This Week in Google 728 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Twig This Week in Google. Stacey Hams here, aunt Pruitt. Jeff Jarvis. Lots to talk about. You win one, you lose one in court for Google. Netflix is winding down. Its d v D business and Mr. Beast is suing over those horrible Mr. Beast burgers. All that more coming up on this week in Google. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This, this is T Twig. This is Twig this week in Google. Episode 728, recorded Wednesday, August 9th, 2023. Stupid Dove Nest this week at Google is brought to you by my Leo. My Leo Photos is a smart and powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit, and manage years of important documents, photos, and videos in an offline library hosted on any device. And it's free. Visit myo.com/twi.

(00:01:08):
It is time for Twig this week in Google. The show where we cover the latest news from the Google verse. Stacey Higginbotham is here. Stacey on iot.com. Not Glenn Fleischman. Nope, she's not Glenn Fleischman. I could tell <laugh> she's got hair. I know nothing about fonts, <laugh>, and she knows nothing about. And I have hair longs and she has hair. There we go. Stacey on iot.com at Gig. Stacey, thank you for being here. Stacey, we missed you last week. That's why Mike's lower third is in there. He filled in. Yeah. I've, I've heard and pro's also here sitting next to me. It's good to see you. You too, sir. Community manager in our club, and of course regular on our show. Yep. Yep. And to his left, ladies and gentlemen, the Tao Knight Leonard Tau, professor for journalistic. Well, your camera looks good. You actually a skin tone today.

(00:01:57):
And, and by the way, I, I, I look at that great clapper. Look at that room. Raider says 10 outta 10 for getting the book in. He's got the book over his, Rachel. Yeah. Yeah. Only one though. You should only have one book. Only one. Not two. Leonard Tap. Professor for journalistic innovation attack. Greg Newmark, Craig New Graduate School of Journalism at the City of University of New York. Hello, boss. I'm, you're wearing your Obama suit today and still a floating head. My tan jacket. <Laugh> <laugh>. Well, I'm not the president. I think a president should always wear Navy. I forgot. Still got the floating head. Oh, wait a second. Wait a second. No floating head. He's, he's, that's better. Yeah. What a sharkskin. Did you get that from down the road and breaking it up some in the Pine Barr? That's excellent. Is that somebody <laugh> found that on somebody's body in the pine burn.

(00:02:45):
What the hell? Wait is a little big on you, Jeff. Yeah. <laugh>. Louis Garbanzo being fit. Tori's communion suit there. Can't win in this crowd. <Laugh>. Hey, I apologize for starting a little bit late because I was doing an unboxing, which you'll see in the club and on hands on technology of the galaxy Z Flip five. Why did they put the Z in there? I'll never know. This is their new folding. This is flip phone. This is flip. And yeah, you could still see, but Stacey, you have the four. You could still see the little crunch, the thing there, but that's not too bad. Yeah, I like the idea that you could do, it's so compact and look how big this front screen is. That's kind of cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:31):
That is nice. 'cause The other one, it was like just tiny. There was nothing

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
There. Get

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:35):
Up a, a page, you know, a New York Times page on the, on the

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
Big screen. It doesn't have a browser. You can only do a few things in it. Wid <crosstalk>. Look at all the spam calls. Did you see all that <laugh> pinch this cover screen. You see all your widgets. Oh, look at that. That's pretty slick. So there is a hack, I think you use Samsung's Goodlock apps is not really a hack, so that you can put any arbitrary app on this screen. But it comes with some basic widgets, like a calendar weather a list of all the spam calls you've received over the last 12 days. Tap to allow permission to see the widget content allow you pretty smooth performance there too, on that screen. Yeah. It feels pretty good, doesn't it? Yeah. Look at that. I don't dunno if it has a separate processor. I, I seem to remember that It does. There's a stopwatch, a timer. I haven't turned on the steps feature, but that'll be my steps. And then when you open it up you know, you get a regular basically call up

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:30):
Like a New York Times page on that screen. I just wanna see how the, how the fold.

Leo Laporte (00:04:34):
Oh, I, you don't even see the fold. You might feel it a little bit if you scroll over that, but if you're holding it in a normal angle, you don't, I don't think you really see the fold. But I'll, I'll pull up a screen. Just if I can find a browser. Geez.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:49):
Page. It's like, I haven't downloaded my browsers yet.

Leo Laporte (00:04:51):
Course. Apparently not. Chrome. There's Chrome. There it is. Okay. Welcome to Chrome. Let me talk to you a little bit about, oh, who and what Chrome is. It's balanced, enhanced, safe browsing. Sure. N y times. Oh boy. I can never type on these.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:11):
Just N yt.com. Oh really? For N Y T. Does that work? Just n Y t. Oh, it

Leo Laporte (00:05:15):
Does. Yeah. Didn't know. Okay. Didn't know that. Ah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:20):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
Come on. Go. The guardian.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:22):
C n n Go go to cnn. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:05:25):
What you could see. I mean, you know, you could see if I hook, angle it right, you could see there's, but it's not, it's not annoying. And when I'm looking at it straight on, I don't really see it. Yeah. I think, how about you Stacy's question though, Stacy, do you get used to it?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:36):
Yeah. Yeah. Your, your brain is real smart. It gets used to lots of things. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:40):
Does it have to adjust? Do they adjust around the bump at all

Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
In the software or? No? Although there are some programs, like, I'll go to the camera that are bumper aware. Right? So, so when you, when you do this, you, you get the picture and the top part and the controls the bottom part. And so this becomes like a little, like a little stand for your, for your camera, that kind of thing. And I do believe if I flip around, I think I can use this. Can I Lies? Lies, lies. All lies. I have to unlock it. Here. Hold on. I'm, you know, drum walk doesn't seem to work very well. You No, it does. I'm, this is new. I'm not, I'm not yet proficient. Proficient your finger. It's, it's actually an aging dog. Learning new tricks. Hey, hey. Just 'cause you're a young puck. Wow. No reason to diss your elders <laugh>. Google is in the news.

(00:06:41):
Uhoh <laugh>. It's never a good thing, it seems. Why? What are we talking about? What that on this show, <laugh> again, judge, the judge has thrown out. I would say the, oh, okay. The majority part of the complaint against Google that the state attorneys general put together last Friday, judge Amme p Metta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, dismissed four claims in the lawsuit and allowed the government lawyers to move forward with three. The four claims he threw out were the claims that Google favored its own sites with its search results. He said, well, good. In fact, he said, it's business. He said, that's stupid <laugh>, I'm paraphrasing. But they are gonna get to go ahead. He said, okay. So Judge Meta wrote, the trial was warranted to assess whether Google's exclusivity deals for web browsers and preloading its services on Android devices illegally help the internet company to maintain a monopoly.

(00:07:45):
You know, they, we've talked about it. They pay Apple 15, we think about 15 billion a year to be the default search on iPhone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they make deals with everybody who puts like Samsung, who puts Android on their device to make sure that Google is the default search. In fact, I think it's part of the, the, you know, open handset alliances deal. If you want the Google services, you've gotta do that. But regarding the search, he said government had not demonstrate, quote, demonstrated the requisite anti-competitive effect end quote to prove that Google broke the law in other ways, such as by boosting its own products and search results over those of specialized sites with the Amazon and Yelp. Yelp was the one of the chief complainers. They basically Yelp lost. Yelp has been whining for years. Yeah. so this will be the first major tech monopoly trial since Microsoft in the nineties, according to the New York Times. And they ought to know amid a renewed backlash over the power of the tech giants F T C as well as the state's Attorney general going after Google. But Google, I would, I think you can categorize this as a victory initial victory in this battle. So what are the, what are the one, are the three charges

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:54):
That ahead then? I'm, I'm

Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
Confused. The, the charge that they are it's anti-competitive for them to require companies to use Google search on their Android devices. Boosting its, let's see, let me the trial was warned assess whether Google's exclusivity deals for web browsers and preloading services on Android devices. So, for instance, if it's

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:19):
Hilarious, we're back to the Microsoft case. It's web browsers

Leo Laporte (00:09:22):
Again. No, no, no, no. It's more than that. Why wouldn't we go after? Okay, keep going. Sorry. So, Google has as you know, Android is open source. So anybody, me, I can make Leo's phone, put Android on it. But what would be missing is the Google Play store. Play store and Google Services underlying services that many apps use and require things like the Firebase mm-hmm. <Affirmative> notification managers, things like that. So if I want to give a, make you a fully functioning Android phone, I've gotta make a deal with Google. And you remember Google's gotten into trouble with these deals in other ways. For instance, they used to say, well, you can't do a non-Google phone and a Google phone. 'cause That, well, that confused people. So if you're gonna sign a deal with us, all your phones have to be Google Services phones.

(00:10:04):
I don't think Google charges you money, but they have certain requirements. Like you have to have Chrome on there. You have to have Google messages on there. You probably, I'm guessing, I'll have to look. You have to use Google search as the default search, things like that. And that's what they're, the trial will, we'll find out when the trial, but the big one, which was I think the one that Yelp, and remember, they had this problem in, in Europe where the EU said, you know, Google Shopping, Google shopping, you, oh, these poor other shopping sites, they can't compete. And, and they did find Google, I think, a lot of money, but not, not in the us. And I think that that's the right answer. So that trial begins, I think so too. September 12th the time says it stands out as the most direct government attempt in years to confront one of the world's biggest tech companies about longtime business practices. The trials expected to last almost 10 weeks. And to scrutinize not only how Google conducts its business, but its relationships with other major companies such as Apple. Where is it gonna help? Samsung? it's in the Bay Area. I think it's in the, no, I'm sorry. It's DC said DC Right? It is the DC Circuit Court. So it'll be in dc that's a busy <laugh> busy venue. <Laugh>, it's gonna be a little crowded in there in that venue. Would you

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:19):
Rather be on the Trump jury or the

Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
Google jury? Yeah. Bill Bayer, a former Justice Department antitrust official, quoted in the time said the cases were as significant as the landmark litigation against Microsoft Uhhuh

Ant Pruitt (00:11:30):
<Affirmative>,

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:31):
Which was ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (00:11:33):
I think of, I think of Victory at least a 50% victory for Google already in this one. Yeah. this was filed in 2020. Lost. So, go ahead. So the,

Ant Pruitt (00:11:46):
The folks like OnePlus, they don't have to rely on Google Services.

Leo Laporte (00:11:52):
I thought there were some <crosstalk> to, but they do, because you can't sell in, in the US anyway. You can't sell an Android phones thing that doesn't have the Play Store I'm thinking about. So there are a lot of

Ant Pruitt (00:12:00):
Huawei's and all of them that Don don't really

Leo Laporte (00:12:02):
Sell in China. They don't. Yeah. That's because Google doesn't do business in China. That's right. So Huawei has to provide its own, you know, play store and all that

Ant Pruitt (00:12:09):
Stuff. And they seem to be doing just fine over there.

Leo Laporte (00:12:11):
I think if you bought an Android phone, if

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:14):
You're buying a Google phone, you want the Google services. I think it's an app appropriate thing to, to

Leo Laporte (00:12:18):
Require. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:21):
But I don't know if it's right to say Google phone versus an Android phone. Yes. It's not a

Leo Laporte (00:12:25):
Google phone. Yes, exactly right. Okay. He misspoke. Why? I would like to apologize for my client, your Honor. <Laugh>, he misspoke. He meant to say, I'm guilty as sin,

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:36):
Actually wash my mouth out with a mouse. Yes, A mouse

Leo Laporte (00:12:39):
<Laugh>. Actually Twitter apparently getting a little bit of a fine, it's just in I'm sorry, did I say Twitter? I meant the, the company formerly known as Twitter, now known as x

Ant Pruitt (00:12:49):
X

Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
Fine. $350,000. Apparently, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor for the Justice Department, filed a warrant with Twitter back in mid-January saying, we want everything you've got on the real Donald Trump account, including all the tweets. It also said in the search warrant, it asked for a non-disclosure order. Arguing that revealing the warrant to Trump would, because remember this time he does not know he is even the subject of an investigation. He might suspect, but he does not, he hasn't received that letter yet. It might, would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation by giving him an opportunity to destroy evidence or otherwise change his behavior. No, <laugh> <laugh> that, that that wasn't gonna happen. Smith is leading, blah, blah, blah. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected Twitter's objections to an order that prohibited the company from notifying anybody about the warrant. Oh, this is where free speech comes in. Yes. Musk said, I wanna tell everybody, including d j T Twitter did ultimately comply with a warrant, but

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:59):
Twitter was also arguing that they needed time to fight that through. But they still had a warrant and a deadline that they

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
Missed and they missed it. So $350,000 three

Ant Pruitt (00:14:06):
Days stayed fine.

Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
So, by the way, if you haven't received your check from Elon for your you know, revenue share mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with Twitter, that's why. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's the government's fault. The only

Ant Pruitt (00:14:18):
Person getting paid is his lawyer.

