This Week in Google Episode 641 Transcript
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiG. This Week in Google, Stacy, Ant and Jeff are here. We're gonna talk about the year in search 2021. What were the most popular searches in the US? The answers may surprise you. Instagram says we're gonna go chronological. As soon as we figure out how. What could be so hard? And watch out for the robots - they're stuck in the snow in Estonia! It's all coming up next on TWiG.
New Speaker (00:00:28):
Podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Leo Laporte (00:00:38):
This is TWiG, This Week in Google episode, 641 recorded Wednesday, December 8th, 2021. Don't touch my fun noodle. This Week in Google is brought to you by UserWay.org. Userway ensures your website is 88 compliant and helps your business avoid accessibility related lawsuits. The perfect way to showcase your brands commitment to millions of people with disabilities. It's not only the right thing to do. It's also the law. Go to userway.org/twit for 30% off UserWay's AI powered accessibility solution. And by Andela. Andela is a global talent network. Connecting innovative companies like yours with quality, the technical talent. So you have more time to focus on your core business. Visit andela.com/for-companies to schedule a complimentary consultation and receive a two week no risk trial with their vetted technical talent. And by Melissa, the US postal service process is more than 98,000 and addresses changes every day is your customer contact data up to date, try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24/7 get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. Well, it looks like Santa Claus threw up on the set set here. <Laugh> happy holidays, everybody. Yeah. It's time for TWiG This Week in Google. The show where we talk about the latest from the universe, the Google verse, the Facebook metaverse and all of the above Stacy, maybe, maybe that's why they named. So I would say metaverse Stacey IBA. Them is here from staceyoniot.com. Happy holiday, Stacey. I guess, oh, thank you. Santa didn't visit your house?
Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:34):
<Laugh> No, we are behind. You can see some wrapping paper actually just behind me on the shelf. Oh yeah. And oh, let's see if we could do it. Raise the
Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
Wow. Oh, there's presents up there? Does your daughter know that? That's where you store them?
Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:50):
Yeah, it's real obvious.
Leo Laporte (00:02:51):
<Laugh> So that's good. It's a wrap as you go at Stacy's house. I'm the other way around. I get all the presents. Make a big pile and then wish I didn't have to wrap 'em on Christmas Eve.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:01):
I wasn't wrapping. Oh, no, we got everything's done.
Leo Laporte (00:03:04):
Oh, I mean from a gift perspective.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:05):
That's so impressive, cause I'm, I'm like on it
Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
This year, last night, Lisa said, give me your laptop. Gave it to her. She said, look at the shopping cart. I want all that. <Laugh> this is a deal we have, cuz I can't buy. I don't know what to get her. So Ant Pruitt's here from Hands-On Photography, twit.tv/hop. Hello an hello, sir. We came up with a new thing for you to do on Windows Weekly today. I don't know if you heard Paul Thurrott was criticizing people who sent Christmas cards with pictures only of their kids, not of them or pictures that are too small or bad pictures. And we thought Ant should do a Christmas card picture workshop where he reviews your card and tells you what to fix before you mail it. Huh?
Ant Pruitt (00:03:51):
We may need to do that.
Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
I think it's a good idea. I actually do have
Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:54):
You just love giving Ant jobs. I feel like Ant is a busy man.
Ant Pruitt (00:03:56):
Well, you know, you know the old saying that if you want something done, give it to someone that's busy.
Leo Laporte (00:04:05):
Hmm. That's true. You busy here. Also with us. The Leonard Tow Professor for Journalistic Innovation at the Craig. Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig,
(00:04:19):
Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig Newmark,
Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
Jeff Jarvis (00:04:33):
I turned my Christmas tree lights on.
Leo Laporte (00:04:35):
Thank you for doing. I saw you get up and I slowed down the introductions just so you can get back. <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (00:04:40):
Thank you for doing oh, that's so lovely. Isn't that cute? All right. Next week I'll have my space decorated.
Leo Laporte (00:04:46):
You didn't say when you looked at our set, you didn't say that's so lovely. Is it? Is it too much? No.
Jeff Jarvis (00:04:51):
Yeah, it's too much. <Laugh> it's a lot. I'm not gonna lie. Christmas is a lot. What's always room for one more point set. Yep. You know, that's just kind of the rule.
Leo Laporte (00:05:02):
TWiT. If you're a member of Club TWiT, there should be something on the TWiT+ feed from yesterday. When I said I got there from my pretty quickly said we haven't decorated this set yet. And I made Burke, bring it all out and throw it on the table. I, it was actually quite funny. So he literally threw it. He, he was like, oh, I'll give you your decorations. Have a giant at deer. So Hey,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:23):
Is that Thai fighter really Christmasy? Yes, it is.
Leo Laporte (00:05:27):
I don't know where the tie fighter came from. Did you put that there? Mr. Push? I did not.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:31):
I did not, but I approve that message. All right.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:33):
No, I approve. I was just like, is there like, is it from the Christmas episode of star wars?
Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
We do have an R2D2. We could put in there too. We have other somewhere. Oh yeah. Right there. Yeah. You have other
Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:42):
Things. I have two points Setas below me. Stacy has one. I'm feeling
Leo Laporte (00:05:46):
Very important. I have a confession to make. These are artificial points. Setas <laugh> man.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:54):
Now you have one, a good dad right there. He's just solving that problem. He's like <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
Hey, I got a big announcement. I got a big announcement solve. Hank went live today. Salt, Hank Dodge. Yay. Show the show. The website. I think he's done a great job. Look at his logo. Isn't he cute? I love it. He looks like chef. What's he making Cacho A Pepe just for yes. And of course you can't make Cacho A Pepe without salt. So salt. Hank is my son who is now selling a premier blend of sea salts, curated from around the world. But don't worry, Jeff, don't worry. Stacy. Don't worry that we're sending 'em out to you. You don't have to get 'em but I just wanted to tell everybody, look at this me. Sure enough was going to the website, meat, Hanks. He, he really does have that mustache. He says "I F-ing love salt!" right there on the webpage. <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (00:06:45):
How's how's his blood pressure?
Leo Laporte (00:06:45):
It's fine. Salt's good for you. Nothing wrong with salt. I love salt, nothing wrong with salt. So yeah, I'm really proud of my boy he's launched his salt site. If you, for a gift for it's just starting. So there's only three salts right now. The collab, pesto, flaky, sea salt blend, the essential flaky sea salt blend or the tr and garlic flaky sea salt blend. And there's also, I think you can get all three as a package and that kind of thing. So and look at the, oh, you'll love the logo. Look at, look at his, look at his little face. Isn't that cute shave
Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:23):
Chef Boy RD.
Leo Laporte (00:07:24):
I like it is exactly what I told him. And I also pointed out. You can never shave your mustache now, dude. Yeah. Yeah. His brand, you kind stuck with it. My friend that your kind is stuck with it. Imagine if that have
Jeff Jarvis (00:07:36):
Been Jason. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. At least at least Hanks that mustache look at that hair. He's said they definitely got something going on. Can I make
Jeff Jarvis (00:07:45):
One small suggestion.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:46): Did they style him for that?
Leo Laporte (00:07:47):
No, I think he just, you know what? This is all a self. He did it all himself. Bootstrap. What? What's your suggestion, Jeff?
Jeff Jarvis (00:07:53):
Link somewhere here to his TikTok.
Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
Yeah, that's a good point. I, you know what? This, it literally literally just went live hours ago. Oh, okay. So I will mention wanna brag about his TikTok too. Yeah. Yeah. It's so great. It's and his TikTok is Salt_Hank. But anyway, this is my son is apparently decided he likes salt. <Laugh>
Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:12):
You? You can't show this to me before we see here's not mean,
Leo Laporte (00:08:16):
Oh, video is, yeah, this is his specialty. Is it stuff? You know, that's what all the tos are, is him cooking. So okay. That's that's the plug salt, hank.com. Congratulations. If you have family and friends who, who love salt, they will love
Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:35):
Five different types of salt in our cupboard.
Leo Laporte (00:08:38):
You're gonna get a package of all three. We're sending em out to everybody. Well thank you. So that's the show. Thank you everybody for being here. I
Jeff Jarvis (00:08:49):
We could actually spend, you know what that's right. We could spend the whole rest of the show watching year end TikTok, bests.
Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
Where is that now? Tons.
Jeff Jarvis (00:08:58):
No, we have to TikTok. No, there's tons of TikTok.
Leo Laporte (00:09:02):
There is there. There's a ton of, let's start with Google. It's called this week in Google. It just seems like a good idea. Yeah. The, they do every year, the year in search. In fact, the is interesting. You can go back to their previous years. It goes all the way back to 2010. If you're curious, Google's all about data, right? So these are search trends. What we shared people who inspired us, the moments that capture the world's attention and he bets on what the number one trending search will have, will have been vaccination. <Laugh> it's a good guess. Among actors, Alec Baldwin tops, the list. I'm not surprised in the news Afghanistan, AMC stock COVID vaccine do coin and GME stock. Wow. I love it. That DOJ coin is up in do is on the list. Searches it to be, looks like,
Jeff Jarvis (00:09:56):
Wait, wait, stay there, stay there for one second. Right? What, what the journalists think is important out of that Afghanistan was out there, but pretty much nothing else was anywhere near.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:06):
No, we talked a
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:07):
Ton about not us, us. I don't mean us. I mean, I mean the world of
Leo Laporte (00:10:12):
Big journalists. Yeah. People talk about stocks. Oh, the world of big journalism
Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:15):
Talked about out AMC and GME. Isn't that game stop. No, I
Leo Laporte (00:10:19):
Know, but don't I, this is global. So let me, let me switch it back to to the United States and see, see, you know, I mean that's all and I don't buy
Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:26):
Your crankiness on this
Leo Laporte (00:10:27):
One. Jeff. So look at the number one news story in the us make a millions. Yeah. That tells you something right there.
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:34):
Need money.
Leo Laporte (00:10:35):
And we need there mega millions, EMC stock stimulus check one new story in there, Georgia Senate race, and then GME. Those are all about stocks.
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:46):
So I, my, my gr micro gr is stands. Thank you very much. No, no. This
Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:49):
Is all about people needing money.
Jeff Jarvis (00:10:53):
It's I mean, this makes sense. And I'm saying I'm gr I'm Gring. Not about them. I, to be about media, how
Leo Laporte (00:10:59):
Paying attention to what people care about. There's a section. This is new, I think called how to be, where you type in, how to be. And these are the things that people filled in, how to be eligible for a stimulus check. These are, this is the aspirations of America as a whole. How to be more attractive. I, I search for that every day. How to be happy alone, how to be a batty and finally, how to be a good boyfriend. Wait a minute. What? That was me. How to be a Badie to be a batty, a batty. I wanna be a batty jammer. B do you know what that is? I don't know what a batty is. Top five games among us battlefield resident evil village. Val ha I of course. And forts a horizon. Yeah. It was almost all my searches. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:43):
First you put on black lipstick to answer your question about how to be a bat.
Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
Oh, really? Is that the answer? Oh,
Jeff Jarvis (00:11:48):
Real. That's the answer? Batty.
Leo Laporte (00:11:50):
What if you search what is a batty? By the way, the, the number one state for how to be a batty, Georgia followed by Texas, California, Florida, and New York related quarries. Oh, she's a, how to be a batty
Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:06):
Gus girl, always playing the game and always on fleet. Okay. That is so ancient. Oh, it's urban
Leo Laporte (00:12:12):
Diction. Let's let's look on TikTok
Ant Pruitt (00:12:15):
19. So I can't be a batty is what
Leo Laporte (00:12:16):
You're saying? Related topics. Feta cheese. <Laugh> I thought no there's sometimes data goes wrong. When data goes wrong, it really goes wrong. Feta cheese feta cheese, then feta pasta, then April 24th. Dunno what that it is then
Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:34):
Leggings. No, you know what the feta was. It was Jeff. We talked about that on the show. Talked about it. See, I bring you, I bring you
Leo Laporte (00:12:40):
Of the, the, but how does that relate to how to be a batty?
Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:44):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:12:44):
It doesn't that well, that's where I got to it from oh, it's related topics. Okay. Okay. Okay. So maybe if you maybe people who searched
Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:52):
Batty is a girl who looks hot and like
Leo Laporte (00:12:55):
Is and slaves in
Ant Pruitt (00:12:57):
Whatever she's wearing. Basically
Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
On point celebrity couples, Kim and KA, whatever. I
Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:00):
Think you have to like make an effort.
Leo Laporte (00:13:03):
Bill and Melinda gates, Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson, Kanye and Jeffrey star, really in a way, the Kim and Kanye couple dominated this list and Taylor swift and Jake Gillin hall. How to pronounce number one word. People want to know how to pronounce, do coin, do coin. Do dogie coin do call Jackson. Michael Jackson. How to pronounce Michael Jackson. Really? Wait a minute. Really? This is America. How to pronounce number two? Quinoa keen wa okay. How that comes. That comes after that commercial. Yep. How to pronounce Kamala? How to pronounce Elon Musk, sons name <laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:13:46):
People. No one cared about
Leo Laporte (00:13:48):
That. No one. Yeah, they cared, but they didn't know. There's no one who
Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:51):
Everyone did wanna know how to pronounce it. Yeah, that was the first question I had.
Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
How a style of straight leg jeans is number one, then Wolf haircut. Corset
Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:02):
Rings. Oh my, my daughter has a Wolf haircut. What's a Wolf was a big thing. This is very TikTok influenced you guys.
Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
Gosh. Well, it's very interesting. Yeah, he is TikTok influenced by the world or the world by TikTok. That's the question.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:14):
I think also youths are influencing on TikTok and then the youths,
Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
Top five memes. Number one, Bernie Sanders. Mittens of course. Why we should watch TikTok for rest of the show. Number two, I saw
Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:29):
A wrapping paper that is just Bernie Sanders. Mittens. That
Leo Laporte (00:14:33):
Would be good. I gotta buy that hamster. Excellent. Number two. I don't know why hamster twisted tea, squid game. And sh
Ant Pruitt (00:14:43):
Oh, that makes perfect sense. I'm still, can't quite figure out Michael Jackson
Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Pronunciation. How to pronounce Michael Jackson. Yeah, me. Anyway, we can go on number one. Recipe, TikTok, pasta. That's where the feta came in. Yeah. Yeah. And Hato and are on the list. What is Haman? Taschen? Oh, it's a delicious cookie. It's a delicious for cookie for, for never heard of that. Hanukah for Hanukah. Yeah. Oh, but so that's the year in search watch. It's just the scratching. The surface. Google goes deep on all that. Do they have a fancy video? Yes. Would you like to it tears your heart. I'm reluctant to play videos. Do you realize? Yeah. Canada, Canada gave us a take down for last. Oh no. That was Mac break. We, we, we played the Canada's tribute to what's his name? And Brian Goling. Yeah, no, no, no, no. You know the other guy mint mobile's guy now quite.
Leo Laporte (00:15:42):
Yeah. Do we both? It's still the same thing. That's going on. I Deadpool anyway. Yeah. Reynolds Reyn Reynolds. Not Goling. That's who I meant. Ryan Reynolds. Thank you. Channel. Thank you. So Canada gave us a, they didn't give us a take down. They demonetized our show. Yeah. That music. And then on Sunday I played smoking these meats and the smoke in these meats guys got mad. So I'm not playing any Google urine search. Well, we're gonna see when we get to the, you that audio, we're gonna see how word TA this is. Do you try? Do you like there's Bernie, by the way, it's joining us. Nice work. Yes. <laugh> gosh, that was all the way back in January. Let's say almost a year ago. Here's the year in search. I'll play the video. Just no audio. No, go ahead. Take us down this year. I'll do the narration more than ever. The world searched. Como. How to heal?
Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
How to honor someone. Oh gosh. Wow. Will there be another lockdown? How to take care of your mental health? How to stay Stronge Biles. Where can I get the vaccine? Yep. How to be is this year resilient? How to make a comeback? There's Lynn Manuel Miranda on the stage of Hamilton. There's somebody else there's BTS how to be yourself. What is my Corpus? Somebody won an award. Somebody won a tennis game. Somebody's given a speech where there's people. There's power. How to move forward. Stop Asian, hate Sandra protect Asian lives. How to use my voice, how to help our planet. It is isn't it. Do you think it'll be upbeat as the end? You know that can't keep us there ways to help your community? When can I visit my, where are you? Feelings, family. Yeah. Okay. Now it's starting to cheer up. No, it's gonna, oh, I love the at poet Laureate. She was great at the inauguration. How to be hopeful, believe little Ted lasso moment, meeting people at the airport, kissing babies, kissing people who were kissing babies crying while they kiss babies search on heck Google. You know, you're gonna see this though on the super bowl and all the other, you know, on the football games, all that I'm so don't take us down.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:33):
It's like, I'm not gonna see it.
