This Week in Google Episode 644 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiG This Week in Google. No, Jeff, no Stacey, no Ant this week. It's our best of 2021. The memories pile on next on TWiG.

.. (00:00:15):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:25):
This is TWiG, This Week in Google. Episode, 644 recorded Wednesday, December 29th, 2021. The year's best. This episode of This Week in Google is brought to you by Imperfect Foods. Imperfect Foods is catching the food that's falling through the cracks of our food system by sourcing quirky yet delicious foods. Right now, Imperfect Foods is offering our listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to imperfect foods.com and use a promo code twig and by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/twig.

Leo Laporte (00:01:12):
Hello everybody. Leo Laporte here. Yes, I'm all alone with my cozy fireplace and my bottle of Mecal <laugh> because it's time for our annual This Week in Google, best of all the best stuff we've been doing. And of course, all the shows this week to, you know, end the year are doing best of episodes. This one is I think the most fun. We have a lot of fun on This Week in Google, and I think we've got some great stuff for you. The thing, one of the things that sticks in my mind most, and I know it, it, it drives Ant Pruitt. Crazy is we had a lot of fun with TikTok. Remember those Shans that were all the rage. Listen,

Jeff Jarvis (00:01:54):
Leo did you, did, did you trust me? Did you, did I, did I not take you to the blob opera

Leo Laporte (00:02:02):
You did and blob opera, you got another one

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:06):
For another show opening.

Leo Laporte (00:02:08):
Okay. Yeah. Yep.

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:08):
You gotta play. You gotta play a few verses of it. Okay. downer, TikTok shanty songs. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
Tiktok aren't Han Shanty's Tot C there aren't aren't C Shanty's like 

Ant Pruitt (00:02:23):
I guess I really need to get on TikTok more.

Leo Laporte (00:02:27):
Like sailor, like

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:28):
What, what tee? Right? So go to one

Leo Laporte (00:02:34):
Fifteens. Shanty.

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:36):
It might even sing along.

Leo Laporte (00:02:39):
Apparently this is, is this a trend on TikTok now? Yes, it is.

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:43):
Yes it is. Yeah. CT talk that volume. Have you checked your volume yet?

Leo Laporte (00:02:48):
Oh yeah. I gotta, I gotta make it come out of the right hole. Hold on. Oh, on it's coming outta the wrong hole. When

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:58):
Back to the beginning, go back to the beginning. Oh, you're messing it up.

.. (00:03:01):
See the name of the ship was a bully of the ones blue below my boys. Blow

.. (00:03:15):
One day when

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
That's actually awesome.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:19):
Isn't it? Let it go.

.. (00:03:20):
Two weeks from shore and dun on her. Well, boy, a captain called all hands for it. Take that way.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:36):
Where you is done. We'll take,

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
You're ruining it. Where do you find, where do you find lyrics to this stuff? I mean, how do these people

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:44):
Know? I, I, I it's the Weller band song and I just searched Google. We could all do. We could do it. We could do a Quintet here.

Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
All right. Here's another one. Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem is we're on Skype there on TikTok here. Let's.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:58):
The tail came up.

Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
Is this the same song to the side?

Ant Pruitt (00:04:03):
And for, she died down, Made the come to bring a sugar and tea and rum.

Leo Laporte (00:04:09):
He's actually kinda lit soon

.. (00:04:12):
The come to bring a sugar tea

Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
And run. You know what? This is actually what makes TikTok pretty amazing.

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:20):
Isn't it? Because, because that's the collaborative part where you, one thing people add on and duet and duet and duet it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
Right. It's pretty cool. It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:29):
Pretty amazing. If you go down you also go to, I think the original one hold on here. So I'm on the wrong pay Uhhuh.

Leo Laporte (00:04:39):
Here's I've got I'm from CNET. Let's see sea Chans are taking from Wellman to drunk. Sailor. Sea Hans are attracting the attention of land lover, tos. It went wild. I don't know what happened. Said a guy at the center of it all. <Laugh> is this the original that's him

.. (00:05:00):
To see the name was a bully of

Leo Laporte (00:05:02):
The, so he starts it solo and then other people on TikTok, pick

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:08):
It up. One guy comes back sugar and tea. So one guy comes back with the guy with a really deep voice. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:15):
The base.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:15):
He's great. And then, and then another one does it and another one does it and it becomes a chorus. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
All collaboration. Yeah. And that's the thing that's that's cool about TikTok is people can take somebody's track. Here's one with strings they've added strings to this strings.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:32):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:05:48):
Right. That's pretty awesome. I have to say, see, the best part is it's right now it's in the public domain. So you don't have to worry about yeah. That's probably why I see Hanny's right. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> now here's the club. Ready remix. See

.. (00:06:00):
The name of the was the bully of

Leo Laporte (00:06:03):
Where's the drops, the drop.

Ant Pruitt (00:06:06):
Oh my boy. Blow.

Leo Laporte (00:06:12):
I'm sick of this song already, but still,

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:14):
It's gonna, it's gonna stay in your ahead

Leo Laporte (00:06:16):
For the next 24 hours Wellman. If you, if you enjoy that kind of music I encourage you to listen. Tostan Rogers doing Northwest passage. Okay. It's very similar. And I love it because immediately Hank green, who apparently has decided TikTok is the hip place to be not YouTube. I is ex is explaining the Weller miss song. Yeah. Let's hear it. You all right, here we go. You also love this.

.. (00:06:41):
I love that there is shanty TikTok, and I love that I'm on shanty TikTok, and I hope there there's more, but I had some questions about this song. Cause I listened to it with my son a bunch this weekend. And I didn't understand all of the references in it now. The main one.

Leo Laporte (00:06:55):
Okay. That's fine. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:56):
Oh, we could learned something, geez Leo!

Ant Pruitt (00:06:58):
I will say, I think this, I like that. This is not just people lip syncing again. At least this is some actual effort.

Leo Laporte (00:07:06):
Yeah. It really

Ant Pruitt (00:07:06):
Sounds I would watch this cuz my only impression of TikTok was everybody's doing a lip sync or some sort of a white transition into something else they're doing. And it, it

Leo Laporte (00:07:17):
Just got, that's how it started. That's what musically was. It was just lip syncing. But somehow when they bought musically and that some and I think really the I, the main thing that they did, right. Was they said royalty free. You can, and pop stars agreed. You can use our tracks Uhhuh and it's not gonna undermine our sales. And that really is, is, you know have you watched the Fran Leitz Martin Scorsese documentary on Netflix yet? Is it good? Yes. Awesome. Looks looks like it'd be pretty funny. It's called pretend it's a city. She's hysterical. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but one of the things she says, oh she's she's just like so grumpy and she's Louis Black before there was Louis Black

Ant Pruitt (00:07:59):
Mail version,

Leo Laporte (00:08:00):
But she says the thing that's great about talent is it's just sprinkled around like sand. It's not, you can't, you can't earn it or learn it. You are born with it and it's ran. It's completely random. And that's I think when I heard that, I thought, you know what? That's true. It's writing, painting, ice skating, playing a bass, throwing a football Shanti, see or Shan. But what I realized is that's, that's really where YouTube TikTok mm-hmm <affirmative> really is a huge thing because it is randomly scattered mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so it's not the people who went to Berkeley college of music who, or signed a record company deal that in the old days, those are the people who got, we got to here. Or if you were you maybe in the subway, you heard write that up. You step in all the time, Jeff, you'd go in the subway democratization and there'd be some brilliant violinist and you go what? This guy's playing for bucks in the subway.

Ant Pruitt (00:08:55):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
But now you, I played with subway. What really? Yeah. What'd you play hockey

Mathew Ingram (00:09:02):
Guitar.

Leo Laporte (00:09:03):
<Laugh> really you'd go down there. And did you make money?

Mathew Ingram (00:09:09):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Some days I made geez. One day I think I made $150 for oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:09:14):
Awesome. Hours. I think we're used to. Oh

Ant Pruitt (00:09:16):
Man. Nice. Yeah. It

Mathew Ingram (00:09:18):
Was great. Yeah. The best part is cuz it's the subway. You can literally play the same five songs over and over because people are just moving away. Some people are moving

Leo Laporte (00:09:26):
<Laugh> you don't need a rip, a wall. I'll be week. <Laugh>

Mathew Ingram (00:09:31):
Just do the times they are changing over and over,

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
Over and over. Wait, is that what you would do? Kind of folk.

Mathew Ingram (00:09:37):
Yeah. Yeah. Neil young. Bob Dylan. Nice. John prime.

Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
Do you still do any of that?

Mathew Ingram (00:09:42):
I do. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
Yeah. Oh, I love that. See, I, I, you know, when she said that, I thought it's a shame. I didn't get any talent cuz I would've loved to. She also said that musicians, there's some, there's no other where people just love you because everybody associates a, a particular song with their youth mm-hmm <affirmative> or good moments in their youth or their child. Ah, and so musicians ha unlike almost any other profession have this, people just love them because it's, it's this memory of their youth and, and so forth. It made me sad. Yeah. That, you know, she, she talked about, she plays the cello or played the cello. At one point, she said that the elementary schools would, you know, you get a free instrument up to a certain point, then you have to buy your own. And they took her cello back and her parent and she said, I need a cello. And parents were trying to figure out how they could buy one and fine. Finally she goes downstairs. She says, mom, dad don't buy me a cello. I will, I will never be. I will never be good at this. <Laugh> it's a complete waste of your money. I don't have that talent.

Ant Pruitt (00:10:47):
Unlike what the hardhead told me and that trombone of his,

Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
Does he, did you buy him a trombone?

Ant Pruitt (00:10:52):
I did. And he was good. He, and he used it up until we got over here and California he, he stopped playing elsewhere. Yeah. He was focusing more on other stuff, particularly sports and whatnot. Sports. Okay. Yeah. Definitely sports. Yeah. Nice girls here and there. A few girls

Leo Laporte (00:11:09):
<Laugh> bought of sports,

Ant Pruitt (00:11:11):
But he was really good. I give him credit. It, it wasn't a total waste of my money cuz he was, he was really good. He was first year air. Pretty much soon as he picked it up.

Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
Are you sad that he didn't keep going?

Ant Pruitt (00:11:23):
Yeah. A little bit. Because I like how having an instrument in your hands just, just keeps you busy, you know? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, it's just something about the, the, did he like it? Health part of it too, you know?

Mathew Ingram (00:11:36):
Did he like it? Yeah. He

Ant Pruitt (00:11:38):
Loved it. He loved it. He was good. And it's funny every now and then I'll catch him listening to classical music go. So he has appreciation. Right. You know? And I can remember just thinking back to when people would laugh at us, <laugh> growing up for listening to classical music, but you know, he was, he, he just embraced it, him and him and his and his brother. They both enjoy jazz and classical music as well as some of the other wild and crazy popular music. That's all over the likes of TikTok.

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
So, you know, if you, if you're not gonna be a professional trombone, learning appreciation for music and, and mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's a lifelong game. That's a PO that's a pause. You want, you want a light moment here? A light moment. Yeah. Bernie memes. I love these mitten memes. Now. Where did the mittens come from? It was a woman. It was a teacher who evidently knitted them for him. And he wore them. Where at the inauguration, the inauguration that's how fast this ation. This was from this morning. Bernie sitting, wearing these mittens and now they're putting him everywhere. In fact there's a sticker already. <Laugh> it's just the greatest here. He is in that line of Workman building New York. You gotta love

Ant Pruitt (00:12:56):
The internet, man. You gotta, this is the drivers you took. You took part of my picket a week.

Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
Here. He is at sorry, here he is at DMV getting his license renewed. Yeah. You know it partly cuz his, his attitude <laugh> there's a shirt. A t-shirt already <laugh> here. He is. I don't know. And the, I don't know, here he is in the hall of mirrors in Sai here he is at a basketball game. Here he is. Oh yeah. He was part of this very important photograph. <Laugh> wearing his, his mittens. They're pretty cute. I gotta say, oh and this happens of course all the time to me when I wear the very famous meme. So Bernie is, this is how he was dressed. It was apparently very cold. It was snowing for part of it. So he's, it was, he's wearing his snowsuit and some big knitted mittens. And he's sitting with his legs, crossing, his arms crossed and it's like a cranky old man.

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Life is like a box of chocolates. Just never know who's gonna sit on the bench is so good next to you. That's just the greatest one. See, see the Internet's a beautiful thing. Did you know that he was in the queen campus? I don't know. I dunno if you knew that. Yeah. You may not know. It's little hard to move the pieces with a bit, so yeah. Yeah, there he is. On with Han and and chewy on the millennial Falcon. <Laugh> boy, I want the sticker. That's what I really, here he is. You know, he's even helping out. <Laugh> in the president's room in the Congress is the new president signed some proclamations. He's got a little, little folding chair there in the corner. You know, there he is with Paul nuts at the pig store cafe <laugh> yep. Yep. Hanging out, hanging out, waiting for a he's a brilliant, yeah. Some even, even on the moon, sorry. And even on the moon out there too late, too late. Even on the moon. There's Bernie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everywhere. This, this was, I think the first one I saw you just sitting a table selling selling CDs, the back of the concert hall, concert merchandising, merch, concert merch. Got it here. Get your t-shirts here. There is the fly on Prince's Prince's head. Yeah. Yeah. He was at the debate. People don't

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:10):
The picture of and carrying an envelope and something. So it was, they put out his schedule like 10 o'clock Joe's thing. 11 o'clock's run by post office. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
Is I'm one of those special chair elevators they sell going. You see here is on the, oh, wait a minute. This is actually on the inaugural stand. Chris. Christie's decided to join him in the beach share. That's good. That's a reverse meme. That's a reverse one. Yeah. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:41):
Stacy, you see, this is, this is where going back to the prior discussion, this is where the unlimited creativity is so wonderful. Now there's no business model behind any of that, but people did it for joy and love. And the question is, how do you give credit for that? If you wanted to, to encourage that, how do you create business models around that? I don't know, but it's, it's fun.

