This Week in Google Episode 647 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 coming up. Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever. What does it mean for Google? We'll talk about the crypto DS bought a copy of doing and now wanna make a movie cuz we, we own the book, right? And Spotify experts are saying, what are you gonna do about Joe Rogan? It's all coming up next on twig.

... (00:00:25):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit.

Leo Laporte (00:00:35):
This is twig. This in Google episode, 647 recorded Wednesday G January 19th, 2022, a disco floor for your wall. This weekend, Google is brought to you by it. Pro TV. Are you looking to break into the world of it? Get the introduction you need with it. Pro TV, visit it. Pro.Tv/Twi for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. Just use the code. TWI 30 at checkout. And by Neva traditional audio conferencing systems can entail. Lots of components. Installation could take days and you might not get the mic coverage you need. That's complex expensive, but Neva audio is easy to install and manage. No take required and you get true full room coverage. That's easy, economical. Learn more@neva.com and by HPE GreenLake orchestrated by the experts at CDW to help deliver a seamless and scalable cloud experience that comes to you.

Leo Laporte (00:01:39):
Learn more@cdw.com. Launch HPE it's time for twig this week at Google, a show we talk about, you know, pretty much anything we want to sometimes about Google. Probably not today. Stacey Higginbotham comes back. We missed you, Stacey. Thank you for yes. Being here we had it's you missed y'all. You could tell who replaced you last week cuz you have lower third <laugh> oh was it Matthew? Who was it? Mike GaN. I didn't see Mike. Mike ELGAN oh Mike GaN. We'll we'll fix that. Well he's nice. There you go. Stacey Higginbotham Stacey on iot.com at gigastacey. Don't forget the Stacey and Kevin show the I OT podcast and all of that. Also with us Mr. Jeff Jarvis, you know him better as that grumpy old band, the letter to professor for journalistic innovation at the graduate school of journalism at the city, university of New York director of the town eye center, cetera, cetera, et cetera. Cetera. Hello? Hello. How did you eat that entire bag of KA Pippi? No, no I didn't.

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:52):
The last time I had it was last week, but I, I had some Kae Peppe puffs before the show. Good. I just wanna make

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:58):
Noise ice. I had to show Stacey my, my, our fine. I am jealous, very deep, cheesy salty snacks. They're the best she

Leo Laporte (00:03:05):
Salty. They're all. They're all the best actually. Sunday we were talking on TWI about the using chopstick to eat spicy hot Cheetos. So they don't get your fingers, all orange.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:16):
<Laugh> that's what people do for like any sort of Doritos. A lot of the, my engineering programming friends do that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:23):
Yeah, because you, you wanna have the snack while you're coding, but you really don't want to get orange on the keyboard. It's bad. Yeah. Trust me. I know also with us, from hands on photography and Pruit, also the community manager <affirmative> of our fabulous club TWI, you have you have a bunch of events coming up, Georgia Doby joining us for what do you call a fireside chat? Annie and NACO was mindbogglingly fascinating. Yep.

Ant Pruitt (00:03:53):
His, his was an AMA and that was so much

Leo Laporte (00:03:56):
Fun. So there's a difference you actually have. Yes,

Ant Pruitt (00:03:58):
Sir. There is, there was a difference. It's the AMAs. I, I set it up to be geared more towards our, our club TWI members to participate and you know, get their feedback. And the fireside chats is more along. I'm digging in and sitting down. I'll take some questions for my members, but it's more me trying to drive

Leo Laporte (00:04:17):
It. January 28th, Georgia Dow at 3:00 PM, Pacific 4:00 PM. Pacific, February 11th, Mike ELGAN and Amira. And I'll be hosting that one. And then the poll is up for the next book in Stacey's book club,

Ant Pruitt (00:04:33):
Which was an another great time. I, we sat down before our AMA, miss Mrs. Stacey and I, and the book. Wasn't horrible.

Leo Laporte (00:04:44):
As I say, <laugh> you didn't like it that much. <Laugh> you didn't like it that much.

Ant Pruitt (00:04:48):
No, I liked it, but it's man, not

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:51):
Horrible. That was the quote. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:04:53):
<Laugh> sci-fi is just a, it is a different thing for

Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
Me. You have to be in a sci-fi. Yeah. You know, it has great, it had great issues to talk about though. AI boss,

Ant Pruitt (00:05:03):
Things like that. It did. Even Mr. Jammer B joined in on the conversation, he would cut our mics off and just take over the show <laugh> even now.

Leo Laporte (00:05:11):
And then, well, as you know, jammer B is a big sci-fi fan. So as MI

Ant Pruitt (00:05:16):
And, and, and something that worth mentioning is we included our members in that because we do it zoom and our members can join in on the zoom and pop up on the screen and talk with us and all that. So, Hey, sign up for club. Wait y'all it's only $7 a month.

Leo Laporte (00:05:32):
It's a good thing. Its' a good cause. It's a, yeah. Yeah. I'll give you all this eats later. A little later on the show. The big story. Oh, I'm trying to find the poll. Oh, for the book. Yeah. I had it a minute ago. I don't, oh, it

Ant Pruitt (00:05:50):
Should be pinned. It should be

Leo Laporte (00:05:52):
Pined pinned to what? <Laugh> I can't find it either. If you don't pin it to my sweater, I'm not gonna find it. That's 

Ant Pruitt (00:05:59):
Twitter events. And then you twirl down club, Twitter events, and you should see Stacey Hagen Bonham's book club. Right. And then you go to the page. I feel like it

Leo Laporte (00:06:09):
Should be so, so maybe we gotta work on this. So when I'm looking at club Twitter, I have events here. That's what I clicked, but that does not include the pole. Nope. Not

Ant Pruitt (00:06:18):
That. And then where is down to keep scrolling? Keep scrolling,

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Keep scrolling. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> keep scrolling. There's Stacey in the best. Keep going. Yeah. Keep scrolling. You're going. Cause

Ant Pruitt (00:06:28):
It's scrolling. Its the show section.

Leo Laporte (00:06:29):
Oh it's under this

Ant Pruitt (00:06:31):
Events. No sir. Okay. Yeah. I don't even know where that came from. Keep scrolling. It should be down under the role section. You see the general section? Yeah. I don't think

Leo Laporte (00:06:41):
I'm

Ant Pruitt (00:06:42):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:06:44):
Let me know

Ant Pruitt (00:06:44):
When you find it. Cause I see general on my screen. That's disor stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
I don't have a general see

Ant Pruitt (00:06:53):
Here at the twin farm. Okay. This is a work in progress clearly, but

Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
You know, if I go to the terminal, I could probably get this working.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:02):
Oh gosh. Please know. <Laugh> please know. Oh dear. Right. The, the books are nor by, I'm not sure how to pronounce that. Author's names and

Leo Laporte (00:07:14):
Or Corey Doro. I authorized bread mm-hmm <affirmative>

Ant Pruitt (00:07:20):
And

Leo Laporte (00:07:22):
One AI 2041.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:24):
And right now an authorized bread is leading the vote. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:28):
Cause Cory is a kind of, has been on the show many times the, the author's name for

Ant Pruitt (00:07:31):
No is needy. OK. Oker before. OK. Four AOR four. I believe that's what is a first time

Leo Laporte (00:07:38):
Media core for all right. Good. Good, good, good. Well, thank you very much for joining us. That's it for This Week in Google this week.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:48):
Yeah. Yeah. That was exciting. This weekend, fusing around TWI

Leo Laporte (00:07:51):
This fusing around

Ant Pruitt (00:07:53):
And you missed the fun part. Leo telling stories before we got on old guy, Leo won the porch. Oh boy. What I could do, this is what I did. I just tagged you in the, that channel. So maybe it'll pop up as a notification for you. <Laugh> are we still doing this? No, we're done. I'm done. <Laugh> done. We got a show to do, right.

Leo Laporte (00:08:14):
Oh wow. Big story of the week. And I don't really know if we have to talk about it on this show. I guess it impacts Google a little bit. We certainly talked about it on windows weekly. Microsoft has put in a bid to buy active vision blizzard. I have to say I loved the New York times story on this because they said for around 70 million, it's 70 billion, sorry. 70 billion, big difference. 70 billion. The irony is that it's actually 68.3 billion. So somewhere in, in the author's mind or the headline writer's mind, they figured, eh, 1.7 billion more or less <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:55):
I mean, what is that a bridge, a roadway who knows

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
Just, you know a little bit, just a little bit anyway. Big story because it is the largest acquisition Microsoft's ever made almost it's 68.7 billion. So they left out 1.3 billion. It also is a story because this is the same activism blizzard that was under so much heat for its frat boy culture for, you know, the bill Cosby conference room. And, and it's CEO, Bobby Kodak. Who'd been with the company since 1991 kind of the poster child for all this they're being sued by the federal government. A lot of employees very upset about how the company's been run, especially women. So Microsoft's buying into this kind of toxic workplace and Microsoft has just recently had issues of their own. In fact, they enough mm-hmm <affirmative> this week that they're hiring a white shoe law firm to further investigate allegations is handling sexual harassment, including from its former chairman and CEO bill gates. So this is great. <Laugh> it's the merging of two boys clubs. I didn't

Ant Pruitt (00:10:06):
Get to catch windows weekly to hear Mr. Thra and miss Mary Jo talk about it. But when I saw this news, the first thing popped to my head is why is Microsoft invest in such a mess? Because well, would Microsoft be liable for some of the, the price it's a good

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:24):
Time to invest in

Leo Laporte (00:10:25):
A mess? Yeah, there their stock prices almost half what it was a year ago. So although Microsoft is offering a premium but I think we concluded that it's a very good deal. It's a, it's the right thing for Microsoft to do as expensive as it is. It's good for business. Go ahead, Stacey. I heard an and

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:43):
Oh, I was gonna say it helps them set up if you know, you think about Netflix or Google doing so any sort of streaming game platform, this sets them up for that, plus is it Xbox? Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:10:57):
Xbox Xbox

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:58):
Platform. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm like, wait a second. That's

Leo Laporte (00:11:01):
It? Yeah. So the one I can't buy my credit's not good enough apparently. <Laugh> sorry,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:07):
Dude. Yeah, so this gets them also. I mean, Microsoft, I know we don't think about it for gaming, but they have a very reputable gaming platform. Oh, they're

Leo Laporte (00:11:15):
Huge. You know, they, they just bought Bethesda not so long ago. Yeah. they have, let's not forget Minecraft, which has been a huge success for them. And in fact is shown that they can be a steward of a game studio and really let it do its job and make it better. I think everybody agrees. Minecraft is even better under Microsoft.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:35):
Do you think Minecraft is more of a games play for, for them or more of an education slash world building kind of play for them?

Leo Laporte (00:11:44):
Here's I'll tell you what my thoughts are. And I think I've remember, I've been chewing over this for the last two hours with Mary Jo and Paul. So I have, you know, you have opinions, I have opinions. You cheat, you cheated. I, I looked ahead on the test. It's actually sensible. Remember Microsoft's under a assault from meta, right? They'd like to play in the metaverse. Microsoft is a big gains player. Nobody denies that. And they will become even bigger by the way, among other things, as they get with active vision blizzard, candy crush, cuz so they get king. So there's a lot of mobile. So it gives them a, a foothold in a form of gaming. They're not particularly big in which is mobile. Call of duty is also Veluma mobile. It gives them, I think it positions them well for what I think might be the next big thing, which is eSports, you know football and baseball in this country are multi-billion dollar and in the NBA multi-billion dollar businesses. I think eSport is, is poised. All we need is that game, that one game that everybody goes, oh, this is incredible. And it, and it's gonna explode. So I think Microsoft's well aware of that. They're also of course, a cloud company with Azure. Hmm. Ups guy.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:57):
I think it's my family. Sorry. No, it is ups. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
Go on. Well here's how you tell, are they wearing rounds ups? <Laugh> <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:07):
I'm at, I don't know, based on the dogs. I think it's not my family cuz the dog would be less upset. Okay. Go on. Keep talking.

Leo Laporte (00:13:15):
But they're also a cloud company with Azure. And I think that this really what this is and you pointed this out. I mean Google with stadia Amazon and Vidia used to be Sony all streaming game. I think streaming games, a lot of people think might be the next big thing because you don't need a lot of hardware. It's a really good use of cloud resources. So all in all this, this, I think integrates beautifully with what Microsoft's business is. So as expensive as it is mic, you know, it's, it's half of Microsoft's cash position. It's a month of revenue for Microsoft. It's a significant amount of money, but they can afford it. And I think it's in the long run. I it's a good business proposition for them. That would be my, you know, I'm not a business person. So Cory

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:59):
Doctoral came on Twitter and, and, and, and taking a whole bunch of us saying, don't say that they're buying it. They're trying they're they're they're they're, they're trying to buy it. They don't have permission to buy it. They could get turned down by the government, blah, blah, blah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:12):
So I asked that question of Paul, Mary, Joe, by Microsoft addressed it in the announcement. Even with this acquisition, Microsoft is the number three games manufacturer. They're not in a position of monopoly in this at all, right. Tencent is bigger. Sony is bigger, so this would not make them behemoth by any means. Now I, I Corey's right under Le con the FTC is a is, you know, I, I think there's this kind of regret that they didn't stop Facebook from buying Instagram and, and WhatsApp. So I think they're looking at all acquisitions now with a little bit of a more evil, odd, well, you

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:50):
Know, what yesterday are we gonna talk about that? That's like the biggest story in tech this week, which is yesterday's FTC department of J DOJ announcement.

Leo Laporte (00:14:59):
I think we can talk about that because, I mean, unless anybody has anything else they wanna say about the Microsoft? Well, the only thing I was gonna

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:05):
Say about Microsoft is where I was headed. There was, was that it's so funny that they're now not the, they're not the evil empire anymore. They're the nice tech company.

Leo Laporte (00:15:14):
Well, that's the other thing that give them a crap <laugh> no, but it is an opportunity. It's so nice. It is. It's an opportune time for Microsoft because while the eye of Soran is, is looking at Google and apple you know, for the app store, they're looking at Facebook for anything Facebook, Congress did not ask Satina Adela to come testify. He was the one guy out. And I think maybe he

Ant Pruitt (00:15:40):
He's the

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
Nice guy. He's the nice guy. So I think maybe, and this does totally fit with Microsoft. The other thing, he is a brilliant CEO. He, he has pivoted Microsoft from being the windows office company to being the cloud company. And gaming is a big part of that for him. So I think this is an opportune moment. Corey's right. I mean, it's gotta get regular. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I think there's a good case to be made that, that, that this will not be stopped. Who else

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:07):
Would've bought it?

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
Sorry. They apparently were talking to Google. They were apparently because, and Google, the price was pretty high. Who, who were the rumors that they were talking to? Although Bobby Kodak, the, should I, can I say embatled? Is that the word? The embatled CEO and founder said that Microsoft was such a natural fit. They started conversations a couple months ago. It, it just was obvious. This is where we should go. Of course that's who got him. So that's what he's gonna say. But apparently they went to other companies and nobody wanted to bite that big of bullet. You know, that's a lot of money

Ant Pruitt (00:16:45):
With the, the Google perspective on here. You were mentioning why Microsoft is, is so successful in this. Is it because they have the Azure backbone because Google has just as much money and resources to be able to pull this stuff off from a

Leo Laporte (00:16:59):
Cloud perspective.

Ant Pruitt (00:17:01):
Right? Why didn't it work? Why didn't stadia take

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
Off. It's the worst run company in big tech right now? <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:09):
No it's because Google makes deliciously beautiful tech and has idea how to explain it to anybody. Who's actually going to use the tech. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
They have some good enough. I I'll grant you that it

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:19):
Any cool stuff. They may have done related to stadia, trying to communicate that to developers. And also because Google has a reputation for saying, eh, this isn't working for me, I'm pulling the plug and no developer. I mean, building a good quality video games. <Laugh> time. Yeah. Time and effort and money. And you're not gonna invest all that. And have Google say, eh, you know what, nevermind.

