This Week in Tech 456 (Transcript)
It’s time for Twit, This Week In Tech. A great show for you. Brian brushwood is here. The Scoblizer, Robert Scoble. And Marques Brownlee from MKV HD. I’m surrounded by YouTube stars this week. We will talk about Facebook’s
conference, when enmity isn’t truly anonymous. Twitter’s tumble on the stock
market and Microsoft blinked. It’s all coming up next on Twit.
Net casts you love, from people you
trust. This is Twit! Bandwidth from This Week In Tech
is provided by cachefly.com.
This is Twit. This Week In Tech, Episode 456 recorded May 4, 2014
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Leo Laporte:
It is time for Twit, This Week in Tech. The show where we cover That week’s tech news. And all its floored
glory. Speaking of floored glory Robert Scoble is here, where not one but two devices that could take pictures
surreptitiously. In fact Robert is going to see if the Scobilizer has his Google Glass. I recognize the narrative clip. This is good because there
is more stealth. Because it is a camera every 30 seconds it takes a picture.
Robert Scoble:
And if you double tap it, it will take an extra one.
Leo: Will talk about that. Robert was
also at the Facebook Developers conference. We’ll talk about that. To his right
is Mr. Brian Brushwood from scam school, the new show NSFW has now called…
Brian
Brushwood: Night
attack. At nightattack.tv. And it is still dirtier
than ever. It is finally actually NSFW. Not that we weren’t extremely thankful
for the platform of Twit but man do we use the F word a lot now.
Leo: Really that was your goal in life?
To somewhere find a platform that I can swear more?
Brian: There was some clip where Bonnie
walked in we were playing and she goes, “Congratulations Brian, just wait till
your daughter finds this”.
Leo: So, it was Inside Amy Schumer that
they did the douche scam school. Have you seen this? That is what this guy does
for a living.
Brian: This reputation that magicians
have, they earned it. That kind of thing doesn’t come out of nowhere. There is 1 billion of those guys actually out. But yes I agree.
Leo: Hey, look who else is here. MKBHD,
Marques Brownlee is back. I bet we Have something that
you don’t have. I should never say that, but I see that Robert Scoble here has been new HTC1. But everybody has the HTC1
but this is the new Sprint Harman Kardon version.
Have you played with it yet Marques?
Marques
Brownlee: I have
not. I have the Google Play addition one and the AT&T one.
Leo: I’m a fan of the M8. I just got the
Nokia 1520 just to see what a six-inch phone would be like. And I like it and not that it doesn’t have enough Google services. What is
interesting about this one, and I know you just got it
you haven’t played with it yet, is this is the so-called Harman Kardon edition and it has the capability of playing back
this high bit rate files.
Robert: And they sent me a really nice
Harmon Kardon wireless speaker. That is called
bribery.
Leo: You don’t get to keep it though.
Robert: I don’t know. It didn’t have a
return shipping label.
Leo: I think this is interesting because
Neil Young has made a lot of hay with his Pono player. He raised quite a bit of money on kick
starter. For basically the same idea. A player that can play instead of the MP3s that we are used to. I think everybody agrees you give up a certain amount when you do an MP3. But
even recorded at higher bit rates this CD is 41 kHz by 16 bit. I asked Joe
Walsh what do you record in? And he said 44 124. Why
don’t you do it higher? And he said it takes up too much disk space. And nobody
can hear the difference.
Robert: That’s not true.
Leo: There is some debate over it. Whether you can hear the difference.
Robert: You can actually. If you get into a
double testing lab you can tell the difference. Most people can actually.
Leo: I think people can. But I don’t
know if I can because I’m so old. But theoretically this phone will do it if
you have good headphones?
Robert: Yeah, that’s why I brought these headphones.
Leo: Okay. Do you know if there is 192
24 music on here?
Robert: I haven’t figured that out yet. I
literally just got it.
Leo: I figure the only person young
enough on this panel to hear the differences probably Marques. What do you
think of the idea? You are deaf now anyway.
Brian: I am convinced that this is the age
of music entering basically wines. You have five wines and there are like three
dudes who can maybe taste the difference between this one and now one, but the
rest of us can buy two dollar wine and think it is great and not have any idea.
I’m pretty sure that is where we are with audio at this point.
Leo: The Golden years.
Robert: Yeah, it is funny it has modified settings
and it has a way to download a higher bit rate and it does sound better to my
years. But most people don’t even know that’s there. Also THX has a new format
that is surround sound audio. It is sort of neat. It'll be interesting to
compare all these.
Leo: NHX keeps pushing surround sound
stuff and it just never gets picked up.
Robert: It’ll be picked up by the video
game people.
Leo: Right. So Pono raised $6 million, they wanted 800,000 and they raise
$6 million. 18,000 people, including me I bought one, but it won’t be out until
September. But Marquez literally you are the only one young enough with acute
enough hearing to be able to tell the difference. Have you listened to any of
this high-quality stuff?
Marques: I rarely do. I just have a lot of
MP3’s. I don’t record any higher.
Leo: You see? Kids
today. Your generation grew up with iPod and little ear buds and that is
all you expect.
Marques: When I am recording I am not
recording to the web, just to YouTube and it compresses everything anyway. So
even if I did record and a higher resolution you wouldn’t really hear the
difference on YouTube.
Leo: It is the same for us, we could shoot in 1080P but why? Do you shoot at 720 or
1080?
Marques: I shoot at 2160P and YouTube will
stream at a higher bit rate when you shoot in 4K. So I can export in 45 MHz per
second rather than 10 which is the max for 1080 P streaming.
Leo: You shoot in 4K?
Marques: Yeah.
Leo: Wow. It is the same thing, you have
to compress it so much you can’t imagine.
Robert: I don’t have enough upload speed. I’d
be up all night uploading one video.
Marques: YouTube takes forever to process
those files too. If I’m uploading in 1080 P a five-minute video it will be done
processing in five minutes but if I upload this 4K video that is 4 gigs and it
takes about an hour to fully process in order to actually show that resolution.
Leo: So why do you upload MK 4K video?
Marques: I like hi-res video in the first
place so I’m kind of future proofing it for now. For the day in maybe 6 years
when someone is watching an old video!
Leo: Did you get a 60 Hz, 4K monitor? Were you able to?
Marques: Yeah, I have the Aquos PQU321Q display.
Leo: That is the only 60hz one out there as far as I know.
Marques: At Thunderbolt.
Leo: Are you running a Mac Pro on that
sucker?
Marques: Yes sir, I am. Faster.
Leo: This is the guy that had 120,000
comments on a single YouTube video. What were you giving away?
Marques: I was giving away the Nexus Pier. Another
one of these is the Nexus 5 with the skin on the back with my logo on it.
Leo: The MKBHD version. Wow. 120,000 comments. Wow.
Marques: All those entries.
Leo: That’s amazing.
Robert: It takes a lot to get Leo jealous
of somebody else’s numbers.
Leo: I’m very jealous of Marques! What
day is it? It is March the 3rd. No, I’m sorry it is May the fourth be with you. We didn’t actually want to play John Williamson
famous music so we you know what they do. They just turn it up a key, take out
a note and that is it. May the Fourth be with you. This
is Star Wars Day. There is someone in the audience right now that is watching
all 6 Star Wars movies in sequence, as is traditional on May 4th.
Promise me they are the specialized
editions. The only valid versions.
Leo: They guy is here with his long suffering
girlfriend. Wife? Just somebody you know? Old friend. I mentioned Star Wars Day to her. Do you think
that is something he would do? Watch all 6 Star Wars movies in one day without
eating? He’d watch Lord of the Rings? That’s a pretty big commitment. There are
only 3 of them but I feel like it is more time that 6 Star Wars movies. It
feels like it just goes on and on. And on. Anyway
happy Star Wars Day. Can you believe it is almost 40 years? 37 years since Star
Wars.
Robert: I saw it 13 times in the first
week.
Leo: You never were a guy to just kind
of take it easy were you?
Robert: No. I was in Junior High.
Leo: 13 times? You just kept going back?
Robert: It was the best movie I’d ever
seen. I was 13, it was 1977.
Leo: I just went once. Anyway, happy Star Wars Day. Let’s take a break and when we
come back we’ll talk about F8 and a lot more. Who did that? Was it Anthony
Neilson who did that fabulous Star Wars crawl? We call that our lower third.
Audience: We call that Kyron in the trade.
Leo: Pardon me. Kyron. Yes, I’m sorry I apologize. The Kyron. He probably
went to Broadcasting school for a semester. That Star Wars
font. I like it. We maybe can keep this.
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Leo: So F8 this year. First of all they
haven’t had a Facebook developers conference in 3
years. It is a long time between conferences I think. You look at Apple,
Google, and their developer conferences are big deals. It really is an
important thing to get developers in your corner. Facebook obviously realized
this.
Robert: I bought Parce last year.
Leo: That is one of the things they
showed. First of all Mark Zuckerberg leads it off. He looks great. He is very
much in command. He is not the shy guy. You’ve interviewed him many times. He
is almost 30. He’s grown up a lot.
Robert: He is confident and he is worldly
now. He’s a billionaire.
Leo: Well he’s not only a billionaire. He’s
got 1.2 billion customers. Amazing thing. He did a
couple of interesting things. For a long time Facebook’s philosophy was kind of
fail fast, break things early and fix them, the hacker culture. He said, “While
that served us well, we want to be a platform now. We want to be stable and
consistent”. That is a big change for Facebook.
Robert: Which means he’s got to move
slowly. The days of some 20 year old checking in some code without having a
committee check it over first is probably over.
Leo: He strikes me as what they are
saying is that… I feel like this is happening. You guys tell me. That Facebook
realized as Google has realized and others have realized that the monolithic
portal page that you go to and everything is there is dead. Mobile is where it
is happening now right? And I think Google knew this all along it seems that
all Google said is we will just do all these different things, some of which
you will use some of which you won’t and we’ll make sure the information we
gather about you is shared across all those platforms. We have basically an Ad
network. And when you use Google Docs, or Voice, or G-plus, or Google mail or
any of our services you’ll see consistent ads across.
Robert: New drive Apps came out this week
right?
Leo: I think Facebook might have
realized this with the acquisition of Instagram and What’s App. They don’t need to fold those into Facebook. In fact it is better if they
don’t. People want to use apps for specific purposes and Facebook is now going
to become the ad platform underneath. To do that and to get developers to use
it, you can’t be changing it every three minutes.
Robert: One problem with apps is if you
click a link on the Facebook app, maybe to sound cloud for instance, it takes
you into the web page. And they just announced a protocol that’ll take you to
the sound cloud app. Now people aren’t all that happy about some of these moves
because they really are, if you look at it, they are taking over the app
eco-system.
Leo: Taking over the web.
Robert: The new web right? I read on my
mobile phone far more than I read on my desktop anymore.
Leo: Zuckerberg promised two years
consistency in the API. Minimum. So if there is an API
call and you are a developer and you’re using it you can be guaranteed it will
be good for two years. We are going to pay more attention to customers. We are
trying to build, he says, a stable mobile platform. This seems to be a big
change.
Robert: The ad network is really the big
thing. And most people aren’t going to get crazy passionate about an ad network
but the numbers will start showing up in the next quarterly results and that is
when we are going to see the effect of that new network. Most of the developers
say it is really well done.
Brian: I’ll tell you what Man. That’s all
great for Facebook but as a consumer there is only one thing I care about and
that is the anonymous login and it is weird because on the one hand I applaud
that he does it but there is so much damned hypocrisy. What did he say? “I can
sign in on my own terms, we don’t want anyone to ever be surprised about how
they are sharing on Facebook”, which is a very magnanimous statement from a man
who built an empire by surprising people about what they are sharing on
Facebook.
Robert: Yeah, that is what I said he’s
starting to grow up. He’s starting to realize that changing all the time pisses
people off and he’s doing things to be more user sensitive.
Leo: Wait a minute. Isn’t Facebook
anonymous login completely cynical because you are anonymous to the app
developer but you are exactly now anonymous to Facebook. What the value to Facebook is to get you to use all these different things and
collect information about you across all these platforms.
Robert: There’s a lot of ways to look at it
as a cynic. First of all, anonymous button takes away screen shot and screen
space that Amazon or Microsoft or Google could use.
You have Facebook connect and
underneath it you have anonymous link. That is the bar where Google Plus would
be.
Robert: And there isn’t that much space on
a mobile phone so right there took away another button possibility from
somebody else.
