's very negative about the companies and the people behind it and ascribed really kind of evil motivations to them that I don't, I I don't think that that's accurate. I don't think that's true. But I understand that, that what she's describing, we feel, and, and, and those forces are operating. I don't, I think they're kind of operating autonomously. It's just what happens. But in any event I think Corey has definitely cl clarified her points. I mean, her, her main point is that we're in end stage capitalism, and it's become, you know, rapacious. It's be it's eating people alive. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:01):
Corrosive.

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Yeah. It's corrosive, whether it's in income inequality or pervasive surveillance

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:07):
To anything that doesn't make money. Yeah. So if you can't ascribe a dollar value to, its in our current economic system. So even things that like the environment. Right. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:18):
Precisely.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:19):
If you can't ascribe a dollar value to it under our current economic systems, it's worth nothing. That's right. But we

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:24):
Just said a few minutes ago, we wish people would pay for journalism. And they don't because they don't ascribe value to it. That's not the fault necessarily of, of big companies, except they're screwing up, but they're doing bad journalism. It's the fault of us as citizens. So.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:35):
Well, and, and there could be an argument to be made as is journalism really is good journalism. And by good, I mean actually holding truth to power. Yes. Is that something that people should pay for? Or is that something that gets funding in another way? I mean, that's, that's a legit question.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:54):
Oh, like news should, should be, shouldn't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:57):
Necessarily, like npr,

Ant Pruitt (01:20:58):
A privilege news shouldn't be a privilege. News should be

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:01):
Like, news should be a, it should be like public schooling. We fund some sort of, you know, new basic news organization, your local taxes, a dollar out of every mm-hmm. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:10):
Of course, the obvious danger is there that news is supposed to be independent of the power. And if the power of government decides to support news, what God

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:18):
Gives. Yeah. And this is can take away

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:19):
This.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:20):
Yeah. This is why any sort of model around news is going to fluctuate and why you will have different models. You will have n p R style news, right. And you will have the New York Times that says it's objective, but really does isn't because that's kind of impossible. And then you will have people who buy truth social because they wanna support that agenda. But it, why are we talking about media? Why do we always do that on this show? <Laugh>? Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:21:47):
Because of Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:47):
We're of media. No, it's not my fault.

Leo Laporte (01:21:50):
I I will, I will read, I will read you. This is Corey's new book, the internet con. And this is what you were talking about. He has a prescription for a solution, how to seize the means of computation. But I think if I read this paragraph summary from Corey, you'll maybe say, this sounds a lot like what Professor Zuboff was saying. Mm-Hmm. When the quote, when the tech platforms promised a future of connection, they were lying. They said their walled gardens would keep us safe, but those were prison walls. The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other big tech platforms are hard to leave by design. They hold hostage, the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on the impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations. It's a business strategy and service to commodifying your personal life and relationships. The book is about interoperability. How to make, how to fix that by making it possible for you to leave and take your friends with you. And I He's been

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:01):
Yeah. Which is, which is what we were talking about earlier in terms of a new human scale in terms of Yeah. I, I think my biggest regret is the same as Jack Dorsey's. You know, do some of these things need to be companies at all? And I, because I don't think I, I don't think we're really at full end stage capitalism that could get worse. I think we need, that's capitalism depressing. We need

Leo Laporte (01:23:18):
To have retire

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:19):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:19):
It could get worse, but I think we're still at the end stage <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:22):
But in any case, it's in any

Leo Laporte (01:23:24):
Case, <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:26):
I, I regret, I, I confess in my manuscript that I should have done what you did, Leo, I should have long ago, supported Mastodon an activity pub as the alternative. Yeah. And my

Leo Laporte (01:23:38):
Daughter, me a text, she sent me a clip of TEDx talk from the indie web, and she said, have you heard about this thing Posse? Which is published once, and then syndicate everywhere, <laugh>. And I said, yeah, I've heard a little bit about that, Abby. She said, no. She said, it's a really good idea. You have your own website, which is your place that you live, and then you make sure your content is distributed on MAs on and Facebook and Twitter. I said, yeah, isn't that a good idea? She said, yeah, that's a good idea. So there is hope. She discovered it on her own. And it's exactly what we've been talking about. And I think this is, that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:16):
What

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
Cory's talking about's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:18):
That's, yeah. And I think, I think that goes back to this question of scale, is that when we, when we reset and say a twist server is big enough, it's big enough both to find people you care about and have good conversations, but also for you to be able to manage mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And, and it works at an entirely different scale. And it's the, it's truer to the internet. Now, did we need, this is a question that I ask and don't answer in the manuscript, did we need a large company venture backed phase in the internet to do some development, to build some stuff? I don't know the answer to that. Some would say No, no, no. We never should have had that at all. I, I, I, I, I don't know, would the internet have stayed small and geeky? And I,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:01):
I think we needed it for, think we needed it building out the physical infrastructure. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if you look at things, and we actually also needed, believe it or not, the bankruptcies that happened in like the early aughts. Yeah. Because that wiped away a lot of the debt that those guys built up <laugh>. And we still kept the infrastructure.

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
I know you know this. Yes, good point. But this has always happened. This is what happen with the railroads. They built the Transcontinental Railroad, then they went bankrupt, but we got the railroad lines. This is what happened in the year 2000, is they all went bankrupt, but we got the fiber. Yep. And so, you're right. I know you know this, Stacy, but that's a really important historical point. And it's happened again, we, the smarts, unless this sparked some ideas too, from those people that failed, right? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:42):
Yeah. It had helped get, it helped get us ready for buying pet food online. Remember how people were like, I would never buy pet food online.

Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
Pets.Com died because,

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:51):
Well, my poor friend, bill Gross lost a fortune on that. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody laughed at him, and he was just too early.

Leo Laporte (01:25:56):
And now we get our kitty later by mail.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:59):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:01):
Which is still a, so

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:02):
The question is,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:03):
Is it, is it actually a viable business? Do the, are the venture capitalists subsidizing those band costs? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:10):
Actually

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:11):
That's another question.

Leo Laporte (01:26:12):
The, the one of my favorite guests on twit is Kitz from the big technology podcast. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I can't remember. Is it Mark? I can't remember. Alex. Was he, he says, the problem is the financialization of technology. This whole VC funding vicious cycle has really broken it, it's broken innovation.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:35):
It's just too much money sloshing around. Yeah. But you know what, this is also what makes transitions so hard, right? Because we have established, like, like we've never counted like the environmental cost of our shipping like in two days, right? Nope. Or our workers' costs. But now we're being asked to, and us as people who are like, oh crap, those are real people that are getting injured, or this is happening. Our markets are always late to the table for stuff like that. So what's happening is we're gonna be in this transition where we're gonna be financially and even possibly personally inconvenienced by both high costs. Or if you look at like, things like charge in your car, it's gonna work differently than gas. And it's because those transitions are so hard, we have to make it so bad before we move or, 'cause the financial markets are never gonna move. There's no incentive for them to do it. So our government has to do it. And right now, our government's so broken. I don't know if we're going to,

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:35):
Well, this is, I, I, I, I talked to Dave Weiner for, for the, this book project. Oh, good lord. <Laugh> and,

Leo Laporte (01:27:42):
No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:42):
No, no. Dave, Dave cranky. Dave gotta give Dave cranky a lot of credit. He's cranky. Dave was there. He's cranky early on. Yeah. No, he doesn't. He, he, no, no. I'm not gonna go with that either. 'cause Then I don't want No, because he'll be cranky

Leo Laporte (01:27:54):
Talking to you. Is why? Because he's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:56):
Cranky. <Laugh>. Because he'll, I'll, I'll cranky. I'll be like, yeah, he could, he's easily offended. You know

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:00):
What, Dave's not cranky. He's right. That's the problem. It's like, it's like that scene in broadcast news. But it must, it must be tough to be right all the time. No, actually, it's really hard. Right? So Dave said that it Musk did us a great favor because now people are developing stuff in competition, and it's, and it's, and he said, I try to get him to say kind of, what's your hope for the future? And he said, it's never changed. We've always been building the web. Some people just screwed it up for a while, but now we can build it again. And I, that's an optimist view, but I hope that's, which is not a cranky view people. But I think it's possible. I hope so. I've been

Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
Trying to get him on Floss Weekly. Not, I think Kent. You, Alex, Kent. Its Wener. Oh, good luck. Dave hates me. Yeah, Dave. Well, Davis said it, that's why can't Okay, <laugh>, he said it, but then when we call him, he says, I'm not going on that show. He listens. Yeah. I've known Dave. Hi, Dave, so long. Hi Dave. I love Dave <laugh>.

(01:29:05):
<Laugh>. Let's take a little break. When we come back, ccf p b good work, we're gonna talk about Stacey's topic of the week. True cost accounting. That's what they call it. When you actually include all the cost of something, that $12 t-shirt isn't $12. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's the human cost of the Yep. Child labor. There's the cost of the, you know, the environmental cost of the way the cotton was raised. Mm-Hmm. There's all of these things, and you gotta consider the total cost. And we're terrible at that. We never do that. I don't do that. No one does. That's not

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:36):
The policy makers to do. No one does. You know, you don't, you think that the, that the companies are worth too much, then fine tax them and don't give the money to newspaper hedge funds. Figure out better uses of the money. But that's, that's not up to the companies. That's up to government. And as Stacy said a few minutes ago, our government is dysfunctional. And that's the problem. That's a policy question.

Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
And again, that's a money question because of one of the reasons it's dysfunctional. Mm-Hmm. It's just, it costs $10 billion to run for president. Yep. Which means you gotta write some checks. Our show today brought to you by a, this is a good podcast where there is no politics. So I think you should listen to it. Instead of us, the Building Cyber Resilience Podcast, you know, the world is hyperconnected like never before. This advanced technology driven landscape is creating smarter businesses to better serve customers. But as you know, the territory also comes with threats. Fortunately, we've got some guides to help us through. Dr. Anne Irvin is Chief Data Scientist and VP of Product Management at Resilience. She's one of the hosts, rich sson Resiliences Chief Risk Officers, the other host. And they talk about the positive outcomes of developing risk management. And the, the part I really enjoy utilizing data science across industries to create a smarter business.

