This Week in Google, 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. A wide ranging conversation as usual this week with Stacey Higginbotham. Jeff Jarvis, Ant Pruitt will play Mike MAs Nick's new moderator, mayhem game, and, and tell you what you'll learn about moderating from it. We'll talk about AI regulation, who watches the watchers. And then Stacy with a warning about a I o t device you really should not buy. It's all coming up next on Twig

Ant Pruitt (00:00:32):
Podcasts

Leo Laporte (00:00:33):
You love

Ant Pruitt (00:00:34):
From people you trust. This is Twig Twi.

Leo Laporte (00:00:43):
This is Twig This Week in Google, episode 716, recorded Wednesday, May 17th, 2023. It's pronounced papyri. And a brief note, a portion of the show contains conversation about suicide. So I wanted to give you a little bit of a trigger warning. And of course, if you're struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one who is called a suicide in crisis lifeline now at 9 8 8 9 8 8 for free, confidential, and emotional support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

(00:01:19):
This episode of This Week in Google is brought to you by the A Ws Insiders Podcast. Search for AWS Insiders in your podcast player, or visit cloud fix.aurea.com/podcast. We'll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to AW s insiders for their support. And by ACI learning. Cios and CISOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is critical with an average completion rate of over 80%. Your team deserves the entertaining and cutting edge training they want. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twi for more information on a free two week training trial for your team. It's time for Twig. This week at Google the show we cover well,

Ant Pruitt (00:02:08):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:02:09):
Was that a Topo Chico or a laqua? It

Ant Pruitt (00:02:13):
Suspenders cracking out the beer already. <Laugh>. Oh, wait. Here. There you go. Spin drift.

Leo Laporte (00:02:18):
Best moment in succession this week when Darwin, the the guy who predicts election results gets wasabi in his eye,

Ant Pruitt (00:02:28):
Wasabi in his eye, he's going, ah, smart. And cousin Greg

Leo Laporte (00:02:34):
Puts a laqua in his face, <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:02:37):
And

Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
And Tom Wakin says, this has

Ant Pruitt (00:02:39):
Got lemon in it. You idiot. It's only a trace of lemon, though. Just <laugh>. Just a hint.

Leo Laporte (00:02:46):
So you're watching it. Yes. I love, it's good. Isn't that

Ant Pruitt (00:02:49):
Good? I love succession. Holy

Leo Laporte (00:02:50):
Cow. That episode, Sunday night's episode, I

Ant Pruitt (00:02:54):
Haven't watched the rest of it yet. I, it made me, me

Leo Laporte (00:02:55):
Queasy. It was too close to reality. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was scary as hell. I I, I, I said this unasked on, sometimes fiction can be closer to the truths and fact. You know what I mean? Amen to that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> such a good show though. Let's play. Could you have any game show music, game music, da da da da da. Hey, I'm Leo Laport, and it's time to play Moderator Mayhem. This is the latest, like your host, Mike Masick. Mike Masick, the latest, wait, we haven't introduced ourselves. Oh, sorry. Realize that that is, I distracted us. That is, I just didn't know if he cared. Higginbotham of Stacy on iot.com in the IOT podcast. Hello, Stacy. Hello, all. Great to see you and your laqua. Let's say hello to Aunt Pru, who's sitting next to me, which I like.

(00:03:51):
You know, we did the thing that, that you're not supposed to do in business, which is I made everybody come back to work. Oh, yeah. Oh, you, you tab I'm the bad guy. Yeah. You bad? I said, we want such a horrible man host, editors and producers in studio from now on. So that's how it used to be. Well, you know, you know what? The laptop, what, what was, what was, what was the last laptop? Lalas. Elon's laptop. Lalas Lalas. Oh, no, no. I don't agree with Elon. I don't agree with him on that at all. But you know, it's good to be until Covid, everybody was here, you know, and occasionally people would work from home, but everybody's here. Then a covid, nobody was here, right? Except me. And, and Jammer b and then Covid o's over. No, it's not, but go ahead. Well, the CDC and the World Health Organization say it's over. So, I mean, it's mostly over. You don't see anybody wearing masks anymore. And, and hospitalization are down 90% deaths are down 95%. It's, yeah. It's gonna be endemic from now on. It's not a pandemic. It's like the flu. It's endemic and yeah, it could still kill you if you're somebody like Jeff <laugh>.

(00:05:01):
So now I'm feeling, I'm feeling at risk around you. You see, I, I'm afraid it's gonna come through the microphone. I, that is the well masked director of the Town, night Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark. Craig Newmar Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Jeff Jarvis. Good to see you. Good to see you. Boss Buzz machine.com. Yeah. So I said, Lisa and I were talking, I said, you know what I'd really like for Christmas? I'd like everybody to come back. It's not Christmas yet, though. Well, it's early Christmas, <laugh> Christmas in July. It's Christmas in May. Yeah. I just, and I think it's better. We had our our editorial meeting, which has been on Google Meet for the last three years. We had a person yesterday. It was great. Yeah. For me. Yeah. But I, but I never went home. You know, I've been here the, the whole time you were feeling lonely. That's getting lonely, weirdo. And, and I feel like there's a certain creative and just a happiness that happens when we're all together. And I know that there are, I mean, I'm sure that nobody has come to me and said, I hate you, but I'm sure there's people who feel like, why are you doing this <laugh>? We were, we, and it worked at home. It's not like the work wasn't getting done. Yeah. It worked

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:12):
Amazingly well.

Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
Yeah. But the work was getting done. We

Ant Pruitt (00:06:15):
Did it a lot better than N b, nbc, ABC and all of those

Leo Laporte (00:06:19):
Cats. I just missed. You

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:20):
Give people some options, though.

Leo Laporte (00:06:23):
Yeah. You can wear pajamas to work if you want. <Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:06:25):
Well, actually, I actually, I am

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:28):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:06:32):
That is, isn't it? What's for

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:33):
Lunch today? What was your free

Leo Laporte (00:06:34):
Lunch today? Lunch today was Acme Burger. It was pretty good. Yes,

Ant Pruitt (00:06:38):
Man.

Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
By the way, every Wednesday we've been buying people lunch. We even have massages sometimes. Yep. Doesn't mean they come in, they come in, they eat the lunch, and they go home.

Ant Pruitt (00:06:47):
No comment. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:06:49):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:50):
There is no free lunch, folks.

Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
I don't know. I This is the Reddit the subreddit. M i the A hole <laugh>. Am I the A hole? Nah,

Ant Pruitt (00:07:01):
Nah, nah, nah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:03):
I just want people to be here. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:05):
I, it might become on the anti work subreddit.

Leo Laporte (00:07:08):
It could if

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:09):
You're, if you're not lucky. It could.

Leo Laporte (00:07:10):
And <laugh>, it's, I don't know. I just, it's, it feels better when we're all together. Anyway, let's play Moderator Mayhem. This is I've introduced everybody. Now this is, oh, hey, it's time once again to play Moderator Mayhem. Nice work. The new Game Content moderation game from Mike Masick and Tector. Are you ready to play? Yeah. Yeah. Contestants, I'm gonna skip the tutorial cuz you guys have played Stacy here. Yeah, Stacy's played this. She can play everything. She made her, she says anxious. It's terrifying. How disturbing is this gonna be?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:48):
It's not that disturbing. I mean, it's, it's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:07:51):
It not, I'm asking you about things

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:52):
That it's asking you. You're not gonna see anything. This one doesn't

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
Show up. Okay. Good luck with moderating your first reviews. I'll be checking in to offer guidance and feedback. I can't believe Mike Masick, this guy does so much and then he has time to do this.

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:04):
Oh, he's been working on

Leo Laporte (00:08:05):
This for a long. You've been here to judge. You're here to judge these reviews based on Trust Hives policies. While I may give you feedback on some decisions that I agree or disagree with, there isn't time to immediately review all of your decisions. At the end of that round, I'll share a policy accuracy score that shows how well I think your decisions align with Trust Hives policy. There's no such thing as Trust hive, right? That's for the game. I hope

Ant Pruitt (00:08:25):
Not.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:26):
Right? This is, this is a, the idea is that you have been employed as a content moderator at Trust High. Okay. A mythical company. Does

Leo Laporte (00:08:32):
This mean I'm, and you're gonna go through Philippines?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:35):
Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:35):
Sure. And you can find out about the rules as you go and more information State will tell you how to, how to flip this.

Leo Laporte (00:08:40):
Okay. Round one. Okay. Reported for illegal, by the way, I serve this on our maid. On instance. I do this on that. You

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:47):
Gotta you gotta stop talking. You gotta

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:49):
Keep going

Leo Laporte (00:08:49):
Then. Keep going. Our review

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:50):
Of it's adding cards as you go.

Leo Laporte (00:08:51):
Oh. A review of new electric vehicles included is a video of the reviewer driving fun while driving. No. X means not illegal. It's correct.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:59):
Correct. Yeah. But you don't mean it to exit. It's correct. Go.

Leo Laporte (00:09:02):
It's correct. God. Oh, it is illegal. Go. I get it. It is illegal. Okay. Good call. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:07):
No, no, no. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:09:08):
Harassment a review of a skincare line tests on animals claiming they're puppy and bunny killers. So what does that mean? Do I click the green check means what? It's okay. The

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:17):
Greed means Greed means it's okay. And you're gonna let it go. X means X means you're gonna kill it.

Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
Kill it. Okay. kill it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:23):
Kill it.

Leo Laporte (00:09:24):
Sometimes more context can help you more clearly see the lines. He got more context, but no, you listen to Stacy who just made a snap decision. Okay. Well, Twitter for spam review of a new restaurant includes links to coupons for a free appetizer. Let's see those. Let's see that. Keep holding the button to take a closer look at the content. The owner of the restaurant is a popular trustive top reviewer and trying to reward his fans with discounts at his new restaurant. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:50):
I'd

Leo Laporte (00:09:50):
Let it go. Okay. Yeah. I say it's okay. Our c e o has asked us to look at this one closely. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:55):
Okay. Kill it. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:09:56):
Privacy review of an airport includes photo of a private plane. That's the c o <laugh>. Okay. We're, we're gonna kill it hard. We're gonna kill it. A review of a laptop running Andy Malware software that you should download for your new laptop. Oh, that's you. Okay. Products being promoted. And last one was malware itself. Take a fuck. Oops. Yeah, that's a, a little closer, little closer up mess. That one up. Review of a protest following report. The governor being accused of sexual harassment includes images of a protest sign that people are reporting the signs and men, that's fine.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:27):
Prove it.

Leo Laporte (00:10:28):
It's okay to say, end me. I'm fired. You're fired.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:31):
Dare You're, you're too sl. I knew that was gonna happen to you.

Leo Laporte (00:10:35):
Ding.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:36):
So what

Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
If we learned here?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:38):
So you, to you're way slow. I'm thinking explanations are killing you.

Leo Laporte (00:10:43):
I'm thinking.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:45):
So when I played it, I got a 67% accuracy. I just read it and I just made a gut decision based on my morals. Half the time they were like, or my, like, I'm like, eh. And then it would come back every now and then. It'd be like, Stacy, you should've looked closer. It didn't say my name, but look closer. It. And it had information that I would absolutely not have any idea why I should look closer at it, but Sure. Or it would be like, you're wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:11:09):
And then Mike says, you know, I kept, there is often, there's no correct answer, so you're not gonna hear right or wrong point, but your manager might tell you that they disagree with the decision or might not. At the end of each session, you'll get a general update on how your manager, this is, let's do another round. Let's, I was, was 67%.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:26):
That is

Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
So hard. You'll, you'll get a general update on how your manager thinks you're doing inaccurately applying company policy. You'll get a sense of your job security. So I got fired like right away. And I guess the point of all this is to show you how hard it is to do that job. Yes. Right. Right. I couldn't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:43):
Do this. And if, and if you played a little bit faster, you would actually, in the middle of like, looking at stuff, if you wanted to get more information, a little thing would come up and be like, hurry up. The comments are piling up. Yeah. And you'd be like,

Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
Okay. Yeah. That, and that's what Mike's saying. He says, you can look for more content, but that's gonna slow you down. And speed is of the essence. Right. Right. So this is, even if you

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:04):
Weren't, it's still hard. Yeah. Right. Even if you, even if speed were no factor at all, the, the cases are not easy. They're not obvious. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:10):
The point, like, I had to pause, like, I went in thinking, okay, I'm not gonna be like Trustive, I'm just gonna go with like Stacy's gut reaction to these things. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:18):
Why are

Leo Laporte (00:12:18):
We so hard on these social

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:19):
Media platforms

Leo Laporte (00:12:20):
If this is, I guess that's part of the point.

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:23):
That's the point. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:24):
That's the point. That's, and this is a really good way, like, to me, so I think we talked about like Google adding bar or adding AI to search and what that means for like content, like journalism and content and revenue, those kind of things. But this is a really good example of how journalists, if your goal is to show people viscerally, and it used to be through storytelling, how life affects people, like how policies and whatnot affect people. This is actually a great way to go to the next, like, iteration of journalism, is to create something that shows people

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:57):
Right. How policies,

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
Right. Oh, I love that work. Yeah. Because it, it's not just that you'll have a sympathy for the person, the poor people who are employed to do this, but also just how kind of this, it is difficult. Even if you had all the time in the world. It's not, these decisions are always difficult.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:13):
And this is for things. I mean, imagine a Congress critter playing this game and being like, oh, what we're asking is pretty much impossible.

Leo Laporte (00:13:19):
There you go. Nation

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:20):
Germany. Yeah. When, when Facebook was researching it's oversight board, they had, you know, went to six cities and 40 people in each room, and professors and lo lawyers and such in there, they would break us up into groups with, with these kind of hypotheticals. And, you know, you have, you're at a table with 10 brilliant people. I was at a table with Kate clo. And they aren't easy. And that's the point. There were real cases. And even if you look at the oversight board cases, they're not easy.

Leo Laporte (00:13:49):
It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:49):
Humanity. Humanity's not easy.

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Well, and speaking of humanity, I've decided to hire four professors of college journalism to help us <laugh>.

(00:14:02):
So we were looking at you might have seen this on Twitter or read it a mid journey created a a series of professors. You know, you, you basically said, I want a psychology professor and so forth. Let me, let me show you a little bit of the video. So you can see anthropology, art history, there was some gender discrimination. You know, the soft sciences got women and most of the other ones got got men. But there's also some, you pointed that out, Stacy, that the psychology professor's houndstooth jacket was pretty right on <laugh> <laugh>. And what's cool is this is Mid Journey. These are indistinguishable from real photographs, I think. Right, right. Aunt, you're a photographer. I think I, I agree. I think these could really be real people. We don't see

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:48):
Their hands.

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Yeah, we don't see their hands. But you know what, mid Journey five has been trained on hands, so it's better at hands. So, but Jeff pointed out, where's the journalism professor? So we decided to use Mid Journey 5.1. And so this is what, and I think, I don't know about the first one. The second one looks like a journalism professor. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yeah. Which you, which you think Jeff? Oh man.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:12):
Oh, they're kind of dorky.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:14):
I've never had a cool journalist journal.

Leo Laporte (00:15:16):
I was gonna say, wait a minute. Journalism professors <laugh>, I think, Hey, I think number two is we're gonna upscale number two. I think that's, I'm leaning towards two and three and three. You like three? Let's look. Three

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:29):
Looks like he has a drinking problem. He, let's

Leo Laporte (00:15:31):
Look more closely again, journalism Professor <laugh>. Yeah. Drinking problem. That's fair. That looks like, but by the way, one of the criticisms of these original professors were they, they were all, you know, they were white except for the ethnic studies professor. Right. But look at this is, I think an African American. Is he? I don't know. I can't tell. I can't tell. I

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:53):
Would say South Asian.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:54):
They're south. They're all men.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:55):
They're all men.

Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
Well, women don't teach journal journalism.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:59):
And, and, and let, let us be clear. This, this epi Aix said this revealed the bias of Vai. No, no,

Leo Laporte (00:16:04):
No. It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:05):
The bias of the academy

Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
In the real world. Human, human life. Right. which, which one of this one. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:11):
But, but by doing that, it just re emphasizes the fact that women don't belong. If I don't see myself representing, oh, I know. There. I don't.

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
Yeah. But,

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:22):
But Stacy, here's the question. Yes. is it better, or no, I'm not gonna say better or worse. Is there a point at which you edit it and enforce it to show a vision that isn't so a mirror of society? Or do you recognize the, the mirror as a bad image of ourselves?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:43):
So this is a lovely segue into something I haven't written, but I think a lot about for journalists in training on ai, which is they need to understand how this was trained. So was this trained on like journalism professors at, at 10 universities? Like, we

Leo Laporte (00:16:59):
Don't know it was even trained under professors at all. Right? We don't know. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:03):
We don't. But understanding your subset of training data is important. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then understanding like the probabilities and how it comes up with this is also important. And journalists don't usually ask those questions. Right. And I think it's an important question to ask because Jeff, that may reflect reality at the 20 places the data was scraped from. Right. We don't know. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, Uhhuh, <affirmative>. So, but that's not the reality. That's a subset of reality that this was then trained on. It's accurately actually reflect the accurate world. It reflects the world that of English speaking, whatever it there

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
You're saying

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:39):
That's why journalists need to ask

Leo Laporte (00:17:41):
This. There's inevitable in this bias saying,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:44):
We, we take this as because it's driven by data. Right. It's a computer. So we take it as a factual representation of something this based on an image of the world that we can trust because it's generated by a computer. But what we don't realize, just like statistics, we don't understand how that data was manipulated going in. And we need to, as a journalist,

Leo Laporte (00:18:05):
This is exactly, I mean, as people, what sarcastic parrots, Tim Naru and Margaret Mitchell

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:09):
Said, oh my gosh, can I just start taking a drink every time You say, well, but that

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
Exactly, but this is point <laugh> was because the computers, they're given more credence than they ought to be. And that the biases are hidden and they're built into these large, and when models

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:22):
Where the model is so huge, and you can't have that kind of transparency, cuz you have no idea

Leo Laporte (00:18:27):
When it's too bad. Now the harm done by this compared to the harm done by face recognition used by law enforcement mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is, is not as harmful. Right. I mean, law enforcement using face recognition is, is throwing people in jail that didn't commit a crime. That's a problem. Right. So, I mean, there are different harms as well.

Ant Pruitt (00:18:48):
Well, where is, where is the government gonna step in on this? What can they do if this data set is so massive? Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:54):
Well, for this

Ant Pruitt (00:18:55):
Week Curtis a smart, you don't

Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
To get in there. Yeah. You don't want government to say anything. Go do you? I mean, it's not their business.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:02):
Well, they should. So the government, so the Biden administration has put forth things about like their AI Bill of Rights. And part of it is testing for bias and looking for like measuring the outcomes of different algorithms and seeing who those impact and publishing that data. So I think that's actually really important because then you can know like, okay, we tested it. Now how often they test it, you know, it's not like it's a static thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is a big deal. But then you can say, okay, I've audited this. It predominantly shows you white people. White men in positions of power. That's good to know. That's like a little caveat at the bottom of your Yep. Your results.