Leo Laporte (00:17:41):
Remember Google bought a bunch of, you know, they were gonna do their independent studio. They brought in big people and they folded it like three months later. And then it turned around and sent them out the door. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:51):
Yeah. Like you would never build, you would never build for that. If you're a gaming company, unless you're like building candy crush or Wordle <laugh> wow. What are those called? Not parody. Copycats.

Leo Laporte (00:18:02):
Yeah. Clones. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:03):
Clones. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:18:05):
Yeah. it's funny because Sony, which is Mike Microsoft's big competition in the console markets stock went down 20 billion. When this was announced, cuz there's a fear that Microsoft will take all these games exclusive and Sony will lose some of its biggest franchises like call duty. Microsoft said right now, they're not gonna do that. Of course that's really intended for the most important audience at this point, the federal trade commission. So let's get at to story. Number two, which Stacey says is the biggest story in tech, the FTC and the department of justice seek to rewrite merger guidelines. They kicked off a crisis on Tuesday to rewrite these guidelines a request for comment, particularly about digital markets. So go ahead, Stacey, why is this the story of the week?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:52):
Yeah. I just realized it wasn't on our list, which okay. This is the story of the week because <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:18:59):
Well, it just happened yesterday. Rundown. It just happened yesterday. That's why

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:02):
It did just happen yesterday. And they actually, we don't used to get the things until three or four

Leo Laporte (00:19:06):
Days old. We like to do like it let em per I like to like to find out what I think ahead of time. Well, they get a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:12):
Nice, a nice cheesy smell. Let me

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
One of the story. Wait, wait, we went for the Kaho Pape moment and then we'd dive in a nice rhyme on it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:20):
Yeah. <laugh> so what they did is they, they pull, put out a request for information on how they enforced mergers and why this matters is because it's saying to the world, both the DOJ and the federal trade commission are going to be looking at how they evaluate mergers. They're gonna change. Well, they're looking at changing our policies and

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
That's a big in particular, in the digital age, what used to work does not work. And I, I think there's this bitter regret over Instagram and WhatsApp and they, I, yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:55):
There's I, I think it's not just that, I mean, look at how Lena con looks at what Amazon's doing. I mean, there's, there's tons of things. So they put out this, it's a request for information and you can get a lot for how they're thinking by looking at the types of questions they ask in this. So the is like just a 10 page document. They want everybody to talk about like they have some things. So they're saying, Hey, the way we look at M and a do our current guidelines really work for that. The, the way we measure competition does that work, which means we could see them look at mergers, more like Europe. You know how we used to talk a lot about how in the us, we wait for harms to consumers in this document, they're actually asking, Hey, does this harm? Not just consumers, but maybe employees does it harm innovation at different levels. So they're actually open. This is a big deal because they're opening up a lot of things that have been established and settled law for a long time. I

Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
Suspect what statute say, Stacey. Well, okay. Let me say, I suspect that's what Corey's talking about. When he says, wait a minute, hold on. It's not a done deal. This is not yeah. This, the climate has changed. Yeah. but that I, I, I echo Jeff's question, which is isn't this Congress's job.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:12):
No. So what Congress does is they write laws and then they let the regulatory agencies figure it out.

Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
Well, I would phrase it differently. They write laws that say what the mandate is for those agencies. Those agencies can only do what law congressional law has said they can do. And

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:32):
I, so I could answer this question for the FCC, cuz that's what I've covered for decades. I can't tell you what laws govern, how the FTC or the DOJ

Leo Laporte (00:21:42):
Thinks. Right? My sense of it actually is that the FCC is much more constrained by what Congress says then the FTC or DOJ is. So probably, yeah, this is an interesting question. And I we'd have to get a governmental expert on this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:56):
Or just gimme a week. I'll learn. Will you thank you. If you want me to. I

Leo Laporte (00:22:00):
You're our expert on everything. That's the truth. No,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:03):
It's about restrictive tray. I'm pull, I'm pulling up the Sherman antitrust act, right. And it starts off with,

Leo Laporte (00:22:08):
Well, and remember Congress has been consumer harm is different. Congress has been addressing whether the Sherman antitrust act is, is, is good enough in this age, but it's, it was always my sense that Congress has to decide that not the, the FTC can't just say, well, you know that Sherman antitrust act is outdated. We're gonna do it differently. I don't, I don't know how much they can do that. They can do that. I wonder do EJS different cuz you can investigate. Right. They have an investigative,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:33):
Like some of, some of the things they're asking. So they're asking how should markets be defined when the potential harm to competition stems? Not from price increases, but from long term or other non-price factors. So that's one of the things they actually bring up. The, I can never say this, Jeff, what's the word? Monso

Leo Laporte (00:22:53):
It's like monopoly, but it's APY

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:56):
Of like the colonoscopy there mono mono Monomy yeah. Thank you. <Laugh> yeah. So how should the guidelines analysis of mono power defer from analysis of monopoly power? The mono,

Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
A mono, a Monomy is kind of the opposite of a monopoly. A monopoly is one company that dominates a business, a Monomy is a market in which there's only one buyer for a product.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:23):
Right. And then they have a,

Leo Laporte (00:23:25):
So it's the opposite segment customer instead of one seller, which is weird, but it's but it's a big deal. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:31):
And yeah. And they also have a whole section on digital markets. So they're like, Hey, how do like M and a in digital markets differ from physical markets? What does that mean? There's a, there's a lot of really good questions they're asking.

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
That's the question though. These are legitimate questions. They should ask them then what? And I think ultimately, but that's, it's a court. That's gonna decide this, not the FTC, not the DOJ, the court and the court's gonna decide it based on established law and precedent, not on what the FTC thinks is. FTC can bring a court case, soak can the DOJ, but the courts are gonna interpret it. And I think they're gonna look at those statutes. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:12):
Yeah, but here's, here's how this works. When a, I mean, you see the same thing, play out with like the F CCC when they put out like a notice of proposed something anyway there they do the same sort of process. So the process is this, these guys are clearly indicating with this, this thing that they've sent out. What's

Leo Laporte (00:24:33):
It called again? The request for comment, this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:36):
Yeah. Request for comment. They're saying, Hey, we're thinking about this. You've got X number of days. I don't remember how many days to tell us your opinions. What they're gonna do is they're gonna come out from that. And then they're gonna create new merger review guidelines from there, everybody's gonna say, oh cranky. This is how they're gonna evaluate this. What'll happen is when they apply those guidelines, the company that's affected by it and is mad about it is gonna Sue. And then we'll see that lawsuit come forth and the judge will say, I, you don't have the power to do this. It needs to go back to Congress. We actually saw this happen with net neutrality in the FCC. Or the courts are gonna say, keep going. So ultimately yes, it gets decided by the courts, but this is still a very important process because it's possible that the DOJ and the FTC make it work. And with most companies that want to be, you know, within the legal framework or with the companies that are going to be doing these deals.

Leo Laporte (00:25:34):
I mean, if you're, if you're a tech company, this just is one more, you're not. Yeah. It's just one more thing that is kind of informing you that, Hey, they're looking at us, they're paying attention. And that may be, be the main intent of this.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:49):
No, no. The intent is actually to come up with new merger guidelines, the intent is not to, we're not gonna leave this process with everybody agreeing that, oh yeah, everything we've been doing is still gonna happen that way because it's so wonderful. We are gonna walk out with new merger guidelines. Now, I don't know if we're gonna walk out with things like, Hey, you're gonna have to undo those deals. Like what the UK is trying to do with meta and Giffy or yeah. Giffy. But we are definitely gonna have a new way of evaluating M and a, which is why it's such a big deal.

Leo Laporte (00:26:21):
So according to the hill, the FTC and DOJ we're tasked during the Trump adminis to look at antitrust enforcement, they spent a year and a half looking at their joint guidance on vertical mergers. They voted last fall to withdraw those guidelines on a party line vote. So maybe it's in the, in this face of this vacuum that they wanna say, well, okay, we we've withdrawn our existing guidelines and vertical mergers now what, what should they be? Right. and of course you know this is the Biden administration in effect, this is the executive saying, you know, we need to pay more attention to this. I think Congress is split on this and I don't know where the courts stand. I think the so I think there are a lot of question marks. It's not sufficient for the FTC and DOJ to say, no, this is the law. They, they don't, they just say what we're invest. No,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:25):
They're they're, these are just their M and a guidelines that they're doing. Right. But when you're doing a deal, you do pay attention to this, cuz let's say you wanna do

Leo Laporte (00:27:34):
Well, you don't want to get investigated. Of course. Yeah. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:37):
Yeah, if you're gonna buy like a tiny little Aqua hire and you look at this and you're like, oh, well now it's no longer worth it. Which is why we're gonna see a lot of VCs come in and talk about how cuz this is gonna affect their exit strategy as well. You're gonna see a lot of interesting players come out and be like, <inaudible>

Leo Laporte (00:27:53):
No, in the RFC, they the joint RFC, they said they're particularly interested in hearing about aspects of competition that the current guidelines may underemphasize or neglect such as labor market effects and non-price elements of competition like innovation, quality and potential competition. I think that's reasonable. So instead of just saying what's the harm to the consumer, how is this gonna affect prices? How well all of those

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:24):
Yield of harm to the consumer that's right.

Leo Laporte (00:28:26):
It's just not in pricing there, there little, well that's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:29):
What they're saying is, is our current strategy for cuz that's all we use right now, right? For our M a is price. Whereas the EU looks at a broader thing,

Leo Laporte (00:28:38):
Right? Critics of anti, just, this is the hill. Again, critics of antitrust enforcement over the last few decades have raised of focusing solely on the effects of mergers and acquisitions on consumer prices has allowed many anti-competitive mergers to be completed freely. This is especially a point of focus for groups worried about the consolidation in the tech industry. Let me ask our tech apologi Jeff Jarvis. Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:04):
The

Leo Laporte (00:29:04):
Internet defender, I'm sorry. Defender of the internet. Jeff Jarvis. You need a little peacemaker helmet. That would be cool. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:13):
Jeff. I, I put in the chat a link to, and the, in the doc in the chat, a link to the actual document.

Leo Laporte (00:29:21):
Oh here's is this the RFC itself? That's good. That that'll be good. Yeah. I was also

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:25):
Looking for this crossed, but go ahead and

Leo Laporte (00:29:26):
Ask a question then. Yeah. Why they're on. So there is on the other hand a, a strong case to be made that we should let these companies let the free market decide, let these companies battle it out. The best case for innovation is for companies to compete as hard as they can and do the best that they can. But you think that there's, I hear Stacey groaning <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:53):
Surprisingly

Leo Laporte (00:29:55):
Is, is the issue that they aren't competing as hard as they can. They're just a acquiring.

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:00):
Well, I mean a few things one as I reread Sherman, it's interesting. I mean, it's all about conspiracies and collusion and, and, and bad things behind the scenes, not purchases. Right? So, so there's a, there's kind of a difference in what it was, what it was aimed for was these horrible, bad tactics that Rockefeller and, and, and, and the Robert barons of the, of the Giled age did this is different. This says, okay, we've established a principle there to Stacey's point and now we enforce it differently. I, I

Leo Laporte (00:30:30):
Think what's really interesting. They're also, by the way, if you read this request for comment, they're also saying, do the guidelines properly reflect the text and purpose of the Clayton act? They're they aren't saying, I was gonna say, we're not gonna replace Clayton or Sherman, but are we act, are we actually enforcing what the intent of these laws is? Are we actually doing our job, but, but even

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:51):
Clayton is about unethical business practices, price fixing monopolies, as opposed to gee, those that's too big or they shouldn't be together. Clay's says,

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
So let me, they wanna prevent mergers and acquisitions whose effect maybe substantially to less competition. And then the FTC and DOJ say, are they sufficiently clear about the circumstances in which that happens? What, what effects should be covered by the terms they're saying less competition. Well, what, how do we do that? You know, how do we,

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:22):
And so point I want to get to is, is to raise what you raised earlier is is that if you really could Sherman turn the way back machine to whatever year it was. And my Facebook's gonna buy Instagram, Instagram, small they overpaid for it's a perfect example.

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
Farther back, there were fewer than 20 employees. It's a perfect example.

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:45):
And so, and to say, oh my God, they should have seen compare that to Microsoft's announcement. And now I'm not saying Microsoft's announcement is wrong, either. They're number three in games. One of the new players is a Chinese you know, who knows the world changes. There's a ran report that I, I, I call upon often from the nineties that said, yeah, we've gotta let this just kind of blow out and, and, and, and, and, and figure it out that, trying to think that we can control it now that we know where it's ending. We know where we are is, is hubris and, and will work very well. And so, yes, we'll make missteps and things that go wrong, but let it play itself out more. And, and so I think the, the question then becomes, we go back to our discussion of regulatory capture and, and we have Facebook out there begging for regulation because they can afford it. What I fear for are the sprouts. We can't see coming outta the ground yet. The competition, we don't know, wants to start out there because it can't. And how do you regulate to that?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:45):
So that's just a silly red Hering of regulating the stuff we dunno about. I'm just,

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:52):
I'm going after with mustard. Thank you.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:59):
So <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:01):
Good for the,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:02):
To say, we don't know what's gonna happen. So we shouldn't regulate is silly. We are gonna mess things I'm up. Okay. Cuz that's what it sounds like you're sick and IM like saying

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:13):
No, what I'm saying is the thing I care about that I do wanna regulate to is to enable future competition. But what I'm saying is because we don't know what that is. I don't know how to regulate to that. And so what happens is a lot of the regulation that occurs to date is stuff that only the big companies can afford to do and new companies can't afford to do it. And that's the unattended consequence of that regulation is that it stifles competition because it sets the, a playing field at an impossible level. And so how do you regulate to avoid that is what I'm, I'm saying.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:49):
So big companies will always, always be able to handle regulation better because they simply have more money and infrastructure to so we, that is a good point in lawyers. Yes. But I think by setting out new guidelines, I don't think that hurts innovation because what will happen is you will have a clear set of guidelines. And yes, the companies will, that are big and established, will play within those guidelines and manipulate them, using their massive war, chest and lawyers. But it also makes clear where the new innovation can come in and kind of go in the cracks. And that's how it's historically gone. So you're gonna, you're gonna change the field. And there are companies right now, like small companies who've been playing under the existing regime that are gonna get screwed. That always happens.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:36):
The other, you know, the other way they're gonna get screwed. Stacey is the other thing I fear is that, and, and I don't like this world where venture money controls everything, but we are still in that world. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And if there isn't, if, if, if exit paths get cut off

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:51):
Well, and that's what I talking the venture capitalists, you're gonna hate this. Yes. That's what I'm saying. There will be more investment once they figure this new thing out. Venture capital is not, I know they like to think they're leading indicator. Oh no, they're not. They're not. No. So they're going to try to keep everything the same so they can maintain their returns, which I don't blame them, but that's also not great for innovation because we're way down this road. And we're pretty basically all our cool stuff that gets invented gets invented to be sold to one of the big companies sales. So I, I have to,

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
I'm like reading these questions this all seems completely reasonable. It doesn't, it doesn't presume an answer. It just says, well, here's some things we really need to look at. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> and in every case they say, you know, consistent with what Congress and the courts have, you know, indicated well

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:39):
That's they have to say that

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
That, well, that's their, yeah, they are limited by that, but it's also better

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:43):
Than a, than a knee jerk pun. We gotta break 'em up to punish 'em. Yeah. Which is what you,

Leo Laporte (00:35:47):
No, this is thoughtful. And you know what Lena con I think is very thoughtful to, regarding that failing firm's thing, there actually is a whole section, section 15 on failing and flailing firms in, in, in which they asked the question in what situation should a weekend competitor defense apply. So for instance T-Mobile, which was failing wa was denied a number of mergers but eventually granted it I think also of serious satellite and XM, both of which were failing and allowed to merge. Right. Even though it created a monopoly. So they're, so they're asking about existing doctrine and how does it change? How's it changed in in the digital era. And I think these are all things you want to con almost constantly ask these questions it's appropriate. Yeah. At this time to say, well, markets have changed a little bit. The Monomy thing is very interesting. As an example, it's effect on labor markets. If there's only one company hiring, that's a Monomy, they're the only customer for labor. Then labor has no recourse. They have no defense. They can't say, well, we're gonna go across the street. So that's a, in

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:58):
Clayton, Clayton actually addresses what they call tying contracts and that labor labor agreements fall under Clayton. So they have a justification for something like that.

Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
They also talk about innovation. To what extent does a focus on product market overlaps fail to identify broader concerns about, to innovate, particularly given that innovation may involve the creation of new product or service categories. These are all I think, really appropriate. Now the question is, is there an answer? Yeah, I think you have to acknow acknowledge this as an imperfect imperfect system. There are gonna be, there are gonna be

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:36):
50 answers, right? There are gonna be so many answers. And this is, this is why we hate talking about this, cuz there's gonna be 50 different answers depending on where you're coming from. And the FTC and the DOJ are gonna have to make some calls and they're gonna

Leo Laporte (00:37:49):
Be like, and then the course will rule, you know? Yeah. So I think all of this is appropriate. I, so get back to Microsoft. I don't, I think may be the fact that this came out the day before Microsoft announced the acquisition of activation may not be a coincidence. Microsoft may have, cuz this is just a question right now. This isn't new policy. Microsoft may have thought now's the time to jump on this, this under, under the door and get it in under the door before the the you know, door slam shut. So I think it's, I think it's appropriate. It's interesting. Meanwhile,

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:24):
Before we move on from regulation, yes, we, we, we could be in a much, a much better place, which of course would be Europe line 51.

Leo Laporte (00:38:35):
Okay. Well, before we go to line 51, okay. <Laugh> let me take a little tiny time out and talk about our sponsor cuz we are at the half hour mark only if you don't include my long boring anecdotes about mattresses and Francis, Fort Kala or your

Speaker 5 (00:38:53):
Efforts to find the simple link on

Leo Laporte (00:38:55):
The you're definitely cutting that out. I took out a whole 10 minutes in the overall timing based on me scrolling up and down, by the way distant folks. It was fascinating. Oh man, we edited that part out completely, but here it doing UI here it is right here under general. There's a little triangle. You can, I missed a little teeny Wey triangle right there. And there it is. Stacey Higginbotham book club vote on the next book and somewhere the vote is here. You can vote on the next book. That's one of them, unauthorized bread, a radicalized Nova. And they talk about where you can get it and all of that stuff. So yeah, it's good to the vote. It's good. You go to the pin right to here you go. It's good. Nor by Netty OCA four four Cora four unauthorized bread by Corey doctoral and Cafu AI 2041.

Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
You can cast your vote right there. If you have a strong opinion. And then when is the next book club it's gonna be next month? I think sometime next month, March at the, we get a March, not February. It would have to be March. Right? Okay. Had to be after we get our vote. Wow. I interviewed Anna in 2018. Holy cow. We watched was an older boat. Yeah. Not well, three years old. Not that old. I mean, well, you know, she's got a new one out. Yes, but they've got a new one out. Yes. our show today brought to you by it pro TV. If you're a, a viewer of any of our TWI shows, I know you are into technology, right? Maybe you've even thought this would be nice to have a career in technology, perhaps an information technology. It well, if you're not sure where to get started, I can give you your first step.

Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
And you know, the law longest journey begins with a single step at it. Pro dot slash TWI. It pro TV has the knowledge, the certificates you need to break into the it world while being very desirable to future employees. This month's theme at it pro TV's perfect. Getting started in. It gives you a great start to the new year. If you wanna dip your toes into it, check out the following courses to get started. Compt is ITF plus and compt is a plus a plus is very often that first desktop support cert that people get, I should mention the it pro TV is the official video partner of comp Tia. So these are the official compt courses and security plus network. Plus it F plus a plus they also have courses this month, special courses on Linux essentials, Microsoft 365 fundamentals, hands on PC build from the bench, Cisco CCT routing and switching and apple certified support professionally ACS, P cert.

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These are great. There's OnDemand webinars, too. Lots of them that will help you decide what part of it you're interested in. And if you're worried that learning about it would be dull and boring, it is anything but all of their educators, they call 'em entertainers are experts in the field, absolutely sharing their passion and that passion makes it fun. They make it fun. Interesting, exciting. I love Adam's stuff by the way. He's great. There's a few of these instructors that they're just so good. If you prefer shorter formats, you'll love it. That the courses are all 20 to 30 minutes each just the right length through your lunch break or a short attention span, but they're always making new stuff. This is very important because the tests change the there's new versions of the software information changes. Seven studios work in Monday through Friday, all day to create great new content.

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Jeff Jarvis (00:43:50):
Is the European regulator speaking. All right. A member of the

Leo Laporte (00:43:53):
European commission. Unbelievable. The video of EU commissioner. Are you ready? This is from T all right, here we go. Let me turn on the sound. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (00:44:07):
Yes. Yes. Ecstasy of gold, a new sheriff.

Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
Wait, you recognize this spaghetti Western that's Clint Eastwood. Watch out this.

Ant Pruitt (00:44:18):
That's the good, the bad and ugly, but the soundtrack

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:21):
Counterfeit products. Ah, but new EU sanctions, lobbying efforts who?

Ant Pruitt (00:44:28):
Huh? I just hope this doesn't get

Leo Laporte (00:44:30):
Pulled. I'm covering it with my whistling. <Laugh> what is illegal? There's a new sheriff in town and it goes by the name of D S a boy that makes me really shiver in my boots. Boy, what does this crap really MIS? What does DSA stand

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:51):
Digital

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Services act? I think it is. And what is it gonna do? Is it gonna eliminate hate speech?

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:56):
Is it gonna oh yes. And this information and everything

Leo Laporte (00:44:58):
Is wrong with illegal content. It's just gonna get rid of all of everything. It's all gonna be gone. Cause Europe know what they're doing because Terry Britton is Clint Eastwood. Yes. In the DSA at noon. Oh, by the way, very first. Oh, nice. Peacemakers here. Very <laugh> very first response tweet to this video. I'm curious. Did you clear the rights to this footage? Mm, nice job. Bread tall. You go to DMC, dead jail. Spotify's getting a little bit of heat. Just a little, just a little <laugh> over Mr. Joe Rogan. Was it 17 thousands scientists

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:50):
Since it really up

Leo Laporte (00:45:51):
To that, something like that. That's that's why they hired Joe Rogan. They wanted a little bit of heat. Now. They might be getting a little too much. It's not still describing though. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. 260 scientists in an open letter. Urge Spotify to take action over mass information events. I think they mean miss. I think the rap action typo. Yeah. <Laugh> I don't get it. Maybe there's a typo in the letter. No, that's this is from the letter. Baseless. Conspiracy theories, broadcasting misinformation. They're particularly upset about a January. Oh, the letter was dated January 10th, but they're upset over a new Eve episode of the Joe Rogan experience known as JRE to its fans in which guests, Dr. Robert Malone promoted baseless, conspiracy theories by allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful asserts. Spotify is blah, blah, blah. What is Spotify's here? Do they, do they own Joe Rogan? No. Yeah. They pay him a fortune. Well, they pay him for exclusivity. Yeah. I don't know that

Ant Pruitt (00:47:03):
Thing, but it's still their platform. And I think they should be held responsible for it because it's their platform.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:11):
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, which is an open PLA for all of us to say the hell we want, they in essence hired him. So, so they are as responsible for him. You want, you want a media analogy? That's a media relationship, Twitter and Facebook aren't but that is, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:28):
They're responsible. So they can make a choice to have 'em or not have 'em. I was talking about this with my friend, Pete Dominic on his podcast. And you know, the fear is Pete says, if they, if they got rid of him or something, oh my God. Then, then he becomes a, a, a even bigger martyr for the cause of stupidity. And, and so Spotify, if I put themself was in a position where, you know, and they're, they're a little hotter to the collar, as Stacey said where, where did two 30 implications on this? If any, they have the right to have 'em run outta happen. That's the implication. They're not re but, but, but it is different. It's interesting aunt. It is que it is a question mark. I wanna get one of our, our lawyer friends and that have a half hour discussion about this to drive Leo nuts. <Laugh> while you were gone, Stacey <laugh> 

Leo Laporte (00:48:17):
Kathy Gilles was great and we're gonna have her back. Absolutely great. You're not gonna let me, but whatever you do, don't ask her about inci. What is it? Incidental, copyright, ancillary,

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:25):
Ancillary copyright, ancillary copyright.

Leo Laporte (00:48:28):
And of course, if you get her and Jeff talking about ancillary copyright, just

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:33):
It's life, Stormz correct. I'm a happy guy. <Laugh> I, is it worse than me on chips? I thought your way back, I

Leo Laporte (00:48:41):
Talking about life. It was adorable. And I enjoyed, I learned a lot. So it was a good conversation about ancillary copyright, but,

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:49):
But it's a good, really good question, Anne. And I'm not sure cuz in this case they are, they, they, they bought the content. But wait a minute,

Leo Laporte (00:48:57):
Wait a minute. Is a radio station responsible for what rush? Limbo says on the radio station.

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:04):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, well, yes. Yes. Cause this in the FCC and radio stations, right? Yes they do. Well, cause that radios, radio radio's different. Not time responsible for publishing an op-ed by rush Limba that libels someone. Yes, they can be sued.

Leo Laporte (00:49:24):
Okay. Yes. Although I have to say my syndicator, premier radio networks, which carried rush Limbaugh and still carries quite a few people or mm-hmm <affirmative> our competitor, which carries Ben Shapiro. They, I mean they leave alone. Nobody stopped these people from saying things like what that Joe Rose. Cause,

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:44):
Cause they're saying awful things. They're not necessarily saying action.

Leo Laporte (00:49:47):
I'm not a journalist. I'm an entertainer.

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:50):
They're saying awful things. Not Joe Rogan says there's nothing wrong with

Leo Laporte (00:49:53):
Saying waffling. Joe Rogan says I'm an F and moron. Does that let him off the hook?

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:00):
No, it, it was a joke.

Leo Laporte (00:50:04):
Yeah, it was. I was just joking. You, you should decide whether you wanna get a vaccine or not. I was just joking. But then this doctor on and says, well, it's much more harmful for young people and you shouldn't get it. And I, you know, I, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Spotify has taken the measure of pulling down old. Some Joe Joe Rogan content that was bad. Spotify's now shutting down Spotify. Well, yeah, bad to find bad, but they've pulled stuff. They've even pulled some of his shows more recent shows. I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:40):
The issue is a moral responsibility, not a

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
Legal one. That's a good point. Okay. There you go. That's really the point. There you go. It's a moral or ethical response ability. Yeah. And we can, we can yell all we want,

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:49):
But I'm not arguing for any kind of legal they are I'm first amendment. Yeah. But moral responsibility. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:50:57):
Yeah. I think as long as subscribers are still rolling into Spotify, Spotify is just going to keep cash

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
In those checks. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. And, and you know, I mean yeah, they're making money on Joe Rogan. So mm-hmm <affirmative>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:14):
Theoretically, we don't actually know that. Yeah. Actually

Leo Laporte (00:51:16):
I think they probably lost money. Okay. To

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:18):
Be honest, they paid him like what was it? A hundred million

Leo Laporte (00:51:22):
Dollars. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:51:23):
Yeah. Have they made good on that yet? I doubt

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:26):
That is a substantial amount of money. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:29):
Direct TV has dumped OIN your favorite network.

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:36):
Yes. Because especially it came out there. This is bad publicity. This is a moral not, not panic, not panic, a moral issue where, and it was a business issue where when the stories came out, that at and T was the prime Mary supporter of OAN was their biggest revenue source. Oh, that doesn't make us look too good.

Leo Laporte (00:51:54):
Do they own DirecTV?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:55):
Wait, that may, that sounds more like a commercial and not a moral issue. Jeff

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:00):
<Laugh>. But the reason it's a commercial issue is because people have a moral

Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
Objection. Right. So I don't know if they actually funded O N they funded, it was indirect, but you're right. I mean, that's why at, oh, they were revenue sourced to them. Yeah. Yeah. So ATT, which does own DirecTV apparently has decided to, I don't know, maybe, or maybe just DirecTV's autonomous anyway. They're not renewing the contract for O N but I think that's related because OAN also a source of a lot of weird disinformation and, and propaganda and conspiracy theories. Even if you like it a lot. O's market, according to Brian Stelter is a couple of years ago. O's total subscriber count is far, fewer, far lower than Fox news, or even Newsmax it's half Newsmax.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:55):
So it's a to,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:57):
Cause it is, it is a crazy person network. Have you watched, I've never seen

Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
It. Is it? I should watch it. Oh yeah. Is it entertaining anyway, if you don't mind

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:07):
It's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:09):
Yeah. I was like, it's only entertaining except you were like, oh no, people actually believe this. Nope. It's not entertaining anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:53:15):
They claimed that COVID was created in a North Carolina lab.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:20):
Hmm. Would surprise. Cause we all thought it was funny, but that's how we got here. We laughed

Leo Laporte (00:53:24):
At that. And O well, and that's the same thing with Joe Rogan. He says, I'm a comic, I'm a comic I'm, I'm making jokes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:35):
How about there's? This is not on the rundown, but, but Brandy's a rosy if you know of her, she's a brilliant

Ant Pruitt (00:53:42):
Yeah. That story with the six person.

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:47):
Yeah. And, and, and Brandy's great cuz she's what I, what I, what I, so what love about her is that she's a librarian who became a reporter who reports on the worst of conspiracy theorists and awful things. But she's still a librarian. Right? I, I love that combination and she's very good at it. She had a really good story. She spent a year on, not like a New York time. Let's go visit a Nazi as far they eat in Panera. This is somebody who tried to really understand what was going on in his head. Somebody who got up to the steps of the capital on January 6th and then said no, this is from, and what happened in

Leo Laporte (00:54:22):
That process? This is from NBC escape from Fe how January 6th changed one person's path. And it's a guy

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:33):
Changed his mind, places like that. Yeah. They're not there's no, she makes the point. There's no one source. It's not like, oh, Facebook, that it turn off Facebook. Everything is okay. Or turn off all the way in everything's okay. No, it feeds. It's a whole bunch of stuff that feeds in media have a major here. And once he was primed to believe crazy stuff, he, his first one was the pizza conspiracy in Hillary Clinton. Right? Well, it could be right. And once he was down that rabbit hole, there was nothing but down toward the center of the earth to go. And a lot of things push him there. And so all in has even doesn't be, have to have a large audience.

Leo Laporte (00:55:04):
Yeah. I, his experience I've had that experience when you're in a mob. In my case it was anti Vietnam protests in the seventies, but when you're in a mob and he talks about, he says I saw their eyes change. You know, when somebody gets really angry and you just feel like they're gonna go nuts, feel like I was watching people get radicalized. And that's what happens in a

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:31):
Mo it was a much more mellow anti moratorium marches. Leo, what, what kind of nasty marches were you in? We were all trying to save the world.