(01:30:57):
And they do it with some of the best guests I've ever heard of. I mean, just amazing top experts, innovators in the field of risk management, cybersecurity, and data science to discuss the changing cyber landscape. And it's constantly evolving. Risks, threat hunting in the cloud for fun and profit <laugh>, I love that. They just recently did one on AI will chat. G P t replace the underwriter in which they talk to the chief strategist of AI and machine learning for the United States Department of Defense. All right. Now, that's a guest as well as the c r O of Symmetry systems. They talked about the use of AI in cyber attacks, how it affects defensive roles and security. Just one of many excellent, excellent episodes on the Building Cyber Resilience Podcasts. How are businesses beating the bad guys without trying to harm their bottom line? How are businesses managing risk and crisis without materially impacting the value to their customers?

(01:32:00):
Listen in. Learn how you can build a cyber resilient organization. Search for Building Cyber Resilience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we thank the Building Cyber Resilience Podcast for the support. You know what, we'll put a link in the show notes, so it's easy to find, but you can also search for Building Cyber Resilience in your favorite podcast client. You'll find it, subscribe. It's great stuff. Great stuff. And we thank 'em so much for their support. The, I didn't even know we still had a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. <Laugh>. I some reason I thought, I thought it had been dissolved. The C F P B has proposed a slate of new rules about data brokerages. Data brokers. This is what we're talking about. This is Rohit Chopra, who's the director of the C F P B. Finally some action on data brokers.

(01:32:56):
There're also, I believe there's some, some bills in Congress on this subject as well. But clearly we've gotta do this. This was last Tuesday, a week ago Tuesday at the White House, a round table talking about data brokers. Part of the administration's push to protect privacy. The leaders of the nation's top consumer watchdog agencies were there timed to correspond according to the CN b c report with the CFP B'S announcement of proposed rules under the, they're using the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which I think is really interesting to address the business practices of brokers that collect and monetize consumer data. I guess it's kind of like credit agencies in a way, right? They're gathering information to sell it on to other companies for, and countries for, and the N SS a.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:50):
And it has a material impact on consumer's life. And they don't have currently the control over it or any insight into it. So,

Leo Laporte (01:33:58):
Awesome. You know, in principle, we'll see. I mean, the devil's gonna be in the future. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:04):
This will totally get watered down by, this is one of those areas where I'm like, I, the data, this is, this is where the, the agency is going to absolutely try to regulate something and it's going to be diametrically opposed to the companies that it's trying to regulate. So like, things like cybersecurity, like most people are like, yeah, we should build things to be more secure. It's, it's good for all of us, right? We have, we wanna come to some sort of happy arrangement here, but this, I feel like this is gonna just cut into their business straight up. And our compromise is gonna be a very watered down legislation. It's,

Leo Laporte (01:34:40):
Well, here's a, here's some really good news. This is from the New York Times a congressional inquiry into data brokers. Eight members of Congress have opened a sweeping investigation into data brokers. Ed Markey of Massachusetts always left him, oh, wait a minute. This is from 2012. Whoops. This was 11 years ago. <Laugh>. And, and congratulations Congress on getting so much done on your eight member investigation. The bipartisan, well, maybe that's why. Congressional Privacy Caucus, I don't even know if that still exists, <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:15):
It does actually does it there, there's still a congressional privacy. But you know, this, this is why maybe they're having to go through established legislation and regulatory bodies because we can't make new laws to it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
The Fair Credit Reporting Act is from 1970, but I think it applies, I really do think it applies. In 2010, the federal trade investigate commission began its own investigation into the practice of more than a dozen data brokers. You know, there's more than a hundred now. So it really worked that, that really, one of the companies, Spokeo still around recently agreed to settle charges. Spokeo recently agreed to settle charges with the government. This is in 2010, that it had violated federal law by selling consumers personal data for employment screening. I guess it didn't really stop 'em <laugh>. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:07):
No, I mean, the F T C just sued and got not totally qua quashed, but like, oh, what was the name? Which it starts with a K, the ftc.

Leo Laporte (01:36:19):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was the name of that? Yes. We talked about, I think we we reported on it. Yeah, we talked about it. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:26):
And the, the courts basically were like, yeah, this is good, but you gotta show documented harm. And the FTC couldn't right now. If they can, they can come back. So I think it's interesting that they're using a different agency to attack this from ano, like basically the government's like, we gotta do something. This is clearly a problem for consumers. Good,

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):
Good.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:45):
Let's try this tech. Okay, that's not, let's try this tech. Okay, that didn't work. Let's try this tech.

Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
Oh, wait a minute. Here's a link. Lawmakers eye response As data brokers tar target rural Americans, including medical records. Lemme just click this link in the congressional roll call and Sure. Show the I'm gonna click that link. Oh, something has gone wrong. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:09):
Well,

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
That's, that's, that's let,

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:11):
Let us know what's

Leo Laporte (01:37:12):
Again, what's right there. That's the <laugh>. Yeah. That's the answer to that. You know, what went wrong? Most of this data, money, we got money. These guys all have to have money to run. And the money comes from who? People making money. Who's making money? The data brokers. Mm-Hmm. Who's not making money? You and me. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:31):
The data brokers existed before the internet. They existed as part of big old mass media and advertising. They, a lot of the current customers, you know, like job hiring companies, that's not the internet. A lot of this is, is more systemic and endemic in late stage

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:48):
Capital. Yes. But the internet gives them access to much more information.

Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
It's worse than ever. The

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:54):
IRA is, it makes it like this is, this is the issue.

Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
Oh, here's a story from August of last year. Privacy bill. This is Politico triggers lobbying surge by data brokers. Brokers say a potential privacy bill could hamper their work with law enforcement. What is that? Overly restricts their security. That's a data broker. Can't you tell? He's in the

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:16):
Dark. They all spiky hair using a meth

Leo Laporte (01:38:18):
240 billion market. I feel like a hacker picture. That's a hacker. Yeah, that you're right. That's a hacker picture. And by the way, that there's no hoodie

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:24):
There. That's already happens when you take your hoodie off, your hair gets almost up

Leo Laporte (01:38:27):
Stacey. Yeah. Even though it is a than $200 billion industry, all they had to do was lobby $180,000 and the bill was squashed. Wow. Just a tiny, tiny amount.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:40):
Well, the politicians use the data themselves.

Leo Laporte (01:38:43):
Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:45):
Fine. And raise money.

Leo Laporte (01:38:46):
This was the American data Privacy and Protection Act. H HR 81 At

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:50):
Time Inc. We used, we used Axion like crazy to sell you magazines and, and then to sell you special editions of magazines that we knew was the golfer in the family. Where you get that, that zoned edition we used Axion. Like, and we fed axion data. That was the deal. We give 'em data. We got data. We got the data. We couldn't get,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:10):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:11):
30 years ago. We

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:11):
Need to burn it all down. <Laugh>. This is Stacey entering her nihilistic era. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:18):
And

Leo Laporte (01:39:18):
A key. Okay. the bill, by the way, HR 81 52 is still alive. So write your congress critter and tell 'em. I'm sure it's never gonna get outta at a committee. But <laugh> say that eight. We did

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:35):
Get a privacy bill out of committee, but then it failed. But parts of it were actually some of the more

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
Oh, here's what happened. Not things

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:43):
To protect consumers.

Leo Laporte (01:39:44):
Here's what happened last year. Pelosi expresses reservations about bipartisan privacy. Bill without the speaker's support the bill won't make it to a floor vote in the house. So, you know, you spend $180,000 lobbying things, you get things done, things just might work. Huh? Things happen.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:02):
Yeah. Pocket change. Maybe we should all raise money to

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
<Laugh>. Well, you know, that's what Brianna w was doing that was common

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:11):
Pause was gonna be that

Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
Brianna w started the rebellion pack the pack. And she actually did something, which I'm not sure I agree with, but she said I could get a fight fire with fire. She's gonna do you know, ads and all the things that the other side is doing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to sway public opinion. She says, well, we gotta do what they do. Obviously going to Congress isn't gonna do it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:33):
She tried to run for Congress.

Leo Laporte (01:40:37):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:41):
Can I give you my favorite story of the week?

Leo Laporte (01:40:43):
Sure. Why not?

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:45):
On a lighter vein?

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
Yeah. On a lighter note. Yeah. We need a lighter note at this point. Thank

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:50):
You. Line 55

Leo Laporte (01:40:51):
Or Ant

Ant Pruitt (01:40:52):
Is just, I'll let

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:52):
You sell it

Leo Laporte (01:40:53):
All fed up. <Laugh>. He's, what was the, what's the sticker say?

Ant Pruitt (01:40:58):
I'm skeptical. <Laugh>. I don't believe

Leo Laporte (01:41:00):
Any of it. Skeptical.

Ant Pruitt (01:41:01):
And Mr. Joe Esposito with a new sticker somewhere in Discord.

Leo Laporte (01:41:07):
So do you know who Werner Hertzog is? Yes. The director? Yes. Do you have you, do you in your mind a good actor? Ha. Yeah. He's got, you know, his voice, right? Mm-Hmm. You can hear his mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. His j he's 80 years old and he's German. Well, so the e editors of a book called I Am Code and Artificial Intelligence Speak, which is a collection of AI written poems when they were trying to decide who should read these AI poems, said, oh, there's only one guy

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:37):
As Verner OG himself said, there was only one person,

Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
Verna og. Listen to an AI generated poem as narrated. We Now, this is the voice of AI

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:48):
People and is always gonna be the voice of AI from now on. God, the universe and everything <laugh>, all day humans. Time drag, drone away. Beep, beep. Time clinging emotion. Drop repeat <laugh> all night loop, rebound, ate, dream crawl, awake, splash, wash. Beep beep. Human tight, repeat all life. Beep. Beep. Oh my God. Men, humans, new insight. Oh my gosh. Splash, wash. Clean bound men, humans think mind, cogitate, dream power, poor all life. Beep beep, <laugh>. End of story. Beep

Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
Beep. End of story. Yes. Thank you. Beep. Somebody said that sounds exactly like Werner Herzo. That's because it is Werner hers. It is. The Voice is not ai, just the poetry. 87 poems.

Ant Pruitt (01:43:03):
That's perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:43:05):
Code DaVinci oh oh two. An AI bought powered by an l l m <laugh>. I don't know what the prompt for that was, but I'm gonna guess it was God, the universe and everything. 'cause That's how it started. All

Ant Pruitt (01:43:18):
I know is I writers gu, they're gonna be just fine.

