This Week in Tech 486 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It's time for TWIT: This Week in Tech. I am so excited. Becky Worley from Tech TV, Good Morning American,
and Yahoo is here. From
Fast company, Harry McCracken, my buddy Jason Snell from Six Colors. We're going to talk to you about the week's
tech news. Even more bad news for Uber, and at the end, we're going to make you cry. It's all coming up next on TWIT.
NETCASTS YOU LOVE, FROM PEOPLE YOU TRUST. THIS IS TWIT! Bandwidth for This Week in Tech is provided by CacheFly at cachefly.com.
Leo: This is TWiT, This Week in
Tech. Episode 486, recorded November 30,
2014.
This Ain't No Tongue Tingle
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trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code TWIT. It's time for TWIT: This Week in Tech, the show that covers the
week's tech news with a panel composed of some of the finest tech journalists
and my personal friends. At least anybody who is available on
a Sunday afternoon. That's
basically all we can do. Jason Snell is
here. It's always great to have Jason
here.
Jason Snell: Present. Available.
Leo: Jason, former
editorial director at IDG Publications, when IDG folded, Mac World magazine, he
went out on his own. He has a great
blog, sixcolors.com.
Jason: Thank you.
Leo: A whole podcast network, which is I think keystone of
that, the Incomparable, which I love.
Jason: You know
podcasting is back, Leo.
Leo: So I hear. All of us who have been doing podcasting for
years are very grateful about how the mainstream media has discovered,
"Oh. We thought those guys were
dead. They were gone. It was over, it was history." No, we're back. Actually, we were just listening to a really
nice piece this morning on Weekend edition of NPR by Jon Kalish that included TWIT but also John C. Dvorak and a lot of independent
podcasts. That's the nice thing. He briefly mentioned cereal. I don't know if he mentioned Blum's startup,
but then he got into the real meat of podcasting, which is the Indies. Real interesting stuff. Great to have you.
Jason: Great to be
here.
Leo: Look who else
is here. Hasn't been
here in ages. Becky Worley.
Becky Worley: So happy to be
here.
Leo: I am so happy
to see you my dear. We try to get Becky
on all the time. But you are so busy
with ABC, with Good Morning America, and you do Yahoo, their Tech page now.
Becky: With Rafe Needleman and David Pogue and a lot of really good
bloggers over there.
Leo: Yeah.
Becky: And then mostly
it's just parenting. My kids are six,
and I would love to spend my weekend with you, but they win.
Leo: Most of the
people that we really want a lot use that excuse. Some of them don't even have children, they
have small dogs. Parakeets. But whatever it is, Sunday afternoon seems to
be sacred.
Becky: Yeah. They're knitting sweaters for their
Chihuahuas and watching football.
Leo: That's exactly
right. I think it's really
football. So thank you for giving up
whatever good thing you could be doing. It's great to see you.
Becky: And right after
your birthday. Happy
birthday.
Leo: Day two.
Becky: Day two. How's it going?
Leo: Of being
58?
Becky: Stop.
Leo: Hey. Harry McCracken is also here. Formerly the technologizer at Time magazine and on his own blog and now he's at Fast Company.
Harry McCracken: I am. I think I'll always be the technologizer, but my main gig is Fast Company.
Leo: We'll call you
Sir Technologizer. Great to have you all here to talk about the week's
tech news. Where
to start. Black Friday was
Friday. You don't. I bet you for Good Morning America you had to
do Black Friday news. All the mainstream
media wants that.
Becky: Oh yeah. You have to think about it this way. It is one of the—it's the Woodstock
unfortunately, of our generation. It's
like it's a communal shopping experience for many.
Leo: I thought
waiting in line to get the iPhone was the Woodstock.
Becky: Yes, also. It's in the vein. It's maybe—
Leo: I have never
done it. Have you ever done it?
Becky: Well I've
covered it.
Leo: Go out to Best
Buy at midnight?
Becky: Oh yeah. I've covered it for ten years, and there are
two types of people who do this. One, it
is a family experience, and the other, it's an
opportunity to get more for Christmas because their dollar goes farther. And it's really survivalist. People who every penny counts, so they think
they save 3 to 4 to 500 dollars if they stand in line for those storebusters.
Leo: Are those good
deals? Are they really?
Becky: You still get
loss leaders that you're seeing on Black Friday in store. There are fewer and fewer, what I notice for
the first time in the ten years that I've been studying on Black Friday is that
the deals online were as significant as the deals—not necessarily the door
busters, but the door busters weren't as extreme, and the online door busters
were much much better. Online shopping this year was huge. Best Buy’s site went down for a period of
time on Black Friday, and they said it was because of all the mobile traffic
that they got.
Leo: It seems that
Black Friday in real stores has turned into Black Month, Black Week. This is a picture of shoppers wrestling over
a television on Black Friday. There's
something a little different about this. This is England. So Black Friday
is normally based on the day after Thanksgiving. They don't celebrate Thanksgiving in England,
but apparently, according to Yahoo News, I think you've heard of them, Black
Friday violence is stepping up all over the world.
Becky: I'm so glad we
could share that with the world.
Jason: I do one of my
podcasts with an English guy. His name
is Mike Hurly, and he was telling me that he doesn't understand anything about
Thanksgiving, and the thing he understands about it is the next day, they have
Black Friday sales and they do that in England now too. We have definitely
exported the idea that consumerism begins right about now and runs rampant
until Christmas.
Harry: The worst part
about it.
Becky: Have you guys
heard about singles day in China?
Leo: Yes. That was the one where the guy bought 90
iPhones and proposed and she said, "No way. You're such a nerd."
Becky: It's their
version of Black Friday. It's a made up
holiday for single people.
Leo: It was created
by Ali Baba, wasn't it? I think it
was. It was created by Chinese retailers
a couple of years ago to try and gin up sails.
Becky: And that was
huge this year. But to your point about
it starting earlier, PayPal analyzed their data and they said that the sails
started last Wednesday, was the start of the sales and the apex was on
Thanksgiving where the best sales and the most sales were, and then it winds
down through next week. Cyber week.
Leo: Amazon is doing
every week, all week, every hour a new deal. Actually I don't know why you would fight in a store for something. Do you get better deals in the real world?
Becky: Only the doorbusters this year. That's really the beginning of the line. Or in certain cases, the stores were doing a better job of managing
Black Friday this year. Some stores had
bracelets, so while you were in line you knew. You told them, "Ok, I'm going to go for this, or that." And they would give you a bracelet or a
ticket for that item so that it would alleviate some of the melee in the
aisles. And then Wal-Mart has a one-hour
thing that even if they sell out, so long as you're there during the one-hour
you can get a rain check for it and come back another time.
Leo: It just gives
me a stomachache. It seems
horrible. Horrible
experience. But people seem to
enjoy it.
Becky: It has become a
bizarre tradition. I'm not saying, and
certainly the Thanksgiving thing just really irks me—
Leo: Yeah, Wal-Mart
is open midnight Thanksgiving Day.
Jason: Target opened
at 5PM, 6PM on Thanksgiving Day, yeah.
Becky: Most of them 5
or 6 PM.
Harry: Is it bad for
the rest of the shopping season if all of the deals are frontloaded? Will people not buy stuff from here on out?
Leo: So the name
Black Friday is a chance for retailers to get in the black, implying that
they've been in the red all year and they're going to make a few bucks on
Thursday and Friday. But is that the
case?
Becky: I don't think
that the black and red necessarily makes a difference here in terms of retail,
although we know that the most technology products are sold in Q4. September till December. But what I do think is that it's a cat and
mouse game with the consumer and it's always changing and it's always going to
change. So at one point in time it's
just Friday. Then they threw in Cyber
Monday. Now it's the week before. And it's always moving. One thing that's different this year is that
there are categories emerging on different days. So phones, Android phones, unlocked phones
generally before Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, then Black
Friday and the weekend is clothing. Cyber Monday is shoes. I know. It's crazy. It's now Cyber Shoe day.
Leo: Although, I got to tell you tomorrow, Cyber Monday, my
phone woke up. Did I say, "Ok
Google?"
Becky: I think you
did. It knew. It knew that you wanted to
go shopping.
Leo: My phone woke
up.
Becky: It knew that
you wanted to spend money and it just woke up right there.
Jason: Ahoy telephone.
Leo: I should change
it to ahoy. That's a good one.
Jason: On my podcast
with the English guy, we used to say, "Hey Siri" all the time when we
were activating everyone's phones because you can't customize it.
Leo: Which you've
just done.
Jason: Which I have
just done. And so now we speak in code,
we say, "ahoy telephone." Because you don't want to say any of these
trigger phrases. You are ruining
people's lives when you say it.
Leo: I have been
saying lately, "OK followed by Google." But apparently, I don't think I said it. But for some reason my phone woke up for no
reason at all, which means others did as well. But—
Becky: Hi Leo. We understand that you'd like to spend some
money. Can you tell us how we can take your money?
Leo: Monday, and
this is why, because that is a Nexus 6, and I was about to say that Monday Moto
maker is going to offer 150 bucks off the Moto X, which I think is one of the
great phones of the year.
Becky: That's the
unlocked price.
Leo: Yeah, and if
you want to go with Verizon, it's a penny. If you've got time to renew.
Becky: They're giving
the Galaxy S5 away all week. It's a
penny. It's free.
Leo: That's what I
was going to say because they can't sell them really. Samsung said they only sold 12 million
S5s. But they expected 40% more.
Becky: I bet they did
that this weekend. The push was massive
in all stores.
Leo: Maybe they
turned around. So there you go. It's good for Samsung. Sales online this Black Friday were up 20%
this year over last year. These are from
a variety of sources including Adobe, Channel Advisor, and Castora,
between 20.6% and 24% year over year. But what's interesting is that somewhere between 27 and 30% of you
bought on your mobile phones and tablets.
Becky: Yeah. That's 30 to 40% of online sales were
mobile. So that was a big change. And I said that's—
Leo: I can't imagine
shopping on my phone. That seems an even
crappier experience than going to a door buster at Wal-Mart.
Harry: I was with my
Mom over the holiday, and she was doing tons of shopping over her phone. I was driving around and she was in the
passenger seat buying stuff.
Leo: And why? Did she explain herself? To get the deals?
Harry: Well, we were
in the car. She didn't have a lot to do
and a mobile device is easy, and she's very comfortable with it.
Leo: Was it mostly
Amazon?
Harry: I think it was
here and there. Every once in a while
she would ask me—She asked what the name of Boston's
hockey team was. She didn't know off the
top of her head. Despite having lived in
Boston off and on since the 1950's. She
was buying something for everyone's fan, but she wasn't sure what the name of
the team was.
Leo: so you told her
Celtics, right?
Becky: OK. So here's my Black Friday question for you,
Harry. We saw the first 4K TVs in the
50-inch range for sub thousand bucks. 899 on Amazon. People
were asking me, all my people who work at ABC, I got to get a new TV, tell me
which one to buy! What do you
think? Where are we, people?
Harry: We're sort of
approaching the bubble of where it's considering. I'd say if you buy it today, you still won't
get vey much out of that. It might be along time before you do.
Leo: It might even
be worse than that, because the 4K you buy today might not even support 4K standards
going forward. So it'll continue to
work, it's not like these new standards will break it, but you may not get the
best picture out of it. A 4K TV that
comes out after these standards are established will be better.
Harry: I think it is actually true that up scaling kind of
works in some cases and stuff can look good. Stuff, which is not 4K, can look good on a 4K TV.
Leo: But where do
you get 4K content otherwise?
Harry: You aren't,
basically.
Leo: Yeah, you have
to buy. Sony gives you a hard drive with
their 4K TV. But that's not the 800
dollar 4K TV though. I have a new
campaign. I want my TV to be dumber.
Jason: Amen.
Leo: Yeah. Why are they putting smarts in these
TVs? Because the smarts that Samsung and
LG and all these guys put in it is so dumb it gets in the way.
Jason: I'll tell you
why. It's the same reason why nobody in
the mobile business or the cable business wants to be a dumb pipe. They want to add value, otherwise they just
have to compete on this basic service and their margins go down. And the TV makers, it's the same way. They're terrified if all TVs are exactly the
same, because all we do is connect these little
outside boxes to them. But the outside
boxes are a way better approach, just like using Android Auto or Car play would
be better in a car, because there are companies that would be good at this
stuff, and then there are the companies that aren't so good.