Brian: I didn’t even think about this as
being an insidious way to go like a second level deeper where you not only tell people that they… man, that is dark. It’s like you
increase the likelihood of somebody using yours because you have the word
anonymous in there and in fact it is totally not anonymous and they are just
collecting even more data. That is horrific.
Leo: Marques Brownlee will people notice
that? Will people just see the word anonymous and go, oh that’s cool?
Marques: I don’t know if anyone is going to
change. The people who care about it will probably click it and hopefully it’ll
do what it says it’s doing. Personally I probably
wouldn’t.
Leo: So you are saying people aren’t
ever going to trust Facebook whether it says anonymous or not?
Robert: That is absolutely not true in the
stats. The ad developers I know say a major proportion of their people are
using Facebook to sign in because it saves you putting that damn user name and
password in for all these stupid apps. Their pitch to the developers was if you
put this anonymous button in, more people will try your app because they know
they won’t give you any data. And there is something to that.
Marques: Or information to post on your
behalf.
Robert: You click anonymous and the app
doesn’t know anything about me.
Leo: But that’s the only one who
doesn’t. You know what app developers do now. You login with Facebook and then
they say, okay give us your email address, your password.
Robert: The best ones don’t do that.
Leo: That is why it is friction free. But
you are giving up something as an app developer. Giving us
access to your customers.
Robert: Absolutely.
Leo: Is Facebook so powerful that the
developers will do that?
Robert: I think so. Based on talking to the
developers in the audience they say they like it because you have another way
to get people to sign in to an app and try it without having to type in your
user name and password. And they know that they lose people on username and
password. I know I do if I have to fill out a bunch of stuff when I first get
an app sometimes I go and do something else.
Leo: Facebook feels a little creepy here
because they are going to developers and saying, okay we’ve got this. We are
going to give you some money, we’ll help you with your
data base, so it feels a little bit like that creepy guy on The Family Guy? That’s
a nice app. Would you mind…
Robert: I can’t argue because on Ratspace I do the same thing. I’m the drug pusher.
Leo: But the difference on Ratspace is that it is open source software right? It’s a open stack. And you’re not
really… Ratspace is not collecting information on my
customers. They are facilitating it. Facebook is saying, Hey forget the Ratspace, the Amazon web services, forget the Google Code,
we’ll do all of that for you. You’ll be in our eco-system, it’ll be a good thing. And I think it is tempting. I even think for us, as
potential ad developers we’d be tempted by that because it is our customer.
Robert: They are not the only one doing it.
Google is out there with an Identity play. Twitter is out there with an
Identity play. Microsoft is trying. What is really interesting is that I didn’t
see any Microsoft on the Facebook stage.
Leo: But you didn’t see any Apple stuff
did you? Or Google stuff?
Robert: There was a lot of Apple talked
about.
Leo: They know the IOS. They’ve gotta be on iPhones.
Robert: iPhone and Android are the two
platforms. Not a single mention of Microsoft. That also matches all the startup
side talk. Very few of them build Windows Phone apps.
Brian: Robert walk me through this because if I’m an app developer I understand the benefits of
buying into the Facebook eco-system for ease of acquisition of new members. But
it seems like in individual login and an email address would be much more
valuable if what I want to do is sell stuff down the road.
Robert: It might be, but when you login
with Facebook, first of all your users don’t turn because it is one click and
then you get, if your users say yes, you get access to their birthday, to their
friend network, all their likes.
Leo: So Facebook will… but wait. Not if
you use the anonymous one?
Robert: Not if you use the anonymous one. But
you know how this is going to work. If I’m an app developer and I opt for
anonymous and then at every turn you are going to try to do something and you
can’t.
Leo: Oh gee. If I knew more about you,
I’d help you.
Robert: Yeah. Please give us full access to
your Facebook profile or sign in with a username and password. You know how
that is going to play out.
Leo: I think that overall what the most
interesting thing here, and I have to give credit to Mike
Elgin our news director and host, for first highlighting this for me. Is this
notion that the monolithic page is dead? I think, in fact I saw an article the
other day that agrees with me, not only we on a post PC era we are in a post
tablet era we are in an everything on the mobile phone
era. And so for the web experience in the mobile phone is tough. It is too
small a screen. We are in an era where frankly all these big companies are
going to say, “We don’t need to have one page, we need to have as many apps as
possible and if it could be our own apps, it could be through a relationship
with an app developer”, but all of them using either the Google Ad platform or
the Facebook Ad platform or the Microsoft or Yahoo ad platform.
Robert: And that is where Android is way
ahead. If you use some of the newer app launchers, they will actually pull in
apps onto your screen that you don’t even have loaded yet. And Apple just
doesn’t let developers do that. Also the app eco-system on Android is more
connected. I can actually deep link into your app, which I can’t do on iPhone
and the fact that Facebook is now coming out with linking for apps tells me
that Apple is in a bad position here. They really should’ve….
Leo: I’m surprised that Apple is going
to allow that. Doesn’t Apple have the right to say no, you cannot click a link
in an app and launch another app?
Robert: I’m shocked that Apple hasn’t done
that yet. Because if Apple doesn’t keep it’s app
eco-system up to date people will start switching. And, you know already 90% of
the market is on android. So it doesn’t take a whole lot more to get us off the
iPhone.
Leo: So Marques, I hate to keep using
you as the young person. But really your usage is what everybody cares about.
They don’t care how Scoble or I or even Brushwood
uses stuff. They care about how people in your age bracket uses stuff. how aware are they, for instance, that this is even going
on?
Marques: As a college student, just looking
around at the way people use apps and trying to sign into stuff. It is
obviously way easier to just sign in with your Facebook account and never worry
about it again. There also apps that use Google plus so if you have Google plus
it is just one click. So that is easy.
Leo: They are not thinking about
privacy.
Marques: No. Not a lot. I have certain
classes where it is sort of a vocal minority where everyone in the class is
concerned about it because it is a class about security or a class about
innovation policy where we talk a lot about that stuff. But outside of that, it
seems like not a lot of concern.
Leo: So, I am curious about Snapchat in
that regards. Snapchat really did well out of the box because, it was that app
that you take a picture and then say they can only look at it for 10 or 20 or
30 seconds. It just took over the world. In fact, they turned down a three
billion-dollar offer. I can’t remember if it was Google or Facebook, I think
Google. They said no we are going to be worth more than that. My daughter
yesterday, she said dad Snapchat just updated. They added phone calls and
texting. So Snapchat clearly sees this as an opportunity. But I think it could
be a mistake though. An application it gets too complicated, one of the reasons
snap Was so popular is because it was very straightforward.
Brian: We are seeing the same thing with
Twitter right? Aren't they talking about…
Leo: Disappearing tweets. They implied
that they would be doing it but they haven’t done it yet. The
whispering. You are classmates use Snapchat right Marques?
Marques: Yes.
Leo: What was the reaction to the new
app? Did they just kind of freak?
Marques: I haven’t seen the reaction. Actually
highly-one we had a reactionary. When I when I thought
I thought it came out all the coverage seems to be very positive and glowing.
But my initial impression was that is a lot more complicated. When Snapchat
started out it was simple. So are people going to try this that use it a lot or
are they just going to use it is the way they did before?
Robert: My son who is 20 says they are using it. He really likes it.
Leo: What did your friend say Marques?
Marques: My friend did not use it. I got the
update next to him and he said is that the new Snapchat? He said he would
update it. And then he did and he said he didn’t know what was going on
anymore. Everything was changed.
Leo: My daughter said the same thing.
She is 22.
Marques: I think people are going to continue
using it the way we they were before. And if they find something that they kind
of like they will consider that a bonus and use it more too. I didn’t get any
walk-through instructions showing the new feature.
Robert: The new video is pretty cool. If
you swipe down it switches the camera to the front facing camera. It is pretty
well done. If you actually do play with it it is
pretty well done.
Leo: But that is the question. Is it
better to be an app that does one thing well, and we
will provide you with inter-app communications if you want to do other things.
Brian: First of all, it seems to me like the
Facebook angle is that they are obviously sitting on a mountain of cash and
goodwill. However, they got there on a very fickle market. All of Facebook was
based on the fact that the flip of a switch all the cool kids ran over to
Facebook away from MySpace. It seems to me that now
that they have the cash they are diversifying and buying stuff with the massive
potential. It makes sense for them to do this. But it makes me think of seeing
the brakes on Twitter’s growth. Which is really shocking to
me. Wall Street of course is taking a giant…
Leo: Snapchat. Chad is sending me a
Snapchat.
Chad: With Snapchat, the general idea
now, instead of clicking on a chat and then clicking and holding to see
something all of your old stuff you can actually swipe over and now you’re in a
chat.
Leo: So if I have a picture of a girl I
can now chat with her.
Chad: Right. Or anyone
really.
Leo: My feeling is, that if you need a tutorial it’s too complicated. You should stop.
Chad: It is funny. What they did was that
snap chat actually sent everyone a big old snap explaining all the features.
But it is interesting, I think that I saved something
from Scott Johnson. What you could do is when someone sends you something that
you like… if you tap on it and it is bald and I move away it is going to save
it. So you can actually save texts.
Leo: It's too complicated.
Brian: I hate to say it man but I tuned
out halfway through the fact that I’m not paying attention is bad news.
Leo: Me too. It’s too hard.
Brian: Simplicity reigns, man. Convenience over fidelity.
Leo: So here is my new Snapchat. I put
it on here and I use it just to see what is going on. And then I take it off
because I don’t want anyone to think I’m using it. That is a problem. I think
that Facebook is making a very compelling argument. Do just one thing well.
Don’t add a lot of features. We will provide the platform across which you can
interact. An ecosystem where people can use it. Really,
these app guys they don’t mind, the only thing they want is the user base.
Brian: Does this make Facebook’s one most
valuable asset basically a terms of service agreement that allows them to share
information and have access to their walled garden? Is that really the biggest
benefit to Facebook to everyone?
Leo: No, it is infrastructure. It is
ease-of-use. It is user base. Everybody wants user base. And if you can scale,
look at What’s App. If you can get up to 300 million
users you are worth $16 billion.
Robert: Facebook wants to know your
emotional connection to people, places, and things. So they can filter the feed
out and addict to you, which gets you to see the advertising. It is an amazing
model to figure out. And the fact that they are building an ecosystem where
your ads are going to be shoved into apps and shoved into other places, and
your identity system is going to be used all over the web. That just ensures
that they know what you are doing to serve you ads. It is not that hard to
figure out what they are doing.
Leo: Well this takes me to a Princeton
professor and sociologist, who decided that she did not want big data to see
what she was up to. She and her husband are expecting. And she has decided that
she doesn’t want big data, whatever big data means, to know. We are talking
about Janet Vertesi, she is an assistant professor of sociology at Princeton
University. She said it was the hardest thing in the world, but she lost her
credibility right away with me when she said, “I am a conscientious objector to
Google, but I'm still on Facebook”. So right there I say, lady!
Robert: While they are studying who you
are, what you do, what your behaviors are, to serve you better.
Leo: She says, “I’ve been on Facebook
about 10 years. I got off Google 2 years ago when they change their privacy policies.
So don’t use any Google products, I was already a conscientious objector to
Google. But I am very active online. I am not fearful of that technology. It
was an experimental thing. What would it look like to do it without walking
away from Facebook or Twitter?” So the first thing they said is we are
expecting but don’t mention it on social media. She told her friends don’t
tweet it. Don’t put it online. We are doing an experiment. Then she said,
“Whenever we searched for anything baby related we did it on Tor, a privacy
network”. So that nobody would know it was her searching. And then when they
buy something they created a fake email account on Amazon and when they would
buy something and have it delivered to an Amazon locker in Manhattan. So they
didn’t have her home address. And she said, “We stocked it with Amazon gift
cards which we bought with cash. To draw a distinction
between our online lives and our off-line lives”.
Brian: Keep in mind that if she really
wanted to keep it quiet, all she had to do was pay cash for diapers at Target
right?
Leo: Don’t go on the Internet.
Robert: And don't do any searches about
babies. And don't click on any ads about babies on Facebook.
Leo: She said it was a lot of work and I
didn’t expect it to be this hard. It was extremely impractical and very
inconvenient. This is the thing that I would say. What have you gained? By all
this effort, what have you gained?
Robert: No baby ads.
Leo: But don’t you want baby ads?
Brian: Basically, the thing they are
trying to compete to do, all of these businesses, their goal is to beat the
other guys of offering you precisely what you need. At the
exact moment that you need it.
Leo: They don’t want to give you power
mower ads, they want to give you diaper ads. But isn’t that what you want?