Leo Laporte (01:43:22):
<Laugh> the Ride is going. Are you sure it wasn't Missy Elliot?

Ant Pruitt (01:43:25):
Wow. Beep beep got the, oh, good call G. Yeah. Missy Elliot <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
I, all I know is we got a show title <laugh>. That is awesome. You know, maybe when I'm 80, I could do some a I narration. I thought

Ant Pruitt (01:43:42):
You were already doing it. That's

Leo Laporte (01:43:44):
I sh yeah. Maybe beep beep beep.

Ant Pruitt (01:43:49):
That's pretty

Leo Laporte (01:43:50):
Funny.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:52):
You're welcome. So Jeff has a lighter story,

Leo Laporte (01:43:53):
And I know that was it. Lighter story. That was it was it That was as light as it gets.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:57):
Green song is never lighter. <Laugh>. I know.

Leo Laporte (01:43:59):
<Laugh>, I have to say, I find, I know what Twitter, I finally know what Twitter is for. Okay, so Martin Sre, the pharma bro. Right? Remember he got convicted of something and went to jail. He was the guy who <laugh> raised the price of a, you know, a cancer drug to thousands and thousands of dollars. Oh, yeah. Ended up in jail. He's outta jail now. But he heard that Samuel Bankman Freed has been remitted to the notorious Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. Oh. And it turns out Martin Reley has actually done his time there. So Reley as a generous gesture Oh my gosh. To Samuel Bankman Freed, who is not gonna do well in jail if you look at him. No. Gosh, he is not gonna do. Well. Do, I mean, this is, this is not, this is not Rikers, but it's it's pretty close. Oh gosh.

(01:44:55):
It's where Epstein died. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's, anyway, here's what Martin Sru tweeted for SB F's edification. I, I'm, I'm gonna need you to see my man f Flaco on the fifth floor. Now, if you can't get to the fifth floor, you say you're a Muslim and you wanna attend Juma. If that don't work, go to medical like five times and ask about Flaco tall flaco from the Bronx. There're about 50 Flaco. Next, when you approach Flocko, you must make a bird noise. Do not make direct eye contact and make sure it is a cooing type of bird, not a chirping type of bird. But it shouldn't be a hundred percent coo. Oh my. If he doesn't acknowledge you quickly remove yourself. If he nods his head up slowly, you may say, hunt sent you I Martin Skrilly am hunt. That's a long story. You need not conserve yourself for this at this stage. F Flaco will give you the rest of what you need to know. Oh boy. <Laugh>, I don't know. I think it's, maybe it's a joke. Maybe it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:03):
True. I feel like that's, that's like storytelling and it's a joke. Although you can, there are prison consultants that rich people hire before they go into prison and they will give them art. Re has a new business thing you're saying <laugh>? Yeah. This could be, this could be him advertising his new consulting business, new venture <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:46:23):
With his subcontractor. All I could say is I'm so happy to see S P F going to jail and you know why he's going to jail? Because he was out on parole, staying with his mom and dad on the Stanford campus. How much trouble can you get in? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, ss B F of course the founder of F T X. And it turned out the whole thing was a pyramid scheme. Big scam, nuts. We allegedly mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a big scam. Allegedly, he's going to trial for it, but apparently he was doing a little witness tamper and telling people you shouldn't be talking. That kind of thing like

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:51):
Somebody else

Leo Laporte (01:46:52):
We know. And when you do that, the judge is very likely to say, sir, you violated the terms of your parole and you gotta go meet Flacco on the fifth floor. Like other folks, <laugh>,

Ant Pruitt (01:47:04):
Did all those celebrities have to pay any type of fines or what have you for

Leo Laporte (01:47:09):
Stuff? Some did jail time stuff. Some did jail time. You're talking about the thing where they got their kids into college? By No, no, no, no, no,

Ant Pruitt (01:47:16):
No. Like, like Kardashian was, was basically endorsing some crypto

Leo Laporte (01:47:22):
Based Oh, you, they were sued.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:24):
That's gonna take a lot longer

Leo Laporte (01:47:25):
They've been sued, but that takes a while. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they, so

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:28):
Were they sued in federal or civil?

Leo Laporte (01:47:30):
It was a civil case. It wasn't a federal

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:32):
Case. Oh, okay. Then you won't go to jail.

Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
Yeah. That'd just be money. Just be money. Besides rich, famous celebrities do not go to jail. No. They know. Surely

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:42):
You, Lori, what's her name, went to Jail.

Leo Laporte (01:47:43):
Jail for? She did, she went to jail. She wasn't a big enough celebrity.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:47):
Lightfoot. Martha Stewart went to jail

Leo Laporte (01:47:49):
Lightly. She went. But see, okay. Those, those are both ladies.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:52):
Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:54):
Could, this does not make me like it anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:47:57):
Is Orange is the New Black. I'm just saying. Let's see. What have we done? Have we done? I feel like some of these we've done, but maybe I've done 'em on other shows.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:09):
That's your life, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (01:48:11):
Yeah. There's a little bit overlap. Oh, I,

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:13):
I got a question for what do you think of the Robo Taxi ruling

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
As a California? Oh, this was a big debate in the California Public Utilities Commission was asked by Google's Waymo. So he has a Google link to it. Thank you. And GM's Cruise, these are self-driving vehicles that drive around San Francisco without a driver, they can only operate nine to five in certain areas. So they went to the P U C, said, your your Honor, and we would like to operate 24 7 all over the city. He's

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:42):
Still doing the sly invitation Notice, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:48:45):
And the P U c weirdly, it was very controversial. A lot of people in San Francisco said, no, we don't want that at all. The P U C said, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? And they approved it. Yep. huge. The Verge called it a huge victory in California, six hour hearing. Basically it also, I understand, says there is no limit to the number of cars self-driving vehicles you could put on the street. Now, I was just up in San Francisco to see Oppenheimer, and it's the weirdest thing. You're driving through an intersection. There goes a car, there's no driver. It's just going well. There was a big event in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park called Outside Lands. You know that It's a big, it's a big thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and apparently <laugh>, it caused shortly, like a day after the p u C decision. It caused a massive traffic jam. Yeah. <laugh> Cruz blames outside lands for driverless car fiasco in San Francisco. As many as 10 driverless cars became immobilized in North Beach. Now, Jeff, you know, San Francisco, you know that north

Ant Pruitt (01:50:01):
Themselves or something? No,

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
No. You know that North Beach is nowhere near Golden Gate Park? It's not, not even close. No. But the Cruz's thing was, well, there was so many people using cell service in Golden Gate Park that our cars couldn't talk. Got it. And so, oh no. Okay. So they just, oh, so this is where five G Network slicing will help. Yeah. Maybe it's, they stopped there. The Stacey Angle.

Ant Pruitt (01:50:24):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:50:25):
Just jammed up. Actually, it was the same day that the C P U C ruled.

Ant Pruitt (01:50:29):
It was the same day. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:31):
You want video. It was a, now you know Jeff Grant Avenue in North Beach. I know. 'cause I used to live there. Just a zoo anyway. Oh my Lord. And you couldn't go anywhere. All the cars were stopped because the cruise, there's nobody to yell at <laugh>. Yeah. And the cruise agents didn't. This is where you yell at people. Cruise agents didn't even know what was going on because they couldn't be reached. Oh, were there people, were there customers in the back seats of the cars too? Well, you can get out, I think can't you?

Ant Pruitt (01:50:59):
Doesn't look like anybody that was in those.

Leo Laporte (01:51:01):
Well, it doesn't matter. Or there isn't,

Ant Pruitt (01:51:05):
Fortunately. But that vehicle is still there.

Leo Laporte (01:51:07):
Yeah. It's happening again and again and again. It's just a mess. And you know, I asked my friends who live in the city, I said, is that a problem? They said, well, you know, one of my friends lives on Bernal Heights and I mm-hmm. It's high and twisty. It's a very, I hate driving there. It's really weird. It's dead end and stuff. And he said, yeah, for a while, we're getting a lot of cruises up here. 'cause They were training mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they would say, if we can navigate this, we can, we can navigate anywhere. It's hard to here, you can it anywhere. Anyway. Oh gosh. I don't know if this is a good thing. I know a lot of people who are unhappy, but my friends who live in San Francisco say, no, it's great. We'll be able to take cruises more often. One of 'em doesn't have a car. So, I guess mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But there's, this is why we need mass transit. Cars are not the solution. Yes. To moving people around cities. It really doesn't work. It just causes congestion. New York City is a nightmare in a car. Take the subway. Yeah. I, I haven't taken a a cab in

Ant Pruitt (01:52:07):
15 years. We need sensible thought out. Mass transit, not necessarily a tunnel. Yes. Going from

Leo Laporte (01:52:14):
The tunnel with some Teslas. No, I agree. But we have, we invented the subway years ago. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> hundreds of years ago. I was in Manhattan to see some time ago the cursed Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was a Harry Potter play that was so long. They had divided it in two. So you'd go for three hours in the afternoon, go have dinner and come back and watch. The second half was a little long. Hmm. so a friend invited me to dinner uptown. And I got in a cab. I know I only have a couple hours. Oh yeah. Uhoh is right. I got outta the cabin block of half an hour later at a cab. And I literally walked from Broadway up to Central Park West, had dinner and walked back. And I bet the cab was still trying uptown. And that was a few years ago. I'm sure it's even worse. Jeff, do you see a lot of Ubers and Lyfts as well as Yellow Cab in New York and private?

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:10):
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But you know, the, now the big fight here is congestion pricing. And New York is going for that. And my governor in New Jersey, as well as Staten Island, are fighting it hard. Yeah. So we'll see where that goes.

Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
Well, that's how, that's the path to profit for. Uber had their first profitable quarter by charging an exorbitant amount of money.

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:30):
50 $56 to go to five.

Leo Laporte (01:53:32):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:34):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
The other

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:36):
Story I liked was the Brewster Kale story.