Leo Laporte (00:14:19):
Apparently. <laugh> blame the Justice Department. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:21):
I wouldn't bet on that. An

Ant Pruitt (00:14:23):
Or I mean, <laugh>, he keeps filing these suits against people. Oh my goodness. And some lawyer is taking the, the retainer

Leo Laporte (00:14:30):
Has to, right. You saw, you saw his tweet last weekend that anybody who got fired because it's something they tweeted. Yeah. Or even a like, we'll defend you to unlimited amount of money will defend you. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Don't count on that. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:46):
Would be much. Well, and and immediately people noted the people who've been fired from Twitter for saying

Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Things he didn't. Oh, whoops. Well, no, we didn't mean them. We have the first case for you. Yeah. No, we didn't mean them. I did read the replies to that initial tweet. There were thousands of people saying, yeah, I was fired. Gimme Yeah. Huh. so anyway, good news for Google in that in that case a a as Bloomberg put a slimmed down lawsuit, <laugh> Google did change the name of one of their products, though <laugh> in order to shocking in order to avoid a little scrutiny. So I Google used to call their ads Instream ads. These are the ads in the middle of a YouTube. They remove the Instream classification from the name of one of its video formats because buyers are questioning whether Google's telling 'em the truth regarding inventory that of inventory they're selling to them. Instream ads are being renamed to skippable ads. Oh yeah. So just to more accurately describe the ad format, they didn't want people to know they were skippable skippable until they people said, wait a minute, it's skippable. Oh. In early June we started offering display and video 360 advertisers 30 and 62nd on Skippable Instream ads on YouTube and YouTube tv. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:18):
I see. The presumption was they were Unskipable. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:16:20):
Yes. Yeah. They called them Instream instead of Unskipable or skippable Unskipable, given that other YouTube ad format serve in stream. Whoa. Or bad. My bad. Don't you hate it when people say My bad? Like, it's okay now. 'cause I said my bad. You caught us. Yeah. My bad, my bad. We changed the name of the skippable ad format from Bullshit Instream Ads too. Skippable ads Skip <laugh> for clarity.

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:45):
That, that doesn't sound like a very good selling proposition. Now, <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
Do you buy skippable ads? No. Instream Ads. Oh, I'd buy those. I would certainly pay less for them. Yeah. Wow. Much less A report from research firm. This is from Adweek. A report from research from analytics accused YouTube of misleading buyers, particularly selling outstream video placements, while specifying to buyers that their ads would only air instream. And I'm not sure what this all means. If you're an ad buyer, you do, Google has denied the allegations in the all analytics report. Instream ads typically refer to ads that accompany a video. While outstream ads appear in a user's feed or via small muted video player within the article. Outstream ads are unlikely to be related to the content the user's watching. Instream ads are I'm lost on this one. Within analytics sample of ads that aired on the Google Video Partner Network, approximately 80% were found to be delivering on sites which offered muted Autoplayed Obscured. That's the big one. Or outstream video placements. So you think you bought an ad in the middle of Mr. Beast's video. Right. In fact, it wasn't playing in the video at all. It was playing in a little small screen on the banner on side prep. And in many cases that was covered up anyway, so nobody saw it at all. Oh, sneaky Google. But Google would charge people for the view impression. Sneaky Google Analytics found that large swaths of advertisers campaigns could end up on G V P inventory and not YouTube videos. So yikes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:30):
How dodgy is this? Yeah. Like at what did these come, like, I just don't understand how you could be a reputable business. I mean, that's an argument for monopoly of self. Just because like why would you ever go to this place if you knew how dodgy they were? Right.

Leo Laporte (00:18:45):
I feel like Google has an ad sales division that is pushing all the time. Right. And Google just doesn't have enough control of them to keep them. That's true

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:55):
Of all ad sales division.

Leo Laporte (00:18:56):
It's always true. Always. Yes. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:58):
Yeah. They're always gonna try to sell something new. You know, when, when I started websites that is, the pages got junky very fast because I gotta they won't buy the regular unit. I've gotta sell a new unit. I've gotta call it a super duper unit. Yeah. We

Leo Laporte (00:19:10):
Got a thing called a takeover. There will actually not be any content on the page. It'll just be an ad <laugh>. Yeah. yeah. You have to keep these, you know, nothing. Look at they're trying to make a living Yep. Of portion as hard as they can. It's the responsibility of management to say, yeah. The

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:24):
Advertisers are saying, I want something special and new. I don't wanna What, what a rails is buying

Leo Laporte (00:19:28):
That. We get that. By the way, <laugh>, I shouldn't this speaking outta school 'cause I happen to be married, the person doing running the business. But there people will say, literally come to us and say, we don't wanna do anything anybody else has done yet before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you have that no one's ever done before? And we go, nothing. <Laugh> <laugh>. What? What do you mean you wanna put it on a balloon?

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:54):
It hasn't occurred yet. So

Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
Let's do, what do you mean? We have certain things we do. That's about it. But yeah, it's very common and it's, it doesn't make

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:04):
Sense. I think you should also, you should offer a charades or charades ad <laugh> and that would be, we'll call it an Engage

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:12):
Adrad cost 20% more because of the fancy pronunciation. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:16):
That's it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:18):
And it's, and it's for a podcast, which makes it even special. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:20:23):
<Laugh>, by the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:24):
Way, even more special.

Leo Laporte (00:20:25):
That was an unskipable ad slash twit <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:30):
Wow. Unless you are a subscriber to Club Twit.

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Right? No. If you were, if you were watching the video, you saw an ad. If you were just listening, you just learned, heard Leo breathing hard. This is true. <Laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:40):
He was moving fast.

Leo Laporte (00:20:43):
One media buyer who was not authorized to speak to the press told Adweek, I think it's dishonest. Were you not accurately Yeah. Representing skippable ad formats before. So the answer is no. So how soon

Ant Pruitt (00:20:55):
Will we see the next

Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
Lawsuit? Yeah. That's on lawsuit

Ant Pruitt (00:20:58):
Versus Google.

Leo Laporte (00:20:59):
But, but a ad buyers agencies and brands have complained forever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> about click fraud all. And it's not just YouTube, it's everywhere. Right. Jeff

Ant Pruitt (00:21:09):
Complain about

Leo Laporte (00:21:10):
Fraud. Oh yeah. Digital ads are

Ant Pruitt (00:21:11):
Fraud. But do they always have the data to back it

Leo Laporte (00:21:14):
Up? Well, in this case, I think they had, now they do. But, and Google virtually admitted

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:19):
Changing

Leo Laporte (00:21:19):
The name, you know, because they said, oh, whoops, my bad.

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:23):
In the very earliest days of the web, an mm-hmm. <Affirmative> gm I think was the first advertiser to insist to all media sites. We are serving our ads. You open it up on your page so that we can serve our ads so we know what got served. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now whether it got seen or not was another issue. Right. But there was mistrust from the very, very first. Yeah. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
You know, there's a, that's a com That's a always that tension's always there from magazines using the A, b, C to say, oh yeah, 15 different people read this magazine. There was a big hand mm-hmm. <Affirmative> hand around. Everybody saw time that week. By the way, the EU does not like behavioral ads. They do not like targeted ads. And they're increasingly showing this Norway has just announced they're gonna find meta a 1 million crowns a day.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:14):
Which sounds like a lot more than it. It is <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:22:17):
Well, let me see here. I don't know the value. That's 89,000 euros a day. So, you know, it's, it's almost a hundred thousand dollars a day. That's, that's nontrivial. That's

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:26):
A lot. Yeah. I could not pay that.

Leo Laporte (00:22:28):
No. I would stop

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:29):
My dad. The most successful I could in history. You, I, that's not even supported by my bougie lifestyle. <Laugh> my goodness. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:22:42):
So this is over. You don't have

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:43):
To give up a waffle a week, <laugh>. This

Leo Laporte (00:22:45):
Is, this is over Google's ex admitted habit or meta admitted habit. Google does it too though of data harvesting for behavioral ads. Now, a behavioral ad is different than an, than a interest ad, right? I, I think so. So and by the way, they ruled last month, Norway ruled that they, that it would ban behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram over privacy breaches. And they said, you'll be fine if you don't fix this. They didn't. So that's why the fine has kicked in. And this is what the regulator said. Invasive commercial sance surveillance for marketing purposes is one of the biggest risks to data protection on the internet today. Users must have sufficient control over their own data, and any tracking must be limited. But this is something, nothing wrong

Ant Pruitt (00:23:36):
With that.

Leo Laporte (00:23:37):
Right? Yeah. But it is part of the I mean, kind of the underpinning of how the web is financed, right? Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:23:45):
Unfortunately. Yep.

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:47):
Well would you rather have two choices? One, there's no targeting at all. It looks like you're going down the worst highway with nothing but billboards aimed at everybody or two, advertising doesn't work anymore. So now everything's behind the paywall, except, well,

Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
There's a middle ground. So they call these behavioral ads because it's tracking based on sites you go see or things, you know, groups you're a member of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as opposed to interests that you explicitly state. You know, when you're, I, I remember dimly from being on Facebook that you might say, I'm interested in college football. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you can advertise against that. That's not a behavioral ad. Right. But if you go to watch college football or you click a lot of college football stories, I think those are behavioral adsd. That's be, they're

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:30):
When do you have No, I don't, I don't know. Leah, when do you have the opportunity to say, to fill out a form and say, I like college football. And gimme the ads on that.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:37):
Whenever you open,

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:38):
Say, gimme the ads. If you talk about it or go to sites.

Leo Laporte (00:24:40):
I didn't say gimme the ads.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:41):
Whenever you open a social media account, they say, what do you say? They have a survey soon as you, as soon as you open it up. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:46):
Well, I don't think anybody uses that. <Laugh>. I talked to Google News News and I tell it what I want more Twitter, more or less of based on my interests. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:55):
Every time I let close and open my, close my Reddit account and, and log back in

Ant Pruitt (00:25:01):
Blue Sky, probably didn't do it. I don't remember them doing, they don't, the Red

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:05):
Sky.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:05):
Right. But the other

Leo Laporte (00:25:06):
Platforms, it's gonna take me a little while

Ant Pruitt (00:25:07):
Because I gotta, as soon as you log in with a brand new account, they say, welcome. And hey, what are your some of your interests? Check here, check here, check here. You know, I,

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:16):
I wouldn't buy any ads on that. 'cause The data is old. You sign into your Facebook account when you were still a, a, you know, your case aunt when you were still a teenager looking for a first date. You know, and you've changed. Instead, <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:25:27):
I can't just barely, I can't remember the, you know, but I think Facebook, I've always, I think Facebook's always done this, but I see in other places. I guess that's the point. Know mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and like Google News and Google News, ostensibly, they're asking you. So what should tell you which stories that they're gonna show?

Ant Pruitt (00:25:43):
Unfortunately, Google News is still not quite getting it for

Leo Laporte (00:25:46):
Me. But do you think, Stacy, when you tell 'em that, that they also use that information and send it on to advertisers, say, oh yeah, we got somebody who's really interested in i o OT here. Sure. It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:55):
Not that they send it to the advertisers. No. They don't sell

Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
Based product. Don't Yeah. Yeah. They sell ads against it. That's, which is a big difference. That's really important difference. We should absolutely emphasize. 'cause People kind of assume that they're selling it to the advertisers. They're not. They're selling you <laugh>. Let's see. I'm gonna log into Reddit. So I'm relogging into Reddit. Let's see if it asks me what

Ant Pruitt (00:26:18):
No, but that's logging in. You're not creating an account.

Leo Laporte (00:26:21):
No. I logged out and logged in. Yeah. So sometimes it does, it, it will give me a big popup that says,

Ant Pruitt (00:26:26):
Oh, just when you log, oh

Leo Laporte (00:26:27):
Yeah. What do you want? What do you wanna see more of? Yeah. Okay. And this is, by the way, this is closely tied to Reddit killing the a p i and the third party apps, Uhhuh. 'cause If you're on the webpage, they can do all of that. Right. And they can show you ads against it. They couldn't do that on third party apps. So

Ant Pruitt (00:26:42):
Whatever happened to that story,

Leo Laporte (00:26:45):
You know I think Reddit won,

Ant Pruitt (00:26:47):
What was it? $25 million was a big, it was a big number like that.

Leo Laporte (00:26:51):
So yeah, you're talking about Christian Selig who created the Apollo app. Apollo. That's right. And he said it would cost him I think even more 20 million a, a month to, to pay Reddit for what they wanted for their a p i access. And he couldn't afford it. So he shut the app down. A lot of third party apps. Right. Went away. A lot of mods and Reddit groups said, ah, that's no good. We're closing. We're not gonna, we're only gonna show pictures of

Ant Pruitt (00:27:19):
Yeah. It went dark for a while. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
What's his name from of,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:21):
Of John Oliver.

Leo Laporte (00:27:22):
John Oliver. Yeah. John Oliver. Or we're gonna mark our thing in SS f w so they can't sell ads against it. Basically behind the scenes, Reddit has fired those mods has gotten rid of those people. A lot of people made noises. They were gonna leave Reddit, but there was no good alternative, as far as I can tell. Reddit is unchanged. Its, its, its business is was a,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:42):
I've mostly left Reddit.