Leo: It seems to me
that a monitor should be just a monitor, and I can apply the smarts in
whichever way I prefer. An Apple TV or a Roku or a Blu-ray player. Whatever I choose. The problem is, we have a very fancy—I bought
the Samsung Curved OLED display last year.
Becky: Oh really?
Leo: Well, I had
to. It was research. It was a very expensive TV.
Jason: That's a lot of
research.
Leo: It's like a
$9000 TV. And it turns itself off at
random intervals. You're watching a show
and it's like, "I don't think he's watching
it." And it turns it off!
Jason: It's an i-tracking technology.
Leo: It's too
smart. It pops up when I'm watching the
World Series. I think the Giants were in
it this year, right? And
the Celtics. And then I was
watching, and then all of a sudden it says, "Yahoo Sports." Would you like to watch, would you like to
get stats from Yahoo Sports? I'm
watching the World Series here! I don't
want to have to find the remote, click the X and get rid of that thing. It's very frustrating. Periodically Samsung, very kindly, sends me
warnings and notices that pop up over the screen.
Jason: I love getting
a software update notification while I'm watching a TV show.
Leo: My servers are
going to be down at midnight on Thursday, just wanted to let you know. I'm watching here.
Jason: Have you
noticed that there are now services that have added buttons to the remotes on
these things too? And I had never heard
this term before. Dave Zatz, you know Zatz not funny, he
writes about DVRs and stuff, I first heard this term today. Which is "button spam." Which is this idea that, oh suddenly
great. I've got a Netflix button on my
remote and four other services I'd never heard from.
Becky: That's the only
power that the set makers have is they have the remote that works. It's the one remote you can bet works,
because it's got a clear line of sight to the set.
Leo: Well don't you
use Harmony or one of these fancy—?
Becky: Yeah.
Leo: I've retired
mine.
Becky: Not all of the
universal remotes work just perfectly. That's the newsflash.
Leo: I retired my
Harmony 1 because, another case, the TV companies have decided there's not an on switch and an off switch, there's one
switch that toggles. But the remote
doesn't know which state the TV is in, so in order for the remote to work, you
have to turn everything off first, with all the other remotes, which you have
to find. Now I have all my remotes, what
do I need the one for? You've got to
turn everything off or it won't work, because it'll turn the TV on, but it'll
turn the box off, and it's like, "come on."
Becky: I will go on a
tirade. IO is everything with the
connected living room these days. It
just doesn't work right yet. Smart features that I want? I want a TV that knows that I'm watching a time shifted sports game and
that it makes sure that I don't see any updated sports. That's a smart feature that I want, and as
for why they put smart in there, because 3D didn't sell enough TVs, because
they didn't have any other technology to put into it, and smart is cheap.
Jason: You've got to
do something. I would love, jumping off
of that. I would love my TV to be
smarter about whatever I'm watching and make some adjustments. Now, I know people who just turn off all the
adjustments, but I've got a cinema setting and a sports setting, because a
sports setting makes everything brighter, it's better for sports, and a game
setting that decreases the latency, right? I have to set that manually. My
smart TV should be like, "Oh, this is a game. I can tell." I don't know how it can tell. It can tell. It's smart. Right? Or, this is a football game; I'm going to
make everything brighter. They don't do
that.
Leo: At least give
me a button that says, "Lobotomy." Give me a button that says don't be smart. Don't give me anything. Give me a picture, and I'll handle the rest
myself. That would be nice.
Harry: A couple of
Chinese companies, I think Hisense and TCL, they're
working with Roku. Roku is responsible
for their smartness, which I think is actually a really smart way to go about,
because there are lots of things that Roku does not try to do. The stuff that Roku does do it does better
than most other smart TVs out there.
Leo: The TV business
is a bad business to be in. SONY is
losing tons of money. Panasonic, all the
Japanese TV manufacturers are losing money on TV. And it's these Chinese companies, the Korean
companies have started to falter, so now it's these Chinese companies like TCL
and Hisense. In fact, Hisense took over the Microsoft booth
at CES in January, right? They want to
be your next TV.
Becky: And guess who
never jumped into the TV business? Apple, for this very reason.
Leo: They were very
smart.
Becky: They knew that
it was a lot about too many conflicting environments and ecosystems at war, and
you're never going to win. And Harry,
jumping off your point about Roku, I mean one of the
smartest things they have is the headphones jack on their remote.
Leo: Isn't that
awesome?
Becky: If other TV
companies did that, wouldn't that be genius?
Leo: The Roku 3 has
a headphone button, a volume control on the Roku turns it up and down, you just
plug it in, and you have headphones. Love that.
Becky: Genius.
Leo: Love that.
Becky: We should be
consultants. All these TV companies
should be, can we translate this into Korean? Because we would definitely
make some impact.
Leo: But I talk a
lot on the radio show. You probably do
in GMA, you talk to normal people. And
normal people don't have the same experience we do, and they want all
these. Because they think that's going
to be better. They want 4K. Well, it's going to be better. It's like 64 bit processors. It's got to be twice as good as a 32— I want
that.
Becky: Well they got
fooled into because when they saw the first HD TV their jaws hit the ground,
and they think that the next thing, the 3D, the 4K is going to be a similar—
Leo: I think true 4K
would be the same experience, if you saw it. But you have to have content.
Becky: OK. So let me go back to the content thing. This is what made me think that maybe it's
time, because one of my photographers, she said, I've got to get a new camera,
and I'm going to get 4K. So even the guys in the field now are saying, you know what? To future proof myself I need to next upgrade
to 4K. So that kind of tells me they're
buying into it. So I think it's going to
happen.
Leo: Yeah. Look at that Apple 5K display. Have you played with that?
Jason: I look at that
every day.
Leo: You have one.
Jason: I have
one. That's my main system. It's beautiful. Although it's a laugh when
you look at 1080 video content on it, because it's like little tiny.
Leo: But I think
that's an example where Apple has moved consumer expectations forward with
Retina and now with this people are starting to see a higher quality
displays. The phones have gone
crazy. Most phones now are QHT. They're 2560 by 2h40. On a 5 and a half-inch device, do you really
need all those dots? Ironically, Apple
is being left behind by the high res displays. Another big item on sale for black Friday, solid-state
storage prices. This is from
Forbes. But what's interesting is I
don't think this is going to be Black Friday only. I think this is a general trend towards lower
prices in SSDs.
Harry: Even big ones,
like a terabyte.
Leo: Which is great. Here's the 840 Eva, which is now being replaced. Samsung's latest Eva was the 850, but 120
gigs for $65? Terabyte
drive. We're talking 35 cents a
gigabyte. That is a big drop from what
they were costing.
Harry: And it's no
longer, you don't have to choose between a lot of capacity with a real harddrive or a small amount of really good capacity with
solid stain. You can get a
terabyte.
Leo: I asked Allyn Melvantano, who is our SST expert, when he was here on
TWIT. He scared me. He revealed that he was an NSA consultant on
that show, and I went, "what?"
Jason: They're going
to have to whack him now. You're not
supposed to admit that.
Leo: He's also an
expert on SSDs for writing for PC perspective at PC.com. He says the 850 is a very good choice if
you're looking for an SSD. He likes the
Samsung. Evo series.
Jason: I'm completely
spoiled now for storage because I was at MacBook care for long enough when I
bought this iMac, there was no doubt it was going to be all SSD. I can't stand the slowness of storage, of harddrives, and I know there's a spinning disc in there and
it's inevitably going to fail, and I just can't do it anymore. It's so much faster to use SSDs.
Leo: And I think if
those of use who are worried that SSDs wouldn't last
as long as spinning drives now we can put our fears to rest. They've been out for long time now. They seem just as reliable if not more.
Jason: They have
certain reliability issues with using SSD's too. They're kind of different issues from the harddrives. But they
don't seem to have that fundamental lack of reliability that we know. They have an aging problem, but it's not like
with a spinning disc where you know it's going to die. There's no doubt about it. It's going to die.
Harry: I would not
keep my only copy of something really important on an SSD. You shouldn't have an only copy of
anything. You should have two or three,
and some of them should not be stored at your home.
Leo: We're going to
take a break. Come back with more. We're having fun. Great panel. I feel like this is some of my—we're having a
great holiday party. Some of my favorite
people, and they took the wine away. But
I thank you. I don't know if that was a
commentary on my performance or what, but they've taken the wine away. Becky Morley brought some PR company
wine.
Becky: PR company wine
for your birthday, and it's fabulous.
Leo: You know, it's the sweetest wine. PR WINE.
Becky: Thank you Max Borge's agency.
Leo: Oh, I know
them!
Becky: They're real,
right? They didn't send us poison.
Leo: It's good. It's a Paso Robles cab, right? From down the coast. Coastline. 2012 cab. And yes, we recommend it. Do you
want the bottle, Max, so you can put it on the wall with all your other PR
gifts?
Becky: No. I'm not allowed to have glass in the house.
Leo: Really? Is it the twins?
Becky: It has gone to
a very plasticated world
with small children.
Leo: One of the ways
we childproof is no wine bottles. Thank
you very much, John, our show today brought to you by IFIXIT. You guys know about IFIXIT. In fact, one of the things that probably
IFIXIT is best known for is their teardowns when new hard work comes out, they
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Becky: I was wondering
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Leo: Yeah.
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Leo: They go to New
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one for me.
Leo: Yeah. One for me, one for me. This is the pro-tech tool kit. 70 tools. This is such a great gift. Especially with the 54 bit
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there's even a triangle bit, which fixes McDonalds toys.
Becky: I need that,
because I'm still using my screensaver as giveaway screwdriver kit. Do you remember that? See I need that.
Leo: But do you
ever, your kids don't eat Happy Meals, do they?
Becky: Well, you
know. My Mom has them right now. They might be eating a Happy Meal as we Speak.
Leo: You might need
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going to like it whether he's fixing iGlasses or
she's repairing cabinet doors and sink fixtures.
Becky: Plus it has tweezers, I mean like you said, I don't
age. I have aged because I need those
tweezers. Chin hairs I'm telling
you. Amongst other things.
Leo: Chin hair. I think that's not what IFIXIT contemplated,
but—
Becky: Hey. It's multi-purposed.
Leo: It works. It's multi—they don't tell you what you can
and can't do. That's 64.95. But I'm going to tell you how you can save
and then let's show you this too, which I really love. You should get both together if you're
shopping for a gift. This is the
magnetic project mat, and this is what we always wanted before. This is a magnet. Screws go on there, and they stay so you can
label each quadrant with what are those— that's a K screw, that one’s on the
left, that one's on the right. It comes
with a dry erase marker. This is
dry-erase. It's a lovely gift stocking
stuffer. Highly recommend it. And, you can get these, here's the dry erase
marker. Look at that. And I can erase, or I can— Get these right
now at ifixit.com and save when you go to ifixit.com/twit, they've got some
great Black Friday deals, including the pro-tech tool kit, the magnet Mac
bundle. Together at
last. 59.95. If you buy it before Tuesday at
midnight pacific time. But you can even
save more, because 10 dollars off any purchase of 50 dollars or more when you
use the offer code TWIT. ifixit.com/twit. That's a Black Friday deal. That's for the real geek in your life. ifixit.com/twit. Use the offer code TWIT to take 10 dollars
off any purchase just over 50 dollars or more. Let's see. Where should we go
here?
Becky: You're the
boss.
Leo: What do you
like? I have a whole lineup of fabulous
stories. We were talking on Tuesday with
Steve Gibson about this new virus. Regin. We say Regin because it is; it uses the registry to hide itself on
the system. But what Steve pointed
immediately is this was not written by your everyday hacker. This was written by somebody with lots of
resources at their command. Very sophisticated. Symantec says that they have seen traces of this since 2008. So this is very much like Stuxnet or Flame. These are viruses that are
created by governments to be used against other governments. Symantec said they don't have the
dropper. That is the very clever little
bit of code that gets on the system whether through a targeted e-mail, USB key,
a variety of ways. It then downloads
encrypted pieces, decrypts them, and deletes itself. These are root kits, so no one will ever see
that this has been installed, and this stuff is very impressive. Very well written. Glen Greenwall at
the Intercept said that it is a part of a decade long joint operation from our
own NSA, and its British counterpart, the Government Communication Headquarters
or GCHQ, and that's been based on disclosures from Edward Snowden. Symantec and the world of
malware threats. Only a few rare
examples can truly be considered groundbreaking and almost peerless. What we have seen in Regin is just such a class of Malware. There's
some credence to what Glen Greenwald said, because of the countries they've
found Regin in, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, India, Mexico, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria, not one infection
has been found in the US or England. That might be one little clue that we're where it came from. What's interesting is it's goes in, in fact if you look in; I should load the Symantec PDF because they
have lots of graphs and information. But
if you load the PDF, you'll see a pie chart of the industries that it infects,
and it's Telecom, it's airline reservations, it's
hotel reservations, it's exactly the kind of thing Saul would use to spear fish
a Company and get information about people. How do you guys, what do you feel—let's assume the US and perhaps
Britain wrote this and has applied it in Cyber Warfare. It seems to me that's better than shooting people.