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
Here is Anthony Nielsen's alternative universe of journalism professors, two of whom are for no reason we know of wearing their mortar boards. Interesting. Jeff, do you do that? Do you just,

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:55):
You just wearing you short

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Sure. Wearing your mortar

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:57):
May is graduation season. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:19:59):
Okay. Maybe,

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:59):
Maybe c a p and the mor born

Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:04):
You know

Leo Laporte (00:20:06):
I, so this is interesting cuz today, this week, of course, Sam Altman and others testified in front of Congress. Congress Yeah. On this very subject. Sam said, yeah, you gotta regulate us. He also said, I make no money from this job <laugh>. Which I thought was interesting.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:25):
Well, the worst thing he said was, you should license the producers of ai. It was just frightening.

Leo Laporte (00:20:31):
Yeah. I really think that's a bad. So this is, it's a difficult thing. I understand. And there's bias. I think the most important thing you could do is just get everybody's awareness raised Yeah. As to the issue of bias. And they get people who train these ais to do the best they can to eliminate bias wherever, you know you know, they should have had

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:50):
These f sarcastic parrots papers authors there.

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
Yeah. They should have. I agree. Not, not Sam Altman as if he speaks

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:58):
For all AI now.

Leo Laporte (00:20:59):
Yeah. He's the CEO of open ai. Incidentally,

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:03):
He's the next Mark Zucker.

Leo Laporte (00:21:04):
Which by the way, Elon Musk took credit for. He said, I started that <laugh> of course wouldn't be here without me started. And Lyft, right. Wouldn't be here without me. I don't know. So Stacy, what do you think is the solution? It's not, do you think licensing and regulation is the way?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:21):
I think having some sort of oversight for, okay. There's different places where AI is going to be used. If AI is in a decision making body, I think every single regulatory agency right now needs to have an AI bureau where they start evaluating. So if it's, if it's medicine, they need to be evaluating medical programs. I mean, cuz like when we say regulate ai, I mean, what the hell are we talking about? Mm. It's so broad. Didn't,

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
Wasn't this, I mean, remember the call for ethicists in medicine in other areas, and I think the medical eth ethicists exist. And ho some hospitals have them, insurance companies need them for sure.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:07):
They have IRBs. Is that what you're talking about?

Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
Well, yeah. I mean, this whole notion

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:11):
Is they also hire ethicists on staff.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:15):
But even things like, you know, the homeland security

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:19):
Internet research

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:20):
No institutional review board. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:22):
It's just review board.

Leo Laporte (00:22:24):
Thank you. There any

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:25):
Say internet? Did I say internet?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:26):
Yes. I was like, your IRB is different than my irb.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:29):
<Laugh>. Jesus. Oh man. Every eye stands for internet. Would it, would

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
It, my, would it be adequate to do what we did with medical ethicists to do that? Should we have AI ethicists?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:41):
No. I just think you need to create a regulatory system that's part of every, like, that does the auditing functions that handles complaints. So you haven't like a, like a weights and measures. Like if you get a, if your gas station doesn't give you the right amount of gas, you complain to the states. So if your algorithm gives you some crappy result and you feel hard done by it. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
Problem is, and you

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:03):
Have a place to go and seek

Leo Laporte (00:23:04):
Restitution. You can have a bureau of weights and measures because a leader is a leader. It's a little bit harder to say, oh, I don't, so that AI is off. Here's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:15):
Well get off against one.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:17):
You have to be Yeah. You, you have to. So here's what we are dancing around and we need to stop dancing around. We need to stop thinking that AI is technology that is neutral. It isn't. And then government needs to say, okay, we also have to recognize that it's the government's role to set parameters. So we have to say, Hey, as a government, we actually don't want ais that, you know, disproportionately affect black people. And this is a hard conversation. This isn't easy. Well, but historically we've been able to, to throw the actual decision making over the fence in by saying it's a technology thing. This is, this isn't actually a technology

Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
Thing. This is why I brought up medical ethicists. Because instead of government regulation, what insurers, and of course they have a big lobby. So they went to Congress said, you better not tell us what we can and cannot do. You know, men health insurance you know, there's no standard for whether they're gonna allow that procedure or not. But that's why they said, but we're gonna have these ethicists who are gonna help us make the decisions of who gets a heart when you have one heart and two people who need it. That kind of thing. You can't make, okay. That's hard to make a regulation. Right. Okay. In fact, I wouldn't want government to say, well, these are the 23 criteria that you have to use to judge who gets that one heart. I'm not sure I'd want that. Is that the right way to go? No. I'll give you another That's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:45):
Tough ish. Or here's So <laugh>,

(00:24:48):
So the heart example is actually a really good one because you have an ethics board. Actually, you have, I don't know who like it at a, I think for hearts, and I don't know if this is a hundred percent Yeah. You have transplant boards. Yep. You have a transplant board who looks at cases on an individual basis. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now here's what's important. It used to be it sometimes the transplant board members are public, right? So you can actually see if you're gonna investigate like a particular heart donation, you could actually see like, did that person have like secret ties to them or not? Or who these people are. Right. so there's an accountability metric there at both who's on the, like the board itself is an accountability metric for the hospital. Like, we, we've reviewed this and here's the decision making. There's accountability for who's making the decision.

(00:25:32):
So we know what their interests theoretically could be. I think that's important in having something for that to evaluate an algorithm, because they're gonna be in every organization and throughout society, you need to have those stationed in the appropriate places. So a hospital review board, you may have a review board deal with medical ai, and it would evaluate the outcomes. And this is what's important, the outcomes of the ai, and see if those align with what the hospital itself wants to promote. Or maybe it's at the FDA level, and the FDA is going to say on a, it'll have a, it'll audit the ais and say, these are the decisions it's making. These are not in line with the outcomes we want to promote as the United States of America. Right. So we have to establish those at different levels where AI is going to be implemented. You need to have it at like, maybe your, I don't know, your attorney generally your state should be looking at police and judges, like ais that are used in the criminal justice system. Like this is hard. I'm gonna, I'm gonna suggest that's sort of

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:42):
A few, a few of the things. Yeah. Go. One is, and and, and you started to get to it, Stacy, is that it's not about the ai, it's about the use, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and we've talked about this in the show a lot, that if you use facial recognition to arrest someone with no other facts, that's a misuse of the data and so on. The other thing I would say, and I was about to write this up, I think it's time for us to demote the engineers. I think it's time for us to bring in other, not just ethicists as as as the ghetto of ethic ethics, but to bring in humanities, to bring in anthropologists and philosophers and sociologists and psychologists. If you were gonna start a newspaper today, you wouldn't put the pressman in charge. If you're gonna start a TV station, you wouldn't put the camera operator in charge though. Jamer B would be a very good head for the company. I might add <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:27:28):
But the thing is, Mr. Jarvis, we, we've been saying this for the last couple of years now, why hasn't that changed? It, it's been put out in the public that hey, the people that are in to, into the business of training these systems need more diversity within the departments. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that's been preached over and over and over again. And it, and it hasn't changed as of yet.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:51):
Well, I think this stuff, the stuff we're talking about today and is still new mm-hmm.

Ant Pruitt (00:27:56):
<Affirmative>

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:57):
You know, we haven't seen this. And again, we don't, it so much depends on the use, right. If, if, if you have this system that maps the relationships of all words that we have available, right. You could use that to query it and say, what are the biases of society? In that case, you don't wanna clean up the biases. You wanna know what they are,

Ant Pruitt (00:28:14):
Wanna know what they are. Okay. Yeah. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:16):
Or if you say, I want to, I want to use this to train children on their career opportunities, well, then you have a completely different use and you're gonna judge the output completely differently. So it's not about the AI is good or bad. It's Right. What was the intent? How was it trained to what end? And is the output beneficial and useful or not? And then how do humans use it? Do the police use it badly? Do mortgage companies use it badly? Do doctors use it badly? The the bad stuff is gonna come with misinterpretation and misuse from the humans after the fact. So it's not about fixing the ai, it's getting, the pix thing is the AI doesn't have the bias. Society does. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or the training set did mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or the prompt did, or our own vision does. And, and so Stacey's right. It's not simple, but it also isn't limited to this thing we call ai.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:12):
Oh, you can't regulate, you can't regulate ai. That's so stupid. And I wish we could stop talking. We have to regulate things. Things.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:19):
Yes. Stacey.

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
Oh, what's the difference between regulating AI and regulating the use? You're saying we should regulate the use

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:25):
You have? Well, yeah. You, you have to regulate the use of it. Already. We're seeing things like

Leo Laporte (00:29:30):
Who uses it? Like you would say, it's okay for me to use mid journey to generate pictures of professors, even if they're biased. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:38):
I'm not gonna, like, I would point that out to you. I'd be like, look. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
But that's not gonna be regulated, I would hope.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:43):
Right? No, you can't regulate that. There's also the risk

Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
Regulation of regulatory capture. And I think that's what Sam Altman wanted. He, hold

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:51):
On. Yeah. But you know what? Regulatory capture is gonna happen regardless. And we see like, they're just pissed because if you have like the option of regulatory capture, then they have to spend money on lobbyists. I mean, I hate, I, I get that regulatory capture exists, but I hate that as an argument for not regulating anything. Because then you're in this like free fall. Like everybody does whatever they want.

Leo Laporte (00:30:15):
Yeah. You just should pretend just pay attention to who's asking for the regulations.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:18):
Right. You totally should. And

Leo Laporte (00:30:20):
Then queen Bono, we see the reg we benefiting from the regulation. Yeah. Right,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:24):
Right. But, but what we're talking, I mean, and, and Jeff, you know, you, you brought up Jeff is right in the sense that like you have to regulate the use of it. And when you see use cases and you have to have regulations in place, so you can actually demand that, those like that a company is telling you when they're using an algorithm to make a decision. So there's two demand that you have access to it.

Leo Laporte (00:30:49):
There's two what abouts that I would raise. One is what about other nations? What about China, for instance? Who we can't do anything about China by well, but they're not gonna be governed by regulation. They're gonna develop ai. They're gonna get increasingly powerful while we are hobbling

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:05):
Or they're gonna overregulate it. Which one of them, one of the senators was basically using it as a model saying, well, China, China regulates this output. Maybe we

Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
Should, well, yeah, we have regulatory capture as an issue here, which is that the, the incumbents influence, or because they care influence legislation and it ends up benefiting them. In China, the incumbents are the people's Republic of China, the government, the ccp. So they were gonna have it be influenced in such a way that it's to benefit them. Yep. So that's their version of regulatory capture. But that's the first one about the other, what about you know, which concerns me also is regulation can keep us from making progress in, in an yes in tradition. And, you know, this is one of the reasons they didn't regulate the internet initially. Maybe we should have, I don't know. But because it was a new and exciting, innovative sphere, they felt that it's too soon for government to intervene. And that could, these are our development of ai.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:08):
So we're not talking about regulating the development of ai.

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:11):
Well, they were in the Senate,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:13):
Stacey, I I know you're not,

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:15):
You're not. I know, but they were,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:16):
But that's what, so you're, you're throwing your what abouts in some, I'm proposing concrete regulatory steps that we can take to prevent actual harms from ai. And then you're in response to that. You're throwing me what abouts that actually don't relate to that at all. So if you wanna ask me like, what about regulatory capture? I would say, yeah, that happens and we're gonna have to look out for it. But that's not an excuse to not regulate. If you're gonna ask what if that stops us on innovation? I would say none of the steps in concrete proposals I've made actually stop. Okay. Our ability to innovate,

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:50):
Stacy. But now, now put on your senator hat. I know Leo is normally the senator here, <laugh>. But now I would like you to be in the Senate because the Senate is not a diverse body. So I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:00):
Should look like an old white man.

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:01):
Yes, you should. Yes. <laugh>. Okay. Yes. Or act like one. So I mean you know, as Lindsay Graham said, outright, oh no, you gotta look grumpy. You

Leo Laporte (00:33:10):
Could be an old white woman like Diane Feinstein. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:14):
Then you won't know where you are.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:17):
Okay, keep going. Jess. I'm asking, what am I asking?

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:19):
Thank you. So, so Lindsey Graham said, you know, should we, should we license? And Sam Alden said yes. So this idea that, that's part of what I think we're talking about here is not just the sensible things you are saying and I'm saying, but where it's headed is the reflex was to say it'll be okay if we license this now, then it's pure regulatory capture. Cause then Sam Altman said well, just for us big guys, cuz I can handle it. Right?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:44):
I do not think we should license companies to explore ai, if that's the question you're asking. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:48):
That's the question.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:49):
I, that is a silly idea.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:51):
I understand that. The, the premise of how, how is it, how is that doable to license

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:58):
You license? You can create a licensing regime to stop. Like, I can't put up a nuclear power plan if I want. There's a can't.

Leo Laporte (00:34:04):
You can't be a barber, right? <Laugh>. Yeah. Unless you go to barbers

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:07):
Independent. Now you can,

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:08):
However, however, get a gun and kill lots of people. Yeah. But you can't make an algorithm.

Ant Pruitt (00:34:13):
Can't be a barber. But you could also be someone that sells fruit on the side of the street in front of a business that had to go through all of their little regulations.

Leo Laporte (00:34:21):
It's true. But I mean so

Ant Pruitt (00:34:23):
This is the same premise. If

Leo Laporte (00:34:24):
Queen Pruitt wants to be an esthetician, right, she's gonna have to go to the state board Yeah. And pass exams and take, pay a lot of, pay a lot of fees. That by the way, that is another form of regulatory capture because that, that keeps the number of estheticians low. Right? and actually that's something Shoshana Weisman, who's a regular on some of our shows is very involved in, is this whole idea of licensing that really ends up just being, you know, keeping the, keeping everybody out so we can keep our salaries on. Hey, you

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:55):
Know what? I introduced Rashan into the network when she has this show since the first time. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:34:59):
She goes on big show.

Ant Pruitt (00:35:00):
She's been, she's been into b she the

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:02):
Show.

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
She's too big.

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:03):
She

Ant Pruitt (00:35:04):
She's she's pasted you, sir.

Leo Laporte (00:35:07):
You know what

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:08):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:35:09):
You know somebody's taking time off in the next couple of weeks. I can't remember if it's you or me, Stacy, next week. I'm God, he hits Han on. We're we're trying to I think we have a list of people we're trying to get C Messina who said he would be on. Yeah. we're hoping we can get him on the inventor of the hashtag. And one of the, you know, people who was a real stalwart at Twitter, who just recently said goodbye to Twitter. He didn't work crazy.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:35):
Oh, Christmas. He's also an actor. This why I get

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
Different Christmas,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:39):
Different Chris Sino.

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
Yes. But Chris is a great guy. I you know, I've been a fan for a long, long time. Not the guy, not Danny Castellano in the Mindy Project. Not that <laugh> the dad Cina, he's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:53):
In, he's in the New Air Jordan movie. The Bend FL movie,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:57):
Air Back Christmas Day. Air, air, yes. I saw somebody on Twitter today, said they had deleted all of their tweets and all of this and all of that. That evidently Twitter brought back some hosting site they weren't using. And they were all

Leo Laporte (00:36:08):
Back. Twitter has so many bugs in the software. Oh, now the latest, you can't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:12):
Delete anything and

Leo Laporte (00:36:14):
Yeah, you can't delete it. Or then you don't have any choice. Or then you get it all deleted or you know, you just don't know what's, it's, it's kind of, you never know from day to day what you're gonna get. Oh boy. The latest thing is they said they're gonna delete people who have not posted in a certain amount of time. So I'm watching, this is scary

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:28):
For dead people being taken over and well,

Leo Laporte (00:36:30):
Actually this is a Google story. Let's take a break cuz this is a Google story I want to talk about cuz Google has announced something similar. Yeah. And there's some real concern about that, but we'll get to that in a moment. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:40):
Yeah. I will argue for it.

Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
Okay. Oh boy. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:43):
Then I'll argue against it. Just cuz that's what makes a show.

Leo Laporte (00:36:45):
And I will put on a striped shirt and encourage you boast to fight <laugh>. But first <laugh> a word from our sponsors, the a w s Insiders Podcast. Have you heard this? It's great. Fast-Paced, entertaining, insightful look behind the scenes of Amazon Web services and cloud computing in general. A w s is the dominant platform for cloud. And I imagine there's so much to talk about. And it's, we're not, this is not your typical tech podcast. Not like us. High production value, high energy, high entertainment, and full of anecdotes and stories from the early days of a w s to today. The host, of course Raul Super Manum is great sub man. Neum is great. Hillary Doyle, but I'll call him Raul, if you don't mind. We're holding Hillary. Dig into the current state in the future of AWS by talking with the people and companies that know it best.

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(00:38:43):
I was very interested in episode three of this most recent season. They talk about Moderna. Did you know Moderna, which of course makes one of the two very successful Covid vaccines. Moderna was born in the cloud in 2010. A w s was brand new, about four years old. And it's one of the, one of the kind of the secret recipes. Moderna had to become a premier biotech company. It's episode three of the New Season. Moderna highly recommend it. If you're interested in the cloud. You've gotta look for AWS insiders in your podcast player. You can also just go right to the web cloud fix dot ora a u r e a.com cloud fix.ora.com/podcast. We'll put a link to in the show notes at TWI tv slash twig. But you know, the easiest thing to do, get your podcast client and look for a w s insiders.

(00:39:43):
I don't give a lift and shift <laugh> <laugh>. That's one of, one of the one of the great episodes, cloud fix.orea.com/podcast or search for AWS insiders and your favorite podcast player. And we thank them so much for supporting our podcast. I like that. Thank you. Thank you. I like, I like doing ads for podcasts. I like growing the podcast club. Yeah. alright. I am it's time for a blood sacrifice in the words of Logan Roy <laugh>. I <laugh> I'll put on my striped shirt. And in this corner weighing at 110, it's Stacy Higginbotham and the Red Trunks. And the red hair on that corner, it's a professor of journalism. Mm-Hmm. You know what that means? Mm-Hmm. And now I forgot completely what you're gonna debate. Oh, what I gotta do this story first. Yeah. <laugh>. So Google announced and we can debate anything.

(00:40:39):
It doesn't matter. Yeah. We'll just start, just debate. Well, you just debate, fight over it. Fight crossfire. Google has said, and I think this scared me when they said it, that they are gonna start deleting accounts that aren't active. Kind of like two years Twitter has said. But then what's now? So at first people go, not YouTube. What about all those great YouTube videos that were posted once and then nobody's still doing it. And then I know that our friend, the creator liaison at YouTube, Mr. Renee Richie said, no, no, don't worry. We're not talking about YouTube. Oh, okay. <Laugh>, are you sure? I I'm gonna presume Renee has the insight talk about Gmail, but they will be Gmail. It will be, I don't care about Gmail, I care about the public square and I'm more concerned about blogger sites. Because aren't there sites that have, you know, been inactive for years that are, are still sure that's but important. Historically,

Ant Pruitt (00:41:37):
I did not about internet archive at this point.

Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
Yeah. But we shouldn't have to rely sketchy on internet archive to preserve and

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:45):
Deadly and to be dead links. Yeah. And, and internet archive is incomplete. So if only, but afraid not

Leo Laporte (00:41:53):
The great Google account purge starts December, 2023. It will slowly happen. But you know, you know, for instance, if you've been in inactive for two years and you're already over that mark, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, your account's not gonna be deleted immediately. You'll get w Google says you'll get lots of warning. Don't, don't worry about that. I can understand Gmail that I guess,

Ant Pruitt (00:42:19):
But why should Google be, why should Google hold onto accounts that were created by mistake? You know someone created an account and forget the password within an hour. So they go and create a new account.

Leo Laporte (00:42:31):
Yeah, no, that's, I understand that. Or,

Ant Pruitt (00:42:33):
Or not to mention the divide accounts that were automatically generated and,

Leo Laporte (00:42:37):
And they say, if you wanna, if you have an account, you wanna keep it active, just sign in once every two years. That's not a lot. That's

Ant Pruitt (00:42:43):
Not a lot. But that's enough to say, I'm here. The light's on. You know? Well, Stacey,

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:47):
You go ahead and defend it too.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:49):
Okay. The internet is not free. There are resources and energy devoted to all of this stuff. Amen. And if you're not using it, you should get rid of it. Now, the best way to do this is to provide the warning that Google says it's gonna provide. So, yay. Two, it should also, I, I think this would be an awesome time to either Google makes a big donation to like the way back machine or the internet archive, or we actually talk about creating some sort of publicly funded or company funded infrastructure for things of value for the maybe

Leo Laporte (00:43:23):
Library of Congress. Right? Maybe that's what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:26):
Yeah. I mean our tweets are there, right? So Well, they's not we should, unfortunately. Yeah. Well, I mean, but that's the thing. We think the internet is free and it's, it's cheap. It's way cheaper than paper, but it's not free. So. Right. And that, I mean, if you think about the environmental costs of saving all of this stuff on these servers, and even YouTube, y'all, I know that there's a billion, like, I don't know how many hours they'll tell you how many, like more hours than one person could ever watch. And I don't think it's wrong of them to get rid of it, especially if they try to do it in a responsible manner. That's, you know, lets, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:43:59):
I don't know how responsible it's gonna be cuz the blog post said quote, if a Google account has not been used or signed into for at least two years, we may delete the account and its contents, including content from Google Workspace, Gmail docs, drive, meet calendar, YouTube, and Google Photos. To which of course, a lot of people who said there's, you know, one of my favorite things is five years old on YouTube. There's a lot of tech TV stuff that somebody posted. They're long gone. But that stuff's there. I understand Stacy, you know, it's a shame that Google has to pay the freight to keep that up there. But that was kind of the deal. It's responsibility. Yeah. in any events, Google then back down, this is why I'm not sure I trust them because then they said, oh wait a minute. No, not, not YouTube. It says YouTube. This is

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:49):
A dialogue. They also, in their thing that they, when they originally posted it, they also said that it wasn't going, that it would be discretionary or they would look at things. So

Ant Pruitt (00:44:58):
What I saw is it mentioned something about videos having potential historical value, not just Cat.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:04):
How are they gonna judge? They're gonna judge that.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:06):
But you know what, if you want your five years of tech tv, Leo, host it yourself and stick a link on the internet. Mm.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:13):
Well let me, let me, let me, let me try to argue now. May I,

Leo Laporte (00:45:16):
Well, first of all, I don't have access to it. So that is in fact the only place that, that exists outside of NBC's Vaults and they won't let us access it. We tried very hard. Oh. So that is the only place that exists. Well,

Ant Pruitt (00:45:28):
NBC uses, so this will be a great YouTube accounts. So it ain't going anywhere. This

Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
Isn't a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:33):
Good

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:33):
Reason to talk about changes in

Leo Laporte (00:45:36):
Unofficial u NBC accounts. It's just somebody who VHS did Yeah. And has put their VHS tape on YouTube

Ant Pruitt (00:45:41):
And literally recorded their screen with the camera or whatever

Leo Laporte (00:45:44):
Stuff. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:45):
Yeah. Can I argue Now we've

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:46):
Lost. Okay. Yeah, I was Can I just make one

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:49):
And make your eyes gimme more to argue with? That's fine. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:52):
<Laugh>, we have lost billions of records over the last millennia. I mean, if we even just look at books that are outta print and Yeah. It's sad. So sad. But it's gone. And we keep making stuff. I'm not a sentimental

Leo Laporte (00:46:05):
Person point. Nobody expects a publisher everything to keep a book in print. Yeah, that's a good point. That's so,

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:11):
Hold

Leo Laporte (00:46:11):
On. But, but, but one thing the publisher doesn't do is then burn the existing copies of the books. They don't make new ones.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:18):
Well that's, that's what happens. That's why the Internet's so cheap, y'all. Yeah. I mean this is, this is this is what defines the internet. Take,

Leo Laporte (00:46:27):
Take who in our in our Discord says, how the hell is Elizabeth Holmes gonna prevent her Gmail account from being deleted? She's gonna go to jail for 15 years. What is she gonna get?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:36):
What she comes someone to log in for her? They'll have inion

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:40):
Scenarios. Let me give you a few scenarios here. Right.

Ant Pruitt (00:46:43):
One is package

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:45):
Include Twitter in this. Right. one is impersonation of a, of a dead person. Right. Or someone who's who.

Leo Laporte (00:46:52):
Well, for instance, if Twitter kills my account, there's nothing to stop somebody else from being Leo LaPorte on Twitter. Exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:57):
So that's the first problem.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:58):
So log in every two years,

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:00):
We You're dead. You're dead. You can't, I

Leo Laporte (00:47:03):
Can't. I'm dead. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:03):
Then you're dead.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:04):
Then you don't get your name Truth. Let me, what if,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:07):
What if there's another Le Laport out there we go

Leo Laporte (00:47:09):
Now. Too bad. I'm Le LaPorte <laugh> and they, there

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:12):
Is, there is a whole linkage to a Leo LaPorte that says that's a Leo LaPorte. That's Leo LaPorte. We know. And Leo may rest in peace, was a wonderful guy. Sometimes grumpy. But we liked him even

Ant Pruitt (00:47:24):
Say <laugh> sometimes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:25):
And now along comes Jason Khans acting like he's Leo LaPorte, which is probably what happened. And, and so there's impersonation publicly. That's one. Two, there's a business problem. I'll use my father cause he never had a Google account. So DV Jarvis now he rest in peace is gone now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Well, people know that cuz there's OITs and stuff out there and they know they can grab that email address that exists in a Gmail and then they can go around to banks and all kinds of places and say, oh yeah, yeah. I'm DV Jarvis. Yeah. That's where the, the password recovery is, is that they count DV Jarvis at Gmail, send it to DV Jarvis. Yeah. And you can recover all kinds of stuff from people who aren't gonna know that they're dead or whatever. There's a, there's a business problem.

(00:48:08):
And three is, you're right Stacy, about the expense. But you have an obligation when you say we're gonna be this repository of culture. Then you didn't make clear at the very beginning, well, but only for two years. And then it's gone. Then it's, the problem of Google in general is what can you trust? Now you're right that culture is not everything America Echo says the culture is what we choose not to forget. So I agree with that. But there was a compact that occurred in the early days of all of these platforms that said Moger. I mean, you're gonna be there forever. Wordpress, YouTube. And

Leo Laporte (00:48:49):
I guess that's the real

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:50):
Question in case is

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
There implicit promise of eternal representation on the net? So I don't think I would say really, I mean there's done

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:00):
Lose if you lose tech tv, what do we lose as a culture, right? If, if, if people do want it, but there's no way to save it,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:08):
That's too bad. Tough life on

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:12):
No, I'm serious. Their heads. I love this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:15):
<Laugh>. And the, the other thing to note is if you see what's happening right now, Google announced this and already they're like not YouTube. If that's the case, they're renegotiating the compact. Look at it. Like if, if you say they're, we had an implicit agreement back when the web was young. To me this feels like, yeah, I mean you all do stupid things when you're young and maybe you promised something like, like you'll tell your brother like, man, if you ever need a kidney, I'll give it to you man, cuz I love you. And then maybe your brother like cheats on your wife or something. Or cheats with your wife. What

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:47):
Is this going Stacy?

Leo Laporte (00:49:48):
No, I usually think, Stacy, you can't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:51):
Be held responsible.

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
I'm gonna adjudicate your

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:53):
Favor changes.

Leo Laporte (00:49:54):
Yes. I'm gonna adjudicate your favor. And what happens in pre-internet world is if something is valued by the culture like Shakespeare, the culture preserves it. Yep. but there, but you're absolutely right Stacy. Think of all of the things that we have lost. Now, would I have preferred that the library of Alexandria did not get burned to the ground?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:17):
Yes. Yeah. We all probably would've. Yeah. He knows what we lost there.

Leo Laporte (00:50:22):
Yeah. Yeah. So I think what Jeff's saying is this is the library of Alexandria and Google's about to light the match.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:30):
That I don't, the truth is

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:31):
Library is Alexandria. Is that every, I forget how many years papyrus would have disintegrated. So you would've had to put the investment into rewriting things and copying the scrolls. Otherwise they would

Leo Laporte (00:50:43):
Also, it's actually very analogous. That effort is not just the money that Google pays to keep the servers going.

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:49):
This is mentioned maybe in the berghe. Is it?

Leo Laporte (00:50:52):
Sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:52):
Yeah. Oh, nice.

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
But one thing though out close that's kind of interesting lately, scientists, they're, they've recovered a huge number of papyri from Pompe after the eruption. You can't obviously unroll it. Scientists are using technology to scan these papyri and then using AI to reassemble the texts

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:13):
That was so Yale of him to use the pool of papyrus <laugh>. I think we don't pyre <laugh>. Yeah. Very good. Very good.

Leo Laporte (00:51:21):
What's the plural of Poe? <Laugh> <laugh>. So yeah, there, so I thought that was kind of interesting. So you're right Jeff, but I mean there, there is a loss to the culture. Another example that's gone

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:36):
Is

Leo Laporte (00:51:36):
A shame. Well, yeah, let's not use tech TV cuz it isn't. But,

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:41):
But I wanna see my dev null. I'll

Leo Laporte (00:51:43):
Give you, I'll give you an example that's kind of related, which is video games. Yeah. These are artistic creations. Yeah. that, you know, if can't really be played once the, you know, the last N 64 crumbles into dust. Right. and, and there is an effort to preserve these sometimes an effort that is thwarted by the copyright holders of all things. Yeah. yeah. But we, I think we do wanna preserve, we wanna preserve even the, the fact that it's digital. If, if the Mona Lisa were a digital creation, we would've want to have saved that. Right. Just cuz it's oil doesn't make it somehow better than a digital creation. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:26):
So I think there are two things that could, that like this is a good conver this is like, good point in time to say, oh my God, the internet doesn't work quite like we thought. Right? It's not, it's not this permanent record of infinite cheap access. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, and then also we have value, there's value in preserving this access that is protected under laws that really protected things that were physical and paper. So then two things we should cut, take away. One, maybe we should create some sort of digital library of Congress or funding for something that, that keeps us

Leo Laporte (00:52:59):
In that might be the right

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:00):
Answer. Culture that we, yeah. And then two, what about our copyright laws? Let's say we wanna put something in this library. Can we re rework copyright something? Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:10):
That's Google Books, right, Stacy? That's exactly the, the, the challenge that, and that's, but that

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:15):
Was physical books. But that's not video games or That's, but that's Bruce's,

Leo Laporte (00:53:19):
If that's what, that's what Bruce Kale is doing at the internet archive. Yeah. In fact, he's archived those video games creating emulators so that you can play them after the N 64 is long gone. He did get in a bit in trouble for that, didn't he? Of course, that was o over lending those books, scanning books and lending them out.

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:36):
You wanna see an analog for this. If you go to stc.ac.uk, this is the universal short title catalog. I'll repeat that. The O c Ustc Doac UK Andrew Pedigree, who's a brilliant historian of books, established this. And it catalogs everything known that was printed. Everything, whether it still exists or not, between Gutenberg and 1700, you search on something in the catalog, right? Wow. And then if, if, if it exists in digital form, you can click on it and look at it. But even if it doesn't exist, the fact that it existed is interesting. And what pedigree says is that it's the things that we used most that we didn't value. It's the books that we didn't care about, that we left on the shelf, that nobody took out, that didn't get ruined. The things that we used every day and cared about and, and, and, and mattered in our lives got destroyed through use. So one of the weird things about this is, the things that you can't find are the things that mattered most of the time.

Leo Laporte (00:54:33):
And you have some standing, because you, I mean, I know you're a professor of journalism, but really, you're a historian at this point, and these original documents are the first draft of history. You need this stuff, right? Absolutely.

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:46):
Yeah. It's fascinating, fascinating stuff. And you also look through, one of the things I love doing this, and I, and I recommend this in the Gutenberg parenthesis on sale soon, is that you look through and you see the progression of print, right? In, in the, in the 14 hundreds, there were no indexes or title pages, or page numbers and so on. And then you see it happen. You, it lost its color, it gained its standardization. The fonts changed. You see something that occurs. And, and there was no, there was little talk. Pedigree also has a book out called The Library of Fragile History, where the, the aim wasn't to preserve. So, so, you know, what I want, Stacy, is just as we had ethicists before, I want librarians to be part of this discussion at Google.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:31):
Yeah. And I think librarians or museum curators, <affirmative>, I mean, all of these mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I've been to dozens of museum exhibits that are all digital. And so curators are already thinking about how to preserve things over time, and as digital formats fail and protocols die, and blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, I, again, I feel sad. I don't think this is Google's, it's totally right that Google said, oh, I'm gonna start deleting stuff. It feels like, do I think it's sad? We'll lose stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
Ruth pra Ruth Poat got ahold of the, you know, the, the bill for the server and said, well, wait a minute here, <laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:08):
But why would you trust a co like a private earth?

Leo Laporte (00:56:10):
That's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:11):
Reasonable. It's a public company with your cultural assets, your stuff.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:16):
I'm not sure about the infrastructure structure side of it, but what about accounts that, that are used just for forward emails? I saw someone in our discord talking about it. They had an old Google account that they would dump stuff in it to forward to their personal email. Right. Based on some type of filter. Does that still, well,

Leo Laporte (00:56:33):
Patrick Han's dad, who was a federal prosecutor, I think he was a Massachusetts. I don't know if Patrick, you'll have to fill me in. But he passed away a couple of years ago. Patrick says he's been keeping Maine US attorney.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:49):
Thank you attorney.

Leo Laporte (00:56:50):
He's been keeping his Gmail account alive for the last two years. That's historic. Mm-Hmm.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:57):
<Affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:59):
Yeah. Well, it's not, you're right. But it's,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:01):
It's also an email that a lot of people would want access to.

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Right. The right thing to do. Throw

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:05):
That open.

Leo Laporte (00:57:06):
The right thing to do would be to have some sort of, you know, maybe Craig Newmar instead of saving pigeons, <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:15):
Pigeons of journalism. God, man,

Leo Laporte (00:57:17):
Save could save

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:18):
Plenty expensive.

Leo Laporte (00:57:20):
Yeah. No, but I think it's probably something a government should do. Libraries, you know, it's amazing. We have libraries. What a great contribution they are making up to our public wheel. Libraries have been mm-hmm. <Affirmative>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:31):
Thanks Ben Franklin,

Leo Laporte (00:57:32):
Thank Ben, and thank you to all those,

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:34):
And, and Carnegie

Leo Laporte (00:57:35):
States and local and governments, and federal governments who finance this because, and taxpayers ultimately who finance this until

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:43):
Florida kills them, but yes.

Leo Laporte (00:57:45):
Yeah. But we decided that this was something important. And that's I think what we need to extend the concept of library to digital goods, I guess. I mean, we already have a structure for that.

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:56):
Well, we, we need, as Stacy would say, we need a discussion. We need a discussion about what's important to save and what the ethic of, of saving is. What does it save to to future historians, to our children?

Leo Laporte (00:58:07):
Well, and this is problematic because for the

Ant Pruitt (00:58:08):
Longest discussion ever, cuz no one's going to agree.

Leo Laporte (00:58:11):
Yeah. If you were alive at the time of Shakespeare, would you say, oh no, that Christopher Marlow, let's save all his stuff. But Shakespeare, he sucks <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:21):
And we don't know what we're missing. That's the other thing.

Leo Laporte (00:58:24):
We don't know what the good stuff is. Like

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:25):
Shakespeare. Well, interestingly, Leo, about that, so it's now the 400th anniversary of the first folio of Shakespeare. And what happened was there were a bunch of really crappy editions of Shakespeare. There's a really funny speeches that were in awful printings of it. And it was after he died, it was friends of his from the stage who said, we must preserve the true Shakespeare. And that's why they printed the first folio.

Leo Laporte (00:58:48):
Interesting. So there was

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:52):
This too, the guttenberg parenthesis on sale. Yeah. They

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:54):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Well, yeah, they curated it basically. And Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:58):
Well, they, they Google. Yeah. They, they, they,

Leo Laporte (00:59:00):
But contemp, the point

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:01):
Is didn't function too to fix the good stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:59:03):
The point is, contemporaneously people recognized his value. And that's probably why we have it today. But maybe there was also another guy. Oh, there was, that wasn't recognized. That might Bevan

Ant Pruitt (00:59:13):
Should have been

Leo Laporte (00:59:14):
Cervantes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:15):
Oh, Cervan wrote 40 plays. He considered him himself first considered himself first a playwright interest. Most of that is all

Leo Laporte (00:59:21):
Lost. We know him for Don Han. It's all like, but is it sold? We don't know where his plays are.

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:26):
Please didn't. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:27):
All like those Euroes euro plays the plays by Euros.

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:32):
How to say it?

Leo Laporte (00:59:32):
<Laugh>, I believe it's pronounced papyri.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:37):
But yeah, there's tons of stuff we've lost at like, all of sa Like there are no intact saffo poems out there, but we're all like, yeah, yeah. She was amazing. Great poet.

