This Week in Google 731, 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. Jeff Jarvis is here Ant Pruitt. We're going to talk about Google. Of course, they've announced the date for their Pixel eight reveal. We'll also talk about Mark Zuckerberg. He says he could type a hundred words per minute and he doesn't even use a keyboard. It's amazing. Plus Samsung renames the Ws gap to Samsung food, all that and more. Coming up next on Twig [00:00:30] podcasts you love
Speaker 2 (00:00:33):
From people you trust. This is Twig.
Leo Laporte (00:00:43):
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 731 recorded Wednesday, August 30th, 2023. Leo, saving time. This episode of this week in Google is brought to you by my Leo. My Leo Photos is a smart and powerful system [00:01:00] that lets you easily organize, edit, and manage years of important documents, photos, and videos in an offline library hosted on any device, and it's free. Visit myo.com/twi and by the Building Cyber Resilience Podcast, a show about tech and security from the perspectives of data scientists, Dr. Anne Irvin and career CISO Rich SSON regarding the intersection of data finance and [00:01:30] cyber risk management. Search for building cyber resilience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(00:01:40):
It's time for T Twink this weekend. Google the Now. Stacey free this week in Google, and it's so bad we couldn't even get somebody to take over from Stacey today, but we've got people coming up, so don't worry. It's just we had hoped to get somebody, but we didn't. Still working at it. [00:02:00] Still working. We were in italics as it turned out. But next week. No, Jeff? No. Jason. So, oh boy. That means you and me and Glen. Glen Fleischman. Oh boy. And I'm producing, Kathy Galles will be joining us in the weeks to come. Oh, great. And we're trying to get Joan Donovan. We'd had hoped to have Joan Donovan today, but Oh, that's right. The schedule did not permit. So we will continue to work. I have some ideas. She's a little busy right now, right? She's very busy. She's probably planning the news trimester [00:02:30] at BU or new. I'm also
Jeff Jarvis (00:02:32):
Always happy to help, but when Jason puts up the bat signal, I'll send out things to people and
Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
Figure out more people. Bat Signal Jason, anytime. Oh yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:02:41):
No, he does. He does.
Leo Laporte (00:02:42):
Yeah. I have some ideas about a permanent replacement, but I do feel, and I've heard this from a lot of correspondence, that it should be a woman. Well, we tend to agree with you. If you're going to replace Stacy, you [00:03:00] should replace her with a woman. So that narrows it down to only half the population. So I'm going to work harder. No, I have some very good ideas. Actually. It's 51%. I have some very good ideas for We want to try. I'm eager to hear your thoughts. Yeah, I'm going to try some people out another time. Actually. That's what Lisa always says. She says, well, will they get along with Jeff is what she always says. Hey, Hey. Am I hard to get along with? It has to be somebody who gets along with Jeff. What's so hard? [00:03:30] Well, basically you'll note there'll be a parade of women.
(00:03:33):
I have binders full of them, and if Jeff seems to get along with anybody, then we are definitely not. Oh, geez. Put it on me. Yeah, thanks a lot. Hey, there's a lot of Google news. Google has announced its Pixel eight launch event and at the same time accidentally put a picture on its Google store of a guy using a Pixel eight. Here we go every year, which looks just like the Pixel seven, I have to say. It [00:04:00] doesn't look that different. I was just getting ready to think about getting the Pixel seven and now out comes the eighth, so I guess I'm waiting. October 4th. A Wednesday. So we'll have a chance to do the event and then do this week in Google immediately afterward. They sent out their invite. What was October 8th? Oh, should we? October 4th. Fourth four. They sent out their invite the day after Apple sent out its invite for the iPhone 15. It's as if they're saying, hold on, wait till Apple says something. Okay, now we can do it. Right, right. Strike Wild Iron. [00:04:30] It's hide. Google seems to really not know how to do any of this. Not at all. No, because it's not their thing searches their thing and they also didn't think about me because it will be 10:00 AM Eastern time. What? It's seven in the morning here. New York City. Oh boy. So we'll find out.
(00:04:52):
I think we know everything, but anyway, we'll find out. Pixel eight Pro really does look a lot like the Pixel seven. [00:05:00] The camera layout is a little bit different, but not a whole lot different. You think people care more about this? I mean, at least the fold was compelling because it's different tech, but these things are all just six inch slates of glass. You think even Google knows this. That's why. Which is why they no longer try here. They posted it on threads. Look at that Using threads. I told you brands own [00:05:30] threads. It's the iPhone with a cucumber in its camera bump talking to the pixel with the cucumber on its camera. They're at the spa. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool. And is there audio? Let's see. Sliding to unlawful. Oh yeah, let's go back and start over. How can I do that? Refresh? Let's refresh it. It's threads. I don't understand it yet. Nice. Pixel
Speaker 4 (00:05:56):
As Spa day was the perfect idea with all these big [00:06:00] launch events coming up. Absolutely. Yeah. These launches just keep getting harder. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, you know what got applause at my first launch 16 years ago. Sliding to unlock. Sliding to
Ant Pruitt (00:06:16):
Unlock. That's a good point.
Speaker 4 (00:06:17):
Drove back
Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
And we sued each other over
Speaker 4 (00:06:23):
It anyway. Did
Leo Laporte (00:06:24):
They? No, they did. Did
Speaker 4 (00:06:26):
Probably did. Turn around phones like you are doing stuff. I can't because
Ant Pruitt (00:06:30):
[00:06:30] Apple had it all. Pat
Speaker 4 (00:06:32):
Answering unknown calls with AI and life translating messages. It's exhausting. But I've still got a few traits
Leo Laporte (00:06:40):
Of my screen. Have they choose such a retro AI voice?
Speaker 4 (00:06:42):
Like what? That's under wraps, but let's just say you'll be U S B Cing soon. Cucumber. You're finally getting U S B C charging. How did you know? Lucky guess.
Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
Okay.
Ant Pruitt (00:07:00):
[00:07:00] I appreciate the fact that they said, you know what? This stuff is harder. It's hard to make these interesting.
Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
It is, and I don't think they succeeded. It's no better, no easier. So was it once a year? Yeah. Was the seven the same time last year? No, because remember, yes, it was the same time last year. It's usually September five. There's an version midyear, right? This year they added folds, but almost always it's October and [00:07:30] they have tried in the past to jump Apple, and then they realize this is a bad idea. Nobody caress. So they're waiting out until after Apple. Samsung jumps. Apple, Samsung did their pixel, their
Ant Pruitt (00:07:42):
Galaxy. Well, Samsung can they have the largest market share.
Leo Laporte (00:07:44):
They're bigger the planet.
Ant Pruitt (00:07:46):
So
Leo Laporte (00:07:47):
Although Apple is rapidly encroaching and I think will soon be dominant worldwide, we'll see. Anyway, there you go. There's the big tech news this week. Thank you for joining us. All right. On this week in Google, [00:08:00] did I even introduce people? That's Aunt Pruitt. Ladies and gentlemen. Oh yeah. He is not only a host on this show. He's our community manager on the club. Twit Discord.
Ant Pruitt (00:08:10):
I can't see you all very well, but Hello.
Leo Laporte (00:08:12):
What are you wearing? What is on your face?
Ant Pruitt (00:08:15):
These are my reading glasses and my laptop looks amazing right
Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
Now. Crisp and clear,
Ant Pruitt (00:08:20):
But boy, everything out there, the cameras, old monitor
Leo Laporte (00:08:23):
Progressive
Ant Pruitt (00:08:24):
Lenses. I think that's Jamer B back there. Or some really tall dude with blue ears. Not sure.
Leo Laporte (00:08:30):
[00:08:30] I decided that we'd all wear glasses today. So I'm wearing my minor progressive. Jeff's also, I'm progressive in ways, always progressive. He's the Leonardtown professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig. Craig Newmar graduate school of journalism at the City University of New York. So Ann, just give it
Jeff Jarvis (00:08:54):
A now. Get progressive lenses. Get a C Pap machine. Get something to shave [00:09:00] the hair in your ear and nose. I that.
Leo Laporte (00:09:04):
I got one word ant depends.
Ant Pruitt (00:09:08):
No, I have two. It depends. It depends.
Leo Laporte (00:09:11):
Better. Yes. It all depends what else is going on. Samsung bought an app called Whisk. Whisk, cool Whip Whisk Family Guy, whisk. It's a popular meal planning and recipe app [00:09:30] and they rebranded it to the very clever, I think very innovative name. Samsung Food
Jeff Jarvis (00:09:36):
Because you think of Samsung, you think Delicious. You think
Leo Laporte (00:09:39):
Delicious.
Ant Pruitt (00:09:42):
Would the name like Samsung? It's got to be good.
Leo Laporte (00:09:45):
Whisk is cross-platform, iOS and Android, but I don't know if it will stay that way. Announce today. It's
Jeff Jarvis (00:09:54):
Interesting that it's a content play. Google bought. What [00:10:00] was the restaurant thing where everybody rates the restaurants that
Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
You used? Don't make me cry. Z gatt. Oh, I'm so sad. Right? So
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:08):
Google had that for a while that
Leo Laporte (00:10:09):
It destroyed it as Google does with everything. Google ruins everything it touches.
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:15):
Is it dead? Zig?
Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
Well, okay, first of all, Zagat, which was started in New York City by some entrepreneurs. The idea was we're going to ask the people who eat at these restaurants what they think and rate it on a scale of weird scale one to 30. But [00:10:30] then they would rate the food, the decor, the service, and the price. And it was these little red guides. They were tall and thin and they were fantastic. Every city eventually had one. Lisa and I relied on 'em. Then they made an app and it was the only way to really, the only problem was the gat was because it was local diners rating it. If you were in a town, I won't name names, it'll make you feel bad. Indianapolis. And they said that this was a 27 restaurant. It would be a 15 in San Francisco. [00:11:00] But you got to understand it's a sliding scale. So Google bought it. I was God, I was just thinking, please don't ruin it. They did it. I mean, basically they sort of incorporated the content into Google business but didn't really. Well
Ant Pruitt (00:11:13):
You said that Google came in and made it a problem. Would the problem not be the competition such as Yelp?
Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
Well, that's, that's why Google bought it. That's what Google was trying to go after. They wanted want to to compete with Yelp. But now
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:26):
Yelp. Yelp was very unfriendly to Google and that was part of it. Aunt your right
Leo Laporte (00:11:29):
Here. Let's look at the review [00:11:30] for Pete's. He Penny restaurant.
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:32):
Well, look where the GA is now. That's
Ant Pruitt (00:11:34):
Right in the corner.
Leo Laporte (00:11:34):
Right? Where is the GA now?
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:36):
So this is going to make you sad. Search Google. Google's the Gap. See what
Leo Laporte (00:11:40):
Comes up. The words the gat.
Ant Pruitt (00:11:42):
Okie dokey.
Leo Laporte (00:11:42):
A g A T. Did you know the Ziat guys?
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:46):
Yeah. So it's now Chase. Chase. It got sold to a company that got bought by Chase and now sitting there making no sense at all.
Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
So not only do you Google, I
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:57):
Think I fake delicious.
Leo Laporte (00:11:59):
Oh, [00:12:00] that's like Samsung food. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wow. The GATT stories featuring personal interviews in dining and hospitality.
Jeff Jarvis (00:12:11):
What the heck
Leo Laporte (00:12:11):
Is that brought to you by Chase? Isn't was Chase jp? Yeah, I think so. Company. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:12:21):
So it's just all things about it makes no sense. It's you scroll down and it's credit cards and mortgages. What does the gap do there? That
Leo Laporte (00:12:29):
Makes no [00:12:30] sense. In 2021 restaurant discovery platform, the infatuation
Jeff Jarvis (00:12:35):
Which had bought was the ad
Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
From Google. Oh. Was acquired by JP Morgan Chase. To accelerate the firm's investment in dining and further demonstrates JP Morgan's Chase commitment to meeting customers where they are. Hi aunt. Hello, sir. Nice to meet you where you are. Yeah, with exceptional benefits, useful content, and one of a kind experiences at scale. This is written by some. Yeah. Where's
Jeff Jarvis (00:12:59):
The
Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
Content business [00:13:00] knit wi? Oh boy. The infatuation entire business, including z ga, is now a holding owned subsidiary of j Morgan Chase
Jeff Jarvis (00:13:07):
And it's dead.
Leo Laporte (00:13:09):
It's like an episode of billions. This is terrible. This is horrible.
Jeff Jarvis (00:13:12):
Yeah, it is.
Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
I didn't realize that Google had sold it off. So in true Google fashion, they bought it, killed it, and sold it for nut pennies. Right. Well, but fortunately their maps, the future of maps reviews is really good. I rely on that more [00:13:30] than anything. You trust the reviews. Yeah. This is especially considering the people respond in that area. Area. This is the worst restaurant in Petaluma. I pizzas any penny. Have you been there? I've not been there yet. This is around, the worst one is the one that we brought you to on Christmas. Jeff, the wash, the Washoe house. Let's switch. Are
Jeff Jarvis (00:13:48):
You going to get sued?
Leo Laporte (00:13:49):
No. I can say something's bad. Why would they sue me? Actually, they might these days. I don't know. Let's just see. The Washau house is actually worse than pizza. Penny. I've not eaten 4.4 stars. [00:14:00] Let's just, let's just look at the reviews. Historic building. The staff are very nice. A variety of choices on the menu.
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:10):
Added
Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
Worse price per person. A hundred bucks plus. So we didn't go cheap. No, you're
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:14):
Kidding me
Leo Laporte (00:14:16):
For that. A great meal and a down to earth atmosphere. Just don't order the peas. They're canned. That's down home. Yeah. Yeah. Well look at this. Being from the south, I was happier than two hogs [00:14:30] at feeding time. Oh no. Seriously though, I will be a regular and highly recommended if you want some good food and country atmosphere.
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:37):
It was like going to the worst church basement
Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
Dinner. You can. It really was horrible. Plastic table. I feel so bad.
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:45):
Overheated pasta. That was funny. That
Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
Was a great thing about it.
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:49):
So hilarious.
Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Lisa
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:50):
Is just hanging her
Ant Pruitt (00:14:52):
Head. I'm so glad. I just drive H by that place every week pretty regularly. I never have the
Jeff Jarvis (00:14:58):
Pull up the
Ant Pruitt (00:14:59):
To stop [00:15:00] there. Something just tells me to keep driving.
Jeff Jarvis (00:15:02):
No, your instinct is right.
Leo Laporte (00:15:05):
It was really terrible. It was funny. Lemme see if I can find the pictures from our Christmas party. It was sad because we invited everybody out and we thought, oh know, it'll be really fun if we do it at a restaurant. That's kind of an old, I mean, this thing was around, it was on the old wagon, the Pony Express Trail. That's
Jeff Jarvis (00:15:27):
About when they cook the pasta. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
[00:15:30] So bad, soggy and
Jeff Jarvis (00:15:33):
Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:15:34):
The only thing get insult at this. Here they are. I mean, and the sad thing is we invited everybody. There's Steve Gibson, Sarah Lane, Renee Richie, Alex Lindsay, Mike Elgin and Amira Scott Wilkinson. I mean, we invited, wow. That's the whole squad. Great body to this. Look at the plastic
Jeff Jarvis (00:15:54):
Tablecloth. The decorations are so festive. This
Ant Pruitt (00:15:57):
Looks like somebody's,
Leo Laporte (00:15:59):
It [00:16:00] was like a dinner in an old folks' home. It
Ant Pruitt (00:16:03):
Definitely looks like an old look. The Baptist.
Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Look at that meal. Basement. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:07):
See if you could focus it on some of the
Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
Food here. Look at that. I'm glad that they gave me with my fried a plastic container of cocktail sauce. Oh boy. So it was so awful. Oops. We've gone past it. But that was our Christmas dinner one year.
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:24):
That picture. Go back to that other picture.
Ant Pruitt (00:16:25):
2014.
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:26):
One more. It's like, are you sure you want to eat that?
Leo Laporte (00:16:28):
Don't eat that. You notice [00:16:30] Alex Lindsay does not have a plate in front of him. He's trying to talk Scott at it. Don't eat this tree. What is his vegetable thing? Oh, it was everything was so soggy.
Ant Pruitt (00:16:41):
Maybe it's gotten better since 10 years ago. It might
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:44):
Well have It might well have,
Ant Pruitt (00:16:45):
Because that was 2014. Believe that's what it said. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
It's time 2014. December 29th, 2014.
Jeff Jarvis (00:16:53):
What's the menu look like now? Maybe it's a different menu.
Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
No, I'm not going to spend any more time in the Wacho house. We're done.
Ant Pruitt (00:17:00):
[00:17:00] But no, I like the review options inside of Google Maps and I've been using it for I don't know how long. So I'm one of those local guides people, they're always
Leo Laporte (00:17:12):
So get ready. Yeah. I know this. This was a conversation on our Slack. Notice what happens when you go to maps.google.com. Now, when you do it, your browser's going to say, do you want to give maps access to your location? Right. You can't use maps without it. But look at the U R L I just entered and it has been reformatted [00:17:30] to google.com/maps. You might say, well, what's the big, well, the concern of many people is now, instead of giving permission to maps, you're giving permission to all of Google to know where your location is.
Jeff Jarvis (00:17:43):
Really?
Leo Laporte (00:17:44):
Yeah. It's a sneaky way of getting to agree to location permissions for all of Google. Yeah. It's
Ant Pruitt (00:17:52):
Under one
Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
Director, not in a granular way. Now I do. In fact, I have the location turned on so I can go to my Google. Yeah, I for one, welcome by Travel History. [00:18:00] Yes, I welcome my Snoopy overlords. But I think there are a lot of people who would say, well, no, no, I like this granular. I don't want Google to know everywhere I've been. I can actually go to my Google Maps timeline. I love that. And see it. Yeah. Now location history is on. I wonder if Google has got in trouble. Remember, Google just got fined for pretending that incognito [00:18:30] mode was private.
Ant Pruitt (00:18:33):
Slap on the wrist. Yep. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:18:34):
Location history is on, and then it shows all the devices on this account. I guess, I don't know. I'm not sure. This is,
Ant Pruitt (00:18:44):
I have mine turned on for my device, but when I go into the browser, the
Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
Browser you don't want to is tough to know where you are. Right. And why is that useful? Because Google sells against it. It's good for advertising of all the things, the demographic stuff. [00:19:00] Advertisers can learn about location's. The first one, they want to know if they're a car dealer and you're in LA and they're in San Francisco, they don't want to spend money advertising to you. So location, I mean, they'd love to know income, economic,
Ant Pruitt (00:19:17):
Or if you're a beer lover and you're in the middle,
Leo Laporte (00:19:19):
They'd love to know top the topic style stuff as well. But they got to start with location. So it makes sense that Google might do something like this. What do you do about it? I don't know if you turn it on. [00:19:30] You don't use maps on your desktop. I guess
Ant Pruitt (00:19:33):
If you do, just know that it's not going to start at your home location. It's just going to start at the global position. And you have to zoom in on your own, which is really frustrating. Really, really frustrating. For some people. It ain't that hard. It's just a map.