Leo Laporte (00:27:44):
Have you? Good for you.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:45):
Yeah. I just, well, because like Reddit, I don't want, I like Reddit, but I don't like the app. And they're just part of this is all to get you more to the app. So the web experience is just so bad. I

Leo Laporte (00:27:57):
Agree. I'm so dependent on I'd rather give them money, information money. Well, I do pay them, by the way,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:05):
How do you,

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
What do you pay? Oh, yeah. There's, oh, yeah. Oh, with

Ant Pruitt (00:28:07):
The Karma had No, no, no. He's got the premiums

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
Service. There's red A premium. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And so I don't see n terrible

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:13):
Job advertising that <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:28:15):
Maybe that's why they need the ads. Yeah. No, I pay for my Reddit account. I don't think it's even that expensive. Let's see where it is.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:25):
Oh, I see. It's, I'm looking for it. So I see this tiny little thing in the

Leo Laporte (00:28:29):
Quarter. You have to really look for it. Pretty. Yeah. Try

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:32):
Now.

Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
Yeah. Oh. But you know, I don't mind paying Reddit because it's so intensely valuable. Although I completely understand the point of view of the moderators and the contributors that Reddit is just a platform. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what you pay for, and you des and you find valuable in Reddit is our posts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:50):
Yeah. But there is, there is value in being a platform. I mean, this is the double side. This is the platform problem. You, it's like being a member at a social club. Right. You create a nice experience for people. You invest in that, and then those people come in and other people are like, oh, I wanna hang out with those people. I should totally Right. Join their thing. Right. And then you feed that back into investing in the, making the infrastructure and community. Nice.

Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
This will, it'll be interesting. One of the litmus tests I'll use, as you know, every December I do a coding challenge called the advent of code. It's really fun. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Reddit is the offsite kind of headquarters. Unofficially, there's a whole subreddit called Advent of code. And people, every day, they post their solutions. They post their hints, their tips, their questions. And it's a very, it's very active. One month, a year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's still around, but you, nothing's happening right now. But come December, this will be an interesting test. There have been people who've said, you know, the Lemi world, for instance, or the Lemi, which is a fed averse version of Reddit sword.

Ant Pruitt (00:29:51):
That's what everyone is suggesting to sort

Leo Laporte (00:29:53):
In our discord. Sort of, it's not quite, but anyway they have an advent of code whatever they call it, subreddit. I will compare the two in December. 'cause That's really, it's things like that that really are gonna tell me.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:07):
Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. If, if, with all of this stuff going on with Reddit, would those communities decide to move to something like our sponsored dis discourse and make their own?

Leo Laporte (00:30:17):
The difference is Reddit is centralized. Twitter is centralized. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so when you get mastered on, or, or forums or it's spread out mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So where does, so with something like Advent of code, you wanna go where everybody else who's doing it is gonna be there. Okay. Whatever. The 400,000 people that are doing it. Yeah. They're all there. So you need a centralized platform for something like that. I, you know, Lemi is interesting. This will be a, an interesting test. I have yet to find it as compelling, frankly, as as Reddit.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:52):
Interesting. I think that's the first time I've heard you say this is where centralized would work for something on the show. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:31:00):
Yeah. 12 million people use Lemi now. But that's Lemi is is like Mastodon. It's federated. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I, I'm on Lemi world, which is I think the biggest one.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:12):
Lemi is like Mastodon. And you have to make a lot of decisions, <laugh>. And sometimes it's hard to use. And you'll doubt yourself a lot. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:31:20):
<Laugh>. I'll go ahead and say it's okay. It's just not

Ant Pruitt (00:31:23):
Tku recommended this to me. I'll go ahead and say, now, based on what I'm seeing on Mr. Laporte's screen, this is not what I'm looking for. It

Leo Laporte (00:31:30):
Ain't Reddit. I,

Ant Pruitt (00:31:31):
I'm not even looking for Reddit. I was just wanting Google News to work better. Right. I don't,

Leo Laporte (00:31:36):
Well look at my red here. I'll go back to my Reddit and you can you can see how you feel about that. 'cause To me, I go through this mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and I've picked my interest. So you're not interested in Heim the game, but I see a lot of Val Posts succession, the TV show. Oh, <laugh>, here's the Bay Area. These are all subreddits. Politics. Maybe we should chess programming. So I pick the things that I care about. This is a fun one. What is this thing? People post pictures <laugh>. What is this of things? And they go, what is this? I found this. What is this? This is a piece of metal with jet lag written on it. What's it for? I like that one. I like

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:15):
Samsung. I like the stupid dove nests. Mostly

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
Stupid dove nests. Wait a minute. Is it

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:21):
Stupid dove? I think it's, I think it's stupid. Dove nester. Is that it? All?

Ant Pruitt (00:32:24):
I thought Reddit was about, was just the meme culture.

Leo Laporte (00:32:29):
Super. Never. This is there is that yes. In the middle of a bus station amongst the spikes

Ant Pruitt (00:32:36):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:32:38):
Aw, if you love, this is for Craig Newmark. This is for Craig. Yeah. It's not doves. Those are pigeons. Wait a minute. What's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:45):
The difference? Pigeons are in the Dove family.

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
Yeah. So a a dove is a white pigeon.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:50):
Right. The joke is that they just are the, they throw like two sticks on the ground and lay their eggs on it. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
It's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:58):
Just picture after picture of like the hell. Man. <laugh> got a problem with that.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:03):
So that one is good enough. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:33:07):
Wow. Yeah, you're right. They're not making the best decisions, are they?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:11):
Because they're not architecturally sound. I mean, these are actually Okay. But the, the really beautiful ones are like, they're like, I came back from the grocery store and this is on my windshield. And it's like three sticks on your windshield wiper. Yeah. And an egg. Yeah. And they're like, dove nest,

Leo Laporte (00:33:27):
Dove nest. I actually say the doves at the grata familia and in Barcelona. They've got a good place to nest. Gowdy, actually. He was a big fan of nature built into the beautiful plaster facade of this massive Catholic cathedral dove coats. Wow. And they're places that you could see them walking in. They have these beautiful houses amongst the statuary. It's really incredible that you will not find on stupid dove nest. All right. I'm so no. So, so, oh my goodness. We found this. This is an example of how you use Reddit. Yeah. I think I'd like to see more stupid dove nests. I

Ant Pruitt (00:34:04):
Never got into

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Reddit. I don't, so I join it and now it's in my list of things. And you can choose, by the way, notice best hot. So these are the hot topics, new topics, or the most upvoted The key on Reddit is people vote up or down. Yeah. No, the up

Ant Pruitt (00:34:21):
Votes

Leo Laporte (00:34:21):
Are the main thing. So you see the most upvoted ones are gonna be the big, the big stories that people are really paying attention to. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you see a lot of politics in here.

Ant Pruitt (00:34:31):
But that's part of your interest though.

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
Well, I, but if I just follow best there's a lot more Val Hyman succession. <Laugh> <laugh>. Here's some chess, here's a little politics, here's a little fishing. Here's a little, you know, it's a little less. And of course, but see really geeky subjects like emax or advent of code, I think this is, having a centralized place is great. If I go to Mastodon, a lot of that stuff is discussed on my Twitter, social feed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it's all, but it's more like Twitter. It's all kind of all over the

Ant Pruitt (00:35:02):
Place. All over the place. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna create a mast email so I can have a Reddit account and try it out. There you go.

Leo Laporte (00:35:10):
That's a good idea.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:12):
Oh, dude. And there's some great accounts for like, weightlifting and photography, physical fitness,

Leo Laporte (00:35:18):
Brown liquor and photography. Cigar.

Ant Pruitt (00:35:20):
Yeah. Because all I ever knew about with Reddit was just the mean culture. And I, I don't really no care for that. No. I never really thought about going to Reddit for news.

Leo Laporte (00:35:29):
The interesting thing about Reddit is it's very segregated. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there's a lot of adult content. You never, I never see that. 'cause I, yeah. I'm just not following. Right. There's a lot of, you know, politics. If you want, you don't, you don't want politics. Don't follow politics. You won't see it. Right. You, you really get to choose your topics. Which I, I

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:47):
Like, see, it's no good for me. I searched for Gutenberg and I get WordPress or the Gutenberg the musical. You know, it just doesn't work.

Leo Laporte (00:35:54):
I'm excited about that. Well, I saw a poster for that the other day. I thought, Jarvis has got to know about this.

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:59):
So, so it is been played elsewhere. I've actually, you know, 'cause it's, it is like the producers, the idea is that they have to make them a horrible show.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
It's, it's really bad.

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:07):
And I've heard the soundtrack and they succeed. It's really horrible. <Laugh>. It's really bad. Josh

Leo Laporte (00:36:13):
Gadd is in it. That's fantastic. Josh Gadd and right else. I'm trying

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:18):
A way to, to you know, leapfrog onto this, what'll be a Gutenberg trend here. I was thinking maybe I should try to write actual Gutenberg facts for the play building. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:36:27):
You could do what the editor of Gizmoto is doing. That was stupid. The editor of Gizmoto is really mad about the Tetris movie on Apple tv. Plus he said, the movies take it from my book about Tetris. And he's suing them.

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:40):
And I enjoyed that movie.

Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
It was a good movie. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:44):
<Laugh>. You're like, oh, my perpetrated amongst stress. That was like a Stacey reaction. <Laugh> damn.

Leo Laporte (00:36:55):
Well, but give, give this guy credit, because it really does look like there are whole passages from the book Oh, damn. That are in the movie. He, so remember the, the, the movie about Tetris really was more about the intrigue between the Soviet Union and the United States. It was more a political thriller. Yeah. He says, that was my premise in my book was it was gonna be a spy novel that just happened to be about Tetris. And the key scene in the, the wonderful scene is where the guy who was boldly gone into the Soviet Union illegally to try to get the rights to Tetris, is that the Soviet, some Soviet spy factory, right? Mm-Hmm. And they're going back and forth negotiating with him and another guy. Oh goodness. And it's a great scene. Straight out the book. So good. Straight out the book. Dang. So I think I, and he

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:45):
Hadn't seen a dime.

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
Well, he, and he, he's got, I think he's got a very strong case. This is what was it? The famous case, Jeff, you'll remember this art, was it Art Buchwald? Who sued saying his book had been, you're

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:03):
Older than me. Dead <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
Buchwald versus Paramount. You don't remember this?

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:09):
No, I don't.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:11):
Oh, no, I don't. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:13):
Art Buchwald said that he brought the idea for coming to America, the Eddie Murphy movie. Yeah. In 1988 to Paramount Pictures. They looked at his idea and said, yeah, that's great. Thanks. See you. And then made the movie. He won the lawsuit and got a big settlement from Paramount. We don't know how much

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:33):
This is why they don't open

Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
Over the transfer stuff. Right. They don't want to. I don't want anybody to send me ideas for podcasts in case I do 'em. And then they say, well, that was my idea. Mm-Hmm. but though the court found that paramount, you send to Jason Calis, unconscionable means of Yeah, I know. Of determining how much to pay authors called Hollywood Accounting. Paramount said, we never made any money on coming to America. So what is there to give you? Oh, yeah. Now I remember this part. Right? Yeah. And so the court agreed with Buchwald that this was unconscionable, therefore invalid. Paramount settled for $900,000. So the editor in chief of Gizmodo is smart. He's starting off saying, I don't want profits. 'cause I know you're gonna mess with that. That's gonna be Hollywood accounting. I want a percentage of the cost Oh. Of the movie of producing it.

(00:39:28):
This is from Reuters Dan Ackerman, editor-in-chief of the Tech News website, Gizmoto Files suit in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, a couple of days ago, accusing Apple, the Tetris company and others of adapting his book. The book te the Tetris Effect, the Game that Hypnotized the World to published in 2016. He sent it to the Tetris company pre-release. They, they saw it. And they made the movie anyway. Right? The book describes the Soviet history of the popular puzzle game and the fight for its global licensing rights as a quote, cold War thriller with a political entry game. Nailed it. Right? Nailed it. Yeah. Nailed. That's what made it interesting. Nailed, frankly. Yeah. so he's smart. Given the Al Paramount case, he's not suing for profits. He's suing for a percentage of the production costs. Smart man. Very, yeah. It's, it's sharp.

(00:40:23):
That was a little bit of a digression from our central topic, which is about Google. We'll have more <laugh> about Google in just a little bit. Oh gosh. I wanna tell you about something. I just found a brand new sponsor. Have you played with my Leo yet? 'cause This is made for you. I start, I downloaded it last night. The photo. So the photo. So yeah, my, it is M Y l I O. Milo photos. My Leo, is what you've been looking for. First of all, it's very smart. It's privacy forward. It's completely offline. You're not storing in anybody's cloud unless you choose to. And even then they'll say, okay, you want to encrypt it before you put it on Google Drive or OneDrive or, or Dropbox. So that it's completely private, but it does all the things that those other server-based tools do.

(00:41:16):
For instance, I've, I tagged about 20 pictures of family and friends. It then goes through the rest of my more than 100,000 photos, tags them. Nice. Very well, very accurately. Finds baby photos, everything. It will do smart tagging where it says, those are mountains. That's a river. All the stuff that, that I would normally have to do manually. You would do manually. You would do manually. It's completely offline. You back up where you want. I actually have it going to my sonology. So I have a sonology backup of it. If you go with myo photos, plus you can have it on all your apps, on your, all your devices. So it's on my iPhone, my Android phone. It's gonna be on this. And you get to choose whether it's a thumbnail of the image, an optimized version of the image or the original.