Leo Laporte (00:55:38):
Well, we thought we were trying to save the world, but in particular, in one in the mining of high Fong Harbor, do you remember that when we mind the Harbor and we, it was in Santa Cruz. I was in high school still. And somebody decided we should March down ocean street and block the highway exit go out and block highway one. Oh, or highway one, I guess it was. And I, this is, I have a vivid memory of this was carrying a V con flag. And in fact, I believe in case anybody wants to keep me from running for president, you'll find a picture on the front page of the Santa Cruz, Sentinel of me holding a via con flag. Oh my. I thought, well, there goes my political career, but oh, shucks. But <laugh> I remember keep it actor getting, getting, you know, I didn't think this was a good idea. I thought this is just gonna people off, but I, you get swept away by it and then they start rocking cars and I could see how you slowly, gradually. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Escalate. And then the next thing you do is you sit it car on fire and if you're angry enough and it doesn't take that's, the point is maybe it's only 10% of the crowd, but it it's, it spreads

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:51):
It's infecti I covered the, the, the Harvey milk. You, you get angry after Dan white in San Francisco and yes, yes. I saw that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:00):
And

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:02):
Moratorium March, that was mellow. Oh. I

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Went to all the teach ins and the mellow things. I did that too. You know, I'm gonna take off sixth period. I'm going to a teach in up at the university. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:14):
Wow. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:57:17):
My parents were hippies. It was okay. I was allowed, You know, how pads diverge in the woods, you know, we're

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:26):
Back, we're back on the porch, grandpa. So let me tell you, I tell stories about the sixties here. It comes. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:57:35):
I'm gonna stop right there. But I understand, I do understand this article, I mean, has nothing to do with anything, but I do understand this article that Brandy has a rosy wrote for reported on for NBC. And I understand this, this guy, which is interesting, cause I don't think most people pull back from the brink. I think you get sucked into it. Right? Exactly. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> exactly. And I think had a unique perspective where he went, whoa, this is getting at well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:59):
His family, he also, he arrived home. His, his family could see where he was on his phone. They knew he was at the Capitol. They were afraid to death. He arrives home and they did an intervention. Yeah. And it was kind of a, of a light bulb moment to say, oh, like, what was I thinking? Yeah. What's fascinating about this too. Is Brandy who I respect immensely is a journalist on Twitter, said she has a MI Miranda statement that she gives to sources. That's smart. And she tells them if this, this is gonna affect your life.

Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
Yeah. Yeah. That's really sad. And all journalists should do this. You should write this up and take it to

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:32):
Your, and this guy, the story took three months longer because he wasn't ready three months ago. And now he was ready and gave her permission. They changed his last name, but people changed his name. Right. but really, really interesting piece because it was, it's not that usual. Let's go to the diner and understand what the, what the crazies are saying. Yeah. This was trying to understand his real thinking and, and it's valuable. Yeah. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:53):
I don't think everybody gets a Miranda. Like I will talk to people and explain to them, look, you are clearly on the record when you talk to me. But I would say it's a very rare story that I would like if it's like more of a human interest, this, I know this feels more than a human interest, but it is kind of human interesting. But otherwise no, in certain people, in certain positions of power, you know what you're doing and

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:15):
If you don't, well, I think Stacey you're, oh, if you're

Leo Laporte (00:59:17):
Talking to politician, you don't need to Mirandize them. Okay. I was like,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:21):
I was like, I am not. Mirandizing

Leo Laporte (00:59:22):
No, not a PR. You're not doing that a PR professional. No, but when you're talking to a normal person and you're about to write a story that that is gonna change their lives, change their lives. I think it's appropriate to be honest and fortunate.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:32):
Okay. Yes, I will.

Leo Laporte (00:59:33):
I will. And I bet you, you do do things like say I just want you to know I'm recording this, et cetera.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:40):
I do it. And I even do it for the CEO of a startup because I have had so many of them just say the dumbest things to me, I'm like, I am not your friend. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:51):
They should know that, but they don't often. Or they don't some of the, like

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:55):
If they have PR representation, I don't yeah. Go out of it. But if it's like, there's a lot of people, people listen to the show and they're like starting up a company and they're trying to do something cool. And I'm like, Hey, I'll write about your gadget. But then I'm pretty clear with them cuz they're like,

Leo Laporte (01:00:09):
Yeah. This is change. Don't your life. You are gonna sell a million. No, I don't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:14):
Do that.

Leo Laporte (01:00:16):
Are you ready? Hey, speaking of witch, I blame you for the success of, of nano leaf. You were the first person that told me about it. And then mic a Sergeant. They are retiring those original home kit, light panels that you showed us. But yes, that's good news. They're

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:32):
Not home kit. Electro item Stacey. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:00:35):
Oh, they're not home kit. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:36):
Oh, well they work with apple, but they're not home. This was pre home kit. They launched these in 2016.

Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
But they're 50% off. Now if you wanna snag

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:47):
'Em they are, they're not going to sell anymore. You can only buy expansion packs for the original triangles for like, till they run out. Now I did ask them, I said, Hey, how long are you gonna do security updates and support? Oh, and the answer, if you're one, since we're talking about it, I tell you they are going to offer it indefinitely. CU support and app features will be available including group scenes, allowing users to control their light panels with current and future nano leaf products. So all of that is still gonna stay. And I even a year after this, they launched the nano leaf canvases. And I was like, are we gonna expect those to become a legacy product in a year or so from now? And she's like, at this time there are no plans to transition. So,

Leo Laporte (01:01:31):
So what was normally say $680 for the 30 panels rhythm starter kit is now 499, $19 expansion panels. That's not quite half off, but a pretty significant reduction. So if you've thought, oh, I'd like to have these wifi controlled L E D oh they're panels.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:54):
They're 30% off the light panels, promo and 50% off accessories. I'm so sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
Well, it said the article we were reading said 50. So you, you not mistaken. I'm

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:04):
I'm reading the original press statement. Sorry

Leo Laporte (01:02:07):
Up. Oh, I see. The article says up to, up to, up to I that up to as little as, yeah. All right. So anyway, that's but the thing they're replacing it with is better.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:20):
The banana leaf shapes it is and they have a, they've done a real, okay. Let me just be real for y'all for a second. I now have my

Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Elements please. And thank you. You're always real Stacey <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:33):
I know I've never known. This means not be the secret here. Would I say I'm gonna be real? That it means I'm about to say something bad about something. I

Leo Laporte (01:02:40):
Know this is she's elements. Yes. <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:44):
So change her life. They suck. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
No. They're the most

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:50):
Frustrating product.

Leo Laporte (01:02:52):
Have you never told us that before young? Well, that's it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:56):
For? So this is, we were, so I was in love with them and then I updated it to the thread border router because you know, it's thread, border router, and I love manner. Right. who doesn't like that. And then they started getting wonky, wonky, and I was like, oh, they would do things like turn on in the middle of the night for no reason they would do things like turn on at all.

Leo Laporte (01:03:21):
That's awesome. I was awesome. Sounds like the I OT life, frankly. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:26):
It is kind of, so, and then what happened is I talked to them and they were like, it's a software update. Only a few people, ares

Leo Laporte (01:03:34):
Life for us. And I OT life for us lights go on. They go off. I don't switch. I don't know. It's ant, not just cuz it's a bad taste.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:47):
They promised an update. The update came through. It did not fix the problem of them randomly turning on, which is why I'm finally giving up on them. And I think if they don't, I've emailed them again this week. I was look, if these don't stop turning on in the middle of the night, <laugh> I mean, we have to literally unplug them when we go to bed. I you know, are we

Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
Gonna pitch this dwindle has the elevator pitch for these. When they came out, he says the elevator pitch was disco floors for your wall. <Laugh> that's not bad. I think dwindles got it. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:24):
I can't recommend them anymore. So don't buy them cuz their software is glitchy unless, and if you do buy them, don't put them anywhere near a room that you sleep. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:04:34):
I learned that way back when with the first hue lights. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:39):
Those are fine. And they fixed

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
The issue. I know they fixed it, but that was it on here for me. What's on top of your, I O T buyer's remorse list.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:51):
Right now that is the device causing the most pain in my marriage. Do you still

Leo Laporte (01:04:55):
Have 'em on the wall?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:56):
Yeah. They're still on the wall.

Leo Laporte (01:04:58):
Does Andrew is things like Stacey the Nala again?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:04):
Okay. Two nights ago, four in the morning they had turned on at one 30 and I turned them off at four in the morning. He pokes me hard in the shoulder and he is like the NA Leafs are odd again.

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:17):
He did he say your de lights <laugh> as he should nailed it? Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:28):
When Andrew suffers. I I know,

Leo Laporte (01:05:32):
Have I told you the story of the of the mattress pad that cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:37):
I feel your page,

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:38):
Man. I really do. Please do tell it again. You're just a great story folks.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:43):
No, no, no, no, no, no. Cause we gotta end this show by five y'all

Leo Laporte (01:05:46):
You know it was 10 years ago today. Was

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:50):
It SOPA a victory for the good guys? Yeah, I remember

Leo Laporte (01:05:53):
The, I remember this. Well, John, remember we went black and white whole day SOPA, which was this? What was the, what was that sta was it the stop online privacy act, privacy piracy, not privacy piracy <laugh> stop online privacy

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:10):
Act. I'm in favor of the stop. The privacy act show has changed.

Leo Laporte (01:06:14):
It was the largest, even to this day, the large, just online protest ever SOPA was, you know, Congress was considering it, but the blackout, which was 24 million people did it. Many sites just went dark. That was the most how you did it was just a, a black page. We didn't wanna go dark that day. So in support, we went to black and white. We became this whole, all of our shows were black and white that day, which I think was good. And we wanted to keep doing it. And, and, and during the show say, here's why we're black and white. Here's what you could do. It worked. Congress was spooked by the whole thing. They killed the bill in 2012 and no significant copy rate legislation has been introduced in the 10 years since. So it was, that was a big victory, an

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:06):
Amazing victory for digital activism. And it also set the it's set actually a lot of things in motion for how activists deal with issues online. So it's definitely not just our websites going dark and like, but even like how people communicated bad in Twitter and shared information, it was a, and remember they, that got us to like, they set up like a bunch of Twilio kind of things where you could automatically dial your Congressman and leave message. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I mean, brilliant. It was, it was the, it was well organized even at the beginning of digital activism, but it was a case study that helped like, but lot us know practices for digital activism. It's a bunch of,

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:48):
You know, white geeks fighting for the technology. Where is the effort to do the same right now for voting rights? Good point. I wish, I wish we could see the same kind of mobile as good point.

Leo Laporte (01:08:00):
Now the same one in democracy in in its defense, SOPA was a direct attack on the internet. So it was really understood the internet to respond that way. But I think you're right. I think I just don't think there's a unity in the same way as the internet had unity over that in the same way over voting rights. I think that's a, well, I think

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:19):
Some leadership get us us there. If somebody would stand up and say, we're gonna, we're gonna bring a bad signal. It's a bad signal.

Leo Laporte (01:08:25):
I'm a, here's what I, when I, you know, when Lisa and I watch a TV and we go, I just say, you know what? There's only one solution to this, which elect more Democrats. The reason people like Kirsten cinema and Joe mansion have so much power is we have a razor thin majority. If there were 60 or 70 Democrats in the Senate, this wouldn't be happening. So in a way, this is reflecting the will of the people. This is who got elected. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:55):
It's it's I mean, okay, but no, we're not gonna talk about it. Let's not do this.

Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
It's politics. I'm just saying <laugh>, it's not like he's already lost over Republican. It's not like Joe Biden's blowing it. No, just saying 50 Democrats. It's a, it's not,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:10):
A's hard. It's hard to elect Democrats because there's repo. There's Gerry. There's also the fact that it's hard to elect Democrats because no, it's true. If you've got two senators and you know, California sense too, and north, I understand

Leo Laporte (01:09:26):
We have a structural problem. The electoral college has broken too, but that's the way it is. So if you care about that, Democrats, if this is something that's an issue for you, here's how, what you do. You don't say white house, you do something about it. You go out and you elect Democrats, you go campaign for 'em, you fundraise for 'em and you get 'em elected, cuz that's the way to solve this. That's the way to solve the filler. The filibuster just reflects the fact that we don't have a super majority period. We, I shouldn't say we, they Democrats don't have a super majority. So that's the, I mean, it's not go out and get people elected that's you know, that's the way, that's the way. But,

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:03):
But if you're, but if, if, if you can't give water to the people who vote, if they have to wait six hours to vote,

Leo Laporte (01:10:08):
Look, look certain places. There's a lot of people trying hard to make this hard and UN and imbalance. I understand that you have to overcome that. Okay. That's but there is a path that's the path. Instead people are going, eh, and comes November of this year. You're gonna really be crying when we lose the house and the Senate. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:31):
I meanwhile media, my, my, my colleagues are, are, we should never be allowed to predict the future are just presuming that it's lost. Cause it was in the past, right? They

Leo Laporte (01:10:41):
Didn't predict. Yeah. Midterm election usually loses the midterms. But just saying w way is not the answer. Go out, do something fundraise. If you care about this, there is a path, but you've gotta follow it. You can't just whine it and say, well, it's Joe, it's Joe Biden's job to do it. No action. Bernie Sanders is not gonna convince Kristin Kirsten son and Joe mansion to change. You know what it is, who is the voters? So go vote. And admittedly, it's an uphill battle because of things like the, you know, the voting

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:17):
Rights. I think it's an impossible battle. You should look at how Texas Jerry. Oh my God,

Leo Laporte (01:11:21):
It's terrible. Oh, I know it's terrible.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:23):
I know because S a the same structural inequities that are, but that happens because

Leo Laporte (01:11:28):
There's Republican legislature in Texas. Right. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:31):
The, we have a Republican legislature in Texas because the people in certain areas have half, like the people in liberal areas have half the people I understand and representing them. I mean, it's the same structural issue. So that's why we have, why are we talking? No. Well, it's a good thing

Leo Laporte (01:11:49):
To talk about. Let's talk about SOPA and PIP. This is a really good report. I found this in the tech took article by Yoi. Benkler at the Berkman center a couple, a couple of years after the big protest. Look at this. This is, here's a book based on this. Yeah. Yo Yoi loves these things. These network maps. This is where the, the big dots are where the organization happened. Look, Tech's a big dot there, right? There has almost as big as CNET there. So this is, and Wikipedia went dark. I remember that. That was a big deal somewhere. There's a little dot for TWI here somewhere.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:24):
<Laugh> somewhere. There's a little dot for GIGO. I remember. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
Landing our coverage. Boeing. There's this was a decade ago. Hard to believe. I know, don't you. I

Ant Pruitt (01:12:34):
Remember, I remember turning on the stream, just playing, playing this day. I can see it right now and, and just black and white. Like it happened yesterday that

Leo Laporte (01:12:42):
This is, oh, you that's neat. That was a, it was a tough decision. Cause I really wanted to support it. I really was a strong believer, but I also don't want to go. We also had to talk about

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:51):
It. We had

Leo Laporte (01:12:53):
That's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:54):
That's, that's what we that's. We ended up doing something similar because we were like, put a banner is a

Leo Laporte (01:12:59):
New site. Right, right. 10 years ago, I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:03):
Recommend Yoi banker's network

Leo Laporte (01:13:04):
Propaganda, which is he's great of that. And the wealth of networks and you know what he does, which is network great. He, he offers them for free is a kind of, of commons download. You can buy the book and you should, but you can also download it for free. If you want. At least he did that with the wealth networks. I don't know if he did it with the, I don't know if it was for the letter and I think that's his policy anyway publisher let's let's see if the publisher lets you mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> Hey big props to IO. Do you know who, who IO is? IO IO. It's off to work. We go, they, this is a court action, a landmarks kind of like the SOPA PIP battle. A landmark copyright decision IO is in Hamburg, Germany.