Becky: Well, can I ask
this question in reverse? So let's look
at steksnet. Here's something that's exploiting skater systems, which were generally
unsecured, going after nuclear environments, how do you feel about that now
that we know everything about what they were doing? As opposed to presupposing that we don't know
why they would do this, let's reverse engineer it and say, here's a case where we do know what they were doing. How do you feel about that?
Leo: Bravo. They shut down the Iran nuclear enrichment
facility by over spinning the centrifuges. Not a shot was fired. No one was
killed, but I think a serious threat was avoided. The argument on the other side was, but if we
start doing it to them, it'll escalate. They'll start doing it to us.
Becky: Oh, they
already are.
Harry: They're going
to do it, no matter what.
Leo: It's not like
they need permission. So it's OK to do
this?
Becky: Do we have a
choice?
Jason: It's hard to
put a value judgment on it when this is one of the—I mean, it's not a hot war;
this is spy stuff, right? Spy stuff like
this has been going on, and what I don't like about it is that you end up with
a lot of people's individual computers getting compromised when their
collateral damage for a larger story that's happening here. But this is a front in an information
battle. A cold war, it's a spy novel
written largely on our hard drives.
Becky: And you make a
good point is that if the source code goes into the wild, and then it's amended
by someone who is less sophisticated and more nefarious, then you have the
power of inter-governmental spy agencies working against individuals, and that
seems like it's a problem.
Leo: That would be
bad. And that is what happened with Stuxnet. It did leek
into the wild. It looks as if great
pains have been taken with Regin to avoid that. So for instance, the modules are encrypted
and can only, so you can't examine the source code. The dropper, which is Symantec, put a nice
little Trojan Horse icon next to it so you understand
that's essentially a Trojan horse that sneaks into your system via e-mail and deletes
itself as soon as its job is done. It
loads in and actually crypts the next stage and the next stage and the next
stage, and it's very hard to get any of these
pieces. In fact, Symantec says we don't
have a copy of the dropper. We can't
find one. So that means the bad guys
probably are having a hard time too. It's also highly targeted. It's a
spear fishing attack; it's not just spread out in the wild.
Harry: Basically the
stuff is not any more moral or immoral than any other form of spying inherently. The NSA does stuff on all fronts, cyber and
non-cyber, that we'd be very uncomfortable with. We've learned about a lot of stuff we're
uncomfortable with.
Leo: It hasn't been
used against anybody in the US so far. What if they started, they attacked US airlines? Or US Rental Car
facilities? US
hospitality industry? Would we
then have problems?
Jason: Well, there's
the larger issue of your spy agencies, your intelligence agencies are meant to
be spying on other countries, not on your own people, and that's a different
issue. That's like if James Bond was
sent to assassinate a member of Parliament, not to
make this too ridiculous, but spying is supposed to be on the outside, not on
the inside. Most of the controversy
about the NSA spying on American citizens or people living in the United
States, that's what is controversial, not that spying happens.
Leo: I've got to
tell you though, that particularly US centric point of view is not welcome by a
lot of the people around the world who say, "yes, finally. Invade privacy as long as you're not a US
resident."
Jason: It's just a
different argument. There are they
allies who are being spied on. Angela
Merkel was not happy that we were tapping her phone calls because she's an
ally. I imagine the Chinese government
and the Russian government probably expected that is attempted on them and
they're probably not surprised when that happens, but these are all different
issues, but I think the reality is we live in a world where all of these devices
are connected on the Internet, and many of them have huge security flaws, and
of course they're going to be exploited by spies and criminals and that's the
world we live in. That's the 21st
century.
Leo: There is collateral
damage, and maybe with this next story is some of that collateral damage, one
of the things that happens is around the world, US
industry gets penalized or is less welcome, and the European Union has
voted. European parliament has voted to
break up Google.
Jason: Finally.
Leo: I have a
feeling that some of this of course is the way they treat privacy in Europe
where they have a right to be forgotten and all sorts of things that break the
Internet fundamentally. But I have to
think that some of it also comes from the knowledge that the US is doing some
of this spying.
Becky: Not to be
trusted.
Leo: Not to be
trusted.
Becky: Well, I think
there's a separation here between Government and Industry. Google definitely feels omnipresent if not
omnipotent in many ways.
Leo: Well you can't
just search the Internet if you just say, "but only in the US."
Becky: Ok. So let's break this down. So here's my question to you guys. So Google provides a service, which is
search. But their business is ads. If you think about it, search is just their
marketing. So why are those two things
in conflict as anti-competitive. As being monopolistic? I'm playing devil's advocate. Explain that to me.
Leo: Well I think
part of the—that's exactly what this legislator is saying is that Google is in
some of the businesses that it searches over, and I've always been bothered by
the fact that Google is a content company with YouTube and there's always the
threat, I don't think it happens, but there's always the threat that Google
search engine would favor its own content over my content for instance. I don't think that happens. Or do you?
Harry: Well, they
certainly wave YouTube into resolve in a way they don't do with some other—
Leo: But they would
make the argument that's because YouTube is very popular.
Harry: Which is true.
Leo: If you could
keep the search engine completely agnostic and Google is also bought ITA which
does airline schedule, and you're going to see now when you do Google searches
for flight information, right?
Becky: So if you were
breaking this up, you would say there's search and ads which can live together,
and then every other Google property should be a separate entity?
Becky: Look, Leo. It's all about you. You are controlling. You're not libertarian. You're not a liberal.
Leo: The United
States government did say, "We think this is a terrible idea." But you know, when you said it, you were
right in the sense that Google is in a lot of businesses that cross, that are
crossing to the content side, and that their search engine could in fact competitively
support those businesses. Now when we've mentioned it in the past, our chat
room was quick to say, but that's business.
Jason: Yeah, the
always, the warning sign, and this is what Microsoft ran into in the 90's, is
if you're using your monopoly power in one area in order to extend power over
other areas. When you're putting other
people out of business because of your power in your Monopoly—
Leo: What if Google
put TWIT out of business because every time you searched for a view of an
electronics product it showed its own stuff?
Jason: Well, that
would be the, if they were promoting their own stuff and using their monopoly
power to make you not exist because you're one of their competitors.
Becky: Don't we have enough
data to say they're not?
Leo: You know, it's
always been debated whether Google—
Jason: We have data on
how Google works. I don't think they
like to talk about that.
Leo: We don't
know. Google says, "we don't favor our own content, and in fact, you'll see Vimeo results." The problem is YouTube is much more popular than Vimeo. So you're going to see more YouTube results
when you search for a video.
Harry: But Google also
spent a lot of time waving Google Plus into all of its services when Google
Plus was brand new, and they didn't have the argument that this is already much
more popular than the competition.
Leo: So is the
European parliament right? Should Google
be broken up? I actually might vote for
that.
Becky: Well how'd that work out with Microsoft?
Leo: It didn't. But the good news is that Microsoft did the
same thing by destroying it's own monopoly.
Becky: Right, but that
was just market force.
Leo: And the Cloud.
Becky: And I think the
same thing could be said for Google Plus, right? Market forces showed that that didn't really
pan out so great.
Harry: The cool thing
about search engine, unlike operating systems is that any consumer at any time
can switch with very little effort. Unfortunately, I wish we did have three or four other search engines
that were as good as Google and a fraction as successful. All we have is Bing and Yahoo, which is a
front for Bing, and the only reason we have Bing is because Microsoft can
afford to lose lots of money on search.
Leo: They have. Hundreds of millions of
dollars every year.
Harry: That is what
worries me. The thing about Google's
dominance is that while Bing is OK, we don't have thriving competition. We have Duck Duck Go, which is actually quite good, and run by a few people.
Leo: But isn't that
just riding on Google's back? Isn't it
Google's results that they're delivering? They don't have their own search engine. Actually, they do, but is it mature? Is it actually working? For a long time, Duck Duck Go was just repackaging other search results.
Harry: They've done a
lot more, and they're surprisingly good for a tiny tiny company.
Leo: Good. Let's promote Duck Duck Go.
Harry: But it's not
like AT&T and Verizon where both AT&T and Verizon would be if the other
didn't exist. And it would not stun me
if one day Microsoft comes to the conclusion that it is just not worth
investing in Bing as much as they do and if, when that day happens, I really do
worry about Google's dominance.
Becky: Well Google has 95% market share in Europe and only 70
in the US, so you can see why this is a particularly European problem as well.
Leo: By the way, a
little blow against Google and for Bing, Firefox, which had a deal with Google
to be the primary search engine in the Firefox browser for many years, made
hundreds of millions of dollars a year on that, we think, in fact it was
probably the deal that kept Firefox and the Mozilla organization alive has made
a five year deal with Yahoo, which is really weird, because Yahoo is just re-wrapped
Bing, so I don't understand that at all. But Firefox browser, now by default, will now use Yahoo Bing, but you
could reset it if you wished. And there
is word that Apple will probably do something similar next year.
Becky: Not to, first
of all, I have to disclose I work for Yahoo, but if you talk about a conflict
in terms of search and content, Yahoo has got content issues way bigger than
Google in terms of their overall business model. Google is not making the lion's share—
Leo: But if I search
yahoo.com for Leo Laporte, am I getting results for
Bing? Aren't I?
Becky: I think
so. Let me look on Bing and see if
they're the same.
Leo: Is it brand
Bing?
Jason: Although that's
a conflict of interest if they're not in the Monopoly position, right?
Leo: They're powered, right there it says at the bottom. Powered by Bing. So these results are not Yahoo doesn't have a
search engine any more. These results
are now, although Yahoo does have some ads in there.
Jason: And I think
they can change the weighting and things on it, but they're using the Bing
search engine and they're weighting it on—
Harry: I think they
can't really just mess around with the order too much. I think part of why Yahoo did the deal with
Mozilla is if Marissa Mayer had been CEO of Yahoo when the deal with Bing
happened, that deal wouldn't have happened because it really, it was Yahoo
giving away something really important. I think today's Yahoo was much more interested in search as being
important than the Yahoo that did that deal was a few years ago.
Becky: Is Yahoo going
to make it?
Leo: You know—
Becky: Do you
sometimes wonder that?
Leo: Marissa Mayer,
the quarterly results were kind of flat, right? But it did look like Yahoo might be a little bit turning the corner,
especially on mobile, right? That was
about a month ago that those were announced. Are you worried for your job?
Becky: I'm just
curious with what the tech minds of the world are thinking.
Leo: How could Yahoo
not make it? What is making it? Will they survive as a company, or will they
become another Google?
Jason: I think a bunch
of people talking about tech on a podcast is both the wrong people and the
wrong audience to judge whether Yahoo will make it or not. I keep likening, remember when David Pogue
got up at CES and announced Yahoo tech and all of the tech bloggers made snide comments about how ridiculous the whole thing
was? Those guys are speaking to the
super techie audience that we're speaking to. And Yahoo, and I don't mean this as an insult; Yahoo was more like a
newspaper. Yahoo is reaching a really
different audience. These aren't people
who are super into tech or super into other specific topics. They're, it's an
older audience, it's a less technically savvy audience, and there is a lot of
traffic that still goes to Yahoo, but it's not the people that we're used to
talking to so it's really easy for us to put them down when if you start
thinking of it as something like a newspaper where's there's just general
interest. There's a lot of traffic that
isn't interested in anything in particular. Yahoo has that power, so we might not get excited about it, but it
doesn't mean there isn't a place for it in the Internet somewhere.
Becky: I wonder if it
was like this at times working at Yahoo is like standing next to a
lighthouse. It's dark for most of the
time, and then when the light shines on you it's blinding.
Leo: It's a big
company.
Jason: I'm talking to
people who work at Yahoo tech. That's
what I hear is you get featured on the Yahoo homepage, that fire hose comes at
you and it is a massive amount of traffic, but that's a little bit like to use
my newspaper analogy, it's like writing about tech in the business section of
the newspaper. People aren't buying the
newspaper for the tech column, but it's in there and they might read it. But it's not, it's part of the much bigger package.