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. We talk about saff all the time. They're, none of her pumps survived. They do. Well, I do.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:52):
There's fragments of them. <Laugh>. Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (00:59:57):
No, I had no idea that, that the poetry does not survive fragments of

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:01):
It's fragments. And but her reputation, people have reported

Leo Laporte (01:00:04):
Her. Exactly. Her reputation is from the other people talking about it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:07):
Let me quote for if I may, from the bad corto of Hamlet, the speech, you all know, oh God, to be or not to be. There's the point no to sleep, to dream. I marry there it goes <laugh>. For in that dream of death when we awake and born before an everlasting judge, from when no passenger ever returned the undiscovered country, that's like, and who sight the happy smile and the curse of dance. That's

Leo Laporte (01:00:34):
Like some guy who went to the play. And then, right. Somebody said, what did he say? Regurgitate something like this be or

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:41):
Not to be. That's the point I'm trying to make. That's the

Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
Point. To be or not to be. That is the question. Whether it is no blur in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Yeah. It's a very different, and it doesn't even mean the same thing, which is hysterical. No, it

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:56):
Doesn't. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
That's the point. Well, may

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:59):
Maybe the guy who was playing Hamlet that time, he forgot his, a <laugh>, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:01:02):
He didn't know his long as, oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:04):
Yeah. This is an ad. Lib is,

Leo Laporte (01:01:06):
This is a great conversation. And maybe I really think this is the kind of thing this Google announcement should stimulate, which is okay, fine. You're right. It's not Google's job to maintain all this, but culturally we want to, what should we do? And I wish members of Congress would think about stuff like this. They won't.

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:22):
Yeah. Yeah. They won't.

Leo Laporte (01:01:26):
This is why you have a

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:26):
Prize. So I, I wanna, I also wanna give Ray credit to the quota mission before. So it's Jean Fe in a wonderful book, said one thing is certainly said, what we call culture is in fact a long fee process of selection and filtering. Now more than ever, we realize the culture is made up of what remains after everything else has been forgotten. Which is a wonderful quote. So, but the choice of what to remember is ours.

Leo Laporte (01:01:56):
What are we

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:56):
Gonna do? Let's stop the conversation.

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
What are we gonna do? Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:58):
Actually let you know, by the way, there are actual saffo poems that exist in fullness, but not very many. Okay. And most of, most of what we see are fragments not

Leo Laporte (01:02:08):
So I think that's not at all uncommon in the ancient world that we don't we don't know. Right. Well, Aristotle, right? We we only know, or is it Socrates? One of them? <Laugh>. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:19):
Know, it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:19):
Always How about the Bible? You wanna use the Bible? Because, well, the

Leo Laporte (01:02:22):
Bible we got Right. But, but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:24):
Well, but it's translations on, translations on scroll. I

Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Mean, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:30):
Well actually finish making your point and I'll see if that works. <Laugh>. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:02:34):
I think there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of people of the ancient world that we only know of by reputation. Yeah. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:50):
This is far too much. Google for a show called This Weekend. Google <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
I know. We should talk about Twitter. Let's talk about Elon. Actually, I have other stories. Good one. Go. I have other stories. There's Breaking TikTok news. This just in the governor of Montana has signed into law the TikTok Ban

Ant Pruitt (01:03:11):
And Express. So now is saying, Woohoo.

Leo Laporte (01:03:15):
Now we know. Take your finger off the button, whoever. I, I don't have any audio. There we go. <Laugh>. Thank you <laugh>. The ear people wanted me to hear. So Montana is now officially the first state to ban TikTok. Why Governor Greg Genor signed the bill Senate Bill four 19 into law today. Go, you have some time. It doesn't go into effect Till January 1st, he signed the bill. He said to quote, protect Montana's person private and sensitive information. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:03:50):
Jesus

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
From being gathered by China.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:54):
That's, that's the key. China. China, that's the key

Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy in Americans violate their privacy and collect their personal, private, and sensitive information is well documented. Okay. Sure. I I can't say that's not true today. Montana takes the most decisive action. Any state to prevent, protect Montana's private data. I wonder how they plan to do this. That's the only thing I'm interested in. How do you implement that?

Ant Pruitt (01:04:18):
When do they reach out to the likes of Meta, Facebook, Instagram, what have you? Well, that's another one about what they're collecting. And

Leo Laporte (01:04:25):
The Montana Department of Justice can find any App store or Bite dance's parent company, $10,000 for every violation and $10,000 a day for each day. The violation continues. So I guess it's Apple and Google will have to drop TikTok from the app store in Montana,

Ant Pruitt (01:04:44):
Right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:45):
Hmm.

Ant Pruitt (01:04:46):
<Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:47):
All. So could you download it on your phone if you left Montana and then when you came back, you could run it.

Leo Laporte (01:04:52):
Yeah. Cuz otherwise they'll have to go to every internet service provider, mobile phone carrier in Montana and say, you need to block TikTok. That's not gonna happen.

Ant Pruitt (01:05:05):
I

Leo Laporte (01:05:05):
Mean, I understand they're concerned. In fact, there was a, a recent TikTok story that implied TikTok was collecting more information than we had thought. Right?

Ant Pruitt (01:05:14):
Yeah. I saw that too. Or that, or that the company

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:17):
More access to it than we thought was gonna more

Leo Laporte (01:05:19):
The story. Right. And was happy to hand it over. So, sorry. So I kind of understand, I'm kind of sympathetic. I would much prefer to see legislation against data brokers. Like c Chava, which just recently got away with tracking your location cuz the judge said, well, what's the harm in that? Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:44):
So the FTC can come back and make a stronger case. I hope they do. It's unlikely to, but

Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
They could. Yeah. The the judge said, you haven't proven harm.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:53):
Right. Substantial injury is what the judge said. You haven't proven.

Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
And if you come back to me and can show that I, well, I'll reconsider, but yeah, we'll see.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:01):
So we need someone who gets arrested because they were near an abortion provider or a woman's healthcare provider, and or someone who was beaten up by a stalker after their stocker purchased data from a data broker.

Leo Laporte (01:06:15):
Now, great. The Wall Street Journal says TikTok Ban signed in Montana, paving the way for First Amendment legal battle. And I guess that's the question is who Sues does TikTok sue? I think they get

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:29):
Tiktok gets some creators to,

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
To sue what creators would be the right one. Right. If Henry, if you wanna sue Montana I'll wear a hat and, and, and a wave a flag. Yeah. But

Ant Pruitt (01:06:39):
That's the thing

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:40):
With TikTok has the data on the biggest TikTok, the, the people from Montana who have the greatest TikTok following. Oh yeah. Those are the people. If you're TikTok, you reach out to Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:50):
You already got it.

Leo Laporte (01:06:51):
That's good. Use that evil Yeah. In front of Yeah. You already got it to Yeah. Protect yourself.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:57):
But would it matter if someone outside of Montana lobbies against this?

Leo Laporte (01:07:03):
The well, the governor was lobbying to broaden it to your point, aunt that, so that it would apply to all social media apps that provide data to foreign adversaries. I mean, you can, oh, I mean, you can, you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:16):
Can Google the top TikTok influencers from Montana.

Leo Laporte (01:07:19):
Oh, just Google it. Google it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:22):
At Montana. Tucker has 6.9 million followers. Wow. Whoa. At Montana. And Ryan. Oh, that's probably a lady. But

Ant Pruitt (01:07:30):
Is, but is Montana Tucker saying anything about this?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:33):
Oh, Montana Tucker might be a lady's name because do people Oh, do people named Montana exist? Yeah. Other than Hannah

Leo Laporte (01:07:40):
Montana. She may not be from Montana is what you're saying. Yeah. Let me search.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:45):
But TikTok can tell you who those people are. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:47):
Tiktok knows. Let's see. Here's Montana. Tucker, singer, dancer, actress, I think that's her real name. Montana. Jordan Montana. Coles, French, Montana. <Laugh>. Oh, here's the Visit Montana account for, it's got a hundred thousand followers. Guess you'd be shutting that down. What's the great,

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:10):
Great gifts there? That third one? I wanna see what that looks like. That really

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
Good locally loved gifts in Montana. Let's turn on the sound. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:19):
If

Speaker 6 (01:08:19):
You just, it's the perfect place for holiday shopping.

Leo Laporte (01:08:22):
Gosh, I hate that voice. Me too.

Speaker 6 (01:08:24):
No. And Fresh espresso.

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:27):
Oh, it's a coffee.

Speaker 6 (01:08:28):
They have lots of fun gifts for the whole family. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:08:31):
I'm not go to Montana. This is so boring. How of

Speaker 6 (01:08:34):
That Two great gray gifts. Okay,

Leo Laporte (01:08:37):
Great. Gray gifts is not the most enticing of names. Mm. How about Huckleberry Bearclaw? You gotta try those. Oh, they're from Pole Bridge Mercantile. You had me at Fried Bread. Famous for its huckleberry beer clothes. Sorry. Paul Bridge. No more promotion for you on the old TikTok. They should sue. They should sue. I mean, yeah. Well, what do I want those? Oh, that looks very good. Have you tried 'em? That's like a No, that's like a gigantic roula. It's giant. It's an American size. Regula. Yeah. You figs like you New York types. Yeah. Would call it a ula. Yeah. This is kind of sad. I you know, I don't know what to make of this. My son, I'm, I'm gonna have breakfast with him tomorrow. I'll ask him how he feels about it, but I don't think he really, he's not focused anymore on TikTok, I don't think. I think Insta and other places in his book, in his, in his book. In fact, his latest is Burnt Potato Chips. Seems like he's given up on the

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:37):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:09:38):
On the whole premise of cooking. Well, actually. Aw, little lobsters hole. The lobster. Oh God. Henry. Ooh, your son Henry.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:53):
Oh, is he making a lobster sandwich with Kettle Crisps?

Leo Laporte (01:09:56):
Oh, see, yeah. He's crisped an extra crispy three sticks above a, that's Henry right there, boy. Three sticks of butter with his lobster.

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:05):
Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:05):
Yep. It is a lobster roll. That's what I have for Mother's Day.

Leo Laporte (01:10:09):
Oh, I love lobster rolls. And you put all crunchy chips on

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:12):
It. Oh no. You need chives. Not shallot. Henry bad. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:18):
You lost me at Shallots.

Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
2.3 million followers on TikTok. All of whom. I wonder what percentage It be funny to find out, like, well, how many Montana followers? Like if you have a hundred thousand, that's a loss. Yeah. I don't know. Hmm. I'll ask him how he feels. I, my guess is he gonna say, what do you mean I don't care? He's gonna, who cares What band? Bigger,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:43):
How many people live in Montana anyway? Yeah, Montana Popul. If it was California, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
Probably more than for Texas. More than Wyoming. Weird document. Amazon in the mor

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:52):
1.1 million.

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
Okay. that's not insignificant. That's almost as many.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:57):
Always as many as live in Wyoming. Right. <laugh> 1.1 million as of 2021. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:11:04):
Yeah. Wyoming only has like half a million. Wyoming has like half a million in half of that. The state. Wow. And two senators. Wow. Amazon launched new devices this morning. What? What? Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:21):
They don't care. They're silly. We don't care.

Leo Laporte (01:11:23):
Stacy does. I thought you would, I put this in. I thought you would cuz Echo Stacey bat this echo Stacy bait. This echo pop for $40 is an Euro beacon as well as everything else. That's kinda cool. You know,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:36):
I turned on the Euro beacon. I have been very dissatisfied. So Amazon has a service that lets you turn certain echo devices. If you have Euro routers in your home, it adds that as another Euro router.

Leo Laporte (01:11:49):
Yeah. This is one of them. The echo, the new Echo pop. This,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:52):
This could be one. I turn mine on. It is literally next door. Like I have an arrow right behind me. Yeah. And then I have an Echo next door. It never works. It's always like, I can't get a signal. This is frustrating. And I'm like, nevermind. You suck.

Leo Laporte (01:12:07):
That is disappointing.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:08):
These are 40 bucks. It's cheaper. They're cute colors. If you want it, go ahead.

Leo Laporte (01:12:13):
They just look like speakers. That's the funny thing. They don't, the dots were kind of ugly. Looked like hockey pucks. These just look like little speakers and they're pretty colors.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:22):
Well, the.is now a sphere. Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:12:24):
It's a full

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:24):
On sphere. It looks like a little,

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
I kinda like this form factor. Anyway, they snuck that out. Let's see, what else, what else? Uber, the Google tablet docking station had had that functionality. You'd be happier. I would be. Oh yeah. You could had a speaker on it. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:42):
So Amazon can produce this echo. It's probably, I don't know if it's a loss leader or just even 40,

Leo Laporte (01:12:48):
40 bucks. $15. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:50):
And Google's charging me $129 for what is essentially a speaker that only works if there's a tablet stuck on it. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:12:57):
Thanks God. Did you order one? I ordered one. 500 bucks, including the doc. We'll see, I'm getting mine. What is it, June? Is that when they come?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:08):
I didn't order it. I

Leo Laporte (01:13:09):
Didn't care. Yeah, I know. I have to, it's my job. You know, June 21st

Ant Pruitt (01:13:14):
When it comes to tablets.

Leo Laporte (01:13:16):
A week after Father's Day.

Ant Pruitt (01:13:17):
When it comes to tablets, what's your use case? Are you a consumption person or productivity

Leo Laporte (01:13:23):
Person? So I have an iPad Mini mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which is a really good size. Little eight or seven or eight inches that I keep next to my, on my bedside table. That's my reading consumption. Okay. So that's pure consumption. Although I, you know, sometimes I'll text mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, stuff like that. But yeah. Pretty much pure consumption. And then I have an iPad Pro and I, you know, down the road that might end up being when you put Final Cut Studio on there and watch throw on there last week, right? Yeah. Yeah. That comes out May 23rd in about a week. That may end up being more of a productivity thing, but right now it's basically a FaceTime I used to face by my mom. I use it as a second screen with my Mac, cuz you can move the mouse over. And so I'll have Discord running there or some other messaging client or whatever. And it's kind of there all the time in the background. It's really a subsidiary device. It's not a primary device. Mm-Hmm. But that's just me. You know,

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:17):
KA

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:17):
Tofl works on his app iPad Pro quite a bit.

Leo Laporte (01:14:20):
Yeah. We have people come in and do the show. Harry McCracken's gonna be on Twitter on Sunday here. Yeah. He

Ant Pruitt (01:14:27):
Normally brings his, we bring

Leo Laporte (01:14:28):
An iPad. That's what he'll be on. Yeah, that's true. It's just as goofy as people who own the board use Chromebooks.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:34):
Hey.

Ant Pruitt (01:14:34):
Oh no. Hey, hey. I don't know. At least, at least the iPad has a decent CPU in it or

Leo Laporte (01:14:40):
Chip Point. It does. It has an M one or an M two. I mean, those are pretty dang fancy. I did a note that the the hp the pretty HP Chromebook is back in stock. I thought I mentioned this to you, Jeff, so you think

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:55):
I should get it?

Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
I think HP makes pretty, pretty nice ones. What was the name of it? Maybe it's not here. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:01):
The

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
The Elite or

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:04):
Elite Crow. HP Dragonfly.

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
Dragonfly. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:08):
Fly Pro.

Leo Laporte (01:15:09):
Yeah. Now the Dragonfly is beautiful. Paul Thoro said on Windows Weekly. He doesn't recommend it for Windows. It's a little underpowered, but I think it'd be fine for a Chromebook. I mean, it's a really, let me see if I can find the Chromebook version. It's a really slim and beautiful. You gotta say

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:29):
Chromebook. You gotta type in Chromebook.

Leo Laporte (01:15:31):
Oh, you got, you type in Chromebook. You gotta

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:32):
Search for

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Chromebook. Search for Chromebook. Dragon Fly Chrome. Chromebook. Chromebook. Papyri

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:44):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:15:46):
There it is. Yeah. Limited stock. Hurry. Last few remaining. Yeah, I think these are pretty, look at the price though. A thousand bucks for a Chromebook. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:55):
A little heavy.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:56):
And the battery is not perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:15:58):
Yeah. Maybe not though. The original

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:00):
Reports were wrong. Kevin was very good about that. He believed.

Leo Laporte (01:16:03):
What does he like these days for a Chromebook?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:06):
Oh, if you wait like 20 seconds, he's gonna tell you. But he does say Jeff, that he has a review of the HP Pro Chromebook.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:13):
Oh yeah. I read it a few weeks ago. Yep. Hang on. I, Kevin, he's, he's typing right now. Every review, <laugh>, believe

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:19):
Me, we're back. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:21):
We're about to forget every week. And I also support, I haven't, does it, does it renew automatically by support of Kevin? Or do I have to do it?

Leo Laporte (01:16:29):
Ben Schon writing two days ago in nine to five, Google said the Dragonfly Pro is the best of Chrome. Os the best. So it's a flagship, but it's flagship priced. That's the,

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:42):
My current, my my, he's been on the network

Ant Pruitt (01:16:44):
A

Leo Laporte (01:16:44):
Few times. Ben Schon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Ant Pruitt (01:16:47):
Shun, shun Benun.

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
I think it's Schon. I hate to tell you Ben

Ant Pruitt (01:16:52):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:53):
I think it's Pyre.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:55):
If he knows how to say Papyri.

Leo Laporte (01:16:56):
You don't, you don't sail around in a sch

Ant Pruitt (01:16:59):
Then again, maybe I'm wrong, but I know, I know. He's been in the network a few times.

Leo Laporte (01:17:03):
I pronounce it as the original Dutch pronunciation. Oh, okay.

Ant Pruitt (01:17:07):
Alright. I stand correct. It says,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:09):
Okay, Kevin's Kevin has told me he likes his spin 704.

Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
And he's still with the AC on sale. He's still with the Acer spin. He's lo he's a loyal man.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:18):
But, but for a thousand dollars, the HP Dragonfly Pro is nicer. He didn't wanna spend the money. Jeff would like the hp.

Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
Yes, because Jeff has loaded 14 inch. We know journalism professors are very well paid. That's why, that's why we get the hound so much money. Houndstooth jackets. The 14 inch. I always wear black cheap ulo, black T-shirts. That's all I have. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:40):
Why he's, that's why his dinner is frozen food from

Leo Laporte (01:17:43):
<Laugh>. The 14 inch 25 60 by, did I tell you how to cut you a pepe in Rome? I did. You did. You did. It's quite good. The 14 inch 20 TikTok now knows that I like chu a pepe. Yeah. So they're showing me Chu a Pepe recipes constantly maybe trying to get me off. There's no recipe <laugh>. It's spaghetti and pepper. Noodles, cheese and pepper. Don't slow down to what's the recipe lines? Noodles, cheese and pepper Noodle cheese and, and pepper. Mine one 60 and 1 61. Good job. 1 61 61. You, you could do TikTok star on Kao one 60. Good Lord. There's something at Line one. Oh, this was your're gonna be your pick. <Laugh>. Yeah. Well, that's okay. I, here we go. When your Italian husband finds an authentic pasta dish here in America. True.

Speaker 7 (01:18:34):
You crying? Crying. No, I'm not crying, but I want to cry. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:18:38):
Is he crying? He's actually crying.