Leo Laporte (01:13:50):
We've talked about 'em before they run a number of adblocking tools extend ad block plus is the best known. They went to court over whether the Springer went to court against that, a Springer said, Axel Springer, a springed iOS ad blocking violates our copyright because it looks at our HTML on our website. So IO to their credit fought this. And this is in Hamburg and IO one. This is the 16th time. IO has prevailed against lawsuits and defended the rights of internet users, code developers, publishers in 2021, the lawsuit was brought by Axel Springer, which is the big publisher, right? They publish a lot of stuff.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:47):
They, yeah, they all. They're also the, the, the kind of the, the

Leo Laporte (01:14:50):
Fox they're the Murdock post

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:52):
Germany of Germany built is the very conservative Tablo

Leo Laporte (01:14:54):
Paper. The lawsuit sought to dictate that the HTML language used to render a website page should be protected under copyright law, which would make it illegal for any technology or even an individual to change the appearance. So if you ever use your own custom CSS to make the page look different, if you make the text bigger, is that violating the copyright? Maybe? of course the w three C the worldwide web consortium, and a lot of us believe that that's the whole premise of the web, is that yeah. Is that you should be able to modify that. I mean,

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:28):
IOS model though, is, has always been questionable to me where we have, we, we, we block ads except unless you pay us,

Leo Laporte (01:15:36):
We'll look them through. I don't, well, they, that's why they have the money to fight this. Okay. I don't recommend ad block. Plus we always tell everybody use you block origin. It's free because Gorsuch the guy, gore hill, rather the guy who does it Gorsuch is somebody else. The gore Hill's got the guy who does it is kind of cantankerous doesn't wanna make money on it. He just hates ads. So he makes the best ad blocker out there. But he has no money, no wherewithal to fight actual Springer. So on the other hand Springer, I think understands that IO is probably much more of a problem for them. So the Hamburg court rejected the copyright argument. Once again, decided in flavor of IO and thanks to them, you can still use HTML in any way you want to. It's still an open standard. Thank you. And yeah. IO has this acceptable ad standard thing where we've talked about this before, where? Yeah, yeah. Over the years. Yeah. you know, on the, on, I understand that's a problem on the one hand, but on the other hand it's cuz it's how they have the money to fight this stuff. So I

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:42):
Actually put this story on the run down first in German, cuz it's the only version

Leo Laporte (01:16:45):
I could find. Thank you for finding the one. I had bookmarked it as well. The non German version. <Laugh> see, see, how's one. I had to book walk through this way. Maybe English you see crypto.com everywhere. Have you seen you? And I know you watch football, you cannot watch football game without Matt Damon saying the fortune favors, the brave

Ant Pruitt (01:17:08):
That commercial confuses the heck outta me every time I watch it, but I'm still more fascinated by the fact that they bought the name and rights to the Coliseum in Los Angeles staple center. And

Leo Laporte (01:17:20):
They are

Ant Pruitt (01:17:21):
All over F1. No one's

Leo Laporte (01:17:23):
Watching F1 now. They got a lot of moneys. No, they got a lot of money. Crypto.Com. It's like, wow. I have some strong feelings. I'm starting to have stronger feelings about NFTs and crypto that it's a scam all and told it's a scam. But I know that that will make people yell at me. So I won't say it out loud. However <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:17:50):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:17:51):
I see. I was thinking that, did I say that out loud?

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:55):
Did you, did you say that it's a scam? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
No, cuz I know that I'm uphill on this one. Everybody says, no, it's a great thing. And it's gonna change the world. Eh, I think all it's doing is, is a big transfer of, of wealth from the suckers into the, from stupid

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:15):
To smart, the bros stupid, bad, the good or good to bad.

Leo Laporte (01:18:18):
I don't think stupid and smart is right. I think it's suckers and bros. And, or, you know, conmen PT Barnums yeah. And anyway, crypto.com suffered a hack. We got a talk

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:30):
About favorite

Leo Laporte (01:18:31):
Story of the week. Well, let me finish this story and then we will okay. Fine. crypto.com just suffered. I was just explaining the background.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:38):
I'm sorry. Yes. I'm sorry. I forgot. It was the intro. It's like a Morian Joe question that goes on forever. I'm popcorn. I need my popcorn so much

Leo Laporte (01:18:53):
Love. Just trying to do my job here. Do you think I'm Herbo? I'm am I? I

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:58):
Been Herbo. I'm embarrassed that I forgot you were doing a story. So I, I had to, I had to laugh. No, Jeff Jeff was on Twitter while you were doing badly Leo and so Jeff lost his train of thought guy was over bro. Who never spoke talking?

Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
Is it my turn? I don't care. I don't even like this story. What's your story, Jeff? No, it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:18):
It's the related one. It's the dune guys. The dune

Leo Laporte (01:19:21):
Do. Oh, I love this story. Okay. This is this one I can really dig my teeth into. Yeah. So you know what a D anyways a tea a D O is is

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:35):
DS distributed and

Leo Laporte (01:19:37):
DS and DBER no it's yeah, distributed anyway. It's the, the idea, the first doubt. Oh, no decentralized autonomous organization. It's a decentralized autonomous organization, which is basically a group of people get together to try to raise money. The first one I heard about was to buy the constitution, a copy of the constitution. The constitution do well there. This is the, be this Dow, this, this summarizes the whole problem. So there was a Dow put together to buy a copy of do the book. It's called the spice do because as you know, in Doune it's all about the spice. They raised keep

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:21):
Going. They

Leo Laporte (01:20:21):
Raised 2.2, 6 million euros for, to buy a book. There's the book, a rare copy, I guess of the 10 copies of stamp. Yeah. Of it's not even Frank Herbert tune. It's a, it's like some sort of graphic novel or something. So their goal now they raised all this money from all these suckers. I mean KARE readers, their goal is to make the book public to the extent permitted by law, which is none. Well, that's the edit. Yeah. Well, they edited that produce an original animated limited series inspired by the book at sell to streaming service, support deriv products from the community. They apparently think that go with it. If you buy a book, like if you go to the bookstore and you, and you buy a copy of the latest Danielle steel novel that you have now, the rights to make a movie out of it, it doesn't work that way. But apparently I didn't really,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:18):
I thought that was people making fun of, I didn't actually think that's what they thought. That's

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:22):
Actually what they thought that's tucked into it. Yep. But, but because I thought there were actually two stories that were done early on this, I forget which one I put in the Kotaku. There was also a a Buzzfeed version that linked to another report that said that well, after this guy, supposedly put in 3 million euros of his own to prime the pump here and get it going. Then he supposedly raised something like 12 million euros to make the movie. So the question is, was this to prove your point, Leo, just a front to raise a lot of money from a lot of idiots.

Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
This is Alejandro Juki, who is according to Buzzfeed, legendary for what? For, I don't know. I'm like so they have apparently liberated, they raised the money and liberated the, his Bible for a movie, which was never produced. Orson Wells was gonna play the Baron har Conan <laugh> Jagger had signed on. I'm not sure for which part pink Floyd had agreed to do the music and Salvador Dolly would play the emperor of the universe. By the way, Dolly's fee was a hundred thousand dollars per minute of screen time. He printed 20 luxurious volumes detailing the screenplay, illustrations and designs. He called the director's Bible. That's commonplace the TV show. You make a Bible, which is kind of like everything you need to know about this. The studio said, yeah, no. And the film was never made. There have been other adaptations, as you know, over time, the Bibles, this is a, the Buzzfeed story attained, almost religious status among revels scholars.

Leo Laporte (01:23:08):
And sci-fi obsessive. It vanished from the public eye until this November, when number five of the 20 came up for auction at Christie's appraisers thought it would sell for $40,000. They never heard <laugh> of, of Bitcoin baby, the winning bid 2.9 billion, I'm sorry, million. It should have been billion million placed by. So Bon Saki, he's a 25 year old cryptocurrency nerd NFT collector. And, and this is the most important part. Freshly minted millionaire from Woodland, California. He says, this is pretty much my entire net worth, but I fronted the 3 million knowing that the community has my back, the community is the spice Dow. This cryptocurrency distributed autonomous organization. They, so apparently by the way, a week later, they went back and said, we need six more million dollars by that's the thing that's to buy the buy, buy a copyright lawyer, another 2.2 million to make an animated film inspired by the vision. I guess that makes sense if Jo RKI is behind this, he's saying yeah. Yeah. It's okay. You make some movie. He probably is one who has the copyright for it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:23):
Well, but he doesn't have the copyright. He doesn't have the copyright for do oh,

Leo Laporte (01:24:27):
Well, so call it June or spoon, June or,

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:32):
And hire some more spice Chronicles,

Leo Laporte (01:24:34):
Spice, Chronicles, and

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:35):
Pepper Chronicles.

Leo Laporte (01:24:38):
The book of spice, the spice

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:39):
Boys, the spice boys, the spice boys

Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
Spice. This is not Sobey's first NFT. He sold in August an NFT that looks like Odell Beckham, Jr. He sold it to a deco Odell Beckham Jr. Who was on the LA Rams, unbelievable himself for 2.7 million worth of the, this is where he got the 2.7 million. It was a crypto punk of O BJ. I know aunt, you have NFTs and I don't want to, I don't wanna ran on your proof. No, no, no,

Ant Pruitt (01:25:13):
No, no, no, no, sir. I've said before I have a love, hate relationship with it.

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
I know. I know you're not scamming anybody at all. No. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:25:20):
It it's. I, I, I look at stuff like this and it just, it burns me up. It ruins. Yeah. Then there's a lot of, of other artists out there that are making some unbelievable art and are getting stiffed, but yet somebody just throws eight pixels on the screen and <laugh>, it's popular. Really? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:40):
When you pay gas money, whose whose pocket does the

Leo Laporte (01:25:45):
Mins, whose pocket does that go? Goes. Yeah. So this is one of the, one of the elements of crypto is that not only does the initial coin have to be mined by a computer or bunch of computers doing hard math problems, but it also all transactions have to be registered in the blockchain by a minor. So minors can do either they can or both and many do. And you make money for either. In the case of mining, you get the crypto in the case of of verifying transactions, putting transactions in blockchains, you get some, you get paid some crypto, and, and often, if you notice, when you do a transaction, I've seen this with Bitcoin. You can decide how fast you want that transaction to occur. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And if you are willing to pay more Bitcoin to do it, you'll transactional occur quickly. Bitcoin is very sluggish. And so sometimes the transaction might usually half an hour, more days even I'm maybe it's down to half an hour now. So that really, so you can, in other words, if you don't pay anything, it may take days. It may or may never be registered. So it's, I think it's honestly,

Ant Pruitt (01:26:56):
I personally, I'm looking at some of the other

Leo Laporte (01:26:59):
Options. Yeah. The people who cheerlead this are, I think mostly people who stand and make money for it. Probably. Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (01:27:06):
Yeah. Frankly. Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (01:27:08):
Scheme technology that the people who is interested, the people who own say NFTs can't say this is bunk because the whole premise is they gotta find somebody else who'll pay more. Right. They paid for it. So they've gotta promote it up. So kind of this G up propaganda, it's a bubble.

Ant Pruitt (01:27:29):
Yeah. I I've, I've moved my stuff. Well, I'm still in the process of moving it all. I'm trying to move it to something beyond Ethereum and, and all of that gas stuff. Because there's other protocols out there that are a lot cheaper and people, or what about,

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
I will sell you a print of my photo.

Ant Pruitt (01:27:47):
I do that too. That

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
<Laugh>, I mean, signed and numbered. That seems to be an honest, relatively honest transaction to me. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I do that too. Yeah. Signed and numbered. And now you have it and maybe you don't have the block, the Providence of this photo on your blockchain. So you can't prove it's signed and numbered by it, through it. But I don't think that's the end of the world. At least you have a photo you could put on your wall.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:09):
Right. You know, and the thing is my audience or slash customers, or what have you, are the people that could care less about blockchain authenticity? That that's, if it says it came from me, they're probably happy, you know? Yeah. I, I

Leo Laporte (01:28:25):
Think honestly, I, I figure you're a big D fan. You might wanna own this book and have it on your coffee table. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> awesome. Now for, for only a few hundred dollars, you can own a link to something you, don't what, I don't know, you own the right to resell the link, which is, I think what this is all about. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:49):
Anyway, and again, it's, it's a love, hate relationship for, for me, because I do like the idea that artists can continue to, to have another revenue stream for their work. But at the same time, it can cost that artist, a lot of money and a lot of headache. And then there's ways of getting ripped off with just people, right. Clicking and downloading, or the hack as we saw on crypto.com. So it's, but it can go, but art is stolen in, in, in pirate or what have you in regular life outside of the digital world, you know? So I mean, the risk are there either way you look at, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:29:30):
That's true. What's cool. Is Akiba actually bought the physical book. He has the book now mm-hmm <affirmative> and it sounds awesome. It's got illustrations by HR Geiger and Mobius and, and Jean JRO that's Jean JRO. And so I mean, it's really, this is, this is a real who was bidding

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:49):
Against him to get to that price.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Oh, I don't know, but I could see, but how did that process, if you love these guys and you love doing this is historic and there's only 20 of them. So it has value. Yeah. I Don Christy, well, it has scarcity. Scarcities Christy's thought it'd be worth 40,000, not two point some million. Right. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:07):
How did it get from there to, I mean, what, what did they, I bid $5. I would've been 2.6 million. Is there another Dow? Yeah. That's the thing it's so I think everybody, what I love about this story, everybody's looking at it and saying, no, they can't be that stupid. No, they can't be. And so either they are that stupid or it's a, it's a scam was almost

Leo Laporte (01:30:29):
As stupid. We don't know. I think it, I, after reading the Buzzfeed story, I think I it's a little bit misrepresented that they thought, oh good. Now we can make this movie. I, I don't, I think they must have known better. But on the other hand, now they wanna Ray more money to make the movie.

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:45):
But

Leo Laporte (01:30:48):
Anyway, I don't know. Look, if you wanna throw your money away, go right ahead. There's worse things to do with your money. There are also better things there are, and there are much better things you could buy some nanos. Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:02):
Exactly. Wait, no, no, no. That's not.

Leo Laporte (01:31:05):
That's not an option. You can, you can annoy husband. Stacey.

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:09):
Let's take, he'll tell you hers.

Leo Laporte (01:31:11):
Let's take it place. <Laugh> Hey, I do wanna tell you about something that everybody now that we are, you know, in day years, what is this year? Two <laugh>. Oh my God. Unfortunately it's zoom will be year three. Won't it? When you're, if you have people going back to work, of course you wanna have your huddle room, well equipped for meetings. You don't wanna have to make people sit side by side. You, you wanna be able to have people socially distance, but this means your audio suffers. Doesn't it? No, it doesn't because no RVA solves this problem. Normally. I mean, I think if you've ever set up a big audio conferencing room, especially the big ones, the larger ones, you realize how expensive it can be. You've gotta get, you've gotta design it. You've gotta hire a team to install it. Technicians, to configure it, a dizzying array of Mike speakers, DSPs.

Leo Laporte (01:32:05):
And then there's the wires. And it's just, you know, it's just crazy. Your room will be offline for days and will have to be regularly. Calibrated. Neva is so much better. They have something they've patented called a, a microphone missed technology. All it takes is one or depending on the size of the room, one or two integrated microphone and speaker bars. They fill the room with thousands of virtual microphones. There's no dead zones. Everyone in the room can be heard, no matter which way they're facing. It means people can talk and move naturally in the space. They can socially distance. You don't have to sterile eyes microphones or anything, cuz it's all in this soundbar, which you, by the way, can Mount, you don't need some fancy guy coming in. You could just hang it up on the wall. Yourself. Neva sound microphone is technology, audio continuously auto calibrates.

Leo Laporte (01:32:55):
So your room is instantly and always ready with optimized audio. You need an outside technician. This installation is, is trivially easy. You can do it yourself. Or, you know, you can get, you know, your, your handy guy to come in and do it. It's a simple thing. Management's simple too. You get an Reva console. So you have multiple Neva rooms. You can monitor manager, adjust the systems and you don't even have to be on site. So it to doesn't have to go from room to room. They can do it all remotely if they need to. So if look, this is the installation. In fact, you should go to the website and find out all about it and you are evva.com nva.com. It's by the way, it's also an attractive solution. It's kind of magic. When people come into the conference room and they'll say, where the mics, where should I, where should I talk to?

Leo Laporte (01:33:40):
What should I, which way should I face any way that you're comfortable because you're gonna be clearly hurt no matter where you are ask yourself, do you want to go with that costly, crazy complicated traditional system or make the leap to the simple and economical Neva? I think I know the answer. N U R E V a neva.com N U R E Eva, neva.com. What a great way, what a great way to get that huddle room sounding good. And you know, I'm all about good sound, really important. And I who, who of us, hasn't had a horrible experience, you know, with the phone in the middle of the table or, you know, I mean, it's just, you can do better neva.com. Thank you Neva for supporting our fine program. We talked about, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. You just saying Woohoo. Woohoo. I'm so used to Jeff saying line 29 that I, I thought,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:40):
Can I go back to the DS for one? Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
The DS Dow DS.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:44):
So the Dow DS. So I, I, there's a, because I happen to look at, at Twitter, even though I'm not allowed to, I did there's a guy named Mike Dunford. Who's a lawyer who was trying to give them advice. And one thing I, one angle I hadn't thought of here is the tax situation. He, he says that you, you made an agreement to raise money under certain promises. And that gives you all kinds of legal issues. That's one, the other one that occurs to me is somebody now got a whole bunch of money and doesn't that somebody owe a whole bunch of money.