Becky: And they've
gone with the magazine format, which is speaking to a different crew and a
different audience.
Jason: It's not for
people who read The Verge, right? It's
not the same audience.
Leo: Actually, it's
looking more and more like The Verge, and there's a lot of Verge content
now.
Jason: Well they've
also got all the content deals. But that
again feels like newspaper thing. It's a
syndication thing where they've got content deals with almost everybody.
Leo: I think my
biggest problem with this format is it's hard to tell the ads from the
content.
Becky: Oh, they're
succeeding.
Jason: Some people
consider that a feature, Leo.
Leo: I mean the ads
look exactly the same. This is a
Princess Cruise Line ad next to four ways to take better care of your laptop
battery. It does say sponsored, but that
tile looks pretty much the same, and as you scan through this, unless you look
carefully to see which is sponsored and which isn't, you're going to see quite
a bit of dollar shave club sponsor stuff. I think that's of course what they're trying to do. It's funny. Because you know, Becky for years at tech TV, I fought the fight for
high geek content. And I always felt
like if you— and maybe, I guess my question is have times changed? Maybe in those days I really felt like you
made a mistake by saying I'm going to do, and everybody did it. Tech content for non-geeks. Nobody cares if they're not a geek. The people who care the most about tech
content are enthusiasts. So make your
content aimed at the people who care the most about your content. Enthusiasts, it's like, at the time I would
say, it's like ESPN doing a show about football for people who don't like
football, so here's the rules. You have
to make ten yards every— nobody would watch it, because the enthusiasts would
go, "well that's stupid." And
if you're not an enthusiast, you're not going to watch it anyway.
Becky: Are you
broadcasting, or are you narrowcasting? And that's where you made your call.
Leo: I've done very
well as a result and tech TV went away because tech TV decided to be broader,
but maybe times have changed. I think
that's what David Pogue is arguing that there everybody uses technology now and
everybody wants to know about technology so there is a market for content about
technology that is not aimed at enthusiasts.
Becky: 10% of the
population used to consume 80% of the content around technology. That used to be the metric. Now it's changed, but in a different way than
we expected. Instead of everybody
wanting to go to the Verge, the vertical of technology is basically Consumer
Reporting. So there's no distinction.
Leo: That's what you
do.
Becky: That's—
Leo: For a
mainstream audience.
Becky: I'll cover
phones and make up and parenting and food, and it's all the same.
Jason: It's not that
there aren't people who are enthusiastic about subjects, it's that right now the Internet doesn't have a lot of places for people who
aren't super into that topic. Who are
mildly interested in technology but aren't going to read a website about
technology every day, what are they going to do? And I feel like sometimes that's what Yahoo
is trying to do. I don't know whether it
will succeed at it, but I do think that is a missing piece of the web right
now.
Leo: On the radio
show, which is the most universal thing I do, and probably the largest
audience, I never attempt to dumb it down. If somebody calls up and says, "My router, I'm pinging my router
but I'm not seeing the pings back, and I'm wondering if I have a DNS
problem," I will answer that question. Whereas I just feel like that's the right way to go. I could very well be a dinosaur in this. The Verge, look at the Verge. The Verge barely even wants to talk about
tech any more. The Verge—
Jason: I don't know
about that.
Leo: The Verge,
even—
Jason: There's an awful lot of reviews of Android phones on The
Verge for it— That is what they want to do. There's no doubt about it.
Leo: Hey says they
want to do content geeks would be interested, but it's not specifically geeky
content.
Becky: That sounds so
vaguely familiar.
Leo: Yeah. I feel like that's a death note, but I don't know.
Harry: I've read, I
recently dumped my Comcast modem and went out and bought one and installed it
myself. I did that after reading a story
on Yahoo Tech. The thing I like about
Yahoo's tech coverage is it's an attempt to do stuff for a general audience,
but to do it well. There's quite a bit
of general audience tech content out there that's not so great.
Becky: I think Rafe wrote that article, and it was about an everyday
common experience of someone who isn't necessarily an enthusiast, but is like,
I'm going to do that.
Harry: It's actually a
bit of a challenge to do it. It's
knocked them down; it's assuming that the reader is going to devote some time
to this.
Leo: That may be the
future, actually.
Becky: It's hard to—
Leo: We've got you, Harry. You're the biggest geek I know.
Harry: In the long
run, talking up always does better for you than talking down.
Leo: 10 Terrible
Tech Annoyances that should be illegal. Number one. Microsoft pre-roll ads in your video. I'm sorry. I don't think that was the intent, but that's one of the
annoyances. CAPTCHAs shall be
banned. I agree. This is Rafe Needleman. CAPTCHAs do nothing. They don't slow anybody down. They only slow real people down. That's the problem. They don't slow the bad guys down.
Becky: If you're over
40 and your eyes have done that thing where they fall apart at 41 and a half,
you can't do a CAPTCHA.
Jason: I tried to put
a Microsoft license code in the other day, and I had to do it like ten times, I
had to take my glasses off and hold it right up to my face, and it's like this
was made so no one could read it.
Leo: What really
irks me is that porn sites are starting to use it, and I'm going blind—
Becky: From what? Why?
Jason: Doubly so.
Becky: See what just happened? See? Your mother was right.
Leo: CAPTCHAs are
crazy, and the point being that, Steve Gibson has pointed this out many times,
bad guys actually set up bogus sites with CAPTCHAs, often porn sites, and they
take the capture from the real site, they put it on the bogus site, and so many
people just solve the CAPTCHA.
Becky: That's
genius. That's so smart.
Leo: The problem is
real users aren't. So the CAPTCHA foil,
as with all of this stuff, foils normal people more than—
Becky: This show is
going off the rail now.
Leo: I think it's a
good time to take a break. We're going
to do that in— Actually this would be a good time to see what you missed if you
didn't watch every second of what happened This Week on Twit. Take a look.
PREVIOUSLY ON TWIT
Rene Ritchie: It's better to look good than to feel good.
Woman: Do you
ever just look at us and think what's happened?
TECH NEWS 2TONIGHT
SARAH LANE: Last
week, Mozilla ditched Google for Yahoo. Now sources tell the information that Yahoo and Microsoft are separately
pitching Apple with the Safari business.
SECURITY NOW
Steve Gibson: You have an entirely different class of malware. It gives me as a developer goose bumps. It is clearly the
work of somebody with extensive resources. This is explicitly targeted.
TRIANGULATION
Leo: We're talking
about super smart things. Super intelligence.
Nick Bostrom: I think there is no necessary connection
between how intelligent you are and what goals you are. Conceivable you have a super intelligence
that's only goal in life is to make paper clips, a world where there are as
many paper clips as possible is a world where there are no human bodies.
Leo: That's kind of
where we lose out. Because
we're just getting in the way of the paper clips.
TWIT: IT'S
WHAT'S FOR DINNER.
Sarah: I'm
stuffing you into an oven later.
Leo: Actually, that
was a very interesting interview on Monday with Nick Bostrom. He is one of the few foremost researchers on
these new smart machines and the idea that machines at some point, super
intelligence may at some point emerge. And as you heard, he pointed out just because they're super smart
doesn't mean they share our values. They
may just really want to make a lot of paper clips, so now is the time to plan
for the future. A
great book, super intelligence. We've got a brand new sponsor, speaking of super intelligence, I want to welcome OSCAR to our show. If
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844-OSCAR-25. We are back to the
news. Google is being asked to extend
the right to be forgotten worldwide. This is another one of them European things, and it makes sense. You can't do the right to be forgotten and
somebody can just say I'm going to go to google.com and find it. But really, this to me is a problem. This
will break the internet, or it will break Google, which as far as I'm concerned
breaks the Internet, because if you cannot, if you can request that information
be taken down from every Google server, basically one country's laws are
enforced globally, and I think that's a problem.
Becky: It can be a
good or a bad.
Leo: Well, there's some things I would like to be forgotten. As Jeff Jarvis points out on This Week in
Google, Germany is like a country that really should not be promoting the idea
that we want to forget our history, and I think he's right. In fact, that's very much part of the modern
German ethos is let's not bury the past, right? Unless it's a Google
search.
Becky: How old is
Henry now?
Leo: He's 19.
Becky: Well I was just
wondering is kids who are probably 26, 27, they grew
up with the Internet to be embarrassed, how are they handling it? What are they doing?
Leo: I think that
whether you inhaled or not is not going to be important in the future. Whether you went to a part and wore a funny
hat and got wasted and then put it on Facebook, we all did.
Becky: And that's the
thing. All those scary stories about
Teacher fired for photo of her holding red solo cup.
Leo: That's old
fashioned.
Becky: Right. It's the issue of is that anonymity going to
be an issue? I think it's a little bit classist, because right now the only way to get forgotten is to
bury yourself with the reputation.com approach, to bury yourself in stuff.
Leo: And you have to
pay them thousands of dollars a month, and they
basically make fake articles and fill the internet with fake stuff in your name
hoping to bury the other stuff.
Leo: Did it work?
Becky: It did, because
he was early enough in the process that it was still cat and mouse and he got
ahead of their algorithm.
Leo: Share it with
the world. What was he trying to hide?
Becky: Can't do
it. Wouldn't be
prudent.
Leo: I've got a few
things I'd like to hide. You know who
would like to hide some stuff? Uber.
Becky: I deleted.
Leo: You did? Ok. Did you delete?
Jason: I don't think I
have it installed, because I've only used it two times.
Leo: I've used it
twice, it was in France. We don't have
it where we are. I think we do now. Do we have Uber up
here?
Becky: You have Uber everywhere.
Leo: They have to
drive up from San Francisco. You're not
going to get a ride right away.
Jason: We had a guest
in All About Android that got one in Sanoma County.
Leo: So now I don't
have that excuse anymore.
Jason: The good news
is that Lyft has announced that the fist bump is no
longer mandatory, they already de-emphasized the pink mustache, and they're
saying—
Leo: You had to give
the driver a fist bump?
Jason: The driver was
going to ask you for a fist bump. So
basically Lyft—
Leo: That's a reason
not to drive in Lyft right there. And the pink mustache—
Jason: The pink
mustache was enough for me to be like forget these guys, they're jokers. They're trying very hard to get away from
that because they sense an opening now.
Leo: Do you think
the world knows about this whole Uber Kerfuffle?
Becky: It went
big. It was just bad behavior.
Leo: It's terrible
behavior. But is there a general feeling
among regular people of I'm not going to use Uber because I don't want to support the company, I'm afraid of using Uber, that kind of thing?
Becky: Number two.
Leo: Number
two? They feel it's not safe.
Becky: Afraid because of
tracking, afraid because of bad behavior, afraid because of the walk of shame
aspect of it that they were promoting. That
was kind of creepy that they had data on you went some place at 2AM and then
you left at 7 AM and they had some sort of, that kind of such, that kind of
data collecting and filtering is creepy. Not to mention their problem with women and all their other issues. The Sarah Lacey thing that
came out. They bombed. They got way too big in their own minds.
Leo: Didn't Uber censure the New York executive that used tracking to—?
Harry: They took
disciplinary action of some sort.
Leo: They don't say
what it was though, do they?
Harry: No.
Jason: Don't say
stupid stuff anymore.
Harry: Emanuel
Michael, who got in trouble—
Leo: He hasn't had
any penalty.
Harry: No. As far as we know at least.
Jason: I don't think
us getting upset about Uber is going to make a huge
difference, but I think there is this perception of them that used to be more
positive, that is going to be reflected in future coverage of them. There was the sense that they were the one
hope fighting against entrenched taxi companies, and now everybody is taking a
step back and saying, "are they too big? Should we be looking at alternatives to Uber as well?" Are we giving them too
much credit? So I do think this will
have a long-term impact on them of some sort. I
don’t think it’s like everybody’s going to delete Uber off their phones tomorrow and it’s all over for them. But I do think they don’t
have the halo around them. And people that cover them are not as predisposed
maybe to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because they’ve
done too many things that are so jerky to get away with.
Becky: So here’s a quick lightening round. Tech CEO, bad behavior. So
one that comes to mind is Mark Pincus talking about
all of the crushing competition. And how he was just trying to steal people’s
money who was using his dumb games. That’s one that
comes to mine.
Leo: What ever happened to Zynga?
Becky: Harry, anything you can think of? Jason? Tech CEO bad behavior that really
impacted…
Leo: There was one CEO that…
Jason: Mark Hurd spied on journalist and…
Leo: Pretexting and got in trouble.
Jason: He got fired.