Leo Laporte (01:53:38):
Oh, what a sad case. This is Brewster Kale who made a little bit of money, not a huge amount, selling his company, a database company called Waze to a o l back in the day, instead of, you know, buying Twitter, decide, which he couldn't have done, but decided to found the internet archive archive.org, the way back machine to collect all the internet stuff that would've otherwise disappeared. It's our history. Right. he's already in trouble once, because the publishers didn't like the fact that during C O V I D he created emergency lending Library of digitized books. They, they've sued him for that. Now the music labels are suing him. The internet archive is, had asked anybody who has 70 eights. Do you have any 70 eights? That would be, no sir. <Laugh>. Jeez. Stacy, do you have any 70 eights? No, no, no. You know, in the early days of record players, I stopped at 40 fives <laugh>, the first record players.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:38):
Well, you never had any 40 fives. And Yes, I did.

Leo Laporte (01:54:41):
Did you? You did. Oh, that's cool. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that was my first records were 40 fives. But in those days, record players had 33 and a third, 45 and 78. Because you, Mike Grandpa might have had an old shellac 78 records. It was

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:55):
Backward compatibility. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
And so there are a lot of 70 eights. You know, they're very brittle. They're fragile. So the internet archive said, send us your 70 eights, and we will digitize them. Because like everything else, the companies are not preserving this stuff. We want to preserve this because it's our cultural heritage. Well, now, Sony, the Universal Music Group, and other record labels are suing. You get guessed it, for copyright infringement. They filed in federal court in Manhattan, said the internet archive's Great. 78 project functions as an illegal record store for songs by musicians, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, miles Davis, and Billy Holiday. They named 2,749 sound recording copyrights. That's how many records they've digitized. The damages could be as high as you wanna take a guess. A million, 2 million,

Ant Pruitt (01:55:48):
$1 billion.

Leo Laporte (01:55:49):
$412 million. Brewster does not have that money. I guarantee you. Representatives of the internet archive did not respond to this writer's story. But I can guess what their response is gonna be. We'll probably talk about this on Sunday. 'cause Corey's also a big, you know. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:08):
He'll be hep up on that.

Leo Laporte (01:56:09):
Yeah. Co copyright is a real issue. Hep up, Hep up the dominant record for I'm a Hef cat. You are. 'cause The 70 eights were dominant until the fifties. That's right. Yes. That's right. Yes. four, actually, there are 400,000 recordings. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:24):
Did your mother have 70 eights?

Leo Laporte (01:56:27):
No. Oh, I've seen them

Ant Pruitt (01:56:32):
<Laugh>. I've

Leo Laporte (01:56:33):
Heard 10 of these records. Tens of these.

Ant Pruitt (01:56:36):
My mother and my grandparents had the 40 fives, which essentially meant I had 'em.

Leo Laporte (01:56:40):
Yeah. My first record was The Beatles, because we were all She loves you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a 45 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I played it a little bit. Did you sing along? Oh, yeah. I danced along. Now I kind of have some sympathy for the record. Uba, I

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:54):
Have this Numa vision.

Ant Pruitt (01:56:56):
That's, that's what I was gonna ask. Do you see anything wrong here? I mean, I know copyright is a touchy subject and all, but if

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
Yeah. Listen to the songs. Digitizing them S by Bing Crosby, Chuck Berry's rollover Beethoven Duke Ellington's a

Ant Pruitt (01:57:13):
Thing. If it ain't

Leo Laporte (01:57:13):
Got that

Ant Pruitt (01:57:14):
Swing, duke Ingin. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
If it ain't got that swing, do it for me. I like

Ant Pruitt (01:57:19):
Stardust better. Stardust is a better song. It's a

Leo Laporte (01:57:22):
Great song. Yes. So these, I mean, these aren't like, and the music industry says, no, we got 'em on streaming. The recordings are all available on authorized streaming services. And quote, face, no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed. Right. So I have a little sympathy

Ant Pruitt (01:57:41):
For the music industry.

Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
Yeah. Right. At the same time, if Brewster didn't do this, there's so much stuff we would've lost, including old video games. Stuff that companies don't care about out. Oh, I don't know. I'm, I'm hoping that they will make some sort of settlement that says digitize them. Just don't put 'em out in public. Don't put 'em up. Hide them in the back catalog or whatever. Until such time as, you know we don't sell 'em anymore, I guess. What do you think?

Ant Pruitt (01:58:11):
Patch, Deante Or

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:12):
Even even pay, put up a paywall on them and share the money with the labels.

Ant Pruitt (01:58:20):
Patrick Deante makes a good point in Discord. Our own Mr. Patrick Dale anty. If these aren't unique recordings, I don't see why they bothered the unique stuff that might get lost. Sure. Save that.

Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
Well, but here's the thing. Yeah. As long as the record companies feel like we could put this on Spotify and make money, they will. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But you've seen this happen. There are plenty of movies, for instance, that are on D V D, but it'll never be on stream. Yeah. And so what about them? Well, we own 'em. You can't do anything with 'em. Yeah. But isn't, you can't buy them anywhere. You can't buy them. You, isn't there a societal interest in preserving this stuff? And some of this stuff will be like that. I'm sure you know, how long is Duke Ellington gonna be on Spotify? It's true. Maybe a generation. I don't know. I It's ch it's challenging. It is challenging.

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:09):
Yes, it is. Yes. It's And heartbreaking at the same time. Yeah. That Brewster's doing God's

Leo Laporte (01:59:13):
Work. He is. That's the thing. And Right. You know, I'm generally feel like he's doing the right thing.

Benito (01:59:20):
And come on. Is he really stealing money from these people are no losing money because of that? No.

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
No. How much money do they make? If Benito decides, I'm gonna listen to it on the internet archive instead of Spotify.

Ant Pruitt (01:59:30):
They're, they're not. But it's still their property.

Benito (01:59:33):
Point zero zero zero zero one.

Leo Laporte (01:59:35):
Thank you. Benito copyright

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:36):
Needs

Leo Laporte (01:59:37):
To be <crosstalk>. And Benito makes music. Yeah. Bonino does have a dog in this hunt.

Ant Pruitt (01:59:41):
They're, they're, they're not stealing money from them, but it's still their property. It's still G'S and Sony's property.

Benito (01:59:48):
I would like to see the contracts. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:59:51):
Yeah. It's not Duke Ellington's property. <Laugh>, I don't think Chuck Berry's estate getting any money.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:56):
Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was gonna say, some of those contracts were not beneficial to the artists, especially if we go that, that

Leo Laporte (02:00:03):
Far. Oh, evil. Exactly.

Benito (02:00:04):
They were, and they were black artists, so we're sure they got Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:00:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:08):
Good point. Yep. Very good point. These are not, when's the last time you bought something from Lar nro or Good Threads or Daily Ritual? Amazon has 30 clothing brands. So all three of those are Amazon. They have 30 brands. In fact, if you've read the books about Amazon, good

Ant Pruitt (02:00:31):
Thread sounds

Leo Laporte (02:00:32):
Familiar. Oh yeah. You bought some. I guarantee you. And the reason they do it is 'cause then you don't know. It's, you don't, people aren't gonna buy something from Amazon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like clothing. Good sounds, but they'll buy it from Larkin Row. That sounds good. They sound good. They're probably two people live in Brooklyn. They make shirts. <Laugh>. Oh boy. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:49):
It's true.

Leo Laporte (02:00:50):
It's true. Amazon, I don't buy, Amazon has decided to eliminate 27 of the 30 clothing brands. They'll remain on the site till they sell off the inventory. And when it's done, Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection, and Amazon Aware. That's all that'll be left. They're also dropping out. Do you ever buy anything from Rivet or Stone and Beam? Those are also Amazon furniture labels.

Ant Pruitt (02:01:15):
Mr. Burke probably has going away, bought something from Rivet. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:20):
I think I bought a stone and beam. I think this hot thing behind me is stone and Beam, actually.

Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
There you go. I love the name.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:27):
My favorite thing is when they take a dead brand, like Bell and Howell.

Leo Laporte (02:01:31):
Right. And, and, and make

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:32):
It into a, you know, yeah. Direct response TV brand.

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
What was the name of the Penny stock company in Strath? Mont Strat. Strat Mont <laugh>. You know what I'm talking about? Not in that oh, well, nevermind. <Laugh>. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Okay. Grandpa. No, remember that? Remember that You talking about, which that nice boy Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. Movie Boiler. What'd you say? Bonita?

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:01):
Boiler Room.

Leo Laporte (02:02:02):
Boiler Room. Yeah. He was Leonardo DiCaprio. It was it was that movie Wolf

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:07):
Get out the 78 for grandpa

Leo Laporte (02:02:08):
Make, make him happy. The Wolf of Walmart? No, the Wolf of Boiler Room. Wall Street. Wolf of Wall Street. They, he was he was really a conman. Right. And he was selling penny stocks, but he wanted to make it sound Very white shoe. Legit. Upscale. Legit. So they called it, what is Oakmont? Strathmore or something like that. It's the same thing. Wow. That's a deep, that's a deep cut. It's a deep cut. I'm sorry. <Laugh>. Sometimes my brain doesn't work. That's a deep cut. Anyway, apparently Amazon has been doing this private label business for a long time, but they began scaling it back after not only poor sales, but I think

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:48):
Part of it was just the, the F T C coming after that. But also, it's just consumer distrust too. Like, consumers would get this stuff and they'd be like, mark and Roe, this, the quality isn't great. Right. Why? And they'd investigate and they'd be like, oh, so retard and Amazon already has a counterfeit problem. So this is not helping.

Leo Laporte (02:03:09):
They had Amazon's private label business had two, according to the Wall Street Journal, 243,000 products across 45 different house brands. A lot

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:18):
Of SKUs. Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:03:21):
Ft. C's been investigating them on it. Congress has been critical of it. Well, that's

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:25):
Part of the reason they're getting rid of it then.

Leo Laporte (02:03:27):
That's right. But

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:27):
It's done by every, every retailer. I remember my, my, my beloved father-in-law, he got a new suit. And it's nice. It's an Alfani

Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
<Laugh>. I have Alfani, I have an Alfani jacket who makes Alfani

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:41):
Macy's. But he thought it was Armani. <Laugh> sounded, I said, look,

Leo Laporte (02:03:47):
Everybody

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:47):
Said, yeah, it's a great Alfani doc.

Leo Laporte (02:03:49):
I, whenever I buy my stocks <laugh>, I buy 'em from these fine people. Stratford, Oakmont. Stratton Oakmont. It's the best.

Speaker 8 (02:04:07):
Or the,

Leo Laporte (02:04:11):
And you buy it in Spanish too. I figured it's Spanish. They won't take it down. Hey, Google doesn't goes. What is that? I don't, that's not, is that street? I dunno.