Leo Laporte (00:18:35):
You kinda watch that stuff. You know, when you're an actor you're taught not to cry. They always say, let the audience cry for you. Don't cry for them. And I feel like this was that. This was like them crying made me not maybe like I'm not gonna cry. Were you, were you touched by that? Yeah. I felt that it made me mad.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:51):
I knew I was being manipulated. Exactly. I was still,
Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
You allowed yourself? I felt, I felt like it was kind of manipulative. Some of it I felt, and I cry, you know, at weddings and I cry, you know, they're commercials make me cry. In fact, a lot of
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:04):
Google commercials. I mean, like I cried true hard. I mean like, like Simone by like I cried, like when she didn't do her routine, I mean, like some of this you're like, wait a minute. It
Leo Laporte (00:19:18):
Brings back. There is hardship in the world. But when Simone Biles didn't do a routine, doesn't really quite like,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:25):
Okay. I thought it was a big deal. I mean, this, she has worked her whole life for, and she is a true
Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
Badass. Maybe I didn't, maybe I didn know the back story. I can't
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:35):
Do this. And if you think about what she'd overcome to be there. Yeah. You're like,
Leo Laporte (00:19:41):
Yeah. But wasn't the reason she couldn't do it. Cuz she did so badly the day before. No,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:45):
No, she couldn't do it because she got basically the equivalent of the YPs. But one of the, like she
Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
Did so badly the day before. No, that's
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:54):
What she did badly
Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
Because she had the Y oh, she had the Ys and then she didn't come. Okay. The Ys are muscle.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:59):
And then also just, just think about this Leo. She was one of like, however, 20 gymnasts who were sexually assaulted that I
Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
Understand. And that all, that was part of it time. Okay. If that was part of it, I mean,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:13):
Wow. Well I think it's gonna always be part of her.
Leo Laporte (00:20:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but all of a sudden that day on the Olympics, you think that was why
Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:22):
I think when you're like big pressure cooker and like you get you're worried and then I'm, and then,
Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
You know, I'm sympathetic and certainly she should take the day off. If she's upset. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> didn't bother me. I'm not sure. It made me, brought me to tears, but,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:40):
And that's really, I mean, like as someone who pushes through mental illness or stress into the detriment of myself, I was really proud of like, that was a hard step for
Leo Laporte (00:20:49):
That. She did that.
Ant Pruitt (00:20:51):
Okay. That's gonna affect different people. Because it depends on your own personal story. There are some people just like miss Stacy said they have their own personal battles when it comes to mental health and they understand the struggles from day to day to, you know, keep pushing through it. Just I understand.
Leo Laporte (00:21:08):
All right. I don't want to be UN
Ant Pruitt (00:21:10):
Pathetic or anything. No, no, you're not. I'm not saying I wast move. Be empathetic. I'm just gonna be like to see why you, I could see why you wouldn't be moved to tears cuz you're not in that same space as some of the other folks are, so yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:21:24):
Okay. Well that was that
Ant Pruitt (00:21:26):
Was fun way to us down.
Leo Laporte (00:21:28):
I really thought Google would, would I thought Google would do the arc and start like being really upbeat, but no, they just was like,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:35):
Actually this year was not upbeat. Wasn't
Leo Laporte (00:21:37):
A good year. We were fine.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:39):
I mean, we got the vaccine, but then we didn't all use the vaccine. So then there's back here and I mean, here we are still debating like yeah,
Ant Pruitt (00:21:47):
Yeah. It's still a debate on safety and all of that stuff. But yet people will choose to do a bunch of weird stunts and I don't get it, but that's just me, people <laugh>,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:00):
People are weird. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:22:05):
Anyway,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:09):
You got tons of stuff here, boss tons. Really? We do. Although so much of it is like not so much of, it feels like Jeff put it on the list. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:22:18):
Oh wow. I wonder one. Wow. Adam major. I told you so opportunity. We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get Adam Masser says Instagram is going to bring back a chronological feed next year. All right. I don't understand why they've been working on a version of the feature for months. What what's so hard. This is so hard about bringing a, you just do it in the order. They were posted. Data
Ant Pruitt (00:22:45):
Comes in, data goes out, right? I,
Leo Laporte (00:22:47):
What do they work on for Leo? I saw what it took for you to do bingo. You know, this is stuff is where misconduct <laugh> bingo is a hard computer science problem too. But even then it only took me an evening. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:23:02):
If I
Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
Months, not months after more than five years, I didn't. Okay. I didn't realize this Instagram. Hasn't had a chronological feed for five years. And this is my argument boy against Facebook too is, is, you know, you join these things, thinking you're gonna see the people you followed in order of the posts they make. Yep. And in fact that that's, you're subtly being manipulated and you don't, you know, and it happens everywhere. Cuz you know, we were talking about my son and his tos. I don't see his tos. They don't they're out. I follow him. Right. Same here, but they're algorithmically, nudged out of the way for something else. So I get
Ant Pruitt (00:23:42):
Notifications for his videos. That's like three days after he posted it, you know, it's sorta
Leo Laporte (00:23:46):
Weird. It's it's I, I think it's interesting that this is such a challenge.
Jeff Jarvis (00:23:53):
Well, thing about TikTok too specifically, is that when I go to salt, Hank, it doesn't have the latest on top, which is the way we think
Leo Laporte (00:24:01):
Of all the web algorithms, baby. They're pushing on top algorithms. Yeah. Adam, ER, head of Instagram, not the founder. Remember Kevin Systrom and company left. Yep. After a while at Facebook thinking they just, and we don't like what they're doing. ER, who's a Facebook guy who has moved into Instagram, was in charge
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:18):
Of the newsfeed
Leo Laporte (00:24:19):
Before mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. Which was also not chronological. Why am I on we're currently working on a version of, of a chronological feed that we a version of does not mean chronological. All right. I just wanna say this right. There's native, black and white. There's not a version of Monday through Friday. <Laugh> there's Monday through Friday. Yeah. Chronological
Jeff Jarvis (00:24:38):
Skip Wednesday. Myself is rigid.
Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
Can you tweet it? You wanna skip it? Chronological is, is rigid. It is in order of presentation. And what is a version of chronological mean? It's not chronological. That's what it
Ant Pruitt (00:24:53):
Means. Maybe Tuesday through Monday is chronological versus Monday through Sunday. Who, I don't
Leo Laporte (00:25:01):
Know. Maybe they throw the big things in there just in case. Talk about rationalization in June. Moai wrote in a blog post that a here's the problem he said with a chronological feed quote, it makes it impossible for most people to see everything, let alone the posts they care about putting em in order would make it hard for you to see everything you care about. That's bull. You follow who you follow that's self-serving it's it's like, no, no, no. You care about what we tell you to care about. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> buddy. Well
Jeff Jarvis (00:25:32):
I sorry, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna devil's advocate here. If you look at the numbers of how many posts there is stuff that you might like to get to, you won't get to, I mean, something happens to be on Twitter now that it, now that it says, oh, 109 tweets above, right? I know, I know I'm missing. Well, you kind
Leo Laporte (00:25:50):
Of control that though, because you're following more people than you can see. Yeah. So you could, if you said low, no, I wanna be able to see everything say, well I'm only follow five. Well, that's why I use
Jeff Jarvis (00:26:00):
A list. Then I use
Leo Laporte (00:26:01):
A list. Yeah. But I mean, that's up to you. He's saying, well, people follow so many people that we have to massage their so that they see everything they care about. Even though I'm sending, 'em a very direct signal of what I care about. I care about these feeds mm-hmm <affirmative> so this is just to me self-serving we know why they have an algorithm and it has nothing to do with why do they have an algorithm to make money? Oh, okay. To make it stick. But that's why you should
Ant Pruitt (00:26:29):
Be in business too. Right. To make money.
Leo Laporte (00:26:32):
Okay. That's exactly the Nu in a nutshell, you have just explained the problem right there, which is these companies are constituted to, for profits over people. They wanna make money and they are using CR non chronological algorithmic feeds because it keeps you there longer. Yeah. It make, and then you see more ads and you, and they make more money. Not because that's what people want. They're not doing what you want. Yeah. They're doing what they want. Make more money by make is sticky.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:04):
Can I, can I just say that I was very impressed that no, fewer than three senators offices created fake Instagram accounts for 13 year old for teenage girls. What Senator Blumenthal, Senator Blackburn and Senator Mike Lee <laugh> they all created creepy about this too, but keep what <laugh> ahead of the hearings. They all created these accounts to try to understand how everything worked,
Leo Laporte (00:27:33):
Finsta accounts,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:35):
They what's Touche, but I, I thought this is kind of refreshing and I'm sure a staffer told them to do it. But I, I remember in 2008 said sitting through some of the Google hearings, oh my goodness. This little Leo thing, what is happening? And Jamer B is killing in tricasting you? I love it. This is great. Anyway they created way back in 2008, when we were talking about like Google search and harm, it was ad poly. It was actually tracking. And they were like, am I given to understand that if I search this, you actually keep that information. Like they were shock, but now they're actively trying to engage in the platforms to understand how they work, which you know, I I'm glad I, I appreciate that that's progress.
Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
So as part of, I feel like it is, it sounds creepy, but I, I, I think we should explain what, why they created teenage girl accounts on Instagram Blumenthal said the office created a fake Instagram account to poses a 13 year old girl to research what the app is like for teens and how it could affect their mental health. Cuz they we've all seen this studies mm-hmm <affirmative>. And back when this was in the news Francis Hoggins whistleblower that Facebook knew and Instagram knew Instagram particularly knew that it was making young girls. Some percentage of young girls feel bad about themselves. Bal said that during their protecting kids online this is exactly when he also talked about Finstas. Our research has shown in realtime Instagram's recommendations. We'll this is Blumenthal talking we'll latch onto a person's insecurities, a young woman's vulnerabilities about their bodies and drag them into dark places that glorify eating disorders. And self-harm I wonder how he knew he, I hope he had some expertise, you know, some experts come in by a Dana Boyd or somebody come in say, yeah, let me show you what a 13 year old girl's account would be
Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:34):
Because it's not one I'm sure one of his staffers had a kid and they were like, okay, go.
Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
He he said within a day of creating the account, the platform began serving the fake account, known as a Finsta content, promoting eating disorders and self harm. I'd like to know what that is. What's you know, I didn't say, oh, you know, you should try throwing up after you eat it much more likely he's interpreting I a lot.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:02):
Do you? No. Well, I get a lot of things that are very like disordered eating kind of posts. So I get a lot of weird FA I bet it's fad diets. Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:30:12):
I, how about self-harm you get, what would a post be encouraging? Self-Harm how would that even
Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:19):
Manifest? Yeah. I don't know about that. How, I mean, but you could, you could see girls talking about struggles with that or, I mean,
Ant Pruitt (00:30:27):
There's a lot of, I don't know if this matters miss Stacy, but is it in a, is this in reels that you're seeing it or is this just the actual like,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:35):
Oh, sorry, this is in TikTok. I'm not, I don't do Instagram. I'm sorry on TikTok. I get a lot of things. Like <affirmative> only eat this for, you know, losing this and what's scary is because I follow things that my daughter's interested in. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I'm half, 15 year old girl to these things and I'm half. Oh, like, yeah, actually I think I'm like a menopausal 55 year old woman. <Laugh> actually, they're eating disorders on both ends. So, you know, I'm just like.
Ant Pruitt (00:31:07):
Cause I get posts talking about eating this and eating that. But these are all professional athletes that are, you know, following diet plans and things of that nature. It's
Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
A lot of the advertising on, on these sites. All these sites are diet supplements, protein powder, you know, tiger milk, every single water or specialties that help you burn fat. That kind of thing. It's it's the early days of
Ant Pruitt (00:31:29):
Newspapers magazines is that, is that considered
Leo Laporte (00:31:31):
Disorder? It's like the Joe weeder magazine in the back of the magazine. Right? Is,
Ant Pruitt (00:31:35):
Is that considered eat
Leo Laporte (00:31:36):
Disorder though? No, I mean, that's what I'm asking. Cause I get,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:39):
I get some that are like nutritionist, but then I get a lot of, of like juice cleanses, which I do think of as disordered eating cleanses,
Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
But the huge, my own personal trainer and his wife <laugh> he told me the other day. Yeah, we take a pill. It makes everything go through you. I said, I got some gummy bears. You, you don't need to take a pill.
Ant Pruitt (00:31:58):
I got, let me make you a pot of coffee with, and then,
Leo Laporte (00:32:02):
And then, and then he said, and now we're on the other pill that is cleanses are just BS. But, but, but a lot of normal people believe them. It's not disordered eating. I know, but
Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:12):
I also get like intermittent fasting. That's pretty extreme. I get things like, oh, I was doing that. How did like, I get tons of, this is what I eat in a day mm-hmm <affirmative> and some of them are totally normal and them are like a woman. Who's like my age, my size. This is what I, this is how to eat 1200 calories in a day. Yeah. And I'm sorry, you should not try to eat, eat 1200 calories in a day. If you're
Ant Pruitt (00:32:34):
Like, that's not even breakfast.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:37):
Okay. Well it's more than breakfast for me, but yeah. <Laugh> I was like, that's
Leo Laporte (00:32:41):
Like breakfast. How many eggs do you eat on one in one
Ant Pruitt (00:32:44):
Breakfast there there's minimum six eggs. Oh my God. Minimum
Leo Laporte (00:32:47):
Six eggs. And you eat the yolks and the whites of course. Hell yeah. <Laugh> do you eat 'em raw? No you no,
Ant Pruitt (00:32:54):
No, no. Because Rocky eat
Jeff Jarvis (00:32:56):
For that. She at all, he doesn't even chew the whole egg just slows down. He's like cast on. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
Okay. I don't know, you know? Yeah, yeah. There's there's
Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:11):
Also a lot of like how to keep your energy up while only eating like X number of calories a day, which I am like, oh
Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
Girl, I get a cup coupon sandwich and I can't keep my energy up. So I don't, I don't know. I think you can eat too much too. I think that's also possible. Oh yeah. It's
Ant Pruitt (00:33:28):
True to sugar crash.
Leo Laporte (00:33:32):
All right, Jeff, you, you said there's a lot of good stuff in here. Give me one <laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:37):
Can I, can I, can I say I told you so,
Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
Oh yeah. Actually hold that. Hold that thought. Cuz if I'm gonna get beat up, I better do an ad first. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:33:46):
Let's pay the bills.
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:47):
Better. Feel some money in your pocket. I yeah. Why am I going through
Leo Laporte (00:33:50):
This? Hold that I got, I got some salt to buy <laugh> this is expensive salt. I gotta say it's not. I
Jeff Jarvis (00:33:57):
Hope, I hope you're getting a wholesale price from, from salt Hank.
Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
No, actually I'm an investor cuz he had a, he had to get a, oh my God. I am. I sitting behind myself are
Ant Pruitt (00:34:10):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
Nicely,
Ant Pruitt (00:34:15):
Nicely.
Leo Laporte (00:34:19):
If you're not watching video. Well you're missing all the fun. That's all I can say. There's
Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:23):
Like a Leo L on the
Leo Laporte (00:34:24):
Shelf. There's an L on the shelf. Yeah. Wow.
Ant Pruitt (00:34:28):
Nicely done. Yeah. Good old Tryer
Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
Mesmerizing. <Laugh> it
Jeff Jarvis (00:34:33):
Is. It is it's the Leo is meno
Ant Pruitt (00:34:36):
And I have gone ahead and ordered some salt. Even you don't. No, even though you, I wanna support him. Thank you. You
Leo Laporte (00:34:43):
Know? Well, I think, you know, get out there. You might, you might sell out if you don't hurry. <Laugh> I'm you know, it's exciting. It's really nice to see your kids. Wait, wait, Ann,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:53):
Are you shopping while
Ant Pruitt (00:34:55):
On the show? <Laugh> I did it. I started ordering right? When he, right. When he pulled out the website, I started ordering. I was like, yeah, I wanna support paint. Aw,
Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
Thank you. I really appreciate it. <Laugh> you give me help. Our show today brought to you by, and then we're gonna hear Jeff, tell me so user way.org. Actually, this is something I think at this holiday season, we can all get behind every website without exception is a public entity. That means it has to be accessible to people with disabilities. And it's, you know, I mean there's three reasons you do this. One is the law Americans with disabilities act requires it. You can get sued for it. In fact, a very well known pizza company in the United States took it all the way to Supreme court. I've said this before they had a phone number and they said, well, we got a phone number. If you're blind, just call the phone number and we'll get you your pizza. And the Supreme court said, no, that's separate but equal your public entity.
Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
You have to be accessible. That's one reason, a other reason is it's the right thing to do, right? Make your site accessible. Third reason, profit. If you aren't accessible, you're leaving 60 million Americans with disabilities out in the cold. They can't buy your salt. They can't, they can't shop. They can't participate. They can't fill out forms user way, solves all that. And it doesn't very affordably. You know, as a website owner myself, I was always nervous about this cause ah, this is gonna cost a lot. It's gonna be a lot of work. I'm gonna have to hire developers user way has an incredible AI powered solution that tirelessly enforces hundreds of web access guidelines, content, access guidelines. With one line of JavaScript. It can achieve more user way. It can achieve more than an entire team of developers. You don't have to be overwhelmed.
Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
You can make your website accessible easily affordably. In fact, first thing you should probably do is go to user way.org/twi. And they have a, a free scanning tool to see if your website's ADA compliant probably isn't but you know, maybe it is, maybe it is. Maybe you did the right thing. Good. but if not check out user way, user ways, AI and machine learning solutions, power accessibility for so much of the web, over a million websites. Coca-Cola Disney, eBay, FedEx, Walmart, and on and on and on user way just but, and you might say, well, wait a minute, I'm the I not do Disney. I can't afford there's no, no user way is making its best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available for a very affordable price to small and medium sized businesses, operating an accessible and compliant website. It's the right thing to do.
Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
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Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:04):
I'm Susan Bennett. The original voice of Siri. You won't hear me say something like this too often. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're looking for, but every day that's what the internet is like for millions of people with disabilities user way fixes all of that with just one line of code
Leo Laporte (00:39:25):
User way can make any website fully accessible, fully ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly can customize it. It's also a way to show your commitment to millions of people with disabilities. Go to user way.org/twi S E R w a Y user way.org/twi. Actually we've got 30% off for you on their AI powered accessibility solutions. So that's even more affordable user way, making the internet accessible for every user way.org/tweet. We thank of so much for supporting this week in Google. All right, Jeff.
Jeff Jarvis (00:40:05):
So last week when we were last here, we had a discussion about Twitter's new rule that basically forbids photos without permission.
Leo Laporte (00:40:14):
Yeah. And I thought it was a good step.
Jeff Jarvis (00:40:17):
So Leo thought, yes, I was gonna make fun of you for that in a second. Leo thought it was a good step. I said that there were unintended consequences to come in danger. It was a well intended step, but it was terribly written and Leo kept insisting. No, no, no, no, no. You're wrong, Jeff. This is good. It can't be misused. It's wonderful. You're a fool. Jeff. I don't think
Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
I said any of that, but okay, go ahead.
Jeff Jarvis (00:40:38):
It was inherit. It was inheriting
Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
The tapes. You're a flow. Jeff.
Jeff Jarvis (00:40:45):
Oh, you think that all the time? No, I don't. No,
Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
I don't. No, I was hopeful. I, I, I understood what you're saying, but I was hopeful that a Twitter would enforce it appropriately so that it, you know, I mean that there was enough room in there that they could make it work. But yeah, obviously people are already using it.
Jeff Jarvis (00:41:03):
Right. So what happened was the far right. Has weaponized it and, and is going after anything that might criticize them and taking down stuff and putting up all kinds of false reports and doing all kinds of things. And so, you know, my argument stands well intentioned, but oh, unintended consequences.
Leo Laporte (00:41:20):
Here's an example. Twitter, Twitter
Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:22):
Said that they're gonna be looking at this.
Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
So it's not. Yeah. I mean, I think they can fix. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (00:41:25):
And they started taking down some of those who were abusing it, but it took a couple days and a lot of researchers yelling at them and they're, I, again, I like Twitter. I think Twitter is doing the right thing.
Leo Laporte (00:41:34):
I think it's, here's an examples how democracy works. Right? Thought this is gonna be part of the process to begin with. Yeah. And I, and I think they worded in such a way that that gives them the the tools they need to take care of it. This is an example that was given by a CNN business. This is the article you're referring to in January. Samuel brow Lowe was covering an Andy mask protest at a Los Angeles mall for the Beverly Hills courier 56 year old local newspaper, where he's a reporter during the event, he tweeted a video of a standoff between Andy masks and a mall official. You see that a lot these days, mm-hmm <affirmative> this week, this is back in January. He did this. Someone filed a report, caused Twitter to lockdown his account. The complaint led to him being unable to tweet until he either successfully appealed the report or deleted old tweets. He was stuck. Now this is, I don't know what's happened since then, but yeah, that's exactly the, the UN unintended consequences were talking
Jeff Jarvis (00:42:32):
What happened. So the guardian is the latest story. That's the one on top where, where this is happening. Twitter has said oh we got, we got used. And they've got a, so a statement. Twitter made said an internal review of the policy after making several errors in enforcement. Well, if you have a bad voice,
Leo Laporte (00:42:50):
You could badly that that does reflect poorly on them because you could see that was gonna happen. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, there's no question that was gonna happen. And they should have been ready for
Jeff Jarvis (00:43:02):
It. After this rolled out, we became aware of a significant amount of coordinated and malicious reports. And unfortunately our enforcement teams made several errors.
Leo Laporte (00:43:09):
I'm shocked, malicious people on the internet. How could that happen?
Jeff Jarvis (00:43:14):
Said that's what I said is they didn't think far enough ahead with those things. And you said I was a fool. No,
Leo Laporte (00:43:20):
I did not say no. We didn't say that. I said, and I think it's still true. I'll stand by it. That the, the policy, as they stated, gives them enough leeway to handle this properly. What they did wrong was they just kind of need your pulled down these accounts. Well, they also didn't
Jeff Jarvis (00:43:34):
Write all enough. Didn't write it. Well, no, no, no. This is the way, no, no, no. You're trying to use us here. You can't do that. And, and people manage to get through it, so they'll figure it out. But, but there's a lot of, I told you, so I was going around the internet this last week, including,
Leo Laporte (00:43:47):
Right. I think Jeff, this is moral panic on your part. It is <laugh>. It is yet to become, look, there's gonna be some, nobody said this would be perfect, but, but I think that we'll see, you know, let's look in a couple of weeks or a couple months and see how this is panned out. It, I think it was really important that Twitter took a stand on this stuff and said, you know, this is pro, this is, they hadn't even admitted. It was a problem. Nope. So to admit that it was a problem to say, look, we're gonna do something about, this is exactly the right direction. Maybe it needs some refine, probably more likely in these less automated takedowns, but that's a problem on, you know, I was just talking about that. I think these were, I think
Jeff Jarvis (00:44:24):
These were human takedowns, but they were interpreting, well,
Leo Laporte (00:44:26):
They need to then, you know, train people better, obviously. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so, so anyway, that was, thank
Ant Pruitt (00:44:31):
You for that opportunity. Wait, let's they? Yeah. <Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Let's see if they fix it. And if not, then they got a problem. You're you're absolutely right. But any, anything Twitter does, you know, Twitter's also been used and you've been the, the victim of it for of a B for abuse. And so I think anything Twitter does to kind of counter abuse is a good thing. Yep. I, I agree. I
Ant Pruitt (00:44:56):
Agree. They just could done it better.
Leo Laporte (00:44:57):
That's all. Yeah. That's all. All right. That's awesome. Do better Twitter do better. I'm watching, I'm watching the world championship match. You know, I was going downhill fast and and there was a press conference yesterday.
Ant Pruitt (00:45:11):
World championship match. What, what sports
Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
Has, what other sport is there? Oh, okay.
Ant Pruitt (00:45:17):
I thought you was talking about F1. Maybe the college playoff
Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
Playoffs or Magnus Carlson. The world champion was so friended by a question at the press conference, he says, do better. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:45:29):
Want, wow, I want that me. I respect do better.
Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
I respect. I said, we get, he says, we get this question. Every, every world championship. It's a BS question. Do better. Yeah. I
Ant Pruitt (00:45:38):
Respect that. Wow. I, I wish there were more journalistic approach out there when doing these little post post sporting event interviews, you rarely, how do you feel about this big win? I feel like crap.
Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
Yeah. You know, is that what there is saying? But I also say it goes both ways, cuz athletes are not notoriously forthcoming at these interviews. Okay. I came to play, I played a hundred percent. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> we came to win. We're gonna win. You know, it's not always very, we scored more points than the other team, the team, you know, I found that the team that scores the most points often wins these game. Yeah. Allegedly, allegedly, unless it's American democracy, Hey, here's a good, here's a good feel. Good story. Tim nit, who was hired by hired by Google to run their ethics division then fired when she said things they didn't like has started her own AI research center too. I think this is important. Asked questions about the responsible use of artificial intelligence. That was kind of what she was supposed to be doing at Google, but they didn't really want her to do that apparently. So that's good news. I'm not surprised. She's the founder and executive director of distributed artificial intelligence research dare
Ant Pruitt (00:46:50):
With lots of funding from lots of places. Good.
Leo Laporte (00:46:53):
The first part of the name is a reference to her aim to be more inclusive. The most AI labs, that's where the distributed comes in, which Q of course, white Western and male, and to recruit people from parts of the world rarely represented in the tech industry. Nobody better to do that. That's great. Yeah. Glad to hear that. So see, there's happy news. It is Dar will also work on demonstrating uses for AI, unlikely to be developed elsewhere. G says aiming to inspire others, to take technology in new directions. This is one of the really strong arguments for diversity. You get a kind of a monolithic group of people doing it. They're all gonna do the same, same kind of stuff. Here's an example, homogenous, homogenous. That's a, exactly one such project creating a public data set of aerial imagery of South Africa to examine how the legacy of apartheid is still etched into land use. <Affirmative> interesting. Yeah. So good going? Yeah. Happy ending. And then there's the Estonian robots. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (00:48:02):
Well,
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:02):
I don't know if you, I put this in the rundown. No. Stacy may think is one of those crazy things that Jeff put in the rundown. I thought,
Ant Pruitt (00:48:08):
No, I was fun. I saw this and I thought about my chat with Ms. Stacy about the murder bot book series.
Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
And it's on my screen, Chad. She, she
Ant Pruitt (00:48:18):
Thought it cute that I thought I could take out a murder bot. And I said, all I need is a hose. <Laugh> that's, that's, that's all I need. And this right here is
Leo Laporte (00:48:27):
These little things you see, 'em all actually in the us two on camp, college campuses, they're little food delivery bots. And they were a bunch in
Ant Pruitt (00:48:34):
San Francisco at one time.
Leo Laporte (00:48:36):
Right. And actually there's always on TikTok, funny little videos of them getting stalled and stuff. But here's about, I don't know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 of them stuck in the snow up, stuck in the snow. They just can't. They just can't move custo.
Jeff Jarvis (00:48:51):
Would've bought him with the
Leo Laporte (00:48:52):
Snow tires. You can see the, you can see the wheels spinning. You're trying not going nowhere. This, the one in the front is here is he's giving up. He's just like, I give a I can't smart robot.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:01):
It's like, this is the next generation's children's stories right here. Like the little engine that could, oh, robot
Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
Robot.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:08):
It had to make his it's like bald. How meets the little engine that could, there we go.
Jeff Jarvis (00:49:13):
Well, I like too is they're going opposite directions and they kind of meet and say, are you screwed? Yeah, I'm screwed. Are you screwed? Yeah. I'm screwed.
Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
<Laugh> somebody at all. Somebody's not getting their their submarine sandwich
Jeff Jarvis (00:49:22):
On the other hand. You know what they need? They need some Maccas
Leo Laporte (00:49:26):
Monkeys. You watch that video. Oh is that the one right below it? Yeah.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:31):
Is that how you say that monkey name?
Leo Laporte (00:49:33):
Yeah. Macke. These are thes of valley. They've learned to steal valuables from tourists and then trade it back for food. They don't want the backpack. They want no, they want the food. So here is so he
Ant Pruitt (00:49:46):
Demonstrates in here. It almost looks like Brian Reagan standing there. Sorry. So,
Jeff Jarvis (00:49:51):
Okay. What is he go along for a few minutes? It goes for a while, but, but he goes along. He, he, he, he gets the, the monkey to steal his phone and then he negotiates with it.
Leo Laporte (00:50:00):
So the monkeys are shows what the monkey will take. Oh, she just, they just stole, oh, wait a minute. That was mean they, the poorer little girl, she's got two shoes, one steals, one shoe and the other one steals. The other one. They're like ganged up on her. Holy cow. Look at this. Yeah. I don't
Ant Pruitt (00:50:15):
<Laugh> oh my God. No, I'm I'm not digging this. Oh my
Leo Laporte (00:50:19):
God. Sunglasses. The monkey would have a, no, they don't really need sunglasses or shoes. I hear. Well, no, no. So he's got, let's see how Spen of BBC two is going to explain. Is there not audio on this, John? I can. I can here. You do it, but you gotta do it in a Ponzi. British accent. Okay. POY British
Jeff Jarvis (00:50:41):
Accent. Yeah. Here you go. So then I put it on my shades and this way he has a phone here. I'm
Speaker 6 (00:50:45):
Okay. He's got my phone and there is a system by which I may be able to do this bartering an
Leo Laporte (00:50:50):
Egg. Is there hasn't he heard of chocolate there, a BBC reporter school where they teach them how to look. He got his phone back. No, that's terrible negotiation. I think he's yeah. That's not good. I think that's a, that's that's an example of an anthrop apologi to doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah. Hey, congratulations to our own Congress member, Devon Nunes, who was decided to abandoned Congress. Wasn't working out that well for him and his constituencies to run. This is gonna work out great. Trump's new media company. Oh boy. He'll be the CEO. What is the name? Do we have a name? The Trump media and technology group. <Laugh> that's a good name. Okay. Big. Yeah. Is this the, is this the whatever happened to the, the Trump Twitter? The, the, the, the that's what this is, and this is that what? This is, this
Jeff Jarvis (00:51:48):
Is the spec, like 1.8 billion. Yeah. It's all just shady as shady can be. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:51:55):
Before noon, as the company released the full names of just two top employees, Donald J one, Donald J. Trump and streaming content. Executive Scott St. John. Oh boy. Now they've now. And then there were three. So anyway, congratulations. It's not up though, right? You can't can you? No. No. All right. I don't think it's ever gonna go up. No Politico where narcissist just have to stay relevant. We're doing the politics real quick. A lot of money. These are all Jeff Jarvis's stories. Just want you to know. Oh, okay. Politico slammed for inventing a disease. <Laugh> news report said Kamala. Harris's Bluetooth phobic for not using Bluetooth. Remember Hillary Clinton got in trouble for using her own email server. Yeah. Harris does not want to use. And she's right. Good. A phone with blue because it's not secure. Well, now she's Bluetooth phobic. According to Politico, Politico's bad. I'm I'm hating too throwing. Why is that a story? I mean, it's
Jeff Jarvis (00:53:02):
Because it, their sexist right wing bros. That's why
Leo Laporte (00:53:08):
The December 6th story says quote, while a growing number of consumers are going wireless, the vice president is sticking with the classics. She's long felt that Bluetooth headphones are a security risk as a result, silly her silly as a result, Harris insists on using wired headphones. Wow. And for her, what a horrible person, <laugh> the real, every hear that story. Real question is where is she getting the phone that has a headphones check? Cause I'd like
Ant Pruitt (00:53:41):
To know, oh, you're not gonna find that out. Oh man, you're not gonna find that
Leo Laporte (00:53:45):
Out. The battle between Roku and Google. It's good stuff. Right. It's over for now. Anyway Roku has become so big that it's able to finally say no to companies that are over a zealous in, you know, their their contracts with Roku for a while, looked like Google's YouTube and YouTube TV would not be on Roku, which would be a big deal. I mean, for Roku used it eyeballs. I don't know. I use Roku. Yeah, I do too. Yep. And I use YouTube TV. I really like it. Roku's deal was set to expire this month. <Affirmative> Roku warn customers in April that YouTube TV may be forced off the platform. Roku said it was, they were asking for too much data about customers. Google was also threatening to make the YouTube app unavailable. That was the escalation, right? Well, you're not gonna use YouTube TV, which is our money maker.
Leo Laporte (00:54:45):
We're not gonna let use YouTube either. Actually YouTube TV was removed from Roku store for five months. I didn't notice that cuz they didn't delete it from my, I still had it on my Roku, but I guess mm-hmm <affirmative> new people. Couldn't download it at the heart of these conflicts allegations from Roku, Google was making anticompetitive demands as part of its distribution agreements, including prefer treatment of its YouTube TV and YouTube apps within the Roku system. Roku did not back down for months, Google publicly denied the allegations. CNBC a couple of months ago said we saw an email that said YouTube executives, actually an email that was from YouTube executives, actually making those exact demands in 2019 Axios. This is from the Axio story. They publicly denied. We've seen that email and can confirm the contents <laugh> in any event this is, you know, this is not the end of these battles, not just with Roku, but with all of these devices and, and services like Hulu mm-hmm <affirmative> and you know, YouTube TV has its own negotiation issues with locals and the cable channels. They're all battling because there's a lot of money. Yeah. I was gonna say,
Ant Pruitt (00:55:52):
Everybody's gotta make a buck, gotta make a profit
Jeff Jarvis (00:55:54):
Bundlers bundlers, gotta make a buck.
Leo Laporte (00:55:57):
Bundlers got a bundle. Okay. Was that all of your stories, Jeff?