Harry: He didn’t get fired for spreading that journalist. He got fired for supposedly
messing with expense reports. That was pre-Hurd though.
Leo: He is Larry Ellison’s successor at Oracle. So he landed on his feet.
Becky: That didn’t go so badly.
Harry: Mark Zuckerberg used to get in trouble regularly and people said I’m going to
quit Facebook over this. And oddly enough, Facebook’s membership just grew and
grew.
Leo: It’s more startup CEO bad behavior that you’re talking about.
Becky: It’s just interesting.
Jason: I think the problem is when the CEO’s behavior is mirrored in the behavior of
going down the chain. And it’s a corporate culture issue. Because then you
start getting a weird feeling. Maybe if it’s a company that makes your software
and it’s software that you use. And you can brush it off, I’ve heard from
people who think you’re putting your life in their hands in a way by signing up
for the service and getting in a car with their drivers. And whether it’s
realistic or not, there’s this feeling like there’s a partnership and a trust
level there. So to have a culture issue with a company that you feel like
you’re putting some trust in, that is a problem.
Becky: Nailed it. I think Uber has a barrier to entry with
normal people. Which is I’m using my phone to call someone to request
information of someone who’s not been vetted by anyone.
Leo: Once you use Uber and you then go back to riding a
taxi… which we did this weekend in San Francisco because Lisa would not use Uber; it was a horrible experience! I don’t like… you think
taxis are better than Uber?
Jason: No, it’s a different feeling.
Leo: I think once people experience Uber, they want that
friction-free experience. They don’t want the fist bump. But they certainly like the idea of pressing a button and knowing when
their car is going to arrive. Getting in that nice clean car, the driver is
nice. You can rate the driver so if the driver is a jerk, they’re out of
business. He can rate you. If you’re a jerk, you’re out of business. And you
don’t have to pay him. You just get out of the car after you get a ride.
Becky: You said once you try.
Leo: You think people won’t try it now because of this?
Becky: There’s a social contract with a taxi that is hundreds of years old. And well-established. And so breaking that involves to engage in a new social contract with a company that has
suddenly gotten shaky in their morals. I think it’s a barrier to entry times
two.
Harry: I think Uber makes for an interesting contrast with Airbnb which has erupted so hard to make this warm, fuzzy
image that they’re making the world a better place by introducing strangers to
each other. And Uber up until a couple weeks ago was
almost glorying and having to embrace of unpleasant, sassy culture. And I think
that is probably over.
Leo: But isn’t it the case if you’re a startup, especially a startup like Uber, that is fighting against a deeply entrenched incumbent
like the taxi commissions of the world. They were just banned in the state of
Nevada and in Toronto.
Harry: Uber has to be pushing unpleasant on some level.
Jason: Absolutely.
Leo: They had to have that scrappy mentality of yea, it’s
David versus the Goliath. We’re David.
Harry: But Airbnb…
Leo: Now it’s a $40B David.
Harry: Airbnb has some of those same challenges because
they’re fighting the hotel industry. And they’ve managed to do that.
Leo: Do you think that’s conscious?
Harry: Oh absolutely.
Leo: Where they’re the anti-Uber. Although we just learned
that 19 people make the blind share of money from Airbnb.
These are the big businesses that have become Airbnb business. 19 individuals make more than half of all the money, wasn’t that it
at Airbnb? So maybe they’re not the scrappy little
guy either. Maybe that’s a myth around the company. It ain’t bringing people together, it’s created a new form of
entrepreneurship.
Harry: It’s very conscious on their part. It’s a brand they’ve created but it’s
working for them.
Becky: Give me your wrist.
Leo: Uh oh. Are you going to electrocute me?
Becky: I am. I brought this for you.
Leo: We talked about this on the show. Becky Worley does these reviews for Good
Morning America. And this was what, smartwatches?
Becky: Yea, and this one I did a little bit on GMA and a little bit on Yahoo. So let’s
imagine that you have a Fitbit or a… this is the Pavlock that’s on.
Leo: It’s a fitness band?
Becky: It could be a fitness band. But it’s a motivational tool. So let’s just work
with it on the fitness band. Let’s say you told your Fitbit or whatever that
you want to do 10,000 steps a day by 4:30 in the afternoon. Well if you don’t
do it by 4:30, it does this. Nothing?
Leo: Nothing!
Becky: Oh I got to do it faster. Hold on.
Harry: Just cry in pain.
Leo: Ahh!
Harry: There you go.
When my mom gave me my…
Becky: That hurt, right?
Leo: That’s terrible! That is terrible! You shocked me! It’s like a bad static
shock. You know when you touch the dog’s nose after you walk on the carpet?
It’s on that order.
Becky: It’s 220.
Leo: It’s 220, but it’s brief. And you are brave to have done that. I didn’t know
what I was getting into. So I don’t get any credit for being brave but that
hurt.
Becky: I know.
Leo: It didn’t hurt like a Taser. You want to try it?
Jason: No way.
Leo: By the way I love it that Becky does this. And you were right it was Yahoo, not
GMA. We actually reviewed this.
Becky: It hurts!
Leo: But you’re a tough person. You’re a mom, you’re a rugby player. How many knee
operations have you had?
Becky: I’ve had six knee surgeries, 15 broken bones, and I gave birth to twins. And it
hurt.
Leo: And this little watch. Do you want to try it, Jeff?
Come here, Jeff. Jeff will try it. We love Jeff; he will try anything.
Jason: it’s like a spinal tap drummer. Anyone waiting?
Becky: It’s not only a negative reinforcement.
Leo: Now Jeff works for me so I’m going to make you do it. Because
I don’t want to get sued for some sort of harassment.
Becky: Are you nervous? You’re a little nervous. Okay, let’s make this a good contact
point. Do you feel it?
Jeff: Yea, a little.
Becky: See I’m the…
Leo: It made me jump!
Jeff: I didn’t feel it that time. I felt it the first time.
Leo: Make it tighter.
Becky: I’m so mean!
Leo: You don’t want to do this? See that would motivate me.
Jeff: It didn’t do anything.
Becky: Oh okay, did it make your hand a little bit of a contraction?
Jeff: Yea.
Becky: I won’t do it to you anymore. I can’t abuse a man in a sweet sweater like this.
Leo: He’s an Eagles fan. That’s his…
Becky: Eagles for Christmas. Okay, alright, I’m going with that. Of
just shock a person in a Christmas sweater. I’m evil. I feel so mean.
Jason: Philadelphia Eagles sweater.
Harry: I’m wearing my Pebble so I don’t have a free wrist to try.
Leo: I love the way Pavlock. Because
it’s like Pavlock’s dog. And it’s a personal
coaster on your wrist. Is it safe?
Becky: Yes, it’s very, very safe. It’s safe.
Harry: Does it have a Fitness band?
Becky: This is not yet available for purchase. He’s still well into…
Leo: But you would tie it to a smart app.
Becky: So the app, you can do multiple things. So, you can use a friend, sort of like
have you used Packed at all? It has a monetary, social and…
Leo: I think I need something that says punishment.
Becky: Yea. I need punishment. So the monetary one-and this is how Pact worked-you say
you’re going to go to the gym or did 10,000 steps. And you put $5 in, it debits it from your PayPal. If you don’t do it, it
takes it
Leo: Big deal. Shock me would do it.
Harry: Where does the $5 go?
Becky: It goes to the rest of the pool of people who are using it who do use it.
That’s how it works.
Leo: So if you do it, you get paid?
Becky: This is Pact. If you do it, you get paid. If you don’t do it, you lose the
money.
Leo: Oh. I might do that. What is it, Pact?
Becky: Pact. So this has a little bit of that built into it. Then it also has you have
to check in with a friend who then checks you in. So you have to call a friend
and say I didn’t go to the gym. And then they, you two have a deal going. So
you have to be accountable to another human.
Leo: Can your friend have control of the electroshock?
Becky: Then electroshock is the third method that it uses.
Leo: Could I give Lisa-she really wants this by the way-could I give her the
electroshock?
Becky: That’s funny because that’s not how I see your relationship going.
Leo: Oh how little you know.
Harry: You know when it’s going to shock you or is it in some random point in time so
you can’t take it off?
Becky: When I beta tested it, it’s not build that way yet.
It’s still…
Leo: It sounds like it’s very early. Now Pact is real and now.
Becky: Pact is real. I met a woman who lost 85 pounds doing that.
Leo: Gym-pact.com. And you put it on your phone, Android or iOS. Then it takes your
money or gives you money. I think this would be good for me.
Becky: And I don’t know if they have this but there are other sites that donate it to
causes you hate. So not only will they take your money but they’ll donate…
Leo: Oh wow. So they donate it to the Coke brothers or something. Then Lisa would press
that button all the time. Wow.
Becky: I think it’s interesting HCI and kind of bringing in
levels of…
Leo: I think it’s how messed up we’ve become that we can’t
bring ourselves to do anything. So now we need some outside electroshock.
Becky: So get this. The guy that made the Pavlock, the way
it started was he had some big thing he had to get done. And he was so
procrastinating on it, he put on Craigslist. He hired somebody to come slap
him.
Leo: It worked?
Becky: It worked! I don’t know if it was a gym or a project. But he hired somebody to
come slap him. It made him so nervous, the slapping, and the social interaction
around the slapping, he decided if I could just come up with something that has
a negative reinforcement. Some people need negative reinforcement.
Leo: Smart. You made a vine of this so I can watch this shock you over and over and
over.
Becky: How much fun to watch a blonde get shocked over and over?
Jason: This could be a great business for Uber to move into. Where somebody comes over with an Uber to slap you.
Leo: Forget the fist bump. We’re going to shock you. We’re
going to slug you.
Jason: Slap car.
Leo: Can I get underwear with that?
Becky: Whoa, you’re moving into a new… that’s a whole other business.
Jason: You’ve got to fill out a capture for that, Leo.
Leo: Wow.
Becky: So leave it to me. Whenever I come on TWiT, I’ve got
to do a little Gallagher. I’ve got to bring you some props.
Leo: That’s good. You know what, when I first saw this I kind of laughed as we all
did. Now I want it.
Becky: Okay well I’ll tell you why…
Leo: I don’t want that. I’m going to do the Gym Pact. I don’t really want to get
shocked a lot. I’m afraid it might stop my heart at some point.
Harry: Or start your heart.
Leo: Either one.
Becky: Look at this thing and let me put it back on your arm.
Harry: Don’t do it, Leo! It’s a trap!
Leo: I’m going to do whatever it takes not to have that thing shock you.
Becky: I’m not putting it on there. But just that feeling I felt like it was going to
work. When I thought about that thing on my arm, it made me nervous. And I
thought that’s a visceral feeling that goes beyond that sort of how we put off
the things that we really want to do by the more immediate things that…
Leo: Three-toed Sloth in our chat room says… I like his name… Three-toed Sloth in
our chat room, what did he say? Now I forgot.
Jason: Lick a 9-volt battery if you’re cheap.
Leo: He said if you’re cheap, lick a 9-volt battery. You don’t need the watch. It’s
worse than licking a 9-volt battery.
Becky: That just tastes like metal.
Leo: It will give you a tongue-tingle. This ain’t no tongue-tingle. This is like the worst static shock you’ve
ever had. Right? Would you say that?
Becky: That’s right. And I was impressed by Christmas sweater guy. He didn’t jerk
away. I couldn’t help myself.
Leo: Jeff probably doesn’t have any nerve endings. He’s worked for us too long.
Becky: Maybe there was a hair barrier.
Jeff: I have the Philly connection there also.
Leo: He’s from Philly, of course!
Jason: For him you have to throw batteries at him. Otherwise he’s fine.
Leo: He by the way has joined Gym Pact already. You know I saw Jeff get excited
about it. He’s not excited about paying the money. He knows he’s going to get
the money. And that’s all he really cares about. I’m going to get $5. I’m going
in there to get the $5. What is your resolution going to be? What are you going
to do, go to the gym every day? Three days a week.
Becky: Nice, that’s good. Tell me how it works because I’ve met people that it’s
worked for them. But I’d like to know; the more data you have. These are good
apps.
Leo: Can you make it $100? Because that would hurt.
Becky: Sure.
Leo: Yea, but what if I make it $100? You can set it for $100 if you miss a day.
That would hurt. $5 I’m going to go, it’s worth it to not go to the gym. It has
to be more than the it’s worth it number.
Harry: Can you set the amount? If you’re rich could you do $500 or whatever?
Becky: Yea.