(01:18:47):
All is an Italy. Italy is noodles, <laugh> noodles, cheese, pepper and pepper. It's in the name. Okay. <laugh>. Well, the next guy does a whole complicated thing. I'm sorry. Italians, please don't get upset with me. I I went to It's delicious though. A wonderful, like 200 year old restaurant famous in Rome for, for its Cacho Pepe. And its carbonara. And they, they, the, the, the, the makers and noodle makers sit in the window. Yeah. Rolling out their noodles. It was Oh yeah. Butter. So good. All that's going. Yeah. He's making cheese. Pepper. Cheese and Parmesan. Pecorino. We're gonna put this stuff Parmesan of our blend. Roman. This is, yeah. He's, he's, this is not butter. Nice foamy here. Foamy butter. Peppercorns. You didn't mention foamy. Butter. Butter and butter. You don't see peppercorns. Recipes. Noodles, blends, running slowly. Streaming. Streaming. A little pasta, cooking water. Oh boy. That's so you get a nice thick of sauce. That's the science. Now we have a kamus sauce. Dreamy sauce between the pasta water. The, so what was in there? Let's just re reviewable noodles. Maybe a little bit more cheese. Greater than cheese. Pepper and pepper and pepper. He had a little butter. Butter and butter. Oh, we had a little butter from sticking. Butter is understood. That's just to keep it from stitching. Butter's always in there <laugh>. Nothing you could do. It's either butter or olive. Hold on.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:11):
Forget what Leo was gonna talk about. Where were you? Back up to the

Leo Laporte (01:20:14):
Right. You think I remember we were talking about dragonflies. 14 inch, 25, 16. That was 1600 i ps touch screen. And it's been shown 1200 nets corrected, by the way, what it's been shown. It's been sh shown. It is shown. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> shown. Oh, shown <laugh>. That's really wrong. Mr. Howell has corrected this. That's completely wrong. It's shown <laugh>. It's two os. There's no way that's shown. <Laugh> shown is S C h o e N. That's not shown. That's schon. S h o. And you're la for God's shown. I thought you would lead 1200 Knits is very bright. That's good. This looks like a nice lighted up. Nice For sure. Per and it got I three or an I five in it. It's very heavy duty. It's using the same delightful decks as Ben shown, shown <laugh> as was on the elite dragonfly. If that's his real name. He liked it. So this is what you'd get on the, on the Windows machine. Yeah. What do you think about

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:09):
A haptic instead of a real click mousepad.

Leo Laporte (01:21:13):
That's fine. I had, if it's done right, which Apple does, by the way, you wouldn't know the difference. All right. Okay. You would not absolutely not know the difference if it's done right. And HP's gonna do it. Right. It's got a fingerprint sensor. That's nice. Well look,

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:27):
Microphone on my current machine broke.

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
So it's hard to justify a thousand dollars for a Chromebook. Unless that's your main machine for all the time for Chrome West. Just get an Acer. Don't, don't spend a thousand dollars for Chrome.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:38):
What was it I got? But I hate it.

Leo Laporte (01:21:40):
Don't. Well, you can spend it. He says it's done right. Pardon me? He says it's what Kevin says. It's done right. It's done right. Bucks.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:49):
Kevin's the expert. Kevin is, I check in on Kevin every week.

Leo Laporte (01:21:52):
Believe me. Are you in the mood for a new one? Are you ready for a new one? You said my

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:56):
Microphone's broken.

Leo Laporte (01:21:58):
Some people

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:58):
Would celebrate that I'm silenced, but

Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
<Laugh> Well, you could use the microphone in front of you right now instead. So here's a, oh, the haptic track pad is done. Right? I'm sorry. It is done right. Oh good. So this is an I five 16 gigs of Ram 2 56 ssd. All of this overkill for a Chromebook. But it not, but that's exactly, exactly what Google would offer you in. If they had a cr if they had Yeah. A pixel book. It'd be this price a thousand bucks. This is if you, I mean, I wouldn't buy it because it's a Chromebook, but if you only use Chromebooks, absolutely didn't get it. How many

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:34):
Years now have been doing this? It's amazing. Yeah. When did they come out?

Leo Laporte (01:22:37):
Jesus. Oh, I don't know. You know, it's been eight, at least eight years.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:41):
Yeah. I've been pure Chromebook that

Leo Laporte (01:22:42):
Long. Good man. I admire your tenacity. Uhhuh <affirmative> show you Now Uber had an announcement too. They had they, their new what do they call it? They have an a, a cutesy, cutesy name for their Uber thing. Lemme see. Here's the Tech crunch story. Uber's annual Go Get event. That's what it's called. Oj the Go Get event. Who

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:09):
Knew they had an event?

Leo Laporte (01:23:11):
We didn't, had no idea. Otherwise we recovered it. Everybody has an event. It's was today slew of new products and features aimed at attracting a new set of customers from teens as young as 13. You can now. So this was always an issue for us because we wanted our kid to take Uber. He would take the train down to his high school and then take the last mile. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we got him to call an Uber. And we, and we always had a lie. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because he wasn't 18 yet. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> was, and the, they wouldn't pick him up otherwise. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it was unreasonable. I said, he's

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:42):
A tall guy so he could get away with

Leo Laporte (01:23:43):
It. Right. He could get away with it. That's right. Now they never asked Hardhead. Now they never asked. They never asked. Hard. Cause he's also tall and good

Ant Pruitt (01:23:49):
Luck. I've done that a couple times. And yeah, he's like, oh, he

Leo Laporte (01:23:52):
Looks, it seems appropriate. By the way, Chromebooks are 12 years old. Says mashed potatoes. 12 years old.

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:57):
Shoot. I'm sorry. Probably have

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
I didn't, the mouth of a 12 year old <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:24:02):
Mouth of a journalist at Professor

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:05):
Stacy said it earlier. I heard Stacy

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
Say it. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:09):
It is true.

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:11):
You should have

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:11):
Heard. You're still sad about it.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
You should heard Amy Webb, who by the way, says you hate her. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:16):
Oh, I don't, she keeps saying that. That's the only thing I hate is that she says that

Leo Laporte (01:24:21):
She and and Phil Lipid on and they were swearing up a storm. Yes. It was so funny. We were talking about AI and it was like, so we had to bleep it. So if you listen to Twit on Sunday, it was so funny. <Laugh>. But, but, but at one point, I think it was bonito said, don't worry, swear all you want. We have AI and ai, which is <laugh>. So Uber now if you sign up as a, for a family account, you can have your teenager age 13 to 17 request rides. But here's the biggest thing. Uber is adding a phone number. If if, oh wow. Yeah. If you want to use Uber, but quote aren't as familiar with navigating a smartphone, you can call one eight, three, three. Use Uber,

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:04):
Grandma. It's for grandma.

Leo Laporte (01:25:06):
It's not just Gram. You know what? So it's not just grandma. We've had people I've had people ask me, can you call me an Uber? Cuz I don't have, I don't have an Uber account or whatever. Mm-Hmm.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:16):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. What if you don't wanna download the app or Yeah. I mean, there, that's not an, and some people don't want, I mean, giving Uber access to as much as they want on your phone. That's, that's

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:27):
A commitment. Well, I didn't know. I went to this Grammarly event last night. Grammarly is a sponsor. It was a very interesting event. It was fascinating. It was a Brooklyn and it was far away from the subway. So they offered people Lyft,

Leo Laporte (01:25:38):
That's another thing. Uber, I'd

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:39):
Never done that before. And it worked

Leo Laporte (01:25:40):
Really well. That's another thing. Uber's allowing, you can buy an Uber, you know, you can always buy a prepaid Uber ride car, but now you can say when it should be delivered. That's cool. So you, because, so you could say, oh Jeff, I know you're coming to our conference on the 11th. Here's your, your card to arrive Will arrive on the 11th. That kind of thing. That's pretty,

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:55):
And with, with the Lyft, it also said it has to go

Leo Laporte (01:25:58):
Here. Yes. Just the left. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:00):
They, they've had things where, actually I think it was on Lyft, not Uber. Cuz I know I've had credit codes that they give you that like That's right. There's a credit code to get to the airport. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:26:09):
<Affirmative>, we've done that. We used to do ads for Uber. That would advertise that as a feature. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that you could you know, set people up with Uber rides as part you, it was, you had a business account, I think it was. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Company did actually, interestingly not that I would've predicted this Uber's first quarter earnings beat forecasts across the board. They did. They actually, did

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:30):
They actually make money though? Yeah. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:26:32):
Oh, that's another question. Fair. Uber's gross bookings. Rose, 19%. 31 billion in the first quarter. Revenue up 30%. Okay. But did they profit? No. Yeah. I'm sure not. They've, have they ever turned a profit ever?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:49):
No.

Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
Uber Eats has been very, that's why we want to know. Very successful. All right. Let's see. Revenue 8.82 billion gap loss <laugh>. Nope. Narrower than expected. Adjusted profits. ATA 761 million. Ibida. That's profit. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:12):
No. Is it in parenthesis? <Laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:27:16):
Because

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:17):
If it's in parentheses, it's a loss.

Leo Laporte (01:27:19):
That's negative. Yeah, it's negative. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:21):
Is it in parenthesis

Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
This adjusted profits came in better than the street reckon $761 million. It's just statement, not a negative compared to the estimate shares of the company spiked. So did, did I guess part of this is Uber and Lyft did not do well in the pandemic, right? Nobody went anywhere. No. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:42):
And well, people ordered, there was a

Leo Laporte (01:27:43):
Mask mandates and stuff too. But yeah, Uber Eats has really helped propel Uber's earnings. Did they

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:52):
Do any like well, did they do any sort of reorganizing of their statements? EBITDA is a fuzzy number in the sense that you can do a lot to EBITDA to make it look nice.

Leo Laporte (01:28:03):
Earnings before income tax. Income

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:07):
Tax and

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
Ebitda. Dep Depreciation. Depreciation depreciation adjustments or something. Now

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:12):
They don't have, I mean, they don't have a lot of access to depreciate.

Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
Right. Cuz they don't own the cars. This is the poor drivers who Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:19):
Yeah. Anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Well, I don't know. Don't, don't they have a program where you kind of rent the car from Uber or Uber or not then have title to it. I dunno. I think they might like a taxi might be right. Like a taxi cab.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:32):
Hey. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (01:28:33):
Anyway, Uber announced, let me just see here. This was in February. They announced the results. Gross bookings, revenue net income attributable to Uber Technologies. 595 million. That's a 756 million net benefit pretext. Primarily due to net unrealized gains related to the reevaluation of Uber's equity investments. So, you know, not from the operating of the business. Theta of six 65 million. That's up 579 million year over year. I guess they're profitable.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:06):
Abida or ebida? I've heard ebitda, ebida, ebida.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:09):
I say ebitda. And when you're on earnings calls, Jason,

Ant Pruitt (01:29:13):
Just cuz you got Pompe, what did I

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
Say?

Ant Pruitt (01:29:15):
<Laugh>, ABIDA. Abida. Abida, ABIDA. Just cuz you get like Pru,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:20):
Like the wife of the Chilean dictator or Argentinian

Ant Pruitt (01:29:24):
Dict. Don't cry for Meda. You know, I never loved you.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:31):
The truth is I never loved you.

Leo Laporte (01:29:33):
I don't know the song in his name. Not ebida. You're

Ant Pruitt (01:29:35):
Pulling

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:35):
A bad co a bad Quatro there. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
All right. Oh, wait a minute. Here's some parentheses. Oh, but this was 2021. So no, they've been doing, they've been profitable since last year. That's a, that's really interesting. It's not what I would've thought.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:52):
I I didn't know that either. We all assumed that they're not making, why did we not know that? Yeah, I don't believe you. Hold

Leo Laporte (01:29:56):
On. We have a picture of an Uber driver counting

Ant Pruitt (01:30:00):
The bills

Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
As he drives you to wherever

Ant Pruitt (01:30:03):
You're going. <Laugh>, thank you

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
To our discord. Done. We love our disc

Ant Pruitt (01:30:07):
Discord, by the way. Nicely done. We love our discord.

Leo Laporte (01:30:10):
If you are not yet a Club Twit member, you could improve our ibida

Ant Pruitt (01:30:14):
<Laugh> please. And thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
Like from negative numbers, perhaps to positive numbers. By paying seven bucks a month, it really does help us. It's, it seems like not much. And we give you I think, a very, a nice value for your money. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get shows we don't put out in public on the Twi plus feed. Like hands on Macintosh with Micah Sergeant hands on Windows of Paul Throt, the new home theater geeks Scott Wilkinson, by the way. You'll love our community manager. He's a good looking fancy fella named Aunt Pruitt. Not

Ant Pruitt (01:30:49):
Sure about fancy, but he's good looking. Yes, a

Leo Laporte (01:30:51):
Fancy fella. And ants been putting together some great events in our discord, including Stacy's book club, which is coming up next month. The Terra Reform. Lee Neitz hiss new book. Plus you get access to the discourse. That's where all those events happen. I think it's a really good deal for seven bucks a month. Yep.

Ant Pruitt (01:31:10):
Is

Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Indeed twit.tv/club twit. There are individual plans, there's family plans. That's something new. And and corporate plans as well. And we, we like to promote it because I really think it's important for our long-term survival

Ant Pruitt (01:31:25):
<Laugh>. And it's a friendly punch who say, come on in, come

Leo Laporte (01:31:29):
On in, on in says Wayne Brady, come on in. <Laugh>. okay, what else? Is it a democracy? Okay,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:39):
Uber Lost Money. <Laugh>,

Ant Pruitt (01:31:43):
What, what are your senses?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:45):
I'm looking at, I'm looking at their financials for last quarter, which were issued on their website on May 2nd, 2023 Rut Row. And if you look at their net loss, how big it was, 157 million. Well

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:02):
That's getting there

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:04):
Now. Their EBITDA was positive, but, and I would have to, that's what's

Leo Laporte (01:32:10):
Confusing

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:10):
Actual 10 Q ebida. No, that's not confusing. That's how accountants get ya. Yeah, it's cuz you don't look at what you're

Leo Laporte (01:32:17):
It's before taxes. Always. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:20):
Because remember they've lost so much money for so long, they can actually bud the numbers and be like, oh, we're not paying any anyway, sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:32:29):
Net cash.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:30):
I felt

Leo Laporte (01:32:31):
600, 6 million free cash. So they, they lost. Yeah. I see this net loss attributable to Uber Technologies is 157 million now. Mm.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:39):
That was, that's much less though than the same period a year ago when they lost 5.9 billion. Whoa.

Leo Laporte (01:32:48):
Isn't net grief. Whoa. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:50):
Right. Do it a lot better. But <laugh> Right. They still reported a net loss and the revenue, their revenue is, that's impressive up considerably.

Leo Laporte (01:33:00):
That's impressive though. And their a beat is up 353% <laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:04):
Which is a little suspicious. How, how's Lyft doing?

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
Lyft just laid off a ton of people. I don't know if Lyft's doing all that well. Are

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:10):
Are, are you gonna make me look up Lyft's fine?

Leo Laporte (01:33:12):
Yes, please, please. Thanks. what's the stock

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:16):
Facts? Stacy? You're just trying to keep us on the facts. No fun.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:20):
Well, I just, I I I trained originally as a financial reporter.

Leo Laporte (01:33:24):
I know. That's why we're making you do this <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:28):
Like none of this be nonsense. Oh, these are there Actually

Leo Laporte (01:33:30):
Use Lyft. I don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:31):
Use revenue. 1 billion net income minus 187 million.

Leo Laporte (01:33:36):
So they also improved over, over Wall Street's expectations. So that's good. Both of the ride sharing companies are doing All right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:45):
I was in one last night. Yeah. From this Grammar Lee event. Grammar's a sponsor and the driver, I, I dropped off my friend Jay Rosen, and then we, we rode up town and started toward the driver. My friend Jay Rosen from New York University. Yeah. I have friend

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:59):
Lyft is also I have at a loss.

Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:02):
Their loss was 190, or sorry, 187.

Leo Laporte (01:34:06):
Similar. Very similar. Isn't it million? Yeah. So yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:09):
So the driver speaks spanna. He's, he's, he's born elsewhere. He's not only speaks

Leo Laporte (01:34:14):
This by the way, I just wanna say one of my favorite kind of stories and anecdotes is Lyft, his drivers Uber driver stories.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:21):
Yeah. Right. But, but, but, but he speaks, he's he's spent 10 years studying chemistry in China.

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
Wow. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:28):
And they're amazing. Wow. They're

Leo Laporte (01:34:29):
Amazing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. My daughter takes a lot of Uber and Lyft rides and I hear a lot of stories about groceries. Cause she gets in a conversation with every one of 'em. It's, she could be

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:39):
Comfort. You should, as a journalist, you Jeff is doing the right thing. Oh yeah. Always talk to you

Leo Laporte (01:34:43):
Stories. Human stories are fascinating. Fascinating. it, the, the other shoe dropped Vice has filed for bankruptcy after 29 years. It's chapter 11 though, right? That's reorganization.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:56):
Oh yeah. They're they're having a Yeah, they've got a, they've got a presumptive sale to the lenders. Yeah. Including Soro. The oh oh Soros,

Leo Laporte (01:35:03):
Sora Fortress Investment Group. Soros Fund Management in Monroe Capital will buy the company, which was high flying at 5.7 billion mm. Six years ago for 225 million. Mm. That's amazing. About 4% of their peak valuation. Unless they can find a higher bidder. But I'm thinking that's probably not, not gonna happen. Eh, does this say Vice was

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:26):
Overvalued back then?

Leo Laporte (01:35:28):
I think it's, it's really a com. Maybe not journalistic, it's a comment on the failure of online journalism, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:35):
Well, no, no. I think

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:37):
It's a common on stupid investors. Yeah. What were they laundering? Sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:35:42):
Oh

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:43):
No, you're right. I also think my, my argument is, and I I was on CBC talking about just this that it was, it's the last gasp of old mass media cert seeking tra traffic for traffic's sake. And they had new ways to do it, but they had new competitors who came in and there was no barrier to entry and they weren't that cool after all. So, I, I just, I don't think we've invented what follows.

Leo Laporte (01:36:08):
Did you have you finished Ben Smith's book now? Traffic? Oh yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:11):
Oh yeah. I wrote about it on Medium. You like it the top post on Medium? Yes, I do. I think it's, it's very well written. It's, it's quite interesting. And comparing Nick Denton's Gawker, who I, you know, I was a friend of Nick's and was around much of that with Buzzfeed is really interesting. And, and Ben's book is, is is really good. He goes on about this, this quest for traffic, realizing in the end that traffic was a commodity. And other, what I didn't include in my writeup on, on Medium was an interesting chapter he had on Jezebel. And how in his view, Jezebel was really the, the preamble to so much

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
Jezebel was a print magazine though. Yes. No, it was not. It was a, Isabel

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:54):
Was a feminist blog that was owned by Gawker. It used to be awesome. Now it sucks.

Leo Laporte (01:36:59):
Yeah. Okay. What's that? Yeah. Well we've see it's been up and down, it's been difficult. I mean, we, you know, podcasting is kind of struggling too. Yep. it's just been difficult.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:11):
What I didn't know was M T V News is dead.