Robert: Exactly. I’m with you, Man. There
is a new digital divide between people like this who are trying to stay
off-line. Richard Stallman and I had dinner. He pays cash for everything,
doesn’t use credit cards, doesn’t use Facebook. There
are people who don’t use credit cards, who stay off of Facebook, who pay cash
for everything.
Leo: Good for them. What is the penalty?
The only way you can make a penalty, Dvorak does this every time, is if you
imagine some draconian scenario like Google gets taken over by Adolf Hitler and
now he has all the data. Or, Facebook is actually a front for the CIA and now
they’ve got all your data. But what is really happening? All they want to do…
Robert: Didn’t your baby have to get a
birth certificate at the hospital?
Leo: Yeah! By the way from day one when
Henry was born 19 years ago we started getting offers because at the hospital
immediately they sell your information. They give you a gift basket. And then
right up to he was 18 and then the selective service emailed and said he had to
register for the draft. For 18 years they knew exactly how old he was. That is
what they do. And we didn’t need Google or big data to do it. But I ask you
again what is the problem? I don’t care, so what. So
what is it exactly the harm? I understand people don’t want to, you don’t have to use the Internet. You have to go to a lot of trouble, but you
can do that. I don’t understand what people are so worried about.
Brian: The thing is that we want to
believe that we are not creatures that are that predictable. But we are. As we
have said on the show before, you exist as a feedback loop. Who you are is what
you do. And it determines who you are. If you think about it,
the ability to know your past actions as a predictor of what you are about to
do is really just the concept of reputation. As much as people get misty
eyed and talk about, why can’t it be you like it used to be and we were in
small towns and everybody knew everybody? Guess what, we are coming back to
those days. And it is because of technology and the Internet. I don’t know that
it is terrible. I have been driving my car around, I bought a car seven years
ago, and it is getting old and I’ve been thinking about buying a new one. Sure
enough, out of nowhere Carmax sends me an email. They
know that my car is getting old and let me know I should be thinking about a
new one. I don’t really know that that is that terrible. That is exactly as
evil as thinking to call someone on their birthday and say, you really value
their friendship. It is a matter of effort and timing.
Leo: People want to control this data. I
understand. But it doesn't help to use scary words like targeting you, or big data, these are kind of potentially scary words to make you
fear something. I’m not sure that I exactly understand the real harm.
Robert: When I talk about it I use the
scary words because…
Leo: If you are scared at a police
state, then be scared of a police state. There’s lots to be scared of with the police state.
Robert: Yeah, when I crossed the Golden gate Bridge on the way here there is a robot taking a
picture of my vehicle license.
Leo: So what? So what? What it can do
with that? Who cares? What is the damage? What is the harm here?
Robert: For me, nothing. That’s why I don’t
care about it.
Leo: You can do things. As Professor Vertesi pointed out, it is a lot of work to stay out of
these databases. And I understand that people wish they can control their
privacy center. But I am just not sure what the horrible thing is?
Brian: Here is what I think it is. Go
ahead and pencil me in as being off the deep end on this. But I think there is
a deep seeded, cultural desire for us to not believe that, with all apologies
to PadreSJ, that all the Catholics were right, that
there really are and all seeing eye that knows all the
filthy, dirty things that we do ourselves when nobody is looking. That has
been, throughout all human history a tool used by all religions in order to
enforce people to be good. And now, it is a reality. It is a fact. That if not
seeing you doing the actual deed, we’ve got all the bits that led up to it. And
we are pretty sure, looking at your credit card bill that you went to the
liquor store 12 times last month. That is the problem. We don’t want to believe
that. We reject that idea. We want to believe we are captains of our own lives.
And to know that our behaviors are predictable, that they are so predictable,
that large corporations will bank money on the fact that, he’s done A, B, and C
then he is definitely into F.
Robert: It is interesting watching the chat
room because people are like, oh why don’t you put some misinformation? But no,
that would screw up that you are going to get.
Leo: You know what upsets people? The
Amazon recommendations are so bad. It’s like, they get
upset because it’s not working well!
Brian: And plus Google ads is good at one
thing. Advertising crap I just bought. That is the reason they are sending me
these ads. But I will say it is fascinating to me when I wanted to surprise my
wife on her 40th with a ski vacation, I had to do everything in incognito mode
because I knew if I just searched one thing ski equipment, Utah or whatever
then every ad was going to be asking me if I was going on a ski vacation in
Utah?
Leo: Okay there is a detriment. It is
hard to hide gifts.
Marques: I had a similar thing where I was
making a video specifically on the most overpriced things on Amazon. So I would
be able to share this stuff with people and have the links and everything. And
one thing I found was $120,000 paper shredder. I kept coming back to that in
sharing that link with people. And sure enough, Amazon starts asking me about
once a week, hey here are a bunch of paper shredders I
figured you would be interested in buying? I feel like everyone who visited the
link after watching my video probably got an email about 12 paper shredders you
might want to check out. The algorithm is kind of…
Brian: There need an irony filter.
Leo: But it’s not the end of the world
though. So she got off Google two years ago because it knew she was engaged
before anybody else did. So what happened? Evidently she sent an email to
somebody on Gmail and it had the word engaged in it and so Google showed her
jewelry store. And she freaked out about that. Like here is this human that
knows something about me… but NO! There is no human.
Robert: Google knows when I’m doing things
because I put them on my freaking calendar.
Leo: It doesn’t matter!
Robert: I’m already married. So the first
thing I’m going to do if I’m getting a divorce is that the meeting with my lyre
on my Google calendar and Google is going to know what I’m doing!
Brian: Now you just stepped into it
Robert. Because this is where people get freaked out about
it. Because when there are algorithms that say the you just bought a sports car? You are working out a lot. So you are having an
affair. And you’re getting a divorce. Let’s just go ahead and… exactly right?
That is what people don’t want. That is, in every way the nightmare scenario.
Robert: Somebody in the chat room mentioned
about Target finding out about a girl being pregnant before her father did. And
it’s here. This is our world. And if we don't like that world we have to figure
out how to not use it.
Leo: I don’t see that it’s that bad.
People do a lot of what if? There is a lot of what ifs
but I don’t see any real ones, they are all hypotheticals.
Find: Here is the thing. You can get
upset about all the what-ifs. Once there is no alternative, the fact is there
are so many alternatives. You can create individual accounts. You can create
pseudonyms. You can go through all the steps of informational hygiene that it
takes in order to filter your information. And all this story shows is that
yes, it is a big pain in the butt. For very little benefit. The fact that we still absolutely, from beginning to end, control all this
tells me that I’m with you, Leo. I don’t see that it is a big deal. Unless, certainly if it is any kind of a government entity then I
get very uppity. But as long as the end goal of the corporations is to
figure out how to serve me better than the other guy? It is really hard for me
to get fired up.
Leo: With Google I think it is such a
benefit. And it comes out of them knowing a lot about me.
Robert: Or take it into an app like TripIt. TripIt has access to my
Gmail. Which is, if we had been on the Leo show 15 years ago in said those someday
we are going to give third-party apps access to our email… and now I have like
15 apps that have access to my email. I was in a plane in Chicago coming home
and I had an email from TripIt that said your plane
is being canceled by another ticket out of town. I clicked on that ticket, I
bought I buy a ticket on another flight. And three minutes later the pilot
comes on the speaker and says, “We’re going back to the gate”. And so I’m in an
all-end world and I am going to give things as much data as possible to help my
life be better. And then people like this lady are going to stay all out and
she is going to have to stay in Chicago. Sorry.
Leo: Google must acknowledge this though
because they just announced that they are not going to scan student Gmail
accounts for ads anymore.
Brian: This seems to me like such a bogus story.
Again, disses that same magnanimous that Facebook to show. The
fact that they are only holding it to students. Like it’s creepy to
students but Totally not creepy the rest of the time?
I don’t see, it is just so much noise to me. I don’t
like that story.
Robert: First of all, I don’t see very many
ads in Gmail. And when I do, they are in the promotion folder. And they are not
going to turn off the promotion shoulders so they are still scanning your
email. They just aren’t going to put an ad on there.
Leo: They are going to scan your email
if you have any email service.
Robert: You think they are going to the
school district and going to say do you want to buy chrome bugs for all your
students?
Leo: 30 million students use the free
Google apps for education. So I guess I can understand why they would do that.
Robert: There can hit those students with
ads somewhere else.
Leo: They don’t even have to hit them
with ads. Just get them to use Google and when they get out of school they will
get them.
Brian: The only reason they would give up
30 million abilities to scrub emails, is if compared to the whole pie that is
like they are getting 30 million scrubs worth of publicity out of this.
Robert: Somebody in the chat room says it
is disturbing that all of us are so on board with this. I think it is
disturbing that you guys are so stuck in the mud and not using this stuff. What
are you talking about? There are 1.1 billion people. You want to email Leo? And
get to Leo? I guarantee you can’t get him on email. But you can get to him on
Facebook.
Leo: Don’t tell them that!!
Brian: I am going to differ with you on
this Robert. I’m not a get with the program kind of guy. Just because everyone
else is doing it, is not a good reason for you to do it as well. But
definitely, let me know what it is you are afraid of. Because
that is the thing that I don't get. And that is why I can resonate with
what Leo just said.
Leo: My only issue is that I hope we
don’t lose services because of this kind of moral panic about the technology.
And people says that Google glass has face recognition
but we are not going to turn it on because people would get upset by that
notion.
Robert: How can you use face recognition
without turning on face recognition? If your phone is going ot have a Beacon, all I have to do is know that I am aiming at your phone and it
is going to be spitting your number out and I’m going to be able to know that
“Oh I’m sitting next to Leo Laporte” on my glass. Without doing face recognition.
Leo: Facebook does that already right?
Robert: That is the new feature.
Leo: They have to tread so carefully
because people are so… I guess what I am saying is that you a have a right to
privacy and I’m not denying your right to that. But if you don’t like it you
shouldn’t use these services. That is fine. I’m not going to say anything about
that. That is completely within your power. But what I don’t want people to do,
people who have this fear of technology and this moral panic is to keep the
rest of us from using things like Google Now or Face recognition in Glass. Because
those would be phenomenally useful and if we don’t feel like there is an issue
with it. I guess you can’t use face recognition because you don’t have the
agreement of the person you are recognizing. You can use iBeacon’s because I have to obviously turn it on with my phone.
Robert: Somebody in the chat room says, “I
don’t see all the possible down sides”. There are a lot of down sides. Not one
of you in the chat room have said a damn thing about
what the down sides are to these things. Tell me what those are? I’m going to
get more ads.
Leo: You are going to get ads no matter
what. I can promise you that. You’re are just going to
get better ads.
Robert: Of course you are. Facebook, by the
way, the newsfeed is learning where you are, who you are connected to, and
algorithmically picks things that you might be interested in. They are trying
to get to you. That is what they are trying to do. That is the real downside is
addiction. But you guys in the chat room didn’t mention that. They are very
good at, they want to do things in front of you that you are going to like,
share or comment on. They are going to try to get rid of the noise. You are
going to get addicted to this stuff and the addiction does have deep
implications for us.
Brian: Let me ask a question specifically
to Marques. Because what we are talking about in general is the emergence of
persistent reputations in our online interactions. That is what it seems to
disturb a lot of people. And we see this trend where, in the early days of the
Internet in the late 90s, anyone could say anything, you could post anything
and you didn’t worry about it ever coming back to bite you in the butt. What we
have seen is that bit by bit the window closing. And more recently in the last
year we saw a shift in the way YouTube handled their comments. Because YouTube
used to ask people what would we rather do, get paper cuts on your eyeballs or
read YouTube comments? And universally everyone is blind because they had some
any paper cuts on their eyes. But then the switch to Google Plus as clumsily as
that was handled, as much of a backlash as there was, how have you seen things
change in the comments on your YouTube videos? Do you find it to be more civil
now that more people are using their actual name? Now that
they have a persistent reputation to account for?
Marques: Okay. So, it depends on where you
look on YouTube. Obviously I do tech review videos about reviewing products. So
80% of the comments are pretty civilized, for the most part. I didn't
necessarily see a big change in the way people commented on my videos. The
worst thing that would happen on my videos would be people screaming fan boil,
the typical reviewer comments like “Hey, I thought this was blah, blah, blah
and don’t pay attention to my username”. Then there is the other side of You
Tube, well not the other side, but there are plenty of other niches in You
Tube, like comedy videos for example where people leave comments like, this
isn’t funny at all or I hated this so much. They would just hide behind sort of
an anonymous username. The people who did that got really bad about You Tube or
Google Plus comments now requiring you to use your name. That is something that
bothered a lot of people but inevitable it is just what kind of stuff do you
want to be tied to your name? What kind of stuff do you not care is tied to your name? So a lot of the stuff on
my videos not a big problem, not a big change. Engagement didn’t really
spike or decrease or anything like that. But I feel like on other parts of
YouTube where people would be more tempted to leave more ridiculous comments or
comments they wouldn’t want to be associated with themselves they saw
differences, maybe comedy videos.