Leo: One more thing on Uber. And I don’t know if this is
bad or not. Maybe we’ll get the panel of experts to explain. Uber’s Android app goes out-and Twitter’s going to do this
too-and looks at every app on your phone to see what you got. It looks at all
the data it can get. Now we’ve seen before and I’ve always calmed people down
when they look at the Android permissions. Because Android
requires you to request a lot of stuff. Even if you want to do one little
thing, it’s kind of got a big umbrella category. People look at it go it’s
going to make phone calls. No it’s not. It just needs to access the dialer or
whatever. But this looks like according to GironSec,
the Uber app actually calls home and sends data back
to Uber about your SMS log, your call history, your
Wi-Fi connections, your GPS locations, your device ID.
It’s a long list. Now this is the Android version.
Becky: Did you say neighbor’s Wi-Fi? That’s the one that creeped me out.
Leo: Wi-Fi neighbors. So it’s not just the Wi-Fi you’re connected to. It’s the Wi-Fi
in your vicinity. You could make the case that Uber’s trying to make a sky-hook style map, location map or something like that. But
really does this seem like… again, this seems like more bad behavior from Uber. That’s a lot of information. Battery
level, health, device info. I mean, this is a ton of stuff. This is from
the cult of Mac, Uber has
provided some clarification to the company’s data gathering. It mentions that
the blanket access is actually a requirement from Google. Access to permissions
including Wi-Fi networks and camera are included so users can experience the full
functionality of the Uber app. This is not unique to Uber and I agree with that. In fact, Recode notes that Uber competitor Lyft does the same access. So I’m unclear. It sounds like this company that GironSec that revealed this saw data of a variety of kinds
being sent. And that’s the problem. Asking for the permission is one thing;
everybody needs to do that. It’s what actually happened. We’ll just have to
see.
Jason: This is what I mean about Uber has lost some of the
benefit of a doubt in any story now. That’s something we shrugged out and like
look, it’s just another Android app permission story. It’s not that big of a
deal; it happens every other time. Now it’s sort of like oh well it’s Uber, you never know.
Leo: Well we’ll watch that one and see what happens there. Maybe they’re just doing
what everybody else is doing, which is asking for…
Jason: Which is stealing all of your personal data and using it for
unknown purposes like everybody else really.
Leo: Twitter has said it’s going to look at what apps you have.
Becky: Don’t you assume that with Olaf that you’re using… now it’s not just if you’re
using your Twitter identity to log on. They’re going to look at everything?
Jason: What they’re looking for is the URL registrations in your system so it knows
what apps have registered for URL schemes, I believe
is what they’re doing.
Becky: And Facebook does this already with all your apps.
Jason: Yea exactly.
Leo: So these are apps that you’ve logged into with Twitter and have given Twitter
permission.
Jason: No I believe you install them on your phone and the apps register for a URL
handler. It’s like on iOS, how inter-app communication happens.
Leo: This is what Twitter wrote: to help build a more personal Twitter experience
for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed
on your mobile device so it can deliver tailored content that you may be
interested in.
Jason: I think that’s the idea that if somebody posts a link to Facebook or Evernote,
or something else where there’s a URL format, if they know that you have the
app, then when you tap on the link in their app it will just open that app up
instead of… It will rewrite the URL to be an app URL if that makes any sense.
Leo: That I would understand and forgive. But they give examples including improving
suggestions on who to follow based on similar interests.
Jason: Yea, well that’s less cool, isn’t it?
Leo: Adding content to the timelines of users such as tweets in accounts that could
prove to be interesting to the user, showing you promoted content that’s more
relevant. We see you have Angry Birds installed, what you like to perhaps buy
the product red level of Angry Birds?
Becky: That’s so nice of Twitter. It’s so helpful.
Leo: You can’t opt-out.
Harry: The best thing about Twitter is I get to decide what might be relevant to me
rather than Twitter. Which makes it so different from
Facebook. So my main concern is not that they’re invading my privacy so
much, as they’re getting a little too clever. I’d rather find people to follow
myself.
Becky: It’s so great to do this show with you guys. You just boil it down so quickly.
Leo: They’re good, aren’t they?
Becky: It really tells you why they’ve been in this business for as long as they have.
You get it. You can take any story and automatically.
Leo: They’re brilliant. And you too, Becky Worley, you too. Twitter says we are only collecting a list of applications you’ve installed. So
they are collecting a list of applications you’ve installed.
Jason: Yea, so my understanding is this is happening through this URL handler registry
on iOS at least. Where apps register for URLs and you can ask to see what URL
formats have been registered. At which point you know what apps register those
URLs and you’ve got a list.
Leo: So if you don’t want this to happen, using Twitter for Android, tap the
overflow icon. Tap settings. Tap the account you’d like to adjust. Under other,
you can adjust the setting to tailor Twitter based on my apps.
Becky: So five steps to opt-out.
Leo: But you can turn it off. On iOS from the me tab… it’s
so hard to figure out what Twitter’s app is doing. Tap the gear icon, tap
settings, tap the account. Under privacy, adjust the
settings to tailor Twitter based on my apps. So there will be a new setting.
Look for it on your Twitter app on iOS and Android. And you may want to turn
off tailor Twitter based on my apps. That’s Hubertus. Isn’t it? That seems like
Hubertus. We’re just going to look at your apps to give you better people to
follow.
Becky: You can opt-out. You can always delete it.
Leo: By the way, I’m not going to use the Twitter apps. I used to use the Twitter
app. Thank God there’s still a few third-party apps like Tap Bot. Tweet Bot.
Jason: Not for long. Because all of the new features Twitter adds,
they add without an API. So more and more, on the Mac I’m using the stock
Twitter app now because I want to see…
Leo: You’re not using Tweet Bot?
Jason: No. I never really liked Tweet Bot.
Harry: I’ve reluctantly moved off Tweet Bot. For Apple and Android, I cannot make
heads or tails out of the official app.
Leo: There’s no good app on Android for Twitter.
Jason: I’m still using Twitterific on iOS. But on the
desktop on my Mac, I’m using Twitter because the notifications tab is so great.
And that information’s not available to third-parties.
Leo: Let us take a break and come back for more. Becky Worley is here from Good
Morning America and Yahoo Tech. Great to have you. Becky for many years worked with me at Tech TV. A lot of it…
Becky: Your first producer there.
Leo: A lot of it behind the scenes. You were producer for both Screensavers. And you
know Jason Snell because it was during that time when Jason came on as a MacWorld editor.
Becky: Mac Tip.
Jason: One of your producers I went to kindergarten with.
Becky: Jerry, right?
Jason: That’s right.
Leo: Jerry Rice.
Jason: No I did not go to kindergarten with Jerry Rice.
Becky: That throw you made to him?
Jason: We used to play, yea in the Columbia Middle School playground. I would throw
the Nerf football to Jerry Rice in the playground.
Leo: Was there a Tech TV reunion that I missed?
Becky: Yes! We missed you!
Leo: May 11th of next year will be the 15th anniversary of the
launch. We should do something.
Becky: Let’s do it!
Leo: I miss the 10th. And I’d like to do that.
Becky: Roger dodger.
Leo: Harry McCracken, the technologizer is also here. From
his new job at Fast Company. Nice to have you. What is
your beat at Fast Company?
Harry: I have a very vague beat, which lets me do just about anything I like to. We
call it platforms. So it’s iOS, Android; it covers Facebook, Microsoft, almost
anything that involves levels of technology. So chips, devices, operating
systems.
Leo: I think that’s almost the most interesting… you could talk specifically about Uber and Twitter. But what he’s really interested in is
ride sharing or social media. That’s where the trends are.
Harry: It lets me cover wearables and the internet of things. Because
those are all about platforms.
Leo: I’m using the Moto 360. That seems to me the best of the bunch. I’ve been
wearing the Galaxy Gear S for the last three or four days. God was that a big
clunky… honking thing.
Becky: What’d you think?
Leo: It has its own phone number!
Becky: Really?
Leo: In fact, they suggest you forward your phone to your watch. Which
seems like a bad idea.
Jason: Wow.
Leo: Yea, wow.
Jason: Don’t.
Leo: Wow is right. What do you wear, a Pebble?
Jason: I do. My battery died because my Thanksgiving guests unplugged my charger.
Leo: Son of a gun!
Jason: It lasts for a week but not longer than that.
Leo: Don’t you hate it when family comes in and tries to improve your life?
Jason: They decluttered those cables. Those cables are gone
now. So that was helpful.
Leo: We’re going to tidy up. Really. Was it a relative?
Jason: I think it was an accident and they just popped it out of the wall. It was a
sad trombone sound.
Leo: Christina came in and took all of your cords. Harry, what do you wear? Do you
wear a smartwatch?
Harry: I jump back and forth. I’m wearing a Pebble which I put on a leather band.
Pebble has gotten a lot better lately partially because of the things they’ve
done. But also stuff like the health stuff Apple has done in iOS. Now you can
use the Jawbone app with Pebble which you couldn’t do until recently.
Leo: That’s great.
Harry: Pebble was somewhat rudimentary when it came out and little by little it gets
better.
Leo: I have to go back and try it. I gave it to Chad. I like the Moto 360 and you,
you wear the Pavlock.
Becky: I have a Casio dive watch that I destroyed while surfing. I’m that bad. But I
have to go back to Tech TV and tell you this. I go surfing in Pacifica and I
always imagine Jim Louderback sitting up on his deck
watching me.
Leo: There’s Worley again, surfing.
Becky: You have him up here, every once in a while?
Leo: I haven’t had Jim in a long time. He left here Revision Three. And I think he
took some time off. But I get the feeling that he is resurfacing to do
something new.
Becky: I sense that.
Leo: Do you get that sense too? He’s up to something. That’s Louderback.
Becky: Chowder head. He’s doing something.
Leo: Chowder head is what we called him. He said you can call me Jim Lobster-back.
That’s what they did in school.
Becky: Back in Vermont.
Leo: You seem like you’d wear a runner’s watch. Like a GPS watch with…
Becky: I’ve been testing sleep devices lately. So I’ve had the Basis, I’ve had the
Jawbone Up 24. Then I’m using these other ones. I
tested out the Sleep Number bed that keeps track of your sleep. Completely through the mattress. That’s bizarre.
Leo: Really? That simplifies things.
Becky: It knows your temperature, your respiration rate, when you’re in deep, light,
or REM sleep.
Leo: Do you find that information useful in any way?
Becky: Oh I love Sleep Number.
Leo: I like looking at the information, but what do you do with it?
Becky: I’m trying to get more deep sleep. Because what I noticed is that…
Leo: Yea, but how do you get that?
Becky: Well there’s lots of little ways to hack it. So you can work out later in the
day, you can…
Leo: Oh okay. So you’re marrying it with behavioral information from the day to see
what helps you sleep better.
Becky: Exactly. And trying to figure out what makes me feel better. Do you ever have
this thing where you go to the gym, and you’re like I’m going to go run and do
whatever. And you get there, and it’s just like womp-womp.
And you just can’t do it. A lot of that is because of how you slept.
Leo: Yea. Then my watch shocked me and I…
Becky: See, then you got on it. But if you hack your sleep…
Leo: That’s what Jessica Corbin’s all about. She makes a device-you should probably
get that too-she makes a device that measures your recovery rate. Your heart rate recovery index. You look into that. It’s a
fascinating thing.
Becky: That’s the ultimate arbiter of your fitness, is how fast you recover.
Leo: Yea.
Becky: You go from like high respiration rate to low respiration rate. Some of the
wearables now days are crazy; they have these shirts that measure how much
exertion as you lift. If you think about it, a number of oh I lifted 20 or 120
pounds; that’s a number that’s meaningless unless it’s relative to your weight,
gender, strength. But exertion, the shirt measures this. And I don’t know
whether they do it in force or perceived calories. But some of these wearables are
insane that are coming out. The one that I’m waiting for that still doesn’t
exist: a device that measures your actual caloric intake.
Leo: That I want. All these watches say… but you have to enter it all in. I want
something that looks at my mouth and says good God, Leo.
Becky: I know. They have apps that use the camera.
Harry: There’s that cup that supposedly…
Jason: And the fork. There’s this fork.
Becky: A happy fork. There was a company in Toronto that said they were making a watch
that measures…
Leo: How could it watch your food?
Becky: This is what it did. It was measuring the fat soluble fat, and sugar in your
blood through your wrist pulse. What is that, your distal? Or whatever. But that turned out be vaporware
shock.
Jason: Fake.
Leo: It was like a tri-quarter?
Becky: Something like that.