Leo Laporte (00:16:01):
This is the first

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:03):
I think, I mean, we see this, it's obviously out there and people are doing it. Yeah. It's great. I mean, you're gonna have to make, I mean, you to make it easy for people to find things. I mean, any of us who like used Alta V star, remember the original Yahoo pay or yeah. Yahoo pages. Like, I mean, you have to, even if you have like a <laugh> distributed system, <laugh>, you're gonna need to find ways to get people, to see what you're building. I mean, I don't know how else to tell you Jeff business is. No, no,

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:37):
I'm just, I'm doing

Leo Laporte (00:16:38):
Speculating. That's all. <Laugh> like, there's gonna be a new book if, kind of where Waldo where's Waldo. Where's Bernie. Oh, we're getting the

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:46):
Copyright in trouble. Is

Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
The, that's the last supper. Yeah. The last supper in there. He is. You want audio? Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel bad if you're on audio, you're missing all the fun. Cause it's just a perfect Bernie pose too. It's it's it's everything. It's the mittens. It's the pose. It's the whole thing. It's his

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:04):
Personality. It's the whole

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
Thing. It's just look. Here's a guy actually selling <laugh> a kid. <Laugh> look, Bernie kid steal his look. You can't quite get those mittens though. Cuz those are those are handmade. Handcrafted. Those are mittens made by. They're not mittens. Well what? These are MITs, are they? No, no. These are gloves he's wearing. Those are gloves. He's he's made by Jen Ellis, a teacher from Essex ju junction Vermont who gave them to him go to business. Now two years ago, she was surprised when he began wearing them on the campaign trail they're made from repurposed wool, sweaters and lined with fleece made from recycled plastic bottles. Of course, of course <laugh> oh golly. I love it. I'm glad we can be happy again. We can, we can be choice. You're like we're

Trey Ratcliff (00:17:59):
Happy

Leo Laporte (00:18:00):
Again. Reason to bring you on is cuz you sent me an email the other day said here's an NFT of one of my images and I was so taken with that. I said, let's get Trey on because we have been trying Trey for a month to figure out what the hell these non fungible tokens are. And if anybody should know it's you all it's, you're not the first artist to do this. In fact this has been a, I think mostly a boon for artists.

Trey Ratcliff (00:18:29):
No, I'm not the first. And I found out about it the first time like two years ago I have a friend named Yash who was one of the founders of Pinterest and he actually came out here to Queenstown, New Zealand came here into the studio and was telling me all about NFTs and how big they're gonna be I'm two years ago. Yeah. And I said like, I don't really understand. So he just explained it to me four hours, like, okay, I get it. So I almost did it way back then, but I thought, well sometimes it's not good to be an early adopter. Sometimes it is. So, but now I think the wave of interest is so high that it's, it's probably the right time to

Leo Laporte (00:19:09):
Get in rhymes. Very got a lot of attention for selling 5.8 million of her art digital art. A lot of it animate. I think all of it animated for in 20 minutes, almost 6 million in 20 minutes. The national basketball association, the NBAs made 200 million sell basketball highlights mm-hmm <affirmative> wow. An NBA top shot.com. The first time I became aware of, of, of what now we call an FTS was crypto kitties, which was mm-hmm <affirmative> a site. You would use a crypto currency, I guess, Bitcoin at the time to buy these digital cats that would mate. But Trey is this kind it's kind of speculation really. I mean, cuz you don't, there's no tangible good. Like if I have one of your pictures on my wall at home, that's a tangible good not necessarily one of a kind, but it's a, it's a thing, a physical thing you're not selling. When you sell an NFT of your art, you're not selling the print. Are you? Or are you

Trey Ratcliff (00:20:13):
No, but you can, you can attach real life goods to your NFT. Okay. But you don't need to sent a link in in the chat like this guy made some shoes and you can, it's like a digital shoe that spins around, but then like if you buy it, you also get the real shoe. And I think in 24 hours he made about 3 million. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:20:37):
My God. Jesus.

Trey Ratcliff (00:20:39):
Yeah, I think. And can you, Trey, can you, can you restrict other, can you put conditions in the

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:47):
Contract about, about what the owner does and does not get

Trey Ratcliff (00:20:53):
Yes. You could put that in the contract cuz you know, it's a smart con contract tied to the Ethereum blockchain. Yeah. So you could put the parameters in there. You can really do almost anything that you like, you can do. You could put it up for auction. So there's one of one you can put up a, a photo or a piece of art. That's an open edition and you put a price on it and if it sells 560 units, then those 560 things are minted and then it's all that will ever be minted with that particular piece of art. There's lots of different schemes and scenario for selling stuff. I think this is there's. So you said speculation, it's totally speculation. And I,

Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
Although here's my, to be fair. So buying star starry night by parts of van go if you buy as an investment instead of just something pretty to put on the wall and I think that's where most fine art is sold as an investment, you you're speculating, it'll be more valuable in the years to come.

Trey Ratcliff (00:21:52):
Right. And I think the they're right to speculate on it because right now there's so many Bitcoin millionaires out there. There's just all the mm-hmm <affirmative> they crawled with them. And I people don't know right now people buy Bitcoin and they just pay the market, you know, the way for it to go 4% or down 3%, you know, it's like trading the Euro for the year and that's a little boring. It's much more interesting to buy instead of having an invisible Bitcoin to have like a digital piece of art and the art there's secondary and tertiary markets. So it gets sold and resold. So why wait for Bitcoin to go up 3% when you could buy a piece of art, that'll jump up 50% in a few weeks.

Leo Laporte (00:22:26):
So is it, you think it's the case that people who are spending money on NFTs are not taking dollars say and turning it into Bitcoin or Ethereum and then spending it, this is stuff they've had, they have in their wallet. And so it's just like buying more, more crypto it's it's what it sounds like. It's kinda like that. Right? Okay.

Trey Ratcliff (00:22:46):
They're probably sitting on hundreds of thousands or millions and Bitcoin and having their Coinbase based accounts. And then these NFT sites, they often use this little wallet called meta mask, so they can just convert it to Ethereum, send it to their meta mask wallet and they can just go stir crazy and buy all kinds of stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
Is it usually Ethereum? When you're doing an Ft? Yeah,

Trey Ratcliff (00:23:07):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
That's actually good news cuz Ethereum is not nearly so energy. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> dependent as a Bitcoin is right. I've been told, somebody said, somebody said, Leo, you're an idiot. It's don't worry about it. The cuz I was complaining actually I was quoting Seth Gooden who did a blog post saying, you know, the only thing bad with NFTs is this it's gonna Hasen climate change cuz there's so much energy involved in these transactions, but that's not the case with Ethereum.

Trey Ratcliff (00:23:37):
I don't totally understand the mechanics of Ethereum, but I do know that it can do a lot more transactions. Yeah. And there's, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, there's new with the new Ethereum Ethereum two. Yeah, they've got a lot of different wild computer sciencey techniques that are happening that can, you know, makes it like 10,000 times as efficient as Ethereum

Leo Laporte (00:23:57):
One. Yeah. It's proof of steak is less yeah. Energy intensive than proof of work,

Mathew Ingram (00:24:03):
Which is, and the main reason, the main reason Ethereum was developed was to do smart contracts like NFTs. Right.

Trey Ratcliff (00:24:13):
So I think it's a really interesting time because you know, crypto has always been very esoteric for the common person. Yes. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:24:20):
This does not make it any less <laugh> I gotta be honest. This just makes it even crazy. We're

Trey Ratcliff (00:24:27):
Getting like the muggles in people that buy all these NBA cards and all this kind of stuff. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and so these are like regular people. And so now there's you know, non-computer science nerves like us yeah. That are getting into this collecting stuff. So it's entering a certain zeitgeist. It's still early, but it's an nice to see so many people playing the game. It just a

Mathew Ingram (00:24:49):
Game. It does remind me of trading cards. It very

Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
Much like that. In fact that's what Seth, Seth go used the the Honus Wagner card of which they're only 10 is an example. You know, that piece of cardboard has no intrinsic value 

Mathew Ingram (00:25:02):
Or Superman won. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:04):
I mean, I guess if you're a super fan or if there's any Haist Wagner fans left cuz he played <laugh> a hundred years ago you could say, well he is a fan, but really that's not why people buy people, buy Haist Wagner baseball cards. They buy it cuz of its intense value and they spend millions on the real money on these things.

Mathew Ingram (00:25:24):
Trade banana. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:25:26):
<Affirmative>

Mathew Ingram (00:25:27):
Go ahead Matt. I was just, did you see you remember the fine art fine art? It was a banana to, to, to the wall by a, an artist. Remember that? Yep. <Laugh> yep. Which is and another performance artist ate it. Do you remember that? <Laugh> I remember that too. And then yeah. And that, so that was his art was to eat the banana, but part of the contract for buying the banana tape to the wall was that the banana would be regularly replaced by the cur. So it's okay

Leo Laporte (00:25:56):
To eat it. The banana, by the way, was priced at $120,000. Yeah. Maio Catlan they titled it comedian and then along comes, it looked like good. Really another comedian to eat it. <Laugh> <laugh> this is part of art basil in Miami beach. So Trey, do you see yourself as send selling your goods? Your, your images this way entirely? Or is this just kind of a fun little sideline?

Trey Ratcliff (00:26:25):
It's a, it's a fun experiment. I still sell big prints. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:31):
People want them on the wall, right?

Trey Ratcliff (00:26:34):
Yeah. this sounds a little name droppy you guys know? I don't take myself seriously, but I did have two famous celebrities become collectors lately. Edward Norton and Leo nor de capo. Nice,

Leo Laporte (00:26:47):
Nice. Whoa. Wow. It's it's network. If it were me, I'd do it the same. Do you guys hang out or, oh, Hey, Trey has introduced me to some major celebrities. He, he Han simmer is a friend. The last time you were in Petaluma, you came here with my space, Tom. And we went out for Korean tacos. Wow. Yeah. So I, everybody famous. I know, I know through Trey, he knows everything met

Ant Pruitt (00:27:14):
Han Zimer

Leo Laporte (00:27:15):
I didn't meet him. Trey's friends with Han Zimer Trey's like his Buddie right? Yeah.

Trey Ratcliff (00:27:21):
My space friends be travel. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:27:23):
Yeah. I, I wanted to ask from the, the, the standpoint of the artist, that's a starving artist and happens to be able to make a sale of an NFT. What is it? From a payment standpoint, I mean, are we talking real money that actually shows up or is it just gonna sit somewhere in a crypto while it somewhere that they have to sit on forever and ever and just buy more crypto based? Yeah. 

Trey Ratcliff (00:27:48):
Items. Good question. I, I, I explain how it works. So you, you take a piece of art. It can be a photo. It can have musico it can be animated or whatever you upload it to one of these marketplaces. Like the one I'm going to put it mine on first any day now is one called maker's place. And then so you upload it just like you're uploading a picture to flicker or whatever, and you write a little description and you, you put how you wanna sell it, what kind of price? And then it goes live. And for example, the way that the money works is let's say they buy it for a thousand. Okay. Maker's place takes 15% and 85% goes to the original artist. So that's really quite good. That's better than

Leo Laporte (00:28:34):
The usual gallery commission, right? Yeah. Wait better.

Trey Ratcliff (00:28:37):
As soon as someone buys it that money is transferred into your Coinbase account or your meta mask wallet. And you can convert that to us dollars anytime.

Leo Laporte (00:28:49):
Okay. So you can cash it in

Trey Ratcliff (00:28:51):
Yeah. Even better. Because it's smart contract. If someone buys that on maker's place and then they resell it, the original artist gets 10% of every subsequent sale. Oh. So until the you'll get 10% royalty on that, on that

Leo Laporte (00:29:08):
Piece. So I could see your interest in this for the artist. This is a great deal. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:12):
Oh boy. Maker's place. Huh? Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:29:16):
<Laugh> now. Yeah. I can see the gears, turning makers, places digital. These are digital are, and that's one of the things I think that confuses people about NFTs. As I said, I got from you. I, I still have it, this a picture of the space shuttle launch. It's beautiful. Yeah. And that's a physical thing. It's probably a print. So it may, there may be other copies of it. That's very common these days, but you know, you may also, if you have a, Vanga go, you might have the original a digital thing. The thing that confuses me is you can make infinite copies. Does, does maker place pro prevent you from making infinite copies of the, of the art you just bought?

Trey Ratcliff (00:29:57):
Yeah. They have a pretty tight authentication process. Okay. Right. Because when it's authenticated in the blockchain, Trey's the original creator only 20 exists or only one exists, but it's digital. How

Leo Laporte (00:30:12):
Can they keep me from making another copy? I don't understand.

Trey Ratcliff (00:30:16):
Well, technically I could take the same photo and upload on another site. True. You know, like the foundation. So there's

Leo Laporte (00:30:24):
A certain amount of, of trust, I

Trey Ratcliff (00:30:26):
Guess, gateway. Right. But there's, there's ways they can check the Ethereum blockchain to see if it's, if the same thing's already out there. Okay. So it's, that's why it's just so trusted. And the, the mind flip that people have to go through is, you know, you've all know Harari books, like sapians that mm-hmm, <affirmative> things only have Val humans are the only animal on the planet that believe in fictions, you know? And if we all believe, we

Leo Laporte (00:30:53):
Believe in a lot of fictions, as it turns out <laugh>

Mathew Ingram (00:30:56):
Yeah. Like money,

Trey Ratcliff (00:30:57):
You can't see a meter, you can't weigh it. But we all agree in how big a meter is. So then we can use such a stuff. Right. It's the same thing with money. And now the same thing with digital arc. And you could see so many people are buying it. That there's enough people that believe in it. Yeah. Just to keep it going. Same thing. I would Bitcoin people didn't know, we gotta get more and more people to believe in this story. But now so many people believe in that story, the story grows.