Brian: Well, what is interesting is I know
I read an article recently about the plight of girl gamers who get a lot of
sexist and hateful comments in their inbox after gaming sessions. It makes me
wonder what kind of comments are the ones that, number one would be legitimate
helpful comments and number two, you wouldn’t want associated with your name.
How often does that happen? Can you think of an example of that?
Marques: Just in the Tech videos I see
people who are trying to… half of them are people who are not making videos and
they don’t want people to know that they are just bashing on everything that they
hate, so they can just feel free to lash out at anyone they want and take out
any negative thoughts they want to have and put them anywhere they want and no
one will notice them. If you don’t have that amenity then you will not do that
anymore. You don’t want that tied to your name forever. Because that is your
Google account and you can hide that.
Leo: I could think of a scenario. What
if you worked for Samsung. And you wanted to say to Marquez, hey we really got a problem with this piece of
hardware. You are not going to do it but that is a minor loss.
Brian: Also, there is an ecosystem for
that. Right?
Leo: But that is always the exception That people point out. Whistleblowers and
the like. People who would like to speak truth to power but can’t safely
do it in this country, or in a lot of other countries. So, I understand. There
is a need for it and amenity for the Internet comments, chat room. we allow people to use handles our chat room. I don’t know, maybe if we made them use their real name we would have
fewer problems?
Brian: I don’t care what you call yourself
as long as you keep calling yourself the same thing.
Leo: But that’s what I don’t like. You
can hide behind the handle.
Brian: Sure. And there is nothing wrong
with that. That is cool.
Leo: I do feel bad. If I were a female YouTuber I would be very happy about this change. YouTube
comments were pretty horrendous for a long time.
Brian: Plus also, think about this. If
what we want is the web to be a legitimate place for business where real deals
are secured and real losses…
Leo: That is why Google and Facebook do
this. Because they want real identity.
Robert: Yes.
Brian: Exactly.
Leo: As for a commercial reason, and
there are reasons…
Robert: And we are not the customer we are
the product, right?
Leo: And that is another example of
things that people say. If you don’t pay anything you become the product. That
sounds negative.
Robert: Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that we
don’t pay Facebook for anything. People say we become the product of Facebook.
Leo: That is what you could say about
Twit. That everybody who watches Twit is the product.
Robert: In some ways that is sort of true.
Leo: But my point is, that is a very simplifying kind of thing to say. It is not untrue I guess. But
that doesn’t say the whole story right? We do tTit because we are interested in talking about this stuff because we want to give
people the information that we feel strongly about. The real truth about it is
that it is ad supported because that seemed the best way to make it available
to the widest, possible audience. But if you say, and it isn’t exactly untrue,
that if you didn’t pay for Twit you become the product? The reason we can make
money doing ads is because people watch. Your attention is the value to us. But
it is not the only reason we do this.
Robert: It if you didn’t have good content,
nobody watches so you don’t have good advertisers.
Leo: Mark Zuckerberg did Facebook
because he just wanted to use people and make money off of them. And we do twit
because we want to use people and make money. That is not the reason we do
Twit. I am going to give Mark some credit and assume that is not the reason he
does Facebook. I know I’ve said it, and I've used it but I don’t like that idea
because I think it is oversimplifying the truth.
Brian: I totally agree with this. This is
the problem that we have with robber barons of all varieties is that it is easy
to overstate, like “They are getting rich so therefore they must be screwing us
in some way”. But in every single case the way they are getting rich is by
offering something cheaper, faster, better and that is of value to so many
people that they make it happen. And even now, to be honest that is part of the
reason why we resent them. Because they make it look so easy, or whatever. But
I suspect that what is happening in general is only empowering more individuals
and yes, it is weird to watch somebody profit obscenely for what seems like it
should be obvious. But all the greatest and all the most important discoveries
always seem obvious in retrospect. And they always seem like, “Why did that
person deserve to make all that money”? Because it turns out there is a value
to limiting interactions to only 140 characters and for that Twitter deserves
to make a ba-jillion dollars.
Leo: By the way, they are not making as
many ba-jillion dollars as they used to.
Robert: Oh my gosh.
We should talk about this.
Leo: In fact, we just made more money on
Twit than Twitter did in the same amount of time. Just want to point that out. Actually wouldn't that
be a great thing, who makes more money? Twitter or TWiT? Twitter makes very little money, right?
Robert: They lost money
last quarter.
Leo: Although, I was
watching Jimmy Fallon and they use Twitter very effectively. They use hashtags
and they do it like crazy. I imagine that's good for their ratings that there
is promotion. He had a lip sync contest with Emma Stone. I saw a lot of social
media action around that, lots of views on YouTube, and lots of Tweets about
it. That's probably good for their ratings, I would guess. It certainly makes
it a more valuable show. But Twitter isn't seeming to
see too much about it and as a result, the Twitter stock is sinking. I don't
know if the stock market is a way to judge a company.
Brian: No. In fact, I
go nuts when we talk about stock because all stock is, is an expectation put to
numbers. However, I will say-
Leo: But it does
point a problem, the growth is slow. So you got to be very clear. It's still
growing, just not as fast.
Robert: The problem is
Facebook has 1.1 billion people, Twitter has what-
Leo: 255 million
active users, a quarter of that.
Robert: So Twitter should
be growing faster than Facebook because they have more open ground to grow and
they're not. That tells you something about how strong Facebook is because it
has your real social graph, your friends. And the connections to your friends
are more emotional to most people. Not some of you in the chat room but to most
people, a baby photo from my real family or friends is much more interesting to me than some news article.
Leo: I agree but
Facebook doesn't seem to be doing that in their news feed. They want to be a
news source, I don't see my friends posts.
Robert: I do all the
time.
Leo: Well I see some
but I don't see all. I guarantee you Robert, you don't see all of your friends
posts.
Robert: Well see, I put
my family on a list so I can see all my family stuff.
Leo: Oh you worked a
way around it but most people don't do that. You go to your news feed-
Robert: No, but look at
all of the crap my family posts.
Leo: And Facebook has
decided that the news feed should be news, not my friends and family.
Robert: I guarantee you
if there's a baby that was born in your social graph, you're going to see that
photo because Facebook is actually pretty good at putting good stuff up on your
feed.
Leo: Well most of my
friends are dying, not having babies.
Robert: Oh well that's a
whole other problem. We'll have to have a TWiT on
that.
Leo: Pretty soon
it'll be obituaries, starts with weddings, then babies, and obituaries. But no,
I usually see like 15 forgotten movies you should watch, 22 celebrities that
look nothing alike... That's what I see in my Facebook feed. I would like to
see some babies and some weddings. Alright let's take a break. That really
killed that subject. Do you want to see a dog and a cat dancing to Happy by Pharrell?
Brian: Heck yeah.
Leo: Alright, that's
in my Facebook feed ladies and gentlemen. Happy dogs and a
cat in Australia. This is going to get us pulled from YouTube because
this is stupid.
Brian: By all means,
let's talk about an important sponsor instead.
Leo: Yes! Ladies and
gentlemen, our show today brought to you by our friends at Citrix who do
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button, use the promo code: TWIT. Gotomeeting.com
promo code: TWIT. I hope politicians start making this a place to come for your
campaign. You could come on here and talk- I think that's great. We have a
candidate for California State Lieutenant Governor in studio. We can tell
because he's well dressed. And the rest of you look like slobs- No, y'all are
good. But I think that's cool. I wonder, I think politicians need to be able to
use social media like Facebook and Twitter effectively. Don't you think that's important. Now Robert, look at your Facebook. What is that,
a baby picture? No, it's some stupid poster.
Robert: No, it's
something a friend sent me. Tagged me in.
Leo: How about a cat
video?
Robert: I'll find a cat
video.
Leo: I've got one.
This is a cat dancing-
Brian: I feel like I
failed this show just now because I ran to go to the bathroom and grab a soda
and I come back just in time to hear, "How about a cat video?" And I
feel like I failed you by leaving for any amount of time.
Leo: Isn't that what
you're known for, is cat videos Brian?
Brian: Brian Catvideo Brushwood.
Leo: That's what they
say. Don't have "Shwood" on, he'll bring his cat videos again.
Robert: I found a baby
dancing video, but not a cat video. Cat videos are hard to find on my feed
because I keep hiding them.
Leo: Oh that's
interesting, does Facebook hear those signals?
Robert: Yeah, Facebook
learns from what you do. If you hide certain kinds of posts, you aren't going
to see them as often.
Leo: Alright, nice of
them to listen.
Brian: That's what
people are freaking out about is that a service provider listens and strides to
provide exceptional service. And yes, I know there's a million ways it could be
abused, before you guys send me emails and a million messages on it. But so
far, we haven't seen anybody totally victimized by big data manipulating them.
Instead, people are outraged like, aah! I got a
coupon that's really useful. That's exactly what I wanted today!
Robert: I found a cat
video for you.
Leo: Oh no, I was
joking.
Brian: There is nothing
that is going to stop you from looking at a Goddamn cat video.
Robert: A cat hates this
singing birthday card.
Leo: Nooo, nooo, no.
Robert: Aw come on, it's entertainment.
Leo: A new MacBook is
here, ladies and gentlemen. Here's an interesting story. It's $100 less, it has
a faster processor, but according to Benchmarks it's got a way slow hard drive.
So, I don't know if Apple is trying to save money by putting a much slower SSD
in there, but it was 1/3 as fast as last year's 11 inch MacBook Air for
unzipping files. That's painful, that's not good. So just a
word of warning.
Brian: Well this is
difficult too because if you're going to make your bones by having exquisitely
fine hard ware, you need to keep doing that because your reputation is
everything, right?
Leo: Well, the
expectation is going to get better every time. It's a shock when something gets
worse. I know it's $100 less.
Brian: But think about
it, when they launched MacBook Air it meant one thing. So thin it was like
magic. It was like the highest end of the hind end. We all enjoyed reading
stories of rich assholes throwing them away in the trash because they couldn't
even know that they were there, but now-
Leo: Wasn't that you?
Brian: No, I wish.
Leo: Oh, it was
Clayton Morris.
Brian: Now though, the
MacBook Air just means the entry-level base whatever. I don't know it's just a
real bummer to see that value of that brand drop.
Leo: What it shows
you is interesting because $899 is not a cheap computer by any regard, but it
seems cheap for Apple. Wow, it's the lowest cost computer, besides the Mini.
But really in truth, in the real world, $899 is a fairly pricey computer so you
don't expect a drop in performance. So just a word of warning I guess.
Marques Brownlee: But if you're a student and you get told, hey you
should get a MacBook. Then you would go, what's the cheapest one I can get?
That's going to be the one.
Leo: Right, in fact I
mentioned this when there was NESTA earlier this week, but this high school
that I consult for stopped buying MacBooks because
the prices- It's a one-to-one program so everybody going to the school gets a
laptop. There's Lenovo for Education Windows laptops that they're giving kids.
Robert: They're not
going Chromebook?
Leo: Well it seems
like Chromebook would be the right thing to do,
frankly.
Robert: Most of the
schools that I talk to are going-
Leo: 21% now, in
schools have Chromebooks-
Brian: Holy cow. You
know my daughter is in 4th grade and already they've centered everything in the
Google environment. So already, she's got her own ID and uses Google Docs. I
just walked in and she was writing a paper in Google Drive.
Leo: Smart move.
Brian: It is a smart
move. And we've talked about this before, that doing everything in the Cloud
seems dumb because what happens when there's no cloud, those days are gone.
There's never going to be a day when there's no cloud. Like having no cloud in
ten years will be as weird as the power going out. You remember like 30 years
ago, it was not weird at all, like once a month for the power to go out.
Robert: One minute and
twenty seconds of my life every day is cloudless when I go through the tunnel.
Leo: You know what my
friend? Pay attention to the road and stop Tweeting in the tunnel.
Robert: And I cashed in
all of my Spotify, did you know about that if you go to the right settings you
can cash in all of your Spotify?
Leo: Yeah, I use
Google Music, same thing. You pin it and it's there.