Leo: Well look at this, this is Jessica’s business. Vitness RX. And it measures your recovery rate. And apparently it tells you, today you’re going to be womp-womp.
Or today you’re going to be great.
Becky: Vitness I’m going to check out.
Leo: Vitness RX, yea. Our show today brought to you not by
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Becky: My aunt in Hawaii listens to your show. She called me and said I got to back up
and Leo says use Carbonite. I’m going to do it, right? I said yep, you’re going
to do it.
Leo: Good for her. That’s awesome! Let’s see, Carly Fiorina. By the way, with the
pretexting thing was while Carly was CEO, Mark Heard was the sexual harassment
issue. Let’s get that right.
Jason: Bad run of luck there.
Leo: Then it was Leo Apotheker who said let’s split the
whole business up. And now it’s Meg Whitman and they’re going to split the
whole business up. So it’s very confusing. You think Yahoo is crazy.
Becky: HP.
Leo: But you know, HP has a big hit. The
Stream. Has anybody been talking about the Stream? This is like a
Chromebook-priced Windows laptop.
Harry: $200.
Leo: $200. It looks kind of junky for you and me. But again it’s not for you and me.
Hey, you’re using an 11-inch MacBook, right?
Jason: Yea.
Leo: They have 11. They have larger ones, too. It’s kind of cool-looking. I think
they’ve sold out, actually. During Black Friday. I
think they sold out of the 11’s. They were very aggressive. HP is going through
some tough times but a lot of people… they have an 11, a 13, and a 14-inch
Stream. And even the 14-inch is I think only $300. Yea, $299.
Becky: This is smart. Because Black Friday basically conditions consumers over time to
purchase certain things at certain times. One of the things that we’ve been
told over and over is that laptop deals on Black Friday are significant. So if
you can put a sub-$200 laptop on the table, it’s not that consumers aren’t
intelligent in doing their research. But specs are not as important as price to
certain members of lives. It’s like can I get on the internet? Can I use
Office? Good. I’m in.
Leo: Probably not something you or I would use. But I think this is HP’s response to
the Chromebook.
Harry: OH yea, it would never exist without the Chromebook.
Leo: Yea. And Carly Fiorina, former HP executive; remember she ran for governor in
California.
Becky: She spent a lot of money.
Leo: Spent a lot of money and didn’t even come close.
Harry: Meg Whitman ran for one thing.
Jason: Meg ran for governor.
Leo: What did Carly run for?
Harry: The Senate.
Leo: The Senate. Alright.
Becky: Yea.
Jason: Again, Mark Heard did not run for anything. Know your CEOs again.
Leo: So Meg Whitman ran for governor, and lost. And got HP as her
consolation prize.
Jason: Carly ran for Senate in 2010.
Leo: Yea, against Diane Feinstein. I can’t remember, or was it Barbara…
Harry: Barbara Boxer.
Leo: I think I am too old for this. Would you take over? I’m going home. I’m going
to the home.
Jason: It’s not a political show.
Becky: See here’s the thing, we were talking about podcasts and I think about it as
I’m getting… my paycheck comes from ABC and I think about all the money that is
going into TV ads. Political TV ads. So podcasting, if
it ever starts to go down, you just have to take political ads, Leo.
Leo: It keeps radio alive, single-handedly. It keeps radio alive because the radio’s
required to offer ads to political candidates of parties. And propositions, and
in California there’s so much stuff. But I think it can charge the full rack
rate.
Becky: Wow.
Leo: So they’re required to sell these ads but they don’t have to divvy into this
account. So the radio loves political ads.
Becky: I can’t bite the hand that feeds me.
Leo: We had the candidate for lieutenant governor for the great state of California.
He came into our audience and sat here during an entire TWiT.
And I knew he wasn’t a normal person because he was wearing a suit.
Becky: Was this Cash Carry?
Leo: Ron Nehring. He was the GOP candidate that did not
win.
Jason: No, he did not win.
Becky: Governor Candidate.
Leo: Yea. But nice guy. He came in and wanted to meet with
me. I think he was very confused about the TWiT army.
Jason: Do you have a plan to invade?
Leo: And then the GOP contacted me and said the entire slate of GOP candidates would
like to be on TWiT next Sunday. And I thought, I
don’t think so. I said if you want we’ll talk before the show. And then they
said oh no we got it. So never mind.
Becky: Super interested until we’re not.
Leo: Flickr is annoying photographers. When you put a picture up on Flickr, you can
decide on the license. You can assign it a Creative Commons license if you
wish. And in many cases people assign a very lenient Creative Commons license
that allows people to use your photos. I think that’s a nice thing to do. But
according to some, Flickr is about to sell your prints. And not give you a
penny because you said you would. Flickr is going to make nice prints of some
of its best images for $49 a pop. But the only credit and the only money you’ll
get is a small sticker at the bottom of the print with your name. Now you can
and it’s not too late, you can go to Flickr and change the license on all of
your images. And you might want to do that. I license Creative Commons on Flickr
but non-commercial. And that would stop them from selling my pictures. 50 million of the finest photos on Flickr, now on your wall. But in many cases images that the photographer doesn’t even know they’re for
sale. But because they used a Creative Commons license.
Jason: You’d think they want to use to enable the people that use their service to
sell their prints.
Leo: Make a little money.
Jason: Rather than just sell them.
Leo: They’re nice prints.
Jason: It’s too bad too. As someone who will use the Creative Commons licensed photos
on my own website, what this is going to do is pull a lot of photos off of
Creative Commons on Flickr and make the full-service poor for it.
Leo: I think a lot of these photographers know that you’re probably going to use
these as stock photos on the web. And don’t mind. But they might think that a
big company like Flickr owned by Yahoo-I’m not targeting Yahoo, I just want you
to know-would might not do something like this.
Becky: It seems like the negative press wouldn’t be worth it. But then on the other
hand, nothing free is free. But I feel like we’ve done this. Haven’t we done this 5,000 different ways to Sunday? Facebook, Instagram?
Leo: I presume that if you change the license that it would automatically pull it
off this. But I don’t know.
Harry: These are people who as far as they know intentionally said yes, you can use
this thing I took for commercial purposes. And make money off of it. I think
the fact that it’s Flickr doing it probably gives people a different attitude
because they didn’t expect this to happen. And Flickr can get around this and
avoid an unforced error just by throwing a little money people’s way.
Becky: That’s a great term: an unforced error.
Harry: Morally I think what Flickr is doing is just fine. It’s legal and it’s ethical.
Leo: It’s perfectly okay, except that it’s just…
Harry: The optics might be bad.
Leo: The optics aren’t good.
Becky: I wouldn’t expect a sports metaphor from Harry. You just pulled that one out
with total ease.
Harry: More and more of the world seems to be full of
unforced errors.
Leo: It’s a good term, isn’t it?
Harry: Uber did all the stuff which they could have easily
not have done. But they did it anyway.
Leo: Alright, is this an unforced error? The music industry is finally suing an ISP
over piracy. BMG and Round Hill Music are suing Cox Communications, saying that
Cox has not done enough to punish those who download music illegally. This is
what the ISPs wanted to avoid when they agreed to the industry’s six strikes
rules. They didn’t really want to get into this battle.
Becky: Law moves slow. This is like seven years ago. Eight years ago.
Leo: They’re using Napster! Actually they’re really complaining about BitTorrent. In their complaint, the music publishers
described the Cox network as an out of control den of piracy. Quote: today, BitTorrent systems are like the old P2P systems on
steroids. It’s like Napster on steroids.
Becky: Even their terminology is so 80’s.
Leo: It’s like the Boston strangler on steroids. Even that’s old! They’re using
performance enhancing drugs on the old P2P systems. They’re roided out! Despite its published policy to the contrary, Cox’s actual policy-this is
again from the complaint-is to refuse, to suspend, terminate, or otherwise
penalize subscriber accounts that repeatedly commit copyright infringement
through its network in any meaningful numbers. In other words, Cox is not
firing customers when it gets a complaint from the music publishers. The six
strikes rule, and I think Cox was a signatory to this,
gave you six strikes. The music publisher would write a letter saying IP
address 192.168 is using BitTorrent. And Cox would
send you a letter saying hey knock it off. You get
six times and the punishment gets worse each time. Up to the
point of possibly being banned from the service. Here’s what Cox
alleged: a Cox subscriber account with IP address 70.168.128.98 at the time of
the infringement believed to have been located in Fairfax, VA was used to
infringe 24 particular copyrighted works 1,586 times.
Becky: That seems like an appropriate time for throttling. A case by case punitive
throttling especially if it’s Taylor Swift songs. So I’m just saying, yea I get
it.
Leo: I guess. Cox has declined to comment. This is an Ars Technica story. Cox was contacted but did not comment. But
presumably will fight it in court. I think the record that ISPs don’t want to
be doing the bidding of the record companies in this regard. But they want to
skate around any kind of lawsuit. This is the first time the record companies
have actually said, you know what, we’re going for it. In the past there’s been
this kind of truce.
Becky: It’s like parenting. You’ve got to drop the hammer at least once.
Leo: At some point you have to sue.
Becky: Or else, it’s all empty. You’ve got to put them in time out.
Leo: They also said that we’ve been sending these copyright infringement notices to
Cox. Cox quote actually has taken measures to avoid and stop receiving those
notifications. Suggesting they were basically treating them like spam. Oh it’s
another email from BMG. I just, throw it in the trash! Well we’ll watch this
one again with interest. We haven’t had a record company lawsuit in ages, have
we? They realize it was a really bad idea to sue end users. Nobody’s going to
complain about suing Cox.
Jason: Then that makes Cox the police. And they have to be the bad guy that forces all
of these…
Leo: Yea. And I should point out that it’s very deceptive to say what they… what was
it, 1,590… it sounds like they have been basically selling these copyrighted
works to thousands of people. I’m sure the way BitTorrent works is you get bits and pieces from a lot of people. I’m sure all that means
was that there were 1,586 connections. And whoever this was, knowingly or
unknowingly, I think a lot of people install a BitTorrent client and don’t realize that it is then serving out that content they had
those 24 whatever, songs in their BitTorrent folder. And 1,586 connections. One subscriber engaged in 39,000 acts
of copyright infringement over 189 days. 39,000!
Becky: That’s one 13-year old girl.
Leo: It’s easy. You could do that in a couple of days. Alright, I’m going to do one
more commercial then we’re going to show you the heart-warming moment that will
take all of this bad taste about Black Friday out of your mouth.
Becky: I cried.
Leo: And put it on your wrist. You know what I’m talking about?
Becky: I cried.
Leo: I cried. I made the mistake of showing it right before the radio show and I was
in tears.
Becky: Isn’t that the worse? At least you weren’t wearing eye liner. I was dripping.
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Becky: No.
Leo: Yes there are. Who swear that this is a fake. I would
submit there is no way this can be a fake. I have a very good nose for fakes.
And gosh knows there are a lot of fakes on the web.
Becky: Everyone’s a dog on the web.
Leo: Everyone’s a dog. No one knows you’re a dog. This is a guy, a kid, a 10-year
old kid named Santiago from Argentina. Mom and dad were struggling a little bit
and he said I want a tablet, I want a tablet. And mom and dad it would be kind
of funny to punk him just a little bit. They wrapped up, it looks like a
tablet.
Becky: Yea it really looks like that.
Leo: Santiago’s very excited.
Becky: He’s got his jammies on, he’s syked.
Leo: Oh I have it muted? Let me turn the volume up. It’s in Spanish. And oh it’s not
a tablet, Santiago. It’s a wooden cutting board.
Becky: And the note says you can cut fruit and vegetables.
Leo: And look it. This kid is in deep psychic pain right now. He thought he was
getting a tablet; he got a piece of wood. But you know he’s hiding it so well.
I wish my kids were this good. And look, he even kisses his mama. He’s reading
the note. Cleans up the wrapper. Kisses
his mama. He understands; times are tough. Don’t have a lot of money. I
really did want a tablet. Then they find another box, it looks like a shoe box.
So he’s happy. He’s a soccer player. Of course he is, everybody in Argentina plays the beautiful game. Got to do
it.
Becky: What was the one goal with the hand? Maradona?
Harry: Hand of God.
Leo: Nobody better.
Jason: Cheater.
Leo: It was the hand of God, it wasn’t my hand. And now, he’s opening it up. He’s a
sweet kid, I like this kid.
Harry: It’s going to be another cutting board, isn’t it?
Leo: It’s going to be a knife to go with the cutting board, which is really kind of
a beautiful thing. No, Fila, that’s running shoes. Wait a minute. Boy that was
a look.