Jeff Jarvis (00:19:49):
I like convenience.
Leo Laporte (00:19:50):
When you were in studio a few weeks ago, I should have brought him to the washout house. Shoot. Oh, I should have
Ant Pruitt (00:19:56):
Done that
Jeff Jarvis (00:19:57):
For old times
Leo Laporte (00:19:58):
Sake. Old time sake. [00:20:00] Now they're saying this change happened in December, but I was not aware of it until more recently, I guess. Right.
Ant Pruitt (00:20:09):
Same.
Leo Laporte (00:20:10):
Well,
Jeff Jarvis (00:20:11):
I'm going to my settings on Google Maps, so I'm trying to see where's the privacy settings. If I wanted to change it would, I
Leo Laporte (00:20:16):
Think you have to change it on your Google account. So this was from the Daring Fireball last year. Garrett, Frankie wrote to John Gruber yesterday. I was asked to allow the usage of location services for Google. Google Maps [00:20:30] seemingly out of nowhere. Of course, I accepted after all I wanted to look at maps, but I noticed that maps.google.com redirects to google.com/maps. So maybe he got it early and it's now just now spreading to others
Jeff Jarvis (00:20:44):
History kind of makes me sad. I don't go
Leo Laporte (00:20:46):
Anywhere anymore.
Jeff Jarvis (00:20:49):
Those were the
Leo Laporte (00:20:51):
So is Notebook, LMM that's still in the labs right's.
Jeff Jarvis (00:20:55):
Still in labs. They said it's going to come out this fall.
Leo Laporte (00:20:58):
This was, I thought, [00:21:00] the most useful thing I'd seen with Google ai, which was the ability to give it a bunch of documents and have it summarize it. You could ask questions of the AI about those documents. Google's being chat, like form of ai, which is Duet is now available in Gmail docs and more. If you are a Google Workspace user, you are. If you are a
Jeff Jarvis (00:21:21):
Google Workspace enterprise user. So once again, I'm cut out. I'm in, but I'm out.
Leo Laporte (00:21:30):
[00:21:30] Well, I don't think you'd pay 30 bucks a month for it, or maybe you would. I That seems a lot. I would
Jeff Jarvis (00:21:34):
Try it for one month. Would you pay 30
Leo Laporte (00:21:36):
Bucks? No. So we were talking about this on Windows Weekly because completely coincidentally, that's what Microsoft charges for enterprise AI and binging. Why
Jeff Jarvis (00:21:45):
Not surprise B?
Leo Laporte (00:21:46):
Well, $30. It must be the price. Why not? They'll pay it. And we were talking about it, and that does seem steep, doesn't it? I mean, we wouldn't buy it for everybody in the studio. But then I was thinking, well, for instance, [00:22:00] we are going to start using Aros ai. I talked about this earlier, called Claude to do show notes, and it's actually pretty impressive. We talked about it last week.
Jeff Jarvis (00:22:09):
I just told that story to Hiawatha Brey at the Boston Globe today. I talked to him about AI and journalism, and I told the story of you and Claude sounds like a drinking buddy of yours. And oh, Claude and I went, Claude, and how you were dubious. But [00:22:30] it really works well with the right prompting.
Leo Laporte (00:22:32):
Anthony, are any of the show notes yet enabled with Claude on the website? I would like to show you what it does. It's really kind of amazing.
Ant Pruitt (00:22:42):
I believe today's Floss Weekly has,
Leo Laporte (00:22:45):
Claude has the
Ant Pruitt (00:22:46):
Bullets
Leo Laporte (00:22:47):
From Claude because one of the things Claude does is emoji bullets, which is hysterical. Let's just say it has bullets. But I don't know if Claude doesn't have emojis. No
Ant Pruitt (00:22:57):
Emojis.
Leo Laporte (00:22:57):
But these were emojis. I
Ant Pruitt (00:22:58):
Believe those were pulled in from [00:23:00] AI with Mr. Ashley today.
Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
In any event, and they're good. They're good show notes and better than probably anybody, but a full-time staffer who's really listening to the show and taking a secretary would do, and producer
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:18):
Leo a
Leo Laporte (00:23:19):
Producer. No. You know how in an organization you have a treasurer, you have the president, and then you have the secretary [00:23:30] takes notes. Notes of the meetings. It's taking
Ant Pruitt (00:23:32):
The
Leo Laporte (00:23:32):
Minutes, the minutes. What do you call that? That's the secretary, right?
Ant Pruitt (00:23:36):
Stenographer.
Leo Laporte (00:23:37):
I don't mean Stacey's not even here anymore. And you guys are me up
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:43):
Still
Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
The secretary to the minutes.
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:47):
Jason's a producer, not a
Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
Secretary, but somebody taking the minutes of the show. But it's hard for a producer to do that. He's got a lot of other things going on. Jason does do it. But that's the thing. If you can get an AI to take, so what we've been doing is taking the show, [00:24:00] getting whisper AI to do a transcription of the show. It does a very credible transcription, and then take the transcription, feed it to Claude, and then Claude poops out the show notes. And if you give it the right prompt, and that's the key. And Anthony's really a master of that. It actually did a very, I was a very impressed. So was
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:22):
Anthony around?
Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
He's busy. He's not responding. He's busy. He's busy. Okay, so
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:26):
I'm curious about this. What I talked about with Awa Bra was [00:24:30] the idea that you would take, let's say the transcript of a school board meeting. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:24:34):
Instead of writing it would
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:35):
Do a good job of
Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
That. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I do think so mean. We know that they've been using AI to do sports stories for years and finance just kind of the numbers
Ant Pruitt (00:24:46):
Just give me the facts.
Leo Laporte (00:24:47):
But my point was, if that replaces a human being for $30 a month or at least half the attention of a producer, very much worth it. That's a deal. If it does a good [00:25:00] job. And so I think $30 a month,
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:04):
If it's enough of a pain in the ass off the producer's desk, they might pay for it.
Ant Pruitt (00:25:08):
The thing is though, what's unfortunate is people are going to say that's AI taking someone else's job. And I think we should reiterate the fact that yeah, it's taking that task away from the producer, but it's also freeing that the producer to do some things that could be a little more creative.
Leo Laporte (00:25:26):
Well, and we don't have somebody taking notes like minutes like [00:25:30] a secretary would do. So it's just something that wasn't getting done. And so now, yeah, it doesn't mean the producer loses their job by any means. There's plenty of other things to do. Plenty. Google's new AI duet will also be able to take notes during meetings. In fact,
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:49):
In fact, this is the good part.
Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
It can take your place.
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:55):
Faculty meetings,
Leo Laporte (00:25:56):
Never again. I'm going to send
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:59):
Claude talk to the machine.
Leo Laporte (00:26:00):
[00:26:00] My French friend Claude will be here listening. So here's an example. This is from Google's blog. You type take notes for me in this Google Meet meeting summary. So far, the simple coffee, coffee, lunch.
Jeff Jarvis (00:26:18):
We're still fighting about the refrigerator. They want you to take all your food out of the refrigerator.
Leo Laporte (00:26:21):
I think this is a good use for it. Action items better if you're there, and then you have this as a reminder. This is [00:26:30] always the case with ai. First of all, I think we now agree. I've seen a number of articles saying this, you can't fix stupid.
Ant Pruitt (00:26:39):
No, you can't. And
Leo Laporte (00:26:39):
You can't fix hallucinations. That AI will stop hallucinating. That is part of ai.
Ant Pruitt (00:26:47):
That's part of its learning process, right?
Jeff Jarvis (00:26:51):
I don't even know. It doesn't have any understanding of words or concepts.
Ant Pruitt (00:26:55):
Yeah, some things. Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
So
Jeff Jarvis (00:26:58):
It is, again, it's just making [00:27:00] predictions of words.
Leo Laporte (00:27:02):
Of course. Open AI and others say, oh, no, no, no. We can fix that. They've yet to do so if you can, I wonder what's holding you up? I've seen others say, you know what, this is a function of a large language model because it doesn't understand. It doesn't understand the context or the content even. So it's going to just stuff. It will say things that aren't right and it's not designed not to. So anyway, that's why I think it's human assisted AI is going to always [00:27:30] be, at least for a while,
Ant Pruitt (00:27:31):
And I'm fine with that.
Leo Laporte (00:27:33):
It's like maybe it's like self-driving vehicles. At some point you trust that and it's going to do it. I guess if you're riding in a Waymo or cruise, you must, but in my car, I'm going to keep my hands on the wheel and it does it right 90% of the time, which is good. But it doesn't take the place of a driver yet
Jeff Jarvis (00:27:53):
Unless you get killed by the 10%. But that's
Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Another battle. And there are a few lawsuits. Tesla's [00:28:00] kind of in trouble with the full self-driving a number of lawsuits now. Alright, that's it. That's the show. Nothing else. Schumer is going to, Chuck Schumer's going to get to the bottom of this. Oh boy. Chuck Schumer says he's going to host an AI forum with Musk and Zuckerberg. I wonder if there'll be a cage match at the end.
Ant Pruitt (00:28:23):
Oh my god.
Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
It's the first of Schumer's AI insight forums. He [00:28:30] wants to regulate. He's a Senate maturity leader. He wants to regulate ai.
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:37):
I'm glad that he's doing forums, educational forums instead of hearings. I think that's a good move. But he shouldn't start with these boys. He should start with backgrounders, with the academics like the authors and stochastic parrots.
Leo Laporte (00:28:49):
I completely agree. These are the wrong point. He would
Jeff Jarvis (00:28:52):
Give them the background and truly teach them. So when the big boys come in, they know what to ask. Because
Leo Laporte (00:28:59):
The big boys, the big boys [00:29:00] are the salespeople for this crap. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:29:02):
So did they mention this in this Washington Post story? Because who can let our leadership know they need to go reach out to
Leo Laporte (00:29:11):
These r Leonard and Chuck
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:12):
Schumer? Well, I tweeted it to Chuck Schumer, I'm sure.
Ant Pruitt (00:29:17):
Oh, he's blocked.
Leo Laporte (00:29:18):
He's following you on.
Ant Pruitt (00:29:19):
He's blocked you. Come
Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
On the guest list for the first forum. I'm sure he
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:22):
Watches this podcast. Hi Chuck. Hi Chuck.
Leo Laporte (00:29:25):
Is
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:25):
He a chuck? Actually,
Leo Laporte (00:29:27):
I like Chuck Schumer. I think he's, I dunno, he's your senator. [00:29:30] So you might have, oh no, you're New Jersey.
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:32):
He's New York. New York,
Leo Laporte (00:29:33):
Right.
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:34):
But he's kind of mine. I pay the taxes to him over there. I
Leo Laporte (00:29:37):
Feel like he's a good guy. I don't know. I don't know.
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:40):
He seems he's, because every weekend, you could be assured that press conference, Chuck was going to do a press conference. He wanted to get on tv.
Leo Laporte (00:29:49):
Well,
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:50):
Less so now that he's
Leo Laporte (00:29:51):
Kind of the job,
Jeff Jarvis (00:29:53):
But he did it constantly. Every weekend. It didn't matter. He had to find a subject for a press conference. Let's
Leo Laporte (00:29:58):
Talk about sewage treatment [00:30:00] plants. So AI insight forums. First one is September 13th. Listen to the guest list. Sundar. Phai, C E O of Google. Jensen Wong, c e o of Nvidia. Former Google. C E O. Eric Schmidt. Why not just throw in Eric? Oh, I like Eric. Nice guy. He's probably knows what's going on. Microsoft. C e o. Satya. Nadela Schumer. Last June said, these are the first of their time
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:27):
Events. There's about Sam Altman, Sam Altman [00:30:30] and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk too, right?
Leo Laporte (00:30:32):
Yeah. You know what's weird? Yes. So this post articles confusing. I don't know if the first one, Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg will be at. It sounds like the first one is, oh, I
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:43):
See it.
Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Schmidt Nadela. So maybe later. Musk Zuckerberg.
Jeff Jarvis (00:30:49):
It's the legacy companies of a sort.
Leo Laporte (00:30:53):
But I completely agree with you that people you want to talk to are not the ones selling it. You want to talk to the people who are cautioning if [00:31:00] you want to
Jeff Jarvis (00:31:00):
Regulate it. And there's scholars and women and people of color who have different perspectives, who've been studying this, who have research. They should be there and truly treat it as an educational opportunity. And if I were a senator in that meeting, I'd say, okay, what should I ask Sam Holman? And they'll be told what they should ask them.
Leo Laporte (00:31:22):
Oh, by the way, I missed this story. Maybe this explains the maps thing. Google to begin selling maps dated a company's building solar products. [00:31:30] Oh, hopes to generate a hundred million dollars in the first year. Oh. Oh no. This is mapping APIs. It's not your information, it's just the mapping APIs.
Jeff Jarvis (00:31:39):
No, but I didn't know. I hadn't used Google Project Sunroof. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
We talked about this when this
Jeff Jarvis (00:31:47):
Did talk about that. It was years. So this is kind of an extension. An extension of that. Now
Leo Laporte (00:31:52):
You would go to your address. I think you still can. Yes. Sunroof. Yes,
Jeff Jarvis (00:31:55):
You can. Wi
Leo Laporte (00:31:56):
Google.com. Let's go to our address. 1351 [00:32:00] Redwood Way. Petaluma. That's the TWIT Studios. Check my roof. If I were to put solar panels, because we get 17,
Jeff Jarvis (00:32:10):
Your average monthly electric bill is now $90.
Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
Well, no, it asks what it should be. That's keep going. I can't go higher than five. Keep going. 500 ain't enough. Yeah, because we get so much solar out there. I would save $108,000 a year over 20 years. Oh, [00:32:30] over 20 years.
Jeff Jarvis (00:32:32):
But still nothing a snee at. We'd have to put in because you're still going to be doing this in 20 years, Leo. I hate to tell you.
Leo Laporte (00:32:37):
Here's the other catch. They don't take into account our electric company, pg e, if you were just to put it in and just not hook it up to the grid. You could do anything you want, I presume. But if you want to hook it up to pg e, they will not let you put in more panels. They will let you generate excess electricity. They will only let you put in the number of panels that you will use because [00:33:00] they don't want you competing with them.
Ant Pruitt (00:33:01):
They don't want the charge back. I mean
Leo Laporte (00:33:03):
They don't want, yeah, they don't want to compete with you. Okay. Their business is building power plants they don't want every time
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:10):
And setting
Leo Laporte (00:33:10):
Fires and sending fires. They didn't want every time taking an to build to the power plant in their backyard. So yeah, maybe I could put in 43,000 square feet of solar panels. By the way, how much would that cost,
Ant Pruitt (00:33:25):
Man?
Leo Laporte (00:33:25):
But I don't think they would let me do that.
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:28):
So an old colleague mine, Fred Bernstein wrote [00:33:30] a piece, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal about finally the musk solar panels that look like shingles cost like $80,000 to put on a house. But they do look good.
Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
They don't look Look like a roof.
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:42):
Yeah, they look like a roof. Can
Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
You get 'em now? I
Ant Pruitt (00:33:43):
Believe Marquez Brownley just did that.
Leo Laporte (00:33:46):
Yeah, of course he did.
Ant Pruitt (00:33:48):
And it looked, and
Leo Laporte (00:33:48):
I'm sure he paid full price for every one of those
Ant Pruitt (00:33:51):
Shingles. Right? And it looked great. It didn't even look like solar. I think it was
Leo Laporte (00:33:56):
Him. It doesn't look like solar. Okay,
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:57):
Got it. 78,000. Hold on. I'll put it in the, [00:34:00] where do you want it? I'll put it in Discord. Here's,
Leo Laporte (00:34:03):
That's
Jeff Jarvis (00:34:04):
The good things happen.
Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Review. Lemme turn off the sound. It does. They look good. Tesla. They do look good. They do look good. Where
Jeff Jarvis (00:34:16):
Is he based now? Marquez?
Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
No idea.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:19):
He's still in New Jersey.
Leo Laporte (00:34:21):
Yeah, he's in New Jersey because he just won the ultimate. His team just won the ultimate championships. He had great pictures.
Jeff Jarvis (00:34:29):
Good [00:34:30] pictures. In the discord I put in,
Leo Laporte (00:34:32):
Oh look, I get $200 off with a code. M K B hd. Oh no, that's the eight sleep, which is kind of a solar roof of your bed, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Where do I have to go on the show notes? Go to Discord.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:48):
Discord Live.
Leo Laporte (00:34:51):
I can't
Ant Pruitt (00:34:53):
Wait a minute.
Jeff Jarvis (00:34:54):
I'll put it in the twit chat. No problem. I can put it everywhere there.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:58):
It's twit there. It's an I R C. [00:35:00] Come on. This is easy in Linux. Tired
Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
Inside the slow yet incredible installation of a 78,000. Actually, that sounds like a solar is very, very expensive. I think ours probably, I don't know. I don't want to know, but I think it's
Jeff Jarvis (00:35:16):
Not much nice. The entire roof is.
Leo Laporte (00:35:18):
Yeah, you can't tell it's solar though.
Ant Pruitt (00:35:21):
That was the thing. It didn't look like a solar roof at his place.
Leo Laporte (00:35:24):
Right. But it kind of looks like it's glassy. Yeah. Yeah,
Ant Pruitt (00:35:29):
It was pretty cool.
Leo Laporte (00:35:30):
[00:35:30] That's not bad.
Jeff Jarvis (00:35:32):
If you scroll down, there's another picture. There you go. That one
Leo Laporte (00:35:36):
Nice. Yeah, I'd take it. I feel like we're probably going to make progress in this category. Yes. Is this going to be the last greatest solar roof or will there be great new stuff coming? Another 10 years? It's going to take, but I think the solar now is pretty ugly. These [00:36:00] big black boxes. A new roof would've cost her 58,000. So by adding $20,000, she was able to get a solar roof, which is a good deal. That's a good deal. Yeah. Yeah. She may have gotten a bargains as the journal. Early adopters got a great price point. It is now more like 150 to 250,000 grief. Boy is that Musk for you? Nevermind. Yeah, that is Musk, isn't it? Yeah. We have our roof is [00:36:30] a Tesla. It was Solar City, but it's now Tesla roof and we have Tesla Powerwalls. The batteries are charge up and actually living here where they turn off the power to prevent the fires. That's a good thing to happen. Power fail over in the power continues. Yeah. Yeah. They should have done in Hawaii.
(00:36:51):
It's very sad. Alright, let's take a little break when we come back. Why is Silicon Valley buying up land in Solano County? Just [00:37:00] a little bit over from here. I want to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's an interesting story. But first a word from our sponsor I show today, brought to you, oh, by my Leo. I love this. My Leo. Oh, have you used this yet? You're a photographer. So Google killed me. They bought Picasa, which was the greatest free app actually, I guess it wasn't free. I don't know. It wasn't expensive and I used it to organize all my photos. I had folders, I had tags, [00:37:30] everything. Google buys it just like Ziga killed it. Basically. They said, oh no, we're going to incorporate it all in Google Photos. Then I upload everything to Google Photos and it's supposed to do the face recognition and all that, but I'm thinking all the time, they're getting all sorts of information out of my photos. I have found a way to organize my photos. A digital asset management system. That's the technical term for that. That is better than Picasso ever was and does not store my photos in the cloud and it's called my [00:38:00] M Y L I O.