Brian: The only way
this will go bad is if something were to violate net neutrality. Can we talk
about this whole FCC situation?
Leo: Yeah, we can
talk about it. By the way, it was David Pogue who accidentally threw out his MacBook
Air because it was so thin. It was in a stack of papers and he just threw it
away.
Brian: Well I take it
back, when I said a-hole I meant delightful individual.
Leo: Delightful
singing fool, David Pogue. This is actually a little bit of an old story, we
talked about it last week on TWiT but I certainly
don't mind bringing it up again because it isn't over until the fat
commissioner sings. Tom Wheeler, who is a tame lobbyist for
the National Cable Television Association, former president there and the
wireless industry. He's in both Halls of Fame, so he really gets around
and is also, oddly enough, the Chairman of the government group that is
supposed to regulate these industries. I don't know how that could possibly-
Seems like that would be a problem... He's Chairman of the FCC and has proposed
new FCC rules, none of which we've seen Denise Howell pointed out last week.
And apparently we still have not seen these but the Commissioners will be
voting on these I believe next week. Then they'll be up for comment. Saying,
hey you know what this whole open internet thing is nice but the
Telecommunications Act doesn't really allow us to do that so here's what we're
going to do: Since the law says we can't regulate this we're going to just
stop. If you are an internet service provider and you want to charge an edge
provider like TWIT or YouTube or Netscape to get to your customers, you go
ahead and do that. Of course, that's a violation of everything we hold near and
dear and as Senator Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts Tweeted she said, I don't
think we know what the next big thing is going to be in the United States but
one thing I think we're pretty sure of is it's going to be online and that
start up gives companies like Netflix and YouTube the power to pull up the
ladder. And before you say your thing, there is something you can do about it.
The FCC has opened a mailbox for comment, openinternet@fcc.gov. So whether you
love this or hate it, you can let them know how you feel about it. You know how
I feel about it, go ahead Brian Brushwood.
Brian: Well I am very
conflicted over this whole thing, I honestly don't know. I'm going to play the
dumb card on this because on the one hand, we're hearing so many of the right
words come out of Wheeler's mouth talking about the importance of competition
and of doubling down and making sure everyone has access. These are things we
want to hear, but then in the same breath he's like, we should also have a fast
lane available for people who feel like paying with it, which makes me cringe.
But then I think about the whole breakdown of the peering agreement with
Netflix. Netflix in peak hours picks up 1/3 of all internet traffic. Netflix
wants to work out a deal-
Leo: I understand
your concern, and you're confusing two issues. Netflix pays currently for
peering and this is not what we're talking about, that's different, but there
is a big argument there and God knows Netflix is not happy- By the way, Verizon
is now saying, yeah you can give us some money too. But you can make the
argument that they are using a lot of bandwidth so maybe they should be paying
for peering because it's not a symmetrical issue, but that's not what we're
talking about. What Wheeler's proposed rules will do is let edge providers-
That means everybody who provides content; TWiT, you
Brian, everybody can now pay for improved access. That's a different thing,
that's not a peering relationship. That means the cable companies and the phone
companies- AT&T is already doing it, they allow a company to pay them so
that it won't count against your bandwidth count so that's the same thing, but
they're already doing it, ComCast will absolutely do
it if these rules go through. But that's different, they're going to each
content creator and saying, oh by the way you have to pay us too.
Brian: Now that
surprises me that you're so universally against it, as the stated goal is to
preserve-
Leo: Why wouldn't I?
Brian: Well let's say
we didn't know we were talking about the internet. If I said, there's a thing
and the guy regulating the thing wants to regulate it to preserve competition
and wants to ensure-
Leo: He's lying.
You're buying into Wheeler's big lie. The first thing he does is publish a blog
post that says, pay no attention. This is no change in rules, no no! It's all fine. And enough people bought this, I was
shocked, companies like CNET published articles saying, oh it's okay! But it's not, it's a very big change in rules.
Don't get fooled by the big lie, remember who pays Tom Wheeler. It's a
revolving door at the FCC and he will go right back to industry. The current
Chairman of the National Cable Television Association is Michael Powell, the
former Chairman of the FCC. It's a revolving door, these guys are going to go
right back into industry and will be very much rewarded for changing the rules
to their benefit.
Robert: If I'm in a
cable company right now, I am scared to death because we are so close to
getting what we need on internet connected devices to get rid of all cables. We
now are getting sports and are now getting good enough news, and so what's
left? We're getting custom content like House of Cards and Amazon has a series
of shows that they paid for. We are getting custom content on the internet.
Leo: The cable
companies are not stupid, so what they're doing is they're raising the cost of
internet alone to match the cost of cable plus internet. They get you in the
fold and they've been very careful about doing that.
Brian: Plus, also
nowadays you can actually pay less for you internet if you accept basic cable
as well. I mean, they are so concerned about maintaining this fig leaf that
everything's fine.
Robert: I'm not naive,
the chatroom is really a-
Leo: Don't pay
attention to that. That's just some guy, that's not the audience, it's just
some guy. Don't pay attention to that.
Robert: I'm just saying
I'm not that naive, I work for an internet hosting company, come on. I know who
owns the pipes.
Leo: Oh you are naive, you think there's still fairies and unicorns.
Robert: I do.
Brian: Well, I'll tell
you this much, as far as the net neutrality thing, and this goes back to like
three or four years ago my hope is, and it's not just mine it's the EFF's as
well. If you read the EFF stuff, they say stuff like, yes it's important that
we have universal access and that everyone gets in and no we are not crazy
about the idea of government being the one to make sure that happens. I want to
believe that net neutrality will remain this electrified third rail that nobody dare touch.
Leo: You're a free
market nut ball. You believe that if there is true competition, in other words,
if I had a choice of ten internet service providers it would all work out, and
you're right. But you don't, do you? And who was it that set that up? The FCC
created duopoly. At best, you have two choices in this country. So the
government created the problem to begin with.
Brian: That's not true.
I'm not going to say that Austin is representative of everyone, but I will say
that the choices-
Leo: Well you have
Google Fiber, that's pretty lucky.
Brian: What's funny is
I don't. I live six miles outside of the Austin city limits which means I don't
have Google Fiber and plus, Google Fiber isn't even installed. But just the
threat of Google Fiber caused AT&T to come in and offer a gigabit service
outside of Austin. So they preemptively competed which means I have AT&T
U-Verse, Clear, Time Warner Cable, Direct PC, I can even use- As many people
do, we're seeing a lot of people not cutting the cable cord, but cutting the
internet cord as they instead use their mobile devices. -So I can use AT&T
wireless. And again, it's not ideal or as fast as I'd like, but the fact is I
have more choices than ever before.
Leo: Who are the
companies you can choose internet from. Your cable
company, and there's your phone company.
Brian: There's two competing cable companies.
Leo: Oh you have two
cable companies, that's very unusual.
Brian: That's correct
and then there's also the phone company, there's phone companies if I want a
DSL, there's also satellite-
Leo: Wait a minute, you have more than one common phone company?
Brian: No, what I'm
saying is if what I want is data service, my total list off the top of my head,
we had Clear here in Austin, we have Direct PC which is the satellite, we have
AT&T wireless, Verizon Wireless, all of the wireless providers and there
plans are much better. There's also two cable companies competing, one of them
is Fiber Optic which is what I've got right now, and on top of that for the
fringes because of the rural areas, they have individual radio-based services
as well. So again, none of this is ideal but if I could have more I would.
Leo: What are the
caps on the wireless that you have?
Brian: My wireless, for
AT&T?
Leo: Just out of curiosity, your Direct TV and wireless caps are very low. They're
not usable. You have an unusually good situation, and still it's not that good.
Brian: Well it's not as
good as I'd like, but if you came to me 20 years ago and told me this was the
future, I'd pee my pants. You're talking to a guy who paid $150/month for a
crappy satellite service that I set up in my apartment on two cinder blocks to
get the signal so I could get four times and it's indisputable that it's
getting better and of course, we all want it to get better faster.
Leo: Okay so we have
Comcast and DSL. DSL will ride on AT&T's wires but it might be a third
party. The DSL is too slow unless you're within two kilometers of the central
office so I have Comcast. Do you think if this goes through that Comcast will
then give me tiered service? We'll say you want the bronze plan. You can have
access to Myspace, Yahoo, and Dig. Or you can have the silver plan where you
can have access to YouTube, Vevo-
Brian: This is why I'm
not afraid of this. The mere fact that you used this an example, this is universally the nightmare scenario that everybody laughs at
and says, screw the whole system if that's what they offer us.
Leo: Well what would
I do about it?
Brian: To be honest,
it's not what you would do.
Leo: It is because
most people would be in that situation what is your choice then?
Brian: The answer is, it's not about what you would do. It's about what the
entrepreneurial spirited competitor would do and they would recognize that
nobody wants this. They would come into this are because they would see a
tremendous market opportunity-
Leo: Why haven't they
done that already? Isn't there an opportunity now?
Brian: Well because you
just offered up a straw that nobody's offering. Nobody's offering this bronze
silver service or whatever.
Leo: Well if I were
you I would be a little more worried Brian because if the providers who provide
your stream for your show and they don't pay the fee which causes you to get
buffered to 90% of the US, how are you going to feel about that? Is that going
to foster your business?
Brian: Well no I
certainly wouldn't like it and would immediately offer up a fist full of cash
and say, who can offer me not this and that's what I'm hoping everyone would
do.
Leo: No, no. Because
you're an edge provider, you don't get a choice. You have to pay- A fist full
of cash to who? Somebody who's going to give you point
to point access to your customers, you don't get a choice. You're a provider.
Brian: All I'm saying
is I have more choices than I've had before.
Leo: You're just
talking about as an end user. I'm just pointing out you should be worried as a
content creator even more than the end user. Let's say you're right; somebody
is going to march in and trench out to my house and give me high speed
internet, which isn't going to happen. But it still doesn't solve your problem
Brian because you have to pay Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon for access to
their customers or you're going to be buffering. And you're not going to have a
stream, so you could offer download.
Brian: Yes in your
fantasy, that would be terrible and I would be against it. I also don't believe
that's going to happen. I believe that would be suicide for anyone to do this.
The mere fact that you're afraid of this scenario, that not one person in the
entire world would vote for, there's no-
Leo: You don't get a
vote. It's too late, the FCC decides.
Brian: There's no
precedent for it to go down the way you're describing and I don't believe it's
going to happen.
Leo: Oh there is a
precedent. Try using Skype in Canada where Rogers, after fifteen minutes, will
disconnect you. There is a precedent.
Brian: Is that the
service provider?
Leo: They use Sand
Vine.
Brian: How's that
working out for them? Are they really excited and is it hugely profitable?
Leo: People complain
about it but as a result, Rogers does quite well.
Brian: Again, short
term benefit long term, very foolish maneuver. I don't think it's going to work
out for them for the long term.
Leo: I understand
your great fear is government regulation of the internet. I understand that.
Brian: It's not even a
great fear. I just think it's an unfortunately imprecise instrument to be used.
All things being equal, I would rather the highly precise forces of market
demand determine it and not the lazy bureaucratic hand of government.
Leo: I agree with you
100% I just don't feel like that's going to happen.
Brian: I'm more
optimistic than you and that's always been our dynamic hasn't it?
Leo: It would always
be the case, if market forces could operate freely in this case. But we know
they can't, it's highly regulated- These are monopolies. Government franchised
monopolies. So already, you don't have a competitive situation. You're very
lucky, and I don't think you have a very competitive situation even in Austin.
We'll see how it goes.
Brian: In general, my
default position is always more competition, 100%, across the board.
Leo: I agree.
Brian: Even my swimming
in soup situation here in Austin. But I guess I'm not as worried about-
Leo: That soup is
pretty lukewarm.
Brian: The fact that
every time the subject is brought up everybody goes up in arms, I love it dude.
Everybody pull out the pitchforks all the time because that's really what
concerns all these guys. You think these guys are worried about government
regulation? These guys buy government officials all the time.
Leo: Well that's kind
of the point, isn't it?
Brian: Exactly. It's
like the last thing I want is an entity that has a reputation for being easily
corrupted and easy to buy off.
Robert: The reason we get
up in arms is because the system that we have as of today brought us all sorts
of innovation in this country and a whole lot of startups that are employing
people. Those startups happen because it was a fair playing field and everybody
could afford the entry fee to it. Now we're heading toward a world where if you
have the money, then you can pay for it, but that means a small startup- Like
Instagram when I met them was two people at a little picnic table. So is that
startup going to have the same access to the customer base they have today? I
don't know.