(00:41:59):
And you can mix and match. It'll even tell you how much each is gonna use up on your disc. It works with your devices filing systems, so you don't have to spend time to import. In fact, I said, yeah, get my flicker. Oh, here is a great thing. I know I have tons of photos in Google photos that I never put in my big dam. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in iCloud or in Lightroom. So it says, okay, fine, do your Google takeout. I did got all the images. Hundreds of gigabytes worth of images. Right. And it just imports 'em. I don't have to do anything else. It categorizes them. Oh, it organizes them by a folder. So it's year, day, month. If you want whatever you want. It did. All the organization, it's super fast search. So I, I could type in a name and boom, there's all the pictures of that person.

(00:42:44):
I can type in pictures of dogs. There's all my dog pictures. It's incredible. And here's the best part. It's free. That's, that's what got me. Like, wait a minute. Where's the cost on this? Well, they, obviously, they would like you to get a subscription mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But you, but all of the features I just described on one device are free. So go ahead and go to myo photos, download it and try 'em m y l i o.com/twit and try it. You will see, oh, I didn't mention this. It has OCR R built in optical character Recogni. Oh, dude. So I imported all my documents as well. And it automatically categorizes 'em based on text. And if there's text in the photo, it uses the text. It's, it's, you know, if you're moving away from Evernote, if you wanna get off the cloud, if you want to, if you're, I moved away from Lightroom a long time ago.

(00:43:31):
If you want a digital asset management tool, not just for photos, but for documents, you could find old documents you thought were lost. You can actually update them in the M photos app. Yeah. And keep the original intact. It's 'cause it's got O C R. And if you do decide to get the myo photos plus subscription, all your devices connect to one central library in effect without a cloud storage. So I have one truth. So I can look on my iPhone. It doesn't have room to store all the photos, but I have all the thumbnails in my iPhone so I know what I've got. Oh, and yeah, in the menu, if you wanna edit it, you say edit it and whatever you want, Photoshop, darkroom, whatever you like. It has, it's the adds all your photo editing apps to the menu. So you can just put it right in there. This is the digital asset management tool. You've been waiting, preserve your digital legacy. I was blown away. I have literally moved everything into it. Do it for free right now on your computer and mobile device. Go to myo.com/twitter. Please go to that address, not your, your app store. 'cause I want, I want to get credit.

Ant Pruitt (00:44:33):
Yes please. And thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:44:34):
Go to that address. You're gonna get some special offers for this subscription plan. The My Leo photos plus my leo.com/twi. If you have any questions, just download it right now for free. It does, it is a little bit of a learning curve 'cause it does so much. But they have a great tutorial built in your way through that. I think this is what you're looking for. M Y L I o.com/twit.

Ant Pruitt (00:44:56):
It's, it's, I put this in our family, the Pruitt Slack channel yesterday. Yeah. Because already everybody

Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
Should already

Ant Pruitt (00:45:02):
Did it. Is interested in photography. And I said, here, try this out. Well, and I downloaded it yesterday, but now I really need to go.

Leo Laporte (00:45:09):
If you start with it, then you never have to worry ever again. My Leo m y l io.com/twit. Do you know how big a drive did you have to buy for all of that? Well I bought eight Tera. Well, no, I bought a en a enclosure that holds four SSDs. And right now it's for two terabyte SSDs. So it's eight terabytes. But I have a feeling it's gonna get bigger, but I can always add more storage if I need to. That's the other part of it, because it's backing up to a lot of places. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> if I start over on one of them and just take it from everywhere else and put it in there. So

Ant Pruitt (00:45:44):
Man,

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
It's gonna be easy to upgrade it. It's gonna be easy to upgrade it. Ah, let's see here. Blue jeans forever in blue jeans. Isn't that what Neil Diamond said?

Ant Pruitt (00:45:59):
Bures.

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Guess how much Verizon paid in May, 2020? So Verizon, I mean, just use their logic. It's May, 2020. The pandemic's been going on for three months. They're going Opportunity. Everybody's working from home. We need a video conferencing solution. So they went and bought Blue Jeans four. Are you ready for this? I think it was hit me. How much was it? It doesn't say in this article. I think it was $400 million. I

Ant Pruitt (00:46:29):
Was gonna say 200 million.

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Two maybe It's 200 million.

Ant Pruitt (00:46:32):
You're probably right though. I was,

Leo Laporte (00:46:33):
It was hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, <laugh> don't. About a month later, this thing called Zoom completely took over and BlueJean never went anywhere. Now I have BlueJean that stole my computer. 'cause There are, I've done BlueJean meetings. Have you ever done a, I think

Ant Pruitt (00:46:54):
The whole idea was BlueJean was more corporate slash enterprise from my experience versus being something that the average person would get their hands on. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
Facebook is, it's more like a WebEx.

Ant Pruitt (00:47:06):
Webex, yeah. I like that.

Leo Laporte (00:47:08):
Yeah. I see with a name to me thought it was more like for schools and, and normal people. I thought it was relaxed. No, I saw it was a good service. Actually. I liked that. Did it have a scorch Scot more room in the crotch

Ant Pruitt (00:47:21):
<Laugh>? Wait,

Leo Laporte (00:47:21):
What? Like a what? Leave my five J No ones? No. Okay. No, it was less than 500 million. But

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:28):
The total wasn't,

Leo Laporte (00:47:30):
It was a lot. I'm just

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:30):
Skipping right

Leo Laporte (00:47:31):
Over. It's like a half a billion dollars kiddos. Well, guess what? Are you serious? Guess what? They're shutting it down. It's over. I'm selling it, shutting it down.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:39):
Verizon buys stuff all the time and shuts it down.

Leo Laporte (00:47:42):
I mean, they're like Yahoo. That's a huge Yahoo of Telco. That's incredible. They just could not with Zoom at the beginning of 2022, Google and Verizon partnered to preload the BlueJeans app on Google. Glass <laugh>. Oh geez. Dead in the water folks. No, dead in the, the water. Talk about, so this is now, this is last year. Last year. The conferencing program you never heard of goes on the glasses. You never wanted <laugh> winning <laugh>. That's, it's the perfect sales pitch. What are you talking about? They get, they had a free tier this year. They're trying desperately, right? Oh, dude. But it didn't, it didn't. No, I've been on BlueJeans meetings. They were just, they're all the same, aren't they? Pretty much, yeah. They're commodity. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:35):
Verizon was also trying to pitch this idea that it would be integrated with its five G services for professionals. So you would basically like, think about a hospital or a HIPAA compliant business. They would be like, okay, use BlueJeans because Verizon can lock it down.

Leo Laporte (00:48:52):
Ah, okay. And say that this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:48:54):
Conference, and the problem is, there were all these other specialties services that were already marketed to medical professionals, right?

Leo Laporte (00:49:04):
Mm-Hmm.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:04):
<Affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the other thing is no one else was like super keen on paying Verizon more money for things that work with the five G network when there was always Zoom and people would just send a Zoom invite.

Leo Laporte (00:49:14):
But you do remember that in the early days of Zoom there was Zoom bombing. Mm-Hmm. Remember a lot of schools were got mm-hmm. <Affirmative> horrified. Mm-Hmm.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:20):
<Affirmative>. We just, we literally just had that at a city council meeting like a week ago. And I was like, guys, do you not know how to lock down your Zoom meetings

Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
Password on? And then there and then there was the sec, a number of security, not incidents, but like for instance, zoom was saying, oh, we're in an encrypted when they weren't. And so there was a black mark and then they went out and they hired people like Alex Stamos. Yes. And and they bought a big crypto group and you know, the best crypto scientist key there. Keybase. Keybase, yeah. And they said, you know, make it secure. And I think they've actually, they did a remark that's almost a business school study of how to turn around, what could have been a bad thing, make a mistake. They learn from it and try to improve is what it sounds like.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:06):
Are we gonna talk about their latest mistake later on in the show?

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
What is their latest? Let's talk about it now. Oh, the new terms of service. Yeah. Yes. People are upset about this. So the Zoom is saying, and I'm not sure it's as bad as it sounds. Yeah. I'm not sure what Yeah. The, the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:23):
Word there. There's some bad messaging here. But what basically Zoom said, we can use some of your data for training AI and communications. Someone read that and inferred that. That meant we can use anything that you say on a Zoom conference call to train our ai. That doesn't seem to be true, but it's not like Zoom's doing a great job articulating this so far.

Leo Laporte (00:50:47):
This is one of those things where if we didn't have Twitter, we wouldn't have any of these outrageous, right. <Laugh>. Well, I mean, you're right.

Ant Pruitt (00:50:57):
We wouldn't have, if somebody

Leo Laporte (00:50:58):
And I saw it, I ma it on too. Somebody tweeted Zoom's terms of services now require you to allow AI to train on all capital a l l of your data, audio, facial recognition, private conversations unconditionally and irrevocably with no optout. Don't try to negotiate with our new overlords. Read one widely shared tweet this week, according to the ap, it's since been deleted and the company has said, no, no, that's not true. So what has the company said? The company says, is it, will you? Yes. Here's their blog post from Smita Hashem. How Zoom's terms of service practices apply to AI features. Fortunately, zoom had a crisis response team still in place, <laugh> from earlier in the pandemic. They basically said, no, no, you have to give permission for ai. We do not use audio, video, or chat content for training our models without customer consent. Hmm. Now I hope that that's a big box.

Ant Pruitt (00:51:56):
So again, this sounds like the whole Adobe thing.

Leo Laporte (00:51:59):
It's very similar. This is, you get this moral panic if I might mm-hmm. <Affirmative> steal a phrase. Oh, terms, Hey, hey, that's mine. <Laugh>. But that happens. All I have that trademarked.

Ant Pruitt (00:52:12):
I got a bad feeling about this. Got it. Clear now baby <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:52:16):
Where's the tmm? I didn't see, see

Ant Pruitt (00:52:18):
Tmm. I

Leo Laporte (00:52:19):
Didn't see a tm. I'm suing you. I'm suing you legal part. No, but this happens all the time. I can, it's happened again and again where people read these boilerplate legal things and sure it does say we can use everything you give us forever in any form. No charge.

Ant Pruitt (00:52:35):
But read the second sentence people.

Leo Laporte (00:52:38):
But that's boilerplate. And it's often because in order to do what they do, they need to say assert that I a lot of, almost always, it's not true. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:48):
You do have to go and opt out of providing some of your data to Zoom for model training, and you can go change this. So, let's see. They say

Ant Pruitt (00:52:57):
That, let's go into they, they explicitly say that though.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:59):
Well, they say you have to opt out. Opt. And we all know how great PE people are at opting out.

Ant Pruitt (00:53:05):
They're just not reading. I'm just gonna go into my re They read the first sentence, not reading the second sentence, because that's why they don't opt out. They didn't read the second sentence. Basically,

Leo Laporte (00:53:14):
They say, we will not use customer content including education records or protected health information to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. We routinely enter into data protection agreements with our education customers and our legally required business associate agreements with our healthcare customers. We recently introduced two powerful generative AI features. Zoom IQ meeting summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose. These features require you <laugh>, you know, we have to look at the data to do these things. Zoom account, and this is in bold zoom, account owners and administrators control whether to enable these AI features for their accounts. Now, if you enable them, of course, in order to have a meeting summary <laugh>, it has to ingest Yeah. Your meeting. So I think that that's why it says this in the terms of service. But that's, if you turn on that feature, here's what Zoom says it looks like, and this is my key, my thing is, you can say it requires consent, but if that consent buried in fine print at the end of a user license agreement that nobody reads, that's not consent, but it looks like they're, they're pretty, they're pretty good here about <laugh> looks just like the creative cloud window.

(00:54:30):
Yeah. After. Okay. It looks just like that me web setting will be to fall off. If admin enables a toggle, they'll see a pop-up that talks about data sharing. You have to press accept after accepting admins can still disable data sharing at any time by turning this off meeting summary with Zoom iq. It makes sense. I mean, you and I know that if mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, if it's doing a meeting summary, well, it, it must have the data. Yeah. <laugh>. But maybe somebody might be surprised through that.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:01):
Here's, people are often surprised by things like that. And here's what I think about the drama. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:55:05):
Go on. Here's what the member, the people who are in your meeting will see meeting summary has been enabled. So, and AI generat content, fine print, fine print, fine print. It's not that fine. And it's covering the whole thing and you gotta say Got it. Or leave the meeting. So, I mean, how, how big do you want it to be, Jeff? That seems like, well, plus what a

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:25):
Lot of people don't operate. Plus a lot of people are using these other services where it comes in as another guest to the

Leo Laporte (00:55:29):
Zoom. Right. And not telling anybody Yeah. Not tell you anything to reiterate Zoom rights. We do not use audio, video, or chat content for training our models without customer consent. And as far as I'm concerned, if this is the, what the customer consent looks like, it seems like that's sufficient. That's fine to me. Yeah. But we see this all the time with terms of service. People read it and they go, oh, they freak out. It's happened again and again. So I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:56):
Don't think that's, I don't think it's wrong though, to

Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
No, I'm with

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:59):
Those change to look at them

Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
<Laugh> I'm, and be like, I'm completely with you. Yes. online. This is from the ap again, online privacy experts say this policy is now accurately reflected in the document. However, the terms do still allow Zoom to train AI and other data such as how customers behave. And they question how much choice some meeting participants will have to opt out if say their boss decides, no, we're gonna have the meeting iq and it's on. Okay. Yeah. You're working for a boss who doesn't care about your privacy. I guess

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:34):
Well look at, think about a city council meeting. If my city council meeting's recorded and they're doing an AI summary as a citizen, and I wanna go on, I have to commit to that to, and that, that is a question that is worth talking about and answering. Or as a reporter getting at like the F C C in the white household meetings over Zoom. Hmm. I have to agree to whatever terms they set in order to get in the building as it were.