Mathew Ingram (00:31:21):
You could put code into the image too, right? Like sort of St. Iconography, or you could insert something into the actual image itself,

Leo Laporte (00:31:31):
But that'd be copy. You can add you that if you, if I copy bit for a bit, the thing I bought, that's gonna be copied with the bit, for bit.

Trey Ratcliff (00:31:40):
Yeah. Well, yeah. Technically you can go screenshot my photos anytime and make 'em your screensaver or whatever background. Yeah. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, there's only one that exists in the Ethereum blockchain and it's authenticated. Mm-Hmm

Leo Laporte (00:31:54):
<Affirmative> that's the real one. Okay. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trey Ratcliff (00:31:57):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the real one.

Leo Laporte (00:32:00):
Trey tells me that I think he sold one NFT of his for half a million dollars. They're doing quite well for for talented artists. Like Trey, Ratcliffe. God, he could come on and explain it all. We're gonna take a break when we come back. Lots more of the best of this week in Google. <Laugh> we're gonna talk more about TikTok. Yes. We got some Linux and well, a lot more, but first let me talk to you about the, the, a company that has a, a name that just doesn't match my experience. It's imperfect foods. And you know, we started doing imperfect foods, Lisa and I, because we realized that we wanted to help the world. We wanted to help the environment. Did you know, this is a stat that just is terrible. 35% of the food supply in the United States goes unsold or on E eaten every week, more than a third down the drain.

Leo Laporte (00:33:05):
That's not right. That's crazy. And it's all because grocery stores want everything to look just right. They don't want anything that's gonna bruise. You know, they'll put aside a third of all the produce just cuz it doesn't feel right. They think it won't sell well, you know what? It will sell because it's great. It's delicious. It's not imperfect. It's just different. Like you and me, imperfect foods is sourcing quirky yet. Delicious foods. Delivering them to you in a way that reduces emissions, reduces packaging, waste saves you. Time saves you money. I mean it is perfect. It's perfect. But they, they still call it imperfect. I'm not gonna change that. Wouldn't it be great if getting your favorite groceries put time back into your week instead of taking it away, especially now it's getting a little colder, a little scarier to drive. Why not stay home co let imperfect foods deliver you.

Leo Laporte (00:34:03):
They call it. And I love this intentionally sourced groceries with just a few clicks in perfect foods. IM P E R F E C T foods is, is a perfect grocery delivery service. They offer an entire line of sustainable groceries. They taste delicious. They reduce waste. <Affirmative> the only catch they may not deliver in your area. Please go to imperfect foods.com and see if you can get them imperfect foods.com. See if you can get 'em if you can. Hallelujah, once you sign up, you personalize your weekly grocery order. And by the way, it's not just produce there's pantry tables. We got blue corn chips on our last basket. Oh, Lisa got some blueberry. She knows. I love blueberries. They're really great. They're they're not imperfect, but they call 'em imperfect anyway. Okay. yummy snacks. Plus your order comes on the same day.

Leo Laporte (00:34:58):
Every week. Ours is Thursday. Yours day will vary because you know what they do. That's really cool to save emissions. They deliver weekly by neighborhoods. So you are all bundled together in a day with everybody else in your neighborhood that produces 25 to 75%, fewer emissions than all those people going to the grocery store. Right? It's it's, it's actually reduces emissions compared to people driving to the grocery store, play us who wants to drive the grocery store when they are. The problem is I think people, when they hear the name, they go, oh yeah, they're gonna be bruised. They're gonna be funky looking. They're not, I was kind of stunned. When we opened the first box, I went, wow, that broccoli's the best looking. It literally was fresher than any broccoli I've ever had before. It was incredible. I couldn't be happier with imperfect foods.

Leo Laporte (00:35:44):
Sure. When you go to the grocery store, you can get a POME grant at the size of your head. Yeah. But so the imperfect foods, POME grants are smaller. They're like, you know, baseball size instead of GRA you know, grapefruit size, they taste better that way. That's perfect. I don't have a problem. Okay. But they call 'em imperfect. So I'm gonna let 'em call. 'em Imperfect. You can get everything. You, you know, it saves you a trip to the grocery store BR basically. And by the way, I know sometimes when you get these deliveries, you go, well, what about the packaging? Say goodbye to packaging. Guilt. Imperfect foods is the only national grocery delivery company that makes it easy to return your packaging. After every order we used to order from the local grocery store, everything would come a plastic bag, everything it's like 40 plastic bags that didn't make me feel good at all.

Leo Laporte (00:36:34):
Imperfect foods doesn't put in plastic bags. No, they put, it's a nice box, which you can again, return after every order. It's just nice. It's great. Right now in perfect foods is offering our listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to a perfect foods.com, use a promo code twig T I G 20% off your first four orders. That's up to an $80 value@imperfectfoods.com. When you use the promo code twig IM perfect foods.com, promo code twig, <laugh> imperfect foods.com, promo code twig, really happy to support this one. They, they do a great job. One of the questions I like to answer completely. Nobody ever asks, but I like to answer is Lennox really better? Let's go to the terminal to find out. <Laugh> keep scrolling. Oh, here we go. This is for you, aunt Pruit.

Leo Laporte (00:37:35):
Oh, I gotta fix this. I apologize. I'm having the Linux problem. Linux, all my audio, please. <Laugh> wait a minute. I can fix it. Do you mind if I take a moment, I gotta go to terminal. I'm sure. Aunt. We we'll forgive that. Yes. He's gotta go to terminal. What was that Linux at, man? What was that go to <laugh> no, wait minute. To be fair. He knows what he is doing. An and that's how Lenox at lunch at lunch, I decided for no good reason to blow out my Lenux install. And in about half an hour, I installed a completely new Lenox on here, but one of the, and I was concerned cuz one of the things we'd done before is set the default rate and pulse audio to 48,048 kilos. And I was a little concerned, but then I played a YouTube video for John and it was fine. So I don't know. We're just gonna have to go with the TikTok musical every time for the testing apparently to what it sounds every to. Yeah. now I have to remember where it is. I think it's in <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:47):
Slash bean. It's it's close here. It is. It's in slash Etsy slash bin slash there we go. And then oops. And then inside Etsy pulse I need abouts is all I do is write. Should I play it on my, it works every time. Demon con.com and then oh, I have to pseudo wait a minute. Sorry. Wait a minute. You wait a minute. Had the right admin, right, sir. No, I don't have, I have to pseudo that. Wait a minute. Pseudo first. Okay. control a pseudo. Okay. And then here's my password.

Leo Laporte (00:39:37):
That, that let's be patient now. It's very easy. We're gonna go down here in the demon. We're gonna go down here and find the default bit bit right here. You see the alternate sample rate. The default sample rate is 44 1, but I don't want that. I want mm-hmm <affirmative> the default sample rate to be 48, 48. K K. You remember? Right. See, you know this <laugh> you know this, you know it's easy. And the thing is, if you expect, if you expect, gosh, you expect the operating system to do all that. You never really understand how computers work. I'm just saying, oh gosh, save that. Okay. Now I have to restart pulse, pseudo, pseudo pulse. I can't remember how to do that. Stop. Let's see if that works. No pulse audio. What is it? Is it pulse audio? I don't remember. Oh yeah. I should have written a set alias to fix that. That's exactly right. I don't remember the name of the demon shoot. Oh, well nevermind. <Laugh> can we all get a look at Mr. Jarvis's face during this right now as he's you can't do this on a Chromebook.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:58):
You're not selling it. I gotta tell you <laugh> I wanted to use signal on my Chromebook and to do that. I have to have a Linux and of course what happens? I go in, I can't do it from my what are they called this week? Workplace account.

Leo Laporte (00:41:13):
Oh, that stupid workplace account. Yep. How do I restart the server is what I need to do. Let's see, I've got the demon comp

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:31):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
Usually by now the chat room has helped me. No, the chat room you're enjoying the chat room is fun. We're not gonna tell you the command Leo. There it is. Kill, kill, and start. Thank you, Paul. See, I can count on I out on Keith five, 12, pseudo pulse audio. That's what? It was audio <laugh> dash kill and then no demon process. That's okay. I'm gonna start it. That's so good. So you're starting it. Yeah. You did. You had put your tag. Oh, I shouldn't have run it as route. That's my problem. There you go. Right there. Oh boy. Okay. Let's do a kill again. Oh, I have to do probably pseudo kill <laugh> now it'll say, oh, I know that one. Yeah. Now I have to not pseudo pulse audio. This is the best. And now let's go back to Bridgeton. <Laugh> already progress for helping you out there. <Laugh> holy cow. Of course. I closed that tab. Wait a minute. Let's this tweet. Let's go back. Here we go. Here we go. One more time. Let's see if it fixed it. <Laugh> this is what you, no, it didn't fix it. No. Sure. Didn't can you play?

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
I probably should. I probably should. Reboot. I just might have to reboot shut up. <Laugh> so Jeff, actually, I might as well start with this sent along this tweet about TikTok and how easy it is. We were talking over were the weekend about why the Youngs love TikTok. And what I didn't know is that a lot of what people do in TikTok is all done in camera. They, you know, my son who does a great TikTok channel, he does cooking on TikTok. Oh yeah. In fact I'll I'll I'll show you the link. It's sodium underscore deficiency. I have no idea interesting with the youths these days. And, and it's hard to find him because he doesn't have his picture on it. Yeah. Look, it's so hard to find. I got a 4 0 4 women. Let me <laugh> let me type it.

Leo Laporte (00:43:47):
Right. He has son tied in front. He has a picture of somebody else. Not his picture, but look, but, so he does all these food things on TikTok and I'm like, dude, why don't you ever cook these for me? Oh my, oh my God. These are, this is amazing. I had no idea. He learned everything he learned and he learned on YouTube so that there he is. So then I asked him, go ahead, Hank, go ahead. Hank. You go Hank. So I asked him so how do you edit? He says, well, I, it in premier, cuz he's like learned how to edit right in the old days. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but look at this. This is a talker. I don't know who, what? I don't know what her name is. So Eden, is it there? Eden HARs. H a R V Z. But she's gonna show us how they edit in camera. You can do all this stuff in TikTok and if you've ever seen TikTok do one,

Speaker 10 (00:44:36):
My trick also is to hold down the red button and let go. When you wanna stop filming, that is the best way to get it slick. Okay, let's go.

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
So, and we call that, we call that edit and camera, right? Where you're you're

Ant Pruitt (00:44:46):
Yes. There's some things you can do in camera, far as a transition stand. Yeah, but

Leo Laporte (00:44:49):
Watch this, this blew me away. Now you tell me if, if you could do this in your camera, so she she's playing music and here's one thing that's really cool is TikTok pauses the music. So you can, you're matching the music as you, as you do it when you, when you don't record. So that makes it a lot easier to do that part. Yeah. That's tick,

Ant Pruitt (00:45:11):
Top magic there.

Leo Laporte (00:45:12):
What she's doing with a hand, watch this. So she's just moving the camera around. She's wa doing a face wipe and stuff like that. But somehow TikTok is, I, I guess they're putting in transitions or something. I don't know. You'll see. Watch the final version. Cause I don't

Ant Pruitt (00:45:32):
You get from what she

Leo Laporte (00:45:33):
Like it's Maya,

Ant Pruitt (00:45:35):
It sounds like TikTok magic.

Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
It sounds like. So now watch. So she's showing it that as she made it, see how she's doing a wipe with her hand and TikTok is somehow, maybe this is

Ant Pruitt (00:45:49):
All TikTok.

Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
It's like she takes her head off. That's amazing. That's beautiful. Isn't this beautiful work. That's an amazing

Ant Pruitt (00:45:58):
That's yeah, that's talk magic there. Cuz you can do in camera transition. So a lot of cinematographers do it pretty commonly, but they also do that with the idea, knowing that it's gonna go into premiere or resolve off and they're able to sync those cuts up to where it looks the way it did right there. A TikTok is just using AI and saying, Hey, this is looking like a good cut point. And I didn't even, but I, but I think she kind of did

Leo Laporte (00:46:24):
It. Cool. She might have done it all in camera. I don't know. She didn't. I think just right by hurt it off. Then she turning off at exactly the moment when hit the right

Ant Pruitt (00:46:31):
Hand. Right? She, is it the, the exact point that it needs to, to transition? I think the app is smart enough to know this is a cut point, right? I think Instagram is trying to get along that, that same path with reels. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I have been trying recently 

Leo Laporte (00:46:49):
You'll give her a plug. What's her what's her account. Oh, I'll have to look it up again. It was E E D E N. It looked great. Yeah. Well, and this is by the way, I mean TikTok, I have to say it it's there are people, a lot of it's just dumb you know, women showing off their bodies and things, but there, but there is some stuff that's really amazing. E D E N H a R V Z. Eden HARs. Here's another one. Taylor, as long as we're doing tos Taylor Lawrence tweeted this out, she says, queen grandma of edits, watch, watch, this is good. Watch this one. This will make you, this will make you realize it's not just for the kids.

Ant Pruitt (00:47:33):
Yeah. That's beautiful.

Leo Laporte (00:47:35):
Now clearly she's using an, an editor to do this. This is not, that's

Ant Pruitt (00:47:40):
Beautiful.

Leo Laporte (00:47:42):
But it, this is where TikTok really is kind of amazing. I see this effect a lot. See as

Ant Pruitt (00:47:47):
Rotoscope in. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:48):
I, well, pink

Ant Pruitt (00:47:50):
Doesn't on the

Leo Laporte (00:47:50):
Phone. I don't know. I mean, obviously she's not handling the phone. Look at that queen grandma. That's that was impressive. Wasn't it? Yeah. That's very impressive. We can spend the whole next hour just watching TikTok, which is what

Ant Pruitt (00:48:01):
People do. No, we cannot. Okay. I

Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
Don't wanna admit this. I don't wanna admit this, but if scroll enough on TikTok, they actually put a slide up with a guy saying, okay. You've you've you've you've been enough. Oh really? Yes. Oh yeah. Oh they do. You've spent enough time on TikTok. Take a break.