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Another reason I wanted a dam, a digital asset management solution, is because I was using light, Adobe's light run to say I want to pay this every month for Lightroom and plus they're trying to get me to put it in the Adobe Cloud. Again, same thing. I don't want to be in the cloud. I want to have my own thing. Myo solves that as well. Now here's the cool thing. It's so smart. It actually does everything Google Photos does and then some it [00:38:30] does everything Lightroom did and then some. I can do a lot of basic editing, but I can also open it up this photo in any of my image editors just with one step right from my Leo. And it's not just photos. You can say, I wanted you to keep track of my documents folder. It'll automatically important Word documents, PDFs. It has optical character recognition built in, so it'll turn photos with text, even PDFs, the text into text.
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(00:39:45):
It has a great de-duplication feature, so you have no duplicates. I have literally 200,000 photos in my photos folder. I've heard of people with more than a million and it doesn't slow down. It's brilliant. Smart tags make it all searchable. This all happens automatically. [00:40:00] You pick, I have you Ant is one of the faces. So I tagged you in a couple of pictures and then it found all the other ant photos in all of my other photos. Same with my family, my kids. But it does even more than that. Specific objects like swimming pools or activities, animals. I could say give me all my blue photos. Photographers love these, all my plant photos, smart tags, and you can stack them. So I say I want all my dog pictures that have, blue is a predominant color. It's so cool, and I could have 'em all [00:40:30] in one library.
(00:40:31):
The Myo library, plus it works on iOS, it works on Android, Mac and Windows, and I have Myo Plus. So it's on all of those. And I can say on each platform, do I want the thumbnails? Do I want the optimized versions or do I want the original versions? So on devices with lots of storage, I keep the original versions, but on my phone's thumbnails. And when I open my Leo on my iPhone and say, Hey, I like that image. I want to edit it. It will download the full quality version from my [00:41:00] Mac at home or wherever it is. Automatically keeps the original attack, updates it. So I have both. And with a Myo photos plus subscription, all my devices connect with one library. No cloud storage. I have all my photos everywhere. Everywhere.
Ant Pruitt (00:41:19):
Mr. Sergeant was telling me about pulling it from other sources such as Instagram.
Leo Laporte (00:41:24):
Yeah. Oh yeah. I took all my Instagram images. That's
Ant Pruitt (00:41:26):
Huge because those are in a different format and you can use those for other [00:41:30] sources somewhere
Leo Laporte (00:41:31):
Else. One, and I'm like, wait a minute, minute. Oh, wait a minute. I can pull my Instagram stuff in. Oh yeah. Because all that, not just pull it in, but keep pulling it in. Right? So now you don't even have to think anymore. You say, I want to put that on Instagram and that's fine, but it's still in your Miley O library. It'll download it. So cool. This is the way to preserve your most valuable documents, photos, PDFs, your digital legacy, and keep track of it all and find it when you need it. Go to my Elio photos and get your Oh, I left out. The best part, [00:42:00] it's free. Yes, it's free. My photos is free. So you can see right now what it'll do on your computer and mobile device. Go to mny.com/twi myo.com/twi.
(00:42:16):
I knew about it. I knew it was out there, and then until I sat down and really started playing with it, I didn't realize all the things you can do and they keep adding new features. In fact, download myo photos for free. Get started now. And this is something, it's an active, [00:42:30] it's been around for about eight or nine years, but it's an active development, which means it keeps getting better and better and better. M Y L I o.com, my leo.com/twit. Please give it a try. I am so excited about this. As you know, I've been looking for a damn solution ever since I decided I don't want to live Lightroom anymore and I've tried 'em all. This is the one
Ant Pruitt (00:42:55):
Dag un smart. You [00:43:00] wanted to talk about this property that's been bought up.
Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
Thank you for reminding me. The old guy forgets. Couple of weeks, three or four weeks ago, I started seeing articles who is buying up land around Travis Air Force base and why, and there was speculation. Is this some nation state? Is it China? How far away is that from you just It's about an hour. It's an hour. Used to Solano County. It's up 80 where Vacaville is. It's nearby. We go through it every time we're going to Tahoe. You go through it, it's nearby. [00:43:30] And Travis Air Force Base is an important strategic asset in the US arsenal. So there was some concern. There's something going on now, once those stories started coming out, Flannery Associates came forward, who is Flannery Associates. They've been buying up large plots of land in Solano County. They've committed more than $800 million. They were buying it at a good price until people [00:44:00] figured out that somebody's buying up on the land and the prices is now skyrocketed. They're still paying for it.
(00:44:07):
One parcel after another flannery, this is from the New York Times made offers to every landowner for miles, paying several times the market rate, whether the land had been listed for sale or not. Now just here's a picture just to give you an idea of what they're buying. It's just brown hills. Yeah, there's nothing out there. Cattle country, nothing. Nothing out there. But these cattle farmers are saying, yeah, boy, I'll take this. [00:44:30] So what was going on was Disney planning at a theme park? Was China, what was going on? Turns out it was the brainchild of a former Goldman Sachs trader who said, I had an idea, and he went around to Mike Moritz, who's a big venture capitalist Reed Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Netscapes, and now, what is it? What's his company? Andreesen Horowitz venture capitalist. Mark Andreessen [00:45:00] Facebook founder Chris Dixon, and they have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into this. Why are they buying this land up? Bill Gates is the biggest landowner in the United States, but that's for agricultural reasons. He's investing in ag in food. No, they want to build the city of the future
Ant Pruitt (00:45:19):
And also get some money.
Jeff Jarvis (00:45:20):
It's Google Islands.
Leo Laporte (00:45:22):
Google. Google Island. It's funny you should say that's exactly what I likened it to on Sunday on twit.
Jeff Jarvis (00:45:30):
[00:45:30] Remember we wanted to move on Google Island at the time. I thought that sounded pretty nice. That's why I've
Leo Laporte (00:45:34):
Been following this story. I want to move there too. I want to move this place. It's re Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs widow Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe. Daniel Gross, Nat Friedman. So lots of money from the biggest money.
Jeff Jarvis (00:45:51):
If Teal buys in,
Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
I'm out. No, but that's what's interesting. If Flore Powell jobs is in it, I'm guessing that's
Jeff Jarvis (00:45:56):
What
Leo Laporte (00:45:57):
Teal wanted to do. Seasteading, right? He was buying up [00:46:00] old oil platforms. He had the same idea. This is the thing. Silicon Valley has his fantasy that we're smart, we're better than government, we should be running things, and I think that they really think they could make a better city, so they want to make a walkable city. The problem is there's only one two lane freeway that goes into this area. It's the middle of nowhere. It's nowhere. It's also a problem. It's the Bay Area that the rents [00:46:30] are ridiculous. Housing prices is out of
Jeff Jarvis (00:46:31):
The control and water is going to be a huge problem there.
Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Yep. Well, they must have a plan. I don't know. They bought so much land so fast it spooked locals who had no idea who the buyer was, the mayor of Fairfield started posting about the project on Facebook several years ago. I think what happened is people started looking and Flannery said, we better go public. So they did a press release and
Jeff Jarvis (00:46:57):
Flannery is run by this kid. [00:47:00] He's like 32 years
Leo Laporte (00:47:00):
Old. 36? Yeah. Well, he was 32 when he started. I
Ant Pruitt (00:47:04):
Get that idea. I just don't like the exclusivity that seems to be tied to this. This isn't going to be a place where anybody can,
Leo Laporte (00:47:12):
Well, the first thing they have to do is change the zoning. It's zoned agriculture, not residential, but they think they can do, because California has this state initiative system, it's pretty easy to get something on the ballot. You just need a few signatures. So they think they can get an initiative that will get this rezoned. The hope is [00:47:30] voters will be enticed by the promise of thousands of local jobs, increase tax revenue, investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts center, shopping, dining, a trade school
Ant Pruitt (00:47:41):
Again, flying area is doing this to make their money.
Leo Laporte (00:47:44):
Well, yeah,
Ant Pruitt (00:47:46):
Not to build a city to make the
Leo Laporte (00:47:47):
Return. Could be many times the initial investment just from rezoning far more when they start building says the New York Times. Moritz sent an email [00:48:00] arguing this effort should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures. We all feel rising home prices, homelessness, congestion, et cetera. They've bought thousands of acres. So it'll be interesting to see if anything, if this ever gets off the ground. I mean these people are so rich that committing a hundred million dollars is like, well, okay, let's see what
Ant Pruitt (00:48:21):
Happens. Let's see what happens.
Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
Yeah, it's worth it.
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:24):
If Saudi Arabia could do its ridiculous thing, they can.
Leo Laporte (00:48:29):
Yeah. Saudi Arabia is [00:48:30] building that flat city. The thin city. That's a wild what have you seen that?
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:36):
Oh yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:48:37):
A flat city Wacky.
Leo Laporte (00:48:39):
Well
Ant Pruitt (00:48:40):
Always it's just a horizontal line,
Leo Laporte (00:48:43):
Like
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:43):
A thin wall. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:48:44):
Yeah, I did see that. A g
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:46):
Nome or what's it called?
Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
The line. The
Ant Pruitt (00:48:49):
Line. A
Leo Laporte (00:48:50):
Revolution in Urban Living. I'm sure this is the inspiration for Flannery,
Ant Pruitt (00:48:55):
To be honest. I believe we talked about that during one of our book club meetings. Yeah. Am I right? Mr. D [00:49:00] b?
Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
Yeah. We've talked about this because Oh, there's mic Caco going. Oh, string Theory. Oh man.
Jeff Jarvis (00:49:06):
Don't be used by
Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
String theory. Or maybe it wasn't maybe just, is it Mic Caco looks like? I don't think so. Think so. I don't know. Somebody looks like Mic Kaku. The idea is this is in the desert and it's got a train that goes from one end to the other. It's just a big long line of mirrored glass. Everything is within walking distance. You have a bunch of neighborhoods in here.
Ant Pruitt (00:49:28):
This sort of reminds me they're
Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
Building it. [00:49:30] You can see it on Google Maps.
Ant Pruitt (00:49:32):
It is not on the same scale as what's happening up there in Solano County or what have you, but I think it's called Lakewood Ranch in Florida, which is near Sarasota, Florida. And you all know Sarasota is like one of the retirement capitals. Oh yeah. Of the us, all
Jeff Jarvis (00:49:49):
Of Florida
Ant Pruitt (00:49:50):
And that little town, I don't know how many years ago, but it's been a little while. They basically band together to build that talent up into what it [00:50:00] is now. Build Lakewood Ranch. And it was sort of weird back then, seeing this new town that just sort of never existed. All of a sudden it exists now and it's just people investing money the way these guys did. This
Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
Is what we had went Dun Doug Rushkoff was on talking about the escape fantasies of the rich and famous. Remember he wrote that book? There's something about when you get that rich
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:24):
Mick Jagger,
Leo Laporte (00:50:25):
What's he doing?
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:26):
Is there, Peter Frampton is there in Lakewood Ranch, [00:50:30] Florida. Oh
Ant Pruitt (00:50:30):
Yeah, it's nice.
Leo Laporte (00:50:32):
Oh, it's not celebration. It's not like some Disney thing.
Ant Pruitt (00:50:35):
Oh no. It's literally the neighbor to the retirement city of Sarasota and it's nice. It is a nice little town, huh?
Leo Laporte (00:50:46):
I'm not against planned communities. I think it's a great idea.
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:50):
HOAs man are evil.
Ant Pruitt (00:50:52):
Yes, they are. To an extent. They are. But yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:57):
My sister's trying to just put a gate [00:51:00] onto her back wall that the dog can see out and Oh my Lord.
Ant Pruitt (00:51:06):
Yeah. That's not up to tell or make
Jeff Jarvis (00:51:08):
It an
Ant Pruitt (00:51:08):
Awful need a permit. Really?
Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
Really?
Ant Pruitt (00:51:11):
Oh, everything. Yeah. Everything in your yard is not yours apparently when it comes to H Ho. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:51:16):
HOAs.
Jeff Jarvis (00:51:16):
When we looked for our house here, we looked at a house that we didn't think was part of an H O A and then they said it was, you can't put up a flagpole. Not that we ever would, but what do you mean we can't put up a flagpole? How dare you tell me. I [00:51:30] can't.
Ant Pruitt (00:51:31):
The last place we rented back in Carolina, my flag was an issue and Oh
Leo Laporte (00:51:36):
Really?
Ant Pruitt (00:51:37):
Oh yeah. I fly Clemson flag during football season and it's
Leo Laporte (00:51:41):
Pretty
Ant Pruitt (00:51:41):
Orange and Queen Pruitt will put up another flag after the season is over with. And
Leo Laporte (00:51:46):
What's her flag?
Ant Pruitt (00:51:47):
She just gets seasonal
Leo Laporte (00:51:48):
Things. I was going to say, I bet that seasons season like gives my Easter flag or my Halloween flag.
Ant Pruitt (00:51:53):
Mine was that big orange flag and how
Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
Big
Ant Pruitt (00:51:56):
Is it? They asked me about it once is
Leo Laporte (00:51:58):
It's square feet? No, [00:52:00] giant flag. Clemson flag. Hey,
Ant Pruitt (00:52:06):
It's football
Leo Laporte (00:52:06):
Season. So what happened? They asked you once and then what'd you say?
Ant Pruitt (00:52:09):
I'm not going to say what I said on the air. All I can tell you, they asked me, you're
Jeff Jarvis (00:52:13):
Not going to want to ask me again.
Ant Pruitt (00:52:15):
They didn't ask me anymore. I
Leo Laporte (00:52:17):
Didn't care. So there is no H o a,
Ant Pruitt (00:52:18):
There was an H o A and they
Leo Laporte (00:52:20):
Still said,
Ant Pruitt (00:52:20):
And I got the letter and everything.
Leo Laporte (00:52:21):
He's scary.
Ant Pruitt (00:52:22):
Yeah. They didn't come back
Leo Laporte (00:52:26):
Fin on him over
Ant Pruitt (00:52:26):
A dgu flag. Really a flag.
Leo Laporte (00:52:30):
[00:52:30] Come on. I wish I had video of that encounter.
Jeff Jarvis (00:52:33):
Yeah, we need to have a camera on Ant all the time so we can capture these moments.
Ant Pruitt (00:52:39):
I'm polite. I'm just,
Leo Laporte (00:52:41):
If it had been an American flag, would they have been all right? Was it Clemson that bothered them?
Ant Pruitt (00:52:45):
I don't know. Because
Leo Laporte (00:52:47):
Why does it even bother? It make a big, loud flapping sound or
Ant Pruitt (00:52:51):
Clanking is all about uniformity in the area. Bull crap. No, I don't want my house to look like your house.
Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
[00:53:00] Well, my house is pretty nice. You might want it. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (00:53:03):
Well, yeah. Yours is quite nice. Sand's peacocks.
Leo Laporte (00:53:08):
Oh, we had a big controversy because Bob the peacock, Lisa named her peacock Bob. Bob, which I wanted to call it Jeff and aunt two of 'em. But anyway, wow. Bob came and doesn't have his tail feathers. You don't how peacocks have be. Apparently they lose them all at the end [00:53:30] of Ming season. It's all for show for It gets in the way all. Yeah, it gets in the way. Frankly, it doesn't help with
Jeff Jarvis (00:53:36):
Flying. Definitely a lot of
Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
Drag with flying, so they've just all fall out. We got one. It's cool. Oh, it's cool. You can, beautiful. So this is really more of a financial story, but I think thought it was interesting. The thing now to do if you're a tech giant is to buy your stock back. If you've got a pile of cash, and [00:54:00] some of these guys really do like Apple, one of the things you do is instead of giving it back to the investors or investing it in new products, you buy stock, buy your own stock. And now investors do benefit from that because now their stock is worth more because you reabsorb that. So they're fewer outstanding shares, artificially props up your stock price. So the companies love that because it looks like your stock is gaining value. There are four companies [00:54:30] in tech that have plowed a trillion dollars into stock buybacks over the last 10 years. Wow. Apple's the biggest out of the trillion. Apple has spent 600 billion buying back its own shares.
Jeff Jarvis (00:54:44):
And how much cash does it still have?
Leo Laporte (00:54:46):
Well, less before repatriation, I think they were almost up to 200 billion in cash. And then under Trump, remember they said, okay, we're going to give you a reduced tax bill for bringing that money back [00:55:00] in. It was all in Ireland. They were stashing it in Ireland. And the problem is you can't bring it in and spend it on American stuff, so you have to spend it in the EU or something like that. Anyway, they got it back for reduced tax bill. But the funny thing is they didn't use that cash to buy the stock back. They borrow against it.
Jeff Jarvis (00:55:19):
Yeah. It was so
Leo Laporte (00:55:20):
Cheap. Money was free, basically. Wow. So they wouldn't even spend their cash. They would just borrow against it. Wow. Apple has spent 621 billion [00:55:30] since last decade. Google Second. It's bought a lot back too. 193 billion Microsoft and Meta 180 billion and 130 billion respectively.
Jeff Jarvis (00:55:46):
So Google has cash on hand after all that of 118 billion. Yeah, apple has 62 billion. That's amazing.
Leo Laporte (00:55:56):
I don't know cash. I mean, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad [00:56:00] thing. I think it artificially inflates your stock price. There's much debate. Yeah. Warren Buffet says it's a good thing. He's a big fan of buybacks. He says it's good for stockholders. That's true. It's good for stock sellers. That's true. Safer than acquisitions, unfortunately. That's probably also true, especially in this day and age, more efficient than it did this. I
Jeff Jarvis (00:56:20):
Would like to see innovation and development, but Google creates things and then just kills it.
Ant Pruitt (00:56:27):
See buybacks from smaller companies [00:56:30] though, right? This is usually just the big boys,
Leo Laporte (00:56:32):
If you will. I think you have to have a lot of
Ant Pruitt (00:56:34):
Cash. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:56:35):
Yeah. Speaking of cash, Nvidia baby,
Ant Pruitt (00:56:43):
Man, they've been on the come up.
Leo Laporte (00:56:45):
I've been calling, I've been saying this for at least a year. Last year we covered Benson Huang's, Nvidia speech, what was it? G D C, what they called
Ant Pruitt (00:56:54):
With all of their ai.
Leo Laporte (00:56:56):
Yeah. And I said, this company pay attention to this company. [00:57:00] They are firing on all cylinders in the hottest sectors out there. This was back when they were selling a lot of carts for Bitcoin. But what's amazing is Bitcoin crypto kind of faded away, but what happened? AI took off and their chips and their hardware is used for AI like crazy and Nvidia. I mean, if you want to know who's making money in ai, it's Nvidia 6.7 billion profit in the quarter, which is a 422% increase [00:57:30] year over year. They quadrupled their profits. Good
Ant Pruitt (00:57:34):
Grief.