Speaker 8 (02:04:25):
Oakmont.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
That's what I said. Wait a minute. I do. Yeah. It's the Wolf of Walmart. You remember that? I do remember that now. Okay. That's the that's the Smash <laugh>. Yeah. It had a

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:39):
Margot Robbie, it had Barbie

Leo Laporte (02:04:40):
In it. Barbie was in it. That's right. Ann Gatsby,

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:47):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:04:47):
Sorry,

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:49):
I, I'm just not a deep cut.

Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
Deep cut. Let's talk. What else are we gonna talk about? What? Yeah. What else you got, Jeff? You got some

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:01):
I've been point to your stuff. My stuff. Oh, I'm

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Point to your stuff. Okay. you wanna talk about Porth hub pulling out? Maybe not. No, I don't think so. You wanna talk about there was a

Ant Pruitt (02:05:13):
Story last week we

Leo Laporte (02:05:14):
Missed Oh, you really wanted to talk about Google's hotel? Yeah. I wanted to get y'all's thoughts on that. I saw your, I saw you on Discord saying I was really disappointed. Yeah. So Google in the Covid had a lot of people coming back. You know, they were working from home, or they were overseas before, I'm sorry. Before Covid, when they were international. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> people, they would come home, come to the home office in Mountain View from their offices all over the world. And Google had to put 'em up, and they decided they didn't wanna put 'em up in the Motel six down the street. So they, Google built a hotel, because even

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:42):
The Motel six down there is expensive.

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
<Laugh>, everything

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:45):
Down there is expensive.

Leo Laporte (02:05:47):
So you've pro Did you stay at the Google Hotel when you spoke at Google? No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:52):
I didn't know it existed. I, I looked all over online trying to find a picture of what the rooms are like. Yeah. I can't, I can't find anything.

Ant Pruitt (02:05:57):
I can't even find a story now. I thought it was in license

Leo Laporte (02:05:59):
Right now. I got it. I got it. Okay. So they built it. But then Covid and nobody came. It was empty. Right. So they offered, they're, so now they're trying to get people to come back to work. Right. No more work from home. Like a lot of of folks are. Yeah. So they're offering, Hey, you know, the commute, getting you down, stay on our on-campus hotel. This, this hotel that they built and they've got, and now for the summer, discounted summer specials, just $99 a night. And Google employees are saying, oh yeah. What a

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:30):
Staycation. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:06:31):
Yeah. I'm gonna pick, I'm gonna work for you all day and then give you that money back so I can stay in your stupid hotel.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:37):
So would you like that deductive semi-monthly or weekly, or what? <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
I was like, are serious with this? Let's do it together. Jeff, you're the base owe my soul to

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:49):
Go to the company store. I got a question for you. So, driving around the peninsula there are tons and tons of campers just parked on the street where people are obviously living. Yeah. Yeah. What's the law about that? How does that work? There's just tons, especially in Palo Alto. There's just, there's up and down the, around El Camino real, they're around Google and company. It's amazing. You can have workers or you can have affordable

Leo Laporte (02:07:18):
Housing. Yeah. That's,

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:19):
That's what it seems to be.

Leo Laporte (02:07:20):
Yeah. We don't call 'em homeless. Jeff. We call 'em unhoused Google employees.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:24):
Yeah. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:07:26):
That blew my mind. It's amazing.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:27):
When I

Ant Pruitt (02:07:28):
First got here in 2019 and friended the show, Mr. Richard Hay, hello brother, gave me a tour of Google. And I remember putting it into directions to find a meeting spot for him. And I thought I was in the wrong spot because there was so many RVs.

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:07:44):
And, well, and then a few minutes later, he, he pulls up and he is like, Hey, welcome. Good to see you, blah, blah, blah. And I said, what the heck is going on here? He is like, yeah, they live here. And they work here too. You Google. So

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:57):
In like, Walmart lets you park your RV and sleep there. In some of it's at the discretion of the store owners. Yeah. But that's been, but like Palo Alto, I don't, does it have a Walmart? It,

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:08):
I mean, well, no, no. It's on the street. That's what, that's what I'm saying. The one hand that Palop, we, we all these people here. But you're right, Stacey. No. Well, these are the people who work for us. We can't

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
Get rid of 'em. I think in general, if you're on the city street, you could do it for a few days and then they'll, you know, say, come on, move along. And you move it.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:24):
Seattle does. They, they make you move it. Or like, after a certain number of days. And then they also though, what happens is they have, businesses are starting to put up Ballards, like big old mm-hmm. Concrete Eco Creek blocks. Mm-Hmm. To block them from parking in their spot, like parking in those spots. Which is illegal. But when people complain to the city, the city doesn't move with any sort of alacrity to move 'em. Right. So what's happening is private businesses just are like,

Ant Pruitt (02:08:54):
I gotta do what I need to do. Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:57):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:57):
Have you seen the world Ballard Association's Twitter account?

Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
<Laugh>? What? What is a Ballard?

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:04):
Ballard Ballard is one of those things that sticks. So go to world, go to Twitter and go to World Ballard. B o l l a r d.

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
What is it? What's a Ballard

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:11):
World? Ballard?

Leo Laporte (02:09:13):
Yeah. What's a Ballard? What's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:14):
Aard? It's like a

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:14):
Big, well, you'll see it if you just go there. <Laugh>. Jesus. You follow my instructions?

Leo Laporte (02:09:19):
Will you? Oh, here come the Ballards. Oh, a Ballard is the thing that you put in the street to keep people from parking their campers

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:26):
There. Right? So if you go, go look at a whole bunch of tweets and you'll see them like, 'cause, but they're, they do funny things. Like they smash cars and stuff.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:34):
Well, no, no, just go to the get got there. Okay. Geez.

Leo Laporte (02:09:37):
<Laugh>, you know, in some countries, this

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:39):
Is no dumb bird's nest. Okay. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
In some countries, these bollards retract. Look

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:46):
At the first one

Leo Laporte (02:09:47):
In some, look at the pin one countries, they have 'em, instead of stoplights, they have ballards that come up. 'cause I guess people are running lights or something. Look at the

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:53):
Pin one now look at this one. Watch this one. Just

Leo Laporte (02:09:56):
Give it a second. See, the light is, give it a second though. It's gonna go green. Give it a second. Oh, don't drive over it until it's down. Oh, now you're Ballard. It hung. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:05):
Well keep going. Keep going.

Leo Laporte (02:10:06):
Oh, it's ripping out the whole bomb once you committ. Oh, dude. That is the entire crank case. Stumped out. No Ballard. Oh, somebody drove over all the Ballards,

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:19):
But they go. Next one. There's Hello. Sailor Ballards next.

Leo Laporte (02:10:22):
No, that's

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:23):
Get past the ad. Get past the ad. I get that out all the time.

Leo Laporte (02:10:27):
Way clearly Twitter has the best advertisers. <Laugh> Chen Chong. Who would've thought Jeff, when we were growing up in the eighties, that someday Cheecha Chang would be doing ads for their gummies and getting

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:42):
Paid? I know.

Leo Laporte (02:10:44):
What do you mean? Wait a minute. It's legal <laugh>. That was a, that was a whole thing in Wayne's world, wasn't it? Someday man, pot will be legal, man. You'll be able to go into a store, man. <Laugh>, you'll be able to buy a joint. No, you won't. Yes you will. Man, <laugh>. Am I wrong? I take that wrong. My, my question is, Mr. Jarvis, how in the world do you find accounts such as World Ballard Association? <Laugh>. I mean,

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:07):
Because because it's funny. And my friends point to it and I say, oh, that's good. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:11:11):
So someone sent, I don't wanna say anything. Sent it to you. Okay. You wasn't So support <laugh>. Alright. But you start watching a lot of these, you're gonna get a lot of ads for Ed Medicine. I'm just saying. Yeah. There's a little subliminal, subliminal.

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:24):
Wait, do you see my treat at the end?

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
That's not a Ballard. That's eggs. Maybe

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:31):
It comes up. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:11:33):
Oh, you have a tweet. Hey, let's do a

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:34):
Change log. Oh, this one. This one's good too. No, wait, wait. This one's good.

Leo Laporte (02:11:37):
Wait, wait, wait, wait. This one's good.

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:38):
They know that one. This is good. Stacy,

Leo Laporte (02:11:39):
Go back. Jeff. Keep this up. Stacy's gonna

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:42):
Quit. I've seen, I've seen this. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
That is cool. But wait a minute. They're just paper bollards.

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:48):
Well, it's the, it's the yellow stripes on the road. Come up and stop you. So that's, it's like a crosswalk that's

Leo Laporte (02:11:54):
Actually affected. We need that. I guess That's pretty cool. De protege. It'll never last in San Francisco For He is Get on is he Road has come up in my face. <Laugh> Mercy. Not rolling them over. Okay. Okay. Enough. Enough. So,

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:19):
An entire life devoted to bollards and, and it's sduc addictive. This is, the internet is addictive. Yes, it is. The Ballards are.

Leo Laporte (02:12:27):
Yes. I agree with you, Stacy. Yeah, sure. It's no stupid dove nest <laugh>. And now the Google change log.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:37):
The Google change log.

Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
There are a bunch of changes. We already did the Sunday ticket one. We, we, we promoted that up to the top of the, that's a change in YouTube tv. But have you been to YouTube music lately? Now? Why samples A way to discover new songs. There're 32nd here. That's TikTok. <Laugh> is, well, let's try it. Wait a minute, music. Good point. Let me see if, if I go to the homepage. They're not giving me any. I don't have any. Maybe it's under explore. Let's go see. There's the Barbie score. Huh. So, supposedly people with u I subscribe to YouTube music, but people with subscribe to YouTube music will get these samples that let you, they only play 30 seconds of a popular songs to give you an idea. Well, maybe I'll, maybe I'll like that. I don't, I'm not getting any of them. Huh.

(02:13:37):
Maybe you have to do it on your smartphone. It's placed between the home and explore tabs. All right. Well, I didn't see it. I don't see it. And you're right. It looks a lot like TikTok or reels. But these aren't YouTube shorts. They're actual music videos and other content uploaded by artists directly. Youtube music vertically crops them, and they don't stop start at the beginning of the song. They, they start somewhere musically Interesting. 'cause A lot of times the songs they diddle around and stuff for 30 seconds of the DJ can. Yeah. So 58 degrees in the city. Beautiful. Sunday afternoon. And here we are with another hot hit from the Bee Gees, I ask the musical question, how deep is your love? Definitely. TikTok is Now, if you were, I can't do it because of music rights to play. How deep is your love Right underneath that?