Ant Pruitt (00:48:22):
<Laugh> oh

Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
Nice. That's really embarrassing when you get to that. Cause that means you've spent a lot of time scrolling. That's the equivalent of Netflix. Like are you still watching you still there? <Laugh> possibly, you know that you should not be watching nine consecutive hours of

Ant Pruitt (00:48:37):
Television. Don't you think you need some sunshine right now? So

Leo Laporte (00:48:41):
Tempting. So tempting I've been watching. I, I was never in a car racing, but I was watching, but I saw some tos of pit crew in formula one. And these guys three seconds, they change all over time. It's I'm watching this. I said that can't be real. So there's a really good series. It's in there. Third season now in TikTok on formula one racing drive to survive.

Ant Pruitt (00:49:03):
I can't stop now. I love it. That I'm hooked. I was just talking. You ever seen it in real life? No, it's it's it's that's docu-series the camera work. Delighting the editing, the sound design it's it is worth watching it just for that. Forget the stories behind it. But that whole series is like watching a trailer. If, if you turn on a movie trailer, it's got the same, very tight just oh gosh. But that serious is I love it. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:49:33):
I'm glad to know. Now I, I told Lisa we have to go to MoCo next year.

Ant Pruitt (00:49:38):
Oh no. Here's

Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
Here's what you can do actually. There's actually a text story there. Y'all what, what does this sound? Is this me? You that it must be me. Yes. You

Ant Pruitt (00:49:50):
It's me. No, I was, I was playing CASBY. My

Leo Laporte (00:49:53):
Favorite place. There's this boring. You. Hey Jeff, what is there's what's going on? Is Jeff doing his own show? Now? How you see? I got a chance. Stop. TikTok is addictive. You see? Yeah. And it's designed for this. Ooh. What doing Jeff. Jeff eyes. Eyes ahead please. Oh, <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (00:50:17):
I'm so glad you hear me.

Leo Laporte (00:50:20):
You hear me? What do you do with your kids? With your students? You, you must, I mean, you're doing zoom, right? They're it's graduate school. Okay. I don't get that. So it's, it's assumed that they're paying attention and plus Leo,

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:32):
I just kind of by my presence, demand their

Leo Laporte (00:50:34):
Attention. Oh good. Apparently I don't there's that? <Laugh> <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:39):
There's one young woman on, on TikTok. I've gotta find her. And so she, she looks like she's about 21. She has voices. If it comes out of the 1940s. Is

Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
She from Israel?

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:53):
No, no, no. She's just unbelievable. 

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
I'm glad, I'm actually glad that the Trump administration didn't dismantle TikTok. I mean, maybe they're spying on us. I don't don't know. So who cares? It feels like there's such creativity going on. And so it's so vital. I really think it's great. And I'm sure that's the same on Instagram and Snapchat and elsewhere, but it's really a very exciting place, place to be. Now this is not moral panic. This is really a scary story from the Washington post. She, she never returned her VHS copy of Sabrina, the teenage witch story, the DA's office. This happened to me 20 years later, she faces a felony charge. She was trying to change the name on her Texas driver's license. When they ran a background check, all they're seeing is these two words, felony embezzlement <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:52):
So blockbuster back in like 1999 or 2000 sent a ton of people to collections for tapes that they either did or did not take out that were never returned. This happened to you. So, but this happened to me when I was in this habit. I did not get charged with a felony, but I did get sent to collections, which for me was a huge change.

Leo Laporte (00:52:16):
Oh, that's terrible. No, that's almost worse than melody because blockbuster.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:19):
Yeah. Blockbuster.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:21):
It's the jail you don't get out of had

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:23):
A, they, they had little sort of database error. And what happened is people who took out movies like right after you on the card or something got attributed to your card. So they had me taking out some video. I

Leo Laporte (00:52:38):
Never, oh man.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:40):
So this woman, and there's a bunch of people in the comments talking about it, but it's from the same era when blockbuster got super aggressive and had this full database. Yeah. They were.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:50):
So

Leo Laporte (00:52:51):
In fact, this woman didn't take that out. She said, but she was living with a guy who had kids and she thinking he, he went and got it and didn't take it back. What's even funnier is the cast of Sabrina got into the act, including Melissa Joan Hart. Yes. Who who did the shruggy emoji <laugh> okay. That's terrible. No, this is what, this was highly traumatizing. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:25):
I remember once flying out of the country and I, and, and, and I remember, oh, hell, I didn't return a video. And I thought I was gonna come back bankrupt. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:53:38):
You just, yeah. The fees just man up, you know, compound interest works both ways, buddy boy. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:45):
What a ridiculous industry that was,

Leo Laporte (00:53:49):
Nobody is flying to join. Google's flock says the verge Firefox has already said, we're not gonna do it. Apple safari. Won't do it. Mozilla, Vivaldi, brave all out in this article by D bone. He says edge. But I have to say when they asked Microsoft about edge, their response was very equivocal. In fact, to the point where I feel like Microsoft was, he was hedging their bets and said, yeah, we're gonna wait and see, we might well use flock. Just as a point of information, Steve Gibson did a very about half an hour on flock yesterday on security now, which I encourage people to listen to it's at the end of the show, he's he says, it's a good idea. And it works as advertised that it is privacy protecting. And it's very cleverly implemented to do that. <Affirmative> I pointed out it's of course Google, you know, has to make advertising work. So Google is

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:54):
For it, for itself and, and many, many others. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:58):
So Google's kind of gotta do the best it can to reassure people on privacy, but still they have to give something to advertisers. That's what I was just talking about. And what, what Google did point out is that there are a number of categories that they don't sell ads against including things like your mental state your previous incarceration, your, whether you're pregnant, your he, any health conditions, they don't sell ads against those in flock will not add those features to any of its cohort. So that might have been a little bit reassuring

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:31):
Pregnancy is interesting because that's highly lucrative.

Leo Laporte (00:55:34):
Well, if you look at what they won't sell, I mean, liquor, right? The stuff that Google won't do ads for is, is actually a list of stuff that people buy ads for ads for. So I think this is why I feel like Google might be a little bit sincere in that there we need to

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:53):
Reinvent advertising. We need to get past what it was. And if we're gonna shoot down everything that comes up just cuz it came from Google. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:02):
No, they're not shooting it down because it came from Google originally an E EF F shot it down originally because they want to stop the web being built on an ad supported model. That, I mean, that that's their idea is that your data should not be your payment for serving the web. We should come up with something better and it might be something like, I mean, what

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:23):
We're doing well like with club TWI. Okay. So we end up with a world where everything's behind a pay wall. I wrote a, a tweet about this last week, but my dystopia is that everything goes behind a paywall and at major media and that everybody has a SubT stack. And the only thing that's free is disinformation. Oh. With, with crap.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:42):
I don't think, I think that's a little crazy. I think what's gonna, I mean, like I, I tweeted just the other day, I realized I subscribed to 11 publications, which is insane. I spend about a thousand dollars a year. Yeah. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:56:53):
You. You very odd. Thank you. Yeah. But yeah, thank no,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:56):
I know I'm I mean, it's, it's my job. I mean, I do it because I run into pay walls all the time and, but it is frustrating. So to try to

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
I'm like you like yeah. I pay for

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:06):
Stuff. Stuff to leave to people, to content. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
I pay for more stuff. I don't, they won't be able to read Bloomberg any money except that I have to use Bloomberg's materials on our shows. I, I,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:15):
I give, I give Bloomberg's

Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
It's 35 bucks month and they have that gosh, darn Bloomberg terminal. They make a lot

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:20):
Of money on Reuters is gonna charge that much, which is ridiculing. Yeah. Reuters. I like Reuters, but

Leo Laporte (00:57:27):
So, so go ahead Stacy. But, but I think

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:28):
What's gonna happen is we're gonna reach a point where people start hitting all these pay walls and they experience the pain of that. And we're gonna come up with new models because they're gonna be forced. Right. Remember? I mean, we always, this is what competition does it create? You, you get this like pain point and then people will come out with like aggregators that are like of some sort and we'll, we'll get to that point. It's constantly evolving and that's good. That's what the web is.

Leo Laporte (00:57:57):
It is. But that's exactly why we never want to get rid of the free tier because I don't want to put everything. I don't, I didn't wanna do a, a wall per se. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> now maybe that's crazy because this is,

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:08):
This is patronage. This is support. This is help. This is fans, but I know this people being

Leo Laporte (00:58:13):
Involved financial times, for instance, you can't read their content unless you pay wall street journal, you can read some limited content, but not all of it, unless you pay new, you know, paywalls are, are definitely a thing. Is that because this idea of, of freemium doesn't work?

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:33):
No, cause it's a winner. Take all market. One of my numbers below, which I will now sacrifice for the good of the show. Thank you, sir, is a a a view of all of the news sites that have over a hundred thousand and subscribers. There's 28 of them adding up to 23 million worldwide English speaking world.

Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
That's a fraction though of the total.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:53):
It's nothing. It's nothing. And the us, 63% of all subs go to three, count three publications. You know what? They are New York

Leo Laporte (00:59:04):
Journal. Yeah. Yeah. And I

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:06):
It's a winter take all model. What

Leo Laporte (00:59:07):
Was the third one? Wall street journal. New York, York times and Washington post.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:11):
Yeah. Oh, I have

Leo Laporte (00:59:13):
Subscription. So do I? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:15):
Do I, I don't subscribe

Leo Laporte (00:59:16):
To any of those. You're the common man. You're the real man.

Ant Pruitt (00:59:21):
Well, but see, the thing is, I, I, I totally get having these pay walls up because ideally they're gonna have legit content out there and legit information, but there's a lot of times that I've been able to click on some of these stories and get a partial view of whatever they're, they're showing before hitting the pay. And I'm like, this is bad and it just doesn't <laugh> warrant

Leo Laporte (00:59:45):
And I'll bring, I'll bring up this. There is a hazard Knox Harrington in our IRC chat brings us up. If all the good content sites are pay walled, what will be left for, for normal unpaying people to pay to breed is link bait and crap. Exactly. Exactly.

Ant Pruitt (01:00:02):
But I'm seeing, I'm seeing link bait from some of these rep reputable sources too. Oh yeah. And, and that's why I'm like, it's not all why have even bother.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:11):
It's not all crap. I mean, mine's free. It's more trade though. I get a lot of people who are cranky, that my stuff is too technical for them. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:00:20):
Too bad. I mean that,

Ant Pruitt (01:00:22):
But that's what you do. So the point is, what

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
Do they expect? The people are just cranky. I gotta say people are cranky about anything. They'll complain about anything. If you're not technical, you'd get just as many people saying you need to be more technical

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:34):
<Laugh> yes. I, I, I, I get each week I get someone telling me I'm too technical. And I get someone saying, thank you for explaining things so clear. Exactly. So I take it all with a, okay. You can't please everyone. But I will say there, there will always be. I, I do think there's always room for I'll call it a trade like publication. Cause the people like my advertisers are happy to reach the people who mm-hmm <affirmative> are legitimately focused on my area. And I think there's areas where that model will work and there, so niche there's narrower that it breaks down

Leo Laporte (01:01:11):
The narrower, your niche, and you have a very narrow niche. The easier it is to do that. I think if you're general, it's harder. Right. Because you don't have a yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:26):
That's well, you have a natural audience. It's just, they're not lucrative. They're just like the it's everybody.

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:31):
Yeah. Right. Well, consider it consider what is considered a frequent user of the New York times. They had to lower it from 20 pages a month to 10 pages a month to five or three. Wow. So that means, that means people who are paying you know, they can't get 'em to converge and they only come three to five times a month, three to five articles a month. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:01:53):
People reading I'm stunning.

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:54):
Well, there's all I, I happen to have in my hand. What

Leo Laporte (01:01:58):
Is this? Profess okay. Senator McCarthy, go ahead.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:01):
Excellent paper. Three great research, which was Duncan Watts, David Rothschild, and Marcus Mobius just published. And it's about fake news and they found that from 2017, there were 5,000 English language publications, academic papers about fake news. So they, what they're saying is they think it's maybe a little overblown and they, and what the research we need, but here's some data in this news. Consumption is a small fraction of overall media consumption. 14% of overall news con media consumption is dedicated to news, right? 14 less than 1% of regular news consumption and less than one 10th of 1% of overall media consumption could be considered fake three in four Americans spend less than 30 seconds a day, reading news online while almost half consume no online news whatsoever. So we are weirdos. We are really weird. Yeah, we are.

Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
Oh, okay. We're having fun. And it is the best of this weekend, Google, I think every week is the best. I love working with Stacy and aunt and Jeff and, and, you know, we have so much fun together. It's just a great show and I'm so glad you listen, thank or watch. And thank you for joining us for this holiday. I hope you're having a good holiday happy new year. We'll all be back with the show live you know, doing new stuff this Wednesday, January 5th. So don't worry. We're not gone for good. We just thought we'd give everybody a little time off and, and a special thanks by the way to our producers especially Jason Howell and our editors who put this all together. And thanks to everybody who suggested the best of clips. We really appreciate it helps.

Leo Laporte (01:03:49):
Let's take a look B break. We'll come back with a, a lot more, our show today brought to you by wealth front. You know, I'm a big fan of wealth front not a big fan of the diamond hands, the rocket chip to the moon, the stomp memes. Yeah. That's fun. Okay. So is going to Las Vegas and throwing your money away on the craps table. It's fun. It is not a way to build wealth. I know I sound like, you know, a cranky old man but this is what I tell my kids. It's what I wish somebody had told me when I was a young guy. It's fun, you know, but day traders, you know, for the most part, don't beat the market. What you really wanna do is get a wealth front investment account, you know, save, if you want save a little bit to take and gamble away on stomps, the odds are not in your favor.