Brian: The answer is
yes, they did and it turned out great for them.
Robert: No, they did but
the rules are changing now. In order to get access to the Verizon customers or
to the Comcast customers, you have to pay. That means a whole lot of little
19-year-old-run companies that do not have the capital yet are going to be
locked out.
Brian: And so we need
government to hold their hands?
Leo: We can stop, we
can stop. We get everybody's point. The positions are just now clear, except
for Marques who's just been sitting on the sidelines thinking, thank God I don't have to say anything. Come on Marques, you want to pitch in
at all?
Robert: When you're
remote, by the way, Marques it's really hard to jump in. I feel your pain.
Marques: I just wrote a paper, I had to write collaborative paper on net
neutrality for a final project, so my brain is just kind of all worn out now. I
had to write like a sort of PSA, like a public service announcement, giving all
of the potential pros and cons for internet users and service providers and all
of that stuff. I've heard all of the side already and have basically read all
of the sides, and I'm just-
Leo: So where do you
stand? What was the thesis of your paper?
Marques: My thesis was that you should care and if it goes to the extreme and
if legislation becomes like really prominent then you should really care and
vote with your wallet, but the whole point of the paper was to not take a side,
be as neutral as possible, and just inform the people reading it that the
problems could potentially exist.
Leo: I think it comes
down to- We don't need to go on any further really, because I think everybody
understands everybody else's point in here, but it does come down to how much
you believe that there is a free market in internet in the US but I just find
it hard to believe that you think there is. Maybe you think that there will be
if there were-
Brian: Let me put it
this way, whether there is or whether there isn't I guarantee there will not be
more after a government comes in and sets the rules.
Leo: Ah, you might be
right. Yeah.
Brian: Yeah,
absolutely. 100%, bet my children on it.
Leo: Yeah, the real
solution I think for community internet and municipalities and so forth, but
unfortunately, then what happens is the government comes in and prevents that.
It's happened in many states, I think 30/50 states because TelCo's don't want competition from municipal internet and prohibit it.
Brian: Pitchforks are
the answer.
Leo: Our show today
brought to you by audible.com. We did talk about this in great extent last week
but I know Brian, you had a different point of view so I wanted to give you a
chance to say something. We were supposed to have Alexis Ohanian on the show today but he is unfortunately, but he's got the right solution.
He's buying a billboard outside the FCC offices saying, Don't touch the internet.
Brian: It's good.
Leo: Who can argue
with that? Our show today brought to you by-
Brian: I have a new
favorite audio book, maybe of all time Leo. And it's going to kill me if you've
already read it but you probably have. Tell me you've read The Martian by Andy
Weir.
Leo: No, I've never
even heard of it.
Brian: Are you kidding
me? I'm so excited! I have a gift for you and for everyone else. The last time
I was this excited about a book is when it was Ready Player One by my buddy
Ernie Cline. Somebody recommended that I check out The Martian. It takes place,
first of all, it's exquisitely well acted by the guy
that reads it, and it takes place- Minor spoilers that you'll learn in the
first few pages coming up. The opening line is; Log Soul 6: I'm pretty much effed. And it's the log of an astronaut who is six days
into their five month mission. It's their second mission ever to Mars, six days
into the five month mission. There's a storm that comes in that's so bad that
they have to scrub the mission and in the shuffle of getting from point A to
point B the communications dish breaks off and stabs him. His readings show up
as dead and depressurized so they leave without him. He wakes up and realizes
that he is alone and marooned on Mars and all he's got is a few bits and pieces
laying around and he knows that the next Mars mission is three years away but
he's only got a year and a half's worth of food and it's how he makes his way.
It's Robinson Koruso on Mars, the voice is exquisite,
the story is so good- I got my wife on it and she is not a SciFi nut, but she loved it and it was so exciting that we spent the last- I walked
in and she had it on speaker and was clearly in the last hour... I sat there in
the dark in my bed, holding Bonnie's hand, excitedly listening to the climactic
conclusion for the second time and it's been forever since I've loved a book as
much as I've loved The Martian. Definitely, definitely, definitely try it.
Leo: I am, so I'm
going to show you what happens here at audible.com. This can happen to you,
you're going to get two credits- I'll explain how you do it. -But you add it to
your cart, then look and see, oh this is amazing, the cost is nothing! Absolutely zero.
Brian: It's a magic
trick!
Leo: It's a magic
trick, this is worthy of scam school. Next step is login with your brand new
platinum account on Audible, download the book, and start listening. I'm going
to complete the purchase because you just sold me on that book and I'm going to
buy it right now. The Martian by Andy Weir, and there you go. Total charge is nothing,
one credit applied, and I am golden. You could do this twice if you go to
audible.com/twit2, and there are two books waiting for you. Actually, I turned
Chad onto a book that I'm sure you've read Brian. It's called The Windup Girl.
Chad: Yeah The Windup
Girl, I think I'm close to an hour into it. Brian, have you heard of this book?
Brian: No.
Chad: Oh I think you
would like this.
Leo: I'm so excited!
Brian is the one who recommended the 1038, the weird Q230 or whatever.
Chad: Well what he's
really going to be excited about is, Brian you like Snow Crash. And the world
that Snow Crash painted, that's what me and Leo were
talking about and he said The Windup Girl. And I'm already into it and it's
absolutely that sort of dystopian, futuristic, commercial world.
Brian: Actually, and
this probably reflects on my crackpot bizzaro views
of the world where when you read Snow Crash, it's clearly meant to be a
dystopian hell hole, but as I read I'm like, oh that seems pretty good.
Everything's up for grabs, you can have your own currency, your own citizenship
in multiple franchises, yeah I'm down for that.
Leo: We do have a
tradition, I should mention that when we have an author in studio who has a book out on Audible, we also mention and one of
your new books could be this Robert Scoble's latest,
he wrote it with Shell Israel, The Age of Context. Mobile censors, data, and
the future of privacy talking about exactly these issues. Boy, this is the
problem with Audible, so many great books. We're going to give you an Audible
account that's good for two books and the first month is free at
audible.com/twit2. Those first two credits are free, and that's usually two
books although some books are a little more, and if you cancel within the first
30 days you'll pay nothing. The book are always going to be yours, you'll also
get the daily download of the Daily Digest, New York Times, or the Wallstreet Journal that's part of the subscription. I love Audible, we all listen to Audible like crazy.
Robert: I love that it
syncs up to the Kindle app. So if you read up to page 49 in your Kindle, and
then you go in your car and start listening to the Audible book, it starts on
page 49.
Leo: Whisper Sync,
it's really a cool thing, yeah. Whisper Sync for Voice I guess they call it so
you can actually read, then listen, read, and listen. We love Audible, the best
readers, the best books, 150,000 strong. You know we're fans, Brian's a big
fan. Brian has turned me on to so many great books, I
can't wait to listen to The Martian. Right now I'm listening to The Flash Boys,
the wonderful Michael Lewis book about high frequency traders. That's an
eye-opener and the unfairness of Wallstreet. There's so many great books and it's like an education
always in your brain. Once you're out of school, Marques, you'll realize that
nobody is pouring anything in your brain anymore and you're going to have to
find a new source of information into your brain. Do you get to do any reading
for pleasure Marques? You work all the time, because you've got school and then
you do your things.
Marques: No time.
Leo: No time.
Marques: No time.
Leo: No books on that
bedside table, there? Nothing?
Marques: There's an iPad over there. Those are all textbooks.
Leo: Where is it you
go to school?
Marques: Steven's Tech in Hoboken.
Leo: And you are a
business major?
Marques: Yeah, business and technology is the name of the major, yeah.
Leo: I am glad that
they are teaching you about net neutrality and stuff like that, that's really
good. I think one thing Brian and I can both agree on, let me just try this: We
should get the influence of money out of politics.
Brian: Oh sure. I
think. The problem is, what does that mean?
Leo: Well it's hard
to do, isn't it?
Brian: Because you
could say that and then say, which is why all ads should be
banned. Or you could say, which is why anyone
who owns a media station should never be allowed to talk without giving equal
time to another. The problem is, we agree that money
is a corrupting influence but the question is, how do we get to fix it you
know?
Leo: Well I have
thoughts but I don't think it's appropriate for this discussion, so we're going
to move on. I know how we can get money out of politics, get Marissa Meyer to foot the bill. She, I think, cut $200 million last year
for her compensation. We were all feeling bad for her because they fired her
number 2 and he got this big severance package. I don't feel too bad.
Robert: I don't feel bad
for Marissa.
Leo: She's done
alright. According to an analysis by Equilar, as
much, perhaps, as $214 million cash, stock, and options in Yahoo. Although, Marissa, just a tip but you might want to sell that Yahoo
stock as fast as you can. Don't hold on to it.
Brian: That's the Catch
22 though, right? If she were to exercise all of that it would not reflect well
on her prospects.
Leo: But Larry
Ellison is an example, Oracle CEO. $78.4 million, nothing. The poor guy, I don't know how he lives.
Brian: Isn't- Well
there isn't a way for me to say what I was going to say without starting
another rabbit hole. Let's move on to something else.
Leo: Henrique De
Castro who was brought over from Google by Marissa to run advertising at Yahoo
was fired and got a severance package of $109 million. 15 months, COO, 15
months, $109 million. I think that Yahoo is doing better than anybody thinks.
Either that, or they're just hemorrhaging money to
their executives. Amazon is open to wearable technology store- We've got Scoble over here wearing two cameras, his Google Glass,
narrative clip - And Amazon is now opening a store where you can buy all this
crap. What do you think?
Robert: Well we're all
waiting for the Apple watch.
Leo: What do you
think Marques? If you found a wearable, would you wear- What do you wear, the FitBit Flex?
Marques: I was wearing the Pebble, and then the Pebble Steel but I switched
back to the original Pebble.
Leo: Ah, why? What's
wrong with the Pebble Steel?
Marques: I just don't like the design as much as I thought I would. I actually
prefer the thinner polyurethane band, it's just more
versatile as a wearable I guess, for what I do, instead of having metal on my
wrist all the time.
Leo: So I've been
wearing the Basis watch, the Basis doesn't have any of the Pebble notification
or calendar stuff, it's just a health watch. It has a
heart rate monitor, steps, and it syncs with the phone using low powered bluetooth, which is nice. So it's a good health watch. It
seems like there is three categories; there's the
health watches like FitBit Flex, and the Basis.
There's the extension of the phone watches like the Pebble and then of course,
Galaxy Gear Fit does both so it's possible to combine the two, and then what
was the third category? It seems like maybe we should have a watch that-
Brian: Like as an
independent thing?
Robert: There's special ones for triathletes or something.
Leo: -That's
independent. Like, it doesn't need a phone and just does its own thing.
Brian: Last time we
talked about this Leo, you were not so crazy about the Pebble. Whereas, I love mine.
Leo: I gave Chad my
Pebble.
Chad: Loving it!
Loving it so much!
Leo: He loves it. So
you still wear the Pebble too, Shwood?
Brian: Oh yeah, it's
right here. The thing is, if you receive let's say 100 notifications of any
variety a day, and let's say conservatively it takes you 4-5 seconds to pull
out your phone and check or whatever every single day that you wear a Pebble,
that's 500 seconds saved by just glancing instead of pulling the phone out.
That's like 5-10 minutes of free time?
Leo: Yeah, but I
don't want to wear an ugly ass watch just to save a few minutes.
Brian: Well it's ugly ass now but I've said this before, this is the
Palm Pilot of the smart watch.
Leo: Right, and I was a big Palm Pilot fan.
Brian: Exactly, the
Newton came out and it was hilarious. Then the Palm Pilot came out and said
let's do less and do it better and it took off. What's funny though, I love
wearing it and I love my Pebble, but every time we shoot Scam School I take it
off and put it in my pocket because I'm so aware of how hilarious it's going to
look 3-4 years from now.
Leo: Right. You might
as well have a giant phone that you talk on. Marques, you're an athlete and you
play ultimate frisbee...
Marques: Right.
Leo: What would be
the ultimate wearable for you? What do you think will happen and what do you
look for?
Marques: I don't usually wear my watch when I'm like working out or at
practice or anything, but when I have the Pebble on like in class, it's for the same reason Brian said. It's because I can just glance, instead of
pulling my phone out of my pocket, which teachers apparently hate. So I guess
glancing at your watch might still not look great if you’re a teacher-
Leo: Well that's
insulting, it looks like you're going, when is this class going to be over?
Marques: Yeah, I'm just waiting begging for the class to end. But I feel like it's
a quicker glance and I cannot take as many seconds of attention away from
whatever the class is about so, just as a student I guess, I'm a fan of the
Pebble and the notifications.