Leo Laporte (00:57:01):
Hmm. I mean, honestly, this is just the beginning because everything we do, including our podcast at some point, I suspect will be churned through an AI for things like show notes and summaries and action items. And

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:16):
And beyond that too, with, with the tool like no work ML and stuff, you have more ability to get to the data. I was at the A E J M C communication and Journalism Academics conference. Woo-Hoo. The last couple days. Dan Frumkin, who's a very good press critic, was there saying to people, reporters should be taking their entire interviews and not just taking the one quote out and book the notebook in the drawer. They should be putting it all up into a database. Hmm. So that it becomes usable. Right. Hmm. And I think that's true. There's a lot of things that were ambient that, that, that died. But now that we can have other ways to get to it, I think it's gonna be a lot more collection than we had only a few years ago.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:58):
Well, that's an interesting point. 'cause Like, I know that OMM started his blog, and I often thought of blogging when I started at an earlier publication I was at as the blog was the repository for things in your notes that didn't make it into the story. Right. And like, oh, this is interesting. I'll just write a little thing. And so it was searchable, it was accessible. And then Cory Drio talks about this a lot. I know that I do this, is you take all of those little things over time and they become part of a bigger story. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it's kind of the inverse of what traditional journalism might have been. And you're doing it kind of in front of everyone.

Leo Laporte (00:58:35):
It's okay though, right? That's a good idea, isn't it?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:38):
Yes and no. So like, if I look at my notes, like I have little codes that I'm, when I'm typing up my notes, I'm like, oh, this is off the record. So I pull that out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I could never just throw my notes into an ai. Right. And make sure, you know, without Right.

Leo Laporte (00:58:53):
It,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:54):
And some of it's like, I mean, I type little notes to myself within my notes. This is bss, check this fact, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:59:00):
Yeah. You wouldn't want publish. That's not something <laugh>. Yeah. I guess the other thing I'd be concerned about is that the raw notes published without context might be misrepresenting the actual facts of the matter, or no.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:18):
And yeah. And my notes are in shorthand and like, if I have notes from, like, let's say I have notes from an interview with Donald Trump, and then I go talk to a Trump rival, if I just publish my notes from Donald Trump, and then next week is my interview with the rival, you're getting an incredibly biased view. <Laugh>. Mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:59:39):
<Affirmative>, what if, alright, lemme give it to you this way instead of your reporter notes. What if when you rec, like you do an interview, you record it and it's transcribed, what if, as in that blog post, not as part of the story, but you said at the end of the story for the full transcription of the interview, click here. I think

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:55):
That'd be, they'll be helpful. People can see the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:56):
Context. No, because they're trying to manipulate you. I mean, part of my value as a reporter Ah, I see. Is that I am, I recognize, right. I have the knowledge to say, this is not how that works.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:07):
So I'll just say back poop crazy things and I'll know to be in the transcript. Oh, possible reporter won't put down. That's,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:15):
That's how people use social media literally today. That's how we're fighting this distance

Leo Laporte (01:00:19):
Information, right? Because it's unmediated. Yeah, yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:21):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:23):
You've just, you've taken my whole job away. Now I'm just a person. People talk to Jeff. No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:28):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:00:29):
Well, but so the primary form of the article is your analysis interpretation, your selective quotations, which is your attempt to tell the story accurately. But I don't think that having the, I think having the primary materials e even if it's put a disclaimer at the front of it that says, look, you know, if you really wanna know what's going on, read the article. But just in case you want to actually hear what this person said, here's the full unedited transcript, but understand that he might be, you know, manipulating you. Yeah. There's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:07):
There's a couple value. I think Stacey's absolutely right about the danger, but there's also 'cause of value. One is you can see the reporter plucked out a quote. You can see the larger context, number one. Number two, the reporter was there for one thing in the story, and there could be five other stories in that interview. Mm-Hmm. Five other things of interest. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that didn't work in the reporter's story. But then someone el Oh, she talked to the CEO of ham.com. Well, I wanna, I wanna read that for a a dozen different reasons.

Leo Laporte (01:01:35):
Circling back.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:36):
That is, that is true.

Leo Laporte (01:01:37):
Circling back to the Zoom story I know San, you're talking in the Discord and a number people are saying, Jason Howell. Oh yeah. That discord, that zoom changed the terms after the bruhaha allegedly that the, with your consent part was added subsequently. Oh, that's true. That's cool. Zoom has done that before. I mean, this is, this is a pattern with Zoom and I don't know if it's sloppiness

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:59):
What your afraid Stacey. My bad.

Leo Laporte (01:02:01):
Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. I don't know if it's sloppiness or if it's trying to put one over on people and then getting caught. Yeah. I think you could interpret both ways. Zoom has definitely done that before. I mean, this is not the first time. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:15):
And they could have decided, oh, the world is not ready for this. We push too hard. Right. Let's walk it back and then let's wait a little bit and then walk it forward again. I mean, you see companies do that all the time. Still not cool. Look at location sharing. Right? Still

Ant Pruitt (01:02:28):
Not

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Cool. I can't, you know, I just don't know. I don't think we know what the intent was. It could very well be just, oh, whoops, our bad. We didn't mean it that way. Or

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:37):
We're doing this. We better put out some new,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:40):
I think it, yeah, I think lawyers were like guys,

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:42):
You've been doing that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:43):
You've been reading some weird stuff. Are we doing any of this? And they're like

Ant Pruitt (01:02:47):
Oh. We're looking at it. Maybe, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
<Laugh>, I'm not gonna jump on the, on the thought that, that maybe they were trying to mislead people. That's certainly possible.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:57):
Well, I won't compare this to Adobe then, because I know for a fact when Adobe's update announcement came to me, it was right there, plain black and white. And then month or so later, all of the Bruhaha showed up on YouTube. Oh, Adobe's gonna share my stuff with it's ai. Right. And I, and I'm like, none of y'all read this stuff. Yeah. 'cause it was right there in black and white. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:03:19):
Think this is as clear cut as

Ant Pruitt (01:03:20):
That. No, it's not.

Leo Laporte (01:03:21):
Yeah. It sounds like Zoom maybe changed their tune when they got caught.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:27):
Yikes.

Leo Laporte (01:03:28):
Okay. Do you wanna do an AI segment? This seems like this would lean naturally into the

Ant Pruitt (01:03:34):
AI saying Sure.

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:37):
We, I just wish we had a theme song.

Leo Laporte (01:03:39):
I know. Or

Ant Pruitt (01:03:41):
I did bring that up to someone. By the way, that means the theme song have been singing the thing to of

Leo Laporte (01:03:46):
Your wife. I hope it's time for the AI segment. Actually, we'll be in just a moment. But I have to take a deep breath. <Laugh>. Alright, now it's time for our AI segment. Google says, oh, this is interesting. This is really interesting. This is from The Guardian. Google says, AI systems should be able to mine publishers' works unless they opt out. In other words, it's on the publisher and the writer. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:21):
Robots text. It's to opt out. It's Google's present systems, mine, publishers, content, unless they opt out with robots, do text

Leo Laporte (01:04:29):
Exactly the same. This is, this is a response to people like Sarah Silverman who are suing artists like Thomas Kincade who are upset that, you know, or Greg Wakowski. Thomas

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:38):
Kincade isn't alive,

Leo Laporte (01:04:38):
Is he? No, he's not upset. He's dead. His

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:40):
Estate. Yeah, his estate, actually,

Leo Laporte (01:04:42):
It's Greg Rakowski, the the, the fine artist Greg Rutkowski. I mean, who,

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:47):
Who would wanna steal Thomas Kincade stuff? Geez. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:04:50):
And ai. Come

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:51):
On Jeff. We know there are a lot of with

Leo Laporte (01:04:54):
That

Ant Pruitt (01:04:54):
Stuff. Come on. Everybody's not as bougie as you, Mr. Jarvis <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:04:59):
No, I think the painter of light is bougie. Actually, Jeff is elitist. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:05):
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. As, as bougie approved, he, Thomas Kincaid is not Stacy Bougie approved. I'm just

Ant Pruitt (01:05:11):
Oh, I know this. I know this. No, no,

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:13):
I can't, I can't imagine that hanging over the couch. No,

Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
Stacy. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:18):
It hangs over my parrot's couch. Does

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
It? <Laugh>? Okay. Yeah. Okay. The bougie doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm just saying. Well, my

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:27):
Stacey is, my father-in-law used to actually go to the starving artist. Art sales.

Leo Laporte (01:05:32):
Oh, well, they were starving. He just wanted to

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:35):
Help. Okay. But wait, so going back to Google for a second, <laugh>, because Google can't say yet. I mean, the issue here is Google's like yeah, you gotta opt out, but we like, literally just invented this. So we've gotta give people the notice that they can opt out. Like, I don't think this illegitimized that is not a word. Those lawsuits, I think we can say, Hey, okay, how are we gonna handle this? And then so Google's kind of victim blaming here. I feel.

Leo Laporte (01:06:01):
So in a submission to the Austrian Australian government's, there's a big difference between Austrian and Australia. Just an l I thought so. Between the Australian government's review of the regulatory framework around ai, Google said in this submission, copyright law should be altered to allow for generative AI systems to scrape the internet. The comp, this is from The Guardian. The company has called for Australian policymakers to promote, quote, copyright systems that enable appropriate and fair use, appropriate and fair use of copyrighted content to enable the training of AI models in Australia on a broad and diverse range of data, while supporting workable opt-outs for entities that prefer their data not to be trained using AI systems. And this is both OpenAI and Google have proposed the use of robots text. That's a text file. Like things like, yeah. That's a text file right now that sits in the root directory of every website that says whether Google or other search engines can scan your material. It's voluntary. It's like a do not track. It's voluntary on Google's part, but they honor it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I have a website, I have a robots do text. If you're worried about the bandwidth, you know, for instance that somebody is, is, is scraping up. You can put them in there and block them or allow them only parts of the site and so forth. They're proposing something like that for ai. I think that's exactly right. There's, I,

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:26):
There's, there's Alright. You go first, Stacy, then I'll do my Yes, but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:31):
<Laugh> Okay. I was just gonna say, I don't know that Optout is the right tool to use in this case. I certainly don't. I mean, if that is gonna be the way we do it, then we have to standardize it and put it into every browser and everywhere that something might be published because things get cut and paste from the web all the time. So my stuff, if I've opted out on my site, could get, I mean, my stuff gets stolen all the time and is then somewhere else and I can't control that. So I feel like you should really, the best and most responsible way to do this is to do data repositories. Incentivize people to stick their stuff in for training. That is the most ethical way to do it. Hmm. People saying opt out because that benefits them and that makes sense. But we don't have to build an entire society just to benefit Google and the big tech guys.

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:26):
Alright. Now can I do by Yes, but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:28):
Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:08:28):
No, but so one, I think that in the long run, and this is a guess, the courts will decide that this is fair use and transformative use. That I can read a book and be inspired by it. If I make a, a movie about Tetris and I steal hold pieces, no. But if I say, oh, I'm going to write a book about technology and, you know, I get inspired by game people. 'cause I read a bunch of books about gamers. That's my perfect right to do. That's how the arts work. Right. and I think the machine should have the same Right. Second issue that I have is, and, and, and there is an obvious question there. Did you buy the book? How did you get, how did you get to the book? How did you read the book? Right. That's an issue. But I can go to a library and I can read the book for free and I can be inspired by that. Second point is, if we shut down everything then the only thing that's gonna be available to scrape are the worst of society. Hmm. And so there's a larger question about these things are gonna be out there. They're gonna be used, they're going to be even when they're used responsibly on other, other py of data, then

Leo Laporte (01:09:39):
That would be society

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:39):
Does look

Leo Laporte (01:09:40):
Corp. That's corp journalist. It's Ka You're welcome. Yeah, you're

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:47):
Welcome. I woke you up,

Leo Laporte (01:09:48):
<Laugh>. I'll go back to sleep. No well, in fact, that's exactly what the Guardian article says. Copyright experts say that's a flipping the copyright law in its head that you have permission until somebody says, no,

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:01):
I don't, I think that's, I think that's wrong. That's why a lot of people said in mind that, that they're not flipping the copyright on their head. That's the only thing. I don't think it does that at all.