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Leo Laporte (01:07:50):
One of the things that's constantly plaguing this week in Google is YouTube's automatic content ID system. It's it's just nuts. A watch. Are you a creator? By the way, you're a creator. I'm a creator. We're all creators. So it's a good time. God

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:10):
Children, our creators finally media recognize that they thought they were the only creators. We're all creators.

Leo Laporte (01:08:15):
You know who else was a creator? Beethoven.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:20):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:08:22):
Segue. That's a lead into your story. Stacy,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:25):
Go ahead. I was like, what is happening here? So this story is, this is both a people suck in a content. Moderation is hard story. And also that YouTube needs better practices story. So this is from Corey doctoral. He let me get the name of the lady, right? Sorry. Let me, let me open this up again.

Leo Laporte (01:08:46):
Marina Maria, I was a piano teacher. You were gonna do this. Who publishes free lessons. I love Corey and I love his blog, plural net. He she creates a free piano lessons on her piano keys. Youtube channel celebrated her fifth anniversary. Corey Wrights by announcing she was quitting YouTube because her meager wages were being stolen by fraudsters. She post a video with a little bit of a Moonlight Sonata, which you might remember Beethoven published. No, actually Beethoven did not publish this in 1801. Beethoven wrote it in, I don't know what, 17, 17 62, but it was published in 1801. It's in public domain. In other words, the copyright belongs to marina. She performed it. Nevertheless, you play or something. You're gonna get that. That's for Elise that's for Elise, not the Moonlight. I can't hum the Moonlight Sonata. I'm sorry, but it triggered. And I might have just triggered it too. Youtube's automated. Play it right

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:54):
Now, but then we're gonna get taken down. The moon lights

Leo Laporte (01:09:57):
Is very slow. It's it triggered? Youtube's automated copyright filter. I'm amaz you recognized fear Lee though. And you name that tune four notes

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:07):
In the nineties. I had a phone that played it. Da

Leo Laporte (01:10:12):
Yeah. A corporate entity identified only by alphabet, super of initialisms and cryptic LLC names had claimed Moonlight Sonata as their own calling it Wicca Moonlight. The content ID flag marina track is an unauthorized performance of Wicca Moonlight. She appealed the judgment. The problem is you, you appeal and we've had this happen to us. Then, then they send a message to the copyright owners saying do you agree that no infringement took place? But of course, of course they say, they said, no, they, they infringed it. So you show, she can now let this shadowy company monetize her video, which steals all of the revenue from her. She can take her video down. We are faced with this, by the way, frequently.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:03):
I had no idea this was happening. This is so infu. Oh, it happens

Leo Laporte (01:11:06):
All the time. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:07):
This is exactly the problem. This is exactly. Well, I thought the problem was just that it took your stuff down and you couldn't make money. I didn't realize there was because people used it like a group of organizations who yes, like,

Leo Laporte (01:11:19):
Like if you wanna fight this and we've done this, you can fight it. You have to provide them with your full name and address. And then they then they go and they and they, you go back and forth. The ultimately it'll end in court. But even prior to that, and then the pre <laugh> we've had people, I, I don't even want to go into it, but we've had people make, I mean, the funniest things ever in their claims against us, we had we had pictures of the NASA video. You know, we had the NASA launch taken down by national geographic who claimed, oh no, we own the NASA video. And of course that was an error. They said, but anyway, this is content ID. Corey hates content ID. I hate content ID. Yeah. And you know, it just doesn't work very well. Here is. And I love this. Corey published this from the EF navigating YouTube's ID, a little flow chart <laugh> to help you help you understand why

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:19):
And blame Hollywood. Yeah. Blame Hollywood folks.

Leo Laporte (01:12:23):
Yeah. Blame Hollywood, but also blame. I blame the tech companies who thought we could solve this algorithmically. Exactly. I agree. Yeah. I agree. And it's the algorithm is the problem. It's easily gamed. Yeah. Bad guys. Yeah. And I guess if you create something like YouTube, where you get, you know, a hundred million hours of content every day, how are you, how else are you gonna do it? I understand.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:45):
Well, and you gotta be, if you're gonna be a platform, one of the costs of being a platform is recognizing that people are going to game it and you have to respond in a way that benefits the core users. Google does it already for search. They're like, oh shoot, too many people are using weird SEO optimizations. Now we're gonna change things. Yeah. But what they're not doing is they'll do it for their core businesses, but then they put out these creator platforms and they're not doing it for those businesses. And that's just

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
Not, it's a big chilling effect on everything. We do. You know, I, I try to tell our staff, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. But it really does create a chilling effect. And we, we have to constantly say, oh, we better not do that. Cuz they'll take us down. Cory also points out that it's really an uneven process. For instance an Instagram take down, takes a few seconds to file, but 28 month months to appeal and we've had that where they'll take down a video and maybe we can get it back in two weeks. But by then, nobody's gonna watch the two week old news show. So it's really, it's really a problem. There's a Warner Chappelle, you know, Warner music, demonetize videos that include the numbers 36 and 50,

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:01):
Why they should have, they should have bad effects for doing bad things

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:07):
And they should be penalized. Forze

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
He's a Twitch streamer and munition good name. Her videos were demonetized over the use of the numbers, 36 and 50 to protect copyright holders that copy. Did you get copyright? You can copyright the number. Apparently the media company full screen was simply <laugh>. The claim was simply over the number 36, you know, and you can appeal and maybe she's probably back full screen is full screen is a social content company for talent and brands. They're owned by Otter media, a subsidiary of Warner media. They claim the number 36 <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:52):
I don't know. I

Kevin Marks (01:14:54):
Don't understand how you can copyright

Leo Laporte (01:14:56):
A number. Well, they also copyright at 50 and while the claims are active before the appeal is accepted, they take all monetization. So and you can also lose your account. I mean, at the long at is you can get a strike and lose your account completely.

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:14):
They should. When they, when they, when they're knocked down, they should have to give back 10 times monetization. They should be some

Leo Laporte (01:15:19):
Sort of, yeah, like

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:20):
Trouble damages for

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Being bad. They call it slap in law in the lawsuit world. Exactly. Yes. There should be some sort of slap. These are

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:28):
Also the customers of the, of the big companies and, and they're the ones have the lobbyists and the lawyers. Yeah. And so they would, you know, you know what, they'd go run into Capitol hill and we'd have a SOPA PPA fight again. It's very what always

Leo Laporte (01:15:43):
Pretty SOPA PPA. We don't want to go with SOPA

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:46):
PPA. We don't want, we don't wanna soap a people again, man. No,

Leo Laporte (01:15:52):
We, you know, we fight 'em but you know, our, the risk to us is that we would get a strike and too many strikes. We would lose our channels. And that would be a big deal. I hate, I freaking hate YouTube. I, I, I understand the value of it. It's very impressive that anybody can create video, but it is also, it's kind of a mess. And and I don't like it affecting what we do as our content, you know? I mean, I, I can't even hum fear at least without fearing that are gonna take it down. Now I gotta worry about 36 and Jeff, no numbers with 36 or 50. I'm just telling you. Okay. All right, got it. Yeah. Don't wanna take that chance.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:32):
No, no line numbers. 36.

Leo Laporte (01:16:35):
Let's start our picks of the week. Now, Kevin, you came here at short notice in the middle of the show, so, oh, you do have a pick. You're amazing. What is your

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:44):
Pick?

Kevin Marks (01:16:45):
My pick is the map of the internet. So are you remember SKC did, did this a long time ago, someone someone's made a current map of the internet. If you there's a link top, right. That lets you wow.

Leo Laporte (01:16:57):
Look at that.

Kevin Marks (01:16:59):
So it's this like, it's this huge, huge map with like different land masses with, with it

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
Looks like a real map, but it's websites

Kevin Marks (01:17:08):
And they're scale to approximate number of users, I think. So you

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
Can see browser tweet there. If you look really carefully, I do you think it's in there? Oh, it should be. I would hope so. You're on the internet. Oh wow. This is is this, this is from Hal maps.com. Actually I'm gonna is one of those places where I'm gonna spend more time browsing their catalog. Cause I love maps. Look at the bottom where Antarctica would be. The dark web Wikipedia is is like Greenland <laugh>. So I

Kevin Marks (01:17:42):
Think basically they want you to buy this and put it on your wall, which is, which would be fun. I may well end up

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Doing that. Here's just the Q zone.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:49):
You know, really what you need is something that actually changes over time. So you need a, a display that links to software that's continuously updating this.

Leo Laporte (01:17:57):
Yes, yes, yes. Wow. That would be a, and

Kevin Marks (01:18:00):
Also I, I want the, I want the version of this in SVG. So actually search the text in it rather than actually.

Leo Laporte (01:18:05):
Oh, that be nice. Yeah,

Kevin Marks (01:18:07):
But obviously who

Stacey Higginbotham (01:18:08):
A touch screen? You could zoom.

Leo Laporte (01:18:11):
In's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter V contact, the Russian version thereof. Duck, duck go. <Laugh> zoom is a pretty big island outta the ocean zoom island. It's a big old one, but not as big as you know who the island of Google it's that's a continent. Google stand. Yeah. Wow. That's really fun. Error. Correcting plateau, Google contacts, Android TV. Google has a lot of that. Took a lot of work. Somebody put a lot of effort in this there's tick to, yeah, this is,

Kevin Marks (01:18:45):
This is clearly a major effort. It's a beautiful it's. Yeah. I think I will get about poster for the wall.

Leo Laporte (01:18:49):
That's pretty cool. And it, and it all looks like one of those old, old time maps of the new world. And then here's a list of major websites blocked in China, very handy. Top website languages, internet users, percent of population. It is now greater than 90%. Oh no, this is, I see here. This is based. This is a smaller map and it's Canada is the only one Canada and the UK are greater than 90% and we're actually only I don't know, down in the lower numbers,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:19):
No Canada looks like it's at 70 to 80%. Again, your colors.

Leo Laporte (01:19:23):
Oh, it's kind of a darker blue. Who's 90% then who's the darkest blue of all. Well, I think

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:29):
That's up there in 70.

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
Yeah. North way. Don't we? Yeah. Finland. All right. Largest companies by revenue, highest selling video games. Teris number one, Minecraft. Number two grand theft auto five number three.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:42):
Oh, this is the same chart only now. So it was 2006 versus two. Okay. Yes. If that makes sense.

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
It's it's changed, created by Martin VA of Halian maps.com. Good pick of the week. I love this. I love the, which features four Chan Google, Susan Waki. PIAR <laugh> that's great. Last time we talked to you, Joan, we were talking about Russian influence on the elections and, and disinformation that hasn't gone away. Apparently. yesterday president Putin said, oh, we not hiking. We're not hiking. You're hacking us <laugh>

Joan Donovan (01:20:28):
Oh, okay, sure. You hack us

Leo Laporte (01:20:30):
How this works. That's that is one of the tools of the of the big lie is, and I it's funny because it happens over and over again. And yet nobody seems to notice is just accusing the person. Oh, oh, what happened?

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:45):
I didn't do it. I swear. I didn't.

Leo Laporte (01:20:47):
We went black. There we go. I didn't do a thing. Your back is to accuse the per your opponent of doing the thing you're doing. And mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's an amazing rhetorical trick because it gets them to get all twisted and nuts defending themselves and all of a sudden it's a combination

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:03):
Of projection. And what about is, and the same in the same thing.

Leo Laporte (01:21:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Projection is a big one. Like, well, everybody, you know, we're hacking you, so you must be hacking us.

Joan Donovan (01:21:13):
I mean, we're not just talking about your sort of garden variety, you know, trolls and botnets online. I mean, hacking the power grid here, hacking infrastructure, hacking meat, they hacked meat, like critical infrastructure. I mean, yeah. So it's a little bit different. The stakes are obviously enormous. But at the same time you know, Putin's always going to pretend he doesn't know what's happening, but he, he himself is you know, very fascinated by technology and, and, and knows a lot. And so we should always be wary.

Leo Laporte (01:21:52):
He also had an interesting justification for poisoning Naval. I mean, it is just fascinating to watch this guy and I, I hate to say it, but it, it has, it, it brought back a little Y like, this is where we were for the last four years. Like with a guy who just says anything he wants and does well, but a guy

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:11):
Who's really effing smart.

Leo Laporte (01:22:13):
Well, maybe that's the difference.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:15):
I was, I was in the room with him once and Davos. Joan now goes there instead of me.

Joan Donovan (01:22:21):
I haven't been, I haven't, I heard the hotels though, rents too high, the rents

Leo Laporte (01:22:26):
Too.

Joan Donovan (01:22:29):
J you can keep your world power. If I, you know, if I save a few thousand bucks, <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:35):
That? So Putin saw a male journalist wearing a what do you call, what do you call that, that, that, that greenish ring from like Arizona

Leo Laporte (01:22:45):
Jade, Jade,

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:46):
No, not Jade. Turco tur turquoise. So we're in a big turquoise ring and he, he focused on it. He said, do men wear those <laugh> and he, and he wouldn't let go. He kept going back on it again. And the guy's wife had given it to him and, and we all tried to get the guy to give, give Putin, make him put it on, but he just, he just, he finds a, you know, an odd little thing about somebody and he just focuses in and he's scary in person.

Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
Some people call that trolling though.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:18):
Yeah. Oh, well he troll, yeah, his whole nation trolls us. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:23:22):
That was my boy, sir. Putin's response to ABC's questioning him about Naval was will black lives matter? <Laugh> I was like, oh boy oh, goodness. Yeah. I it's just anyway it's not, it's not really on our, our beat, but I, but I think it's great to have Joan on because what is on our beat is the use of technology particularly the internet these days to spread lies, misinformation, to mobilize, to radicalize. There's all sorts of malign uses. Now Jeff is the big defender of big tech and I don't, well, I don't dis agree with him, big tech. We, in fact, Joan of the internet, I'm defending the internet. Yeah, you, but Joan was saying this, you were, you were not here at the moment, but Joan was saying this before the show began, where would he have been in the last year and a half without zoom and tech and all that? Amen.