Leo Laporte (00:57:38):
Again, mostly selling these cards. Gaming's part of for sure. But the big one is ai. They make the GPUs chat. G P T uses Google buys 'em. Everybody does. The high-end AI chip, the H 100 is the hottest card out there right now. Sales grew doubled, [00:58:00] 101%
Jeff Jarvis (00:58:04):
Companies stocks almost at 500. In September it was 1 21.
Leo Laporte (00:58:11):
If people listen to our show, I don't give stock advice, but I've heard it again and again from people who say, I realize this company was on the roll from your reporting and I bought it and see that rolls, but I don't buy tech stocks, and I think it's a mistake to listen to us for stock advice, [00:58:30] but I think we saw this coming. AI cars, buying Nvidia chips like crazy for all the self-driving stuff, gaming, I
Ant Pruitt (00:58:40):
Would've assumed whomever's handling the EV batteries, the lithium, what is it, lithium ion or the lithium?
Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
The new ones are these. It's
Ant Pruitt (00:58:53):
A new
Leo Laporte (00:58:53):
One. The iron based one
Ant Pruitt (00:58:54):
Iron. That's the one. Lithium fp. I figured it would've been those companies that've been on the come up,
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:00):
[00:59:00] But there's a lot more competition there, I think, right?
Leo Laporte (00:59:03):
Yeah. It's also has a
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:04):
Grab. It's
Leo Laporte (00:59:05):
Not a giant market yet. This is a hot market. But yeah, I mean, again, I'm not predicting what'll be
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:11):
Any, what's happened to the price of chips with the scarcity? Has it gone
Leo Laporte (00:59:15):
Through the roof? Yes, absolutely. And companies like Microsoft are buying these as fast as they can make them. Let's see if I can buy a price on these [00:59:30] things. Data centers buying them. Microsoft buys NVIDIA's H 100 GPUs for the Azure Cloud and for open ai. In fact, this is really the big benefactor of this AI boom is Nvidia Meta expects to spend $30 billion this year on data centers, maybe more as it continues to build its AI capabilities.
Ant Pruitt (00:59:51):
How much did they lose with their VR
Leo Laporte (00:59:53):
Venture? 10 billion a
Ant Pruitt (00:59:54):
Year to spend
Leo Laporte (00:59:55):
10 billion a year. But it's not over. It still could happen. [01:00:00] It could still happen when
Ant Pruitt (01:00:03):
A win, it could
Leo Laporte (01:00:04):
Still happen. Let's see. NVIDIA is also compiling its technology into expensive and complicated systems like the H G Xbox. That's eight H 100 GPUs in one computer. They said in their earnings release, I'm reading from C N B C story building. An H G X box uses a supply chain of 35,000 [01:00:30] parts. It can cost $300,000. Each of these H 100 cards cost between 25 and $30,000.
Ant Pruitt (01:00:40):
Holy moly. And
Jeff Jarvis (01:00:42):
How many of 'em does OpenAI need?
Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
As many as you can make. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not at all surprised and yet it looks like the use of chat G P T and these other tools is decreasing. [01:01:00] This is from the honest broker.
Ant Pruitt (01:01:03):
You said parlor trick,
Leo Laporte (01:01:04):
Ted Julia. I'd said it was par trick, but I've also said I've been a little bit chasing by it. Look at the job, the show notes AI does in certain areas that really, it is good. It's just the thing of typing a query into chat. G P T, that's
Ant Pruitt (01:01:20):
The thing.
Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
That was dopey. Oh, you made a limerick. Wow.
Ant Pruitt (01:01:23):
Impressed. Y'all made fun of me because I didn't really get excited about Bard and all of that stuff. [01:01:30] Dude, I'm just doing a Google search. I don't need AI for that. But
Leo Laporte (01:01:34):
Ted Jolia, the honest broker says the only areas where AI is flourishing are shamming spamming and scamming ai. That's a
Jeff Jarvis (01:01:46):
Growth business. He's
Leo Laporte (01:01:47):
A good writer. I don't think a human wrote this. The AI hype is collapsing faster than the bouncy house after a kid's birthday. Wow.
Jeff Jarvis (01:01:57):
God.
Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
Bing's market share of search, still [01:02:00] 3% did not go up with chat. G P t with Bing chat, in fact drops slightly since the beginning of the year. Because
Jeff Jarvis (01:02:08):
Is what I wrote in my post that we talked about last week in my conversation with Jason, is that I think that generative AI is going to give all of AI cooties because you're not going to trust, oh, the machine made that.
Leo Laporte (01:02:21):
I think my position is it's good for humans because if an infinite amount of mediocre crap is created by ai, it makes [01:02:30] the quality content created by real humans more valuable.
Jeff Jarvis (01:02:34):
Right? Well, I think more than that, it commodifies content so much that this idea that we have to make more and more content all the time that goes away and it feels like journalism have to recognize value in different ways in trust and authority and information and value and utility and things like that rather than, I made 20 stories today. I filled the world with more popcorn, peanuts from styrofoam packages.
Leo Laporte (01:02:58):
He says, everywhere we look, the situation [01:03:00] is the same. A huge amount has been invested in ai, but consumers aren't taking the bait. They're treating it like those America online startup discs in the mail. Bingo, straight into the trash. Who's buying those AI written books? Boy, if you go to x.com, it's all about here's the three things you need to know about AI to change your life. Right? Everything I see on the, yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:23):
I see people. I see humans who are writing these books now. Nah,
Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
No, it's all ai.
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:29):
No, no. Even [01:03:30] the ones who are writing it to say how powerful AI is, they're going to go as stale as a,
Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
It's just
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:39):
Dunking Donuts. Donuts in a week.
Leo Laporte (01:03:42):
Are you trying to find a nice metaphor like I'm trying to the bouncy house. You're not going to be shamming spamming and scamming on an awesome
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:50):
Alliteration. I wish. I love, I adore alliteration.
Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
Anyway, he makes a strong case. I think [01:04:00] it's a good article. If you haven't read it, I think you must have put this in because I did not see this. Yeah, thank you. I
Jeff Jarvis (01:04:06):
Did.
Leo Laporte (01:04:08):
What else? We're actually doing a lot of AI stories. I guess this is our AI segment. The Times is Mad. They want to sue chat. G P T. In fact, the Times C N N and the A, B, C, the Australian Broadcasting Company are blocking
Jeff Jarvis (01:04:24):
And Chicago Tribune and some Australian newspapers and others. Ken
Leo Laporte (01:04:28):
Maritime, Newcastle Herald. [01:04:30] Yeah, because you can now, I mean I don't blame 'em. You can now use a robots text style command to keep those bots from scanning your data, but then
Jeff Jarvis (01:04:42):
The AI we get is going to be worse. It's the human analog, right? Just as if you put all news behind the paywall, then humans are going to be dumber. You put all news behind the robots text, then the AI is going to be dumber. Are we really any better off?
Leo Laporte (01:04:57):
Yeah. Chat. G B T actually [01:05:00] posted a blog post explaining how to disallow gt PT bot. You put this in your robots text user agent, G P T bot disallow, but then made the case that you shouldn't do it. Don't do it because,
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:21):
So I didn't review the story very much. The same section. OpenAI says that they're trying to get the court to throw out all but [01:05:30] one claim of the authors who were suing them over their works. Believe it was in our, the one that stays open is copyright, but the others they want to get rid of,
Leo Laporte (01:05:42):
They say it's a derivative work. It's basically fair use
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:47):
And transformative. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:05:48):
OpenAI claimed. The author's quote, misconceived the scope of copyright failing to take into account the limitation and exceptions, including fair use that properly leave room for innovators like us [01:06:00] to use their stuff. But they said what? They said one thing.
Jeff Jarvis (01:06:09):
Yeah. They said the copyright should go ahead. That that's still worth adjudicating, but the rest of which should all be thrown out. But let's go back to the newspapers for a second. So I mean, the one hand fine OpenAI says, we'll honor a robots text, but absent that, [01:06:30] if OpenAI subscribed to the New York Times, they've acquired the content legally, I still see no problem. The machine should be able to read it, learn from it,
Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
Just as you and I do.
Jeff Jarvis (01:06:43):
Yes,
Leo Laporte (01:06:44):
Exactly. How is it different? And
Jeff Jarvis (01:06:45):
We as humans should fight for the machine's right? To do that so it doesn't impinge upon us, and then we're told, oh, no, no, you can't know that and bring in Corey doctor over the discussion. If all knowledge becomes protected in ways that you're not allowed [01:07:00] to know it. We got trouble in an enlightened society.
Leo Laporte (01:07:03):
I agree. Let's take a little break. More to come. It really feels like we should bring Stacey back. Oh, that's right. She quit. I hope
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:16):
She, this is a good way to promote the show. Leo. She, she's got another gig.
Leo Laporte (01:07:20):
She's working a consumers union. If you just,
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:22):
She's going to change the world here. She just blathers with us.
Leo Laporte (01:07:25):
Yeah. We are actively searching for a new blather to join us. [01:07:30] Our show today brought to you by,
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:33):
You got LinkedIn or sorry,
Leo Laporte (01:07:35):
Screwed
Jeff Jarvis (01:07:35):
Up here. Go to LinkedIn and search for blather.
Leo Laporte (01:07:38):
Find shot blather in chief. Actually, I asked Corey about this. I'm trying to remember. He was on a week and a half ago and he basically brushed off the copyright issues saying we got, I'll have to go back and listen to it. I wish I had an AI summary of that show [01:08:00] that we have bigger fish to fry, not the thing that we have to worry about.
Jeff Jarvis (01:08:06):
Well, that's an issue for big media companies, which Corey is not exactly a huge fan
Leo Laporte (01:08:10):
Of. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He doesn't care if it reads his books. I just wish that the
Ant Pruitt (01:08:15):
Artists like Sarah Silverman understood that piracy is out
Leo Laporte (01:08:19):
There. Let's be fair to her and all the others. I don't think it was her idea to sue. I think somebody, some legal eagle said, Hey, who can we get to go after these guys? They've got deep [01:08:30] pockets and I think it will be thrown out. I think we've always said that this is fair use, that this isn't stealing the book. This is in effect reading the book,
Jeff Jarvis (01:08:42):
But it's going to take years to adjudicate that. In the meantime, then people are going to be scared of using the fruits of these models for fear that they'll get sued years, hence. So it's got to get settled one way or the other is kind of the wise way to go.
Leo Laporte (01:08:57):
Hey, our show today brought to you by another podcast. [01:09:00] You probably prefer to be honest. I am so good at marketing, aren't I? Oh boy. Building Cyber Resilience. This is, I am very interested by the idea of data science. This is a show with a data scientist, Dr. Anna Irvin. She's Chief Data scientist and VP of product management at Resilience, and it's also hosted by Rich sson, who is the C R O, the chief Risk Office at Resilience. Resilience Building Cyber resilience [01:09:30] is more important than ever before because our companies are living in this advanced technology driven landscape. Our businesses are smarter, the better serve customers because of it. But with that, along with that intelligence also comes threats, and that's where cyber resilience is so important. In the Building Cyber Resilience Podcast, Dr. Irvin and Mr. Sson talk about the positive outcomes, developing risk management and utilizing data [01:10:00] science across industries to create smarter business.
(01:10:03):
They have some of the best guests on, I'll give you an example. They just did one on ai Well chat. G P T replaced the underwriter and their guest was the chief strategist of AI and machine learning for the United States Department of Defense. The D O d I didn't even know the d o D had a chief strategist and AI and machine learning as well as the Chief Risk officer of Symmetry Systems. They talked about how AI is being used for cyber attacks [01:10:30] and how it affects defensive roles in security and how AI can be used to defend really interesting stuff. But that's just one of many topics in the building. Cyber Resilience podcast topics, experts and innovators in the field of risk management and cybersecurity and data science. How are businesses beating the bad guys that are attacking their bottom line? How are businesses managing risk and crisis without hurting the value to customers? It's a tough challenge. Listen in. Learn how you [01:11:00] can build a cyber resilient organization. Search for Building Cyber Resilience. It's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts. Building cyber resilience. Always glad to promote a great podcast. This is one of 'em. And we thank them so much for supporting us. Right. Building Cyber Resilience. We'll put a link in the show notes, but if you just search for that in your favorite podcast application, you'll find it quickly. Building Cyber resilience.
(01:11:30):
[01:11:30] Yeah, because Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just going to say, I kind of agree with OpenAI because if everything OpenAI says is a derivative work, well maybe it chat GT's stuff. It is derivative, right? It does. No original thinking on its own. Nope. So if you agree, if a court agrees, oh yeah, this is all stolen from somewhere else, that's the end [01:12:00] of LLMs. That's the end of that kind of ai. It's over.
Jeff Jarvis (01:12:03):
Yeah. Well it is not just LLMs, it's the end of machine learning. Because LLMs, what scared everybody is that these are now used to create content. So that's what scares us. But machine learning has been around for a long time learning from all this stuff for a long time. And if you cut off the right, the ability to learn [01:12:30] that could be scary.
Leo Laporte (01:12:33):
Here is, did you find this or did Anthony find this? Hugging face has a new hugging face.
Jeff Jarvis (01:12:40):
I found this, it might take, while it's one of these cases, Leo, we should go in and make a request and then come back to it. It might take a little time, but it's fun. It's
Leo Laporte (01:12:47):
A comic. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Alright, so what should I do? A Japanese Franco. Belgian American.
Jeff Jarvis (01:12:53):
I did American Fit 1950s
Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
Is funny that you should say that. I want to do that too. And so what's the story?
Jeff Jarvis (01:13:00):
[01:13:00] Do you want a superhero? Do you want a cat
Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
Gets stuck in a skyscraper, but a superhero named, what's the name of the superhero? Plastic ant comes and saves it. Is that enough? And
Jeff Jarvis (01:13:28):
Realizes season little more, I think to [01:13:30] cats. The cat has to have some kind of special power, don't you think?
Leo Laporte (01:13:34):
Okay. A laser eyed cat gets stuck in a skyscraper chasing the evil.
Jeff Jarvis (01:13:47):
Oh yes.
Leo Laporte (01:13:48):
Mouse man. But a superhero named Plastic Ant comes and saves it
Jeff Jarvis (01:13:55):
With what superpower plastic ant have.
Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
I think we [01:14:00] should let the AI determine that. Okay,
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:01):
Fine. Alright, so generate away
Leo Laporte (01:14:05):
And what the moral is. Is there a moral
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:09):
Well, it doesn't really have text. It just creaks. The text
Leo Laporte (01:14:12):
Has its day. Okay. Now, oh, what font should I use? I can choose the font too. It looks like I'm going to use action, man. Okay, Helvetica, we are now generating a new comic book. We'll come back to that.
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:26):
It'll take a few minutes,
Leo Laporte (01:14:27):
But it's fun. That's cool. That's hugging face, which is,
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:30):
[01:14:30] And on tomorrow's just a little preview for those of you who are here on tomorrow's Jason's AI show, which I think should just be the title of the damn thing. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:14:39):
Actually that is good. We're going to have, yeah, we're going
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:41):
To have tools we want to show off. And I claim that one. I have dibs on that one tomorrow.
Leo Laporte (01:14:50):
Okay. So don't pretend you didn't see this when it comes up. Perfect. We didn't mention it. Well,
Jeff Jarvis (01:14:55):
Jason and I can play with some new things tomorrow.
Leo Laporte (01:14:58):
I should probably [01:15:00] mention that Taylor Lauren is going to be on Twit. Wow. In a couple. I know we've been trying to get her on Twit for so long. Amy Webb and Taylor Lawrence and Jill Duffy. That's September 10th. You're not going to miss that one. That's going to be a very,
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:16):
So you're going to convince Taylor to replace Stacey. And then there's a win.
Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
Oh, hey, here we go. Here's our comic book. That was quick. Holy cow cow. This is amazing.
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:26):
Isn't it great? Holy.
Leo Laporte (01:15:27):
That was quick. Holy cow. There's the laser eyed [01:15:30] catman.
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:33):
It made up some flies too.
Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
And then, wow. And then there's an, there's plastic
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:40):
Ant.
Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
Plastic ant saving them and I don't know, it doesn't really make any sense, but it's pretty good job.
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:50):
It really is, isn't
Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
It? Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:15:53):
And it's now the thing is what, you should now have the ability to fill in all the bubbles with your own tax.
Leo Laporte (01:15:58):
Yeah, well there's a tool for that, right? [01:16:00] Has to be. We talked about it. Was it? Oh, maybe it was on Twitch. Yeah, that was
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:03):
Right. There was last week.
Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
Last week it, we talked about que or whatever, funky
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:09):
Que. So it only does like five or six frames.
Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
This is pretty sweet,
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:15):
But it's pretty nice.
Leo Laporte (01:16:15):
Now I could regenerate it in a different, let's do a, I dunno, humanoid hat. What's haddock? I don't know it isn't it? I got to find out now. Alright, we'll go back to that. Look at that.
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:27):
It's going to be fish.
Leo Laporte (01:16:30):
[01:16:30] Did I tell you I slept on the couch last night? I'm just kind of,
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:35):
How's Lisa feeling?
Leo Laporte (01:16:37):
She's all better. She took Ovid, so she came back from podcast Expo on Friday. Podcast was feeling movement they call it, and was feeling a little low, but not super sick. Tested Saturday morning. She said, get away from me. I got it. I got the news.
Jeff Jarvis (01:16:58):
Not because of the usual things. I say that [01:17:00] for this
Leo Laporte (01:17:00):
Time. This time I got a reason. And so I decamped to my office, sealed it up with Saran wrap and I have a little weird little couch, which unfortunately is too short for me. So I have to sleep, couch, a tiny couch, my feet sticking out or in a ball, and I've been sleeping there all week. But now she just tested this
Jeff Jarvis (01:17:23):
Morning. What are you doing for meals?
Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
Take out what else? No, I'm cooking. We have to take turns in [01:17:30] the kitchen. And then, but I didn't get it. I just, this morning I was talking
Ant Pruitt (01:17:33):
About Peacock and lost its feathers a
Leo Laporte (01:17:35):
Few minutes ago. Yeah, Bob's gone. Have you ever had Peacock?
Jeff Jarvis (01:17:45):
Are you masking in the
Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Home? Oh yeah. I didn't want to get it, but both of us were testing negative this morning. She took Pax Ovid. Now, I don't know, is there a fear of rebound and stuff? I don't know. But she tested negative after five days of Pax [01:18:00] Ovid, which is what's supposed to happen. So unfortunately I
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:02):
Can't take it. My AFib,
Leo Laporte (01:18:05):
Oh, that's not good. I thought if I get it, I'm not going to take it. I want get the full immunity. I want to fight it off like a man. Oh no. I want to take it on and whoop its butt and say goodbye and then I will be stronger for it at boy. Unless it kill kills
Jeff Jarvis (01:18:20):
You. Break or bleach. Yeah, no,
Leo Laporte (01:18:23):
X has changed its mind and will be allowing political ads. This does not bode well [01:18:30] for 20, 24 X has confirmed his lifting its ban on political ads. A move it committed to earlier this year after Musk bought it. You remember? You may remember that they banned the ads after the midterms in 2018. Now that we can't make any money on political ads, we are going to ban them. Okay. And I think if you're really paying attention, interesting. They banned them until there was an election and they brought 'em. They brought 'em back. Right.