Robert: That's one
reason I never took to the Pebble because when I'm sitting anywhere, my phone
is right in front of me and in my car I have a dashboard mount for my phone so
I don't need the glance ability that much.
Marques: Yeah, it's just that I have to take my phone out of my pocket and
then hit the wake up button-
Robert: If I was in
school and I wasn't able to look at my phone because my teacher didn't like it,
I totally-
Leo: So yeah, Tim
Cook here calling from Apple for Marques Brownlee. Hey Marques good talking to
you, love your stuff. What do you think we should do with the iWatch, what do you think? Just tell me anything.
Marques: Wow... It should be light, it should not be-
I don't know, I'm not a fashion designer. I just think the design of it is
going to be extremely important. The way it looks, the way it
feels.
Brian: I feel like it's
too early for them to try to get away with any kind of design that looks svelte
or thin, or try to sell us on it. I say own the thickness, own the blocky-ness
for now, which I feel like Apple would do.
Marques: See, we keep seeing Moto360 and then like-
Leo: I think that
looks sweet, do you like the Moto360?
Marques: I do, yeah. That's the one I'm looking forward to most and I can't
wait until we actually get to like physically have it-
Leo: And that's going
to be out this summer they say. It looks like a watch, it's round!
Marques: Exactly.
Leo: It's a little
thick. To me, this is the closest thing I've seen.
Marques: I just have a couple of concerns about the display and the battery
life; Those two things just because it's obviously not
that big. So it's going to have an LCD display that should be bright enough to
view outdoors, but also if it's a watch it's always on, so you're just glancing
at the time. So is it an always on, very bright LCD? In which case, you're
burning through battery constantly and have a really short life, or does it
have a really huge battery? I don't know how that's going to work, so I'm
curious.
Brian: That is the one
thing that I really adore about the Pebble is the fact that I really do only
charge it like once a week, basically.
Leo: Everybody agrees, that's one of the best things. So you interviewed the new
CEO of Motorola yourself, Marques, did you talk about any of this stuff?
Marques: Yeah, he hinted at the fact that they were working on wearables when I interviewed him and that was a couple of
months ago.
Leo: It wasn't Dennis Woodside, you talked to the new guy?
Marques: No, no I talked to Dennis.
Leo: You talked to
Dennis, okay. So he's no longer CEO and has moved on.
Marques: Right.
Leo: So he hinted at
this, but we now know because they announced it. This is not a guess.
Marques: Right.
Leo: Rick Osterloh has taken over for him, he's an interesting fellow
and I like him a lot. He was the guy who designed Motorola Blur, which was
among the worst of the carrier improvements on Android and I said, Rick I'm
sorry. That's a terrible thing, why did you do that? He said, we had to because Android in the version 2 was so God-awful that nobody
would've bought it so we had to clean it up a little bit. And that's when the
Motorola X came out and he said, now we don't need to.
It's a beautiful UI and a great OS and we don't have to modify it. I think the
Moto 360 is my- But this is a notification watch, it's not a health watch. It
sounds like you don't have any interest in a health watch?
Marques: No. I don't wear it for anything fitness-related. I've never even
bought a FitBit or a Nike Fuel Band or anything, I
just don't use wearables while working out.
Leo: Oh, it's because
you're fit.
Marques: No, I do work out. Like a pedometer seems like a cool idea, I just
don't have it turned on in my Galaxy S5, I just don't
really care about how many steps I take. I don't know.
Leo: Yeah, the stuff
I do never seems to register. So I'll row for half an hour and when I look
it'll say something like, you took 3 steps. And it's like- Then Lisa says, well you know you rowed. To which I respond, yes but I
want credit for it. I want credit, I want a star, I want points.
"You know you rowed. You rowed!"
"No, but I didn't- I have to... And how's Kevin Rowes going to know I rowed if I don't show up on the
leader board. I don't get any credit for it." Marques, do you like the S5,
is that your daily driver?
Marques: Oh no, my daily driver is the One M8, Google Play Edition.
Leo: Yeah, baby!
Marques: Is that you too?
Leo: Well I don't use
the Google Play Edition, I actually think that the
stock HTC Sense is not so bad.
Marques: I do like Sense 6, but I still prefer stock Android. So that's where
I'm at with my daily driver. I'm testing a couple of other phones.
Leo: How do you think
the camera-
Marques: This OnePlus...
Leo: Wait, whoa!
Whoa! Hold that up again. You have a OnePlus One.
Marques: Yeah, this is a really exciting phone.
Leo: For a long time
I thought this is a scam, a fake, they're never going to release it. It's the
real phone, it works?
Marques: In the flesh, yeah. It's a living breathing CyanogenMod phone and of course, I really like stock Android so much, so I'm a fan of the
OS here, the interface, the camera is very impressive and the price is the most
impressive part of it so I'm having fun testing it.
Leo: $350, I think?
Is that what they're going to-
Marques: This is the 16 gig so it's $300. And the 64 gig is in black and it'll
be $350.
Leo: Wow. So this is
the reason I thought it was a scam. First of all, OnePlus One, OPO. And these guys came from Oppo so I thought- It's really an Oppo phone isn't it?
Marques: Yeah, I see a lot of resemblance, I see a lot of the same- It's like
sign language, I have a Find 7a next to me too and it's very similar.
Leo: Hold it up
though, it looks very thin.
Marques: It might even be the same panel. It's a 5.5 1080p display. It's got
the silver trim around it and I guess I prefer this design a little bit more.
The back, the camera actually looks almost exactly the same as the Find 7. In fact...
Leo: How could they
sell this phone for $350 though, this is impossible.
Marques: I don't know, that's the question.
Robert: Costs on these
things are coming way down because-
Leo: And they'll give
it to you for $1 if you smash your phone. Did you see that, what did you think
of that one?
Marques: That? I'm glad they turned back on that.
Leo: Oh they did?
Marques: Yeah, they got a clue that maybe that wasn't the best idea so they
were offering this contest, I guess, where you submit your phone and your idea
for smashing it and they would pick 100 people and then you smash your phone
and-
Leo: Your ride is here,
you want to get that?
Marques: No, every day there is a traffic jam at like this exact hour and
results in people beeping their horn.
Leo: And people like
to beep, what could possibly go wrong? Okay go ahead, I'm sorry.
Marques: So they turned back on it and now they're allowing the 100 winners
that they did select to donate their phone, instead of smashing it which is a
good idea.
Leo: Much better
idea. Although, those guys with the blender, BlendTech,
they smash things all the time and nobody says anything about it. The 'Will it Blend' show.
Chad: It would be 100
phones.
Leo: That's right.
These would be 100 phones and they wanted you to take a video of you smashing
it. Demonstrating not only that it was smashed, but that it
can no longer turn on. So you had to turn it on, show it, hit it with a
hammer, show it again that it's not turning on now...
Seems like a lot. I'm just searching my inbox to see if I got anything from
them, I guess not. So I guess I'll have to wait. Do you feel like this phone is
ready, is it buggy, is it reliable?
Marques: This one I have here is like super Alpha and it doesn't even have
volume buttons, but they're sending me another one that is finished packaging,
finished product. But right now, from the software it is fine. It's a CyanogenMod entirely, it didn't have any bugs or quirks
once it's working so I feel like it's working great.
Leo: Awesome, and you
said you really like the camera. Tell me about that.
Marques: I do, I was impressed. So it has this new camera app from CyanogenMod. Of course you can swipe in on stock Android
from the side? So you swipe in a little bit and so it says, okay I'll open the
camera. But it's the whole entire viewfinder, first of all, so I like that.
It's really simple it takes 4k video, 1080p, slow motion HD video in 720, it
takes 13 megapixel photos I believe and they look really good. Sweet dynamic
range-
Leo: Better than your
M8?
Marques: Definitely better than the M8.
Leo: I know the M8 is
only 4 megapixels, but I like the pictures it takes.
Marques: The Google Play Edition M8 doesn't take nearly as good pictures,
unfortunately and I do like pixels so I'm not a fan of it only being a 4
megapixel camera. I like to zoom in and pixel peep I guess. I'm not normal on
that but when I'm looking at Galaxy S5 photos and iPhone 5s photos I'm way more
impressed so I think this is a lot closer to those cameras, which is impressive
because it's so cheap.
Leo: Is that what
kids are calling it these days, pixel peep?
Marques: Maybe I'm weird that I pixel peep, I don't know. That's what I call
it. I like to check out-
Leo: You zoom in on
it and you're pixel peeping it?
Marques: Yeah, on my own phone just because if I'm taking a landscape shot and
I'm literally comparing the quality of two different cameras... I took the same
picture on both of these cameras and I'm trying to compare which one looks
better, so I'm zooming in on the edges of something to see that it's softer
here and sharper here, that's what I'm seeing.
Leo: Alright, well I
thought it was a scam. It's not and it will be out this summer. It really will
be $300-350.
Marques: That's what they say.
Leo: Now you're
talking Nexus 5's prices.
Robert: It will be
interesting to see what they hand out at Google IO this year.
Leo: Well the rumor
is, I don't know if it's true, but the rumor is that
they're going to replace the Nexus with the Silver Edition. That sounds a lot
like what Microsoft did with their Signature PCs, which nobody made. Vizio, I think, made them. The idea of being, god you people are crapping up our Windows devices, so we're
going to sell a signature PC that's just pure Windows. And none of the
manufacturers bought it, they all said, no we need to make money off of our crapware. It feels like the Silver Edition is kind of the
same idea. What do you think Marques?
Marques: It reminds me of the Google Play Edition stuff where originally, I
saw no reason for it to exist at all and am still not sure what benefit it has
to a company to have a Google Play Edition, other than to be more developer
friendly and have that relationship with Google. But when that Google Play
Edition Galaxy S5 first came out, that blew my mind. So it reminds me a lot of
the same program and I'd be curious if that's an actual thing and not just a
rumor.
Leo: Yeah, we don't
know. They may still make the Nexus phones, which are made by Google to Google
Specs, as opposed to say, I'm going to take the Galaxy S5 or the HTC One and
just make it a pure Android.
Marques: Yeah. That's what I keep saying. The main reason the Nexus even
exists is to show that Google Spec. They move away from things like SD cards
and move away from capacitive buttons. If they were to use the Galaxy S5 as
Google Play Edition, you still have the SD card and the physical home button
and all of that stuff that you're trying to move away from. So Nexus serves to
move, at least software and hardware in the same direction Google wants.
Leo: Well you can
thank Nexus for the new M8, they've got capacitive buttons, they've got on-screen buttons, and I was not a fan at first but now I think it's great.
I see where Google was going with this thing. We're going to take a break and
coming up with more here in just a bit. MKBHD is here, Marques Brownlee; Robert Scoble, the Scoblizer;
Brian Brushwood-
Brian: Brushwoodizer.
Leo: -The Brushwoodizer. Is it Night Train, or is that a fortified
alcohol?
Chad: Night Attack.
Leo: Night Attack.
Brian: I was really
confused, if you were still talking to me.
Leo: Night Attack was
the name of the new show.
Brian: Night Train, The
Night Train Thunderbird as a new podcast, that's amazing. Oowens Farm Strawberries, our new podcast. Zema, our new podcast. You're going to love it.
Leo: Our show today
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buy, you don't need a credit card up to that point. A quick
run-through of the last few news stories. Daily Motion, the European
YouTube says Google is cheating. Serving up YouTube results instead of Daily
Motion results. There's always the fear that Google would favor it's own sites and I always
thought Google shouldn't be in the content business for that reason. This is
the first I've heard of someone actually saying this is actually happening.
Brian: I will say that
I almost never catch a Daily Motion link when I do a Google search.
Leo: Let's see if I
search for Mario Batali, they've got a new series of
him cooking- No I don't see a thing. I see Mario Batali YouTube.
Brian: I don't want to
say that this is a nefarious anti-comptetitive practice on Google's part-
Leo: No Google would
say, hey no this is what people want, right?
Brian: I would be
curious to see how much of their secret sauce they would expose to justify it
because I do agree, that Daily Motion is definitely under represented
considering the size of that site.
Leo: It seems fairly
credible, but we don't know. Let's see, Microsoft blinks... You used to work at
Microsoft. They said, we are not going to update
Windows XP. That's it, it's over. April 8th, that's the last update. Turns out there was a zero day flaw in Internet Explorer
that affected all versions of Windows, including XP so they sent out a patch
last week.
Brian: Wait, they went
back and patched the next-
Leo: Yeah.