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:21):
I wrote a thank you note to the internet on medium two weeks ago. And I, and I mean, it, we would've been worked without

Leo Laporte (01:24:27):
It, but this is our constant battle on, on this show, but also just in general, there's good in tech and there's bad in tech mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> you wrote a piece Joan for Harvard magazine saying disinformation ain't going away, you know, can it be stopped?

Joan Donovan (01:24:46):
Was that was a piece that I was profiled in and okay. Yeah, the headline. So there's a couple other researchers in there

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:54):
<Laugh> yeah, that, that headline on that piece 

Leo Laporte (01:24:58):
Can disinformation be stopped?

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:01):
What's your answer to that? Joan <laugh> well,

Joan Donovan (01:25:03):
It, it, as with everything, it depends. You know, one of the things that I think the internet has been fantastic at is helping us root information around the planet, lowering the cost of it. I was just thinking about high fidelity video and how different it is to be isolated, but not necessarily a own in the same way. And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm wearing my phone phone losers of America. T-Shirt here today. <Laugh> cause I, I do, you know, I still like romanticize the phone and voice and, you know, just the way in which people come to hear and learn from one another, but there is something different about video. And when it comes to dis information, I think we're dealing with, again, a distribution issue, we're dealing with a content issue. We're dealing with, you know, people who are motivated either through money or clout to you know, push disinformation around. Obviously it's politically rewarding to be able to do that. And so I wish I could say in this moment that disinformation can be stopped. I think one thing we have to focus on is figuring out, you know, what should these, what should these distribution channels look like and how should they be run and who should oversee them. And and, and we gotta go from there, like we need serious standards and protocols to get at what I've been calling a public interest internet, or an internet that serves the broadest public. Good.

Ant Pruitt (01:26:38):
The don't sound so naive, but it, I, I don't think this will ever be stopped as long as there's some form of profit involved, whether it's money, whether there's political power or,

Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
Or power dominations. Well, and as Jeff has pointed out, it predates the internet by a long shot. Well, since witchcraft

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:56):
It's print. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
But is part of that and maybe it's is a little bit more, I mean, look, we've always had, I'm sure in the pre-print there were middle age is there were conspiracy theories that made the rest just very, very slowly <laugh>, you know? Right. But, but as soon as there were newspapers you know, there's the press wars of the eight, what is 1820s in the United States where they

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:19):
Were to ballots printed ballots and people going through and, and, and that was the source of a lot of the witchcraft conspiracy theories,

Leo Laporte (01:27:27):
But there is a cynicism that's a little different, in fact, it's interesting. You invoked the phone losers of America, John cause I think there's, they're, they're harmless, but they also deal in a form of disinformation. And there's a certain amount of almost cynicism, like a mocking like, oh, we can fool these people cuz they're stupid. I guess paper. Well,

Joan Donovan (01:27:57):
I think it's not stupid. I think it's trusting right. Lot.

Leo Laporte (01:28:01):
You're mocking people cuz they're trusting. That's terrible.

Joan Donovan (01:28:05):
I mean, but that's, that's, what's so interesting here is we a, we have to change how information is shared and what kind of labels are put on it and how it arrives at our door and, and what we call news and what we don't call news. I've been a big pusher of, of trying to get us to think about, well we have distribution pathways, social media really favors things that are popular and novel. And so what if we were to also make sure that social media served things that are timely, accurate local knowledge, but nobody

Leo Laporte (01:28:43):
Wants that is the right. I mean that's as well. I mean,

Joan Donovan (01:28:46):
We don't, you don't have to want, everybody

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
Wants to serve. Nobody wants the vegetables. Nobody,

Joan Donovan (01:28:51):
Nobody wants water. I mean like it's like, it's, it's nice. It's good to have it's necessary. But like if you have a choice between water and, and wine or water in a martini or water in you know, an ice cold seltzer, like I am here,

Leo Laporte (01:29:08):
Which is what Jones drinking. Yes. <laugh>,

Joan Donovan (01:29:10):
You know, that's that's but part of it is, is really trying to figure out what, in what proportions do we need this? You know, and I, and I think too, you know, so like if you think about broad stakes of different conspiracy theories, like probably the, the most broad stakes that most people are familiar with is you know, this notion of Holocaust denialism and you know, a couple years ago Zuckerberg came out and said that, well, he is not gonna remove OC cost denial on his platform because people have the right to be wrong about things. And later, as we realized how big, you know, antisemitic movements get organized and how big they become when they are allowed to exchange information unfettered and reach audiences of people that do not necessarily understand the stakes of what they're reading and it's, you know, just kinda laced in with, you know, misses from your aunt and your, you know, your cousin's graduation pictures and your, your friends, your best friend's cat and Holocaust denialism is just right there in the same, a mix. Yeah. It's different. And so we de we do need to think about ranking sorting, labeling, you know, I, I think we need more librarians at the helm of the internet.

Leo Laporte (01:30:33):
Amen to that.

Joan Donovan (01:30:34):
I like that. You know, I, I don't think it's insurmountable. I just think that there's a, there's different ways of thinking about what the solution might. Be's

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
A big hill to climb. Yeah. All right, Matt. Now you're back in the hot seat because the New York times says Sundar Pacha sucks. <Laugh> <laugh> can a nice guy be an effective leader, is the question the times asks DKI Waka Bahi talking to rest of Google executives, all anonymous, of course, who say that Sunar takes too long to make a decision. We did, we have seen some blog posts the guy who founded ways Noam Barine when he left, wrote a blog post kind of excoriating the Google culture saying it, it had turned into a, a big, slow moving company. Do you, do you stay in touch with people at Google map or have you oh yeah, yeah,

Matt Cutts (01:31:35):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's interesting because even, you know, in the later days when I was at Google, you could, you could definitely feel like getting a change launched was more difficult of course, than the early days, but also just like, okay, how does it affect, you know you know, international markets, you know the search quality and other languages, that sort of stuff. And, and some people are like, oh, you have to get all of these approvals. But also, you know, it's a natural thing that when you are a really big company with a really big footprint and impact, you're gonna have more scrutiny. And, and that's, you know, it's, it's hard to try to figure out how can you move quickly while still being big. And I don't think anybody's found the perfect solution to that at all. Every time I ranked or interacted with Sundar, he, he was always doing a really good job. So

Leo Laporte (01:32:25):
I've only talked to him when he was running the Chrome OS division, but I was very impressed by his genal and nature, his intelligence, his candor. I thought he was a really great guy, but that does not necessarily make a great CEO. In fact, it might be, might be the contrary abilities that I have to say the times Barrys about eight paragraphs in the Google executives complaining about Mr. Che's leadership, acknowledge that and say, he is a thoughtful and caring leader. They say Google is more disciplined and organized these days, a bigger and more professionally run in company than the one Mr. Pacha inherited six years ago.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:03):
Stacy, he, you were gonna say that all that I'll pipe

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:05):
In, well, I was just gonna say, what they're doing is building a story based on an archetype, right? And so you've got the Zuckerberg archetype, which is, I don't care about other people. I never apologize. I never about think about things I'm just in it for, I don't know what he's in it for anyway, the money, the data, the whatever. And then you've got this sort of thing, which is, oh, he's too slow moving, you know, in, in very thoughtful and blah, blah, blah. Google's separate problems at a slow moving. And it is, it's a, it is a much bigger company. It's trying to do a lot more things, but to there's two things happening here. One is conflating the person at the top with the fate of the company. And I know that leadership matters. I mean, you look at Intel and you can just watch how leadership has just sucked a company just down the toilet. But I also know that there are many people under him and Google is Google is a company that from the outside really looks pretty disorganized just in general. So I don't know if, I don't know if I feel like the executives there complaining about Pacha really means much. Does that make sense? And I think the New York times is kind of making a, to fit a mold that it needs.

Leo Laporte (01:34:23):
Jeff kind of was a little off, actually <laugh> as I remember as

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:28):
Surprised journalistic,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:29):
Well, no journalistic, journalistically. I thought I, I just came Peter Kafka and I for Meco just went back and forth in each other on Twitter. Like, well, I don't know if I could do well, your journalism class. I said, well, maybe not. I think this is based on anonymous reporting. You can write this story about any boss out there. Well, some people like him, some people don't, they don't like him makes decisions. Any boss there is. And, and in my tweet, you can, I said, I said, can you

Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
Scroll up? I can. Yeah. So the more I think about this New York times one man trend story about Senator PETI, the more ridiculous it is Jeff Jarvis wrote it could be written about any boss in any organization. Some agree, some disagree, some like some don't like, but won't go, go up

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:11):
To the, the prior

Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Tweet. And the initial tweet is, go ahead, go

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:15):
Ahead, media, move faster, break things into Silicon valley, evil Google. Our CEO is thoughtful and patient New York times let's do a trend story about Google and cracking because it's not moving fast breaking things.

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
There is a little, little contradiction there. Mike Masnick replied to you. He said how, I mean, how much do you want to bet that if Google had acquired Shopify, we'd the New York times story about how weak antitrust is that it was allowed to happen? So that's another, another point is that the times has a little bit of a dog in this hunt. I, but we have said on this show, Mike ELGAN said at first we've said it several times it soon up, I may not be the right man. For the job, Google, Google is making a lot of money. They've, they've, they've doubled their staff. They tripled their revenues since he took over. But you know, it's making money the way it's always made money in search and advertising.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:10):
Well, you can't abruptly SW I mean, Google is clearly trying other things to make money. I don't think anyone wandering around going, ah, you know, not aware that search one day is going to erode, but I think they're struggling with how to build up that much money again. And part of that's just because they got in early, I mean, it's like you got in early on the web that gives you untold advantages. And actually that's why the FTC is in the Congress are looking at antitrust things. Now is the companies that got in early in these kind of newly forming networks are rake in the dough and well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:51):
If they did it well, there's also, I mean, of course Al and Yahoo are untouchable. Yes. You know? Yes. I mean, to its credit did really well.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:01):
Yes, same as Amazon. Same as Facebook. Apple's a little of an outlier there, but you know,

Matt Cutts (01:37:08):
It's interesting to me that I feel like Larry pages, like they hired a lot of really great slash smart people in the early days. And then sometimes if, if Larry or your Sege, or even Eric were like, we're gonna go down this route. They had enough people who were like maybe, and they, it, it wasn't mutiny, but it was like, you know, we'll just have our backup plan in our pocket where if this thing doesn't work out, we're ready for the next thing. Like you had a really high caliber of people. And I think they've been able to maintain that much better than in a lot of big companies that I know of. The one thing I would just add is Google is it's kind of entering well, the whole tech industry is entering the lawyer season. Like, you know, the ability to talk well in front of Congress makes a difference and will for the next few years, at least just because of the spotlight that's coming on on big tech in general.

Matt Cutts (01:38:01):
And if you comparing contrast or think about Sundar, you know, testifying to Congress versus Larry Page, you know, Larry is brilliant. He's fantastic. He has all kinds of amazing ideas, but he wouldn't be my first book pick to go sit down in front of you know, the federal trade commission or, or Congress. And, and it feels like Sunar is pretty well suited for that. You know, certainly there's areas where he, you know, you might say, okay, well, where's the, the maniacal vision or something like that, but Sunar does a good job of listening to, you know, the feedback that he's hearing from what I am, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:38:35):
I felt kind of guilty raising this whole issue, be Senator Pacha. And I, and I like Senator a lot and I like Google a lot. And I think this is a question that's yes, yet to be answered. I do. And I'm sure it is a question we'll be discussing further in 2022, on this week in Google hope you're enjoying our our best of there's lots more to come.

.. (01:38:56):
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Leo Laporte (01:39:30):
Jeff Jarvis will never <laugh> let me live this down. I I'm sorry. I like Sudoku problems. Jeff thinks I'm nerdy, but I had some recommendations. <Laugh> I'm sorry. I like them.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:46):
I just reloaded my YouTube page right now. And the first things that pop up a Photoshop tutorial, MKB, H D they know you so well. Wanda sys kind, because I watch a lot of standup comedians and here's a hands on photography video. Here's Alex Lindsey. Here's a Clemson replay. It, it gets me.

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
All right. That's a, that's a good exercise. Let me look at what YouTube recommends for me. TWI the Sudoku for people who don't like Sudoku MacBreak Weekly boy, you are boring in another Sudoku video. Oh, geez. A Woodcock luring warms in the video.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:25):
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold Sudoku. How do you possibly make a video out of Sudoku? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:40:34):
Jan, how it's fascinating actually this channel of people watching,

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:39):
Making some play video games was boring.

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
This so far beyond crack

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:44):
The cricket that as up to nine, 12

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
Time reigning Sudoku champ and he makes he makes Sudokus it's just, it's fascinating. Wednesdays. I couldn't remember what it's really really good. I like it. Oh, Leo, you, I don't have any YouTube. Congrats. One of the great, I don't have a life, but that's still pretty funny. That's still pretty funny. Here's for some reason, an Nintendo switch game, Zelda sky were sword HD chess, office hours, Rene Ritchie's Apple ecosystem. How Amy Webb beat her insomnia. There you go. Oh, here's some more Sudoku. How to set a classic Sudoku. <Laugh> wow. That's so title. Yeah. Oh, look. There's a lot of Sudoku yesterday.

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:37):
I like to watch Tic-Tac-Toe videos on YouTube. Sometimes somebody's really going to win in a surprising way.