Ant Pruitt (01:18:58):
So how much money [01:19:00] has X made?
Leo Laporte (01:19:01):
Well, X is desperate, right? So
Ant Pruitt (01:19:04):
This is a play. Hey.
Leo Laporte (01:19:06):
Yeah. Ad sales for X have dropped according to, well, we don't know. Oh, I guess New York Times 59% year over year. That's amazing. So anything to keep the X afloat? Well, they say it's as part of X's commitment to free speech.
Ant Pruitt (01:19:27):
Is that in air quotes?
Leo Laporte (01:19:28):
Yes. Supporting people's [01:19:30] right to accurate and safe political discourse. Oh,
Jeff Jarvis (01:19:33):
Accurate and safe
Leo Laporte (01:19:34):
On X. Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:19:36):
But X safety, which is nobody.
Leo Laporte (01:19:39):
There is no safety. Well, they say we're currently expanding our safety and elections team from
Jeff Jarvis (01:19:43):
Zero to one part
Leo Laporte (01:19:45):
Timer on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts, let the intern do it, and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats. Speaking of emerging threats, here is the haddock version of [01:20:00] the comic. What is
Ant Pruitt (01:20:01):
A haddock?
Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Well, it's kind of nice.
Jeff Jarvis (01:20:04):
Oh, oh
Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Yeah. There's ant Man looking, another kind of cat. Antman is a cat. Yeah. And he's got a little, right. Is that a cat? A little poop sigil on his back. Okay, what all, let's try another, try another genre. One more genre. Yeah. What else? A morkin Franco. Belgian Franco. Oh, that'll be like, what is a Franco? Belgian probably like Tatt or Asterisk Rick. Oh, that'll be funny. Yeah, we'll come back for that. Franco
Ant Pruitt (01:20:28):
Belgian.
Leo Laporte (01:20:28):
Franco Belgian. [01:20:30] Where was I? God, I've got no memory at all.
Ant Pruitt (01:20:35):
We're talking about X and the political ads. What do
Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
You think of X guys? Are you using X? I
Ant Pruitt (01:20:41):
Still am. Again, I still use it broadcast wise. I don't go there to consume very much. You mentioned a few minutes ago in the show about some of the stuff that it was showing to you.
Leo Laporte (01:20:55):
Oh wow. Steve Gibson just announced on X. We were asking [01:21:00] him for this. One of the things Steve talked about this yesterday is that they're discovering that a lot of the hard drives, you're right, he does a piece of software called Spin Write, which checks hard drives for errors and it's been having trouble because a lot of the hard drives sold these days are bogus. They claim two terabytes in they're 500 or they're thumb drive built into an Ss s D box. Oh yeah. It's a big problem. Especially on Amazon and Alley Express. And so I said this would be a good [01:21:30] feature for spin, right? He said, yeah, I'm going to have to put that in the next version. But now he's decided he's going to pause work on spin, right? To create a new piece of freeware that will quickly and not as directly check any U S B connected mass storage for fakery and we'll spot fake, fake drives. That's pretty cool. Thank
Ant Pruitt (01:21:48):
You Steve. Mr. Gibson.
Leo Laporte (01:21:49):
Thank you. Steve CX is something, it's wonderful. So I wonder how he'll
Ant Pruitt (01:21:53):
Do that.
Leo Laporte (01:21:54):
That's interesting.
Ant Pruitt (01:21:55):
Just the
Leo Laporte (01:21:57):
How would you know that there's a pump drive inside of box? [01:22:00] What you do is you have to write data at every sector of the drive and make sure it has that full that you can read and write all of the sectors it claims to have. And then you have to do some additional fudging to make sure it's not compressing it to make it one terabyte drive look like it holds two terabytes. There's some extra stuff you do, but yeah, he says it's doable. Problem is it could take time because you got to write to every sector and read every sector. So big drives these days could take a while. But anyway, good for you, Steve. [01:22:30] Thank you. He must've thought of a way to do this fast. That's probably, that's probably what happens. Air, he went home last night and he was thinking, so wow, that's good. See, X is great. I love X. It is, look what you learn.
Ant Pruitt (01:22:42):
I can't remember what you were saying earlier about what it was showing to you, but I think as I go
Leo Laporte (01:22:48):
Into my, besides teaching John gummies ads
Ant Pruitt (01:22:49):
Into my, for u version of x.com, it seems to know what I like because everything I'm scrolling through is football recruiting.
Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
[01:23:00] I keep hearing people say, oh, it's full of right wing crazies and stuff. I don't see
Ant Pruitt (01:23:04):
That much. I'm not seeing anything like that. I do
Leo Laporte (01:23:05):
See The Great Chi and Chang Gummy though. I see a lot of that
Ant Pruitt (01:23:08):
More football. Do you get that or it just me? Football photography.
Jeff Jarvis (01:23:12):
Oh no, I get that.
Ant Pruitt (01:23:12):
Football, my nephew.
Leo Laporte (01:23:15):
You're not getting any ads in there?
Ant Pruitt (01:23:16):
No. No ads. And this is on the webpage, not inside the MOG
Leo Laporte (01:23:20):
App. The only thing I don't like is there's so much AI garbage these days.
Ant Pruitt (01:23:26):
Yeah. I'm not seeing any of that stuff anymore. I used to see a bunch of memes [01:23:30] and crap that I didn't care about. Is it
Leo Laporte (01:23:31):
Possible they're going to turn it around and make
Ant Pruitt (01:23:34):
It there? The problem is still bots still p e s chops in our I R C mentioned that earlier, and I agree because I get followed by bots. All the dag time and Musk and the squad has not figured out a way to fix that just yet, even though that was the top of his list of demands when it came time for acquisition, if I remember
Leo Laporte (01:23:56):
Correctly. Well, as long as we're saying that these guys are [01:24:00] turning things around. I should point out Meta has just done its single biggest takedown removing a Chinese influence campaign on you. Speaking of disinformation, I was
Jeff Jarvis (01:24:11):
Hoping we're
Ant Pruitt (01:24:12):
Going to have Joan thought of it
Jeff Jarvis (01:24:13):
On today to talk about that.
Leo Laporte (01:24:14):
Well, when we bring, because she's the expert on disinformation. We also tried to get Alex Stamos another. He runs the Stanford Internet Observatory. We will get both of them on it in future shapes. The campaign began at least four years ago to span thousands of accounts. Not just Facebook though, Instagram, TikTok, X, CK [01:24:30] and Chinese websites, but Meta has, so as the Times gives an example, back in February, an article claiming that the US destroyed the Nord Stream underwater pipeline in the Baltic Sea was published on CK and blog spot. Within 24 hours, the article had been posted to Reddit, medium, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, translations of the article, Greek, [01:25:00] German, Russian, Italian, and Turkish also began appearing online. We now know that the posts are part of a Chinese influence campaign. That meta has started with Chinese law enforcement. It was discovered in 2019, 7,000 minute wait
Ant Pruitt (01:25:19):
Minute. It started with law enforcement.
Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
Yeah, 704 Facebook accounts. This is one group, 954 Facebook [01:25:30] pages, 15 Facebook groups, 15 Instagram accounts all removed from meta because of their ties to the Chinese campaign.
Jeff Jarvis (01:25:40):
The thing about this is there's research that I don't have at hand, but says that people spend a tremendously small amount of their time on this disinformation. A small group spreads it around, but most people just hardly see it. And it isn't that influential.
Leo Laporte (01:25:59):
I don't think
Jeff Jarvis (01:25:59):
We [01:26:00] have an idea of how big a problem member is.
Leo Laporte (01:26:01):
I think it is. Here's what I think happens. I see this happen in my life too. People are scrolling through Facebook, they see it peripherally and they just kind of register. Oh, the US might've blown up Nord stream and keep on going. They don't even look enough to know what the source of that was or anything. You've said this, everybody said, I saw a headline. I can't remember where it was from. It said that we did that. And it gets in your head, you see enough of it and people start repeating it. So that's the psychological, you might start believing [01:26:30] even there's zero evidence. In fact, all the evidence now is Russia did it as we thought, but it was beneficial to the Chinese. They called this Operation Spam Fage just to the seed, if you will. Yeah. Because they consider the US an adversary. So they wanted people to question the United States motives and so forth. And by the way, Facebook said the Chinese campaign struggled to reach people and attract attention. Just [01:27:00] as you said, some posts were riddled with spelling errors and poor grammar. Others were incongruent random links under Quora articles that had nothing to do with the subject being discussed. But I will say I believe that doesn't matter because people don't dig that deep. They just, in glancing, they register it their Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:18):
But it their head, the question is how many actually even see it at all?
Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
Well, yeah, if you don't see it, it doesn't. That's the thing.
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:25):
Right. And I don't think many people see it, and it's not shared much, and it's a small portion of people who [01:27:30] do share it. The same argument is being made about ai. Oh my God, this election, we're going to get buried in disinformation. Well, we already have plenty of disinformation. What does the volume mean? The question is not how much there is put up online. The question is how many see it and what impact it had.
Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Facebook says that it's the seventh campaign they've removed from China and the last six years, four of them found in this year alone. And this [01:28:00] meta says is because the Chinese are learning from and mimicking the Russian influence campaigns. Russians, yeah. That we've known about. Good on 'em. First of all, these, it's probably a fractional cost for these companies, right? Countries rather. It's a small, what did it cost? 5 million.
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:18):
Oh, yeah. It's a joy. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
And I think that there is this thought, and I believe it's true that you put this in the air, people aren't going to really read it. I would read in New York Times [01:28:30] story and vet it and say, wait a minute, look, all these errors, this is not, they just see it. It's in the glance. And enough of those I saw in four different places. That's why they spread it everywhere. I keep seeing that the US did this. I'm thinking maybe that's the case. It's the same thing with the origins of Covid. You put,
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:49):
I also think that it's an effort. It's a message to the United States government and to our,
Leo Laporte (01:28:55):
Oh, that we can do this.
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:57):
Well, yeah, we're going to cost you some [01:29:00] effort to keep of this and to worry about us, and we can come in everywhere under you. It's guerrilla warfare online.
Ant Pruitt (01:29:07):
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:29:09):
Some of these, by the way, are Proin. One of the links meta posted in its report, links to a TikTok account, part of the Spam Fage operation, one of the most popular videos, which at times says, we saw, showed a woman arguing in Chinese that life in Xinjiang, [01:29:30] which is where the weeders are being interned, was peaceful. Of course, we know that that's propaganda from the Chinese government to make you forget that they're putting weeders Muslims a minority in imprison camps.
Ant Pruitt (01:29:46):
Is it China's fault that society can't quite seem to think for themselves anymore?
Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
No, I don't think that The point of this is to say, I think the point of it's to [01:30:00] raise people's awareness. And I honestly do think that that is one of the problems with the internet is there's a lot of stray information floating by. And your brain sees it. And if you see it enough, you start to think it's true. Because enough, we're built so that if 20 people told you something was true, you'd go, it must be true. We're built that way. So if you create an influence operation that goes to all the different places and you keep seeing the earth is flat, the earth is flat, you might say, well, I know it's not flat, but boy, there must be something going on [01:30:30] here.
Ant Pruitt (01:30:30):
Okay, there's got to be some legitimate,
Leo Laporte (01:30:31):
There's got to be some reason I keep seeing this. I really believe that. Jeff, do you not think that's the case? No,
Jeff Jarvis (01:30:37):
I don't. I think the problem is that we are assuming too much that people actually care about the truth of things when they want to. Performatively say, well, that's good child molesters in pizza basements. They don't care whether it's true. That's not the point of it. The point of it is to signal and say, I hate those people and here's what I'm going to say about them. And so [01:31:00] the coordinated attacks right now on transsexuals, why is that subtly out there? Yeah. Who
Leo Laporte (01:31:07):
Caress?
Jeff Jarvis (01:31:07):
It's a
Leo Laporte (01:31:07):
Signal. Yeah. Or drag or drag queens. It just
Ant Pruitt (01:31:11):
Seems like there's
Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
While of a sudden,
Ant Pruitt (01:31:13):
No, what was that critical thinking?
Leo Laporte (01:31:18):
But I think my point is it's not involving that part of your brain. Okay. It's not involving thinking at all. It's just all these impressions. That's
Jeff Jarvis (01:31:27):
The point. And in the back, I don't think it's impressions. I think [01:31:30] it's more than just, oh, I came to believe this. Oh, that irritates those people. I don't like, I'm going
Leo Laporte (01:31:36):
To say no. I agree. But that's a separate thing going on. I think that also is happening, which is this.
Jeff Jarvis (01:31:41):
But the problem is how do you then judge actual belief versus,
Leo Laporte (01:31:46):
Well, you don't. That's why polls are so useless now, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Polls are also performative for political polls. Yes. People will say something to a pollster for performance reasons, not because they
Jeff Jarvis (01:31:56):
Believed it as the great. The late James Carey, Columbia professor said, [01:32:00] opinion polls preempt the conversation. They're meant to measure.
Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
Oh, I love that
Jeff Jarvis (01:32:05):
Opinion. Polls are, yeah, it's brilliant stuff. And I think everybody agrees. I wish I were qualified to write is the danger of political polls to democracy.
Leo Laporte (01:32:14):
Yeah. Well, of just horse race journalism, democracy
Jeff Jarvis (01:32:18):
Too.
Leo Laporte (01:32:19):
You cannot get away with that from that anywhere. It's all a horse race. It's not about, nobody's talking about policy or anything. It's like, who's in the lead and coming around the courthouse [01:32:30] we got, and it's just not, I think that's bss who won the re debate? Who won it? Not what did they talk about? Who won it?
Jeff Jarvis (01:32:39):
Right.
Leo Laporte (01:32:42):
You think critically though? I don't think critically. I'm just as susceptible.
Jeff Jarvis (01:32:48):
He just criticized.
Leo Laporte (01:32:49):
I'm just as susceptible to this as anybody I know that if I see something, and the most important part of this is that you don't register, that you don't get a chance. [01:33:00] Your critical thinking doesn't even get engaged. It's just you keep getting these impressions. I see this happen with so many people. I saw this in 12 different places. I'm starting to believe this. I'll give you an example. I'm starting to see in a lot of different places, we're spending a lot of money on Ukraine. Shouldn't we be spending it in better places? And if somebody wrote a think piece in foreign policy talking about this, that'd be one thing. But that's not the point of this. [01:33:30] It's the point of it is. So you start thinking, maybe we're spending too much money.
Jeff Jarvis (01:33:33):
Roberts Swami says that it's on Fox, it's on this, it's on that. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:33:38):
And it amplifies it. But the real point of it is not to trigger your thinking process at all. If you start thinking about it, it's Overton
Jeff Jarvis (01:33:47):
Window.
Leo Laporte (01:33:48):
Yeah. Shift in the,
Jeff Jarvis (01:33:50):
To let something into the conversation. If you think about
Leo Laporte (01:33:52):
There, you should probably see how they're all full of crap. Yeah, okay. They don't want you to think what the idea though. I think, and it's effective. [01:34:00] I think of this spanner flush thing is just to get the thought in your head. And eventually you might even think you thought it, okay, I get it now. I'm hearing it's everywhere. Psychology 1 0 1. Yeah. Well, it's where old wives tales come from. And I mean, I think it's a natural human.
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:18):
Well, so, alright. Can I do a Jeff moment here?
Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
Please bring that book out. Is it the G parenthesis?
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:25):
Well, we could do that. We could show that we should just
Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
Quickly, there it is. Gutenberg parenthesis.com. [01:34:30] Jeff's new book just came out. It's
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:32):
Great. And coming in November. Object Lesson magazine. Woo-hoo.
Leo Laporte (01:34:36):
Good one. What's that?
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:38):
That's my next book in November. It's a little book about the, it's an elegy to the magazine.
Leo Laporte (01:34:43):
Oh, I want to read that. That's a tiny book. I'm
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:45):
Going to need stronger glasses short too. But I'm going to talk about something
Leo Laporte (01:34:51):
F
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:51):
That's going to put you to the
Leo Laporte (01:34:52):
Politics of talk and reputation in medieval Europe.
Jeff Jarvis (01:34:57):
Watch out. Watch.
Leo Laporte (01:34:59):
I've been [01:35:00] very worried about this Midieval Europe, Europe thing. It's just I'm worried about this. What's going on in medieval Europe?
Jeff Jarvis (01:35:08):
So the point is, what did people do before print, right? Well, when print came out, nobody trusted it. Their provenance was not clear. Anybody can make a pamphlet. Anybody can make a Facebook post. Anybody can make a tweet. It was all the same. And then one of the institutions about editing and publishing came along that imbued print with authority. So what did people do before print? And I [01:35:30] was curious about that. And I went back and looked at some stuff and I came across this concept called Fama in Latin, you can probably tell me. It means it is said. And what this is really about is that people in their time had to take the responsibility.
Leo Laporte (01:35:43):
This is what we're talking about, right? That's exactly what we're talking about.
Jeff Jarvis (01:35:47):
They had to take the responsibility for understanding the reputation of who told them something. The reputation that attached to what they heard, the reputation of the person that was about their own reputation when they wanted to share it. And they had to manage [01:36:00] this social process. It wasn't an institutional process. It was a social process of whom do you trust? Why do you trust them, and what do they said in the past? And that responsibility, we kind of deputized to institutions like journalism and publishing and so on. And now that they're overwhelmed, the responsibility falls back on us and we're not very good at it. And people need help doing it. But that's what it returns to in essence, is that we're all going to make these decisions on our own, and thus we've got to help people make those decisions [01:36:30] and not just have crap thrown out all the time. So they say, yeah, there's child molesters and pizza parlors and of
Leo Laporte (01:36:37):
Jarvis. That was kind of my point is that people don't do the Fama question. They don't say where it came from,
Jeff Jarvis (01:36:41):
But they should. They should. That's
Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
The thing. But the plants, it's
Jeff Jarvis (01:36:43):
Our responsibility and the internet that we build is going to be, if it's true of all of us in the internet book I've been working on, I say that one of the things we should promise to ourselves is if something looks too good to be true,
Leo Laporte (01:36:58):
Stop.
Jeff Jarvis (01:36:59):
Don't share it. Think [01:37:00] for a second.
Leo Laporte (01:37:01):
That's all. But we won't. Well, it's media. Never
Jeff Jarvis (01:37:05):
Speak for yourself.
Leo Laporte (01:37:06):
Say it's media
Benito Gonzales (01:37:07):
Literacy when it comes down to it. We don't have a good media literacy in this country.