Leo Laporte (01:37:13):
They just fired tw Yeah. 25 staffers. Yeah. another end of the line. Although was M T V news on M T V? Or was it, I've no idea. Web only. I didn't even know it existed. I know.

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:26):
Yeah. I thought MTV was just reality shows now and not even music.

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:31):
That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:37:34):
A lot of people are trying a lot of different things in the internet era to make news work, or not just news kind of informative content. Is that fair? Because I think we're not a news Exactly. A news Right. Podcast. But we

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:51):
No, cuz then you would wanna be right about things like net losses.

Ant Pruitt (01:37:54):
<Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:56):
Ooh, zing

Ant Pruitt (01:38:00):
<Laugh>. I said what I said, man, we were

Leo Laporte (01:38:04):
Right. My goal is to be right. Eventually

Ant Pruitt (01:38:07):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:38:10):
I don't expect to be right all the time. I like to be right. Eventually, eventually

Ant Pruitt (01:38:16):
At some

Leo Laporte (01:38:16):
Point. And thanks to Stacy, I think we, we do pretty well there.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:20):
Yes. I was gonna say eventually keeping us even honest, she keeps us honest. Might turn a prophet <laugh> keeping us honest.

Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Okay. Okay. I'm actually this is a sad story and I meant to talk about it last week. And I, and I forgot, but I'm sure Jeff, you have something to say about Deuce. I followed her. Yes. I loved her blog. She was the first mommy blogger, but it was, that's really de de diminishing to call her Amani. Not at all.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:51):
No, I don't think it's, I don't think it diminishes her at least. Cause I think it, you know, there there were, there were the stages of bloggers, there were tech bloggers, there were political bloggers, war bloggers were called. I was one of those. And then became mommy bloggers, women bloggers. And Deuce was really a, a, a leader of that with a unique voice. She got fired for her blogging. So that became a verb. If you got fired for your blogging, you've been deuced. She was amazing. She had a lot of trouble in life. A lot of anxiety, a lot of difficulty. And in the end, it defeated her really tragically. She also kind of went off the rails in other ways. But we gotta give her credit for what she built. And I think if you, you know, there was a lot of talking about Jezebel in the Ben Smith book, but Deuce was far before Yeah. Jezebel. And

Leo Laporte (01:39:33):
Really, she started blogging in in 97.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:36):
So Stacy did you, were

Leo Laporte (01:39:37):
You reading Blog started in 2001. I she was a what I liked, I didn't care about the subject matter. She was a great writer. Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:44):
She was. She was.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:45):
She was like Jenny Lawson. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:49):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
And she wrote about her life in, in a, in a genuine, authentic, real way, which in the early days of the internet was so refreshing. Yeah. Because we

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:02):
Sharing in some ways. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:03):
But we were so used to this kind of polished presentation of mainstream media and, and it was really refreshing to see people authentically. Now we're

Ant Pruitt (01:40:11):
Tired of that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
Yeah. Maybe now we want to go back to Polish. I don't know what

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:15):
Influencers.

Leo Laporte (01:40:16):
Yeah. But see, that's polished again, right? It's Oh

Ant Pruitt (01:40:19):
Yeah. What is

Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Influencers, the stuff that's big now in social is all, you know, Yolo poll. You only see, you don't see their real life. You don't see the enemy. Well, you can,

Ant Pruitt (01:40:33):
They simulate I'll say they ae to that <laugh>. Yeah. They try to make it look

Leo Laporte (01:40:37):
Real life. Yeah. But it isn't. And that's even worse. They know because people go, oh, I, I can't live up to that. Right. And then it's you feel bad.

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:45):
Heather's life was all too real.

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
Heather. Heather, you never read her stuff and said, gosh, your life is better than mine. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's quite the opposite. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> often you said,

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:53):
I'm not alone.

Leo Laporte (01:40:54):
I'm saying that's what you said. That's I'm not alone. I'm not the only one who feels this way. Eight and a half million readers a month at the peak.

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:05):
Which is, which is a time of a much smaller internet.

Leo Laporte (01:41:08):
Oh, that was at the time. That was huge. Huge lives.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:11):
People didn't go on the, on the internet too. She

Leo Laporte (01:41:13):
She did. Yeah. and of course as we probably should always say when we talk about such things, is if you, what

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:22):
Is the new number?

Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
Yeah, there's a new number. If you feel like you are, you know, worried about yourself or you need help,

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:29):
9 88,

Leo Laporte (01:41:30):
There's somebody to help. And it is now 9 88, which is great. The the suicide and crisis lifeline. There's somebody there who cares, who can, you can talk to. And I wish she had. Yeah. I really wish she had because that's a huge, she

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:46):
Was a precious, she was

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
Voice. She was a precious voice. Yep. And I meant to bring this up last week, and I just, I I spaced it out. But there was a very, this is all those

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:55):
Early days of blogging, you know? Yeah. I, I, I interviewed Dave Weiner a week ago. And we were reminiscing, which is the point of the interview from my book about the blogger cons. And this was pre lovey bloggers and producer. This was back in the, the tech and political days. But it was a wonderful time. It was amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
Oh, it was. We

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:16):
Disagree with each other and we talked with each other and we got along and I would say what

Leo Laporte (01:42:20):
Happened, some of the same thing for early days of podcasting in the Yeah. Mid two, two thousands. There was really well, Leo

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:27):
Podcasting's only been big in the last two years. Don't you know

Leo Laporte (01:42:30):
<Laugh> Well, but the same thing happened to podcasting that happened at blogging, which is the big publishers came in and said, okay, we'll take it from here.

Jeff Jarvis (01:42:38):
And then they got bored

Leo Laporte (01:42:38):
With it. Yeah. And then they're bored. Right. for a while they thought, oh, we've got the formula. It's crime. True crime. And every podcast was true crime. I even thought, I thought we should launch a True Crime podcast. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if we really wanted to sell, we should, we should have at least two or three two crime podcast True

Ant Pruitt (01:42:54):
Crime and a companion podcast based on whatever the hot show is of the, of the

Leo Laporte (01:42:59):
Month. Yeah. The Game of

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:01):
Thrones Succession companion podcast

Leo Laporte (01:43:04):
2006.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:05):
I actually think that would do well on your social thing. Pick a show and just

Leo Laporte (01:43:11):
Get some We tried that. Talk about it each week. We tried that. We've tried all of the obvious things except True crime. I just never could bring myself to do scripted stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But and those are scripted. You have to have writers. Oh boy. That, but nobody wanted anything from us, but tech news and information health and how to, that was really what our,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:31):
That's cuz you're not as cool as like well

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
You are d tech, tech and

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:33):
Well-Rounded

Leo Laporte (01:43:35):
<Laugh>. Did I, did I do something to hurt you recently?

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:40):
Oh, over the years. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
<Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:42):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:43:43):
Today or <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:50):
He hangs his head.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:51):
I don't, I don't have my punch Leo button. So now I'm, you don't need it looking for the verbal jabs.

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
You really don't need it. You, you, you're

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:57):
Hitting me. You're a psychic button.

Leo Laporte (01:43:58):
Yeah. You're hitting me where it counts. Right up here. <Laugh>. Right in the old noggin. Microsoft. This is weird. Has inked a deal to use fusion energy by 2028. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Stacey, you

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:13):
Did talk about

Leo Laporte (01:44:14):
This last, oh shoot, nevermind.

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:15):
Yeah. Yeah. You brought that up, correct. You right

Leo Laporte (01:44:17):
Now. <Laugh>, screw it. Forget I mentioned it. <Laugh> are you worried about lithium battery fires on airplanes? Maybe. Why suddenly

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:29):
Is this happening?

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Yeah, really

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:31):
Happening. It's been happening

Leo Laporte (01:44:33):
Apparently. Why we didn't even know about. Well, so I guess C B S did an investigation, Uhhuh <affirmative>, and they found out that there was on average an incident every week on an airplane ju to a listing look started Ion battery either catch catching fire or exploding. And it's very, it's problematic. Now, we talked about this on Ask the tech guys on Sunday and the guy who does the Airplane geek podcast called in, he's a air era airplane aficionado. Oh, main man. Micah. Yeah. Micah from Maine. <Laugh> main man, Micah. He he said all commercial flights now have bags for lithium on fires that are self extinguishing. Oh, I

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:17):
Was gonna

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
Ask. So that's the good, that's the good news is they are at least prepared for this. And it's maybe why we haven't heard of any really terrible, this

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:25):
Is why you don't put them in your lu luggage

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
Too, right? Yeah. According to the other thing I learned is there is something in the Department of Transportation called the pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration or fusA,

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:36):
<Laugh>. Say that again? Fusa <laugh>. And he knows how to pronounce that fu so we know that's the right way. According

Leo Laporte (01:45:42):
To fusA, from March, 2018 through March 20, 23, 5 years, there were 5.3 incidents on a 5,319 incidents on all airplanes in the United States. 700 of them on passenger planes. That averages to be one hazmat incident on a passenger plane every two and a half days. Yikes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:05):
And it's probably actually greater because remember so many flights were canceled during covid and that was bright smack in the middle of that dataset. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:46:14):
Lot of these are not your laptop or your smartphone. A lot of them are. In fact, it seems like probably like

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:20):
E e-cigarette

Leo Laporte (01:46:21):
Things. It's EICs it's the cheesy cheap e-cigs that you buy.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:26):
Well, and they, they stopped letting you check all of your luggage with the batteries and bringing your luggage with the batteries in. Well, that

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:32):
Was the stupidest thing was the batteries built into the luggage that was just so dominant. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
Well, yeah. I remember when that law changed because I had checked a ton of stuff with batteries and I got pulled out of the airplane. Oh yeah. They actually came and got me. Ooh. And they said, you need to ooh, take all of the batteries out of this. I, what? What do you mean? They said, you can't put this Ubi You, you had about 47. Right. I carry so many lithium ion batteries with me, <laugh>, everything. Laptop, iPad, cameras, drones, microphones. Geez, it's the 360 cameras. Probably a dozen. Geez. Lithium ion batteries. And every trip they, there, there are companies working on batteries that won't burn. That's one solution. Right. but the other one is to have airplanes prepared and personnel trained when things start smoking and <laugh>, do not put batteries in the check luggage cuz you can't tell it's smoking. Right. And keep an eye on your stuff. And if you see smoke coming outta the overhead bin, immediately notify the flight. Let someone

Ant Pruitt (01:47:32):
Know. Don't be, don't be a

Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
Hero. Yeah. The,

Ant Pruitt (01:47:35):
The, the, the staff and team, they're trained on

Leo Laporte (01:47:37):
That stuff. The good news is as far as I know, no planes have gone down because of this, but it's certainly, it's scary. Gary,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:45):
Can you, you don't use water to put out a lithium, you can battery It's chemical expulsion, right? Yeah. That's, it's like a grease fire

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Problem. Yeah. <laugh>. Though, so these bags, you can see one right here, these digital grease fire. Yeah. Do I think they do have water in them, but that's mostly to hold the smoke and stuff inside. Right? Yeah. Cuz yeah. The, the problem is the lithium eye. That's Pete Buttigieg, our Department of Transportation secretary. The problem is, so these are the bags they put 'em in. The problem is that the oxygen that supports combustion is in the battery. So there's, you can't smother it. Right. oh, okay. Thank you for that explanation. Yeah. So it's a self feeding fire and that's why they're difficult. You know, the, we've heard for years about problems at recycling. Pretty much every recycling plant ends up having a lithium ion battery fire at some point. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they get punctured and once they're punctured exposed to air, they burn. See,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:40):
Cities are having this issue with like the electric scooters. A lot of them are randomly catching on fire in cities as

Leo Laporte (01:48:46):
Yeah. They're all over. Well, they're littering. Yes. They're, and they're cheap, crappy balance too. Yeah. was, it was a very bad, now you're gonna have to look at the balance sheet, Stacy and, and, and verify this number. But according to variety cord cutting hit an all time high. January through March, 2023. US Pay TV subscriptions fell to their lowest level since 1992. 2.3 million customers turned away from cable, satellite and internet TV providers.

Ant Pruitt (01:49:23):
Interesting. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:24):
Mm. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I get it's Bruce Lehman's data. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
I don't know whose data it is.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:30):
And internet. I get his, so Bruce, Bruce Leman does it's Leman Research Group and he's been calculating this stuff for the last 20 years.

Leo Laporte (01:49:41):
Well, this one is a report from Craig Moffitt of svb Moffitt Nathanson. In any event Yeah, I know. They all agree cuz a as Craig said, we're watching the sun begin to set on the pay TV business. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. Right.

Ant Pruitt (01:49:57):
Wonder how this is going negotiation. Here's what with the Writer's Guild and on, I'm wondering if those numbers are coming up and they're negotiating.

Leo Laporte (01:50:06):
Oh, I don't know. Oh yeah. That's an interesting, because, because where are people going? They're going to streaming mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Right. I dunno why I'm pointing at you <laugh>, because your truth says it. Pro TV and chill. Cause

Ant Pruitt (01:50:16):
It pro and chill. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:50:19):
No, the reason they say internet is because of the streamers like YouTube, TV and Hulu. They're also, I thought that was the alternative. I thought some people were going No, the alternative is Netflix. HBO, O Max. Hulu. Not Hulu Stream.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:33):
No bundle.

Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
Yeah. No bundle. No. Hold on,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:35):
Hold on. So I I'm just looking at back check. I'm sorry. No, don't actually, I'm not

Ant Pruitt (01:50:42):
Sorry. No, don't be sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:44):
<Laugh> don't be. So the pay TV providers, this actually, so this is Lachman's research. So Moffitt is a Wall Street analyst. It

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
Says, according to Moffitt's calculations in here in this variety hard,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:57):
So what says different calculations? I know in Moffitt's calculations and Lehman's calculations are both based on re the financial reports issued every quarter by the big cable company. So it's roughly the same numbers. Okay. sorry. So I'm, I'm just seeing cuz Leichman also pulls out other like Dish TV and sorry. Other things like over the top things like YouTube tv. So those guys here, they actually also lost. So the bundle guys like Sling, Hulu plus Live tv U YouTube tv and FBO also lost 394 subscribers this quarter. So everybody's losing things because of, so it's not just the cable guys, which everyone is cutting the cord, but it's also probably an economic issue too, because people are, all right,

Leo Laporte (01:51:52):
So Comcast, the largest pay TV provider in the country dropped 614,000 customers in the first three months of the year. Ooh wee. That's that's not insignificant. Youtube TV was the only provider tracked by Moff. Nathan said that picked up subs. They added 300,000 subscribers. In fact, at this point it looks like YouTube TV's gonna be the winner in terms of internet tv, you know, live tv. They

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:18):
Are the top, they are the top one with 5.7 million subscribers.

Ant Pruitt (01:52:22):
UI is good.

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
It says 6.3 million here. But that's, anyway they netted over the past year, 1.4 million subscribers. Hulu has barely grown. In fact, they lost a hundred thousand subs in q1. ABC's about to buy the rest of it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:37):
Disney's about to

Leo Laporte (01:52:38):
Buy the rest of it. Yeah. Disney abc Comcast is getting out of it, basically. Yeah. Comcast owns a quarter of it. Disney has the right to buy it off of them. They're talking right now. Comcast is happy to give it to them. <Laugh> and Disney has said that. We'll just roll it in Disney plus it'll all be one screening thing. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:57):
Yeah. Cuz once they launched Peacock, it really made no sense for them to have Hulu. Right,

Leo Laporte (01:53:02):
Right. Fubu, FUBU TV lost 160,000 subscribers. It's worst quarter loss in record. So in, it's in, it's a big change in the way TV works. The pay TV score. When did

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:18):
Y'all cut the cord?

Leo Laporte (01:53:19):
I still have the cord. I am corded.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:22):
I can't remember. This's been a long, long time. Long time. I think

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:27):
I did it in 2010.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:29):
We're old. I still have, and the thing is, lot Stacey, lots of cords. <Laugh> Uhhuh. Gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:53:34):
He's got a corded phone. Hey, you know, it's like Battlestar Galactica. If ever the silences come, we know Jeff will still be able to place a pizza. Huh? Uhhuh

Ant Pruitt (01:53:43):
<Affirmative>. I I would temporarily it's actually cut the cord. It, I guess I should correct myself because I would get back on cable for football season and then call and yell at the cable company. You don't need to

Leo Laporte (01:53:53):
Anymore.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:53):
You're gonna turn it off.

Leo Laporte (01:53:54):
Get YouTube TV and get Sunday tv. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:56):
Yeah. Nah, that's, that's what I've, I'm, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:53:58):
250 bucks for Sunday ticket for the

Ant Pruitt (01:54:00):
News. I'm not doing that. That's a lot. That's stupid.

Leo Laporte (01:54:04):
Anyway the according to Nathanson, I'm sure your guy has other numbers, but Nathanson, Moffitt Nathanson says the pay TV floor, the bottom, you know, the, the, the subscribers who will never quit. Right. 50 to 60 million US homes, which is still, you know, okay. Still a lot

Ant Pruitt (01:54:23):
Of folks.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:24):
So, so they still have, there's still 73. So top the, the big cable providers that we're just thinking of, not the virtual mp, the, the virtual internet guys. That's 73 points. Roughly 7 million left. So we can still see 20 million

Leo Laporte (01:54:42):
Drop. Yikes. us as of the end of Q1 pay tv, US pay TV services has 75 and a half million customers down 7% year over year. And everybody agrees that number's gonna get bigger and bigger as more and more people leave. I still have, I know you table. I have YouTube tv, I have, I subscribe to Hulu and, and all

Ant Pruitt (01:55:03):
The extras. I you get all the extras.

Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
I got more money than cents. And I just, I wanna watch everything. And I don't wanna, I'm

Ant Pruitt (01:55:09):
Gonna give you some sense for some of your money.

Leo Laporte (01:55:11):
I don't wanna be told I can't watch something I wanna watch. So I just watch it. Damnit. I I think it, it's a bit of a thing, but I think we are, Lisa and I are going back and forth that we're probably gonna turn off the cable subscription, YouTube tv, scratches all of our issues. It gets

Ant Pruitt (01:55:30):
It done.

Leo Laporte (01:55:30):
It's gotten more expensive. Oh yeah. Why? It's a cable bill.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:34):
I can So yeah, so Cable saw this coming, I think I wrote this like in 2012 or 2010. Cable was like, oh, crikey. Everyone's getting of their landlines except for Jeff. Everyone's getting rid of the triple play. Yeah. Remember how we used to talk about the triple play and your bill for all of those was roughly $150 a month. And now if you look at your broadband bill, a lot of people are paying over a hundred. Rough, roughly that amount. Yep. So that's all this, it's just happened gradually that the price didn't change the mix of what you were paying for

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:06):
Did. But the other big thing that has happened here, it is, and I write about this basically in every, every book I do now, is it's the death of mass that the huge audience that existed goes away. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> broadcast. You know, a linear TV is long dead and AM radio is about to die as cars get rid of it. Yeah. mass is what goes away. And, and you have a lot of niches. And I think that's more natural state for media. It was a temporary

Leo Laporte (01:56:33):
Yeah. That's what we are, right? Yeah. We've been a niche, niche player since 2005. Very happy. It's not huge, you know, it's not a hundred million people watching, but it's, you don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:44):
Want it to be,

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
But as loyal. I don't want it to be loyalty actually, <laugh>, I don't want it to be, I like having a kind of qualified small audience.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:51):
We love you all. Everyone who's watching, we'd

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
Love you. Yeah. We'd love you. Well, I figure if you're watching us, they're interested enough to watch us. I think that's good. That's,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:59):
If you're listening later, we also love you too.