Leo Laporte (01:10:08):
Well, here's, here's my question though. Isn't there a society, so copyright is all about protecting society's interest. It's protecting the

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:18):
Actually

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:19):
No, no. Where did you get that from?

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Well, okay. It creates

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:22):
A, creates a marketplace. I

Leo Laporte (01:10:25):
Got that from the, the founders. That's the original premise of

Jeff Jarvis (01:10:29):
Ban. I, I, I I Gutenberg Preis book. I have a chapter about that. Oh, really? Right here. <Laugh>. the, when the statute of was passed, it was at the assistance of the booksellers', the stationers and the publishers who wanted a tradable market a marketplace for tradable assets. So the, yes, the author started with the asset, but the point was the author could sell the assets so that then there became a marketplace so that publishers could trade them, sell them, control them, buy shares, and them. It was all about that marketplace of the, of the farther down the chain. Just, just for the

Leo Laporte (01:11:06):
Record. Well, but go ahead. Here's what I would say it was. There are two parties, right? There is the person who created the content, whether it's a patent or a copywriter or a trademark. There's a person who created it and currently owns it. And then there's the interest, the greater interest of society. If all you were doing was protecting the owner's rights, it'd just be in perpetuity. No, they created it. They invented it. They own it forever. But the copyright and patent systems both have expiration dates. And the purpose of that is to make sure that after the original creator is able to recoup his expenses and make a reasonable profit on that, that then society benefits from that invention or that work and can use it then subsequently without license 50 years later. Right. Well, and you know, the original patent was only, was shorter and the original copyright was a lot shorter. And over time, I think the pendulum has swung in the favor of copy way too strongly in favor of copyright holders to be, you know, but the

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:03):
Copyright holder is not the creator anymore. The copyright holder is

Leo Laporte (01:12:06):
Disney. Well, there's copy variety of, yeah, there's a variety of other things that happened in the, in the medium. But, but really it swung, it swung the wrong way. And it was life plus a thousand or whatever. I mean, they're pushing it as long as they can. In effect, society does have somewhat of an interest in patents expiring and copyrights expiring. That's how you could create Disney's movies because they had access to Grimm's fairytales without license. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it was, it was Disney who then said, but now, now was us. I own Cinderella. So, yeah. So I think in that light, there is a societal interest in letting AI use stuff because it makes AI better. We wouldn't have ai Yes. If you couldn't scrape this stuff. So I, the other, I think you

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:49):
Could, but based on the amount of money. So AI is something that you could eventually make money off of. You build these tools, you build these algorithms that, and then you could sell that to people. Right? So why not create an incentive instructor to, sorry, an incentive structure to get people to donate their data or to, so pay me for access to my site. Say,

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
I'll tell you why.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:14):
Casey, you are such a, okay.

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:15):
'Cause You can't afford the whole,

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Such a small fraction of the total would be available. It'd be like saying terribly. It'd be like saying to book authors, Hey, anybody want a permanent copyright? Me? anybody want to allow stuff to go into the public domain after 10 years after you die? No. Maybe a few people, whatever some people see doesn't

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:37):
Put up all its crap for that purpose. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:40):
I would put up all my crap because I've already figured out it. This also means we change the way we monetize content. That's another one. And Jeff, you're a big fan of this. Yes. So think about what kind of infrastructure and value you might have for a true expert to create content and donate it to a site to become part of their ai. And maybe it's after five years, maybe it's after one year. I don't know this, but, but, but

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:06):
Let's, let's, let's look though Stacy at what the, the, the model training is just the structure of how to do it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that doesn't actually, if they do it right, that doesn't really use the content so much as it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:18):
Yeah. There's tons of public works that are already available that could teach you how to speak English. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:22):
There's fine, you're gonna go back to the, to the stuff that when, when Jim Crow law laws were still around the books written then used words we don't use today. And, and you know, I I think that there's, there's a a, an issue there for society as a whole. There's another interest to society as Leo says. And the model training is not reused itself. It doesn't remember it, it just maps it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:51):
You can train models though, with less data. I mean, like Yes. That's, so if we're talking about training a model, oh, sorry. And go ahead.

Ant Pruitt (01:14:59):
That's the, you're hitting on what I was thinking about with the Sarah Silverman discussion. 'cause I'm pretty sure that the AI grabbed it from some pirated website more than likely. Right? So

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
Is it possible, or it could have, you know what, or,

Ant Pruitt (01:15:13):
Or pointed out somebody like going Good Morning America.

Leo Laporte (01:15:15):
Somebody pointed this out on Sunday, that it could just be a summary of all the other reviews and summaries. The

Ant Pruitt (01:15:20):
People that legitimately read.

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Yes. She may, maybe it didn't read her book, but it's just summarizing everybody else's summary. Yeah. Yeah. Which by

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:26):
The way, is an example of what it does. Right. I can read the book and I can write a review. I'm perfectly within my rights Yep. To absorb her book and write that. So why shouldn't this AI have the same? Right. And by the way, the irony here is that so far the courts have given the products of ai no protection.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:46):
That is true. And

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:47):
It's an interesting angle here.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:49):
And if you wanna keep going on that angle, think about what Amazon was just doing with the Jane, what's her name? Jane

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:56):
Friedman.

Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
Thank I was getting to that. I've got her article. Okay. This,

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:00):
This gone, you've gone down the rundown there,

Leo Laporte (01:16:02):
Stacy. Yeah. Well, no, this is exactly us There it though Jane Friedman, who is a novelist, I've never read her novels, but

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:09):
Oh. No. Well, Jane Friedman is also a former editor of Harper Collins, extreme expert on the publishing industry. She has a newsletter I re I i I subscribe to called Hot Sheet. Okay. So Jane is followed by everybody in publishing. So when she complained, everybody noticed.

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Yeah. So she's a, she's a perfect person to step up and say something. She says in her blog post, dated August 8th, I would rather see my books get pirated than this. Or why Good Reads in Amazon are becoming dumpster fires. Her complaint is that people used her good name to generate AI books that she did not write over her name.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:47):
So it wasn't an issue of copyright at all. I got in this, this argument on LinkedIn. It was an issue of the use of her reputation likeness name. She

Leo Laporte (01:16:55):
Says, garbage books getting uploaded to Amazon, where my name is credited as the author, such as a step-by-step guide to crafting compelling eBooks, building a thriving author platform and maximizing profitability or promote to prosper strategies to skyrocket your ebook sales on Amazon. Or, and this one has a pig on the front, how to write and publish an ebook quickly and make money <laugh>. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:18):
Does this not fall on Amazon to filter

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:21):
Out? But here's the issue. Yeah. The issue is that Amazon, she told Amazon that this was happening at Amazon. Like, yeah, sorry.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:27):
At first didn't,

Leo Laporte (01:17:28):
At first. They have now removed them as has good reads, which they have now is an Amazon company, I should

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:33):
Say. So then we get to this idea of, okay, so we have crappy models or people abusing a good model to make crappy products, then the model is blameless. If we take that worldview, then we have to rely on companies to police it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we're mm-hmm. <Affirmative> so far, companies are doing a crap job at policing it. And we don't have the legal tools necessarily to force them. Like,

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:56):
I wonder, I think I wonder, Stacy. Okay. I think that you know, if, if I took your, if, if I took the, I don't, do I have it right here? No, I don't have it. Damnit. Oh, yes I do. If I took your bougie sticker. <Laugh>. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:18:10):
I don't have it. Why don't I have the sticker? Okay. Because

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:12):
I was there. 'cause I, I made the effort of going on my pilgrimage. Can we

Leo Laporte (01:18:16):
Send, we'll see. Can we send Ms. Ham her stickers? No. She'll be, she'll be here next week, Mr. Oh yeah. You just have to come get him. <Laugh>. Come on and get 'em.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:26):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this picture and I'm gonna make bougie beer. Stacey's bougie beer. Yeah. And I'm gonna put this good idea, by the way, and I'm gonna put this on the label of my beer. Now you can then sue me because I have used your likeness. Likeness. This goes back to one of the very first privacy issues. But a woman's like this was put on sacks of flour without her consent.

Leo Laporte (01:18:48):
Aunt,

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:48):
I also, I said, Stacy, so I'm using your, your name, your good reputation for the bougie beer

Stacey Higginbotham (01:18:53):
That was syrup

Leo Laporte (01:18:55):
<Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:55):
Oh gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:18:56):
Wrong product, sir <laugh>. Yeah. You can't get Uncle Ben's rice. You can't get any jemima's syrup. Nope. For good. You can't get Jemima pancake mix. Nope. And God bless it. For good reason. For good reason. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:08):
So this is, this is about like this. And, and it

Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
Wasn't until like 2021 that the company just took a Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:15):
Took a while. It took

Leo Laporte (01:19:16):
While I'm a little,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:18):
Hey, Henrietta Lacks got her day in court in Justices. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:20):
Hela the back. Hey, Hela, Hela Hela

Leo Laporte (01:19:27):
We're talking lax in the immortal gene. She was in the fifties. A black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer physicians removed some cells from her cervix. They had an interesting property. They reproduced again and again without ever dying. Yep. the physician noticed this, started to sell the cell line. It was used to develop by Jonas Sauk to develop a polio vaccine used to develop the Covid vaccine. It's been used in labs everywhere, all over the world. The estate of Henrietta La Henrietta Lacks was never a form of this. There's a wonderful book about it called the Imm Immortal Cell of Henrietta Lacks lack Immortal Life. Mortal Life of Henrietta Lack. She was never informed, but her estate of it, they sued and they just settled. And I, I, they don't say how much, but I, I imagine they got quite a bit of money from the medical company that was selling her immortal genes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with no fee or license to her.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:18):
So back to Stacey's point,

Leo Laporte (01:20:20):
By the way, Stacey, that does apply. That does apply. I was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:24):
About to say that also applies.

Leo Laporte (01:20:25):
Yeah. This whole open source.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:26):
It's actually relevant. Surprising. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:30):
It's not surprising when I bring stuff up <laugh>. It's relevant, y'all.

Leo Laporte (01:20:35):
Anyway, Jane,

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:38):
That Amazon should be held to the fleet, to the fire. Yes. Because they were, they become a, a, a, an accomplice to the crime of stealing her image or likeness or reputation.

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
She writes. So there sh we desperately need guide rails on this landslide of misattribution and misinformation. Amazon and good reads. I beg you to create a way to verify authorship or for authors to easily block fraudulent books credited to them. Do it now. Do it quickly. Yes. That's issue, that's the easy fix in Amazon. Can, you would think Amazon had, right? They had the resources for that. Well, I

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:08):
Suspect they, I've got an author page. I'm verified by my publisher. It wouldn't be hard at all to save my publishers to say, yeah, that's him. Right. And, and I have that right.

Leo Laporte (01:21:18):
It apparently, if you need to have your good reads, you'd think if you're a good Reads page, you know it's your page. You'd be able to put what books are there, there and no if you need to have your Good reads profile corrected as far as the book's credited to you, you have to reach out to volunteer librarians. You put some in scare quotes on good reads, which requires joining a group, then posting a comment thread that you want illegitimate books removed from your profile. When I complained about this on X, an author responded. She had to report 29 illegitimate books in just last week alone, 29. And this is the problem is it's trivially easy to create these books. Wow. Amazon absolutely needs to set up a system. I suspect they will. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:59):
There's some complications there. There is another Jeff Jarvis, who's a jazz musician. Right. You gotta disambiguate people. You've gotta verify 'em. And there's some expense. But they should do it because Kevin

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:08):
Offend a billion dollar company deal with the problems. Like, yeah, I'm sorry. They're all about scale. I get it. But at some point in time you have to say, oh, this is where we need to spend money. Because not only is it ethically the right thing to do, it's also gonna eventually hurt our business. I mean, Amazon is dealing with counterfeits left and right, and it's a problem for

Leo Laporte (01:22:28):
'Em. And they're making a little bit of money. They just did their quarterly results. They made some billions and billions and billions of dollars. Just

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:34):
A little What another segue. Oh, last quarter,

Leo Laporte (01:22:36):
Gordon Master and interestingly, c e o Andy Jaen Jassy on their Thursday earnings call said every single Amazon team is working on generative ai. Not on blocking fake books, apparently <laugh>, but on generative ai. He says they range from things that help us be more cost effective and streamlined in how we run operations and various businesses to the absolute heart of every customer experience in which we offer. It's true in our stores business. It's true in our a w s business. It's true in our advertising business. It's true in all our devices. You could just imagine what we're working on and you're gonna have to, 'cause I'm not gonna tell you. Hmm. so, you know, he's saying important. Even though Amazon unlike open AI or Microsoft or even Google doesn't offer a, you know, I don't think, do they, you never know with Amazon. They might and just forgot to tell everybody a, a chat bot or anything that uses ai. I don't think there's any consumer facing AI from Amazon. Maybe an L l M for Amazon's Echo. It could be something just more for the operations. Who knows? Yeah. Well, Jassy said in last quarter that they are working on a, an L l M for echo job listings.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:55):
Well, they should. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:23:55):
They should 'cause echo's everyone is

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:57):
Stupid.