Leo Laporte (01:37:12):
Nobody knows how to read stuff. Again, this is my point, that Spam Fage didn't require that you read it, it required, it scrolled by, and it scrolled by in enough places. You weren't even thinking about it. And it got in your head and suddenly it kind of makes sense. Spray, I'm
Jeff Jarvis (01:37:26):
Heretical about media
Leo Laporte (01:37:27):
Literacy photography. [01:37:30] By the way, you might be wondering what happened to that laser eyed cat that got stuck in a skyscraper. Oh yeah. Chasing the evil mouse. Man. Here's the Belgian Franco.
Jeff Jarvis (01:37:39):
That's weird. That's weird.
Leo Laporte (01:37:42):
I like it.
Jeff Jarvis (01:37:43):
You like it?
Leo Laporte (01:37:44):
Yeah. It's cyberpunk. It's very cool. That's the word cyberpunk. Yeah. I don't see, it's a
Jeff Jarvis (01:37:49):
Gigantic
Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
Cat. Yeah, that cat looks stone. Where's plastic band? Where's plastic Ant? What are these things? I've been written out. You've been written out of the comic.
Jeff Jarvis (01:38:00):
[01:38:00] The algorithm killed you ant I'm sorry.
Leo Laporte (01:38:03):
This is great. I'm going to save this. I might have fun with this. Well, the
Jeff Jarvis (01:38:08):
Great thing is I'm going to use this for what? I need illustration for a post. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:38:13):
If you want to know more about this, tune in tomorrow. The AI show. Jason's AI show. I like that. I like that. Yeah. Jason's AI show. Who's Jason? We don't care. He's just some guy named Jason. Jason's AI show. It's kind of like saying everybody's AI show. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:38:30):
[01:38:30] Well, if we can have Claude, we can have Jason.
Leo Laporte (01:38:32):
Yeah, Jason and Jennifer's AI show. Oh boy. And it's everybody's AI show, right? Yeah. Just generic,
Jeff Jarvis (01:38:42):
Jason. Well, hold on here. I'm leaving this. I stand up for Jason Day. Jason is not a secretary and he's not generic.
Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
That's just clear. No, I don't mean It's that Jason. It's just the generic Jason.
Jeff Jarvis (01:38:54):
No, it's our
Leo Laporte (01:38:55):
Jason. It's your Jason. If you want to know more about Comic factory and the hugging space, [01:39:00] or sorry, hugging space. Hugging space, all you have to do is tune in tomorrow and find out more. But
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:06):
You have to be a member of the club. Clubby do
Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
So I think we're going to start streaming that while he does it as well. So if you're in the chat room or if you're watching live, everyone's
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:16):
See live. Everyone can see the
Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
Live. Everybody can see it live. Thank you, Manina.
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:19):
Oh, cool.
Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
It's open to all,
Jeff Jarvis (01:39:23):
They just don't get their, I want to go back to media literacy for one second because I'm a heretic on this topic. That's the flag I [01:39:30] should salute. But if news media needs an instruction manual to teach people how to use it, then it's the news that's doing something wrong, not the people. And I think we've got to see different ways to meet their needs. What do you say?
Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. I've said for a while, and our so-called journalists out there have to do a better job. And I think we have done ourselves a great disservice with the 24 hour news channels. I mean, Fox is obviously egregious, but I think all of [01:40:00] them, all of them are because in order to fill, I know we tried to do it at Tech TV to fill 24 hours with news coverage, you're going to end up sensationalizing it to keep it interesting. My news
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:10):
Used to be a public service.
Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
Yeah. News used to be a public service. Now it's a profit center. Not good. Not good.
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:16):
Well, and look, today, it's been the storm end knowledge today. Yeah. So the storm end to end stuff. So I put up a screenshot
Leo Laporte (01:40:25):
From, oh man, that god damn buoy in Key West. I'm so sick of that. Every time there's [01:40:30] a hurricane in Florida, they show that buoy, which is the southern most part of the US continent, key West. And there's a reporter, I'm standing here waiting for the hurricane.
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:42):
It's
Leo Laporte (01:40:42):
Terrible. You turned me onto this years ago, Jeff.
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:48):
Storm porn.
Leo Laporte (01:40:49):
Storm porn. Yeah. But no, just the idea that a reporter has to be
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:53):
Oh, knee,
Leo Laporte (01:40:54):
Deep in water in order to cover this
Jeff Jarvis (01:40:56):
TV doesn't have the sense to get out of the rain. Yes. [01:41:00] The hurricane Lastman, Neil Postman, in his book, amusing Ourselves to Death, talked about how the telegraph changed everything because it suddenly made everything, everybody's business. So a storm somewhere now became important everywhere. Even though it's not relevant to you, it didn't happen to you. It didn't come into Petaluma. Yes, you care about the people there, that's fine. But to cover it all day long is ridiculous. There's other things happening in the world and they just ignore it To [01:41:30] go for storm porn.
Leo Laporte (01:41:32):
I take you now to the southernmost webcam live from, oh, it won't load. Damnit. This
Jeff Jarvis (01:41:39):
Storm took it out, man.
Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
The storm took it out. Did it? I probably did. No, that thing's made out of cement. Maybe a great white Got it. I think it's actually because I'm on Linux and it doesn't want to load it.
Jeff Jarvis (01:41:51):
You're not in Chrome.
Leo Laporte (01:41:53):
Yeah, I'm not in Chrome. That's right. It isn't like Firefox on Linux. Well, we don't know what you're doing. Who are you? What are doing here? [01:42:00] Anyway, I hope you're all all right. Hurricane Ilia. Was it landed? It was bad. I hope everybody's okay.
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:12):
Yeah, it's bad. But it wasn't as bad as you. Almost the TV people were almost hoping,
Leo Laporte (01:42:17):
Oh, they're praying.
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:18):
Oh, it's a category three. They're
Leo Laporte (01:42:19):
Praying for it. It's sad. And its on older folks, in my opinion. Oh yeah. On older folks and people with soft [01:42:30] brains of any strength. Yes. My brain is my brain. My brain is soft. But I'm not totally idiot.
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:41):
I don't even watch the news.
Leo Laporte (01:42:43):
Probably smart. So you were wondering, I know how the meta ban of news in Canada has fared, right? Oh, poor Canada. According to Reuters, the Canada News ban has failed to dent Facebook usage.
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:00):
[01:43:00] Nobody caress
Leo Laporte (01:43:02):
About nobody cares. Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada unchanged since they started blocking news start of August. Two different analytics firms. SimilarWeb says unchanged data.ai said its data was not showing any meaningful change to the usage. Here is the graph and it's nothing. There's where they block news drinks. It's the same,
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:29):
It was [01:43:30] 3% before. And yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:43:33):
Who cares? Meta did not comment on this, but they're probably secretly going. They
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:39):
Were secretly clapping.
Leo Laporte (01:43:40):
See, we told, we know what's new. We told you it wouldn't affect us.
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:46):
I think I, I predict. I don't predict anything because I'm not a futurist. I predict, however, that meta will end up getting rid of news almost the world around.
Leo Laporte (01:43:57):
It's too much trouble. There's no point. [01:44:00] And if it doesn't affect your usage, because people don't go to Facebook for news. I know that. We thought so. We thought that they got news. Well, they
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:06):
Say they start Facebook for news, by the way. Number one, there's nothing stopping a news organization from putting actual information on
Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
Facebook. So there can't still be news there. And
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:14):
Number two for all this, oh my God, they're cutting off news. Well, every news organization has paywalls, so they're not exactly opening up to the world either.
Benito Gonzales (01:44:22):
It also matters where you're talking about though, because there are places like where I'm from. I'm from the Philippines, and this is the place where Facebook is the most powerful [01:44:30] thing ever. And people share news, read news. They do everything on Facebook over there.
Leo Laporte (01:44:35):
And Bonino, not just Facebook, but WhatsApp. It's the internet. The other meta. Oh
Ant Pruitt (01:44:39):
Yeah. Facebook is the internet for some
Benito Gonzales (01:44:41):
People in the Philippines. Facebook's the internet. Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:44):
But what do you think of rapper
Benito Gonzales (01:44:46):
Rappers? Great.
Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
What's Rap
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:48):
Raper is Maria Resa, Nobel Prizewinning journalist and enemy of Duterte. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:44:55):
She's now, is she okay? Did she go to
Benito Gonzales (01:44:59):
Jail? No. [01:45:00] No, no. Ss not the president anymore. We got a new president
Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Now. Oh, you got ready to dote. See,
Benito Gonzales (01:45:04):
But we have an, it's Marcos now again.
Leo Laporte (01:45:06):
Oh, another Marcos.
Benito Gonzales (01:45:08):
Yeah. Fantastic. We're kind of doing that again. Fantastic.
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:10):
Greatest hits.
Leo Laporte (01:45:12):
So this is a question I ask about the US too. What's wrong with the electorate? That they keep electing corrupt leaders,
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:21):
The slavery based system of states, and
Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
In the US it's the electoral college, right? Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:29):
It is. [01:45:30] It is. Because the Senate wouldn't look like the way it does. And the presidency wouldn't look like the way it does if it had not been for those rules, that structure. What
Leo Laporte (01:45:36):
Is it in the Philippines? Bonito. Do you think Kaino grew up in the Philippines?
Benito Gonzales (01:45:40):
What do you mean that
Leo Laporte (01:45:41):
Why does, how
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:42):
Does get elected?
Benito Gonzales (01:45:43):
Well, I mean, in the Philippines, there's a whole lot of issues. I mean, the most biggest issue is the colonial mentality. We've been colonized since for the last thousand years.
Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
Colonialism really leaves scars. Does it? Not much like slavery leaves
Benito Gonzales (01:45:57):
Scars. That is really the root of all of the problems.
Leo Laporte (01:46:00):
[01:46:00] Yeah, it's the original sin. Thank you. Imperialist nations job well done. The Philippines was a US colony until most recently. Right. But it was before that. It was Spain.
Benito Gonzales (01:46:14):
Yeah. Americans were the last and then don't be the last. It was Japanese before them, and then it was Spain before.
Ant Pruitt (01:46:19):
Oh, I didn't know that part. Spain.
Benito Gonzales (01:46:23):
That's why I have my, that's why my name is Spanish.
Ant Pruitt (01:46:26):
Did not know that. Huh?
Leo Laporte (01:46:28):
Benito.
Benito Gonzales (01:46:29):
Benito Gonzalez. [01:46:30] That's a Spanish name.
Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
That's the Spanish as you can get. Yeah, I
Ant Pruitt (01:46:33):
Know that. But I had other thoughts.
Benito Gonzales (01:46:36):
And Filipinos have a lot more in common with Latinos than they do other Southeast Asians because of that.
Ant Pruitt (01:46:41):
I had other thoughts on your name that I want.
Jeff Jarvis (01:46:46):
When you are Americans. Well, where are from culturally, what connections do you feel here?
Benito Gonzales (01:46:57):
Okay, well, this is a very loaded question for me personally.
Leo Laporte (01:46:59):
We should [01:47:00] say you moved here as an adult.
Benito Gonzales (01:47:01):
Yeah. I moved here as an adult, but I was born as an American citizen. My parents were nationalized Americans, but they moved back the Philippines before I was born. So I'm naturalized an actual American that was born in the Philippines to Filipino parents. So my identity crisis is a
Ant Pruitt (01:47:17):
Little different. People. I had no chance in this, in understanding it.
Benito Gonzales (01:47:20):
So my identity crisis here is a little crazy.
Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
I want to recommend a really fantastic book called How to Hide an Empire. [01:47:30] I don't know if you read this, Jeff, you seem like you've read every book ever. No. A history of the Greater United States. This is, we don't, don't really admit that we were an imperialist and somewhat still are an imperialist nation. And it talks about a history of our overseas possessions, including the Philippines. We still have
Benito Gonzales (01:47:51):
Puerto Rico. That's still a colony.
Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
As an example, when Pearl Harbor was hit, the Japanese also bombed the Philippines. Significantly. Huge, [01:48:00] huge damage. Many more lives lost. But we didn't talk about that. Even both Hawaii and the Philippines were US territories at the time. But because Hawaii, for some reason, we decided Hawaii is okay, but the Philippines, we shouldn't talk. It's a fascinating eye-opening book. Highly recommended by Daniel. It's
Jeff Jarvis (01:48:22):
A great title too, because American
Ant Pruitt (01:48:25):
How Hide Empire didn't have
Jeff Jarvis (01:48:26):
A Hidden Empire. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
The cover kind of says it all. You've got [01:48:30] what he calls is the logo map of the us, which is the one we're all familiar with. But if you look at the territories like Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, all the territories, they really as much of the landmass as those territories. It's really fascinating. I'd be interested what you thought of it, Benino. Actually, that's
Benito Gonzales (01:48:55):
Really interesting. I would like to read that. But to answer Jeff's question real quick, how I feel about Americas, I do [01:49:00] feel both. I feel like an American and a Filipino. When I'm in the Philippines, I have to sort of defend Americans. And when I'm here, I have to defend Filipinos.
Leo Laporte (01:49:07):
You suck. It sucks. You have to defend people everywhere you go. Wow.
Jeff Jarvis (01:49:10):
What about, I'm curious because you have Latino name, a Spanish name, and there's Asian connections as to what assumptions do ignorant Americans make when they meet you and start to hear your history.
Ant Pruitt (01:49:29):
I can [01:49:30] answer that for you. He's here in California. I assume he had an Asian and Spanish parents. Hence the name. Hint how he looks. There's the ignorant American answer right there. That's exactly my thought about you, Mr. Bonita. I didn't know until later finding out out that you were from the Philippines.
Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
He thought what he was.
Ant Pruitt (01:49:52):
Well, no. It's just the fact that his last name is Gonzalez. And I was like, well, we're in fricking California. [01:50:00] It's Spanish here. Right. So that's all. It just made sense to me. Oh, okay. He's probably got a Spanish parent and an Asian parent.
Benito Gonzales (01:50:08):
Well, that's probably more of a function of you're not knowing enough Filipino people because all the Filipinos have
Ant Pruitt (01:50:12):
Too,
Benito Gonzales (01:50:13):
Except for Victor. I mean Victor bna, that's a Filipino name. See, Victor's name has a
Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Victor. Victor does a Filipino victor. Great.
Ant Pruitt (01:50:20):
Right? Yeah. Can't say I've met a lot of Filipino people in my
Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
Life. Just hang out here. We got a lot.
Jeff Jarvis (01:50:25):
Well, actually, probably more than you know.
Leo Laporte (01:50:27):
Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. More than [01:50:30] I'm going to get a copy of this.
Ant Pruitt (01:50:33):
I feel like everybody Filipino Met has been here in California in the last four years.
Benito Gonzales (01:50:37):
Well, there's a lot of us here. A of us.
Leo Laporte (01:50:43):
I think this will be fun. Next time you charge your Tesla, take in a movie. Tesla's going to build a supercharger in Los Angeles with a diner and drive-in movie theater.
Ant Pruitt (01:50:55):
I like that. I've been
Jeff Jarvis (01:50:56):
Expecting a lot more of this.
Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
I agree.
Jeff Jarvis (01:50:58):
How do you make that that [01:51:00] time when you charge enjoyable?
Ant Pruitt (01:51:04):
I like this idea.
Leo Laporte (01:51:05):
Most superchargers are in mall parking lots so that you couldn't goes to a mall. Maybe. That's right. The
Ant Pruitt (01:51:13):
People with a Tesla so they can charge.
Leo Laporte (01:51:15):
Yeah, I don't Now this is a drawing. This is from the projects architect. I don't know if they're going to actually call it Millie Ways, but if you're a fan of Douglas Adams, you'll know that Millie Ways was the name of the restaurant at the end of the universe [01:51:30] in the hitch sky to the galaxy. And it does have a very retro sci-fi look. You see the chargers
Ant Pruitt (01:51:36):
There, copyright on that.
Leo Laporte (01:51:37):
And I guess they have car hops like in the old days. Remember? That's fun.
Ant Pruitt (01:51:44):
That's what Sonic tries
Leo Laporte (01:51:45):
To do. Sonic. And they didn't have a and W in Carolina. They did. Did they? We had the a and W was right here on Washington Street. It's now a Mexican restaurant. And even when I'm moved here, 20 years or 30 years, 30 years ago, they would come out in roller skates [01:52:00] with the tray and they'd hook the tray to your car and you eat your,
Ant Pruitt (01:52:03):
That's what Sonic used to do in Carolina. I don't know. I haven't been to a Sonic in a gazillion years, but
Leo Laporte (01:52:11):
I like that you can't probably can't find young people in a rollers skate anymore. It's part of the problem, right?
Jeff Jarvis (01:52:18):
Well, no. You use those jet packs, electric wheel things. Oh
Ant Pruitt (01:52:23):
Yeah. The
Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
Hover one Wheels. Oh, that'd be good.
Ant Pruitt (01:52:26):
Hoverboards. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:52:28):
Or segues. [01:52:30] Segues.
Jeff Jarvis (01:52:30):
You can find an aftermarket for your Segway or another job.
Leo Laporte (01:52:35):
We already gave 'em away. We had the really Well, yeah, gave away the junk. Kings came and they took them. They said should Really? Yeah. They said, oh, these are
Jeff Jarvis (01:52:47):
Great. There was no value to them.
Leo Laporte (01:52:48):
Well, I'll tell you what the value is. So they said, these are great. Can we have 'em? I said, yeah, but you should know something. They need new batteries. The new batteries are $3,500 each. You could buy a new S [01:53:00] from the current owner for a thousand dollars. So take 'em if you want 'em. They're classics. $7,000 to get those two segues working again. That's crazy. And for 2000, I get two new, what do they call 'em? Nine bots. But they bought the Segway. Actually, the nine bots look pretty good. They look actually a little bit better than the original Segways. The original Segways are kind of clunky.
Jeff Jarvis (01:53:25):
How many miles do you think you put on
Leo Laporte (01:53:28):
Your Segway? Not many. Eight. [01:53:30] No, we wrote it in town a few times probably. And then of course Michael, when he was like 12, used to joust with his friends, they would've Segway joust to,
Jeff Jarvis (01:53:41):
Oh, that's fun.
Leo Laporte (01:53:43):
Take a nice sharp board. Maybe a couple of nails in it and go at one another. Yeah, that was fun. I swear
Ant Pruitt (01:53:47):
Michael gets cooler and cooler every week. Man, that
Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
Was crazy. I yelled. It's the only time I've ever yelled at him. What are you, whatcha doing?
Jeff Jarvis (01:54:00):
[01:54:00] They
Leo Laporte (01:54:00):
Had these, the board has Sharp Point and they're riding and the segues go 12 miles an hour. So that's 24 miles an hour. Closing speeds. We're jousting
Jeff Jarvis (01:54:12):
Stop right
Leo Laporte (01:54:13):
Now.