Ant Pruitt (00:56:04):
That was, well, I didn't put that in there. He didn't put that. Oh, good
Leo Laporte (00:56:07):
Man know. Did you put,
Jeff Jarvis (00:56:11):
I put in, I put in something for Stacy, but, but if she doesn't like what I put in here, so I'm not gonna mention it. I, well what is
Ant Pruitt (00:56:17):
It? Let me look through normally I see a little tiny,
Jeff Jarvis (00:56:20):
I don't know. It says very I O T down at line 1 52. I thought it was I O ish. I thought this would be an okay.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:26):
If you think I get all the way down to line 1 52. Oh, wow. Very I OT
Leo Laporte (00:56:31):
Seeking a common language. This is when you say bless his heart for self-driving bless your heart. Bless your heart.
Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:39):
So this actually I wasn't raised by a Southern woman <laugh> it was just
Leo Laporte (00:56:41):
Raised out. This actually is interesting because one of the promises of self-driving cars is that they will talk to each other inter auto communication that would help you all arrive at a stop sign. The cars could say after U Fons, that kind of thing.
Jeff Jarvis (00:56:58):
But it's very, I T it, it struck me it's out of the home and, and to interesting, have to create a language for this. And, and, and is it gonna be too late to enforce
Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
It? This is actually about bicyclists, the a company Argo AI, which develops self-driving systems is has released technical guidelines for safe interactions between robo cars and bikes. The guidelines created in collaborate with the league of American bicyclists,
Jeff Jarvis (00:57:26):
Cuz humans do a really crappy job of interacting with, oh
Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
My God, Rob, a better job. So much. So that cyclists I told, I mentioned this a while ago are putting up what they call ghost bikes, where there have been car bicycle collisions and deaths. We have one down the road from us, Sierra white painted bicycle bicycle us are urging AV companies to incorporate the bike lanes into their AI maps. And, and furthermore, to, to put models in for typical cyclist behavior, like lane splitting or swerving around an open car door so that they they're prepared for such actions. It would really be nice. It, I actually pretty much given up bicycling around here because I just it's too scary. It too dangerous. I would love to be able to. Yeah, like
Jeff Jarvis (00:58:12):
You tried the pool noodle hack scares me even as an automobile driver. It scares
Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
Me. If I had a pool noodle on my head, what would I do with a pool noodle? No,
Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:20):
The pool noodle hack. We actually see people around here riding with them. You get a pool noodle and strapping on the back of your bike and makes sure
Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
Bike gives you
Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:29):
Wide and people it's visible avoid it. Yeah. It's mostly just to like, cuz and it's true. I've seen like I am not one of those people cuz I ride my bike so I know how scary it is when a car feels like it's not that far from you, but it's really fricking close mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's an idea, but yeah, no this is, this was, I feel at first
Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
I was around here. People would actually take aim at the pool noodle. No I'm trying to see, see if they could just tip the pool noodle. <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (00:58:57):
I dunno if you, if you search for horrible, I know pool noodle, bike safety. You'll find some images of it.
Leo Laporte (00:59:06):
Now the entire show comes to a halt. Well I, you good? I,
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:12):
I won't try
Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
To contribute to the show at all. Safety.
Jeff Jarvis (00:59:15):
She, here it is. God, I
Leo Laporte (00:59:17):
Just get kicked. I rode around San Francisco a pool. Geez. Oh wow.
Ant Pruitt (00:59:23):
I totally like that. It's it's super visible.
Leo Laporte (00:59:27):
It's
Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:27):
Visible. It's cheap.
Leo Laporte (00:59:28):
It's this is Michelle Robertson running for the San Francisco Chronicle. Yeah. The lead will tell you something about it. F you be HOD. The man shouts at me from the roll down window of his silver sedan. We're at the intersection of fifth and mission. Not a, not a fun place. Yeah. Angry sedan, man. Can't get around me because I have a bright yellow pool noodle ti five foot in length, tied to the back of my bicycle. It jets about three feet into the right lane. Denoting, the minimum safe passing distance per California law for cars and bicyclist three feet. I really like
Ant Pruitt (01:00:04):
That. I liked that as a driver. There's a certain spot. Yeah. I like it
Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:08):
As a driver. I like
Leo Laporte (01:00:09):
It as a bicyclist. Okay. You wouldn't aim it me. No
Ant Pruitt (01:00:12):
I wouldn't. But some I ain't San F
Leo Laporte (01:00:15):
People probably would. Who would aim it? The noodle, no one here in this area. It would just say, well, let me put it this way. Have you ever driven down a, a country lane with a baseball bat aiming for post ops mailboxes mailboxes?
Ant Pruitt (01:00:26):
No, I, I you're. You need confirm or deny such
Leo Laporte (01:00:30):
Thing
Ant Pruitt (01:00:33):
Who would do such a
Leo Laporte (01:00:34):
Thing? No one, no one in their right mind would do such a
Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:37):
Thing. Drunk west Texans. <Laugh>
Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:44):
Okay. So anyway, I was gonna say to bring it back to a tech angle, just for fun. Thank you. Totally. Just going out there. I like this story, Jeff. I think, you know, we've talked a lot about B2 V standards, like vehicle to vehicle and yeah, yeah. Vehicle to infrastructure. It's not infrastructure. I can't think of what and we were actually supposed to get there, but then the Trump administration ordered the, I can't remember if it was the national highway and
Leo Laporte (01:01:14):
Safety trans, whatever that one.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:16):
Yeah. Yeah. It's either that one or dot. They basically took it out of the language. We didn't have to do it by any timeline. So they took away the timeline. Wow. So now we don't have a timeline for that. And then the other thing is this is really good information because like MIT has done research on like cars at an intersection, like self-driving cars at an intersection. And like how people will make, like, if I'm about to cross at a cross wall, I try to make eye contact with people in the car. Yeah. Before I step into the street, that's a very good, and there's no way to actually do that. So this is talking about creating ways to have the cars, communicate with people, sending the opinion. I, I think that's really important. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
It is. So in our chat room, I think this is good. One of our chatters has attached. His name is ER con I'm out at a freight train horn on my e-bike. <Laugh> nice. Nice. Where can I get a freight train horn? Cuz I will do that. That sounds like a great idea. Freight train horn. <Laugh> what is a, what, let me, let me see if I can find a freight train horn. How do you power it? Do you have to have a, like a, a lead acid battery to power? It <laugh> well, you're on a battery, a bike. It already has a battery, right? Yeah. You need a pretty big battery for a freight train horn. Here's a, here's an example of what you might hear when you travel by. Serone a little too close. <Laugh> I like that. I want that on my <laugh> I'm biking here. Get outta my way. Watch that sun
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:00):
Corn blasters. I want you think we're gonna
Leo Laporte (01:03:04):
Get special a take down from the freight train cost
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:08):
$1,399.
Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
You can buy it really?
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:12):
Huh? Well, it's pretty heavy.
Leo Laporte (01:03:14):
Well, I got a trike back fancy bite. So we are talking in the beginning of the show about YouTube. Takedowns get ready for this. Over 2.2 million copyright claims hit YouTube videos between January and June of this year before being overturned. Wow. This is a report from YouTube, the copyright from YouTube.
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:39):
So it's a new transparency
Leo Laporte (01:03:40):
Report. Yeah, they haven't done this before. Copyright transparency report. This is good
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:45):
To finally shame the bozos who are doing this and put a stop to it. Well,
Leo Laporte (01:03:49):
It is as many as that sounds, it's only 1% of the 729 million copyright claims issued in the first half of the year. Yeah. It sounds
Jeff Jarvis (01:03:58):
Only the bad ones they caught, even though there's a heck.
Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
Well, it's, it's this automated content ID system, which catches us all the time for all sorts of things, including Canada. When users dispute the claims, which we often do we didn't dispute the Canada claim cause it wasn't really fair use, not fair use. Yeah. I just didn't have enough Canada stories. So I just played a pieces when users disputed these claims, the cases were soft. Although I thought it was, it was kind of pro Canada. Right. And I thought it would like Canada wouldn't mind if I used it. It was great fodder at the time. Yeah. Well anyway, when users disputed the claims, the cases resolved in favor of the uploader of the video, 60% of the time. So 729 million claims, 60% of them overturned, YouTube creators have long complained. They didn't could have talked to me about this, about how the platform handles claims, because it always assumes you're in the wrong, it's an uploader, right?
Leo Laporte (01:04:59):
It's by default, right? The copy holder, whether or not the person guilty, even the copy holder air use. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's problematic. So the report says no system is perfect and that errors happen even with established guardrails or, or as you would have it fun noodles in place to prevent the abuse of enforcement mechanisms. I think that's probably what Google's using is you know, there's a couple of pool noodles to keep them keep the, keep the guardrails when disputes take place. The process provided by YouTube provides real recourse and over 60% of these disputes were resolved in favor of the uploader. You know, if 60% of 729 million content ID, copyright claims if 60% are wrong. Right, right. That's, there's something wrong with the system. The
Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:53):
Problem. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:05:54):
And the prejudice that it's gonna, it's gonna favor it. It is. If it's gonna be wrong, it's gonna be wrong in favor of the copyright alleged copyright holders.
Leo Laporte (01:06:04):
Another
Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:04):
Way to put the fact that they put this out here is indicative of the fact that they're gonna start looking at how to fix it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:06:10):
Yes. I hope so. That's the whole thing. Anyway. I, I don't effect, I mean, there's a lot of stuff I don't do. Even though I know it would be fair use just because we don't want to you know, en rage, YouTube mm-hmm <affirmative> and it really, if you know, and frankly YouTube isn't that important to our downloads or to our revenue, but I wanna make sure we're on YouTube for the, for the audience. Don't want to have strikes. We could leave. Yeah. It's just, it's really JT says in our chat room, Sony has taken me down for sharing NASA Apollo eight video, which is completely public domain public domain because it was in Sony's libraries and they forgot to say, well, we're using it, but it's not part of our content ID. Same thing happened with national geographic. We gotta take down from national geographic because we got some NASA footage in one of our shows. And it was because national geographic had the same footage and the content ID just says, well, yeah, they own it because they used it. Yeah.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:11):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, cuz wow. It would be, it would be reprehensible and truly evil for Google to be like, oh we see that this is a real problem. We're publishing this problem and screw everybody else out there. We're not gonna do anything about it. So I think this is probably them collecting data on the path to fix it.
Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
This isn't that big. I could, I could put this on my bicycle. <Laugh> hundred 70 decibels though. We're still building it. It might be kinda loud. Lord
Ant Pruitt (01:07:40):
Got the tank on the back. You can put, that's not bad. Now I go
Leo Laporte (01:07:45):
On your tri hundred 70 decimals. I'd have to wear ear plugs in.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:49):
Yeah, you would
Ant Pruitt (01:07:51):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:07:53):
It has a air valve solenoid for solenoid, for increased airflow to sound louder. See what we need here.
Jeff Jarvis (01:08:00):
Stacy. We need to put that in the studio. And when you do something bad, Stacy can help.
Leo Laporte (01:08:03):
Oh that would work.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:05):
Should we get with her aunt too? I'm not, I'm not ready to like appreciate
Ant Pruitt (01:08:10):
Her being considered of me. Thank you man. <Laugh>
Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:15):
You've done nothing to
Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
Deserve it. Google was saying that workers would return to office January 10th. They've backed down on that. They sent out an email on Thursday said yeah, yeah, no. They still encourage do y'all
Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:30):
Think this is the new norm normal. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:08:32):
And I asked this because no, I do. I mean, yeah I
Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:35):
Do. Yeah. So then what do we do going forward? Do we just, I mean, are, are we just gonna adapt over the next like three to five years to just hi Casey, are you thinking about we still in person events? I'm thinking about in person. I mean, I am going to CES. I have decided that I want to go Theron or how I, I am still going. So you're
Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
Going to CES. I just gotta know you won't be here in January.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:03):
Yeah. That's what I just said. Were you <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:09:05):
I just there's a little, let me explain how this show works. John writes down everything each of you says and hands me a note and I read it <laugh> and then that way Stacy just said she won't be here. It's in January. Oh, I'm sorry. I,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:24):
Sorry. Sorry.
Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
I was just confused. I was like, I was buying an air horn. I wasn't. Oh,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:28):
Okay. I'm like did I not say something out loud again? No, I'm
Leo Laporte (01:09:31):
Just confirming it. Yes. You're not gonna on the show. You're gonna see. Yes. So I'm not buying anything. I'm not tweeting. I'm the only guy here actually paying attention. <Laugh> not that am I gonna see? Yes. Any difference? Just weren't although I am, how, how well is that going? I'm looking at the next story. In fact, I had already started the next story, but she was making a point. Yeah. But she was making a point. This Smith Stacy was talking. So that was, so that was the story. Yes. Yeah.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:01):
I was, I was just trying
Leo Laporte (01:10:02):
To, it is the new normal can add to the story. I think it is the new normal. And I think that part of it is, I don't know so much about going to events, but working is it, that's an industrial era notion that you have to come to a place of work from nine to five money. A lot of industrial era bosses are gonna insist on it. Yeah. But it's industrial era. It's from when you were making widgets and you had to have hands on so true. But with knowledge workers and most, and many, many jobs are knowledge based right now our lot of our staff doesn't come in. Yeah. I used on faculty.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:33):
Are you okay with that?
Leo Laporte (01:10:34):
Just told. Yeah, we that's our policy and we are doing for four day work week starting next year. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> oh,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:41):
Oh. To match the four day school work weeks because that's a thing that's, that's a thing too. That's gonna be, yeah. A lot of schools are having like teacher burnout. So they're going to four day work weeks. But if your parent and your office is not gone to a four work week, that's, you're
Leo Laporte (01:10:56):
Kinda like torture. That's not what, why we're doing it, but I'm actually, I'm glad we are doing it. I don't know if any schools in this area are good for the good
Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:02):
For the teacher. I was gonna say, you should look into that because it's, that's like some of the wider reaching effects of this.
Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
Well, and I would say good for the teachers, except it's not good for the students. Cause no, that's not. They're getting 20% less education.
Ant Pruitt (01:11:15):
I, I agree. It's, it's tougher on, it's tough on the students too. But I have a teacher in my family and some of the stuff that she's been dealing with from the COVID restrictions and all of that in addition to the kids being pretty craptastic with their or behavior, in addition to the parents being, craptastic it it's, it's really burning these teachers. Oh, I know. And it, and it's not their fault. They don't want to do the best for the kids, but you know, it, people have mass mandates. Some people don't have mass mandates. People have assignments that are due at such and such time and they throw it excuse. Well, I can't do this assignment because I'm not well, and there's nothing totally wrong. They're using COVID as an excuse when it really isn't an excuse. It's, it's a mess. People are just gaming the system all around and teachers are fed up.
Leo Laporte (01:12:05):
Well, I don't blame it, but what are we gonna do about education? Cuz that's kind of
Ant Pruitt (01:12:09):
Important. Right. And, and my pay teachers better. Yeah. That's the thing. They're not get enough money to keep fighting this hard as well. That's
Leo Laporte (01:12:16):
Different. Yeah. If they're just not being paid well and the country doesn't respected. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's hard. I know it's really hard these days. Yeah. anyway. Yeah. I think, I think with more and more, we're gonna be seeing people work remotely. It's interesting cuz our sponsor for this hour, Woohoo is a company called Anela. Let's take a little break. We'll come back with more actually the change log coming up Anela is I, the, the, when I talked to the folks in Anela I loved what they told me. Their motto is brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. I love that. So brilliance is global. There are really great engineers and programmers and all over the world. The problem is the jobs up to now, they had to live nearby. Well times are changing and more and more companies are saying we can get, we want global talent.
Leo Laporte (01:13:09):
They're some of the best programmers in the world. They don't have to live next door and de can hook you up. They're a talent network with a mission to connect that brilliance with opportunity. These days, your company is expected to move faster than ever before to stay ahead of the competition. And it's hard to find time to both build and onboard an amazing engineering team. You need it, you need it, but that's where Anela can help. They can get you there that the world's first talent network connecting innovative companies like yours with top tier vetted engineers. So you have more time to focus on your core business. Andela has a very rigorous vetting process. Their hiring process will make sure you're getting the best technical talent. It's quick and efficient, but it maintains the highest quality admission standards you're gonna, you're gonna get top quality engineers.
Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
It's, it's, it's a truly global talent pool, but I wanna reassure you because for instance these engineers are fully embedded. They're really part of your company they're embedded in your organization. They guarantee five hours of overlapping working hours with the rest of the engineering team. So it's not like they're working at night, you're working at day. Although sometimes the, the, the shift in hours is helpful to give you a broader footprint so you can help customers and things like that at, with Anela you can tap into their pool of highly 12 qualified talent from around the world. Cut your hiring timeline down from months to days. And it's very efficient to get you going. The ramp up times are really quick because Anela understands. Companies are expecting to do more with less. They've got to justify R ROI. When you hire Anela engineers, you can expect they will be efficiently, onboard, and work in and ready to deliver value for your team within days.