Leo Laporte (01:41:45):
You know, none of this is objectionable. Actually. I think YouTube has done an excellent job. It's just really boring. It's it's you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:52):
Start watching they'll

Leo Laporte (01:41:54):
They'll stay. Oh, or they start. So if I, if I watch one, oh yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:59):
Wait, wait. Let's watch this Sunoco video and see

Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
What it recommends next. No, no. It's they're long videos as you might imagine. Well, no, you'll see on the right hand, what do we recommend next here? Let's see the calculus. This is only 49 minutes is pretty quick. The calculus, the right hand. Your page. It'll have what's next. Where would I see that over here? It's usually, I dunno. Why don't you see that? I always see that. Maybe it's too big. Maybe may, if I make a little smaller, I'll see more. Oh, I mean, I in theater mode, theater mode. Yeah. How do I get out of theater mode over a video to tell you how I need a video on how to get out of theater mode cover to the bottom right of the video. It's a button at the bottom of the video. There you go. My mini player theater mode, full screen that's theater mode. Wow. I don't get any recommendations because I'm happy watching this video. They know about Sedco a model, actually. I'm not kidding. This is my recommendation for the week, the cracking, the cryptic channel, and I'm not alone. 372,000 people agree. It's that's awesome. It's the best place for SED videos. Oh, geez. <Laugh> geez.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:20):
Very soothing. If you didn't wanna be alone in your house, you could have a thing in the background.

Leo Laporte (01:43:26):
I don't think we're getting SKU shaming here. And I want, I

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:30):
Want, I want, I want, I want an audit of your suitcase to Hawaii. How many Sudoku?

Leo Laporte (01:43:35):
I don't me a book. I've got the crafting the cry. I mean the cracking, the cryptic app, which has some excellent Sudoku. I wrote a Sudoku solving program, you know? Oh boy. <Laugh>

Speaker 16 (01:43:51):
Why you like this? What

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
Scripting language did you use? I wrote it in racket. It's not a scripting language.

Speaker 16 (01:44:02):
Crazy. That was SHA.

Leo Laporte (01:44:08):
Oh, there's nothing wrong. Sado. It's mathematics. It's good. It's good for your brain. It's good for you. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:44:14):
It's like, I'm just not good

Leo Laporte (01:44:15):
At it. No, it's fun. 

Speaker 16 (01:44:21):
That was fun.

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
Hell. Was that? What was

Speaker 16 (01:44:28):
That? Stacy? Do you need a waffle? Is your stomach talking to you? Oh no, it's a dog. It's not me.

Leo Laporte (01:44:37):
Kyles asleep. Oh, he's dreaming. Oh, he's

Speaker 16 (01:44:39):
Snoring. That's so sweet.

Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
He's chasing something in his dreams.

Speaker 16 (01:44:44):
If you had a little camera ride, have you move it so we can see, but you can't. That's

Leo Laporte (01:44:48):
Cute. So cute. He has it. You didn't remove his vocal chords or anything. He's he can bark normally, right? Oh yeah. He,

Speaker 16 (01:44:54):
He can definitely bark

Leo Laporte (01:44:55):
Normally, but he's just in his dreams. He barks like a dream.

Speaker 16 (01:44:59):
Yeah. Now he sounds like a small dog

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
When he is not. I do have a close up picture provided by Matthew in our discord chat.

Speaker 16 (01:45:10):
Yeah. Add about another 90 pounds or so to that dog. <Laugh> and you have Kyle. Thank you. 

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
He's dreaming of biting. Rand. Paul says, see one shower. <Laugh> you got, 'em worked up. That's what sound like also, I'm glad you're back because we can now do the official introduction in in three part harmony for Mr. Or harmony as the, or his harmony for Jeff Jarvis. He is ladies and gentlemen, the letter Leonard tower professor for journalistic innovation at the

Speaker 16 (01:45:43):
Praise. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:45:48):
Whoa graduates. School of journalism at city, university York. Oh, look, who's up beard. Stacy,

Speaker 16 (01:45:54):
Look at that. He's whoa. It's like beetle juice. <Laugh> does it's like beetle juice. What is happening? Right? We've summed you from the pigeon party. We've

Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
Summoned you we've summoned Craig Newmark to join us. That was a little, we weird. Wasn't it? Wow.

Speaker 16 (01:46:15):
More excellent placement.

Leo Laporte (01:46:18):
Hi. Hi Craig. In the sky.

Speaker 16 (01:46:20):
Hi Craig. That's good stuff. It's like the great and powerful Oz. Holy. I was looking at the discord while y'all saying, and then. Oh, this is my new idea of surveillance. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
It's Craig new Marcus. I don't have an cams up. I, in the, at least he's up front about it. I love it. Let's let's actually widen the shot and bring Craig down from his perch in the pigeon cam. This wasn't. That was a brilliant, brilliant job that put you have named you now have named that that position. <Laugh> it's the pigeon, the pigeon cam. Yeah. Craig is of course the Craig of Craig's list. But lately has been a great philanthropist and among other philanthropies is the graduate school of journalism at the city university of New York. That's why we graduate school of journalism. We sing it every week, every week. Hi Craig.

Speaker 16 (01:47:18):
Hey, it's my pleasure to be here. I really do listen to the show fairly religiously. I am very much looking forward to the imoral panic blue bird drinking thing. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:47:33):
There you go. It is. Oh, there it is. And it's put up moral panic, triggered it. Craig it's funny because we it's not water. We invoke you all the time. What was it? Not water.

Speaker 16 (01:47:48):
It may not be

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Okay. Oh, inquiring. Mine's gotta know. It's after 5:00 PM. New you New York, York. He's on the east coast. Yeah, it's okay.

Speaker 16 (01:47:57):
He milk. I am. I am in New York now in pretty much our new our new home New York, as it turns out is much better for my health. Really

Leo Laporte (01:48:08):
<Laugh>

Speaker 16 (01:48:08):
Is, is I bagels just take up

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
Bagels. <Laugh>

Speaker 16 (01:48:13):
Well, mostly I eat less badly. In San Francisco I would tend to fill up a refrigerator for the day, but I have little discipline. I practice the seafood diet and that's not good to lose weight in New York. I get a little food, but if I want more food, I have to decide if it's worth putting it on pants. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
<Laugh> so you're on the no pants. Diet is actually the 

Speaker 16 (01:48:45):
Whatever, whatever substitute for self discipline works. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:48:49):
Do I can't go out cuz I don't have any pants. No pants, diet. So you're in, are you in Manhattan?

Speaker 16 (01:48:57):
Yes. We're pretty much in the village. Oh, nice. Even in the, in the window you see a little bit of a a bird feeder pigeons happen sporadically trying to get into it and fighting among themselves.

Leo Laporte (01:49:10):
I saw them are earlier actually. Yeah. I wanna see some pigeon action. Yeah. Wait, are there any other birds in New York? <Laugh> other than, I mean, I lived there, but I never saw anything else. <Laugh>

Speaker 16 (01:49:22):
The dusts. There are doves and we have the occasional Sparrow, Cardinal tufted, tit mouse and a few others like that.

Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
Craig, are you a bird watcher?

Speaker 16 (01:49:37):
Pretty half-assed we put out food and water. If the birds decide to visit us, that's good. San Francisco, a lot more variety. We've seen a lot of the wild parrots. Oh yeah. And that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:51):
Nice. Craig's a bird lover, bird lover. Nice. And we should, we should note that Craig today, just, just before announced hold, where is it here? Craig?

Leo Laporte (01:50:01):
The whole news philanthropy.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:03):
Yeah. Pigeon philanthropy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:06):
What, what what's that is that <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:10):
So say more things Greg gave a grant to UHY. Is that ASA Craig?

Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Yeah. We Paloma Blanca Palo at dove. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:22):
You continue pigeon and dove rescue work for pigeon rescue.org. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:50:28):
Wow.

Speaker 16 (01:50:29):
Yeah. I figure there are successor species. I should suck up to them. <Laugh> <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:50:36):
Do you also invest in robots? <Laugh>

Speaker 16 (01:50:40):
I know, but I hedge my bets. I also have welcomed our machine over Lords <laugh> yes.

Leo Laporte (01:50:46):
Oh, nice. Nice. So, so that's really is, this is kind of what you do now, day in, day out. You, you don't run daily, the daily operation at Craigslist or do you,

Speaker 16 (01:50:57):
Well, I gave that job up in the year, 2000. Wow. Cause people help me understand that as a manager, I suck <laugh> and I've retired. I retired a few years ago. Particularly considering that I'm just short of 70. Now what?

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
You don't look at lying. You don't look that old I'm I'm not blowing smoke. You don't. I would never have thought that. No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:25):
You're not. You're not that close Craig.

Speaker 16 (01:51:27):
I'm I'm not gonna let, I'll be six. I'll be 69 soon, but I need to desense time. 68.

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
Yeah. You're getting used to it is what you're doing. Yeah. I know. He's one year

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:36):
Older than I am. I know. He's trying to put closer to 70 Craig

Leo Laporte (01:51:39):
Craig. I'm 64 and I do the same thing with 65. Yeah. I'm I've been, I've been preparing myself for that for the years. It's not easy.

Speaker 16 (01:51:48):
Not make sure you make sure you sign up for the appropriate parts of Medicare.

Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
I did. I did. I did very good because there's a penalty. If you don't. I just, I was telling the crew, I did that yesterday, which is wow. Difficult. Yeah. So you, so you're full time in philanthropy then basically. Yeah. And you have done a lot of things, but it seems somewhat of a focus in journalism.

Speaker 16 (01:52:18):
Well, right now, from my point of view and my background is computer sciences somewhat abstract. I'm looking at information warfare in different forms. The big priorities, the days are like helping with cybersecurity fighting disinformation, good. Or as the cool kids call it influence operations <laugh> and also countering harassment. First focusing on the worst of it, which is directed against women, journalists, there's other areas, including helping vets women in tech and as you've seen pigeon rescue

Leo Laporte (01:52:55):
<Laugh> wow. By the way, here is the site diplomacy. It's pigeon diplomacy@pigeonrescue.org while you're

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:03):
At, at Google Craig Newmark and pigeons. And there's some great pictures. You'll see <laugh> Craig hits up close and personal with pigeons.

Leo Laporte (01:53:13):
Some people know if I would do that. Yeah. Mean, some people think of them as flying rats, but I guess Craig, you're a open-minded fella.

Speaker 16 (01:53:21):
Well those, those were stunted pigeons.

Leo Laporte (01:53:26):
Good. 

Speaker 16 (01:53:28):
As it turns out, pigeon pants is a thing they're diapers and you want to, you want the pigeon to be wearing the diaper before it flies onto your shoulder to cool lovingly <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:53:44):
I learned that hundred percent. Yeah. <laugh> note to self <laugh>. I'm just glad you explained that the diapers were for the pigeons. I just was, I was unclear at the beginning and now I understand. Well, when you get to a certain age, a little bit better, a little bit better. What you're talking about,

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:03):
I'd rather call them pigeon pants than depend. I like this.

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
We know how much an Pearl loves TikTok musicals. And I'm sure that's why I put this on here for him. You kidding me? So, or, and when, when I say I could be brown, I could be blue. I could be violent sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything you like, what comes to mind? No wizard of Oz, nothing. It's the grace could be brown. White. That could be blue. I could be VI, is this a Grace Kelly? I could be, is this from a movie? A Grace Kelly movie. I don't know where it's from. I just know it's all over Twitter or is Intel or something? Another sounds like people

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:44):
Do they record one person can record all the parts or two people can record all the parts. And, and so it's quite popular. You can, you can go down below the one you're gonna show and show

Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
Why it's popular. I'll show I'll show. The girls show collaborative is to, yeah. Here's here's some girls. This is called the Grace Kelly singing challenge. Brown.

Speaker 17 (01:55:06):
That could be blue. That could be the sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything new. Like I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be BI it's sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple that's

Leo Laporte (01:55:18):
I could be anything. You it's like a round. I could be brown.

Speaker 17 (01:55:21):
I could be blue. I

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
Could be VI, but it can just be one person singing. I could, I like it. They have this in a, in a dag mobile app. Is this cool. I know. Isn't that great. I have to say I'm a TikTok fan. My son now has 200,000 plus followers and millions of views on every video. So I'm, I'm, I'm a believer. So anyway, the reason sucker for these,

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:42):
These are, they're all, they're all pretty to

Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Listen to. I, I love them. I love the singing ones. So apparently I didn't know this, but Ryan Reynolds who is of course, oh yeah, this happened yesterday. The owner of mint go give away prize and and will Ferrell our working together in a movie called a Christmas Carol and Ryan res decided, you know, as long as he's got nothing to do, cause this is the problem, frankly being on a movie set, you got a lot of free time in between takes. So he thought he'd tried it himself. Let's I could be

Craig Newmark (01:56:12):
Brown. I could be blue. I could be VI lits sky. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. I could be anything new. Like I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be on the harmony. I could be hurtful. I could be purple. You layer

Leo Laporte (01:56:25):
It on. No,

Ant Pruitt (01:56:26):
I heard in like an editor.

Craig Newmark (01:56:27):
I could be blue. I could be vile. This guy. I could be hurtful. It's pretty good. He's a good singer. I could be anything you like, I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be vile this sky. I could be hurtful. I could be hurtful. I could be anything you like, I could be brown. I could be

Leo Laporte (01:56:43):
Blue, far walks in. Let's go. And does the high be,

Craig Newmark (01:56:47):
I could be anything you like, I could be brown. I could be blue. I could be high on this

Leo Laporte (01:56:52):
Sky. I could be high. That's pretty good. That's that's really freaking good. I hope this, this girl is a musical. That's really freaking good. Yeah. Apparently it is a musical. So I guess they can both sing. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:03):
That's gonna like musicals. It's gonna,

Ant Pruitt (01:57:05):
That would be no, no negatives, sir. <Laugh> no, that was good though. I give credit where credit is, dude, that to be able to do this inside of a mobile app is,

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
Is, is we're gonna make him a TikTok or sooner or later. That's that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:19):
Why TikTok is so amazing because it enables that kind of collaboration. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and remixing. And it's just it's it's it's, it's a new level of, of content creation.