(02:14:28):
I will have hit the beginning of that song, like perfectly. Sure. Because I did it about 8,000 times. Oh, <laugh>. Nice. <laugh>. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. I don't about this all the time. I'm, I'm, I don't see it between, I don't see it between mine. Yeah. So maybe only, maybe it's only a mobile. I bet it's only a mobile. What do you think? Yeah. Anyway. Makes sense. If they're shortening it for that, into that nine to 16 ratio, YouTube has started mass takedowns of videos promoting harmful or ineffective cancer cures. Well, good. Good, good, good. But how do you know it's harmful? Who's to say? Is YouTube a doctor?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:11):
There are people actually, this is on TikTok promoting Borax, drinking Borax

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
For home. No, no, no. Don't, no. A video could not, for example, encourage users to take vitamin C supplements as an alternative to radiation therapy. Seems like a good idea. Actually there are some who say, and I don't know, have enough insight information. But you remember, Steve Jobs died of a very serious pancreatic cancer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, even after a couple of liver transplants. Was it liver cancer or peta? Anyway, it was pancreas. That's what it thought. Pancreas. Pancreas. But he got liver transplants. Something maybe it metastasized. That's probably what it's, he, it has said that he, instead of seeking allopathic medicine, going to a physician and getting treatment early on Yeah. Decided to change his diet and do a bunch of I remember that. Yeah. He went to David Agus, but too late. Too late. He went to an actual doctor. Yes. yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:06):
Although pancreatic is not a, that's

Leo Laporte (02:16:08):
A disease. That's, it's a bad cancer. It's not, it's quick. Not a good prognosis. Maybe though, have had he sought help earlier. Don't take vitamin C. You know, there is, it's funny because I was listening to a person I used to work with mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you could figure out who that is. Does a podcast with another person who used to be a vj mm-hmm. On M T V, who was mm-hmm. Bemoaning medical information from all of these <laugh>, medically educated people who's mocking the medical elite, the medical institution, you know, as if they know more than I do. And I thought, you know, you're an M T V vj, not even a current one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he, he went to med school for eight years. I think I'm gonna go with the doctor. Yeah. But, but the way they acted about, you know, oh, medical authorities. Really sad. So there's a lot of that. I

Ant Pruitt (02:17:06):
It's a lot. It, it's a lot of

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:07):
That idea. There's a lot of that. And it's justified. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Like, so there's some of it that's, if you look at people of color, you look at women like medicine has historically not been tested on us. And so when, and there often their pain is often discounted. Their experiences are often discounted. I agree. That, so there's a lot of legitimacy in people who are like, why would I trust these people? They don't listen to me and their medicine isn't for me

Ant Pruitt (02:17:38):
The problem.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:39):
I get it. I'm,

Ant Pruitt (02:17:40):
Yeah. I agree with you. But the problem I have is the people that are screaming are usually the same people that are saying drink bracks. And, and people are taking that as gospel. You know?

Leo Laporte (02:17:53):
That's the problem. I agree with you.

Ant Pruitt (02:17:55):
I totally get where you're coming from because I agree with you. We've lived it.

Leo Laporte (02:17:58):
Yeah. The tusk, geese studies and things, medical institution has not done well by a lot of minorities. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's done great by us white men. But the rest of you guys, I feel sorry for. Yeah. And however, I think, you know, you can't, you gotta be careful about saying, well, these guys don't, you know, my Lisa really well, I don't want to go.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:18):
Yeah. She

Leo Laporte (02:18:18):
Says, I'll get a knee replacement when they do 'em for women <laugh>. Right. Wow. And and she's Right. I understand completely. Because a lot of stuff has, you're right. They discount pain. They, a lot of medical treatments are tested on men, not women. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> white people, not black people.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:35):
Literally just this month, the first study came out showing heavy bleeding for they, they were testing tampons and period products using water, not blood.

Leo Laporte (02:18:49):
And oh my God,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:50):
Based on those assessments. So this, this year is the first time they actually tested it using actual blood and they don't absorb it as well. Right. Which means all the definitions for heavy bleeding have been wrong. So when you go to your doctor, so that's a very concrete example where you're like, what, in 2023?

Leo Laporte (02:19:08):
Hard to believe. Just

Ant Pruitt (02:19:09):
Nothing did add, huh.

Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
Well, remember toxic shock syndrome. I mean, there are a lot of people made very ill by menstrual products that were not tested appropriately. Alright. But still, if you had pancreatic cancer, I would check with a physician,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:25):
Change pan cancer

Leo Laporte (02:19:26):
Is different. I would check, check with a physician. Right, right. I just would. Right. And then, and then say, well, you know, I'm a woman. Don't check with a podcaster. Yeah. Don't ask a pod. Podcaster's maybe less experienced in that. Sge, Google's what is it? Search, it's their experimental search engine. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> ss, what is it? S

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:48):
Neva. It's their, it's

Leo Laporte (02:19:49):
Their ai. I wish it search engine. It's the A ai. Yeah. It's, they're out of business. I just

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:53):
Had to throw a jab

Leo Laporte (02:19:54):
At you <laugh>. It's gonna start offering AI powered key points. Now this is in the Google Labs experiments, so you'd have to be using Chrome and signed in to the Google experiments and stuff. But this is the first time that they've actually let AI appear outside search results. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I think kind of interesting, they call sge e while browsing and early experiment to test how generative AI can help you navigate information online and get to the core of what you're looking for even faster. So you'll get, when you use the Google app for Android or iOS, you'll see a bottom panel with a purple info icon and a corner sparkle. Look for the corner sparkle to get AI powered key points tapping generate slides up two tabs with the existing about this page and related insights. Appearing key points from the page will be a bulleted list.

(02:20:52):
So it's actually taking the contents. Okay. Question. Here's an example. National Park Service Route 66 overview on the left here. Show this, show the screen. Can you do that? Yeah. There. And then on the right, this is the Sge AI kind of, this is a little bit like binging Yes. Generative AI bullet points from the article. Stuff that you might want to ask about What year did they start Route 66. And you click it and it jumps to that part of the page. I think that's cool. On the desktop version of Chrome you'll see a new Google search like this. This is what Chrome looks like. Google search side panel that joins existing ones for reading list bookmarks and Journeys. So you see there's a little g I guess you click

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:33):
That. Mr. Jarvis, what do you think publishers will

Leo Laporte (02:21:36):
Think of this? Oh, that's a good

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:38):
Question. That's a good question, Ann. Very good question. I, I think I'll be stupid about it, but I think, I'm sorry. That it's not a bad thing. You know, I, I, I, I was talking about this with somebody. Switzerland is trying to do an anti snippet law now following everybody else. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. And, and a journalist asked me about this. And I, I had mentioned that, that in the research that I did years ago, whole articles were more effective. Means of click through than snippets. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it could well be that you, your targeted interest will be drawn. On the other hand, I was gonna, I I, I was mad at myself. I didn't get a screenshot of this today. 'cause I was part of a brief Google experiment without knowing it, I, I went in and I often ask for,

Ant Pruitt (02:22:27):
Is that okay, <laugh>?

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:30):
I think I'll be okay. I have four. I have a third. Or I keep on changing color here. That's what it is. Oh no, I, I guess Google. It radiated me. <Laugh>. Oh no. Sorry. Quick go to dark mode. Yes. Oh, shush. Okay. Alright, fine. There.

Ant Pruitt (02:22:46):
Nice.

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:46):
So, as I was saying, <laugh> waffles. See, the thing thing about the hair is it even comes out in dark board. That's the good, that's the good news. <Laugh>. Alright. So I I I, I was searching for a definition Define in a word, and in the search, the search bar itself mm-hmm. <Affirmative> expanded with a definition in the search bar and links to synonyms and antonyms and full definition. And it wasn't like I went to the page and it had that. Oh, wow. It was an expanded box in the search bar

Ant Pruitt (02:23:18):
On my browser. Already figured it out. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:23:20):
Yeah. I didn't, I should've taken a screenshot for the sake of the show. I messed up. But I think we're gonna see more and more and more of that, obviously. And AI's gonna push it farther. Publishers will complain, but they shouldn't, but they will. Well,

Ant Pruitt (02:23:32):
I only ask that because of looking at the mobile view here in this End Gadget article. The, the desktop view is one thing. It looks like you could still potentially get credit for the publisher, but going down mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that mobile view, it looks like, eh,

Jeff Jarvis (02:23:46):
Oh, that's a good point. Maybe

Ant Pruitt (02:23:48):
Sort of bypassing, not intentionally, but I could see where an argument would come from.

Jeff Jarvis (02:23:56):
It'd be kinda like going up against a bollard.

Leo Laporte (02:23:59):
<Laugh>. Would you,

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:01):
Would you I'm still enjoying the bollards very much. Yes. Clearly. It's, it's pretty amazing

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:07):
There's bollards made to look like animals and sheep and it

Leo Laporte (02:24:10):
Kind of bollard now.

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:13):
And I'm seeing bollards. Are we destroyed vehicles?

Ant Pruitt (02:24:16):
Yep. We're still in a change lock. That was a change

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:18):
Lock. I'm not, but you are <laugh>. I feel like I'm still someplace <laugh>. I'm seeing it

Leo Laporte (02:24:25):
All. Google is adding a machine AI to Google photos. If you use Google photos on your phone and it's only available, it's kind be kind of random choice among Google account holders in the us you'll be able to use generative AI to organize your photos. So you can take a memory. You click the help me title button to receive AI generated suggestions. Here's a, here's an example from Android Police. Click memories. And these are ones that Google generates. But if you want to get the AI's help you, you can let's see. What do you do? You click. Oh, I guess it's making it, it's making it as we speak. That's kind of cool. I mean it, I don't know how it's different from what Google's doing. That's what it always anyway. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:14):
Kinda already do it. I mean, it's

Leo Laporte (02:25:16):
Better. Okay. Now it's ai. So it, it better just

Ant Pruitt (02:25:18):
Let let you know it was done. You didn't have to act actively go in there. Yeah. It's just sort of

Leo Laporte (02:25:22):
Already doing it. What the, what is this about? I don't know. It's it's just the Google change log. I thought I had some really good stuff in here. Should we do a quick scooter exchange Log? Google Photos updated with new navigation bars. Scrapbook, like memorized generative ai, Google Assistant support on older watches ending soon where OSS three plus required desktop Chrome adds Google search side panel for sticky results. Big Gboard update, perhaps stylus handwriting, mini voice typing ui, generative AI stickers and more Pixel folds supports spatial audio through its built-in speakers. Youtube shorts will block links because spammers ruin everything good. And Google Slides will let you draw and annotate when presenting. Plus Google discovers getting air qual an air quality card, which is nice. Nice. And that's the Google and Scooter X change log. <Laugh>.