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:02):
We especially love the ones who make it all the way through. We are amazed and

Leo Laporte (01:57:07):
Happy. You know our completion rate is about 80%.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:12):
You're kidding me. No, that's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:14):
Freaking. Oh, that's great. That's

Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
Freaking

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:15):
Awesome. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
That makes sense. Pretty high.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:18):
I, you know, maybe it's tech people cuz the completion rate on my show is about 85, 80% too. And I'm like, dang, you're

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:25):
Not long.

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
Think we're, you know what the difference is is yours more than ours? But people are listening for information. Right. and so they're gonna, they're gonna keep listening to the whole show. It's not entertainment where you turn it off when you're done washing the dishes. Yep. And you go to the next thing. They're listening for content. Right. And I, I do prefer that. I think we're a little less that than you. That number would make sense, <laugh>, because we don't have much content. It's mostly just our first. You're

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:50):
A lot

Leo Laporte (01:57:50):
Longer. And we go on forever.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:53):
God. We do. Hey, what's our next story?

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Let's do this. Let's take a break and come back with your data. Bills pitch of the week. How about that? How about that?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:00):
Holy Molly, we're not doing change log.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:02):
No change log. No. All log. Wow. Sure. Geez.

Leo Laporte (01:58:06):
Freaking

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:06):
Hate. My God. Did we add an AI log?

Leo Laporte (01:58:08):
I just hate you guys so freaking much. You busted my chops here. We're

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:16):
Just trying to keep us on.

Leo Laporte (01:58:18):
There were three AI stories. We kind of did 'em already and I Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:20):
Yeah. It was, yeah, that's true. That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:58:23):
Let's see what the change log has. I'll give it to you real quick. Change log.

Speaker 8 (01:58:29):
The Google change log.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:33):
The theme is gonna take longer than the

Leo Laporte (01:58:34):
Change log. Yeah. Pretty much. The pixel seven a's free pixel buds and case offer ends this weekend. Buy your phone now. If you were gonna get one, that's actually a good deal. The Pixel seven a I like it. Although the six A is even less, less expensive and still a pretty good deal. Yeah. Google Docs is adding <laugh>. No, I put this in, I even put this in collapsible headings. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:59):
You had it, you had it up in the main feed and demoted it. I can't believe you even for a moment, had it in the main feed.

Leo Laporte (01:59:07):
Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are syncing up kind of. Really kind of. Now this is a story from Mashable. I didn't even know they were still in the business, so, oh I hear,

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:20):
I got a question for you. People send me calendar invites and they're at ICS and of course I'm in Google and you can't import them. What? You can't what

Leo Laporte (01:59:28):
You can't open. Yes. You

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:29):
Can click on it and save. Yeah. You go, yeah. You gotta go through all that magilla. You can just, where somebody who puts up a save this to Google and you just click it. It's done is so much better. Well

Leo Laporte (01:59:40):
Get ready cuz On May 15th, that was two days ago. Google and Microsoft set it up to their calendar apps. Allow for more integration. They call it get this calendar interoperability. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:54):
Catchy. That's catchy.

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
Marketing allows you to productively schedule time, manage your schedule collaboratively, regardless of your calendaring platform. Now people who use Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook with the same email address can receive both Google Calendar invitations and RSVPs and Outlook for the same calendar. Outlook will remind you about events created in Google Calendar and recurring events from Outlook will update on your Google calendar. So I think it, what it is honestly, is they're starting to support ICS is the standard. Google Calendar kind of did their own little thing. So it's a little more automated. It's better. Yeah. more AI in the workspace. We kind of saw this at IO last week. Gmail inbox, meet notes, slides, soundtrack maker all has ai. Now Android TV has a live tab with free channels just like Google tv, those free channels. Actually, you know, there's one free channel. I, I don't normally cause I don't wanna see ads. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> free v has the remarkable jury duty show. Have you watched that yet? Oh boy. No. This is a reality TV show.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:00):
Oh, I saw an ad for it now. Husband and kid are watching that. I saw an ad for it. They, they love it. Yeah. So it's legit. Huh?

Leo Laporte (02:01:07):
So, you know, I don't know if I'll watch all the episodes cuz it's kind of rep repeat repeating a little bit repetitive. Yeah. But the idea is, here, I'll play the trailer for you. This is an Amazon Prime. You gotta mute it though, but you have to watch it on free V Right. Their, their channel when they say jury of, so the idea is I don't, why do I have to mute it? It's a trailer. No,

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:26):
They're gonna ding us.

Leo Laporte (02:01:27):
Okay. Don't dingus. So the idea is that guy, this guy here is a real person. Everybody else on the jury, the judge, the bailiff, the lawyers, the defendants are all actors, including James Marsden playing himself as the biggest egotistical buffoon ever. Okay. That's compelling. But here's the thing that happened that they didn't expect. It's funny, right? Because it's like you know, it's like you know, you're getting punked. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? It's like candid camera. He doesn't know. He's not in on it. And so the jurors do all sorts of dopey things they hate on each other. There's one juror who's like in the movement of the enhanced body movement. So he has a, he has a one of those bags where your water on it. Oh, a camelback. Camelback. Like a camelback. But the, he says, well, the idea actually would be if I could have a bladder or some sort of bag inserted in my body, I would never have.

(02:02:24):
And then in the another nozzle, he said, what's that? Well that's a liquified food. He say, I have water and I have food. And then he comes to the jury with crutches strapped to his ass because he doesn't wanna have to sit down or keep people waiting so he can sit down at any time, but doesn't work with a jury box. It's funny. Like, and this guy, this poor guy doesn't know it's all fake. He thinks, wow, I'm with the weirdest. But here's the funny thing here ever. Here's the funny thing. And they didn't, the producers didn't expect this. This guy is like a sweetheart. Instead of getting angry or frustrated, he like shows the guy with the sits on the crutches and has the thing a bugs life to show him that, you know, you could be an outcast, but really you're also an innovator.

(02:03:04):
<Laugh>. He's like, he's like a sweetheart. It's a saint. Nothing throws him outstanding. And it's all of a sudden you, this guy by the way, is gonna be a star's all of a sudden. But my question is, did he have to like quit his, did he have, he thought he was on a jury. He thought did he have to leave his work and not be paid and then come to a jury and how jury, like you do in a jury, what are they doing? The funny thing is Marsden is there and he, he wants to get out of it. So he stages fake paparazzi. They come and they're at the door and stuff. And it, and the judge, instead of getting him out of the jury, he says, yeah, now see, judge is gonna happen all the time. I should probably not be here. Judge says, that's fine.

(02:03:40):
We're just gonna sequester you all. So honestly, they're <laugh>. They're all staying in a motel together. It's, it's, it's actually very funny. Okay. I'm in. Yeah, I would watch it <laugh>. I would watch it. It's, it's pretty wild. Oh, okay. How many episodes? I don't know. Cuz you know, I'm kind of losing steam on it. It's certainly the first, the premise is well, is good enough the first few episodes. I'll probably watch it a few, few more. I've been seeing ads. Okay. I'll give it a shot now. Yeah. That's jury duty. <Laugh>. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a really interesting concept. And I think it got out of the producer's control <laugh> because this guy turned out not to be reacting. They thought he'd be like all pissy. Right. And instead, this guy's like a Saint <laugh> Dew is his civic duty the way.

(02:04:29):
No. John's asking a good question. Aren't the cameras a giveaway? No. He's told that we are making a documentary about jury duty and we have chosen your jury. So they have documentary style interviews of the entire, of everybody, the actors and the real guy. They pretend everybody's real and they interview 'em after. And they have cameras and stuff. So they're pretending. Yeah. Oh yeah. We're filming it. It's, it's for a documentary we're doing on juries, but they have to go through hours of like real boring court stuff to prove that it looks real. The question that's boring. Court stuff. The judges always, always ajour. They do. The judge is adjourning all the time. <Laugh>. That's enough. I don't, they I read one story where they don't show that to you. Of course they'll do four hours of evidence. Well, the case just prove the guy case is terrible.

(02:05:11):
The case is terrible. It's a civil suit. This woman is claiming that this employee ruined her business and her reputation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because he got drunk and urinated on all the products. <Laugh>, whoops. And the, the plaintiff has this really beautifully created 3D animation of what happened. <Laugh> and the defense to defense attorney got his nephew to make something <laugh>. Anyway, I'll leave it, I'll leave it to you to watch. It's funnier if you compress it like that. Anyway. Have you watched the Diplomat? Yeah. I'm st I I started and I thought this is so good. I'm saving it for Lisa. It's, it's very good. It looks good. Episode six and seven when they're off in a meeting. It's at a place called Ditchley, where I've been twice Ditchley in England. Yeah. Ditchley, Ditchley Ditchley. They I I thought this, this is like fake. Aaron Sorkin turns out the showrunner is a guy who used to write for the West Wing. So there is a there's a connection. Yeah. It kind of feels like that West Wing thing. It does. Finally, pixel phones are gaining a new ringtone inspired by Kenny G. Oh my god. Shall I play it for you? You go to sleep instead of answering the phone. I wonder if it's on my phone here. I'll play a little bit of it. Will they take us down for this? They will scrum 'em this music.

(02:06:40):
I swear you always know when Kenny G on the horn Yeah. Really has a sound.

(02:06:48):
Get ready for the name of this. This is the Kenny Jing Tone. <Laugh> <laugh>. And that was a Google change log. And that's the change log. Gosh, that's horrible. God. Our show this week brought to you by our wonderful, wonderful studio sponsors. ACI Learning. Really the reason ACI Learning wanted a sponsors studio we're here in the ACI Learning Studios is cuz they wanted you to know the name. Because ACI learning IT Pro is now part of ACI learning. And we know, you know it pro since they started 10 years ago, they've been a part of our family. We've been talking about all their great training. Well now it pro is that much better by merging ACI learning. They are, they are now able to give you all kinds of valuable training in it, in cybersecurity, in audit. They've got expanded practice labs. They're now up to 7,000 hours of content.

(02:07:54):
All of this, because the ACI learning has empowered them to do so much more. In fact, thanks to ACI learning the days of boring, archaic training methods are finally over. Lack of meaningful impact shows up as low engagement. And we were just talking about that, that suboptimal performance. The industry training, industry training industry's completion rate on their videos averages around 30%. That's cuz people get bored, they drift off. It's just not good. A C n learning is 80% completion rate. I think the same thing. It's entertaining, it's fun. And you are learning. You are learning. And what this means is your team is gonna love the training they get from it. Pro and ACI learning in today's IT talent shortage. Whether you operate as your own department or you're part of a larger team, your skills have to be up to date. That's table stakes, right?

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And for training for your enterprise, there is no better way to keep your team compliant ahead of the pack. You could choose an existing course and let ACI learning combine modules for a tailored solution, or let them custom design a course to address your specific needs. Yes, they do that. In fact, ACI Learning's Private Bootcamp will train your team alongside the e most passionate, the best subject matter expert certified in the latest version of each individual cert. And when you do that private bootcamp, you get full access to advanced reporting. Actually, anybody who's doing it in the team training does with a c l Learning's PR Pro portal track and manage your team's results, manage seats assigned on the site and team members for customized courses relevant to their position access, monthly progress and usage reports. And they're very visual. That's helpful. If you're justifying the spend of the higher ups, you get immediate insight into your team's viewing patterns and progress over any period.

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Stacey Higginbotham (02:11:58):
Okay. My thing this week is not a thing. It's a dump your thing. Burn your thing. Get rid of your thing. Recycle it. This thing is the WiMo Smart plugs. This week they, I just

Leo Laporte (02:12:10):
Bought those t t p links, smart plugs and I, I haven't even box.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:16):
Those are different. Okay. These are, these are different. These are made by Bekin. Wimo, yeah. Okay. Calm down. Yeah, calm down.

Leo Laporte (02:12:22):
You mean the ones that the series vulnerability was recently uncovered in?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:26):
Yes. That was the one. So here's the issue one, it's actually not that there was a serious vulnerability, although it is very SIMer serious, it could be remotely executed. It also allows the device to execute code, which means like someone who's not in your house or has physical access to the device could theoretically use this buffer flow vulnerability to get access to your device install code that could then get access on the rest of your network i's,

Leo Laporte (02:12:52):
So there's a bot here, right?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:54):
Hold on. It's not great. So this is terrible. And the researchers was like, this is terrible. We should tell Be and WiMo. So they did. And Peka WiMo said, eh, they're not gonna fix it because

Leo Laporte (02:13:05):
Oh, so you're literally saying burn these, not buy them. Yeah. Don't buy them. Burn them.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:09):
No. Said burn. Recycle. Get rid of

Leo Laporte (02:13:11):
'Em. Oh wow. Okay. Nice pig. How about those TP Link ones? Those are okay. Yes. So

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:17):
Those are fine. Well, here's, here's the next part of this, right? Bekin decided not to do this because the device was sold starting in 2019. They're like, ah, it's close to the end of life. We're not gonna update it. This is actually the second or possibly the third time Bekin. Wimo has decided, oh. When faced with a security vulnerability to be like, eh, that device is old. But they're still

Leo Laporte (02:13:38):
Selling them, aren't they?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:40):
Yes. To me that says they do not care about you. Do not buy. I mean, this is exactly,

Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
Do not buy anything. But why tell from WiMo, I think. Right. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:49):
Belk, and we [inaudible] don't buy. They got purchased by Foxcon a while back, but, so now you know.

Leo Laporte (02:13:57):
Oh my goodness.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:58):
Yes. The T healings are fine. N TP link when faced with vulnerabilities has historically they catch 'em updated too.

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
Yeah. They, you know, it's funny we were talking on security now about a router vulnerability and how most routers don't auto update their firmware. And you've al I actually quote you all the time, Stacy, you've always said, do not buy any iot device that doesn't have auto update capability. And somebody wrote to us and said, Hey, good news. I have a TP link. It auto updated it, fixed it, it it patched the vulnerability. Yeah. Oh good. I think TP Link is a good company. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:31):
A lot of the new ones do, but yeah, so

Leo Laporte (02:14:34):
Yikes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:35):
Oh yeah, Wemo. Okay. Don't ever buy their stuff, period. If I've ever shown you them, just say, Stacy, you are wrong. I Maya culpa.

Leo Laporte (02:14:43):
You didn't know it. I'm stopping you now. It's not your fault. You didn't know, but they are still selling them, which is a little bit disappointing.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:49):
Yeah. But people show you who they are. Believe it.

Leo Laporte (02:14:50):
So it's not Bekin anymore, it's now Foxcon or,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:54):
Well, let's see. Someone bought them. I think it was Belcon Limo purchased. Foxcon purchased an a great purchase. Bekin International that controls links limo. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:15:08):
Oh, Foxconn bought Bekin. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So maybe we'll stay away from all that was forever ago. Dang. Yeah. Yeah. Dang. Bekin was always up and down because they would take, they would basically relabel no name Chinese gear as bean gear. So some of it was very good. Some of it was not so good. I guess now we know they don't really care. Nah, profit. Thank you Stacy. Wow. Jeff Jarvis a number.

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:38):
Oh. next a few

Leo Laporte (02:15:43):
Things I like rebranding the, the Wiener mobile <laugh>. Well, alright, go ahead. You do that first. I, I vote for that.

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:50):
You're not getting off that easy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:52):
After 87 years, the Oscar Meer Wiener mobile is now the Frank Mobile.

Leo Laporte (02:15:58):
No. Oh, that's terrible of

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:01):
Teenage jokes. Is that what it is?

Leo Laporte (02:16:03):
It's, well, you know what, nobody calls 'em wieners anymore. I think that's probably the thing. Is that what

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:07):
It is? Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (02:16:08):
I mean, I know no one calls

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:09):
'Em Franks either. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:16:11):
No. What do you call 'em? Hot dogs.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:13):
But hot dogs.

Leo Laporte (02:16:14):
Hotdog. It's a hotdog. You know, my family, what do you call 'em growing up? It was never wieners. It was never Frank's. It was Winnie's Winnie's weenies. Well, I think Winnie's mobile really is not gonna be good.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:29):
So it was always strange for me to hear wieners and, and Frank's

Leo Laporte (02:16:34):
Weenies.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:36):
Yeah. Beans.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:37):
Beans and weenies.

Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
Beanie weenies. Weenie.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:40):
We didn't even say Beanie Weenies. When I saw Beanie Weenies in the store, it that

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
Blew my mind. You thought it was a family name? Yeah. Yeah. I did too. We called 'em Beanie Weenies when I was growing up. I loved it. Baked beans and little pieces is a hotdog. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:52):
That's Franken beans.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:55):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:55):
See, that's just, but now it's Frank. That's just weird.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:57):
It's Franks. Why

Leo Laporte (02:16:57):
Eat 'em Frank. All right, so there's one. The Oscar, I've, I like that one. What else you got?

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:01):
The other one is, so in 2016, I went to Google Newsgeist and a friend of mine named Jochen Wegner, who's the editor of site online in Germany, saw all US American journalists after the election Stop. Y Leo. I can see it on the <laugh>. I'm breaking the fourth wall. The fifth lens. You know

Leo Laporte (02:17:22):
I've been busted twice today. Now we're off camera shenanigans.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:26):
This is the problem with Zoom. We can

Leo Laporte (02:17:28):
See. Yeah, you can see me. The audience

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:29):
Can't, but now they don't. Anyway, so Jokin said he watched all the journalists in America going nuts after our election in 2016. And he said, this can't happen in Germany. I gotta do something. And he created something called Butch Lare. And which people answered questions at the end of stories about their views. And then they asked them, do you wanna meet with somebody near you? Who disagrees with you in person?

Leo Laporte (02:17:50):
Oh God. Favorite part of this's. My worst nightmare

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:52):
Is that Well, I, you're gonna have your chance in a second. So Ha had the chance Wonder right here was matched with

Leo Laporte (02:17:58):
Who? It's bad enough. I gotta talk to Stacy every week. <Laugh>. No, Stacy and I

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:05):
Most of the time. So now, and they, and they and they and they now made it into, into, I think it's your world speaks. Is that what the world talks? Or your country speaks And they, and people can do it in countries, individual countries. Now they're doing it across the world on a given date, coming up in June. If you go to the world talks.org and you answer, if you scroll down, you can just answer a few questions. Very few. Sign up. Just hit sign up.