Leo Laporte (01:14:55):
It's just great. It's just great Mindshare as an example, and you'll find these references on the website, Mindshare partnered with Nella to quickly hire 10 new digital experts. And these are high level experts, data scientist, machine learning specialists, analysts, software of developers. I have a quote from the executive director and head of business intelligence at Mindshare. He says, as we continue to enhance the synapse platform, time to value is very important. Andela is a great partner in helping us identify the right talent that's fit for different purposes. Andela you can tap into a wider talent pool, stop competing with major tech companies for talent down the street. There's talent, all around the world. You'll spend less time interviewing brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is, and I love that. Visit anela.com/four-companies to schedule a complimentary consultation. You'll get a two week no risk trial with their vetted technical talent, a and D E L a andela.com/four-companies, four dash companies. Thank you, ELA for supporting this week in Google. And I think this is really great. Bring bringing talent from all over the world in, into these businesses that need the talent and it doesn't nowadays. You don't have to be sitting there. It's not an industrial area job. You don't have to be sitting next to each other. You really can get the job done. And these people are so talented, so talented. All right. Let's play the drums slowly, John, because it's time for
Speaker 7 (01:16:32):
The Google change log
Leo Laporte (01:16:38):
Android, 12 L beta one. Here's everything new actually really more importantly, if you have a Google pixel, the, the drop is coming out this month, new feature drop. But look, here's some, here's some things in the next version of Android, 12 L will be released early next year. Two more betas to come a little bit easier to find wallpapers dark themes. Just for you, just for you really
Speaker 8 (01:17:06):
Easier to find wallpaper. They've got some
Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:09):
Real issues with
Ant Pruitt (01:17:10):
Android, 12 problems in this OS, man. Crap about some wallpapers.
Leo Laporte (01:17:16):
How about the buggy now playing notification
Ant Pruitt (01:17:20):
Really now playing is, is a big issue for someone. How about I can't keep my phone calls connected. Really? You
Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
Dropping a lot of phone.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:26):
How about my Bluetooth is all wet.
Leo Laporte (01:17:28):
Bluetooth who uses Bluetooth? Not Kamala. No, she's not
Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:33):
Kamala, but
Leo Laporte (01:17:33):
She's smarter than I am. Think you're Bluetooth phobic. That's what I feel. <Laugh> well that might be, those might be hardware issues. No,
Ant Pruitt (01:17:42):
Dude, this, this blue, I started noticing the Bluetooth stuff on the pixel four when Android 12 came out. It just, it, it just toggles off. You
Leo Laporte (01:17:52):
Don't want a full screen widget sheet from the home screen and new weather. Yeah. When I
Ant Pruitt (01:17:57):
Look don't Slappy of, of dista, don't even slap you this come
Leo Laporte (01:18:02):
On,
Ant Pruitt (01:18:03):
Man.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:18:04):
Did you hear that? Ann's gonna slap you and it's gonna hurt way more than the Stacy punch Leo and I can't wait. Sound the air horn, the F horn.
Ant Pruitt (01:18:14):
<Laugh> it just annoyed me when I said, do you hate your pixel six? The hardware is great on this phone, but the OS is craptastic. It is. You don't use yours enough, I guess, I guess
Leo Laporte (01:18:29):
Not. I mean, it's not my daily driver. I use it, but I don't use it every well. This is, this is something that's been driving me crazy. What's that? Well, I have the always on screen. It even shows the fingerprint Uhhuh, but it's not responsive. That's in there. Well, what I discovered is you have to press the screen on, off. I mean, you shouldn't have to, that's a bug. I would say's if I press the button, I can it'll it'll wake up and, and live. You know,
Ant Pruitt (01:18:53):
They, this should have gone through Daum U a T
Leo Laporte (01:18:57):
What's that
Ant Pruitt (01:18:58):
User upset user acceptance testing before it got pushed out with people
Leo Laporte (01:19:03):
Who have Android auto
Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:05):
Or it could have gone through a and T cuz he's got opinions
Ant Pruitt (01:19:09):
<Laugh> I do it well. So true. So true. Well played well played.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:14):
There is a lot of latency on this guys, you know <laugh>
Ant Pruitt (01:19:19):
But no, it it's. This really bugged me. All of this stuff looks like just some cosmetic, just pretty, pretty in it, up kind of Android stuff. And that has nothing to, to do, do stick on a pig with function. This, this always has to, would be better than, than what is offering up, especially when you have really nice hardware. Like the pixel six pro. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:19:41):
Let me check for an update. Maybe I'll get an update. Nope. Maybe in a week or so we're gonna get updates. That's gonna have the the pixel December security patch. They do a hundred, nearly a hundred fixes to Android 12. So maybe, maybe some of these complaints will
Ant Pruitt (01:19:58):
Go away. Can you control F and see if it says Bluetooth <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Fix for distorted audio over Bluetooth in certain scenarios. That's not the
Ant Pruitt (01:20:10):
Problem. No, <laugh> the problem. Is it just
Leo Laporte (01:20:13):
Quite a, a few fixes? There's a hundred fixes fix for issue. This, which seems like a lot for lot. Yeah. Yeah. Fix for causing assistant to unintentionally start a phone call. That's been something people have been claiming back complaining about. Yeah. Audio playback, audio noise and videos, microphone cutting out during calls and certain conditions that was happening to you. Right. It
Ant Pruitt (01:20:35):
Cuts out or drops. I had to call PG and E you know how much fun that is? I have
Leo Laporte (01:20:41):
Had calls drop on this convers. It just
Ant Pruitt (01:20:43):
Stops. So didn't you get
Leo Laporte (01:20:45):
When a call drops? I just assume it's a carrier. Not not the,
Ant Pruitt (01:20:50):
Not the phone. That's what I was assuming at first. But yeah, but if you, if I'm sitting in one spot or no, this is not the carrier. This is
Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
General improvements for fingerprint, sensor, stability and performance. They improved that last time too.
Ant Pruitt (01:21:03):
Oh, metrics,
Leo Laporte (01:21:05):
Camera image, quality improvements expect continuous improvements in the camera. Sure. Camera's good. And I think that just making it better and better. Sure. oh way. Networking, telephony fix for issue. The disabled call features no sensors. There's look at
Ant Pruitt (01:21:20):
This. All right, Google, gimme a call. Let's talk. Wow. We need to talk about this. All
Leo Laporte (01:21:25):
Pixel phones going all the way back to the three a will benefit from the December update fixes that listed below. There's quite a few. That's great.
Leo Laporte (01:21:36):
Yeah. So patches will go out to a lot of phones across the board. All the pixel phones. Well, golly, golly. Sorry
Ant Pruitt (01:21:45):
For raising my voice earlier.
Leo Laporte (01:21:46):
Pixel, did you raise your voice? It's cool. When you do that. Pixel buds, Aeries firmware update, adding base slider, loudness compensation and more. I, I agree with Kala. I don't, I want to use wired headphones. I really don't like Bluetooth, but that we don't how much choice. The December Chromecast with Google TV update improves Doby, vision, playback, storage and more Google photos is they do this every year. Now, starting to surface your best of 20, 21 memories. <Laugh>
Ant Pruitt (01:22:20):
Ma let me just see. Oh, that reminds me of another bug. It continues to think that my photos are sideways and I get this little notifi notification. That's from the software that says, Hey, your, your photos are sideways. No, they're not.
Leo Laporte (01:22:33):
I'm starting to hate my picture phone.
Ant Pruitt (01:22:35):
<Laugh> they're not. I took it that way.
Leo Laporte (01:22:37):
I'm oh yeah. You know? Well, you mean you took it
Ant Pruitt (01:22:41):
In landscape. I take it in landscape mode. Oh no, no. That's sideways. That's not sideways. <Laugh> that's that's not a, oh geez. Hmm. It's a dad gum camp.
Leo Laporte (01:22:53):
Are, did you have a pixel before? No. Yes. That's all I've had. Oh, you did? Okay. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> cause I talked you in getting the six.
Ant Pruitt (01:22:59):
No, you taught me into getting the four. I wanted the six. You taught me into the four
Leo Laporte (01:23:03):
<Laugh> no, I told you when the six came out, I said, you can get one, right? Yes you did. Didn't I? And I was like, yeah. And I want me, I bought it for you. Yeah. Okay. And I was like, yes, please. But I'm feeling bad now. No, no, the phone is fine. It's the OS. Yeah. It's the OS nice
Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:19):
Thing is the OS can always be improved. That's true. Please.
Leo Laporte (01:23:22):
Google, please. How about this fix <laugh> and it worked Jeff right? For the mysterious Android auto error. Oh
Jeff Jarvis (01:23:31):
Yeah. Yeah. I was going nuts. So I bought another cable to make sure there wasn't the cable. I was going nutty. And this thing's a bit overwritten cuz it's all story difficult. I had to hit one button once <laugh> somebody discovered. Cause they were probably hitting every bucket in the car saying why doesn't this work? You hit the talk to the car button. The little mouth. Yep. That just opens up the communication between the car and the phone like, oh there you are. Okay. Wow. Okay. Go. Here was Android auto. Okay. I hit it once. Other people have definitely have to hit it every time they done the car or something, which is a bit of pain, but I hit it once and it works one more time. I kind of hit it once. Cause it wasn. Sure. But it knock wood. It's
Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
Working. All right. When, what kind of car do you have? So we can so Mazda. Okay. Cuz I, you know, like I said, I haven't had that problem, but I guess it just varies. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> per automobile. I have heard from people who are having issues.
Jeff Jarvis (01:24:19):
I was the celebrity email of the week on all about Android. Woohoo. I got two
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Weeks ago. Did you accuse of them of moral panicked? <Laugh>
Jeff Jarvis (01:24:30):
No, because they were helpful. They couldn't have been more helpful and more nice and more generous and gentlemanly, nice work and inform now. And they were trying to, trying to help me out of a, of a fix. They were, they were quite nice.
Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
That's their job. They do a good one. I have to say all about Android. Tuesdays 5:00 PM. Pacific APM Eastern on Twitter.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:53):
Are we, is there just like a posity of news? I feel like there
Leo Laporte (01:24:57):
Is an opacity. There's a posity of Leo
Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:01):
<Laugh> okay. No, no I'm just I'm like say, okay, we're still, we're still in the change. Lock change lock. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:25:06):
And that's the a Google change log. Wait, work, change now. What do you wanna do? <Laugh>
Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:14):
Now, now we're moving on. Okay. We could do
Jeff Jarvis (01:25:18):
Tiktok videos, lots of
Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
Tiktok video. The top videos of 2021.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:25):
Oh wait, wait. Before we do that. Can we say how excited I am that Jessica Rosen weel has been congratulations
Leo Laporte (01:25:32):
Approved.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:32):
Yes. Congratulations. She is the new head chair of the FCC. I have met her several times. She's
Leo Laporte (01:25:39):
Very good. I,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:40):
Yeah, she's so good. She's so smart. She's really interested in both understanding how the technology works and I'm protecting the consumer.
Leo Laporte (01:25:50):
So she's been a commissioner for some time. And as you may know there the way the FCC works, they have to be three Republicans three Democrats and then the chairperson. She is the first woman. No,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:03):
No, there are only five chairs. No there's five, two Democrats three.
Jeff Jarvis (01:26:08):
No, there should be three Democrats and two Republicans.
Leo Laporte (01:26:11):
Well, depends on
Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:13):
Chairs. There's two Republican. Sorry. There's usually two Republicans, two Democrats on the chairs. And then whoever the president is usually appoints. Whoever's part of his.
Leo Laporte (01:26:22):
So the fifth person is the chairman. Okay. So instead of, okay, so I got it off by one. So there's two of each, well, it's a
Jeff Jarvis (01:26:29):
Rather crucial one. Yes,
Leo Laporte (01:26:30):
But it's off by. I was off by one. It's an off by one error. It's very common. So there was two, two Republicans, two Democrats and the chair. This is the first time a woman has been a chair of the FCC and a six years ever. Senate approval was 68 to 31, which is kind of amazing to hear that kind of I majority in the Senate. So
Jeff Jarvis (01:26:54):
Is Gigi someone gonna get through
Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:56):
They're fighting Gigi and Gigi is so freaking awesome. And so like, I'm so mad about that. It's it? What is it? Is it a red herring? Is it whatever you put up to TA it's it's annoying.
Leo Laporte (01:27:09):
So there, so there's empty seats at the FCC. Yes. Right. And Gigi would be, would she make it complete?
Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:16):
She would be the, the third democratic commissioner
Leo Laporte (01:27:20):
Basically. Okay. So there's a, they've been missing a fifth commissioner or for some since,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:25):
Since Trump and that was actually political wrangling by the Trump
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:28):
Administration. Right. People of the Republicans like Gigi first I forget what the reason was. It's backwards, Republican logic and some of the Democrats don't, it's all complicated. And I don't, I haven't been able to follow. She has
Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:37):
Supported like she is very much in favor of first amendment rights. She's argued in favor of conservative news organizations in the house. But if you ever
Leo Laporte (01:27:46):
Look, she's also a net neutrality advocate.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:49):
Yeah. She's a net neutrality advocate. She is anti duopoly. She is,
Leo Laporte (01:27:54):
Is what we need. Tru production.
Jeff Jarvis (01:27:57):
Yes, we need exactly. We need, she's brilliant. She's informed. She's brilliant.
Leo Laporte (01:28:01):
It's gonna happen. So however her prospects are not, not great. Well,
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:06):
I don't know. I don't know that they're bad. It's just
Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:09):
The press and everyone is fighting for her in, in ways that are actually pretty astonishing. Well,
Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
It's amazing that war Rosen wall, it's amazing that Rosen war got 80, 68 to 31 vote in the very partisan Senate. So obviously she's charming. There's, doesn't, there's some progress being made, which is really good. F's important. FCCS important to all of us for a variety of reasons. Okay. Yes. Thank you for doing that and distracting us from TikTok top videos of 2021. Appreciate it. If you go to
Jeff Jarvis (01:28:44):
1 0 1, you get a long list of, you can pick them rather than having to watch their
Leo Laporte (01:28:47):
Compilation. Yeah. The CNN thing is just taken Ava. That's just like one of those ridiculous slideshow. Where of course you could go to TikTok and see the videos, but no, CNN's gonna give you a static slideshow. <Affirmative> so retention, retention. I'm gonna give you a chance to vote. We're gonna watch one,
Ant Pruitt (01:29:07):
One. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:29:09):
One. If you like, I wanna see talk so much. Go watch it. Drone dancing. Where am I? Where am I squishy? The chip monk hiding nuts in his mouth. Restocking in its fines, dog painting or Zach king. Who's kind of an amazing video. Affects genius. Disappearing into his art chipmunk chip squishy, the chip monk chip. The account is ship monks of oh dog painting.
Ant Pruitt (01:29:37):
No dog painting is my osie girl. No, I've seen the dog painting. So it's
Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
Wonderful. Here comes squishy.
Ant Pruitt (01:29:44):
Hey squishy.
Leo Laporte (01:29:48):
That's it. By the way.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:50):
Yeah, no, but look how cute he is. Ish. Now he says fluffy bunny watch
Ant Pruitt (01:29:57):
Squishy paying rent,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:00):
Squishy pay. And
Ant Pruitt (01:30:03):
Cause all I see is his. Oh is he gonna make
Leo Laporte (01:30:05):
It? Yes, he got 'em all in. Okay. All right. I'll give you your second choice.
Ant Pruitt (01:30:10):
Dog painting dog.
Leo Laporte (01:30:12):
That's from my awesome.
Ant Pruitt (01:30:14):
Would've been, this is an amazing painting. This the dog that was doing the, the down the snow sucks.
Leo Laporte (01:30:20):
Oh, wait a minute. We probably can't play this music. So just watch the dog paint. Yeah. Dog painting blue. Lots of blue on the canvas. It's all blue. Now. That's the first one. Now he's got some green. That's interesting. How they're cutting in between tells me they really are very much influencing what the dog is doing now. He's doing yellow. If they weren't cutting. Well, you're a producer. They're the dog having a producer. They're cutting. They're cutting. I don't think the dog is painting a Daisy. I don't think the dog even knows what the hell's going on. They probably put bacon on the paint.
Ant Pruitt (01:30:58):
I don't know what I'm doing here with this paint. I thought the trick was peanut
Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
Butter. The dog painted and they're yeah, sure. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Ant Pruitt (01:31:07):
Quite honestly, both of those are better than what I thought would've been the best pick the drone dancing. Yeah. The drone dancing was not. That was horrendous. It do not even play it. Plus <laugh> now you gotta play. Now you gotta play it to irritate. No, no, no we don't. No, no we don't. It's horrendous. I, I hate, I gave them two seconds.
Leo Laporte (01:31:24):
Oh that's that's beauty of TikTok. They in fact, the New York times discovered how TikTok reads your mind. Oh,
Ant Pruitt (01:31:32):
Didn't the wall street journal.
Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
I'm not gonna do it. Don't worry. Don't worry. It's moronic. I agree. The CIA is big into Phil. Finish this sentence.
Ant Pruitt (01:31:45):
Surveillance Bitcoin cryptocurrency, a bro. <Laugh> crypto
Leo Laporte (01:31:51):
Stacy wins cryptocurrency. According to William Burns, the director, the agency has quote, a number of different products focused on cryptocurrency products, projects, no not products, projects. This is something I inherited. My predecessors started this. He said, but said, had set in motion. A number of different projects, focused on cryptocurrency and trying to look at second and third order consequences as well in helping with our colleagues in other parts of the us government to provide solid intelligence on what we're seeing as well. And actually there. Then, you know, if you look, this is on vice at the more like this stories, you'll see why the CIA might be interested, man, shot dead and haul and hail of gunfire over crypto mining rigs, Ted Cruz says Bitcoin mining can fix Texas's crumbling electric grid. Oh God cryptocurrency loan platform implodes in a 130 million hack. How not to get scammed in the crypto market. And buying aunt says it helped cops arrest ransomware money. Laers <laugh>. So I guess you'd get an idea why the CIA might have some interest in all of this.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:08):
You know, probably four years ago I was at an event and there was an FBI money laundering person there. So, and they, they were like very excited about Bitcoin. This was not in general. It was Bitcoin. And it was because, you know, we can, we can track things. It's it's great. So they were, I get why they're excited about this.
Leo Laporte (01:33:29):
I think you, you know, somebody, people have made the case that we wouldn't see ransomware as such a problem, if Bitcoin did big Bitcoin, because yeah. Now that everybody knows about Bitcoin knows how to get it ransomware, despite what the CIA might say about tracking Bitcoin does have some sort of an anonym it a lot better going the seven 11 and buying money cards. Money cards. Yeah. Yeah.
Ant Pruitt (01:33:52):
Did you have thoughts on the blockchain story on 1 0 8 into
Leo Laporte (01:33:57):
Security section? Well, let's go there and find out Google, temporarily disrupts a bot net that infected 1 million PCs. Yeah. Steve Gibson talked about this yesterday. Glu Tiba it's the largest bot net to date case you're, you know, what's a bot net very often when bad guys co-opt computers, what they do is they set up a command and control IRC room. The computer joins the room and then it waits for the command. And there's all sorts of things. You do, you know, DDoS attacks try to take down gambling sites on Subaru, Sunday, things like that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> company ES Google estimates. The malware has infected approximately 1 million windows. PC is globally. They're on that bot net they're all infected by Glu Tiba Google traced it to at least two individuals based out of what a surprise Russia. The company is, suing them in hopes.
Leo Laporte (01:34:56):
It'll set a precedent, create legal and liability risks for bot net operators. At times the company says it saw the network grow by about a thousand devices per day. I remember, and this is, I mean, this is 20 years ago. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> at tech TV. We had, we had gotten a tip logged into IRC channel. That was a botnet. And I was watching computers join at hundreds per second. Wow. The botnet was growing very fast as the malware spread mm-hmm <affirmative>. And once the malware infected your computer, your computer logged in this IRC channel to wait for your command. Oh the malware that adds a computer to the Glu TBA bot is usually found hidden on sketchy websites that offer free software. According to Google, the operators use the malware to steal personal data. Mine, cryptocurrencies. That's a big one these days. Yep. And funnel other internet traffic through the infected machines.
Ant Pruitt (01:35:54):
Can you explain this? Unfortunately, Motiva's use of block technology as a resiliency mechanism is notable here and it's becoming more and more common practice among cyber crime organizations.
Leo Laporte (01:36:06):
Yeah. The decentralized nature of blockchain allows the bot net. They say to recover more quickly from disruptions, making them harder to shut down. Maybe they're not using chat rooms anymore. Cuz it's easy to go after and shut down a, a, a commanding control center in a chat room. Maybe there's maybe that's exactly why they're using blockchain because it's decentralized. The issue of course is once you get all these computers, you gotta somehow tell 'em what to do. You gotta coordinate their activities. So anyway, Google temporarily disrupts Tebo if you want more information, we did talk about it on security. Now yesterday with Steve Gibson, Steve
Ant Pruitt (01:36:43):
Gibson
Leo Laporte (01:36:45):
Anybody, anything you want to talk about? There's plenty of word TikTok videos. No, no, no, no, no. Are you glad you not working@better.com? They fired 900 people over zoom.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:01):
Whoa, how else are
Ant Pruitt (01:37:02):
You gonna? I was going, I saw this headline. I was like, it's 900 people. So this one person was going to go door to door for 900 people or, well,
Leo Laporte (01:37:12):
Usually you send emails, you know? I mean there's ways to do that. But then there's people that
Ant Pruitt (01:37:17):
In envelope, hold on, people complain of about getting fired over text messages. Well, the
Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:22):
Issue was that he, he come then the CEO got on there. He was like, this was so hard. Last time. I'm hoping he'll do better this time. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:37:31):
He did it again. Oh boy. I come to you. He said with not great news. If you are on this call 900 people. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you're part of the unlucky group being laid off your employment here is terminated effective immediately.
Ant Pruitt (01:37:47):
I don't see. I don't how there's
Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
No way to get fired nicely. Yeah, I agree. It's not a good thing. One way or the other
Ant Pruitt (01:37:53):
It had to be done, unfortunately that was the more effective way efficient way to do
Leo Laporte (01:37:58):
It. So I know Leo. I have to <laugh> I whenever, well, we don't, we're a small company. So if people need to be fired, laid off, I do it. Or at least it does it in person, never fun. This guy did not invent Bitcoin. I'm just gonna say,
Ant Pruitt (01:38:17):
I wanted you to explain this to me. How, and
Leo Laporte (01:38:20):
He wins a us court battle for Bitcoin fortune worth billions. He claims he a guy claims he invented Bitcoin. And he's an Australian computer scientist. I'm not gonna say his name. He went to a, he went to court, suing the family of a deceased business partner that claimed the family claimed to his own half of a cryptocurrency fortune were tens of billions of dollars. The jury did award a hundred million in intellectual property rights to a joint venture between the two men. But the jury did found that this guy did not owe half of 1.1 million Bitcoins to the family.
Leo Laporte (01:39:05):
Didn't he, you know these were some of the first Bitcoins that we created through mining. They could only be owned by a person or entity involved with the digital currency from a beginning, such as Satoshi Nakamoto, it's creator. This guy claims to be the creator. He's not in order it's, by the way, it's an easy thing. If you think, you know, if you say I'm I'm Satoshi Nakamoto, well, Satoshi has tens of billions of Bitcoin in his account. All you'd have to do is move. You wouldn't even have to do anything, but just say, if you moved one zillions of a Bitcoin from that account to another account said, look, I'm gonna do that tomorrow. Prove, and you did it that proves it. Yeah, you can't do it.
Ant Pruitt (01:39:52):
So the courts in idiot, Theto
Leo Laporte (01:39:54):
The jury don't week to liberate. They didn't understand it. Yeah. yeah. He's not a credible claimant to the, to the role, especially because there here's an easy proof, which he has never, he's always said, oh yeah, I'll do that. And never does it. So what
Ant Pruitt (01:40:15):
Does he think he's gonna get?
Leo Laporte (01:40:17):
Because notoriety that's why I don't wanna say his name. Exactly. Okay. Got it.
Ant Pruitt (01:40:21):
Thank you. Good call, sir. It's like that other guy who drove masic crazy. We won't mention.
Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
Yeah. <Laugh> yes. Take
Ant Pruitt (01:40:31):
Dirt. Pod Ray had a good tweet.
Leo Laporte (01:40:35):
Yeah. I wasn't gonna do that, but now that you've called it out, I will. I'm sorry. You, you like it cuz it takes a potshot at your favorite organization or one of your favorite organizations. News, IY. I thought Padre had a good sense of humor about newsy. Well, so it is a, you know, look it's tabloid journalism, right? They here I'll find the tweet he's I can't find it in the rundown. He said it's newsy published. I got it. No, no newsy pub news. Max not newsy. Your favorite news. Max Bannan preps for conclave as quote, Pope is dying. What to which father Robert says, oh, oh no, I'll have to let him know the next time he comes over. Rolling on the floor. Laughing. I thought it
Jeff Jarvis (01:41:17):
Was very cool that we know the guy who knows
Leo Laporte (01:41:19):
The pop. We know the guys.
Jeff Jarvis (01:41:21):
That's all. That's all. Yeah. can I put in a plug for a friend of the show near it? Weis, blat who subbed forced wants to yes. Tech glass. She's great. Yep. Her book, which we, which we love is, is academic and it costs 80 bucks, but she now has an, an audio book aversion coming out right now for, I think it was 1395. She's it's supposed to go up on, on audible any second. Good. And she'll have the paperback coming out for 30 bucks soon. So it's an important book for those of us who cover technology. And here's a plug for the brilliant Dr. Weis blat.
Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
She I knew it, she very kindly asked if I would read it. And I said, yeah, I just don't. I just don't have time, but I gave her some names. So maybe she I hope she found I, however, who did
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:12):
It, is there example you could, could you, you recognize that voice in
Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
Two sentences? I probably could. I sent her over to Cory doctoral. Oh. And said you know, Cory has his books recorded, pays for his books, recorded mm-hmm <affirmative> she was very kind to ask me. I was very, very flattered, but it's hard to record a book, especially 2 52 pages of, yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:30):
This one is, and this one has lots of data in
Leo Laporte (01:42:32):
It. Let's see. It's on it's on
Jeff Jarvis (01:42:36):
Quotes. Quotes are very hard to read cause you've gotta do a slightly different
Leo Laporte (01:42:40):
Voice. Here's a sample. Let's see if
Speaker 9 (01:42:43):
The sentence that drew most of the reactions from the research interviewees was, but our work will never be done perhaps since this phrase symbolizes the never ending challenge.
Leo Laporte (01:42:53):
Good. He sounds good. I don't know who it is. I don't recognize that voice, but sounds very listenable. So I'll be getting that tech lash and tech crisis communication near it near it was on our show to talk about it. When it, you know, when it came out and now it's in audio, which will make it certainly will broaden the audience. I, yeah, I'll check that out. Cause it was, it was a, you know, expensive 80 bucks. Yeah. because it was academic academic. Yeah. Why, what <laugh> so explain to me, is it cuz it's such a small
Jeff Jarvis (01:43:28):
No, it's what they do is they sell up the, because libraries, they think it's just gonna be written in the library. There there's a, there's a series of books that I love by publisher called Bri. Like there's now a hundred books about book history get me started <laugh> there are 140 bucks each because I think nobody's gonna buy this book only the library's gonna buy it. We're gonna charge a very high price for it. I'm trying to get Gutenberg geek out and it'll probably be with an academic publisher. Knock on what if I get one I'm talking to one now. And I just don't want it to be an $80 book that's I'm
Leo Laporte (01:44:01):
Want, but yeah. Peter Boris reads it. Peter J Boris and look forward to, well you can go to near its website probably is the best, best place to go. Yeah. That's where you go. Yeah. Yep. Congratulations, Google her.
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:16):
Oh, there's there's another one. That's interesting. Yes. So there was a recent academic paper, like, like today that looked at the search engines. This is line 56 and 57 the search engines and, and how much they, they promoted conspiracies and they put in, I think, six basic conspiracies QAN on. I forget what the others were and they, and they looked at Google, Yahoo being Zantex and I forget. And duck dot go, duck dot
Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
Go. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (01:44:54):
And the only one that was free of conspiracies was Google. Is
Leo Laporte (01:44:59):
That Google or others?
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:00):
Interesting. Yep. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause Google obviously goes to the effort to clean them out. And so if you go to the explanatory Twitter thread, they have some graphics there that show what they, what they did here. So I think that was interesting to see that if you go to the effort, you can have an impact and they chose to do this and they did it. So
Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
It's a pre-print
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:25):
It's is pre-print. Yes, that is.
Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Which means it's not it's
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:28):
Not been peer reviewed peer reviewed. Neither. Have we been neither? Have we been, we
Leo Laporte (01:45:31):
Are not peer reviewed unless you
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:33):
Got, unless you call the chat room. Peer I like the chat review is kinda
Leo Laporte (01:45:37):
Reviewing us in real time. Keep us straight. Do they does she say it's she's a postal doctoral researcher at social computing group. It looks like it's, she's got a Swiss are also
Jeff Jarvis (01:45:56):
Yeah, so
Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
We'll see if somebody funds. That is the question I would, I'd be curious about
Jeff Jarvis (01:46:01):
The department of informatics at university of Zurich. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:46:04):
That's fair. That's safe.
Jeff Jarvis (01:46:07):
The li Institute for so VI Shafton
Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
In Germany. That sounds good. Yeah. I see. All right. All right. But you know, that's appropriate. You should ask when you read a study, especially if it's not peer reviewed. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, absolutely. What was the funding? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> just nothing here really is sparking joy, sparking joy. The Rohingya are search suing Facebook for a mind boggling hundred 50. Now this says million, but I heard saw billion. So maybe I misread it. I put
Jeff Jarvis (01:46:42):
This in here. I thought I saw, what do you do with like
Leo Laporte (01:46:44):
Genocide of a whole people? Yeah. Well what's that worth right? Axios is saying million now. So maybe, maybe I missed somebody did a typo. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Million seems more reasonable. 150 billion. Sounds like you don't expect anybody to take it seriously, but we're just gonna ask for a giant amount of money. None. Nonetheless, I think this is with a lot of merit. There's no question. Where are they suing? But in what court do they say us didn't get into the story. Us in the us courts. Okay. Yeah.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:10):
Who is suing? I mean, you can't Sue like the Roh Higa people
Leo Laporte (01:47:14):
Can't Sue like Roh Higa refugees from the us are suing in San Francisco, seeking the court, seeking the court to apply Burmese law. So this is kind complicated <affirmative> yeah, it is. The backstory in case you didn't know is that thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed in Myanmar. The UN called it genocide and Facebook is widely accused of kind of allowing anti Rohingya, amplifying the messages and amplifying the message messages. And this is, we were talking actually about this. I think on Twitter is that, or maybe that you were saying this Jeff, one of the problems is you can, you content moderation in English in big languages can be well done by these companies, but it's these narrow languages where they don't have a lot of content moderators, very hard as, and the, and the cultural context, and you don't have the context.
Leo Laporte (01:48:13):
You have to have people on the ground and so forth. A UN report in 2018 said Facebook played a determining role in disseminating hateful rhetoric and Myanmar. The international criminal court has opened an investigation into crimes against the Rohingya, Muslim and Bangladesh, and me and Mar so face Facebook issued a statement back in 2018. I, I think that this will be an interesting legal experts note. There's no known successful legal precedent for invoking foreign law and a suit against social media firms, especially because of section two 30. So I, I, that's why they want Burmese law. They're protected under two 30. They're not liable in the us, but they might be, but they are liable under Burmese law, but they're suing in the us. So it's
Ant Pruitt (01:49:07):
Sounds complicated. And if all of this goes through for that nation, that sued Facebook, what can Facebook do to stop this from happening again? I mean, is it
Leo Laporte (01:49:18):
It's well, it's hard and that's what we're talking about. It's but they didn't, I mean, Facebook has, I mean, this is my, one of my chief criticisms against Facebook is this seems to happen again and again in the Philippines mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. They know their
Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:32):
Evil and they just don't care.
Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
Well, they don't care. They have not found a way to do something about
Ant Pruitt (01:49:37):
It. Is it, is it just gonna take more and more nations suing Facebook before something even
Leo Laporte (01:49:43):
Gets done? Well, this is in a nation, these are refugee nation, but people suing. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think Facebook's at all threatened by this lawsuit. That's the real truth of it. Mm. They have enough lawyers. Yeah. And I just don't think it's gonna go forward. It, I, I'm kind of on, on the Rohingya side, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> but I don't know if they're, and I think they have merit, but I don't think they have standing.
Jeff Jarvis (01:50:07):
Well, the other point of doing this is for the attention. Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:50:11):
And that's why we're giving it. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>
Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Amazon launches Alexa together. I think we're gonna have to get our I person to say, what the hell is that a new service to help you care for the ones you love <affirmative> Alexa together? You know, I guess they were talking about this. I remember at an event, this would be, I would sended in September. Yeah. Yeah. 1999, a month, $20 a month or $199 a year. And then it, it's a way for you to port loved ones keeping you together. Even when you, apart, you get customized alerts, 24, 7 urgent response. You can see how things are with snapshots of your loved ones, echo and smart home interactions. Additional family members can join you to support your loved one. I think this is probably a good thing. That's very good. Remote assistant Augusta Augusta Augusta set reminders on a loved one's echo, managed shopping lists, linked music services.