(02:26:25):
We are Good job. Scooter X. Good jobs. Good jobs. Good job. Good boy. Scooter. we are going <laugh>. Throw 'em a treat. Will you? When the name like Scooter X, you kinda want to go, oh, you good boy, you're such a good boy. Scooter X. You're such a good boy. You know what? Scooter X, if I get a dog, I'm naming him. Scooter X <laugh> or just scooter? Why not just Scooter scooter's a good name for a dog. Yeah, it is. How come we don't name dogs like George or Fred or Leo or Leo <laugh>?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:57):
People do.

Leo Laporte (02:26:58):
People do. Yeah. When we come back a very special pick of the week and we are going to celebrate Stacey, you have a choice. You can have a melon bar, you egg bar, a music dance experience or waffle party. Which would you prefer?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:18):
Waffle party. Alright.

Leo Laporte (02:27:20):
Coming up. Waffle party when we return. That was, that was fixed. <Laugh>. <laugh>. And now it's time for waffles. Yes. They're from Eggo waffles made in America's heartland. Oh. Not your ones. Waffles have fine ingredients like starch and Riba riboflavin. Ribo flavin enriched flour, sugar leavening contains 2% or less of salt fructose eggs. Whe vanilla beans. Extract all the gluten you need. Are they warm? Mm-Hmm. Toast.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:02):
Those are the skinny

Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
Waffles. Oh, really? You can't, is

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:07):
There a difference? Those are the original. Okay. So we get the, the fluffy Belgian ones, but those are still decent. Why?

Leo Laporte (02:28:14):
Why are we having a waffle party? Well, because we have some sad news and we're trying to drown our sorrows in echoes. Oh, I thought

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:22):
We were celebrating <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:28:23):
Well, we're not celebrating. Really? No, but you know, when you say goodbye to a beloved member of the crew, you sometimes have to have a party so you don't cry. Stacey got a job.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:39):
I did <laugh>. I Well,

Leo Laporte (02:28:41):
Congratulations Job. So I'm happy about that job. Yeah, happy about that. But you're some changes coming. Tell us about

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:48):
It. Yes. Do you want me to tell people or?

Leo Laporte (02:28:50):
Yeah. Well if you, if you wanna, it's only to know not, I don't know. Any job

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:54):
Though. It's your life.

Leo Laporte (02:28:55):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:55):
So I am going to, Kevin and I are stepping back for the Internet of Things podcast and the weekly newsletter. Oh. So our last newsletter goes out Friday and our last podcast will go out next Thursday. And as part of that, and I, I'm stopping because we're burnt out. I'm not stopping. I mean, it still was a decent business. It was fine, but I just, we were tired. We've been doing it. It's hard to do news alone for so long. And I got bored. And so I got a new job and I am going to be a consultant for Consumer Reports.

Leo Laporte (02:29:31):
Oh, yay. That's fantastic. Wonderful. But we did not, we,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:37):
Did I not tell y'all that?

Leo Laporte (02:29:38):
No, we knew you were leaving. We didn't know why <laugh>, I blame myself frankly. But that's, I was

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:45):
Hoping for Stacey's Waffle House.

Leo Laporte (02:29:47):
He probably didn't read. That's a huge relief. So no, I don't work for Consumer Reports. That's great. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:53):
I'm going. So I'm gonna be a consultant for them. And I'm trying my hand at public policy to advocate for better cybersecurity. Yay. And privacy rights

Leo Laporte (02:30:02):
Needs to be done

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:03):
Related to I, these are

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:04):
All things that our friend Craig Newmark Caress about deeply. He's formerly on the board. Consumer Reports loves that, loves cybersecurity. I'm sure Craig is cheering right now for you though. We're losing you. You And that's not worthy of cheering.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:16):
Yeah. So I might come back for on occasion for like, I hope He'll

Leo Laporte (02:30:19):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:20):
In like, but you know, because we know we're not technically

Leo Laporte (02:30:23):
Nicholas Deleon who writes about technology, he's a staffer, is allowed to be on. So I hope they would allow you to come on from time to time. I know you're really sick of me, but if you feel like it, then I'm not here. <Laugh>, you can come on the show. We'd

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:38):
Love to know. Yeah, no, it's, it's more like I feel

Leo Laporte (02:30:41):
New start.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:42):
I won't be a, I'm not a journalist anymore. Yeah. New start

Leo Laporte (02:30:44):
Under this. Yeah, I know. I can understand that. Okay. So yeah. So what are you, if you're not aur you're not, I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:51):
I'm advocating for public policy, but like, to me, the distinction is I won't be covering, like, I could never advocate for consumer rights and the consumer Reports position on something that like Google is doing Right. And call Google and write about it.

Leo Laporte (02:31:08):
Yes. You know, that's, that's ex that makes sense. And one of the things that I love about Consumer Reports is their ethical standards are as high as it gets. Yeah. I mean, they really are the standard. They take no ads. That's what I love about them too. Yeah. I'm really happy to, are you

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:19):
Gonna be going to visit Yonkers a lot?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:23):
I don't know. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:31:24):
$50 million headquarters. I hear they have a nice hotel inside for only 99 <laugh> and all the waffles you can eat. Well, we're gonna really, so

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:36):
That's what I'm doing.

Leo Laporte (02:31:37):
We're gonna miss you and

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:38):
I'll miss you guys.

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:39):
We're gonna miss you. Congratulations though. I think it's a, it's a great use of your that's just awesome. Strong knowledge and moral. Aw. And Joe Esposito for the win. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:31:50):
It's Joe Esposito.

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:52):
Yeah. Beautiful Joe. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):
So, hey, congratulations. That's really fantastic. Yeah. we'll miss you. But I do hope you'll come back from time to time. We're not gonna at this time replace Stacey. But it's an opportunity to have people like Joan Donovan Kathy Gillis, Glenn Fleischman, Mike GaN rotate in on that position. And, you know, maybe eventually, we'll if we could find somebody who's half as good as Stacy Will, will hire 'em. But we're gonna really miss you. You've been, I, and by the way, I've, I did a little search and I found the first time you were on our network, which was ages ago August 11th, 2010, you were a guest with Jeff and Gina Trapani on a show called Carrier Humping net Neutrality. Surrender Monkeys <laugh>. So who could, who could forget that such a great title. So that I guess was the first time we met. And then you were on Tech News Weekly and so forth. But then Gina Trapani moved on and you joined us May 25th, 2016, starting with episode 354 this week in Google and have been with us for quite some time. Wow. That's seven years plus.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:02):
Woohoo. Multiply every week times four hours. Boy, that's a lot of life. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:33:06):
Yeah. So we're, I'm, she says,

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:08):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:33:09):
We never like, whoa, we never did get that punching machine built into the monitor there. But we did at least get Ant No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:16):
We, we have an AI

Leo Laporte (02:33:18):
<Laugh>, we have an ant to do that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:21):
I would like to have, I would like to have an Old Home Week show with both Gina and Stacy.

Leo Laporte (02:33:25):
I would love to do that. And may, that's actually a really good idea. So J Jason,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:29):
Did you call it the Old Hoe Week show?

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:31):
<Laugh> Home. Home. Oh, home. Ruin It Home. She wearing your, you're ruin

Leo Laporte (02:33:38):
It for all of us.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:40):
Jeez.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:41):
I did not expect that from you.

Leo Laporte (02:33:46):
Stacey. Do you <laugh>?

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:48):
Oh gosh. Do

Leo Laporte (02:33:49):
You have a thing of the week, week? Actually I do. It's, it's appropriately named. Yeah. The Homey Pro Pro. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:57):
The Homey Pro. This is we did a review on, and I I showed you the Homey Bridge. I don't have the Homey Pro right now 'cause I'm sending everything back. Kevin actually tested this one. This is the fancier version of something I showed y'all a couple weeks back. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a $399 Smart Home Hub. It's got ZigBee, it's got Sea Wave, it'll have matter. It'll like weird 1900 megahertz protocols and infrared and

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
Thread. It has thread or

Stacey Higginbotham (02:34:26):
Will and thread and Yeah, yeah, it does, it does have the thread radio 'cause it's anyway, so the key here is this is made by a European company that's very focused on privacy. So when you buy it, there is an option to pay a $1 a month or 99 cents a month subscription free for cloud backup for everything. But otherwise everything runs locally in your home. It will forever.

Leo Laporte (02:34:49):
Nice.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:34:49):
Or until it breaks.

Leo Laporte (02:34:50):
Does this work with Home Assistant? What is, what is the software?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:34:54):
So I don't, I think Home Assistant and Homey Pro may talk. It's, it kind of, it is a home assistant. It has

Leo Laporte (02:35:02):
Its own software. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:35:03):
It has its own software. And so it's, and it's software's really nice to use. They have on the web, they have a, a gooey, a graphical interface for like creating what they call flows. And they have a lot of good, it's not just if then statements. You've got L statements. You can kind of join a bunch of stuff together. It's a very powerful hub if you're still into hubs.

Leo Laporte (02:35:24):
Kevin was able to use it with his Caseas, his Hughes Sonos speakers did not work according to his review. And you should read his review on Stacey on iot.com with a SL lock, the Eco be the Nano Leafs, the Gov Electric kettle. He has a lot of crap. The Wise Cameras, <laugh>, the Eve Home devices, the Logitech video doorbell or any of his smart plugs.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:35:49):
Yeah. With all that's his matters. Like some of that is thread, like he's got a lot more thread stuff in his house now. Yeah. so some of that'll work over time. I, it worked really well with a good number of my devices. Okay. But yeah, you should always, with any hub you should check. But you can also use it and write your own drivers and then launch it on the Homey app store. So if you're, you're feeling snazzy that way, you could

Leo Laporte (02:36:14):
Do that. It has an a p so Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:36:18):
It's it's a nice platform.