Ant Pruitt (01:54:14):
I totally get that. It's some of the crazy stuff we used to do. I think
Leo Laporte (01:54:19):
It's powerful. Course. Whatcha going to do? Whatcha going to do kids? Actually look at this. Segue nine bought, that's not even a thousand dollars. It is $539 on Amazon.
Jeff Jarvis (01:54:28):
Wow. Who owns 'em now?
Leo Laporte (01:54:30):
[01:54:30] Nine bought Chinese company. But this is effectively the same as a Segway. Wait a minute. Why
Ant Pruitt (01:54:36):
Aren't there any Segway sports?
Leo Laporte (01:54:37):
Why aren't there? There was Segway. Polo Wozniak famously had a Segway polo team.
Ant Pruitt (01:54:44):
I remember that.
Leo Laporte (01:54:47):
The problem with this segway, and I think it's the same problem with this nine bot, is you look like the ultimate tork riding around because you're eight feet tall, you're standing on this platform and you have
Jeff Jarvis (01:54:59):
To stand. Your posture [01:55:00] has to be weird.
Leo Laporte (01:55:03):
Paul Bart, mall Cop Paul b Bart. So there were two couples that had Segways in town, us, Lisa and me and another couple. And we'd see him, we'd wave and now it's just that couple and they ride around in their segues and you stand out like a sore thumb. You really do.
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:21):
So Dean Cayman's company is right behind Jake's apartment and
Leo Laporte (01:55:25):
They're still around is he's a developer of the Segway, but he also made [01:55:30] a very cool wheelchair that could climb stairs. He's brilliant.
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:34):
I wonder what he's making now.
Leo Laporte (01:55:35):
I don't know. Not segues. Segway took a little bit of a hit when the owner drove off a cliff and died. Well, wasn't
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:44):
The
Leo Laporte (01:55:45):
Owner, he was the ceo
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:46):
Was the owner. T o. Yeah, he did.
Leo Laporte (01:55:51):
Yeah. He was a former coal miner. He became wealthy by manufacturing the Hesco [01:56:00] Bastion barrier system. In 2009. He bought Segway In 2010. He died from injury sustained from falling off a cliff while riding his Segway pt, which was the offroad. It's very sad.
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:20):
So D E K A research, that's where the iBot wheelchair is.
Leo Laporte (01:56:25):
Yeah. I hope he still makes that. That was very cool. Gosh, I can't
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:29):
Believe Arm A revolutionary [01:56:30] prosthesis. Prosti Prosthesis.
Leo Laporte (01:56:33):
Prosthesis. That's
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:36):
Allowing for multiple advanced movements. A small subcutaneous pump for drugs, clean water for around the world. He does good stuff. Nice.
Leo Laporte (01:56:48):
He's a good man
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:50):
Efficiently converting almost any fuel into electrical power Sterling
Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
And the segue wasn't his fault, I think,
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:58):
And he makes the freestyle coke [01:57:00] dispenser.
Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
Really? The
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:02):
What? The one where hit all the buttons and get that. He
Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
Invented that. Oh,
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:05):
That's so cool. Go to daka research.com/innovations.
Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
That's very Oh my.
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:14):
The auto syringe. Oh my
Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
Lord. Well, he's invented so many things, but the Coca-Cola
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:18):
Freestyle love machine
Leo Laporte (01:57:19):
Is a little odd
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:21):
That he love that. Ive invent that machine, don't you?
Leo Laporte (01:57:22):
Yeah. They had one when we went to see Oppenheimer at the imax where there it is A M C [01:57:30] A M C theaters. They have 'em in there and basically you put a cup on it there and you can make anything you want.
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:37):
That delights
Leo Laporte (01:57:38):
You. No. Oh
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:39):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:57:40):
Not in the least.
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:42):
Because aunt I drink lemonade and if go you go to Taco Bell, they replace the lemonade with some strawberry lemons, they'd crap. There's only five choices. That's it. I go to a place freestyle. I can get lemonade, I can get pick lemonade. I can get diet lemonade. I can get any [01:58:00] lemonade. I damn well please. And that makes me happy. Are you going to make fun of me for that? Huh? You got a problem with that As simple.
Leo Laporte (01:58:05):
What's interesting, sir?
Jeff Jarvis (01:58:07):
It makes me happy.
Leo Laporte (01:58:07):
Scene came and invented a wearable insulin pump, and he uses the same technology in the Coke freestyle.
Jeff Jarvis (01:58:17):
No.
Leo Laporte (01:58:18):
Yes.
Jeff Jarvis (01:58:20):
This is too cool.
Leo Laporte (01:58:23):
It uses less than one kilowatt of electricity per hour, less than a hair dryer, and the purifier [01:58:30] will use any water source no matter how polluted laundry, water. This may turn you off the Coke, freestyle, groundwater, seawater, even sewage. It's all okay. It boils and evaporates the water. It actually distills it condenses it. Cleans it in the freestyle. Yes. No, that can't possibly be, oh no, that's something else. No, that can't be. That's something. He actually made a water purifier. Oh no, that's the water purifier. That's the slingshot. But it's in the same article [01:59:00] as why Dean came and invented the Coca-Cola freestyle. So I just Well, it's other things and other things. Yes. So he invented water purifier and the Coke freestyle, which really, if you think about it, is the opposite of water purifier. A purifier, it takes water and had corn syrup and flavoring sches it up. It
Ant Pruitt (01:59:22):
Up thousand calories
Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
Go either way. I can't believe the freestyle is still around. It's up there. [01:59:30] I think when they write the history of western civilization, it'll be right up there with the McFlurry as kind of Rube Goldberg machines that only a civilization with an excess of free and leisure time would ever invent. Am I right?
Ant Pruitt (01:59:47):
I've only seen those machines like a handful of times.
Leo Laporte (01:59:50):
Next time you go to imax, you can live in the future.
Ant Pruitt (01:59:55):
A simple pleasures. Mr. Jarvis, I salute you. That's all. Found your, that's [02:00:00] all
Leo Laporte (02:00:00):
Right. You like your mayonnaise? I like my May.
Ant Pruitt (02:00:03):
Yeah. It's a simple pleasure.
Leo Laporte (02:00:04):
Do you play Valant? I bet bonito you've played Valant. You seem like a Valant player. No,
Benito Gonzales (02:00:08):
Because Tencent wants root access to your computer to install it, so, oh, no
Leo Laporte (02:00:11):
Kidding. Tencent is the Chinese company that publishes Valant needs rude access to install it.
Benito Gonzales (02:00:19):
It's for their anti cheat, but I
Leo Laporte (02:00:21):
Still have no thanks. I don't do any of these anti anything with anti cheat. I don't play because yeah, it's got to be invasive by its nature. It's worse than D R M. Really? [02:00:30] So there was a big Valant World Championship final in Los Angeles last week. Elon Musk showed up.
Ant Pruitt (02:00:38):
Okay,
Leo Laporte (02:00:40):
Elon, here's a clip of his appearance of Elon Musk at the Valant tournament. You really can't see him at first. It just, the camera hits him. Listen, you can hear him once the crowd season a bigger reaction than ten's got. Yeah, I think so. They're starting to boo him Nice [02:01:00] and shout 10 to five. Bring back Twitter folks. Back
Speaker 7 (02:01:03):
On the game. Now Paper X.
Leo Laporte (02:01:06):
Another challenge for them. This is all the excitement of eSports brought to life. 10.
Ant Pruitt (02:01:11):
And now give me grief about watching football crowd
Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
Threading. Do you play Overwatch? Because this looks a little bit like kind of a boring Overwatch. I do play Overwatch. Yeah. Overwatch is much more fun than Valant. This looks boring.
Benito Gonzales (02:01:27):
This is like Counterstrike and
Leo Laporte (02:01:28):
Overwatch. It's much more like counterstrike. [02:01:30] Well, apparently you can hear in this clip, I don't hear it, but you can hear. I heard it,
Ant Pruitt (02:01:37):
Hear
Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
It. Very
Ant Pruitt (02:01:38):
Twitter
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:40):
Later
Leo Laporte (02:01:40):
On Twitter. Twitter. That's
Ant Pruitt (02:01:43):
What they were
Leo Laporte (02:01:44):
Doing. Don't bring back Twitter. No,
Ant Pruitt (02:01:46):
That's what they were saying in there. Yeah, they're
Leo Laporte (02:01:47):
Wrong. By the way. You know that he fired a lot of people when he took over. There are 2001 of the contracts you sign as an employee, then we do it here. By the way, just so you know, don't think about [02:02:00] suing me, is you agree. Damn. You agree that you
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:03):
Fire your lawyer now you
Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
Agree to binding arbitration. I
Ant Pruitt (02:02:07):
Saw that in the documents when that
Leo Laporte (02:02:09):
Came on. It's just a sensible thing to put in the document and apparently everybody hired, everybody does it. Everybody in California does it. They're actually thinking about making that illegal because you should have the right to sue me. Everybody does that anyway. Twitter is now facing 2,200 arbitration cases [02:02:30] from employees fired. They say illegally ex-employees saying they failed to pay, promised severance and then delayed the arbitration cases by not filing the fees, which totaled over $3 million.
Ant Pruitt (02:02:48):
Well then sounds like they have a case, right?
Leo Laporte (02:02:51):
They're going, could you
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:52):
Default on arbitration? Can you just That's
Leo Laporte (02:02:56):
Interesting. That's an interesting question. They're using Jams, which is the big arbitration [02:03:00] company. I think it's probably what we use too. I don't know. I don't know. We've never had to do it, but I don't know what we would do. I don't. Don't think it specifies for two party matters. The filing fee at Jams is $2,000 for matters based on a clause or agreement that's required as a condition of employment. The employees only required. You'd be glad to hear this, to pay $400, it's cheap. That's cheap. Yeah. Anyway, Twitter's got a big bill
Jeff Jarvis (02:03:30):
[02:03:30] Among many that they don't pay.
Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
Why pay him? Do I want to go home? So let's do the Google chains. Let's go the Google chain. Look. Come on now baby.
Ant Pruitt (02:03:41):
He ended
Leo Laporte (02:03:41):
It. Let the Good Times roll. Chrome OS 100 sixteens coming out with some nice new features, including autocorrect and cloud and local file search. Why would you want a file search? Oh, I guess in ChromeOS. I'm sorry. Wasn't that thinking it was browser computer? So this is for you, Jeff, so [02:04:00] you could search your computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking Chrome browser, the ChromeOS.
Ant Pruitt (02:04:05):
See, I didn't even take a slide at you at that time.
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:08):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:04:09):
Do you install? You do. As soon as it's possible you install the,
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:13):
It just happens. That's the beauty of
Leo Laporte (02:04:14):
Chrome. Just
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:15):
Happens. You don't even have to decide this bloody Mac, which thank you very much. You gave me from about 20 years ago. I probably haven't updated it myself in 10 years. It just
Leo Laporte (02:04:28):
Doesn't.
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:29):
Well, [02:04:30] no, the Mac doesn't. The Mac tells you idiot. You should update. You should get your oil change too, but a minute you get
Leo Laporte (02:04:36):
A vaccination. No, wait a minute. Your Chromebook, doesn't it say restart to update or close? That's
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:41):
All you got to do is restart. Next time you restart. If you turn it off for any reason, restart it. There it is. It's done. No decision, no effort, no nothing. A beautiful thing. Live
Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
Loving. Glad you're happy with your toy computer.
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:53):
And by simple pleasures, I have my Coke machine and my Chromebook
Ant Pruitt (02:04:58):
A toy computer.
Leo Laporte (02:05:00):
[02:05:00] Google is discontinuing. I
Jeff Jarvis (02:05:03):
Don't go to Terminal. I don't do any of that. You could if you want.
Leo Laporte (02:05:08):
I don't have
Ant Pruitt (02:05:09):
To. It'd probably run better if you
Leo Laporte (02:05:11):
Could. You can actually go to the terminal. It's actually one of the best parts about the Chromebook. You can install Linux on it. Google has discontinued. I don't even know if you knew about this. Do you know about Pixel Pass? This was where you would buy a phone and you'd get Combined services all in one. You'd get Google one, preferred Care, YouTube Premium, Google [02:05:30] Play Pass. I
Jeff Jarvis (02:05:31):
Had no idea and I have owned nothing but pixels. How much did it cost before they killed it?
Ant Pruitt (02:05:36):
I didn't find that until someone mentioned it in our Discord this weekend.
Leo Laporte (02:05:41):
I'm guessing that you would, they launched this in 2021 when the Pixel six came out. So if you wanted a Pixel six, including all of those features, 45 bucks a month, pixel six Pro 55 bucks a month, you'd get 200 gigabytes storage. The Google one [02:06:00] play pass for premium games and apps. I actually pay for Play Pass YouTube premium. I also pay for that. I think it's, maybe it's all part of one subscription. Maybe it's Google one. So if you have a Pixel Pass, you'll be able to continue using it for two years from the subscription date
Ant Pruitt (02:06:17):
And then it'll go a la carte after that. Is that what they're
Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
Saying? It says, let's see. New Pixel Pass subscriptions will no longer be available August 29th. So it's done. [02:06:30] Why is it being discontinued? We offer the best value for our hardware products, give users flexibility, blah, blah, blah. Is it available? No. Can I still upgrade my service? You can upgrade your Pixel device after 24 months, but you can't update your subscription to pass. So you're going to have to, okay,
Ant Pruitt (02:06:47):
So it is, I
Leo Laporte (02:06:47):
Look, it was a way of, I think basically making it more affordable to get a
Ant Pruitt (02:06:51):
Fixed, and I guess I never knew about it because I already had those services and we're paying.
Leo Laporte (02:06:59):
So you look for [02:07:00] an email that you would've gotten on August 29th with the subject line. An important update on Pixel Pass. You will automatically renew every month until canceled on the Google subscriptions and you'll get a monthly bill. So sorry, I don't know how many, Google never said how many people did that. Probably they canceled it. Either. It was costing him too much money. So many people did it or it was a pain in the butt. Nobody did it.
Ant Pruitt (02:07:29):
Right. [02:07:30] I'm thinking more of B
Leo Laporte (02:07:31):
Plan. B
Jeff Jarvis (02:07:32):
Plus. I'll bet It's also a problem too in internal politics. So who gets to allocate the revenue to their bottom
Leo Laporte (02:07:38):
Minds, right? That's right. That's a good point. And the writing was on the wall. They did not offer it for the seven A or the fold, their two most recent phones. Oh, so that's kind of a little hint. Do you use Google Chat? The successor to I don't know what
Jeff Jarvis (02:07:55):
To what? Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
To Hangouts. I guess they're adding voice messages and [02:08:00] Will now interoperate with Slack and Teams. That's basically giving up that's saying, yeah, go ahead. Use Slack. We don't care. Alright, well Interoperating
Jeff Jarvis (02:08:12):
Is kind of neat.
Leo Laporte (02:08:13):
How does it interoperate? I don't know. I don't know. They partner, oh, this is terrible. They partner with collaborative interoperability solution provider mio. So that messages sent using Google Chat can appear in Slack or teams or vice versa.
Jeff Jarvis (02:08:28):
Oh, that sounds confusing.
Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
Yeah. Doesn't [02:08:30] sound good. Anyway, how long before Google Kills chat? It's just a matter of time. And if you have a pixel fold or pixel tablet, I have the tablet at home, you'll able to add, know Android 14 beta 5.2 is rolling out and it has fixes for those. You mean a tablet you're not so thrilled about? You know what, it's doing the same exact thing as the Nest hub Max that it replaced. It's just sitting there being a hub. Stacey [02:09:00] was right said clock. Don't buy this expensive clock kitchen slash kitchen timer speaking which, and actually it's worse because every once in a while I'll ask it to do something and say, you'll have to enter your pin to do that desk. It's like, no, I don't want to enter my, what's the point of that? Oh man. So it is a task tle,
Jeff Jarvis (02:09:18):
When you picked up after Windows Weekly, I never seen this before. You picked up your clock.
Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
I put my clock in the window every day. It's one. Why? Because it's one [02:09:30] of those atomic radio clocks that gets the time signal because it's important in a broadcast environment that all got to be synced. All the clocks be accurate. So this show can begin precisely at 1 59, 59. It clicks over and the show hard
Jeff Jarvis (02:09:46):
Ends and hard out
Leo Laporte (02:09:47):
Because you start, the way we start, this is a broadcast operation, but unfortunately it's apparently my studio. This used to be a Broadcom office before we moved [02:10:00] in five years ago or six years ago now. Seven years. Seven years ago, sir. Seven years ago. And I am in what used to be the server room. So I'm guessing they put metal in the walls or something because that clock does not get a signal. I have to put it in the window every night. So that will be accurate so that I can begin the shows. Exactly
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:21):
How inaccurate would it be? It's like a nanosecond.
Leo Laporte (02:10:25):
No, wouldn't matter. It drifts over time. I don't know John. We know. I mean, [02:10:30] you shouldn't ask a little bits about his clock. He's got one this one second a week. So I would be starting the show in a year. I'll be starting the show a minute late. That's not okay.
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:45):
You
Leo Laporte (02:10:45):
Know that I am a stickler for network. Alright,
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:49):
I can stay. So how many years have you been having that habit of moving the clocks every night? Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:10:55):
Since we moved here, I've had to put that clock in the
Jeff Jarvis (02:10:57):
Window. So seven years you've done that. [02:11:00] He can't remember now what he was talking about three minutes ago, but
Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
He move the clock in the window, that clock. Well wait a minute now let's get this right. He said a second A week, seven years is 364 weeks. So it would be six minutes off by now. If I can put it in the window on a regular basis. Six
Jeff Jarvis (02:11:24):
Minutes slower or faster.
Leo Laporte (02:11:26):
Imagine is it slower or faster, John? Which way does it drift? I [02:11:30] got faster. Faster. So we'd actually have to start this show six minutes earlier, sooner. That
Jeff Jarvis (02:11:35):
Confusing you like savings time. That'd be terrible. There's Leo savings time. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:11:40):
So thank goodness I put that clock in the window. You just noticed I do that instead. Starting at two 20, we had to start at two 14 and by the way, heaven for Finn schedule for two that I should forget to take the clock out of the window and put it back where it belongs on the set. People in the chat room go crazy if the clock [02:12:00] I've seen there. Yep. I've seen that in I R C and again, I don't know why. Because quite passionate about that time is basically, it's your opinion, man. It's just your opinion.
Jeff Jarvis (02:12:10):
It's all relative.
Leo Laporte (02:12:11):
It's all relative. That's the Google change law. And in a moment we will get your picks of the week with a highly truncated pick of the week. I'm going to have to start doing a pick of the week [02:12:30] now. Yep. You'll now just to fill this thing out.
Jeff Jarvis (02:12:34):
You can take one of mine if you want. Yeah, you got extra. I always have more than
Leo Laporte (02:12:37):
One. You're very good. Time for the picks of the week. Jeff. Jarvis, what do you got for us?
Jeff Jarvis (02:12:47):
Alright, well I'll do two since you're derelict.
Leo Laporte (02:12:50):
Nothing.