Leo Laporte (01:51:16):
And more when I brought my mom an echo and set it up for her, it was set up on my account and it didn't take her very long to reset it because she said, I see your calendar notifications. I don't I want mine, but of course she didn't know how to make it hers. And so it just doesn't work. And there's also if a compatible device detects a fall, Alexa calls, urgent response and notifies emergency contacts. So, or, you know, they can shout call for help. So I think this is pretty cool. I think this is a good idea. It is expensive, but I guess 200 bucks a year done. Yes. Not
Jeff Jarvis (01:51:50):
We just moved my father. Thank goodness. My 95 year old father, and he's now seven miles away, which is a blessing. He's wonderful. Absolutely. But I was so until we convinced him to do that, I was so worried and I was, I was looking at this and thinking, how do we do it? But the problem is there's no, he's 95. There's no device he can use.
Leo Laporte (01:52:08):
No, no. So, but some of this is you using it right. To keep an eye on him. Okay. Right. And there is, and one of the, one of the things you're paying for, with a 200 bucks a year is a, a 24 7 urgent response team. He could have reached it by saying echo call for help. The fall detection, you know, I have my mom's fall detection on her watch. I don't know if it works with this, but if the detective fall, then the echo would say, do you want me to call urgent response? Do you want me to connect you to urgent response? Okay. All right. Remote assist, if the loved one chooses to activate it, that's worth $200 a year. My man. Yeah. I think so. Given a home aid would cost, you know, that much a day mm-hmm <affirmative> so I think that's good.
Jeff Jarvis (01:52:48):
Yeah. I'm counting down until we see the story about violating the privacy of our elders. But well,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:54):
Notice don't Washington post did it already. They did in November. Yeah. But okay. Hold on. Because you did actually at the very beginning call for my, my thoughts on this, and then you kept going, well, no, I
Leo Laporte (01:53:05):
Wanted to tell everybody I'm set in the stage. You go the background, this is, this is everything you need to know. Now, what does Stacy think is the question. Then Jeff had
Jeff Jarvis (01:53:13):
A dumb question and then now we're now we're at the meat of it. Now we're at the heart of it. Now we're at the value. Now we're the reason people are here. Go ahead, Stacy. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:53:24):
Bless is hard. So
Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:27):
<Laugh> just a couple things quick, not even corrections, just little addendums. So the device that you would buy to detect falls, that's an additional device. It's gotta be set up in each individual room. It's $250 for that device. It uses radar. It's very effective. I've talked to the company that makes it a bunch. So that's a very interesting device. If you're gonna buy something like that, it's nice because it monitors for the things most people are worried about without using a camera because it's just using radar. So one of the nicer things about this particular setup is that you will see that your parent interacted with Madame a or, but you don't know what they did. So you'll see, you know, your mom played a song. Your mom asked the time, but you don't know exactly what they're doing or your mom turned on a light, but you don't know if it's in the bathroom or what? The other thing that's nice is this is an evolution of their care hub stuff, which they launched the year before. Now you can do one to many. So with it, doesn't have to be just you Leo controlling your parents'
Leo Laporte (01:54:38):
Account. Yeah. My sister could do it. And your sister. Yeah. Yeah. And she's down the road. So that would actually work out really well. I suspect we'll be doing this mom's 80. She doesn't have she's living at home by herself. She doesn't have in home care, but I think, you know, this would be eventually she'll need that obviously, but this is a step in between this looks really yeah, no, this
Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:59):
Is a, this is a really compelling service. Yeah. I think. And it's fairly privacy. Certaining I mean, what is elder? I mean, basically to stay in your home, you might have to give up some of your privacy. It's really terrible,
Leo Laporte (01:55:13):
But, and you know, if you don't wanna do this, you don't have to do it. Obviously. It's mm-hmm <affirmative> well, yes. You know, so nobody's making anybody do it. I hope. Well,
Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:23):
No, I mean, I can see someone saying, Hey, look, mom, if you don't wanna go into assisted living, you are gonna have to do this. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:55:32):
Right.
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:33):
Usually that's, if you don't wanna go assisted living, then we're bringing in some stranger into your home every day and then, oh, I'm not gonna do that. And that's the fight that it's
Leo Laporte (01:55:40):
A tough, it's a tough one all around tough. It really is. After my
Jeff Jarvis (01:55:43):
Father had had breakthrough and he was in the hospital, then he was in rehab. It, it, it hits you for a loop and he says, I need this kind of help. And we said, oh yes. Okay, great. And the opening was there and you know, it's, it's never an easy discussion <affirmative> but I hope somebody takes care of all of us when we get that old.
Leo Laporte (01:56:06):
Yep. I did get my mom an apple watch that for the fall detection and, and some of that stuff, she loves it and it keeps her encourages to be active and stuff like that. So there's intermediate steps technology, I think as because Jeff baby boomers, we're getting old and there's gonna be a very big market for this kind of stuff for us. So, and I think
Jeff Jarvis (01:56:27):
There's gonna be a lot of services to keep you in your
Leo Laporte (01:56:29):
Home. Yes. Which I think is good. That's definitely evident.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:35):
And this is nice because you know, a lot of people, they, there's no indication that you're old. Right. So if you look like a lot of people don't wanna wear like the bracelets or the buttons, because it's an indicator, even hearing aids that they're old and you know, this is pretty normal. It's kind of hidden throughout your home. So,
Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
Yeah. Good. Thank you, Amazon. On the other hand, there's a lot of people, according to the Washington post name, post got a little who can't wait to change their name. <Laugh> what, there's gotta be a name in journalism for this kind of story.
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:09):
And it was done before. We've, we've talked about it before, but I put, I put it back in there just cuz it keeps coming around again. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley named their daughter in 1985 in 2015, 6,000 baby girls were named AC I there's actually a good story in Brad. Stone's Amazon Unbound about how they came up with that name and all the other names they considered it wasn't by any means a slam dunk. In fact, it was kind of a late decision to call it, graph the graph, call it, huh?
Jeff Jarvis (01:57:42):
Graph. It
Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
Says show graph, show the graph. Suddenly the names when the, so this, this peak right here is release nationwide. This sudden plummet is the drop in people named babies named given the name. You would name your kid after Billy Joel named their, the numbers, you know, went up and up and up. Yeah.
Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:08):
He, he wrote, he wrote a song, didn't he?
Leo Laporte (01:58:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Has one does and 2020 as Billy Joel does, as one does, as he does in 2020, only about 1300 babies were given the name. Okay. I, I mean, there's a for this kind of story, it's a kind of a lifestyle soft, moral panic, moral panic. I don't think that's the name. I don't think it's that talking name that I'm looking for. Do you want to talk about it's your basic effort for a trend story? I know you're a trend story. That's the word I was looking for? Trend story. Do you wanna talk about Ben and Devon's slides you do every year? We, he, this, that time a year. Yep. Yeah,
Jeff Jarvis (01:58:51):
It is that time of year. I think Ben's brilliant and, and, and a great analyst and I don't know how many pages it is. What was it? Oh, hell I should have looked. I'm sorry. I should have looked up the
Leo Laporte (01:59:04):
The name of it is three steps to the future, which is essentially the, the premises three trends in 2021. You know, it's funny because Amy Webb who is of regular, our Twitch show would love her. She's a futurist awesome future today Institute came to us a couple of weeks ago and said, I'd like to do a show about the future with on TWI. So we're we contacted, I think Daniel Swar science fiction, author mm-hmm <affirmative> and I thought we're gonna get a scientist as well. And get, aim me and talk about future trends. That'll be early next year. I, I think it'll be the first, like January 7th, the first week of the first Twitter of January. Nice. I'll watch that. Won't that be interesting, but let's see what Ben has to say. Okay. Future here's a whole slide. Just this one. You can you summarize this? Jeff? <laugh> just says future.
Jeff Jarvis (02:00:03):
There you go. I'm
Leo Laporte (02:00:04):
Trying to look for the slides. There you go. Okay. The tech visions for 2030 numbers up he's got two dots. One says web three, one says metaverse and then he's got a lot of other words, random words put together. And then the great rebranding redefine the vision instead of broader goal for VR and crypto. So cryptocurrencies are now gonna be called web three. Yeah. So, which
Jeff Jarvis (02:00:30):
Is basically say it's BS. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:00:32):
VR AR gonna be called metaverse the next plat. That was interesting. He says the next platform after smart phones, I think that's probably true. Web three, the, a holy Roman empire is nearly is neither. Holy nor Roman, nor empire. According to Voltaire, cryptocurrency is neither secret nor only a currency, blockchain or DLT are not databases. That's what Voltaire would've said. Had even born later <laugh> yes. Blockchain is a distributed open computing system, or at least that's the plan web three, the dream of the next version of the internet users read the web publishers create and make money web 2.0 users create networks control and make money. Web three users create network users, control networks and money. You know what I'm done with this? This is funny. This isn't that insightful? No, it's not. Okay. Sorry. Buzzfeed went public. Is that interesting? Jeff? It's a, it is
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:35):
Journalism. Lots of reasons because it's journalism, it's a spec. But a whole bunch of the back holders backed out before who
Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
It was a back back.
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:47):
It was, it was a spec back. Yes. and so they didn't get as much money as they wanted me while NBC was not heavy about the valuation, which was a clawback on a spec back. And so NBC owns
Leo Laporte (02:01:57):
Bus paid
Jeff Jarvis (02:01:58):
For them. NBC invested hugely, ah, Comcast invested
Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:01):
Hugely. I was about to say Comcast, my friends
Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
They own Buzzfeed news, Huff post taste acquired complex media
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:10):
Complex. As part of this is part of what, what
Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:12):
I thought Verizon owned HuffPost.
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:15):
They sold it to Buzzfeed. Oh, Verizon got out of all
Leo Laporte (02:02:19):
That media and they bought complex from Hurston Verizon for 300 million.
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:23):
That's part of the steel. And then Jonah, Brett thinks the only way to compete with the big guys is to become a big guy. He's
Leo Laporte (02:02:28):
The founder and CEO. Yeah, he's
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:30):
Brilliant. I mean, Joah was the brains behind, behind HuffPost too, really. And all their technology. But the back didn't work so well the straw, the
Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
94% of investors withdrew.
Jeff Jarvis (02:02:45):
Yes. I don't, I don't understand spec enough to understand fully what that means, but that means there wasn't as much money in this
Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:51):
For yeah. You raise a bunch of money and then you take things public through a pipe basically. So you usually merge with the public company, but you have money. There's a lot money. You raise with the idea of doing this. So they just didn't have enough money to do their deal. Or did they buy a cheaper
Leo Laporte (02:03:05):
Company? The merger raised roughly 16 million after investors withdrew about 94% of the 287 and a half million previously raised by the spec. The company also raised an additional 150 million in convertible note financing, borrowing that's part of the spec deal.
Jeff Jarvis (02:03:22):
Hmm. It came out at 10 bucks today. It closed at
Leo Laporte (02:03:25):
7 68 68. Yeah. Nobodys, investigat media down 22%. And finally, cuz we're gonna take, we're gonna take a break and then get your picks of the week. Finally, the Chinese have finally made contact with an alien civilization on the backside of the moon. There it is. They call it mystery hut.
Jeff Jarvis (02:03:49):
The outhouse on the moon. It is <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (02:03:51):
Their Rover is only, it's only turning 60 feet away, but gonna take the months to get over there. It's three months to get over there. Yeah. It's not moving fast. It looks like it's cubic, which means that either there are, there are aliens on there or wombats stone H cuz it's a cube and or ah, like wombat poop. It could be <laugh> that's John's jug. It could be a monolith. Yeah.
Jeff Jarvis (02:04:21):
Except 2001.
Leo Laporte (02:04:22):
It would be the monolith from spinal tap. It'd be kinda like a little one <laugh> <laugh> I actually, it's hard to say how big it is. I think it might be actually like five meters tall, but I'm not sure. I thought the initial report said 20 meters, 20 meters. Right. Okay. Anyway, it's it looks kind of like a cube. So in three months, two to three months, the we will, we have forgotten about it. Two we'll spend it's. Well, if you put it in lunar terms, it's only two to three lunar days, so it's not oh, okay. Not as long. I'll still forget it about, they have to cuz they have to avoid craters cuz if they fall in it's like there's nobody to get 'em out.
Ant Pruitt (02:05:02):
I feel like the Estonian rat robots. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:05:06):
So that's a good, you know, that's a good story. Wouldn't wouldn't it be amazing if they got there and it is a cube it's like, wow, that would be
Ant Pruitt (02:05:14):
Amazing. Huon. It's a cube. It's it's a cube. You get it. Oh nice.
Leo Laporte (02:05:22):
Let's take a break and you, I
Ant Pruitt (02:05:24):
Love the peanut gallery. Peanut gallery gives me such joy. Yeah. Jammer B is hilarious. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:05:29):
Yeah. Thank God for Jamer B we will have final thoughts and picks after a word from our sir, Melissa, you know the post office process is 36 million address changes in 2020. Huge chunk of your customer. Data is at eight. Estimate is about 30% of customer. Data goes bad every year. That's why you need Melissa. Melissa dot of com slash TWI. They're the address experts. In fact, over the last 35 years, 10,000 businesses have used Melissa to DUP customer information to add to customer information, to correct customer information. You can verify addresses, emails, phone numbers, and names with Melissa in for over 240 countries and territories. In fact, you can even do it at the point of entry in real time. Cuz Melissa has a great API. You can try the API with their new lookup apps just came out for iOS and Android.
Leo Laporte (02:06:34):
You can also DDO by mention this their data matching will eliminate clutter and duplicates, which means your database is more accurate. It also means you're not sending and three catalogs and annoying people to the same address. So that saves you on postage and mailing costs. It'll help with identity verification, you'll reduce risk, ensure compliance. And of course keep, keep customers happy. I know this because we were, we were selling TWI. Remember we were selling those TWI masks for COVID mm-hmm <affirmative> and they all went to one guy in Florida, Florida, one of Florida, right? Yeah. See Melissa, would've fixed that man there you can convert addresses into latitude and longitude. That's helpful for delivery and things like that. Geocoding, you can remove up to 95% of bad email addresses from your database with the Melissa's E mail verification and the beauty of Melissa.
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They're still supporting communities and qualifying essential workers. During COVID 19, you may even qualify for six months of free service. Just apply online@melissa.com named to Gartner's magic quadrant for data quality solutions. That's the second year in a row. Nice go. And Melissa, make sure customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7 get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free melissa.com/twi melissa.com/twi. Thank you Melissa for supporting this week in Google. Thank you for supporting us by using that address. So I know you saw it here, melissa.com/twi. Stacy, do you have a, a pick of the week
Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:12):
I do. This is part of the Stacy loves sharing books with people. Oh this is a good time for aunt to tell you about our, our book club date, if we found it
Leo Laporte (02:09:22):
Yeah, about that <laugh>
Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:26):
Date. So I'm not gonna tell you
Leo Laporte (02:09:27):
About that yet. Wow. But
Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:29):
The book I wanna tell you about today is called AI 2041. And I think a lot of y'all are gonna be really interested in this because it is a collaboration between, oh, I'm gonna butcher this and I'm so sorry, Chen Kial maybe KFA and Cafu Lee Cafu is a researcher at Microsoft and Cafu was brilliant. He's worked at Microsoft Google. I don't actually know if he's still at Microsoft. And Chen Keon is an author. So what they've done is they've created a book that is a number 10 short stories and then an essay afterwards by Kafu Lee about the, it is all about AI. So 10 stories about AI, and then he explains why this will happen and what, how it could kind of vary a little bit in the next 20 years. And so it really taps into, I like reading science fiction and also I really like understanding like the technology behind it. And this is like
Leo Laporte (02:10:36):
Technology. We should get them on our prediction round table. Sounds like, huh? Cafu yeah. So I mean
Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:44):
Choan, if you've done all this with Jenan Choan like, so I'm gonna be honest. First two stories feel very, not good at stories. They're just like, they're, they're more like thought exercises. They're not complete plot driven kind of stories, but if you go past those, they get better. So the stories sometimes feel like they're very much harnessed in service of explaining specific AI, but like he explains GA he explains transducer formation. I mean like this is hardcore. And if you don't like that, you could just skip all in and just read the stories 40
Leo Laporte (02:11:23):
AI, 20, 41, 10 visions for our future brand new. Wow. That sounds really interesting.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:11:32):
It's a, like, I, you probably have to be a certain type of person to like it, but I feel like our audience has some of those types
Leo Laporte (02:11:39):
Of, I think this is gonna be better than the one written by Henry Kissinger. I'm just saying,
Stacey Higginbotham (02:11:44):
Oh yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:11:47):
And and Cafu doesn't sound like do when he is reading it. Cool, cool. I'm gonna have to put this on my audible. It is available on on audible, so that's great. Nice. Yeah. And
Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:03):
Before aunts, like, oh no. What if Stacy makes me read this book one day <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:12:08):
And yeah. Oh, what is the deal with the, the book group? Well,
Ant Pruitt (02:12:11):
The thing is, I, I suggested a, a date before the show actually. And then I realized, dang, is that too soon
Leo Laporte (02:12:20):
To, oh, we have to read it. Right. You know?
Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:23):
So January 13th, autonomous, I feel like you could read autonomous. You could read it
Leo Laporte (02:12:27):
The holidays. It's not a, and it's not a long book. It's, it's a easy to read. It's fun. It's really good. Well, there, we have it,
Ant Pruitt (02:12:32):
January 13th, autonomous. That is a
Leo Laporte (02:12:36):
For the book club for our book club. Well,
Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:38):
The book club at 1:00 PM, which means like in other parts of the world, I mean, it's still late, but it's less late.
Ant Pruitt (02:12:45):
It's less late. It's less late plus. And it's gotta schedule two people come
Leo Laporte (02:12:49):
On. And that will be occurring in our discord server for club TWI members. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but then also part of the trip feet later, if you just wanna listen for club to members, we have, we have now thanks to you aunt, really starting to build up quite a library of really interesting events going on. That's where the entitled Lennox show is the GIZ Stacy's book club. You interviewed Mary Jo fo last week. That was great. We've got Mike ELGAN and Amira ELGAN coming up. I'm gonna do that one cuz I've been on their gastro and I have
Ant Pruitt (02:13:17):
An idea for you, but be fine. We'll
Leo Laporte (02:13:19):
Talk about it offline. If it involves singing and dancing I'm in buddy. Maybe I'm in <laugh> maybe can I wear a top hat and tails and my cane and it'll be great. Make sure you bring your L with you too. I'm putting on my top hat. So that, by the way I brings me, were you in the, were you in theater in high school? Oh, of course. Shin played. See the little shocking kicking behind. No, it's cute. It's not great. I was, I played as an example, Sheridan white side and the man who came to dinner. Great dribbling co you have the touch of a sex star Cobra. Oh man. Where is Sean? Look? I was in the yeah. Anyway acting. I am a se if you are not a member of club TWI though, you can, you will miss some of these fun things.
Leo Laporte (02:14:13):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so that is a good reason. Actually, there are many good reasons to join club TWI $7 a month. What do you get? You get ad free versions of all of our shows. You get access to the discord, which is active all the time and really interesting. That's kicker the TWI plus feed. I, yeah, I think actually the disc course's been a case it's really great. I'm just, it's our new social life. And it's, you know, I think seven bucks a month is a, is a pretty good deal for all of that go to twi.tv/club TWI note also that we do have a corporate membership too. And I mentioned that because we sold our first plan. Woohoo. 300 congratulations. Yeah, 300 it security professionals at RMC resource management concepts. Yay. RMC, web.com. We welcome them. David Hickman there, vice president there he's the guy who contacted us and we said, Hey, we'd be thrilled to you.
Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
So thank you, David. And, and thank you to the crew. And we, you know, our RMC is is I think the first to provide a corporate membership, a free access to our shows, particularly security now for their it and cyber security workforce now through December, 2022. So it's awesome. It's really nice. Thank you so much. We love having you in the club. The club is a great resource for us, but it's also a great community for you and, and thank you to Stacy and aunt and all the people who make that club so much fun. What is it? Stacy? I have breaking
Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:44):
News. Oh, Antone has named their color of the year for 2022.
Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
The color of the, the color. Is it the color of your hair? Can you just change
Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:54):
Your hair color to match the Pantone? Oh, oh, I could. It's called very Perry. It is periwinkle blue. So it basically looks purple. You, I I'm a big fan of the colors of the year. I like knowing this. So I'm sharing that with you cuz I just got it.
Leo Laporte (02:16:12):
Lets let's watch the video Pantone announcing the color. That's last year's colors. Oh, well what year is this? That's oh, is this 2022? Which last year? Cause that was 2021. Okay. Yeah. So, so this, there is not the color of the past year. It's the color of the new year. Yes. Oh, well let's watch the video a very Perry. You can turn up the sound. I'm sure there's purpleish got taken down for it sounds well, we get taken down. Gosh, you think they would want sounds people that talk about this. That looks very M softish it's purple. I like it.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:55):
It's purple. Yeah. I like it too.
Leo Laporte (02:16:56):
Yeah, actually there's no sound. It's just a 15 second clip showing purple and apparently there are animals with fur. That's that color cuz that's what I'm looking at. I don't
Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:06):
Know what if that was like a monsters ink it
Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
Maybe on a thing or what? Maybe? by the way, if you wanna know that's Pantone 17 stroke, 39 38. Got it. And, and the,
Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:19):
The club TWI wants you to color your hair
Leo Laporte (02:17:21):
That next week. All right. In honor of pantos very Perry. I wouldn't, that's a pretty good color. I would
Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:29):
Be, it would, it's a, I would, I would consider it, but I'm not gonna go back for like the full, full bleach and die for another couple months. Could
Leo Laporte (02:17:36):
I do a cellophane maybe? And just, you know, <laugh>, I'm getting my, you could do it. I'm getting my hair done tomorrow. My hair did. I'm getting it done tomorrow. You can do it. Do it. Shall I bring in a pan ship? It's just, just like a little purple. Yeah. Right, right here. Yeah, exactly. Do you think if I tell the stylist, I want Pantone's very Perry, 13, 9 98 that they would know they'll be,
Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:03):
You should be prepared to
Leo Laporte (02:18:04):
Show the video. Okay. I will. I will get ready Candace. Oh my gosh.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:09):
Hold on. <Affirmative> there is a blockchain element to this color story. Oh boy. Oh no. Hold on. With the help of Tezos the energy efficient blockchain network Panton will begin to
Leo Laporte (02:18:24):
Explore the world of color. Oh no. In the digital art
Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:26):
World. Oh no. For the color of the year 2022 collaborating with Paris based multidisciplinary artists polygon 1993, they will leverage these artworks inspired by the color to create digital representations of the color and the message, the color embodies inventiveness, creativity and new ways of thinking about color.
Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
Oh Lord boy. That sounds like that's a, it's a guaranteed money maker. Hmm. Okay.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:56):
Sorry. I just, I was like,
Leo Laporte (02:18:59):
Hey it tech. Oh
Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:00):
<Laugh> there's a, Microsoft is in here too. Microsoft is gonna use this color in their products, including custom teams, backgrounds. Look at this market.
Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
Didn't I just say it look Microsoft. Yes <laugh> wow. It alls coming together. Oh boy. Did you know there's also a sauce called very Perry. It's a oh Perry, Perry sauce. Very Perry is Perry Perry, but it's very New York by way of South Africa. So excellent. Sorry. I know that was a huge distraction. And yet I did it anyway. Well we
Ant Pruitt (02:19:36):
Never on this show really distractions. I know
Leo Laporte (02:19:39):
<Laugh> squirrel amp. You were talking about ants thing a week. Do you have a thing of
Ant Pruitt (02:19:47):
The week? My thing of the week. Well, since we're talking sauce, I want to give a shout out to my man. Rod over in Charlotte story with rod is, is he was a sports marketing guy and you know, he duties nice little get togethers and whatnot and decide to just do make some sauce that his granddad used to make. You know, cuz he's from South Carolina, Carolina mustard
Leo Laporte (02:20:13):
Sauce, a lot of
Ant Pruitt (02:20:14):
Mustard sauce. Mm that's good. So people were like, man, you should sell this stuff a couple years ago. And he decided to sell it here and there. And I, I would love some of this. It has grown to now he has a nice big kitchen dedicated to producing the sauce and it is going out the door quite regularly. And I just wanted to give him a shout out, show him some love because proud of him and we we're happy that he's continuing to do big things in this business is growing that's Chester's barbecue sauce. He's in his granddaddy's recipe. Chesters BBQ sauce.com. Nice. No. So shout barbecue. I didn't also know as J what they call it's
Leo Laporte (02:20:59):
Mustard based.
Ant Pruitt (02:21:00):
Barbecue sauce. Yeah. SAC Carolina like mustard base.
Leo Laporte (02:21:03):
It's sacri. I'm just gonna tell you this right now. I think it sounds better than is, is, is it in Lou with tomatoes or does it still have tomatoes?
Ant Pruitt (02:21:10):
No, no tomatoes. Twin tomatoes.
Leo Laporte (02:21:12):
Yeah. Yeah. This sounds really good.
Ant Pruitt (02:21:14):
I, I like it. I still like tomato, tomato based better. Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:21:18):
You know the
Ant Pruitt (02:21:19):
Original barbecue sauce. Yeah. But my grandmother, whenever my grandmother would make barbecue, this was how she did it was with mustard sauce. All right. And my next pick is a friend of mine and friend of the show fan of the network. If you could play the audio to this, I'd appreciate it. It's just something that I think people should hear from
Leo Laporte (02:21:38):
The voluntary
Ant Pruitt (02:21:39):
Input. Every dad gum day. Shout, shout out to you, Mr. Leo, Leo Allen.
Speaker 10 (02:21:43):
You may be having a tough day, but try to remember just one thing always in the day with a positive thought and that grateful heart. Try to find at least one thing to be positive about. And at least one thing to be grateful for, try to focus on these things because not only will it help you put things back into perspective, it can also help prevent you from carrying today's problems on into tomorrow.
Ant Pruitt (02:22:07):
My I like it. My man, a little wed this
Leo Laporte (02:22:10):
Day wins.
Ant Pruitt (02:22:11):
I loved it. I saw that this morning. I was like, yeah, Leo. That's good stuff. I
Leo Laporte (02:22:15):
Like the name of his podcast too. Yep. Never forced, never coerced the voluntary, voluntary inputs
Ant Pruitt (02:22:21):
Podcast.
Leo Laporte (02:22:22):
<Laugh> compared to this, which is absolutely coerced. Forced. It's really it's punishment all the way. Mr. Jeff Jarvis, you got must have a number of the week.
Jeff Jarvis (02:22:34):
Oh yeah. I had crappy numbers. So I'm gonna use this opportunity. This is my segment. I own this time. This is me. I'm gonna give us another TikTok video here, here. You're here. We could go with bones, no bones, which is the trend everybody's been talking about this year. Or we could go with the laughing Fox. I'll leave that choice to you or both laughing Fox. It's the
Leo Laporte (02:22:54):
Best here it is. Ladies and gentlemen laughing Fox.
Speaker 11 (02:23:00):
My,
Leo Laporte (02:23:02):
Can I just say Fox ever do that to a Fox? You will. You will regret it deeply. He's happy Finn again. Who's the Fox,
Speaker 11 (02:23:14):
The Fox. Oh my
Leo Laporte (02:23:18):
Goodness. She's talking way too much. And, and he's trying to bite her face off. I just want point out. Yes. Good luck with that. We actually have foxes in our backyard and yeah, I don't think I'd pick 'em
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:31):
Up. You don't want to go screeching their tummies. No,
Leo Laporte (02:23:34):
I'd be doing that. Although you, I mean, you might want to, but you shouldn't. No. And their sound is actually kind of an interesting sound. It's kind of scary to be honest with you. Well,
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:43):
When they stood, they really make noise to,
Leo Laporte (02:23:45):
Oh, maybe that's why maybe they were stripping. Cause, and then there was bone crunching later, which I really didn't enjoy. <Laugh> okay. That's a number. Is that your number you don't wanna do?
Jeff Jarvis (02:23:56):
That's my stuff. Okay. Elon Musks, we could make fun of media for thinking. He was really asking the world if he wanted to sell his stock. And course he had to sell his stock cuz he had options coming. So he sold the stock so we could pay the taxes. So he owns even more stock now. Oh, how funny on the media again, he
Leo Laporte (02:24:14):
Owns 6, 560 4,000 more shares than he did when he sold the shares. The rich gets richer. He's exercising options to buy with the cash he makes from the shares he's selling. So he's exercising at $6 and 24 cents a share, which is 1% of its actual stock price. So in other words, it's kind of like this. If I gave you an a dollar to make a hundred dollars, that would be a good deal for me, for you. All right. So that's what happened. Wow. You know what <affirmative>, it's funny how the truth is different
Jeff Jarvis (02:24:51):
From what you, I, this is the case all along, anybody with any savvy about this, but my dear friends and media said, oh boy,
Leo Laporte (02:24:58):
We fell for it, Twitter. Well, we listened to him and he that's what he said he was gonna do. So you know, and he paws, he,
Jeff Jarvis (02:25:04):
He paws
Leo Laporte (02:25:04):
Everybody every time chance he get, he paws us. Yeah. Hey plug you plug barbecue sauce. My plug is salt from my son. Woohoo, salt Hank. Yay. For the first time ever available, get 'em Hank, not invariable in stores. These are the debut abuse, salts, collab, pesto, flaky, sea salt, blend, essential, flaky, salt blend, truffle and garlic F flaky salt blend. You will, you know what? This, you should just not use it. Put it aside someday. It's like owning the original chef boy RD can that's what I'm saying. Salt Hank com SA he's on his way, buddy. SA hank.com. Look at that. Kaho Pape. Beautiful. Mm, no <laugh> I love it. Thank you.
Ant Pruitt (02:25:54):
<Laugh> the mustache.
Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
Yeah, the Stach it's in his logo now. He's really stuck with it. It's permanently. Well, not just the sta
Jeff Jarvis (02:26:01):
The fact that he has to bar not shave his
Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
Chin too. He, this is him how he's been ever since he was about four or five years old. So <laugh> that
Ant Pruitt (02:26:13):
Beautiful. B
Leo Laporte (02:26:15):
Love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Anyway, thank you everybody. And thank you to our El in the shelf. Little Leo for yeah, well done. Well done in the head. Nice. let's see, where can we find Stacy? Higginbotham that's what the world wants to know. And you'll find her@stacyoniot.com. That is her website, sign up for the newsletter. It's free check out the events. And of course all the articles, plus the I O T podcast with Kevin TOFL every week. Lots of goodness. There.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:43):
We did our, we recorded our 350th episode. Wow. We're not 50th this week in Google level, but for an independent podcast, high fives for Kevin and I am so
Leo Laporte (02:26:52):
Proud of us. Hey, well done. Congratulations. That's a lot of work. I, it is. Have you been, that sounds like you've been doing it for seven years. Is that right? Almost.
Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:01):
Yeah. Wow. Well, seven years come April and we did it at GIGO home, but this is 350 from the end of GIGO
Leo Laporte (02:27:08):
That's oh, wow.
Ant Pruitt (02:27:09):
Wow. Right. And the IRC sends us congratulations
Leo Laporte (02:27:12):
To you. That's really a big deal. Thanks, RC. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. An Pruitt TWI TV slash hands on photography slash hop. That's right. What should we do at the hop what's going on at the hop? Well, this
Ant Pruitt (02:27:25):
Week I had the pleasure of talking to Mr. Peter Adams. He was previously on floss weekly because he did the faces of open source. And it's such a beautiful photography project. Neat with a lot of folks in the tech industry. Oh, that's neat. Our days of your so I wanted to pick his brain a little bit about headshots, some portraits, and it's gonna be a lot fun.
Leo Laporte (02:27:47):
It's fantastic. TWI do TV slash hop. That's right. Let's all go to the hop. That's right. Mr. Jeff Jarvis, you know, we got a little song about you, Jeff. We'd like to say, well, we don't have to do it every time we don't have to do it. It's okay. Jeff is the director of the town night center for entrepreneurial journalism at the Craig Newmark graduate school of journalism at the city university of New York. Frank Sinatra called him a bum former TV guy, critic, Ray. Krock called him a nickel millionaire. He's our one and only king of the moral panic. Jeff jar, king of the Berg gun. I like that. Thank you all for being here. I love doing this show every Wednesday. It's a great caper to my week, cuz I don't work on Thursday and Friday.
Leo Laporte (02:28:41):
We hope you will come back every Wednesday around 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2200 UTC. The live audio and video streams are@livedottwi.tv. If you're watching live, you can chat live@ircdottwi.tv. That's open to all club TWI members. Welcome to chat the discord too. We pay attention to both on to man versions of the show available at twit.tv/twig. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in Google. So you can watch the video there. Probably the easiest thing to do audio or video is subscribe in your favorite podcast client no charge for doing, doing that. Just to just get a client search for TWiG or TWiT and you can get all the TWiT shows in. If you want that way, you'll get 'em the minute there available and please do leave us at five star review. If you think of it it would sure help us spread the word. Thank you everybody have a great week. We'll see you next time. On This Week in Google!
Jason Howell (02:29:38):
Android is constantly evolving and if your part of the Android faith full, then you'll be just as excited about it as I am. I'm Jason Howell host of all about Android, along with my co-hosts Florence ion and Ron Richards, where every week we cover the news, we cover the hardware and we cover the apps that are driving the Android ecosystem. Plus, we invite people who are writing about Android, talking about Android and Android onto the show. Every Tuesday at twit.tv. Look for All About Android.