Leo Laporte (01:35:16):
I, I guess so. Christie's I guess, and whoever buying and

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:21):
Holding art is subject to different tax arrangements because it's, it's considered a collectible oh, Uhhuh. So collectibles and, and don't ask me what the rules are, cuz I don't remember. But collectibles they're different for inheritance tax. Is they when you buy it? Yeah. Have fun. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
By the way, if you do go to forum dot spice, do.xyz, you can read what they're proposing to do. One of the things is to upload individual pages so that the ownership is democratized and then burn the books.

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:58):
Yeah. That's no,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:59):
No that's a bad idea. Never burn anything that involves burning a book. It is

Leo Laporte (01:36:04):
Optional. Never a good idea. It is optional. You don't have to,

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:10):
That's less like taking a Gutenberg Bible, cutting it up into pieces, making Xeroxes of it and then burning it

Leo Laporte (01:36:16):
Here. By the way, is the the it's both a meme and a bell curve, the meme, the meme and bell curve of what people wanna do, of course, on the thin ends of the bell curve, burn the book and burning achieves many goals at once in the middle, the fat wedge. No, you cannot burn the book, which is our single asset <laugh> But that's only 34%. So it is definitely, you know, we got a ways to go. All right. Thank you for that. A one megabyte page would cost 177 M gas, approximately which at a cost of 100 G WWI per gas was in 18 per page. Yeah. I'd bark too. <Laugh> biscuit. That's the gas fees or 18 E <laugh> that's Cray. Cray. Oh, and the guy who wrote this is of course anonymous pseudo Andon X, E E post-doc in a university. Now full-time in crypto inventor of JPEG mining.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:28):
<Laugh> JP, whatever that is

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
Mining. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be skeptic. It's the, it's the wave of the future. Lucky

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:36):
Students who don't have that person anymore. How's

Leo Laporte (01:37:38):
Your, how's your world score? Jeff. Get 'em fired

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:42):
Up now. <Laugh> I thought blocked that word everywhere.

Leo Laporte (01:37:46):
You, you got it in three. I would've got it in, in three, but I, I guessed the less obvious version of the word and I got it in five. I should have got

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:56):
I'd rather see you do user interface than this.

Leo Laporte (01:38:01):
Okay. Let's do user interface. <Laugh> you said it. Not me. Let's see what else? This is another one. Kind of like the other one, an Austrian watchdog. I think that would be pronounced the watch dog. How do you say watchdog? No, that, that was, that was hunt hunt and Austrian hunt dog. Ho's dog hunt hunt is hunt. So what's a watch hunt. Okay. I dunno up Ave schnitzel in Australian, Australian VE schnitzel rules, German companies use of Google analytics back hunt back hunt hunt I'm watching is breaching. GDP are because it sells data, sends data to the us

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:59):
Where the government might get it.

Leo Laporte (01:39:00):
Thanks to SHMS two, which is the U us data sharing rule. The Austrian data protection Vaun has ruled that you can't use Google analytics cuz it sends data to us.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:18):
It's gotten ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (01:39:20):
It's a violation of GDPR. Isn't that?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:25):
Isn't that true? This maturation of an industry, all this is

Leo Laporte (01:39:27):
What happens. We do we still use Google analytics? I, I tried, I tried really hard to convince management here, not to use Google analytics

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:37):
On. She said not until you fix the bed.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:40):
<Laugh> management is gonna come running in here again and start throwing things at you. There's

Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
More than one person in management. I tried to convince them that we should not have good old analytics on our webpage. Cuz who cares? Like Mike Masick who got rid of it. That's when it that's when I try, I said, look what, see Mike did this. And I think it's the right thing to do. And no, so now maybe we have to, because we don't wanna violate GDPR.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:03):
You're not in, in Europe. You don't, they're what they gonna do arrest you.

Leo Laporte (01:40:07):
Oh, okay. So that's a good feeling. No, they'll find you. So, but that's an interesting point. If, should I say, if you're in Europe, you can't look at our site. That's what I was gonna ask. We have Europe in listeners.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:19):
Well that happens with relat with a lot of news sites where they just, they like Chicago tribute just blocked Europe and said you're you're worth nothing to us. You're dead to us.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:28):
We said it makes sense for the Chicago tribute. I mean given

Leo Laporte (01:40:32):
Their, well, we, I mean, when GDPR went in action a year ago, it's been a year now. We, we had this debate. Well wasn't it January? Maybe like it was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:43):
No GDPR went into effect May 18th on oh good God. You know this 19 or I think it's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:51):
She's the rainbow

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:52):
Vac

Leo Laporte (01:40:53):
Definitely in April. Definitely in April. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:57):
Wow. No, I got a, hold on. I could be. Let me just double check that. No, no, I, I take you as my, I thought it was 20 May 25th, 2018. So May 25th, 2018.

Leo Laporte (01:41:10):
It'll be three. It'll be four years. That's amazing. Yeah. Anyway, at that time we thought, well what should we do? And <laugh>, you know, the shruggy guy

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:21):
<Laugh> right. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:41:24):
That's what we decided to do.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:26):
Oh, here, there, there's a new thing. All of us shrugging. And it can't again, take the screenshot.

Leo Laporte (01:41:36):
<Laugh> it's very hard. He is really multitask. He's producing the show. He's he's doing it. It's like the pay, no attention to the man behind the curtain. So I don't,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:53):
That was good. He turned the, he just played the Stacey flailing

Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
Arm. He turning the Stacey search engine land. What happened? They say, when we turned off amp amp, of course the Google technology we've gone back and forth over, over the years intended to speed up pages. But I think lately we've realized be also intended to kind of centralize Google's control of the internet search search engine land made the decision to stop publishing amp versions. Google's accelerated mobile pages. They said just, you know we didn't wanna have to put our content at third party series, et cetera. So since then a lot has happened, but bottom line is according to search engine land. We've seen very little disruption in our traffic and now have a much clearer picture of our audience analytics

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:47):
Sometimes using that middle man not great. That's what I wanna know. How, how do they get a better vision? Well, with the amp,

Leo Laporte (01:42:56):
It comes off their

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:56):
Server going through other servers that was just cash. Got it. Okay. Got you.

Leo Laporte (01:43:01):
Which has speed up things, but it also centralizes controlling Google. And at the time Google said, oh no, it's an open standard. Anybody can run amp servers. Nobody else runs a nobody's done it. Right, right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:13):
<Laugh> chat room. Does the shrunk. I love I C shruggy <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:43:18):
Google kills YouTube originals. The, did you know that they had originals triggered it? Cause Cobra Kai was also, I was skip.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:28):
The only one I knew is Cobra. Kai. Yeah. Huh?

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
What Jeff's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:33):
Scare? Pew pie is gone. Oh, scare

Leo Laporte (01:43:35):
Pew pie. So that basically there were two <laugh>. There was more than two, but that honestly I think Google's probably right to shutter it because anyway according to variety, this YouTube originals division founded six years ago to make exclusive original content for the pay per month, YouTube premium service. I do pay for that, but that's not because I wanna see Cobra. I it's cuz I don't want ads. Now the group is being shuttered and YouTube's head of original content. Suzanne Daniels has announced she's leaving in March.

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:08):
So that was the whole pitch at, at, at oh yeah. What's what's the conference I used to go to in Anaheim with all the video people VidCon you VidCon you know, that was a big deal of VidCon. Oh my God. The huge banners. And we're gonna, you know, gonna be the new network and then nevermind.

Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
You know, it's funny. This is everybody else started doing original content too. So it, it, it didn't help them. It was stiff conversation out Google. Remember when Google had like a hundred million that they were gonna give creators. They've done that a couple of times creators fund TikTok does it a lot of, lot of you know, Instagrams starting to do it now. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember we were told we had a big time entertainment attorney in here. He said, you guys really ought to go after that Google money, you could, you know, you could, they, they give you 10 million, but here's from Robert, is it Kinsel we've we've had this conversation many times. K Y N C L KLE, dear creator. You know, I think, you know, don't you Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:14):
Yeah. I've met him. Yeah. I hate to think at Davos. I think he's

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
Chief business officer. No, You mean it's a very economic

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:24):
Forum. Those days are over Stacey. I'm just not on not to invite Lindsay. We got a Davos and a Gutenberg in this show. I'm liking it.

Leo Laporte (01:45:32):
And a few anecdotes. Where's

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:34):
Your bingo card. Jarvis bingo

Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
Today says how about there are over 2 million creators in the YouTube partner program? Our creator of community has never been more successful. We've paid more than 30 billion to creators artists and media companies. Oh, probably more tour the media companies than to the creators. I'm guessing. Well they

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:58):
Don't Sue us. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
You know, things like license fees. However, with rapid growth, this is gonna be fun. However, as soon as I see that in the memo, I'm going, oh, this would be interesting. However, with rapid growth comes new opportunities. Oh. And now our investments can make a greater impact on even more creators when applied to other initiatives. Like our creative shorts fund. Is this for people who have new design ideas for shorts. Underwear. Yeah. Yeah. Black voice is fund. That's good. Live shopping programming. Oh yeah. Oh no. Oh no. Live shopping

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:44):
Is a big deal. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:46):
Makes over the world. Yeah. But in the, in the case of YouTube, what are you shopping for? I don't know. Makeup. Let me see. I slim

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:55):
Probably jewelry.

Leo Laporte (01:46:57):
Do they have sweaters? Do they have a live shopping channel? What do they call it? Brick or brat? Brick or brat? Bricker. Bra. Oh, Hummel, Hummel figurines. It's the hum. No,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:07):
My friend it, a friend of mine used to do it in China because that's where this kind of concept. I think, I don't know if it came from there, but

Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
I mean QVC it's influencers, right? Selling stuff that they, I would guess YouTube. KA Pepe, YouTube here. Pepe, youtube.com/shopping. It says. And there's nothing there. <Laugh> what?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:33):
Nothing but growth then Neil there's do you, do you remember the beta store? The, do you remember the beta store they're doing shopping. If you go to their website, they do live shopping now for like

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Gadgets. What's the beta store. It's beta store

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:48):
Remem. Okay. The beta store. It was created by some of the founders of nest and they had physical stores where you could go in and touch like complicated products and play with them and then buy them if you wanted to. And it was more oh

Leo Laporte (01:48:02):
Yeah, that was kinda, it was that. Yeah. Was that the, like the come on, come in and touch complicated products.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:09):
Well, no, that's it's the Stacey real talk right there. I like it. And companies would pay, it was like a, it was like a marketing expense for companies. Not like a retail strategy for them. If that makes sense. Although they did sell

Leo Laporte (01:48:22):
We're shopping right now. Here's the vac one coffee air brewer, a complicated. So they make a simple drink. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:30):
So they've pivoted to doing video shopping because of you'll be buying one

Leo Laporte (01:48:34):
Before the over also. Yeah, they got the right guy. Look at that. <Laugh> oh, she's doing the universal SIM sign for that's chef's kiss water should drop. Yes. Water, water should drop. Oh my God. We went to a fancy Michelin toast. Our restaurant a couple of months ago, or maybe a month ago. It was my birthday present from Lisa. And they had the most elaborate Victorian era coffee making machine I've ever seen. That was, it was like a show. They have this vacuum tubes and these chambers and they pour water in and then they turn it upside down and it goes siphons up into the thing. And then you wait and then you pull the thing and it, it siphons back down. And now you have coffee and it tastes exactly like <laugh> <laugh> oh man, like a down Maxwell house, like a Maxwell house.

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
It was a fine, oh no fine. And they, even the guy who is doing it, like the waiter's doing this, it's like 10 minute process. He's doing this whole thing. Even he says, yeah, it's, you know, it's just kind of for fun. <Laugh> <laugh> I think this might be the the modern version of this V one coffee air brewer. I think it's the same idea where it's using. Yeah, it is well, scroll down. They have other, they have other products, the Willow toothbrush FAQ. Oh, I need this, the Navy and bed warmer. <Laugh> now that I have a bed cooler, does it have, I should really have a bed warmer because you know what goes, how does that work? Does it microwave your head? It's exactly like outside table. It's exactly like that. It's just a small version. It's got a little water pump, but it's go.

Leo Laporte (01:50:18):
Instead of, this is exactly what the E E what the eight sleep looks like, but it just goes into a little pillow instead of the whole bed. Dear, just buy an electric. Here's something I could get the HNO. Oh, I'm sorry. HNO and he snoring sleep mask. Sure. I'll be wearing that tonight. It's got app if you want. And it's got an app. If you wanna look like the elephant man, you need the hoop nose. What else we got? Silk and P pure silk pillow case. So this is it. This is home shopping. Interesting. I don't know what happened to YouTube's home shopping. It's funny that Robert Kinsel should say we're gonna put more money into that one. In fact, if you go to youtube.com/shopping, nothing happens. Well, that's why they're putting more money. Cuz there wasn't any before nothing but growth, man. Nothing but exactly. I guess they all, they did it for the holidays, I guess, holiday streaming shop, but then they stopped. They should be doing it for singles day. Yeah. Which is coming up. Oh look, the Morel twins, Gordon Ramsey who can't donut media. Patrick star, Jackie Ana, Manny MOA. Mr. Based the richest man on YouTube.

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
He is by the way, according to Forbes, the richest man on YouTube,

Ant Pruitt (01:51:38):
Out of north khaki Laki,

Leo Laporte (01:51:40):
Mr. Beast, Renee said he and his other YouTube creator friends thought that that list was not exactly a accurate, but I think Mr. Beast makes a lot anyway. Yeah. Robert Kinsel together, these factors contributed to our decision to reduce our YouTube's original slate to nothing going forward. We'll only be funding programs that are part of our black voices and YouTube kids fund. We will honor our commitments for already contracted shows in progress and creators who involved with these shows should expect to hear from us in the coming days. <Laugh> okay. All

Ant Pruitt (01:52:15):
Right. The issue I have with some of that stuff, like you, you mentioned the black voices stuff. I looked at at least two different things on there. Maybe three and did nothing for me. And I, I think that's why a lot of these things just sort of followed through the cracks cuz sometimes the content just isn't good. There's just too much competition out there.

Leo Laporte (01:52:37):
It's hard to do good content. I I, I think a lot of you mean look at us. I know, see what I'm saying? <Laugh> I've been trying for 15 freaking years. I think a lot of people executives, people in LA and just say, oh, you throw money at it. This is what YouTube learned. You throw money at it. Good content magic. And it's not in fact, YouTube's real model is not so much throw money at it. In fact, I don't think they believe that throwing money at it. Does anything, their model is they Netflix attract? Yeah, this is the difference. Youtube's got a better model act as if you're gonna make a lot of money and attract they, what is it? 500 hours a minute or uploaded something like that. Attracts a ton of stuff. And we'll just let the crap float away. And the, and the gold will, I guess, gold sinks. And I was like

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:29):
Off the crap and the gold should sink, but sometimes it crap floats,

Leo Laporte (01:53:32):
Floats, and the gold sinks. And then you dig up the gold.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:38):
You have to get past the crap.

Leo Laporte (01:53:40):
When you pan for gold, you slosh the water and the silt comes off and what's left in the bottom of the pan solid gold nuggets. What if we lift

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:50):
Cream float to the

Leo Laporte (01:53:52):
Top? The cream will rise cream of the is the crowded, the 500 hours, 491 hours and 59 minutes will float down the river and be somebody else's problem.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:04):
They sink the 4, 9 90 ones. The other eight minutes is the cream of the cream. The nine minutes rise floats to the top where we see it in the recommendations they rise to the recommendations.