Jeff Jarvis (02:12:52):
Yeah. So Zuck says he can type 100 words a minute wearing a headset with a virtual keyboard. [02:13:00] Little touch of video here.
Leo Laporte (02:13:02):
Oh, there's video. All right. I want to see. Yes. So is he twitching his fingers in the air to show this?
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:09):
Well, you'll see. No, no, it's not the air. It's on a tabletop.
Leo Laporte (02:13:12):
So it projects a screen on it. Oh, here it is. Okay.
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:15):
It in his vision. Yes.
Leo Laporte (02:13:16):
He sees it and he says hes a hundred words per minute is fast on a regular keyboard, right? Yeah. What is normal? Like 60 to 90, right? Yeah. A hundred's really fast.
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:27):
He could be a secretary. Leo.
Ant Pruitt (02:13:30):
[02:13:30] Somebody getting Z on the phone for next week.
Leo Laporte (02:13:37):
Does he? Looking at his fingers. All right. Apple's going to do this too with their vision pro. They're going to have a floating keyboard. It's like you have this thing called a keyboard. It works. It's physical. It sits there. Oh, yours
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:53):
Is an old fart. What need?
Ant Pruitt (02:13:54):
But it gets in the way, but
Leo Laporte (02:13:55):
I got to wear a headset so that I could see an imaginary keyboard.
Jeff Jarvis (02:13:59):
You do it
Leo Laporte (02:14:00):
[02:14:00] Anywhere, can with my fingers in the air.
Ant Pruitt (02:14:03):
If using a virtual keyboard in the air, you're not going to have wrist problems anymore.
Leo Laporte (02:14:08):
Oh, you, you're going to have arm problems. You
Ant Pruitt (02:14:09):
Just have Go ahead.
Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
Do that for an hour. Do
Ant Pruitt (02:14:11):
That and your shoulders are going to be,
Jeff Jarvis (02:14:14):
Could do a joke.
Leo Laporte (02:14:17):
Oh, it.
Ant Pruitt (02:14:18):
You're going to fill out this coat, man.
Leo Laporte (02:14:20):
Our reality labs research says Zuck on Instagram towards any flat service into a virtual keyboard with touch typing. We have a race and Boz tank [02:14:30] checked in at 120 words a minute. I was just around a hundred boy. Talk about a humble brag. Oh yeah. I lost. I was only a hundred words. Tank it
Ant Pruitt (02:14:40):
Not a hundred.
Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
I don't understand. That could be so fast. You think it makes you faster to have a virtual keyboard?
Jeff Jarvis (02:14:46):
I don't know. I mean, since all I do is type, I actually kind of be curious. That's the first good use I've imagined for virtual world.
Leo Laporte (02:14:53):
I can only imagine what carpal tunnel's going to be like with these things. Really? Well, it's
Jeff Jarvis (02:14:58):
Going to be barfing first,
Ant Pruitt (02:15:00):
[02:15:00] But haven't you heard how some people will say they type faster on their phone than on their laptop? They're
Leo Laporte (02:15:05):
Liars.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:05):
I sure don't. They're liars. Yes, they're
Leo Laporte (02:15:08):
Liars. They just
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:08):
Type release. Remember the old T? Remember T nine.
Leo Laporte (02:15:11):
T nine? Yeah. I mean, I've seen people, but that's a freaky weird thing to do.
Ant Pruitt (02:15:18):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:15:20):
You want to do another one, Jeff? Go ahead.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:21):
Yeah, I'll do another one, which is after Google screwed the pup on domains on top of everything else that they discontinue, they
Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
Sold it to [02:15:30] Squarespace. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:31):
And so WordPress came in and said, well, we'll do domains. And now they're saying they'll offer a hundred year domain plans so that when you conk, you can be confident that Uncle Joe's site will still be up.
Leo Laporte (02:15:45):
You're saying in the year 21, 23 twit TV
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:49):
Buzz machine will still be there. Still
Leo Laporte (02:15:51):
Be there,
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:52):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:15:52):
How much is a hundred year domain resource? I don't know.
Jeff Jarvis (02:15:56):
Say I should have actually read the story beyond the headline.
Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
[02:16:00] You would know
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:01):
Found out something because I was going to talk
Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
About it. I was going to ask you. Oh, wait a minute. You have to ask for a quote. You have to ask for a quote. They don't say it's an investment in tomorrow.
Jeff Jarvis (02:16:12):
Is it like life insurance? Oh, you're old Jarvis. Okay. Then that case.
Leo Laporte (02:16:16):
So it's really not more than a domain registration. You get the domain for a hundred years, but you also get your web hosting for a hundred years as guardians of your life's work. $38,000 [02:16:30] or $380 per year. Oh, okay. That's like their top of the line plan. I
Ant Pruitt (02:16:35):
Love that
Leo Laporte (02:16:36):
Bullet point. You get a managed WordPress experience, but since you're dead, you don't need to worry about the entering text or anything. Unmetered bandwidth. Best in class speed, unstoppable security bundled. That is a bold statement. It is. I wonder if anybody's going to spend 38 grand and do that. That's weird. Weird. No, of course not.
Ant Pruitt (02:17:00):
[02:17:00] We still going to be using domains in a hundred years.
Leo Laporte (02:17:01):
Well, yeah. Will there be web in a hundred years? Exactly. Benito.
Ant Pruitt (02:17:06):
Good question,
Leo Laporte (02:17:06):
Huh? Okay. Mr. Pruitt, you got something for us?
Ant Pruitt (02:17:11):
I am my first quick pick of the week. Sony announced some new cameras this week.
Leo Laporte (02:17:16):
Oh, don't tell me that.
Ant Pruitt (02:17:18):
Well, it's the A seven C and the A seven C. The A seven C is a tiny, tiny, tiny four frame mirrorless camera from, oh
Leo Laporte (02:17:27):
Boy. 61 megapixels,
Ant Pruitt (02:17:29):
But that's the [02:17:30] R Oh. The new A seven C is 33 megapixels. I think it's up from 24. And it was a good camera, but it's just too tiny for my
Leo Laporte (02:17:39):
Hands. The problem with tiny also is that the lenses don't shrink along with the camera,
Ant Pruitt (02:17:44):
So it sort of feels weird.
Leo Laporte (02:17:45):
So you have this little potty on a big lens. Yeah,
Ant Pruitt (02:17:47):
It feels weird to hold, but some people like that, like those bodies and then the mark, not the mark two. The R is the same body, but it's 61 megapixels similar to your A seven four.
Leo Laporte (02:17:59):
That's
Ant Pruitt (02:17:59):
Really good. [02:18:00] So it's going to look, I
Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
Have a five, but
Ant Pruitt (02:18:02):
Oh, you got a five? Yeah, it's going to look really
Leo Laporte (02:18:04):
Good. The seven C two will be available in the fall, which means any day now. 2199.
Ant Pruitt (02:18:10):
Good price.
Leo Laporte (02:18:11):
If you equip it with a 28 to 60 millimeter lens, 24 9. The R is $3,000 a little bit.
Ant Pruitt (02:18:18):
It's good price.
Leo Laporte (02:18:19):
Actually, that seems like it's less than my A seven R. It is less,
Ant Pruitt (02:18:23):
But again, it's a really, really tiny camera body to
Leo Laporte (02:18:26):
Hold. Is it otherwise the same as an A seven R?
Ant Pruitt (02:18:30):
[02:18:30] I remember the last year's A seven was the same as the A. Seven C
Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
Is compact. Okay. Just
Ant Pruitt (02:18:37):
A comes a seven four, I believe.
Leo Laporte (02:18:39):
Okay. What else you got
Ant Pruitt (02:18:41):
Next? I wanted to bring this up because Mr. Simon Phipps brought up beeper.
Leo Laporte (02:18:46):
I don't like this
Ant Pruitt (02:18:47):
At all. As y'all were talking about. I don't like this at all. Chat and Google.
Leo Laporte (02:18:50):
I don't like
Ant Pruitt (02:18:51):
This at all. What are your thoughts on this? I don't plan on using it, but Mr. Simon Phipps, one of the co-hosts on our show, floss Weekly. He uses this because he doesn't want to,
Leo Laporte (02:19:00):
[02:19:00] Well, it's the Holy Grail. Remember Pigeon? I remember
Ant Pruitt (02:19:02):
Pigeon.
Leo Laporte (02:19:03):
Yeah. I mean the idea of having one app that does all your chats, and this will do WhatsApp. This will do Instagram and Slack, but the biggest even X, but the biggest one is it will do apple's messages. And right now, if you're on an Android device getting Apple messages, it's problematic. Here's how they do it. They have an iPhone dedicated to you in their server and all your messages get sent
Ant Pruitt (02:19:29):
Through [02:19:30] the phone. What?
Leo Laporte (02:19:30):
To their server for a while. They actually had Max, or they wanted you to use a max. I got invited to this and I decided I did not want send. They always say you're encrypted so they can't see it. And it is a matrix server. So that's a good open source product. That's probably why Simon is into this WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, iMessage, Android. S M Ss, telegram, signal [02:20:00] beeper, slack, Google Chat, Instagram, I r c Matrix. There is something appealing about that. Yeah, I agree.
Ant Pruitt (02:20:06):
Well, we use Slack here at Twitter of course, and he's hardly ever in our floss weekly Slack, and we figured out why. So it might
Leo Laporte (02:20:14):
Be a good solution for him. And
Ant Pruitt (02:20:15):
Now he's in there. He is like, oh, okay. Well,
Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
I use a free open source program called Aires to get all of my Apple messages into my Android device. So this Android uses air message as its default, SS [02:20:30] m s, and so there it is. And so all my Apple texts and all of my Android texts are in one thing, and when somebody texts me, it shows up here, whether it's on Android or Apple and it uses SS m Ss. So I think this is, it's a good solution and it's free. I run the server though. I have to keep a Mac running at home that's doing this. This one, they run the server. I don't know. It's an interesting idea how much it
Ant Pruitt (02:20:59):
Cost. [02:21:00] I don't know.
Benito Gonzales (02:21:02):
I think what answered is the use case though. It's like if I have one contact on familiar
Leo Laporte (02:21:06):
Messenger app that I use, understand. Yeah, I totally understand it. Yeah. I can't remember what the cost was.
Ant Pruitt (02:21:14):
I didn't ask.
Leo Laporte (02:21:16):
I applied for an invite months ago. I got invited in and when I read that I had to have everything go to them. I said,
Ant Pruitt (02:21:23):
Yeah, that's what he lost you.
Leo Laporte (02:21:25):
I lost, man.
Ant Pruitt (02:21:26):
Well, I'm going.
Leo Laporte (02:21:26):
It does solve a problem that nothing else can solve. Yeah, I do. [02:21:30] It solves a problem. Nothing else can solve. Nobody does all of these, which is really cool.
Ant Pruitt (02:21:34):
It's usually a few, but not somebody others and vice versa.
Leo Laporte (02:21:40):
The slack is pretty great, right? See, if it gets more responsive on Slack,
Ant Pruitt (02:21:45):
We shall, we shall. That'll be a test. My last one is again, for folks that are thinking about everybody out in Maui, you can still show them some love and support. It's
Leo Laporte (02:21:57):
Not too late. They need it more than ever. Now
Ant Pruitt (02:21:59):
We [02:22:00] do have a link in our show notes for a resource that shows you where you can actually donate and it's not a scam. And it will actually help these people. And I got this from Mr. Brian Chi of this weekend, enterprise tech
Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Longtime Hawaiian resident. Yes. Who has moved to
Ant Pruitt (02:22:18):
Florida. He is now in Orlando, Florida. He
Leo Laporte (02:22:21):
Still loves
Ant Pruitt (02:22:22):
Hawaii and still running from and stuff. Yeah, take
Jeff Jarvis (02:22:28):
That out. I north of
Leo Laporte (02:22:28):
Him today. Maui now.com. [02:22:30] M A U I now.
Ant Pruitt (02:22:32):
Oh yeah. I didn't say that. Sorry.
Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
And they have a whole page of, it's not just one thing. There's a whole, there's
Ant Pruitt (02:22:38):
Lot of different places you
Leo Laporte (02:22:39):
Can turn it. So you could pick, if I want to help animals or I want to have the food bank or the council for Native Hawaiian advancement, et cetera, et cetera. Really great. Good. Thank you. Ant and I will start preparing a pick. I used to not do it just because I want to give you guys all the time you needed, but I think it's time next week though. [02:23:00] We do have somebody to fill in for Stacy. Who did I say? I forgot. You have
Ant Pruitt (02:23:05):
Mr. Glenn.
Leo Laporte (02:23:06):
Glenn Fleischman. Jeff, you're going. I'm gone. Where are you going? Yeah, I've
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:09):
Got an event.
Leo Laporte (02:23:10):
Alright.
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:11):
The C N T I, this new policy group that I'm going to be an advisor to is having its unveiling.
Leo Laporte (02:23:17):
Excellent. That's September 6th, September 13th. Kathy Giles, attorney at law.
Ant Pruitt (02:23:24):
Kathy Giles,
Leo Laporte (02:23:24):
IP Esquire expert. Always
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:27):
Good discussion.
Leo Laporte (02:23:28):
Yeah, she's great. [02:23:30] Qui council com and we're working on some others to get 'em on it on a regular basis. Perhaps even replace Stacey, although she's, I replace, this is true. Jeff Jarvis is the Leonard Tower professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School
Ant Pruitt (02:23:49):
Of
Leo Laporte (02:23:50):
Journalism at the City University of New York by his book by the way. Good reading and really makes an excellent point how the internet age [02:24:00] and the Gutenberg age, the similarities, the differences is really good. The Gutenberg parenthesis,
Jeff Jarvis (02:24:05):
Not that history repeats itself, but there are lessons to be learned. Yes.
Leo Laporte (02:24:08):
Gutenberg parenthesis.com. I hope your ears are burning on Sunday. I was talking about what I've learned from you, which is that mass media is a relatively new invention of humankind and that what we take for granted is having, oh, we need a mass media. Well, we've never had one before. Do we really need one? Fascinating [02:24:30] stuff. Thank you Jeff. Aunt Pruitt, thank you. Website is ant pruitt.com/prince. Buy some print
Ant Pruitt (02:24:38):
Please and thank you. And also folks as the club TWI Community club member, make sure you join and check out our book club that we're having
Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
Tomorrow. So I did have that question. So Stacey is going to do the book club tomorrow.
Ant Pruitt (02:24:52):
She will be in book club. Fantastic. Tomorrow.
Leo Laporte (02:24:54):
And it's not too late. If you read fast, you
Ant Pruitt (02:24:58):
Can just come in and just listen [02:25:00] to the conversation and share your 2 cents to the book Translation State by Ann Luckey is
Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
The book. Alright. 9:00 AM in the club. If you're not a Club twit member, you're missing out on the best deal in content. Not only do you get ad free versions of all of our shows, you get access to the club twit, discord ants, our community manager really makes some great stuff. How did that walk go? I couldn't make it. I
Ant Pruitt (02:25:25):
Really had a good time with Mr. Joe Esposito.
Leo Laporte (02:25:29):
Did he come out [02:25:30] for that?
Ant Pruitt (02:25:30):
He came all the way
Leo Laporte (02:25:31):
Over. Oh, I'm going to kick myself though. I miss Joe.
Ant Pruitt (02:25:34):
We had a good time. Some good pictures. We have a thread here in our Discord, which some images from Saturday had a good time.
Leo Laporte (02:25:42):
I'm sorry I missed you job, but I didn't want to expose. You had a
Ant Pruitt (02:25:44):
Cigar and it was great.
Leo Laporte (02:25:46):
I had just gotten the news from Lisa that she was infected and I wasn't sure whether I was or not. So I
Ant Pruitt (02:25:51):
Thought, yeah, I got that text and I was like, shoot. Yeah, you stay. I should
Leo Laporte (02:25:54):
Be
Ant Pruitt (02:25:55):
Careful. I think I told her, hang in there. So
Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
There's another advantage being in the club. We will not expose [02:26:00] you to Covid if we can help it. You also get however you freeloaders. No, I can't promise anything. You also get shows that we don't put out anywhere else, including the Untitled Link Show with Jonathan Bennett, hands on McIntosh with Michael Sergeant Hand on Windows with Paul Thero, Scott Wilkinson's, home Theater geeks. Lots of great content in there. And the Jason's AI show. AI show. Maybe Jason and Jeff's, [02:26:30] maybe that's what I'm calling it. Jason, how about Jason and Jeff's AI adventure? How old Mike?
Ant Pruitt (02:26:35):
How old Thousand is what Jamer B is calling it.
Leo Laporte (02:26:38):
Jason and Jeff's excellent AI adventure.
Ant Pruitt (02:26:42):
Hey, by the way,
Leo Laporte (02:26:42):
Tomorrow, by the way, what time do you do that? 1:00 PM
Ant Pruitt (02:26:45):
That'll be at one. I believe it'll be at one. Yes. Also West Coast folks, that God's
Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
Time.
Ant Pruitt (02:26:52):
Four o'clock. Sure. My goodness. Folks, again, interested in Club Twit. Yes, it's [02:27:00] seven bucks a month, but we do have single show plans,
Leo Laporte (02:27:03):
2 99.
Ant Pruitt (02:27:04):
So if your favorite show is this week in Google and you can't quite pull off the seven bucks a month, you can get this weekend Google only for 2 99 per month. So
Leo Laporte (02:27:14):
Either way, it really helps us hugely keep the show on the air. So we really appreciate it. Thank you. And I know those of you who would love this show to go away, but there is unfortunately no way to do a negative contribution. [02:27:30] Like I will take $7 until you cancel. We don't have that yet, although we could work on it serious.
Ant Pruitt (02:27:37):
Come on in and join like a Joe, join Esposito and join Quippy, all of Us Club here.
Leo Laporte (02:27:42):
Bunch of people. It really is fun. Yeah. Thank you all for being here. We do this week in Google every Wednesday, 2:00 PM ish,
(02:27:51):
Precisely it. 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern Time. That clock tells us exactly how we're 2100 [02:28:00] utc. You can watch the live or listen to livestream at live twi tv. If you're doing that chat with us in irc, irc TWI tv actually can use a browser so you don't have to have an IRC client for that. Or in our club Twit Discord after the fact on-demand versions of the show are at twit tv slash twig, T W I G. If you go there, you'll see a link to the YouTube channel dedicated to the shows. That's a great place to watch if you want to see the video or share clips because YouTube makes that very [02:28:30] easy. Of course, the easiest thing to do if you want to listen to every show is subscribe in your favorite podcast client. We'd appreciate that. If you subscribe, you'll get it automatically as soon as we're done and you can listen at your leisure. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you next time on this week in Google. Bye-bye.
Rod Pyle (02:28:49):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in Chief VAD Astor magazine. And each week I joined with my co-host to bring you this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the Final Frontier. We talk to NASA chiefs, space scientists, engineers, [02:29:00] educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space. Books and tv, and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars Rocket, join us on this weekend space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.