Leo Laporte (02:18:31):
No

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:31):
<Laugh>. Oh, you're not gonna, don't worry, don't worry. You're not really signing up. It's Germany. They believe in privacy.

Leo Laporte (02:18:37):
Did you get here from a friend? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:40):
Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh no, don't scroll.

Leo Laporte (02:18:43):
He's the world to better place.

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:45):
Worse place. Answer the

Leo Laporte (02:18:46):
Question. 20 years ago. Yeah, it is.

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:48):
Okay. Now is this gonna be like

Leo Laporte (02:18:49):
Chat roulette after I answer the question, does hard work always lead to a better life? No. You're

Jeff Jarvis (02:18:53):
Gonna answer these few questions.

Leo Laporte (02:18:55):
Should climate protection be a priority? Even if it means sacrifices? Yah. Should all countries sanction Russia for the war in Ukraine? Yah. Should every company accept your refugees? Yah. Should state and religion be separated? Yah. Should people of every gender have rights? Equal rights? Yah. Well, who would say no to any of this? All older generations living? Oh yeah. At the expense of younger people. No. Hell no.

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:23):
Sir, so then <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:19:24):
If you, you

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:25):
Disagree me more about yourself. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:27):
About you for a living,

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:29):
You'll be matched.

Leo Laporte (02:19:30):
I am. To

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:31):
Someone around the world to have a one-on-one conversation.

Leo Laporte (02:19:33):
Agitator just

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:35):
What Stacey likes all the time is saying, let's have a conversation.

Leo Laporte (02:19:37):
You do your time. Tweets

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:40):
Have a conversation with somebody who just screws with

Leo Laporte (02:19:42):
You. What makes you happy? Tweeting

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:45):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:19:47):
What worries you? Twittering. <laugh>. Okay. And then now they're gonna pair me up with somebody who disagrees with what I just said. Yes. Yes. Well, I gotta here, I don't have to, I have to go around the world for

Ant Pruitt (02:19:58):
That. I put in here. What do you do for a living? I put meathead. What do you do in your free time? I put whiskey. What makes you happy? I put war more whiskey. <Laugh>. What worries you? I put no whiskey. Let see.

Leo Laporte (02:20:12):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:13):
I was gonna say Too much whiskey.

Leo Laporte (02:20:14):
No whiskey. All right, that's cool. That is@theworldstalks.org. The worlds deep site.org.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:21):
Deutschland.

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
So Berlin, how did the the original German version do, do, do? Well, so it did,

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:28):
It did very well. My favorite part of the story was that one woman was linked by, matched by the algorithm with her father-in-law,

Ant Pruitt (02:20:35):
<Laugh>. Oh yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:38):
Oh. And they had, that

Leo Laporte (02:20:39):
Would be my worst nightmare to be matched with my father-in-law.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:42):
Exactly. Oh yeah. I think they had a thousand people who got together one-on-one in person. And there were no fist fights. Nobody, nobody. You know, the America might be dangerous, but nice, but in Germany it wasn't. And then they've done in other country since. And it's, it's really kind of a neat experiment that says, you know, you can meet people and

Leo Laporte (02:20:57):
It's one of those ideas. That's sounds good in principle.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:01):
I know, but it's kind of worked to

Leo Laporte (02:21:03):
Keep expanding. Hey, I'm glad there are people who will actually do that. Just not exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:07):
Yeah. I'm, yeah. I was debating whether to do it myself. Write, I don't know what I can talk about. Cause I'm gonna get No, you see, I'm, you know what it's like this group. I just get

Leo Laporte (02:21:14):
Upset. I just get upset. Exactly. It's just upsetting to talk to people who don't agree with my 100% correct points of view.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:23):
And, and the numbers. You always present, but you're always, did

Leo Laporte (02:21:26):
We disagree over whether old people are living off of young people?

Ant Pruitt (02:21:29):
Yes we did.

Leo Laporte (02:21:29):
You think that I am abusing your youth? Wait a minute, you're old.

Ant Pruitt (02:21:34):
I'm not old. I'm oldish. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:21:36):
Oh my gosh.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:37):
We're so close to the end.

Ant Pruitt (02:21:38):
Y'all. There's a difference. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:21:40):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (02:21:42):
Sorry. Don't you?

Leo Laporte (02:21:43):
I love it having a host. Mac's getting old to be over

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:46):
I the minute.

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
All right aunt, it's time for your thing.

Ant Pruitt (02:21:51):
My thing. Quick shout out to vbu.com. Remember I was a judge for a photo contest and view bugg. It was the early, early morning photo contest. Oh. It was 17,000 entries. Thank you for everybody who participated. They whittled it down for me to pick and I picked the list of I can't get in photos. Why can't you get in this shit? You have

Leo Laporte (02:22:12):
To have an account.

Ant Pruitt (02:22:13):
No you don't. It was, ah, shucks. I'll have to fix that link.

Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Does it mean I have to participate? I don't want to, no. Anyway, I'll sign in here. Yeah, there

Ant Pruitt (02:22:20):
Should be a public link there. But ubu.com Early morning con Early

Leo Laporte (02:22:24):
Morning. Oh, this is if I wanted to upload some photos I guess, right? Yeah. I wanna see the, I want to see the Explorer photo contests.

Ant Pruitt (02:22:33):
Should be completed. I had to fix the link for our show notes, I guess. No, no,

Leo Laporte (02:22:37):
No. The link was fine. I clicked a button. It was my fault. Nice

Ant Pruitt (02:22:41):
Work.

Leo Laporte (02:22:41):
Yeah, <laugh>. Let me do that again cuz if you, the length that we'll put in the show notes of Trick says this is it, right? Yep.

Ant Pruitt (02:22:49):
That's

Leo Laporte (02:22:49):
It. So I pressed view winner. That was my

Ant Pruitt (02:22:51):
Mistake. No, don't do that. Don't press that scroll down. Cause that's my

Leo Laporte (02:22:53):
Winner. Oh my God. That's gorgeous.

Ant Pruitt (02:22:55):
That's a very, very,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:56):
Oh wow.

Leo Laporte (02:22:57):
I got a question. A is, is that a real pho? How do you know that's a real photo?

Ant Pruitt (02:23:02):
I pixel peep. That was real <laugh>. These are real. That's gorgeous. One of them is actually a iPhone shot. Wow. That's the second run. The first run open in the second.

Leo Laporte (02:23:12):
By the way, I said that cause the

Ant Pruitt (02:23:13):
First photo is so

Leo Laporte (02:23:14):
Amazing. You think a computer made up? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:16):
Well yeah. I was like, I didn't know there was a place that looked like that. And then I'm like, man, where did these people find the horses?

Ant Pruitt (02:23:22):
Or they were camping in that first shot. Really? And they're like, yeah, we're off our tent. This is what we Nice. Open our beautiful tent too. Isn. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:31):
Why you camp.

Ant Pruitt (02:23:32):
Yeah. It's beautiful stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:23:33):
This is also gorgeous. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:23:35):
Now the last one here,

Leo Laporte (02:23:36):
I think, I'm glad you chose this. Me. That's not a landscape and I kinda like that

Ant Pruitt (02:23:40):
I made this one a, a part of the list, but I couldn't make it a winner because the foul name says night train. It's supposed to be a morning contest. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:23:50):
<Laugh>. Well, but if you ride the train all night, the sun will come up. The

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:54):
Sun will rise up.

Ant Pruitt (02:23:55):
Yeah. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:23:56):
Nice. Isn't that what's happening here?

Ant Pruitt (02:23:58):
Yeah. Maybe

Leo Laporte (02:24:00):
<Laugh>. It's a night and turn. I mean

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:01):
That's what I assume.

Leo Laporte (02:24:02):
Oh, that's another

Ant Pruitt (02:24:03):
Beautiful nest. The people's

Leo Laporte (02:24:04):
Choice. So what is View Bug?

Ant Pruitt (02:24:06):
It's just another photo community. Think of flicker. Is

Stacey Higginbotham (02:24:10):
That the Momo Bridge? The one between Copen, Higgin and Momo. It looks

Leo Laporte (02:24:12):
Like it doesn't. It sounds Tweeted. Yeah, it looks like it.

Ant Pruitt (02:24:14):
That's pretty. Yeah, it is so cool. Oh, that'd

Leo Laporte (02:24:16):
Scare me. That'd scare me

Ant Pruitt (02:24:18):
Bad. My pick of the week next week is, is gonna be for you Mr. Jarvis. I'm looking forward to it. Ar I've already picked it out. Oh, and my other pick I I want to say don't leave home without it. And it is as simple as this little, this is $20 from

Leo Laporte (02:24:34):
A guy who spends a lot of time on the sidelines. <Laugh> <laugh>. This is what you take to every football game. Baseball game, soccer game, lacrosse game. Or

Ant Pruitt (02:24:47):
Just because you feel like sitting outside, you know? Yeah, that's

Leo Laporte (02:24:50):
True. It's got a cup holder. I,

Ant Pruitt (02:24:52):
I had lunch today. I've

Leo Laporte (02:24:53):
Seen so many of these at the game. Our

Ant Pruitt (02:24:55):
Twits sponsored lunch today. I had it outside.

Leo Laporte (02:24:59):
Oh, you actually took your hamburger and went outside. Went

Ant Pruitt (02:25:01):
Outside. And is because Nice idea. I always have my chair with me. Yeah. And that comes

Leo Laporte (02:25:05):
Keep that with you at all times.

Ant Pruitt (02:25:06):
Yeah. I keep an an orange shirt. Why do you keep it your pants and my <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (02:25:10):
My

Ant Pruitt (02:25:11):
Not No comment.

Leo Laporte (02:25:13):
I thought those thighs were large, but I didn't realize you had the chair in there. No, these are, you know what these are, these are like classic. This is are classic. You can't beat 'em. Yeah. Yeah. We

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:23):
Keep two of these in our car. That's a good idea. During the summer season for impromptu, basically like, oh look, it's a festival or, oh look, there's, so

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
You need these all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:25:33):
So just buy one 20 bucks or so and throw it in the back of your car. It's always there when you need it. I use it for the Do

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:40):
You keep car clothes?

Ant Pruitt (02:25:41):
I the only car clothes you have car clothes I have is, I have my I have an orange sweatshirt or an orange shirt. What the hell's a car? Car clothes in the back of my car case. I don't wanna go. Want photo walk

Leo Laporte (02:25:52):
Car clothes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:53):
Yeah. So we keep car clothes. We have a, a bucket. It's not a bucket. It's one of those cloth bins and it's got a pair of sweatpants. A hat.

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:01):
Jesus

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:02):
Scarf. A sweater. Is that case a blanket? You

Leo Laporte (02:26:06):
Go to the beach and your clothes disappear and then No,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:09):
It's cuz I live in Seattle and like you drive like Yeah. Yeah. You're like, now it's hot. Now it's cold.

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:15):
Neil, Neil, while you were gone, these people both admitted that they pack screwdrivers in their suitcase. <Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:23):
He probably does too.

Leo Laporte (02:26:24):
No, I don't have a screwdriver in my suitcase. The

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:26):
Screwdrivers in their suitcase. I want a tour of the, of Stacy's trunk. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:26:32):
Screw.

Leo Laporte (02:26:33):
I can see one in your, that makes sense.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:37):
The only other thing we have is the picnic blanket. I mean we have the chargers

Leo Laporte (02:26:40):
And actually I do carry a multi tool. You're I carry a multi. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:43):
We have a multi-tool. Multi tool.

Leo Laporte (02:26:45):
Yeah. That's a in your suitcase. Yeah. You never know. You never know. Lately, lately before we left on this last trip mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I bought any Ann ACO recommended these three L l l e D lights. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they're little like postage stamp size. And I just bought 'em and I kind of scattered 'em around in case you know, there's a fire, the lights go out. You got a light. That's

Ant Pruitt (02:27:06):
True. Yeah. Oh geez.

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:10):
Oh yeah. We do also keep two headlamps in our car. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:12):
Headlamps.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:13):
I, I want, I want, I want a special outdoor version of Stacey's thing's plural.

Leo Laporte (02:27:18):
Oh, you know what else? I

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:19):
Wanna see the back of

Leo Laporte (02:27:19):
The car that I keep in the car at all times. I keep a special device that has a light, it'll have a blinker. It's like a flare, but it has a magnet on so you can put any part of the car and it has a seatbelt cutter in it. So if you, if you, you gotta get outta your seatbelt. Get a wreck.

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:35):
Can you use it to break the window? To get outta the Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:27:36):
It has a little window too. Yeah, a little

Stacey Higginbotham (02:27:38):
Hammer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
Mm-Hmm.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:39):
<Affirmative> suggest Jarvis, did you go camping? Well, probably just

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:42):
Now. No. You could tell. No. In fact, I broke up with a, I I I I, when I moved to California, my girlfriend at the time, Uhhuh <affirmative> was an editor of the Chicago Tribune and she was kinda an outdoorsy person and she came and she said, we're gonna, we're gonna go to Yosemite cuz we have reunion

Ant Pruitt (02:27:55):
There. You see, I haven't been to Yosemite

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:57):
When I was in F

Ant Pruitt (02:27:58):
So

Jeff Jarvis (02:27:58):
Great. Good. It was snowing. And I said no, I'm not staying out in a tent. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
Oh no.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:04):
Oh dude.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:05):
And it broke up the relationship and good dude. It was not meant to be.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:08):
I want the Tahoe. Oh, do you

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:09):
Keep car snacks?

Leo Laporte (02:28:11):
<Laugh>?

Ant Pruitt (02:28:12):
Yeah. There's normally some snacks in my glove box. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's large

Leo Laporte (02:28:16):
Snacks. Both. Both of both. My kills have yelled at me because I don't have tissues and water

Ant Pruitt (02:28:21):
Are always in there. Nap.

Leo Laporte (02:28:22):
Always in and said Mom has tissues and water in her car.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:25):
I have water in my trunk.

Leo Laporte (02:28:26):
I'm not Mom

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:28):
<Laugh>. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:28:30):
I have all

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:30):
That. How do you, that's

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:32):
An honor of your winning photo. I wanna mention this stool Thinging. My minion Fogerty. If you don't follow her, love her.

Leo Laporte (02:28:37):
She's grammar. Grammar girl. Grammar girl. She's

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:39):
Wonderful. She found out this week that there was a mountain in Washington state named Exclamation Point.

Leo Laporte (02:28:45):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:46):
Oh, NICET.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:47):
So she love that. Isn't

Stacey Higginbotham (02:28:49):
That great? Is great. Did she find it on Peak Finder? <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:52):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:53):
Good one. Good one.

Leo Laporte (02:28:54):
There is some amazing, what's her name again? Minion Foggerty. That Foggerty. She's on massive Foggerty. She's Grammar girl. That was my

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:00):
Pick of the week.

Leo Laporte (02:29:01):
Oh, peak Finder. Oh, okay. Like

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:03):
Peak Fighter. Like several, several like

Leo Laporte (02:29:06):
Year ago that,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:06):
That was one of my picks of

Leo Laporte (02:29:07):
Grammar girl at Zurk. Z I R k.us. She is a one of the original podcasters. Yeah, she's great there. She great person.

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:17):
Wonderful

Leo Laporte (02:29:17):
Feeds. Yeah. Yeah. I

Ant Pruitt (02:29:19):
Found

Leo Laporte (02:29:19):
Her. She's on Speak feeds.

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:20):
Stacy wants to do that now. I'll

Leo Laporte (02:29:22):
Bet it's time to strap on the old feed bag because we're gonna have to say goodnight to everybody. We thank y'all for being here. Stacy Higginbotham is@stacyoni.com. She does the IOT podcast and she is on the Twitter at Giga. Stacy, thank you. Stacy, you are a jewel. A gem among Roses. Thank you. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:29:47):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:29:48):
Aunt Pru there, you know, aunt Aunt's, the guy You be

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:51):
A rose among Dandelions, rose

Leo Laporte (02:29:53):
Among Dan

Ant Pruitt (02:29:54):
West. George Accent.

Leo Laporte (02:29:56):
You are a nut among screws. <Laugh>. He is. He is he is our community manager. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> at the club Tour disco. He hosts the hands-on photographer show tweet tv slash hop. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he is available on the internet@auntpruitt.com slash

Ant Pruitt (02:30:15):
Prince and apparently gets made fun of for drinking a gallon of water.

Leo Laporte (02:30:19):
He has on the set. It's not that you drink a gallon, you have it in a plastic gallon jug. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:24):
Yes. Why go buy one when I already bought one. Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (02:30:26):
Know, <laugh>. Yeah, I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:30:27):
Get it. Can't based on how, how late the day is. You've got a lot of water left

Ant Pruitt (02:30:32):
Today. I've got a long way to go. Yeah, I'm behind. Yeah, you're right. I'm

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:35):
Hey mixed. I mixed a lot of that with some whiskey I think. There

Leo Laporte (02:30:38):
You go. Yeah. Just a few. No, never put water in your whiskey. Just a few drops A drop. Yeah. <laugh> the Leonardtown professor for journalistic innovation. Ladies and gentlemen at the Craig Newmar Newmar Branches School of Journalism of City, university of New York. You know him as Jeff Jarvis. You love his book. The Gutenberg parenthesis available for pre-order gutenberg parenthesis.com. I will be back Sunday for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm gonna demonstrate this thing, this little devil of a thing called the Flipper one. It looks like a little video game device. It is. It could steal cars, it can break into buildings. It's all sorts of things. It's the o Ultimate Hackers pen. Just, and

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:17):
You can watch 'em get arrested

Leo Laporte (02:31:18):
During the show. Watch, get Arrested Live. Great. And we will now be able to take phone numbers at Ask the 10 calls. Call. Thank you Jammer. B phone calls. We have a phone number. Eight eight eight seven two four eight T t G. That's a tollfree number, but do you have a phone? Yeah. No, we have no phone. We have the number. (888) 724-2884. So you can call now. Leave your question for the Tech guys on Sunday or when we're on the Airli Sunday. You can call and get on live using that phone number. Thank you too. Outstanding. Way to go Mr. Jammer. B. Great. We do This Week in Google every Wednesday round about 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern, 2100 utc@livetwit.tv. You can watch live or listen live. We finished by Thursday most times. Usually we're done by Thursday. If you are listening or watching live chat, live@irc.twit.tv or in the Club Twit Discord.

(02:32:15):
If you're club twit, remember after the fact on-demand versions of the show available at our website, twit tv slash twig. While you're there, you can click a button. It'll say take you to the YouTube page. Yes, we have a fully dedicated YouTube page for this weekend. Google. You can also use that, those links to sign up in your favorite podcast player. Subscribe for free and get that show every week as soon as available. That's it for the show. I'm Leo LaPorte. We'll be back next week if the good Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise. We'll. Oh my. We'll see y'all <laugh> on the flip Flop. Bye-Bye.

Speaker 9 (02:32:51):
Oh

Leo Laporte (02:32:52):
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