Brian: That's a bummer,
I feel like they should have stayed firm.
Leo: Stay firm,
Microsoft.
Robert: When I worked at
Microsoft, the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team pulled me into his
office and explained how life is for him. They have so many customers with so
many installs that if the CTO of XYZ big company calls you and says, you fix
this or I'm moving to Linux, you decide to fix it.
Leo: Yep. I thought
this was an interesting free market story, in fact it
takes place in your neck of the woods Mr. Brian Brushwood. There was a startup
called Outbox, seemed like a great idea. A couple of guys said, what we're
going to do is you fill out a forwarding form at the post office and forward
all your mail to us, don't even have it delivered to yourself. We will scan it,
we will let you check boxes to say what to deliver and what to not deliver.
Seemed like a great idea, they launched in Austin. Have you seen it?
Brian: What's funny is
I saw this story but didn't understand it and I remember thinking, I want Leo to explain this to me.
Leo: I'll explain it,
they got funding, people got excited about it, they wanted to expand so they went to San Francisco and started doing it there.
Everybody wants this, nobody wants snail mail unless they want it, so much of it is junk mail. And so they got called to meet
with the Post Master General in Washington D.C. and they thought, oh this is
exciting! Maybe the Post Master wants to partner with us because it's a better
way. They go into the meeting and instead of just Patrick Donahoe,
the Post Master General, there is also the General
Council of the United States Postal Service and the Chief of Digital Strategy.
Brian: I can tell this
story turns out super great, with everybody high fiving and the customer being
happy.
Leo: This is the
story from inside sources. Evan says the Post Master looked at us and said, we have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and
we will never work with you.
Brian: This is awful.
Leo: This is just
Evan's recount, this is the Post Master General and he says, you mentioned
making the service better for our customers but you need to understand that the
American citizens are not our customers. About 400 junk mailers are our
customers, and your service hurts our ability to serve those customers. By
keeping that junk mail out of people's mailbox, you're putting us out of
business.
Brian: Okay, for the
record you were wondering why I'm the nut job who would prefer to not see
government object itself to the net neutrality.
Leo: This supports
your case.
Brian: Right? This is
disgusting because by objectively they could move less crap, spend less time,
move fewer resources, but this protectionist buggy whip crap is... I rest my
case your honor.
Leo: They told
Outbox, here's what we're going to do, we're not going to honor those
forwarding requests. So Outbox said, oh crap now what do we do? They literally
had trucks going to everybody's mailbox in Austin and San Francisco, get the mail out of the mailbox- You have to sign a long contract that says
it's okay to do that. -They take it, took your mail. And of course, it was so
expensive that they basically have gone out of business.
Brian: That's a real
bummer, and again, I'm not going to harp on it but this is to me,
unexceptional. It's something that happens a lot and it's the reason for my
default skepticism of injecting government in the net neutrality-
Leo: You know what,
you're absolutely right I'll give you this one. In their closing blog post,
saying we're going out of business they said, you may think government
organizations are completely insanely backwards. You're wrong, they're worse.
Robert: Well look at Las
Vegas, right? They built this new high speed tram and it stops a quarter mile
from the airport.
Brian: Why did they do
that?
Leo: We got you this
close.
Robert: And the same
forces that brought that to happen means we don't get Uber and Base.
Leo: And you don't
get Air B&B, practically banned in San Francisco because they don't pay hotel
taxes. Yeah, you're right Brian it's easy to find these examples.
Brian: I feel like
you're just rubbing my shoulders now Leo. You're making me feel better with all
of these examples.
Leo: Feel better
Brian?
Robert: Don't you hate
when the world isn't black and white? It's sort of muddy.
Brian: I love Air
B&B, I love Lift, I love Uber.
I love all of these disruptive services and it bums me out that people are
using the hammer of bureaucracy to shut them down.
Leo: Well I think we
should shut this thing down. Thank you Brian Brushwood for
being the voice of reason and bringing that little bit of Texas into this show.
Brian: Well thank you
for patronizing me and putting up with my non sense. Look I'm 100% wrong about
everything I get that. This all feels very balanced, Leo. It turned out very
well.
Leo: Damn your eyes,
Brushwood.
Brian: Hey can I tell
you guys about a brand new thing and I want to know if Marques thinks this is
going to work. We launched a brand new series on Scam School, it's only the
second time we've launched something new on the channel. But if you've ever
watched Scam School, every episode is very much modeled on a television show.
Episodes are usually 10-15 minutes long, which in the YouTube world is like
Lawrence of Arabia. We have a cold open, an intro sequence, an intro, and then
finally we get into- People just tend to just jump forward like, just get to
the trick. Meanwhile, we have this back catalog of like 300 past episodes with
like really good bar tricks and clever scams you can pull on your friends. So
we decided to launch something new called Scam School Remix. For example, the
first episode we do the entire episode is 75 seconds long and the idea is waste
no time.
Leo: So in 75
seconds, you will learn how to scam.
Brian: Less than that
because the second half is all follow up, watch you can learn the trick right
here.
Leo: You're going to
break your arms doing that. Don't do that anymore, that's dangerous.
Brian: It's alright, as
long as they're the one lifting. But you'll notice in the second half, we're 45
seconds in and already in the follow up and then the wrap up is the last 30
second or so. The idea is we have been openly hostile to the things that make
YouTube successful so now we're trying to embrace it by shortening everything.
Leo: You got confused
Chad, didn't you? He thought you were the video and the video was you. You got
confused, I think you did.
Brian: That happens.
But Marques, here's my question to you: How important is brevity in the YouTube
world these days? The don't waste my time, get to the
point, go go go. Is that
the leading factor in how you design your videos?
Marques: Not necessarily for me, but for YouTube in general when you have a
series going on and people are finding a whole bunch of your stuff at the same
time, it does get important that it's quick to get to the next point. So if
someone were to find my channel, for example and wanted to just cruise through
15 videos, my intro is 7 seconds long and then I get right into the content so
I guess I do make a point to get right into things. But like you were saying,
with a 15 minute episode where you're kind of formatting after tv where it takes a while to get into what you're titling
the video, people might skip over that and so it does make a lot of sense to
just head into what you're going to do. If you have a title, a thumbnail and
the first 10 seconds of the video, that's very satisfying to someone who
clicked on it.
Brian: Well I'm really
excited. This was my pitch to the folks over at Discovery, the idea was to weaponize previous videos. Let's make
them viral gold by taking what was a ten minute episode and making it 90
seconds, we'll see if that works out.
Marques: Yeah.
Leo: Awesome. And you
can find Marques, of course on YouTube, youtube.com/MKBHD. Just
the one channel? You're not going to do an MKB4HD?
Marques: 4K? No, just the one. That's it.
Leo: That's it, right
there. It is awesome, and Marques has actually showed that people on YouTube
will watch longer videos with more content and that encourages me I think
that's really great. You do great stuff, it's good to have you on I appreciate
it. And your preview of the OnePlus One is up there
too. What is that a Tesla? Do you drive a Tesla too?
Marques: I did.
Robert: I drove the new
Mercedes Benz electric.
Leo: Yeah, I saw you-
Robert: So take that Marques.
Leo: You had an
exclusive on that one. How'd you like that, I watched that video, pretty sweet.
Robert: It was nice. I
had South By Southwest BMW get me the i3.
Leo: That's BMW's
electric.
Robert: These are
$45,000 cars. The Mercedes is bigger, it's a little quieter.
Leo: But the Tesla's
the one to get, isn't it?
Robert: Yeah, but that's
$70,000+ so it's out of my budget.
Leo: Even the i3 is
out of my budget, would you consider that?
Robert: I'm looking at it, my Prius is five years old now so I'm definitely
looking. I hope my car lasts until the Tesla 45,000.
Leo: But the cost of
electricity... Because I know a number of people with electric cars that say,
I'm paying through the nose. It's very expensive.
Robert: Interesting,
compared to gas?
Leo: Yeah, I don't
know if you actually save money because the utilities have wised up. They say,
oh you're using a lot of wattage there. I think we're going to have to put you
in a new tier.
Robert: Interesting.
Leo: I'd like to know
more about that, ladies and gentlemen. So we've got three YouTube stars here
and me. But I did interview a YouTube star last night. A little group called Pomplamoose and that'll be airing tomorrow, I guess is our
Triangulation for the day. And then the man who founded Vonage, Jeff Pulver, an early advocate for voice on the internet will be
on Triangulation tomorrow.
Robert: I got to do
something even better than the Mercedes last week.
Leo: What's that?
Robert: I interviewed
David Hall, the guy who builds the spinning thing on top of the Google
self-driving car. The lightar. Every self-driving car uses his product.
Leo: Wow, the lightar king. Where will we find those videos.
Robert: Somewhere on
YouTube. YouTube.com/scoblizer.
Leo: You got to work
on the plug. These guys got it down. Did you see any shows from this week, we
had some good shows, if you missed a little bit of TWiT this week, here's a rundown. The weaponized version.
(Previously on TWiT, Tech News Today: Will
consumers understand the distinction? I mean, anonymous sounds anonymous but in fact, what you're doing is you're giving
Facebook all the signals it wants. The vocal influencers will understand it and
they're the ones who would kill it if you didn't do it right. This Week in Law:
We give our data to the third-parties, are real and they are compelling.
Because for most people the biggest security risk is not the NSA or the Chinese
government or cyber criminals, it's I lost this stuff. This Week in Enterprise
Tech: Our second blip is all about a zero day bug found in Internet Explorer.
This one actually has the Department of Homeland Security issuing a security
alert to stop using IE. All about Android: Those that want to look at every
single app we ever featured on the show can go to Wiki.twit.tv, search for the All About Android and you'll find the list in there. TWiT, thousands of hours of high quality dribble. I'm a
huge loser, 2011 I came in last. 2013 Aaron Nukem beat me. Who?)
Leo: Poor Ron
Richards. What's coming up next week, Mr. Mike Elgan of TNT Fame.
Mike Elgan: Coming up this week, Tech Crunch disrupt it's New York tomorrow, May 5th. We also have a couple of mystery Google
announcements to contend with. Google intel will
unveil something about Chromebooks in the Chromo S on
Tuesday, May 6th and finally, Google has summoned Google Glass users to what
they're calling a Glass Explore Celebration on Friday, May 9th at Silican Valley's computer history museum. They accepted
only the first 100 people who replied to the invite, the event has some kind of
announcement but nobody outside of Google knows what it's all about. That's
what's coming up this week, back to you, Leo.
Leo: Thank you Mike Elgan, TNT Monday-Friday 10 AM Pacific.
Robert: I got the invite
but by the time I responded it was sold out.
Leo: Bummer. You
should get a special Scoblizer exemption.
Robert: I don't care
about this stuff anymore.
Leo: You wrote an
article saying it's all over for Google Glass.
Robert: It's not over, it's just a deeply flawed product that hasn't gotten
fixed. A year ago I overlooked all of those flaws because I thought that they
would get fixed in the first year but now I'm waiting.
Leo: Marques did you
ever wear Glass?
Marques: Yeah, on occasion. I have it and wear it for once in a while stuff
but...
Leo: For like dressy
events?
Marques: Like, I almost brought it to the Tesla stuff to get like a
perspective of- It's usually for the camera that I'm bringing it. -That I want
to get a first-person perspective of something.
Leo: I'll give it
that, it's a little less dorky looking than wearing a head strap and a GoPro.
Marques: Right.
Leo: But just a
little. Do you graduate this year, Marques?
Marques: Next year, 2015.
Leo: We'll have a
party for you next year. Thanks for joining us everybody, we do This Week in
Tech every Sunday afternoon at 3PM Pacific, 6PM Eastern time, 2200 UTC right
here on twit.tv. Please watch, but if you can't, on-demand audio and video
always available after the fact. Not only on YouTube but
wherever podcasts are available, as well as twit.tv. You can download it
and watch it to your heart's content. Never any charge. The TWiT T-shirt is-
Brian: The TWiTty shirt.
Leo: Show us the
girl's version it looks really good. TdoubleEspring.com/twit and they're only
$20. We're so close to our goal of 500, just a few more. How many more days
until the thing runs out?
Chad: 12.
Leo: 12 more days?
It's a smexy shirt, you're
going to like it. May the Fourth be with you ladies and gentlemen, is this Star Trek Day edition of This Week in Tech?
Brian: On behalf of
Spock, Turk, and all of the cling-ons, thank you. May the force be with you.
Leo: So it goes,
thank you everybody we'll see you next time! Another TWiT is in the can.