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
You know what? The number one viewed video on YouTube is it is the cream. This is the cream. Oh man, do you know what it is? Do you know what it is? Do you know what it, 10 shark shark, right? Billion views, 10 billion views. And

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:36):
You just gave it

Leo Laporte (01:54:37):
Another. And I just gave it another, actually, this one's only got 2 billion. Oh, this is, this is a special world. Children's day pink Fong. But they baby shark, the original baby shark, 10 billion views. How many people are there in the world?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:54):
Like seven point something billion.

Leo Laporte (01:54:56):
So who are these extra 3 billion people? <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:00):
I've never met a toddler. Children, children, toddlers play this thing. Like, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:55:06):
I don't understand. And how any video could be viewed 10 billion times. And there are only 7 billion people. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:13):
There are 7.9 billion people now. So

Leo Laporte (01:55:16):
Here it is. We're almost 10. Oh, I was wrong. It's 10 billion. 45 million, 696,506 views. Yeah. Unbelievable. So where is, where is people coming

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:27):
From? So Leo, before you ask what on OAM? I just tweeted what was on OEN two minutes ago.

Leo Laporte (01:55:34):
Really? Like the Twitter. Are you watching OAM? As we do the show

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:37):
On my TV, I just wanna see they had, they had on the back. It's better than baby shark right now. I would watch it too. I think it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:44):
They had the pillow guy on. Then they an ad for this. You'll

Leo Laporte (01:55:46):
See it on my Twitter feed. All right. On his Twitter feed, ladies and gentlemen here is nine one. The free Trump gift for kids

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:54):
From Mike Huckabee. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:55:56):
The kids guide the kids guide to president, president Trump. First family. Why did Donald Trump decide to run resident drain the swamp? What is mega? That's great. Good for them. Oh, look, there's a picture of Barron. The youngest Trump. That's great. Very fun. And this was an ad, like to buy this?

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:18):
Yes. Yes. It was Mike. Hunab pushing this. That's

Leo Laporte (01:56:22):
The thing I think is most interesting is how all these people who hated him <laugh> until he got the Republican party grift. Yeah. Oh, I thought

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:32):
You were gonna talk about how they're all

Leo Laporte (01:56:33):
Making money. Well, they, it is. It's like a, I think they're scared of him, but B also it's a great opportunity to cash in

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:41):
It's. It's just like buying the dune book. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
Yeah. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:47):
So I'm gonna tell y'all that at five o'clock I have to, I have to let's

Leo Laporte (01:56:50):
Wander off. Let's wrap this up and get your pick of the week. Stacey's

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:54):
Wait, wait, wait, what have we not done here? What have suffered dementia?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:58):
I'm giving you, I'm giving you 30 minutes to get us time. I don't think there's and other stories. Well, isn't there

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:03):
A chance, certain beloved feature of the show. I

Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
Don't think there's a change log in this rundown today. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, there was a whole blank white space and now there's a lot more <laugh> it's like we

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:14):
Didn't talk about Google it. Oh, we talked

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
About Canada jokes. There's McDonald's eggs. And we talked about four Tesla, Dr. Well, this actually is a big story for the first time ever a driver using Tesla's full self-driving is facing felony charges in a crash. Actually it is an FSD. It was the autopilot. California prosecutors have filed two because this has been the question all along. In fact, Lisa, you just asked me this other day. Who's liable. If I have a auto park thing, I stand out there, press the button, my car crashes into another car. Who's liable. Well, California prosecutors have solved that question. They filed two manslaughter charges against the driver of a Tesla who ran a red light and killed two people in 2019 while using autopilot. Now I think that this isn't gonna be the test case because at that time, in fact, I don't know if it even does now, but at that time, autopilot didn't know about stop signs or red lights. So I used it a lot on my model X, but you know, when you come to a red light, you gotta stop the car. Doesn't know that. So I think maybe this is really is the guy's fault. Not, not the autopilots. I don't think. Well, it is

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:25):
The what? Cuz he's responsible for his

Leo Laporte (01:58:26):
Car. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:29):
Leon tall. He just, he didn't notice that happen. No. When

Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
Did this happen?

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:34):
Who died? Andre. Leon tall died fashion morning

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Yesterday. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:40):
A young, sorry. Y'all I I've apparently been under a rock.

Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
I'm under such a rock. I don't know who he is.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:48):
He was the amazing fashion creative director of, of Vogue

Leo Laporte (01:58:53):
Vogue. Did he invent the giant puffy jacket?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:56):
Kind of? No, <laugh> he just

Leo Laporte (01:58:58):
Styled quite possibly. He's just rocking it. <Laugh> he's just

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:02):
Rocking it. He was, he was, he was auto wind tours right arm. And then, and then she dropped him and oh, and he ended life

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:15):
Poor arguing over if he could live in a house funded by which fashion house it was crazy. Anyway, the point is the man was a genius and anyway, sorry. Totally not

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:27):
Stay on for a second. Just for a second Stacey. Cuz because actually I worked at KA Nast. I know he was beloved. What was his primary contribution to fashion? What was, what was his

Leo Laporte (01:59:38):
Apparently giant jacket? What's what he

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:42):
Recognize. He, he like Anna winter and possibly more than her mm-hmm <affirmative> recognized designers and promoted and, and styled and then styled the clothes for the fashion.

Leo Laporte (01:59:56):
He did Michelle Obama's clothes for many years in the white house. Yes. No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:00):
He was brilliant. I just, I just never saw the, the essence of utter the Onelli you know, what was a lot of,

Leo Laporte (02:00:07):
A lot of this risk

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:09):
Taken

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:10):
Yeah's because Anna went tour, took a lot of his not tour. Exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:14):
But well, but yeah, she that's what she does. Anna used to have in her, in her office. And I've said Adam, them was fable the most uncomfortable possible chairs

Leo Laporte (02:00:27):
Here is here is Anna. I went to her with Mr. Tally in 1989 before her hair went white. That looks like a fun party. Don't you think? Wait

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:41):
Her hair isn't white. Is she wearing white hair now? Doesn't she

Leo Laporte (02:00:44):
Of well it's gray or is it blonde? Anyway,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:48):
It's dark. It's it's an Ash blonde Ash or Ash brown. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
Ash brown. Ash brown. Oh yeah, there she is. There they are in 2014 with her Ash brown hair. Yeah. So that famous was it, is it a pixie cut Bob? What has she got there? That's a Bob. Bob.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:07):
It's the Anna Wood tour head. I mean, it, it might as well be a, a Jennifer, like, you know, it's like it's its own thing now. Okay. I'm sorry. I, I I'm like I have to leave and then I sidetracked us to

Leo Laporte (02:01:17):
Totally. And I, you know it, I didn't know you were so into design because I just went to the San Francisco museum of arts, Patrick Kelly retrospective. And it was amazing. I mean he, another very famous black designer who passed away too far, too young in his case. But he made some amazing stuff and we saw this in San Francisco. I didn't even know it was gonna be there. Oh, that's cool. It was so cool to see this. So this

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:46):
Is one of my favorite books right here. What I'll I'll show you how to read a dress.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
Oh, it talks. I wish ID read that. I loved,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:55):
Well, this is, this is for women's fashion specifically, but it it's just like, I love,

Leo Laporte (02:01:59):
Yeah, you would've loved this exhibit. It was, it was amazing. I would've, I love

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:03):
All, yeah, I'm the person the met is pandering to, with all

Leo Laporte (02:02:07):
Of their questions. One of the things that's interesting about Kelly, first of all, he fled to France because of course he couldn't, you know, get a fair hearing cuz he was black. But also in the us, but also collected racist memorabilia and turned it into his fashions in many cases, which is pretty neat. That's crazy. He got a lot of heat for that. You'll see. In fact, in this picture he's wearing kind of a pin, that's like a black Sambo pin and it was a way of saying, you know what take it back. Yeah. We're gonna take it back. And I, I loved him and so did France. In fact here's one of his collections had Eiffel tower hats. They were so great. So great. So Stacey, I didn't, I don't know this other guy T tall, but if you like Kelly, but Kelly, wasn't a designer. Yeah. I know. He just discovered people like Patrick Kelly, but come, come to San Francisco and see this as an amazing show. Okay. I will. Yes. Highly recommend it. Look at this. Look at this lip hat with a lip suit. <Laugh> isn't that hysterical. He had a great sense of humor. All right. What else before? We get rid of Stacey 

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:19):
12 updates who I

Leo Laporte (02:03:21):
Just got one. Did you do your update? Did it make your picture better? I,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:25):
I think it broke my Bluetooth. Oh really? And, and I think I'm, I'm having

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
Better performance, good.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:03:34):
A HAPPI arrive. I could not connect my freaking headsets and get them to work for like, okay, I got

Leo Laporte (02:03:40):
Two or three days. I got a big tip and I did this on windows weekly because both Paul and Mary Jo used pixel six pros, the new Jan, the January update did come out and it's supposed to fix all these problems. But, and I found this on Reddit. There is a trick, at least with ambient lighting. And I suspect with maybe fingerprint and other things, you almost need to do a reset of the phone. And there is a reset hidden in the weirdest place ever. So I'm gonna follow along over my shoulder, if you would, John, can you, can you pick up my over the shoulder, he has to push some buttons and make it work.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:18):
He was all ready for the change log and then you change

Leo Laporte (02:04:19):
The button on it. And I, I, this is the change like, so this is my pixel six, by the way. I think Annie and AER recommended this case. I like, or was it you? Aunt, maybe it's you it's spike. Okay. Nice case. Anyway. So go into settings. All of you who have a pixel six follow along here, cuz you'll never believe where you find this setting, go to apps, go to see apps, apps, hold on, see all apps. And this is because the only way you can get to this particular app device health services is through the app settings. So this is okay. Remember when Google decided to move updates into the store in many cases, cuz come, but HES weren't passing along their updates. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. This is one of the places where you have to do this device health services storage and cash manage space.

Leo Laporte (02:05:15):
Holy cow, did that have anything? Does disease have anything to do with that? No reset, adaptive brightness. If you've been having trouble with adaptive brightness, do that and then hit that. I think this actually is the one you want, which is clear all data for device health services, including batteries, statistics, adaptive bus, adaptive, brightness data. I think that after you do the January update, you should do this because you have a lot of old cashed data. Okay. That removing that I think fixes a lot of things. The other advice that I strongly suggest if you've had trouble with a fingerprint reader, is deregister your fingerprints and re reregister them. After you get the January update, you mentioned

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:53):
Something a while ago. There came a point with my phone where suddenly I'm at home. It shouldn't it should I have to hit the power button

Leo Laporte (02:06:02):
Before it's frozen fingerprint. Yeah. I think this fixes that I haven't had that happen, actually. I haven't had that happen in a while, but again, I'm just gonna run through this real quickly cuz I know it's weird. We'll put this, I guess in the show notes and I don't know Jason is out. So I don't know if, if they talked about this yesterday and all of on Android, but again, settings apps, just because you have to get to this weird device, health app, see all and then device health. And this is a weird trick because you, I, I didn't even remember. Okay, now I have to go to storage and cash, which makes no sense manage space and the, then that's where you get these settings to reset adaptive brightness and clear all data. And I suspect that that's what's going on that there's cashed bad stuff from the old days. Cuz this seems to help. I have one leg of it. Yeah. I only have four kilobytes after clearing it. And, and if your fingerprints are still not working reregister those, so then that's your Google change log. Oh geez. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:03):
Good stuff. I fell asleep. I

Leo Laporte (02:07:06):
<Laugh> I, I actually pulled this for you. We do have to do an ad and then picks and then we'll go. But I do wanna just read this Jeff, how Campbell's soup turned Jersey into a tomato growing state. I'm

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:22):
Wondering how this end up here. I'm gonna tell you something in a second, but go

Leo Laporte (02:07:24):
Ahead and put it's from Smithsonian magazine. And I had no idea, you know, they call New Jersey the garden state. My family was in Leon, just over the bridge. So it's kind of still Metro sprawl, but you're in a very nice part of New Jersey. And as you go as it south, it gets beautiful. It really is beautiful.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:44):
It's beautiful west too. Where I,

Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
Yeah, it, but it turns out it's a perfect growing area for tomatoes, the soil, especially by the way, the inner still plain, which

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:55):
Is you scroll down just a little bit in that photo. I'm gonna tell you something. This one. No, no. The people the meeting on the, on the farm, maybe it's up now. No, that one, there

Leo Laporte (02:08:05):
It is cinnamon. I lived in

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:07):
Cinnamon. No, I didn't just live in cinnamon. I lived like there <laugh> I lived on the old tomato fields for Campbell soup.

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
You lived in tomato fields.

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:17):
I lived in the old tomato fields. So because

Leo Laporte (02:08:20):
Of the perfect soil for this, particularly in the intercoastal area, a Lomi soil, the very famous tomatoes were bred by camel soup, Ru the Rutgers tomato, which is now gone by the way. Although Rutgers is trying to bring it back because a few seas remain in the, the Campbell's archives, the Rutgers tomato, they stopped because selling it or using it, even though it was perfectly uniform and everything, the skin was thin. So they wanted a thicker skin. But anyway, it was a great article by the li the founder of the library seed bank. He's a seed activist, Jeff Tron and he talks about the garden, state tomato, the Rutgers tomato, and most importantly, the J T D if you like Campbell's tomato soup, <laugh> it's because of the J T D, which is actually named after the I think the CEO of

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:17):
Camels, right? Yeah, he was, he was a dens war or something. I forget what was yeah. John, John something.

Leo Laporte (02:09:22):
So did you read the article, John Thompson. Florence? That's it. Thank you. Yes, he would. He was the president of the company, the JTD tomato released in 1918 BR there in cinnamon. It's a medium size red tomato,

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:35):
N a M I N S O N. You learned how to spell that early cinnamon.

Leo Laporte (02:09:38):
So is that where you were born?

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:40):
No, I I, I went there from second to seventh.

Leo Laporte (02:09:46):
That's cool. I had no idea. All right, now we're gonna take a quick break and then it's picks of the week and then Stacey's gonna go somewhere and do something. We only wish we could follow along. Maybe make cookies. Yes. Maybe have dinner. I don't know this. The episode, this episode of TWI is brought to you by brand new sponsor. Welcome CDW H P E GreenLake orchestrated by the experts at C D w. Now, if you're in enterprise, I'm gonna tell you something you sh probably know by now yesterday's infrastructure is not gonna help you meet the demands of tomorrow's innovation may not even help you with today's innovation. And now more than ever, you have to quickly adapt to change. Right? The consumption oriented model of public cloud is revolutionized. How organizations think about infrastructure, how organizations are now demanding the speed and agility of, of a public cloud experience, but still to this day, many workloads remain on prem.

Leo Laporte (02:10:51):
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Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
And once implemented CDW provides ongoing management, which means your staff could focus on innovation. They don't have to fiddle with the bits seamless cloud experience across all your organization's apps and data. Thanks to a as a service model that meets you at the edge. You'll have scalability that provides instant increase in capacity love in that, right? Giving you the flexibility of match your growth and meet demand and streamlined management of all your data, all your applications inside that single platform, providing simplified operations and accessibility from everywhere, giving you back time to focus on innovation. You get a there's kind of a through line here. C D w not only helps assess an organization's needs and build a unique HPE GreenLake solution. They also remain an active partner they're right there for you to provide support throughout the management process. C D w experts also bring decades of experience designing, orchestrating, and managing G cloud solutions to help you unleash the full potential of your investments, giving you back the time you need to what yes, innovate and dream bigger for a seamless cloud experience. Trust HPE, and it orchestration by CDW people who get it learn more@cdwdotcomslashhpeeasytoremembercdw.com slash H P E. We thank of so much for supporting This Week in Google. And if you're interested, please use that address so that, you know, you saw it here, cdw.com/h P E. Now, usually I start with Stacey Ann with Ann let's, let's reverse it, Ann, what's your pick of the week? This week.