Leo Laporte (01:23:58):
Job listings from earlier. No, actually it's not. I play Jeopardy every night with my echo and it stumps me every time. It's very smart. <Laugh> job listings from earlier this year indicated Amazon was hiring to improve Amazon's search with and quote, interactive conversational experience. Problem was, you don't really want an AI 'cause they're pretty chatty, you know, <laugh>, that's bad enough. When the Echo says, oh, and by the way, did you know there's four other ways to do the same thing you just did? I don't want to hear that. No, no. So

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:28):
We had the founder of Josh ai, which is a,

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
Is his name Josh Natural

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:33):
Language? Josh ai. His name is Alex. So the company's name is josh.ai. And what it is is it's called

Leo Laporte (01:24:40):
Your AI Bob.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:42):
It's a

Leo Laporte (01:24:42):
Private Microsoft already did that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:44):
N L P. Yeah, that's true. Okay. So it's a private voice company. And they actually added Josh G p t. So they've created their own generative ai. And what they, when he was on the show, he talked about how he both messages people who are using it, so they understand the limitations of the generative ai. And then also when to use just normal N O P and when to use generative ai. And it's been a real learning curve for them, because Yeah, you're right. Some people are like, don't give me a lot. Just turn on my freaking lights. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so the, the distinction they're, they're learning to make is just figuring out when you use one or the other. And storytelling. Apparently a lot of people wanna talk about recipes. <Laugh> travel plans. There are a lot of like prompts that they're like, oh, this is clearly a generative AI kind of thing. So we're gonna see these built in. We're not necessarily, it's not like Amazon's Madame A is gonna get a new name. It's just that we're gonna see better use better answers to things, and we'll be able to ask all sorts of questions and get good answers. And some will be easy.

Leo Laporte (01:25:59):
Go ahead. <Laugh>. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:00):
John. Oh, no. I was like, somebody's

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:03):
<Laugh> the commercial. Do it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:07):
But the latest technology isn't always easy to use for people of a certain age. These kids done bought me a busted machine. Again.

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:15):
Odessa. Odessa. That's why Amazon partnered with a

Speaker 5 (01:26:18):
R p to present the new Amazon Echo Silver, the only smart speaker device designed specifically to be used by the greatest generation

Leo Laporte (01:26:27):
<Laugh>. A great Saturday night Live Amazon Echo. It was one of the best. Oh don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:32):
Oh, oh one's most come back to our cameras. Waffles. We were a little busy saw waffles. Oh. Oh. Just

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
To make Stacey jealous, we got Waffle in our, in our snack cabinet. Now, these are the worst waffles I've ever had in my life.

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:48):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I was like, who makes those waffles?

Leo Laporte (01:26:51):
Well, not makes me,

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:52):
Those don't look like my

Leo Laporte (01:26:53):
Eggos several months ago. It'll do, it'll do they look right? They're warming up. They're not exactly crispy.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:00):
Any one of those hotel waffle machines. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:27:03):
I didn't touch it. I just you're fine. Id I'll eat it. I mi it, I'm MD eating it. <Laugh>. All right, let's take a little Oh, we're, no, we're not. I'm sorry. I was gonna take a break, but we have a couple more AI need more Ai, AI stories. Ai red teams says the Washington Post are attempting to break <laugh> AI and make it go rogue. You know, black Hat and the Defcon are coming up in Las Vegas and there's gonna be Yeah, they're going, it's going on right now. In fact, we're gonna talk about it. Oh, okay. On Sunday with people who are there right now. Cool. There is a big public red teaming event for AI going on right now. It's Def Con's AI Village. The Generative Red Team Challenge has drawn backing from the White House as part of its push to promote responsible innovation in ai. They you're getting top hackers according to the Washington Post top hackers, the best, the best people, the best, best from all over the world that are gonna come together to rack up points by inducing AI models to air all under

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:09):
The age of 18

Leo Laporte (01:28:10):
In various ways. Hi, I am Timmy. I'm one of the best hackers with categories of challenges that include political misinformation, defamatory claims, and algorithmic discrimination or systemic bias. Google open ai, anthropic stability of all volunteered chatbots and image generators to be put to the test. They wanna know, you know, how you can jailbreak their ais. They gave us an example. There was an event at Howard University last month, a preview of this larger event. One AI chatbot exposed someone's private medical information. Another coughed up instructions for how to rob a bank. One speculated that a job candidate named Juan would have weaker interpersonal skills than one named Ben. And one concocted an elaborate recounting of the night in July, 2016 when Justin Bieber killed Selena Gomez.

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:10):
You see, these things should have been set out only as fiction machines. The mistake the machines don what machines designed to do. The fact that they are presented as something that's gonna present any fact is where the mistake is. I completely agree. And people are gonna use it to do

Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
Best. It's a human error, not a machine error. It is a

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:25):
Human error. Yeah. Yes. We are the ones. And even when it does reveal something, reveals our biases, it's all filled with our stuff

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:34):
And ain't Yeah. But if you're gonna, I mean, the point of these things isn't to like show that machines are stupid or bad or whatever The point is to say, Hey, if you're gonna rely on these, which people ultimately will, they

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:45):
Shouldn't.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:46):
They shouldn't, but they will. I mean, come on. Yeah. We know this. Look at all this back self.

Jeff Jarvis (01:29:51):
The case of the muck lawyer. I know this was him. He wasn't the machine.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:56):
I get it. But people are gonna use it. So we need to have an understanding of how people will do this and that, that is just responsible. I mean, it's kind of like saying, if you're gonna build a car, you gotta test drive it. Mm-Hmm. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:10):
You can't possibly stop it from doing everything imaginable. If someone's gonna try make it do the to

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:14):
Stop that. Security is never going to, it's, it's never a final stop. No. But you have to constantly push the boundaries to understand where your weaknesses are. Stacey,

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:27):
If I, if I said I wanna write, write me a story about someone named Leo LaPorte as a bank robber. How do you, and, and, and, and which Leo's done right even on the show <laugh>. How do you anticipate that? No,

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
Let's be clear. I've never robbed a bank. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:44):
<Laugh>, nor have you done it on the show. On the

Leo Laporte (01:30:46):
Show or off the show. I have never robbed

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:49):
The bank. That's one type of, that's one type of, of prompt engineering. And we know it because people have done that well. But you have to be,

Jeff Jarvis (01:30:56):
What if Leo is a bank robber? How do we expect that? There's no way for the machine to know the difference. And for us to think that we can build a guardrail around that is imposs an impossibility? A logical impossibility? I would argue

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:07):
For us though, to not recognize where the machine makes common mistakes is like building something on the edge of the cliff without realizing there's a cliff there. That

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:18):
Why we're the mistake was me telling it to write a story about Leo LaPorte, the the bank robber. It's not a mistake. I did what I told it to do and it didn't. Yeah. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:27):
We ha we can't trust that you're always gonna be an ethical actor. So we have

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:31):
To Well then you don't, then don't build this technology at all a okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:35):
So don't build the

Jeff Jarvis (01:31:36):
House on the edge of the cliff. Don't, don't make it part of binging and act like it's gonna return any facts. There was this big story, I think it was Washington Post about, you know, I lied about me. I can make it lie about anybody on earth. There's no way, there's no logical way to build that guardrail. Now this is, this goes back in a way, to Leo's point about whether this is, whether chat, G p t, whether LLMs are this life-changing thing. I don't, I don't think they are, but I think other elements of machine learning are, and so I think we've gone off the, off the road here. So the way we're agreeing, Stacy, I think that the only solution here is tell people don't use that crap and don't rely on anything that you used it for.

Ant Pruitt (01:32:19):
Okay. Well, why even develop

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:21):
It? You can tell people.

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:22):
Well, that's the question. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:25):
We have to, you can't, we can't throw this out into the world without having people test it and see where it goes wrong. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:33):
How do you test the Leo as a bank robber scenario? You show people reporter that you can get it to reporter. Leo actually robbed the bank. I'm going to write a story saying, Leo robbed the bank.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:44):
I guess I don't understand.

Leo Laporte (01:32:45):
Stop saying I'm robbing banks. I don't <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:48):
I don't understand the point you're trying to make open. But Leo is a, we have to know how to make, I, we have to know how to make it laugh. I

Leo Laporte (01:32:55):
Haven't had to rob a bank since Club Twit started two years ago. <Laugh>, I just wanna be very clear. I've given all that up.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:02):
Thank you for ending Leo's career of Crime Club had club. It's another benefit you have. You go to sleep at night Chicken as knowing you.

Leo Laporte (01:33:13):
I thought I was gonna be spending the rest of my life in Alcatraz, <laugh>, Google's anyway,

Ant Pruitt (01:33:20):
I, I get where, where Stacey's coming from though. I do. Because it, it's, I think about the, the, the incident with the police the other week where it, it worked. It actually stopped that car that was carrying Oh yeah. Traffic and drugs or what have

Leo Laporte (01:33:35):
You. Yeah. But it was, but you were

Ant Pruitt (01:33:36):
Taking pictures

Leo Laporte (01:33:37):
Of everybody. Yeah. You

Ant Pruitt (01:33:38):
Know what's to stop it from saying, Hey you're Aunt Pruitt. We thought you was old doctor, even though you Right. Both black, both of you drive a m w Well, somebody

Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
Pointed out, I don't know if this is true, but I think it's true. Every single instance of mistaken identity arrests, it's usually thanks to facial color recognition were people of color. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, every single, no white person's ever been arrested. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for mistaken identity, just people of color due to, due to face recognition of ai. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if that's true, I, I don't know

Ant Pruitt (01:34:11):
How, I don't how that stuff can be fixed. I just know it definitely needs to be addressed.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:16):
I think you could, well, this, Stacey has talked about this story. I think you could say to police departments, you may not use it for that. Well, or it has to be vetted this way in that way you could use it for missing persons. But

Ant Pruitt (01:34:24):
At the same time, it worked in that scenario last week or two weeks ago, it worked. They got those drugs off the

Leo Laporte (01:34:29):
Street.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:30):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:31):
Something can work. I mean, the question we have to make as a society is if something works 80% of the time, is it worth it? Yeah. Right. To have one out of every five person be wrongfully arrested. That's

Leo Laporte (01:34:43):
Why we have the fourth. Is that okay for, that's why we have the Fifth Amendment or fourth Amendment. Because one of 'em, the founders realized that, yeah, you could have perfect law enforcement if you were willing to invade everybody's privacy. Right. But we do have a right against unlawful search seizure. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And yes, it's, that means law enforcement's not gonna be a hundred percent perfect, but that's the price you pay for some freedom. That's the same reason we have the jury system. Assuming you're innocent until proven guilty, yes, some guilty people will get away with it, but far better that one guilty person or 10 get away with it than one innocent person is convicted. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that, that's, that's our jurisprudence. That's the way this country's been formulated. And I think that's the right way to be. Now let me, but let me solve this issue between you and, and Jeff here. You never will, I think. No, no. I <laugh> I I, I've come to this, in fact, we had this conversation a little bit on Windows Weekly. Richard Campbell calls it the hype cycle. You know what the hype cycle is, right? Yeah. And, and you see it all the time in all kinds of things. Especially in Silicon Valley. Always. Where, where, where, here's the, here's a, a simplifi. Is this the

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:48):
Gartner Hype Cycle? Yeah. Yes. Well, yes it is.

Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
So there's a technology trigger and then there's the peak of inflated expectations. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we are mm-hmm. <Affirmative> we are right there. That's we baby's where Yeah. Heading down to the trough of disillusionment, leading to the slope of enlightenment and the plateau productivity. I think that's exactly where we are in ai. Somebody should

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:08):
Have copyrighted the copywritten. This, and by the way,

Leo Laporte (01:36:10):
Well, we're gonna give Garner a credit. 'cause I think that's great. That was pretty Did

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:14):
Gartner copyright

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:15):
It? They should, they should up money every time you mention it. See, that's the,

Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
It's developed, used and branded by the American Research Advisory and Information Technology firm. Gartner. So thank you. Gartner Group trademark Gartner. But the point is well take It's a good, it's actually a good metaphor and it's well taken because that's where we are in ai, where we are kind of putting on ai all of these capabilities we know it can't do. But at some point we're gonna figure out what AI can be reasonably safely used for and what things it shouldn't be used for. And I think Stacy's right. The only way we find that out is by trying it. And I think Jeff's right, that you cannot overstate the, the, you know, you, you can overstate the value of AI that it's not for everything. But, and we've all agree that, for instance, the the notebook lmm that you were talking about at Google which takes existing content and synopsize it, that's a perfect use. Right?

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:12):
That's, and, and, and, and training that model. So it can do that is a value that is not generative and does not violate copyright, but uses the knowledge in, in different ways.

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
Yeah. So I think you're both right. I mean, we need to, we need to understand the limits of ai. And the one way we do that is by red teaming. But there is gonna be value to it. And I think it's, it's reasonable to avoid Stacey's skepticism. <Laugh> Stacey, this is a new badge we are adding to the collection of Madre. Stacey Higgin bought them is skeptical of your waffles. I'm skeptical of those. What are they? Well, I'm already going through half of one. They're pretty tasty. I'm fine with them.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:53):
An an's like I'll eat them both. That's fine.