Becky: No, it can’t be!
Leo: He’s frozen.
Becky: Oh I get teary.
Leo: Don’t you get teary? Because he frankly thought he got a piece of wood and some
shoes. I think he knows what it is. Another big hug for his
mama.
Becky: A tablet!
Leo: Now let me tell you something; this is not fake. First
of all…
Becky: You wouldn’t put that nipple in there.
Jason: What the hell?
Becky: That did disturb me. But secondly you cannot make a kid…
Leo: You can’t make a 10-year old cry like that. Mom apparently saved up. The story
is on the YouTube site. He is so happy. Now this, folks, if you don’t
appreciate what a great life we have…
Becky: The kid is in tears!
Leo: And you’ve got your phone, your tablet, and your laptop. This is a kid who
really appreciates. He’s so excited.
Becky: Actually, I saw this and I have been covering Black Friday and so many people
are just cynical about it. For a lot of people who spend that time in line on
Black Friday, it’s so that they can get a little bit more for their family. And
I know that’s maybe…
Leo: No, that makes sense. And I’m not going to be dismissive anymore.
Becky: Even if that’s only 10% of the people, then fine.
Leo: Because of little Santiago.
Becky: So long as there’s no smack down over the Barbie. That’s all I’m saying.
Leo: Yea, don’t fight.
Becky: Santiago’s parents were not involved in…
Leo: And that $400 4K TV that you bought may not be as good as you think it is.
Becky: $899, 4K.
Leo: Yea. Actually that was like an LG. It was a major name brand. It wasn’t…
Becky: It was no, what are some of the crazy ones? Insignia?
Leo: Vizio, $700 4K TV. That was at slickdeals.net. That’s
Walmart? Slickdeals?
Becky: I love that video. It was a sweet way to end our giving thanks.
Leo: Speaking of sweet, thank you for bringing some wine. It was delicious. And
thank you for being here. We don’t see enough of you but I’m so glad when you
can come. It’s just, we think the world of you. And all the best at GMA.
Becky: Thanks.
Leo: And at Yahoo Tech. Do you file on a regular basis? Can we catch your stuff?
It’s whenever you get around to it.
Becky: CES, man. It’s happening.
Leo: Oh and what are you going to do for CES?
Becky: I’m going to go. I’m going to take a lot of hand sanitizer. I’m going to try
and avoid going out with Dvorak. The only time I’ve ever gotten in trouble at
CES.
Leo: What happened?
Becky: Dvorak!
Leo: Remember, the right to forget.
Becky: Luckily, that was pre-internet.
Leo: What did you do?
Becky: Let’s put it this way; I ended up some place that I never wanted…
Leo: He’s a wild man.
Becky: Dvorak and who’s that guy? Simian guy?
Leo: Will Hearst?
Becky: Yea.
Leo: Oh those two are trouble together. One’s a billionaire, the other one’s glad to
spend the money.
Becky: It was bad. At 3am, and I have a live shot on CNN at 4:30. And all of a sudden
I realized, I do not want to be with Dvorak and Hearst
at 3am in Vegas. An hour and a half before a live shot.
Leo: That’s trouble.
Becky: It makes me nervous just thinking about it.
Leo: You’re going with ABC, so it will be a big deal, right?
Becky: I’m going with Yahoo. ABC doesn’t care about that.
Leo: They don’t care about CES?
Becky: Nope, couldn’t care.
Leo: Yahoo Tech will be there. Well awesome, we’ll watch for your coverage. Believe
it or not, that’s like a month away. Six weeks away. Holy
cow.
Becky: I know.
Leo: Harry McCracken, are you going to CES?
Harry: This is the first year since 1981 that I’m not going to CES or Comdex or any
other tech show in Vegas.
Leo: How about Mobile World Congress? That’s the one to go to now days.
Harry: That’s probably the one to go to. I’m skipping it for the first time ever.
Leo: Really? Does that make you feel a little fo-mo? A feel of missing out?
Harry: I’m torn between feeling like I’m skipping Christmas and feeling like I really
don’t have to file my taxes.
Jason: Harry not going to CES is like getting a call from the governor, okay. It’s
like very brief.
Harry: Up until now I’ve always said that I liked going to CES. And in some ways I do.
So we’ll see.
Leo: So you’re saying it’s like Christmas with a root canal?
Harry: Yes.
Leo: The two together.
Harry: It’s both fun and painful. The way to do it is to go there… in the old days
when I worked for a print magazine, trade shows were fun because when you went
to a trade show, you stopped all your normal work while you were there. And the
moment they invented the internet and you had to file stories every day, trade
shows stopped being as much fun.
Leo: I knew they shouldn’t have invented the internet.
Jason: I know it ruined everything.
Becky: Were you there with me, and Hearst and Dvorak?
Harry: No.
Leo: He doesn’t remember and he’s going to keep it that way. No CES for Jason Snell.
Jason: No. That’s actually one of the top things about not being employed by my former
employer. Is that they’re not going to make me go to CES like they did last
year.
Leo: But you will be covering it as we will be, remotely. We’re sending Father
Robert. Dick T. Bartoley’s going. Live alive camera. So we will actually have live streaming from
CES. We’re going back to the old way. Remember for a while we had a booth and
we were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we were like what are we
doing here? And then Spike takes over the whole garage.
Becky: That was crazy. They had the top floor of the Renaissance. It was nuts.
Leo: Crazy. Then they left after day two. It’s like you don’t care? Eh, we’ve seen
everything.
Becky: Flashing the pan.
Leo: We’re here for the long haul. So I personally will not be going. But I will be
anchoring our coverage.
Jason: From right here.
Leo: You think I’m going to go?
Jason: Oh no. The governor has called back and he takes it back, Leo.
Becky: I’ll get you the mini hand sanitizer.
Leo: Oh!
Jason: Was that worse than the shock?
Leo: Yes. That was worse than the watch. Oh! Poquito CES.
It’s like she gave me a piece of wood and then the root canal.
Becky: It was the opposite.
Leo: The Incomparable is so good. I imagine, yes you did, you talked about the Star
Wars trailer.
Jason: We did not just talk about the Star Wars trailer. We did an hour and ten
minutes about an 80-second long trailer.
Leo: Crazy.
Jason: Because you know we would. Syracuse, so we went deep into it.
Leo: And you have seen I’m sure the variations already?
Jason: There’s the George Lucas’s special edition of the trailer.
Leo: Where he has puppets going at it, Jar Jar.
Jason: Then there’s the Lego Star Wars trailer which is very good, too.
Leo: Which is actually quite accurate.
Jason: Yea, they did a great job with it.
Leo: This movie is not going to be out for more than a year. But there is a trailer.
Jason: Some fans are really excited. They’re reading the tea leaves.
Becky: Tim Goodman has a podcast with you guys, right? He is awesome.
Jason: Yea, Tim Goodman from the Hollywood Reporter and I do a TV podcast called TV
Talk with him. It’s on the Incomparable.
Leo: He used to be a TV reviewer at the Chronicle. And I’ve read his stuff
religiously.
Jason: Yea, so we’re doing a weekly TV podcast.
Leo: It looks like Six Colors has really become mostly about your podcast.
Jason: Well it’s in there. You’ve got to cross-promote. You’ve got to have a little
bit of this and little bit of that.
Leo: A little comics. A little technology.
Jason: This guy, Marvel Unlimited is a really good service. Then there’s tech, there’s
lots of good stuff on Six Colors. You should check it out.
Leo: Then there’s Siri.
Jason: Yes. Siri. Maybe Siri could do something. Look at
that.
Leo: Is there something wrong?
Jason: I wondered about that screenshot perhaps not having enough content. I want to
watch television, Siri.
Leo: Did I do something wrong? Oh I had zoomed in. I’m sorry. There we go. Much better. Yea, I love Six Colors. And you’ve got such
great people working with you on the podcast. It just makes me very angry. Jason Snell and friends. Upgrade, Clockwise, the
Incomparable, TV Talk Machine, Total Party Kill, and the Anthology.
Jason: And I’m happy to be here.
Leo: Always happy to have you, Jason. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for
joining us. We do TWiT every Sunday afternoon, 3pm
Pacific. That’s 6pm Eastern time, 2300 UTC. Please watch live if you can. As
you can see, the chat room is basically our writers. It’s our writer room.
Becky: They fact check.
Leo: They’re good. They fact check. They
follow-up. It’s wonderful! We don’t get to make a mistake for more than
a few seconds before the chat room says you’re wrong. And that’s good. If you
can’t be in the chat room and watch us live, please download an audio and video
version of the show. They’re all over the place, twit.tv, our website of
course. But everywhere podcasts are. You can also get one of the TWiT apps. We didn’t do any of them. Our great third-party
folks did them. For every platform, iOS, Android, Windows
Phone, Roku, and on and on and on. That way you can watch. If you’d like to be in the studio, tickets@twit.tv. Nice, small, compact studio audience today.
Becky: And my dad.
Leo: Including your dad, which is very nice to see. Is he
Mr. Worley?
Becky: No. Jim.
Leo: Jim. Twit.tv/best of. Jason is giving me a little
hint. He’s got to put together a Christmas episode of the show which will be
composed of the best moments of 2014. And in order to do that, since he wasn’t
here for it, it would really be helpful if you could put twit.tv/bestof. And put in something that happened that you liked.
Jason: It goes for all the shows, too. We’ve got all the shows listed, not just TWiT.
Leo: I can be long. It can be short. It can be a little funny bit or it could be a
great discussion of a story. We would like to make a nice little TWiT for you. Christmas week we will not be here. All of
our shows will either be doing best of’s or specials. Because there’s no news that week. That
kind of thing. You can also, is it too late? It is, no more Tee Spring,
right? That’s sold out?
Jason: I believe until December 1st.
Leo: We extended that for a day. Teespring.com/twit to get the
fall 2014 polo shirt of dress shift. Suitable for
wearing on live with Regis and Michael. That’s the kind of shirt that
they tried to get me to wear. Tech TV.
Jason: I was going to say I should get one of those so I can dress up.
Leo: Then Michael Gelman said under no circumstances are
you wearing that shirt.
Becky: You are not allowed.
Jason: No cross-promotion.
Leo: No branding.
Jason: By the time anyone watches this or listens to this though, it will be done. Two
hours, 54 minutes.
Leo: Really? That long?
Jason: That’s how much we have left.
Leo: All you live folks, go there now. Can you guys… you’re all invited to come to
our New Year’s Eve party. 3am New Year’s Eve to 3am New Year’s Day. Bring the
kids. And we’ll put you to work doing something silly. We’re going to have a
jumpy jump outside. We’re going to have a bucking bronco.
Jason: You’re doing that here?
Leo: Yea, we’re taking over the street. We have a permit to take over the street.
It’s 24 hours; you don’t have to be here for the whole thing. Come for five
minutes or ten.
Jason: Yea, I would love to do that.
Leo: Some people will come for the whole thing.
Becky: That’s crazy.
Leo: I will be here for the whole thing. Collapsing at 3 in the
morning.
Jason: Will there be a show where you’ll be asleep?
Leo: Many of these… you know we did this last year.
Becky: Hey you should go for a world record. The longest podcast.
Leo: How long did Roker go?
Becky: It was Roker cast that made me think of it.
Leo: How long did he go through? 36 hours.
Becky: I know but there might not be a world record podcast yet.
Leo: You’re going to have to put that watch on me and shock me every hour to wake me
up.
Becky: You can do it remotely from an app.
Leo: We’re going to do a 24 hours… we’re doing a telethon
because we’re going to do it for UNICEF. To raise money for
UNICEF. UNICEF has worked with us. We’re going to have a tote board that
will show you. I’ll be like Jerry Lewis and have the tuxedo and I’ll say show
the tote. And we’ve got lots of great gifts and rewards for donations or
pledges. There will be an auction. Fez-o-rama, or fez maker has donated some fezzes. We have some really nice stuff. So if you can tune in at any time, and again it doesn’t have to
ruin your New Year’s Eve.
Becky: Ruin. That’s not a positive approach.
Leo: Well I’m just saying if you want to go out and get really drunk and get into an Uber, you could. But my recommendation is you stay
home and you watch TWiT all day and all night. When
is New Year’s Eve? December 31st, okay.
Jason: This year. This year it’s on the 31st.
Leo: Awesome. I’m just joking. I know when it is.
Becky: Just making sure.
Leo: Jim, you and me. We’re going to Hawaii! Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you
next time! Another TWiT is in the can!