Ant Pruitt (02:13:40):
Don't let me make sure

Leo Laporte (02:13:41):
I'm off of, I pick you off guard, dear. <Laugh> sorry

Ant Pruitt (02:13:44):
To make

Leo Laporte (02:13:44):
Sure I'm off that. He thought he had a few minutes. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (02:13:47):
I did. Well, my pick is it's Canon again, you know, they've been dealing with some stuff in this photography industry, but today they announced a new camera body. And it's the us R five C.

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
Well, the R five is, is mind boggling, but this is, this is a new R five. This

Ant Pruitt (02:14:07):
Is a new R five with cinema capabilities. And it sits right in between the R five and the C 70. So you're gonna get cinema capability up to eight. K. It even has an internal fan on it. You can record up to eight K raw internally. This looks like a beast of a camera, and I believe it's gonna start you at about 4,500 bucks. I'm curious about the current R five owners, because this, this still allows you to shoot stills in addition to having all that extra video.

Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
And it's what power 48 megapixels

Ant Pruitt (02:14:44):
40 megapixels. Wow. So I'm wondering what my R five fans are thinking right about now.

Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
Well, it'll use those lenses. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (02:14:55):
Right? Yeah. But I don't know that body is sitting right in between this one and the C 70, the C 70 is a dedicated video. This is like

Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
The best of both. Right. You get both in effect, I would guess. Right? Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:15:06):
So, yeah, that was this morning. And I think it's a pretty good price and hopefully able to get my hands on one to test it out soon. Eight

Leo Laporte (02:15:15):
K raw 4, 2, 2 4k one 20 P

Ant Pruitt (02:15:19):
One 20 P. And you still get the audio for the slow motion. It doesn't totally warp it out. Still pretty good features built in here. Wow. No ND filters. The N body stabilization has a 1.4 crop on it. But again, all of that stuff can be worked around

Leo Laporte (02:15:35):
When I got Henry and R six, cause he needed to, I wish this had been out, but it's R six was less expensive, but even it has very good video capabilities. Yeah. Is great. Yeah. And he has all my old Canon EF lenses. So he just, I said, we'll get an adapter and alls work. Yep. So I

Ant Pruitt (02:15:54):
Saved a lot of money, sir. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:15:56):
So he has my old mark four 5g mark four. And now he has the R five and I bet you, if all things go well, did you see Chrisy Tegan re retweeted his reel the other day. Yeah. Oh, good for him. He's been going back and forth with Chrisy Tegan. They wanna do a cooking show together or something, but anyway, good for him. If all that pans out, maybe he should get an R five C thinking. <Laugh> I'm thinking this would definitely, let's not buying it.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:23):
<Laugh> but shout out to salt. Underscore Hank. For real, I I'm, he's doing great. I've really enjoyed the the salt that we got here at the house. It's good salt. Isn't it? Especially. Yeah. The pesto one, the pester

Leo Laporte (02:16:36):
One is really, I'm a fan of the garlic truffle. I just had that on an avocado toast. It was so good. So salt, hank.com <laugh> and aunt Pruitt is of course an underscore Pruitt on Instagram.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:49):
Yeah. Gimme a follow over there. I'm still putting stuff on Instagram and still interacting with people there. I, I tell the people that watch my show and listen to my show, to just follow me over there and interact with me there. And I do my very best to follow up.

Leo Laporte (02:17:06):
When you took this profile photo, were you thinking like you're looking at the camera, are you thinking? I love you man. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:17:14):
That's my normal happy face.

Leo Laporte (02:17:17):
Okay. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:18):
I'm smashing and

Leo Laporte (02:17:19):
Face. I can't read it. That's all <laugh>. And so it's like the mono Lisa that follows you around. I can't decide <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:17:27):
That's just the normal

Leo Laporte (02:17:28):
Story. I love you, man. I'm gonna rip your heart out through your lungs or I don't know. Can't tell

Ant Pruitt (02:17:34):
I'm a good poker player.

Leo Laporte (02:17:36):
It's poker. That's what it is. Are you? I bet you are. It's complete. I'm poker. I'm a good poker player. Yeah. See, I see the smile here. There it's like I Don can't read him. What's he thinking? See, have a Royal flush. I don't know. Maybe number of the week, Mr. Jeff Jarvis.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:52):
All right. So this is the ultimate me. I said, no, it makes Stacey happy for me to bring up this word. Gutenberg <laugh> $200,000, 200,000. This, this makes you got your skill. This page go to that page. All right. So this is a fragment discovered fragment of the donut tos, which was a grammar book that Gutenberg it is believed you don't know anything printed before the Bible. And there's very few examples of this, and they're all just pieces that were used in, in later bindings. So this is, this is a 1490 book and, and this, this book guy, Patrick Olson was representing this thing. <Affirmative> and if you go to, oh, you can actually

Leo Laporte (02:18:33):
Open it. Oh my God. Oh

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:35):
Yeah. So the book is not what you're thinking of. It's go to it's column one column one

Leo Laporte (02:18:41):
Row two. Oh, so you don't care about the book. It's the thing they make. Don't about the book out of exactly. So

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:46):
Go to RO that, that one, see what what's right

Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
There in the that's the donut that is the Donita.

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:51):
It's a silver, the donut hot to, and the great thing. It's a wonderfully written explanation of why they know this and, and how, but it's $200,000 has a price on it. And as of yesterday it had a Putin cart button. And I have to admit that I did it for just

Leo Laporte (02:19:09):
Two seconds. Oh your I have

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:11):
The sense that for one second, I had this in my, in my cart. So they,

Leo Laporte (02:19:16):
This old book, they make this newer book. Exactly. This old book has been identified as being a very early Guten book Gutenberg. And

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:26):
It was a, it was a, it was a kid's grammar. It was a school grammar book, a Latin grammar book. So they weren't meant to be saved. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So if you go to that, that first photo, yeah, right there. That's the, that's the outside of the body. And you see those little letters right there. Yeah. Those are little tiny bits left of Gutenberg's stone tus. Wow. Yeah. So I was, I know this has nothing to do with Google.

Leo Laporte (02:19:46):
I think you should buy this an NFT and burn it. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:49):
Was gonna say, I could then burn it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:51):
Yeah. Who needs it? Just making an NFT. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. if you, if you want it, go on over to Olsen, rare books.com and peacemaker. We'll be glad to burn it for you. And now ladies and gentlemen, Stacey Higgin, Bonhams pick the win.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:11):
Woohoo. All right. Y'all this pick of the, week's a little crazy. Let's see if we can get

Leo Laporte (02:20:15):
Leo to buy it. It's not as crazy as mine. I got a crazier one, but go ahead.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:19):
Okay. Mine is the oven that I actually bought in November, but it arrived. And I've gotten to play with it. Is it from June? I am so excited. No, this is a, a, a slide in range and induction smart range and oven from GE cafe. And the reason I'm talking about it is cuz it's the first appliance that I've actually like big appliance that I've connected to wifi because it's freaking awesome if you connect it to wifi.

Leo Laporte (02:20:48):
So I love the idea of an induction oven. We, we wanna get induction cooktops. We actually have one. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:53):
No, this is, this is an induction cooktop. It is. Oh, is an

Leo Laporte (02:20:56):
Electric oven. I get it. It it's stove as well as an oven. Yeah. It's we love induction. Yeah. Yeah. Do you love it? So is it good for KA? Okay. Oh yeah. It's

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:06):
Well actually, no, I do that.

Leo Laporte (02:21:08):
That's another story. So this is a regular oven, but it's wifi enabled. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:13):
It's so it is the first thing I've ever put on wifi. And the reason is it talks to both Madam a and Google. So I can tell Google preheat, my oven. Yeah. Which I still can't do from. And I can ask like how much time is left on the timer. If I set it the oven, but GE has also been very active in updating things. They actually, prior to Thanksgiving did an update to these, to many of its ovens. Not all of it, but any of those that were capable of it, they did the Turkey update that did a cook program for Turkey. So you just put the probe in the oven and said you were cooking a Turkey. And it was like, boom, I'm on it. Don't worry about

Leo Laporte (02:21:51):
It. I got this. It's got an air fryer mode. Woo. Yes. It's got, even though it looks like a standard of stove, it guys looks like it has two. It's got, what do they call that? The Dutch oven. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:05):
Got a Dutch oven. Oh, this one's the here. Mine is. Which one are you?

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Yours is at the Dutch oven. I was looking at a video. My not the oven.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:11):
Mine is the cuz I already have the June is my, I don't need two separate little tiny ovens. I need a big oven.

Leo Laporte (02:22:15):
This is not a cheap though. It's four grand for this. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:18):
Well, induction ovens are expensive. Yeah. That's my, that's my

Leo Laporte (02:22:21):
Oven right there. Yeah. We wanna get an induction cooktop. I'm really, but it's been

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:25):
A while. So this gets into the next thing. And in like two weeks, I'm gonna have a new thing related to it, but I'll just sneak peek it. Okay. This works with the Heston Q smart

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
Pants. I have Heston Q smart pants, pants, pants. My pants are smart pants.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:41):
So because I have to buy new pants for the in it's cooktop, I was like

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
The Heston work with induction. In fact, they come with a little induction, little burner

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:51):
Single. I don't need that. They're they're integrated with GE. Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:22:55):
So

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:57):
I will talk about, yeah. That's oh wait. So the pan we'll

Leo Laporte (02:23:01):
Hear about it in two weeks. I smart pan.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:04):
So the pan recognizes information coming from the app or in this case with GE in the integration, the oven. So it will also sensors in it to detect how warm the pan is. So it will, there's a couple things you can do with that. You can keep your pan at exactly the right temperature, which allows you to Sovi in it. If you would like, right. It also allows you to do things like melt chocolate and delicate kind of heating things that normally have to babysit as a cook. The other thing it's gonna do is you can tie it to some of the recipes and it will follow some of the recipes. It's not a Thermo mix, but it's still gonna be pretty cool.

Leo Laporte (02:23:39):
Yeah, no, I have Alex, Lindsay tuck me into getting these. I have a couple of Heston QS and it, yeah, it comes with its little induction unit. But if you had a stove that works with Stacey's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:50):
Call for empathy, there not a thermal mix. Like Leo has one.

Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
I have some more, oh, PHA. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:01):
Just, I just $3,700 on a range, but I'm gonna complain about

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
Thousand. When does it come?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:08):
This is it came, no, I bought it in November. It came, oh, you have it Monday. Oh, okay. I like set it up. That's why, it's my thing. So did you have I tell you about a thing? So you got rid of, or you always, no, I had a failing. No. I had a failing Bosch and I was just like, so that oven, it was horrible. Y it,

Leo Laporte (02:24:27):
Like, we had a Bosch dishwasher. We got rid of cuz it was just,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:31):
Oh, I like my Bosch

Leo Laporte (02:24:32):
Dishwasher. Well this one, all the circuit boards fried all of them. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:38):
That would be a problem.

Leo Laporte (02:24:40):
It was a little too computery. Hey, I got one for you, Stacey. This will go very well with your your cocktail party later. This is you, you know about Chiam, right? Which identifies music. This is Chiam, which identifies French cheese. Yes,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:56):
Yes. Is it

Leo Laporte (02:24:57):
Based on smells? No. You have to take a picture of the cheese and then drag it to the, the.here. Chiam is the brainchild of a few data scientists to the company called previ IO over lunch. A few months ago. Debate took place as to which type of cheese we are served on a dessert tray. Yes. Things get pretty wild. It lunches outside of our per France office. Just imagine what these folks are like on your weekend from Z, that lunch, an idea was born. Can machine learning be used to identify a type of cheese? Now I have to say Chiam, which is by the way, literally trained, but was trained on a data set of cheeses only. So don't expect this to work on your cheddar, your either. So it's your Vermont, not your eats. Yes. Vier Compte LA that kind of thing. It can only predict the type of cheese <laugh> but I, I don't know. I guess it's good. You tried it. No, I haven't tried it. Are you kidding? <Laugh> but I just thought, wow, that's French right there. Chiam, Chiam. It detect French cheese and there's even an API. If you you'd like to. There

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:25):
Was a startup who actually used molecular

Leo Laporte (02:26:28):
Chemistry. Oh yes. Smelled it. Test strips to

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:30):
Detect it, smelled it. And this was a startup I saw present probably four years ago at a, at a food tech conference. And I was like, it was also a French person. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:26:42):
Gotta respect that. Passion. You, they have a big nose. It makes it easier to smell.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:48):
Let's be passionate about cheese.

Leo Laporte (02:26:50):
I wouldn't. Oh God. Yes. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? Yeah. It's the best. Yeah. By the way, you will like this. Stacey. If you do use it for cheese recognition, it will also recommend wine pairings <laugh> well,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:00):
Excellent. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:27:02):
Wza these cheese that makes us thirsty, announced things in newest features of Chiam wine pairings with direct purchasing enabled <laugh> <laugh> all right. Stacey gets to go now. Thank you. Have ALO waffle on me, Stacey HIIN Bathum Stacey on I ot.com. Subscribe to her free newsletters. Don't forget the podcast she does with Kevin been TOFL all about IOT and it's all there@Staceyiiot.com. Thank you, Stacey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, aunt Pruitt and underscore Pruitt on the Instagram and underscore Pruitt on the Twitter. He's at twi.tv/hop community manager at our club where he's bringing in some great stuff, Georgia you one, my best Georgia dos coming up. Mike ELGAN. Thank you for all that you do there. And then of course, there's this guy, the director of the town night center for entrepreneurial journalism at the graduate school of journalism at city university of New York, former. And that just fires me up every time I hear. I know I love it. I love it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:11):
I absolutely love it. <Laugh> my friend, Pete, Dominic, the podcast I mentioned is, you know, I I'm I'm I like, I have another, another family. I occasionally am on pizza. He was just run serious for, for 12 years. He's a comedian. He has people in his audience who do jingles. Oh. And he decided they decided that I was jingle worthy. Oh, and I

Leo Laporte (02:28:35):
Goodness, jingle. You have a jingle package. No, that's that's not have we talked about this? Where can I, where can I hear your Jing? Not

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:42):
Yet. It's not, he's not put it on the air yet. He played it for me today, but he hasn't put it on his area yet. So when it's there, I will play my jingle for you.

Leo Laporte (02:28:50):
I'm kind of feeling bad about this now. Yeah, I don't. We got was we about this, sir? And he got you a jingle. Is this gonna, we he's my real friend. Yeah. Are we gonna have like yes to when insults him. Wow. Wow. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Stacey. Thank you aunt. We'll see you all next time. We do this show every Wednesday, 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern tune and early for the anecdotes from the front porch 

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:20):
From the old God

Leo Laporte (02:29:22):
Old man, ramblings I and roll rambling on the porch. 

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:27):
<Laugh>. Let me tell you about the

Leo Laporte (02:29:28):
Time. If you stick around, I'll show you my Ditra later. That's a coding joke. You just wouldn't understand if you wanna watch us live, live.twi.tv. <Laugh> that is a joke that literally like one 10th of one, 1%, 1000th of a percent got. But those of you who know, you know, that's big enough for you. Yeah. That's big enough for me. I don't care. Yeah, I'll take it all. Irc.Twit.Tv. If you wanna chat with us, join the club club TWIT at twit.tv/club TWIT, you can chat in the discord on demand versions of the show@twi.tv slash there's a YouTube channel. There's also, of course you can subscribe cause it's a podcast. So go to your favorite podcast player, look for twig and subscribe. And that way you'll get it automatically. Every time it's available. Thank you everybody for putting up with us. We'll see. Next time on this week at Google, have I ever told you the, the one about

Speaker 5 (02:30:24):
<Laugh>

Jason Howell (02:30:27):
Android is constantly evolving and if you are part of the Android faithful, then you'll be just as excited about it. As I am. I'm Jason Howell host of all about Android, along with my co-hosts Florence ion and Ron Richards, where every week we cover the news, we cover the heart where, and we cover the apps that are driving the Android ecosystem. Plus, we invite people who are writing about Android, talking about Android and making Android onto the show. Every Tuesday at twit TV. Look for all about Android.