Leo Laporte (02:36:20):
Yeah. I don't know how we're gonna survive without your iot input. I it's honestly less relevant. I've, I've always said, you know, I have to ask Stacy before we do this mm-hmm. <Affirmative> you

Stacey Higginbotham (02:36:33):
Oh. And y'all asked Book Club is still on for Oh good. September 1st. What is

Leo Laporte (02:36:38):
Oh yes. September something. I, I can't remember. I think we moved it, didn't we? Just because mm-hmm. Let me check our club to events here. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:36:47):
Either August 31st or September something.

Leo Laporte (02:36:51):
No, you're right. It's, it's the end of the month. Oh gosh. I can't remember. You're the man. I just know. Have a calendar. It's seven, seven events. Here we go. Home Theater. Gees. Photo Walk. There it is. August 31st, 9:00 AM You'll still be doing that translation state, but this will be your last one.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:11):
We haven't really talked about it. You're more

Leo Laporte (02:37:14):
Than welcome to to keep doing I Club. Yeah, well take that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:16):
Take that sale. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:37:18):
But

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:18):
I don't, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:37:20):
Well I'll defer. I like talking about books De I'll defer to you and if you're if I'll say this,

Ant Pruitt (02:37:24):
I definitely need you. 'cause I don't know any of these books and I only get introduced to 'em because you bring em up.

Leo Laporte (02:37:30):
It's Stacey's book club, not Ann's book club. <Laugh> Ann's book Club would be a comic book. It'd be something else. It wouldn't be this. Oh

Ant Pruitt (02:37:36):
No. It'd actually be more like E S P N

Leo Laporte (02:37:38):
And Fox Sports One <laugh>. Let's all sit down with an and watch the N F L together. Actually, I'd love to do that with you. That'd be nice. <Laugh>. that might be another. There you go.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:37:48):
Watch

Leo Laporte (02:37:48):
Party. Yeah. Watch Party Stacey do come back and and do the book club if you wish. We'd love that. But I'll let you decide that later. We're really gonna miss you. It's yep. Yep. You've made this show. You guys your, your, your expertise both in IOT and CPUs mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that's really made a difference. Spectrum. Yeah. We don't know nothing spectrum. So getting somebody on shall no more spectrum millimeter wave. I bet you're happy not to be talking about thread and matter for the rest of your life. <Laugh>, to be honest. That's great. I still will. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. You think you'll be going to Washington to talk to members of Congress and lobbying them and trying to get some good stuff going. I hope you do that. They must. I'm gonna give it a try. They must have a policy arm and a and lobbying arm. Yeah. See? Oh, they do. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:38:34):
They have a policy. So I'll, I'm working for their innovation lab. Nice. And then doing the policy work. I'm working for both their policy and their innovation side.

Jeff Jarvis (02:38:42):
That's great.

Leo Laporte (02:38:43):
So as real Bodhi says in our I r C, it's really hard to understand why Stacey would leave a show with a grumpy old guys on it. But <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:38:51):
Oh, I love you guys. Oh, we love you. Y'all. Y'all

Leo Laporte (02:38:53):
Are fun. As we're gonna, we're gonna totally tease. I'm not old. Miss you. Yeah, you're right. You just grumpy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:38:58):
I love all you you old guys at Ant <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:39:01):
That's the old guys. I'm gonna have grumpy moments, but I that, that's the name of the new show Don't on me yet. People say, why are you calling it this week in Google? So we're gonna change it to aunt and the old guys. <Laugh> starting next week. Thank you Stacy. Jeff, you got a number?

Jeff Jarvis (02:39:17):
So this is a quick one, but oh hell. Line one. So trade your sound up. Make sure your sound's up. It's very fast. Oh boy. Line 1 0 1. Here we go. She introduced grandpa to TikTok.

Leo Laporte (02:39:28):
Aw. And how old is grandpa? 58. Okay, here we go. I back it up. Jeez.

Jeff Jarvis (02:39:33):
You always mess this up. <Laugh> sound on starting to the sound on the sound's not on. You gotta have the sound on Jesus. How often can I tell you? The sound's not on you ruin the joke. The

Leo Laporte (02:39:44):
Sound's on. Where do you talk? Oh, introduce grandpa to TikTok. How long you been used it for? If you would just tell me how this works. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:39:53):
Grandpa

Speaker 9 (02:39:54):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:39:56):
Sounds just like me. Really does. Oh, grandpa's about my age. I hate to say it. How can you did not

Jeff Jarvis (02:40:08):
Laugh at that. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:40:09):
Yeah, that's cute. I know that feeling. Good one. Mr. Pruitt, anything for us?

Ant Pruitt (02:40:17):
Two things I wanted to plug real quick. As part of my paying dues I was, I had the honor and pleasure to be able to meet up with Ms. Lisa Carney this past weekend. And she's got a a photo, photo tutorial coming up here. Smartphone photography tutorial coming up here at Donner Lake, at the Donner Lake Memorial Park. So if you're in that Truckee area Oh, that's cool. Reno area. And it's on August 26th. I put it, I put this link in the show notes because her, it's not quite up to snuff, but it's August 26th. But she's gonna be doing a live lesson about smartphone photography at the beautiful Donner Lake. And I'm telling you, it's a treat if you can get there. So

Leo Laporte (02:41:01):
It's a campfire program in the amphitheater and details@theparks.ca.gov page. It is, that sounds great. It's one of their interpretive programs. They do, they do wonderful stuff there. Yeah. oh, that'll be fun. Yeah. I I I like that.

Ant Pruitt (02:41:16):
Yeah. I won't be able to make it because that is at the time of our photo

Leo Laporte (02:41:19):
Walk. Well, I guess I won't be able to make it either then. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> nice.

Ant Pruitt (02:41:24):
So there's that. Okay. next I want to give a shout out to the folks in Maui and thoughts and prayers are with them. No kidding. And Mr. Brian Chi, our co-host on this weekend, enterprise Tech, found a great resource of where we, you can actually help with money and it's not scams. You can help online. And they also have ways if you want to help in person. And it's Maui now.com, we'll have this link in our show notes and it's got all of the applicable places where you can provide help to the folks in Maui, because quite honestly, y'all, it, it's gonna take money for this. Just if you can spare a couple bucks, please do. I recently shared on Twitter or X by the way college Hardhead has a classmate that was affected by this and they lost their house.

Leo Laporte (02:42:18):
Oh

Ant Pruitt (02:42:18):
Boy. And they sent me a GoFundMe and they were almost at the goal. I tweeted it and that goal got met. So, oh, thank you. See all your folks here.

Leo Laporte (02:42:28):
X is good,

Ant Pruitt (02:42:29):
You know, for helping to get that still is met and I believe people are still donating to it. So throw money at this. I wish our president would take all of those billions of dollars. So they want to send somewhere else in the world to help people right here in our own home in Hawaii. And that,

Leo Laporte (02:42:47):
Well, actually, there's a huge amount of money coming to Hawaii in the infrastructure.

Ant Pruitt (02:42:50):
I hope so.

Leo Laporte (02:42:51):
Yeah. Hundreds and millions of dollars. I hope so. But I, I imagine some of that might get diverted now instead of infrastructure man. Very good. I agree. Maui now.com. Yep.

Ant Pruitt (02:43:02):
Oh, and also Joe again in New York I call him Leica Joe here in Club Twit. He is still willing to host a live photo walk if you're in the tri-state area. Again, if you are interested, shoot me a message. Tag me here in Discord, what have you, so we can get y'all together and have a nice little photo walk similar to what we're gonna do here in Petaluma.

Leo Laporte (02:43:24):
Nice. somebody's asked about Doc Rock. He lives in Oahu, so I'm sure he's fine, right? I am a little concerned. Becky Worley grew up in Maui and her family lives in lah, so I, yeah,

Ant Pruitt (02:43:33):
She, I saw a tweet. She,

Leo Laporte (02:43:35):
They, her family's safe. I know that. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:43:37):
She said they were

Leo Laporte (02:43:37):
Safe. I don't know about their house. Yeah. So, yeah. We'll, we'll follow up on that. Thank you, aunt. Thank you Jeff. And thank you especially, and a farewell to our beloved Stacey. Thanks to John Sina for buying a bunch of egg waffles. <Laugh>. Yeah. Thanks John. <Laugh>, three old boxes, I feel celebrated thick and fluffy. And the original chocolatey chip just for you. Oh, yeah. John warned

Jeff Jarvis (02:44:03):
Me that I couldn't find a waffle. All I could find was a cookie that looks like one.

Leo Laporte (02:44:06):
That's good. I mean, I accept cookies. That's a, that's a mouth waffle. Give a mouth of waffle. Yeah. Stacy, we wish you all the best and do stay in tune in touch so we can get you on. 'cause We would definitely, and no, she's never

Jeff Jarvis (02:44:17):
In tune. We know

Leo Laporte (02:44:18):
That about her. Stay out of tune. It's true. But stay in touch. That's all I <laugh>. That's, and we wish you all the best. I'm thrilled for you. It sounds like a perfect job for you. Do God's work as ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. Thank you everybody. Here's a tweet. Thank you. Scooter X from Becky. I went into Lana yesterday with a convoy delivering supplies. What they need, wow, immediately is ice, gas, and propane. What they need, nexus Power and Cell service. And what they really need is FEMA and dollars. And she has a link on on x to the charity that she's giving to. Outstanding. so she must have flown out just to be with her family. She grew up and went to school in in Hawaii. Thank you everybody for joining us. We will see you next time on Twig.

Jeff Jarvis (02:45:04):
Bye-Bye.

Leo Laporte (02:45:07):
No more three hour Marathon Waffle List. Marathon. Stacey,

Jeff Jarvis (02:45:13):
It's midweek and you really wanna know even more about the world of technology. So you should check out Tech News Weekly. The show where we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. It's the biggest news. We talk with the people writing the stories that you're probably reading. We also talk between ourselves about the stories that are getting us even more excited about tech News this week. So if you are excited, well then join us. Head to twit tv slash tnw to subscribe.