Leo Laporte (01:57:30):
Yeah. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:31):
Wait, I've got a better for you. And for example, I will say no. Well, I was gonna say, because I thought of an, this week, actually, I realized, I finally learned how to do makeup and I, everyone was like, oh, just want to use,

Leo Laporte (01:57:44):
You know what? I was just gonna say, Stacy, you look really good today. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:50):
Oh, thank you. I did not. I, I didn't, I, I don't have contour, but I finally

Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
Learned how to do cont. I was just gonna say, I didn't a little late. No, no, no. I noticed right away. I wanted to be, you know, cause I know people, you don't Stacy, nobody likes it personal. But given the, that you've raised this point, whatever you're doing, it's working.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:10):
Well, you get, I had an event earlier, so that's all. Oh, okay. But <laugh> But YouTube gave people infinite times. So their makeup tutorials were killer. I was like, I do not need to watch someone for 10 minutes, but for like a minute, people can get everything bad TikTok. And so yeah. I'm like screw YouTube. Tiktok

Leo Laporte (01:58:29):
Is where it's at. Well, and as we mentioned last week, TikTok has more viewing now more view people spend more time watching TikTok than they do YouTube videos. And that's probably why short attention span and what I, I, I talked to my son a lot about this, cuz he's really become the TikTok master I'm he's now my teacher on TikTok quarter of a million followers and growing fast you can go up, you can go up to three minutes, but he's found that it's better if they're shorter. So by the way, today, he posted a video today, 4.6 and views so far, this, this one we showed, I thought we showed this one last week. I would like to eat that. This is he's. One of the things he does is he big on sound effects, sound effects, natural fully have ASMR, whatever you want to call it. He's the master. The other thing he does and I talked about this is it's not clear when it's Luke, so people watch it over and over and over again again, cause they're not sure it got to the end and he's like a high quality gift. He does that very consciously. How long does it take to edit half a day. So here's, here's, here's his most recent. This is, this is a duck sandwich. It's pretty

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:40):
Good. Nice

Leo Laporte (01:59:43):
Choice of music for this one. I know I told him that. I said he is, wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:50):
I just want, although I've heard it, I think a couple times on some of my video. So maybe

Leo Laporte (01:59:53):
It's I asked him how he figured out what music does this and Spotify a lot and try to find something that works with the, the thing. So, plus it's the real sound too. The real sound is what's what's key. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so yeah, 8 million views. Seven and a half million views. Three and a half. So I was asking you before and

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:13):
We got, we got interrupted ourselves. How do you turn that into a living?

Leo Laporte (02:00:18):
I keep asking that. I'm sorry. Try not to be that dead. Cuz you know, when, when I was a, well, when his mom and I got married, his, his, his mom's brother said don't marry a DJ. Those guys they're

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:33):
The worst. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:00:35):
They're not going anywhere. Just a subtle nudge yet. So, but that's true. And I, I realized I was doing the same thing with him. Oh, come on. You know, don't that's not real media that's but it is real me. This is modern media.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:48):
He could get invited to the met

Leo Laporte (02:00:49):
Gala next year. I wouldn't be sure at all. And I hope he wears that sweatshirt and sunglasses and the cheesy porn stash, which all of which we try to discourage him from wearing my mom. 88 year old mom says don't wear a hat, Henry. You're so cute. Why are you wearing a hat? But I just tell her mom it's a different generation, you know, this is yeah. So, but I I'm, you know, we worked out this morning together. I'm always querying him, you know what's so what are you learning? And he's really paying close attention to, to the feedback that he gets both from com but also views and is tuning it slowly, closer and closer to, and you can see it makes a difference. Geez. It really does make what kind of metrics

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:32):
Do they give them besides just views?

Leo Laporte (02:01:34):
Is there anything I'll ask? 'em I don't know. Oh, so asked how do you make money? So there's a couple ways to make money. Yeah. Yeah. Tiktok ads are not inter or interstitial. They're not in your video. Right? So unlike YouTube, you don't have preroll post row Midroll so there's nothing a tie to your video. So you don't get any of that ad revenue, you know, it's like Instagram, it's every few videos. There's an ad. Now I see a lot more big brands on TikTok. So I obviously TikTok is doing suddenly very, very, very well. But they do have a hundred million dollar creators fund. So that gets parceled out. But you know, a couple, he's got 4 million views, maybe 600 bucks. So it's not, it's not a big, wow. So what? That's not like YouTube money. No. Yeah. But what does, because they know they're not sharing revenue with you. They allow you to have ads so you can sell your own ads in there. And the CPMs are something, something like five bucks which if you have 7 million views is $7,000. Nice. Is that right? No, it's 30, 30. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:02:40):
$5 per thousand chat rule. 7 million is $7,035,000. That's a lot of money. Is that right? Could that be right? $35,000. So, so save us, please. It's a lot of money. They can you do it? No, I just did it. That's right. Oh, I'm sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:56):
I was, I was signing up for the pixel super fans club. I'm like, we're gonna talk about Google eventually. Yeah. Hold on. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:03:04):
Math. So, so scooter actually saying that the us TikTok creator fund is actually now they plan to spend 200 million over the next 12 months, August to August 20, 20 to 2021. And we'll be upwards of a billion in the next three years. And more than double that globally. They have to cuz otherwise creators. That's what killed vine. You gotta share that money back or creators go. Yeah, we'll go somewhere else. And then I, he told me YouTube shorts is doing this too. So nevertheless is he

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:34):
Crossposting it to

Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
Anywhere other than yeah. He puts it on Instagram as well. And I told him, do YouTube shorts. Why not? What's wrong? Why would, why not? Why not? Oh, I don't know if he's gonna, I don't. But he, the next step for him would be to going out and selling ads.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:49):
Wow. Or signing a deal with like having a knife company or a chopping block company or pan company he's gonna BES tabla. Exactly. And he just goes,

Leo Laporte (02:04:00):
Does cooking Dick. Exactly. He he's gonna be a guest poster on the taste made Instagram this week. Taste mades big. That's a big Instagram that's branding there. Yeah. You know, so I think I, you know, next year we'll see what we, what I'd be saying about my son. Yeah. Don't be a to star. They don't make any money. I might be wrong. I think, I think it's, it's not influencers. He's a content creator. And actually my feeling is even if he doesn't make money on TikTok, he's the skills he's getting are useful and will get him, you know, plenty of that's the one thing I can

Ant Pruitt (02:04:36):
Say about TikTok is the way it puts constraints on the content creator. It's good telling you, okay. I need to create content that is 60 seconds long. That's going to make people wanna stop to click on it. First of all, and then make them want to watch it all the way through for 60 seconds and then make them want to say, Hey, Hey, did you see this? Let me show this to you. That's that's pretty dagum challenging. And not everybody can do that. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:03):
It's I am big Penta.

Leo Laporte (02:05:05):
It is. Yeah. Right. Is

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:08):
Of, of, of poetry and art constraints.

Ant Pruitt (02:05:10):
Art. Yep. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:05:11):
So true. And it also means Jeff, this is true of YouTube and Twitter and everything else. If you're gonna be a content creator, you have to work your off. You have to post every day. You cannot stop. It's a content machine. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Stacy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:05:27):
No, I was just gonna say, Jeff, how does this relate back to Gutenberg?

Leo Laporte (02:05:34):
Wait a minute. Give,

Ant Pruitt (02:05:35):
Give time. You asked

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:37):
Since forward she asked actually two, one Shakespeare found that verse sold better than pros. Interesting. And so Shakespeare was the first major the, the, the first playwright who ended the major playwright who ended up with real market in printed play plays. So around the same time that Mont invented the essay and Savan the modern novel and, and a guy named Johan the newspaper all around 1600 Shakespeare proved the market for printed plays. Since you asked,

Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
If you don't mind, I'd like to take us back to the 21st entry <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:06:21):
She asked

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
<Laugh>, I'm just teasing. I love it. I could go on. I love Shakespeare

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:28):
Today. Amazon announced in limited edition, two hundred and twenty nine ninety $9 echo studio featuring Billy I's cover art for happier than ever God

Leo Laporte (02:06:40):
Scares.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:42):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:06:44):
Who the hell wants that. <Laugh> all right. You wanna see it? Here's what it looks like. It's amazing. You can have an emo teenager spooning away on your echo device. I guess if you're really a fan of Billy Eish,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:58):
It just seems so niche. And I guess it's just a, it is cover print job. It is. But I don't understand. I'm curious about the economics of this and why Amazon's doing something like this on hardware. Because like,

Leo Laporte (02:07:15):
Well, they did, they have like a children's echo. Remember they had, they have a

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:19):
Children's echo and they actually did a line of echo, like smaller $99 speakers that were like the Diane V Fosberg and two other designers that you could buy with their imagery on their echos. It's

Leo Laporte (02:07:32):
A little expensive is $230. The normal price for an echo studio. That's no,

Jason Howell (02:07:36):
Yes. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:38):
They're usually two 50

Jason Howell (02:07:39):
Aren't they? This is $30 more says the

Leo Laporte (02:07:42):
Headline just for Billy Eilish. You know, I would buy it for the kit factor, frankly. People I know would come and say why it's like, why do you have some woman's face on your,

Jason Howell (02:07:52):
Who knows maybe, maybe shutter fly. I will start to allow us to print out our own, you know, photos on an echo show, our echo studio

Leo Laporte (02:08:01):
Coming forward. I mean, it's clearly for the, the massive Billy island fan, right? I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:06):
There are a lot of Billy E fans out

Jason Howell (02:08:08):
There. Y'all there are definitely, they are,

Leo Laporte (02:08:10):
Oh, wait a minute. The echo studios 200 bucks. This is 230 bucks. Yeah, you're right. 30 bucks. More, 30

Jason Howell (02:08:17):
Bucks more. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:19):
It also comes with what four months of Amazon music, which does not seem like a smoke and deal to

Leo Laporte (02:08:24):
Me. It should come with lots of Billy Eilish music. You get six months to Amazon music unlimited oh six months. And you can listen to happy than ever in spatial audio.

Jason Howell (02:08:39):
It's the only thing you can listen to on this device is that out,

Leo Laporte (02:08:41):
Over and over and over again,

Jason Howell (02:08:45):
You know, because you're a big enough fan to have Billy Eilish on your device itself. So they figure that's, that's probably what

Leo Laporte (02:08:51):
You want. Here's what it's here's what it would look like on your Billy Eish desk with your Billy Eish poster and your Billy is wallpaper really funny.

Jason Howell (02:09:02):
It's it's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:03):
A puzzling device. I that's where I brought it up, cuz I'm like,

Jason Howell (02:09:08):
Doesn't make that sense. This,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:08):
How expensive is it to make? What is the, what is the, what is the

Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
Conversation? I mean, if even like Alexa could be Billy Eilish is that would be cool, but no,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:18):
They, yeah, like that makes sense though, cuz that's a digital product, but this is a physical product. It's gonna sit there forever. I just, I thought it was, I was flux fluxing,

Leo Laporte (02:09:29):
Spices,

Jason Howell (02:09:30):
Flux. You probably don't want Alexa whispering to you is the thing. So you probably don't want Billy Atlas's voice. You know, she, this she's very, there's lots of whispering, whisper singing. She's

Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
ASMR

Jason Howell (02:09:44):
Also joining us Jeff Jarvis, who we have to, we have to do the full introduction here and I've got it. It's a mouthful. It's become tradition. You know, take a deep breath, a deep breath, a little special today. The Leonard tap professor for journalistic innovation at the

Speaker 20 (02:10:01):
Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig,

Speaker 21 (02:10:07):
Craig, Craig Craig

Jason Howell (02:10:16):
School of journalism at the city university of New York and the director of the town night center for entrepreneurial journalism at the great,

Speaker 20 (02:10:26):
Great, great Craig, Craig, Craig.

Speaker 21 (02:10:29):
I love it. Great, great, great

Jason Howell (02:10:39):
Graduate school journalism at the city university of New York. Welcome to the show, Jeff. And let us give, let us give credit, do we have the credit ready for who did that? Absolutely. We do. Jake Overton sent us this barbershop quartet version. You would be really cool. Outstanding. There's probably a lot of people that watch and listen to this show that also are musically inclined. It'd be pretty sweet if like everybody did their own little version of this, but anyways, Jake, I, the first one notable for that one.

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:05):
And so Craig Newmark himself and Twitter in the response to this offer said that he had Craig Newmark sounds himself, but his wife wouldn't share them.

Jason Howell (02:11:14):
<Laugh> I see, he's still doing that. Crowdwork in, in his community gig in his comedy. Yes. Yes, exactly. Awesome. We finally have a tune to play so, so you can, you can save your pipes. You don't need to sing it this week. Aw. Although be doing a lot of talking. Yeah. Right. Well maybe in the future, we'll all too like tag along. Although that's kind of hard to do, like do a, you know, a harmony with something played on the internet it's well on TikTok,

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:46):
You know what we should do? We should put it on TikTok and do with it.

Jason Howell (02:11:51):
There we go. Make it a meme. Of course let's make it then. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:11:55):
I think we're gonna continue to sing Craig new Mark's praises. Every time we mention his name on the show, I think it's the contractual obligation.

Jason Howell (02:12:03):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:12:04):
I think Jeff makes us do it anyway. It was so much fun having Craig Newmark on the show. That was one of the highlights of this year's episodes. I, I think this is fun show. We had a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed listening to our best of episode, Stacy aunt Jeff. And I will all be back next Wednesday January 5th for whole new this week in Google in a whole new year. Meanwhile, I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. I wish you the happiest of new year's and from the bottom I heart. Thank you. Thank you for listening for watching for subscribing, that just helps us a lot. And for those of you who are club TWI members in a special thanks because that seven bucks a month you pay for ad-free versions and the discord and the, and the feed really goes a long way. Really helps us. We can, we can really safely say this show is brought to you by listeners. Like you have a wonderful ha safe and happy new year's Eve, happy new year to you all. We'll see you next time on this weekend. Google. Bye. Bye.

Speaker 22 (02:13:20):
I.