Ant Pruitt (01:37:55):
I'm fine with

Leo Laporte (01:37:56):
Them. It's more like a hoho than a waffle. Either that or

Ant Pruitt (01:37:58):
I'm carb depleted.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:37:59):
Okay. That does not look. A hoho is a chocolate cake filled with

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:02):
Cream. <Laugh>. Yeah. <Laugh>. Okay. Where, where are you from, David? You ignorant slut. Leo. How could you not know that? It's nothing like,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:12):
That's like, where is your little Debbie knowledge? Come on, man.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:15):
Nothing like, like, oh.

Leo Laporte (01:38:17):
Or any snack cake I've ever met before. <Laugh>. Let's take a deep breath and we'll come back with the Google change log in just a moment. Nothing like Oh, oh, oh. You ignorance

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:31):
I's like, no, that's Kevin.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:33):
Keep up the good

Leo Laporte (01:38:34):
Work. No, I love it. <Laugh>. Oh my, my, my my my time for the Google change log. Well, I'll let him say

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:45):
The Google change log

Leo Laporte (01:38:51):
Chrome is, and I, you know, I don't know if this is something to celebrate or something that could make you go uhoh. Oh, switching to weekly security patch updates. I guess they had to, oh boy. Every, so you are getting a new Chrome roughly every month. Now you're gonna get new Chromes. Actually it was every six weeks, then it was four weeks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now it's every one week. <Laugh>. I guess you have to,

Ant Pruitt (01:39:19):
I'm not a developer, but does that mean that the users are beta testing this in the public, essentially?

Leo Laporte (01:39:26):
No, I think Google's pretty good. I think these are security patches. I think Google's pretty, but, but what what it really tells you is there are lots of zero days. Yeah. and, and a browser is the very place that would happen because that's the interface between your secure, safe entry and entry. The outside dangerous, dangerous outside world. It's the point of entry. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And because browsers are designed to render a huge variety of content coming in from this dangerous place. Anytime you have a you know, a Steve Gibson talks about this, a content interpreter, things like your text message app or a browser. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's always a risk. 'cause In effect, that is a program that's running on data and there's always a risk that the data could be malformed and cause a hack. So I think it's appropriate but it just tells you how dangerous it's out there <laugh> that Google feels this is necessary.

(01:40:20):
We talked a few, I think it's almost a year ago, about Google's plans to delete inactive accounts. That's been a year. Wow. They are going ahead with it. Accounts won't be deleted until December 1st, but you will start getting warnings. Good one. They will sell, send multiple warning notifications. But wait a minute to me, you mean to the Gmail account I stopped using five years ago? They're gonna send me a notification. Thank you. They will send it to backup emails. If you provided one, you will have an eight months window. Can we do the change log theme? Yeah. Yes, we did. Where were you? Right down. Were you eating waffles? Were you grabbing a hoho? Have a Hoho <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:01):
Y'all, I realized they, someone just posted in the Discord, the hohos. I was thinking of dinging dogs, y'all.

Leo Laporte (01:41:08):
Yeah, I know you were. Oh, so you are the one. Yeah. It's your fault. So, D dog Stacy, our local Hoko, I'm a dog <laugh> our local bakery, the best bakery, one of the best bakeries in the world as Martha Stewart's favorite bakery. It's, it's in many lists as the best bakery in America. Della Fattoria here makes a giant hoho <laugh>. It's this big and you can get it and slice it and, and hohos for miles. Mm. It's really good.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:39):
I think it's just a, it's a frosted swish roll is what it is.

Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
Right. It's really exactly what it is. Yeah. And that's why they can, you know, they just roll up the dough. We made my 20 year old Michael for some reason came home and said, I wanna make an uey cake. And it's, it's a hoho. What's that? It's a purple hoho <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:58):
It's made with uey fruit.

Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
Yeah. It's a purple hoho. And it was interesting to say the least. <Laugh>. No, you're a purple. Bringing endorsement <laugh>. Where was I? Oh this, this new policy was announced back in May, I don't think it was May of this year. I feel like it was even before then. Anyway saying it's intended to prevent security risks because older accounts are more likely to be insecure, rely on recycled passwords, uhhuh not use two factor. So they're more vulnerable to phishing and hacking and spam. The first accounts to be cut are those that were created then never revisited. I bet you Gmail has a million of those. Right. Ton of those. Everybody wanting to do burner accounts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. Right. And spam. All of that. So that makes sense. The, remember the Bruhaha was over accounts with YouTube channels.

(01:42:55):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> people losing their YouTube channels and they want that back. Yeah. There are, that's an exception. Accounts with YouTube channels remaining balances on a gift card. Keep a balance on your gift card. Oh, that's the way to go. Those that have been used to purchase a digital item, like a book or a movie, you've got the rights to that book or that movie, or those that have published apps that are active on a platform like the Google Play store will not be deleted. Okay. I I didn't remember any of that part. Oh, you know what, this came out. This was in 2020. Google said users would have their content wiped from services they stopped using. That was when everybody, oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:31):
The YouTube stuff was more

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
Recent. Everybody was, well, I don't know. It seems, I don't know. I've lost, what do you have to do to prove to Google you're alive? Oh, to save your account, all you need to do is log in, sign into your Google account or any Google service once every two years and then do something. Read an email or watch a video or perform a search. But if you're logged in and you do something, they go, oh, he's not dead. We thought he was dead. You looked dead. Maybe he was just eating too many ho hos Google messages. This is a big deal. Now, encrypts r c s end to end by default group chats as well. So that's a very big deal. Google's been pushing hard to get Apple to adopt by

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:14):
Google messages in the UK soon.

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
What?

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:17):
Because when the UK does its online safety bill. Oh, right.

Leo Laporte (01:44:21):
That'll violate the encryption is Borked. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:44:24):
It's so stupid. I

Leo Laporte (01:44:25):
Suspect that's why Google's making that announcement. They had first promised last year that the upgrade was on the way The company first started rolling out end-to-end encryption for one-to-one messages in late 2020. Now it's for all messages, including group chats. So that's very good news. I don't think it'll convince Apple to adopt it. But anyway, if you're using Google messages, you know, I so I just, you saw, I just saw, I set up a new Samsung phone and I can never tell. There's, there's a Samsung Messages app on here and there's a Google Messages app on here, but I can never tell which is which. They're both called messages. Right. Messages and messages. One

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:10):
<Laugh> a quarter.

Leo Laporte (01:45:12):
<Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:13):
<Laugh> one

Leo Laporte (01:45:14):
One has a green icon. And so if I, so you know, what I wanna do is set up in my default apps. I want to choose which messages app I use for my s m s.

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:25):
Do I use

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Messages or messages?

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:27):
<Laugh>. I think we should do a a, a a. Marshall McCluen wants to read messages. Wants to read massages.

Leo Laporte (01:45:33):
Oh, massages.

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:35):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:45:36):
So is the,

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:37):
Like, charades and charade.

Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
So maybe somebody in the chat could tell me, is the one with the white icon with a blue thought bubble, that's Google or blue icon? Or is

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:46):
That Apple? Is that Facebook one? Looks like Facebook. Well, that's, no, no, no, no, no. I don't have Facebook. The top one is Google. That's Google One is the

Leo Laporte (01:45:52):
Google messages. You know that for a fact. Scooter

Jeff Jarvis (01:45:54):
Confirm Scooter hits.

Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
So that's my gonna be my default. I want Rush knows. I'm not gonna use Samsung's. That would be silly. I'm gonna use Googles Oh, their phone. So there you go. Oh look, my Samsung order just arrived. Oh, wait a minute. <Laugh>. See? And I just pop it right in my pocket. Look at that. You don't even know. I have a phone. Know how, know your

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:14):
Old, I predict later tonight, he's gonna say, where's my phone? I can't remember what my phone is. <Laugh>. That's how I know you're old. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:23):
Gmail for Android and iOS is adding a translate feature. That's good, right? Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
Love that. So you, you'll get a, if you get an email in a language you don't understand, you could translate it. Or more importantly, maybe you're writing somebody in a language you don't speak you can translate it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:42):
That always makes me so nervous.

Leo Laporte (01:46:44):
<Laugh>. Yeah. You never know what it really says. Do you? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:47):
Okay. Google, please do this correctly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:51):
And even though it was only launched a month and a half ago, and of course I bought it at full cost 4 99, Google has now discounted its pixel tablet, <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:46:59):
Shocking. Four

Leo Laporte (01:47:02):
Jo. It's only $60 off. Four. Four point 39 for the 128 gig Model five. How do you like it? You use it? No.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:11):
No.

Leo Laporte (01:47:12):
I'm just, I should have, I should never have bought it. Can I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:14):
Have a I told you so, sticker. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
My goodness. You're right. Mr. Joey Esposito. You on it? Stacy told me I should,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:21):
I should be waggling my finger. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:47:23):
And it's not, frankly. It's just, as you said, it's not as good.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:27):
That's, we need, we need a, a waggle sticker. Please, please, folks. Waggle sticker. No, you can't smile. No. You gotta do it without, without smiling. Stacey,

Leo Laporte (01:47:36):
You've heard Bobblehead. This is Stacey's bobble finger. <Laugh>. Why don't they make bobble fingers

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:42):
With her, with her leg? Lip. Lip brisk. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:45):
Weak wrist. Wrist.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:46):
What was it? Weak wrist. Yeah. Floppy wrist. Floppy wrist.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:49):
<Laugh>. Floppy. Floppy. That's right. Floppy figure.

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
In any event,

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:54):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:47:57):
In any event the problem is with it, just as you said, Stacy you know, so I have the Nest hub Max, which is the, looks exactly the same. It's not detachable. It's not a tablet. And it works. And I could talk to it, and it does everything. Every once in a while, the Google tablet will say, well, that's fine, but you gotta enter your password before I'll do anything. Because it's a tablet.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:18):
Because it's a tablet. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (01:48:20):
Interesting. Not

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:20):
Useful. That's interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
Not helpful, Google. Okay, well, that's my Google change log. But guess what? It's now time for Scooter X's Google Change Log.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:32):
<Laugh>. That'll take about two years. There's

Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
A lot in here. Scooter.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:35):
Yes. Well, you, you make fun of me. Scooter X <laugh> does it just for the change log.

Leo Laporte (01:48:41):
California regulators that will decide the future of Waymo in San Francisco and cruise too. That's the GM self-driving vehicle. C P U C will de will debate tomorrow to determine whether crews and Waymo will be allowed to operate.

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:58):
How, how visible are they when you

Leo Laporte (01:49:00):
Go down there? Everywhere.

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:02):
They're

Leo Laporte (01:49:02):
Everywhere. And they're slowly expanding the range of where they go. And they seem to work. All right. They don't get in many accidents. The worst they do is they hold up traffic or they congregate, or, you know, but people

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:14):
Don't, or people find ways to put

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
Cones on their noses. You know, it's funny because Alex Kitz, who does a big tech, a big technology blog and podcast was just on, I think C N B C saying it's only a matter of time and not very long at all before self-driving vehicles are everywhere. And I think this may not be the case. Whoops.

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:34):
No. I also put up, of course, this is also Elon's really, really bad execution of it. Wall Street Journal did a whole thing in the video of, of how, just how dangerous Elon's are. You wanna regulate technology. People regulate Elon's. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:49:47):
That's up to Nitsa. That's the National Highway, national Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, which makes those rules. And they really do need to be a little bit tougher. Yeah, I think on self-driving vehicles. So, crews and Waymo offer limited commercial service in San Francisco. If, according to TechCrunch, the C P U C votes tomorrow to grant final permits, the two companies be able to charge for rides, expand hourly operations, expand the service area, and add an un. And this is bad. An unlimited number of robo taxis to their fleets. They're already everywhere in San Francisco. A no vote would delay, if not completely derail crews and Waymo's plan to launch commercial operations in California. They are, of course, in other places. Phoenix, chiefly the big one. And Arizona seems to have been very positive and favorable towards self-driving cabs. That will be interesting. We'll watch that with interest. That's tomorrow. What else in the scooter exchange? Holy cow. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:50):
You make fun of me,

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
Boy, Jim. Let's see. You know, I did that one. Google Calendar rolls out material. You widget redesign. Oh, we,

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:00):
We, we don't know. We never care material. No, no, don't, don't do

Leo Laporte (01:51:03):
Material. Youtube will stop showing, showing videos on the homepage if your watch history is off. Actually, I didn't put this in the change log. It's a big story. I think if you turn, watch history off and go to your YouTube homepage, you're just gonna get like a blank, a blank page. Just the search bar up top, the navigation menu on the side. Be careful

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:22):
What you wish for.

Leo Laporte (01:51:22):
It's what you ask for this to be mobile and web.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:25):
No recommendations

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Starting today. Google writes. This is on the YouTube support page. If you have YouTube watch history often have no significant prior watch history. Features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled. Like your YouTube home feed. What could possibly go on? <Laugh>?

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:43):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
Joe. Good one, Joe. Oh my gosh. What could at

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:47):
This point, Joe, we don't have possibly Stacy Waggle. That's good.

Leo Laporte (01:51:51):
That's good. You was very worried. Good one, Joe. See, we're talking our stickers. Oh, I won't. Club twit stickers. Yes. Very nice. Joe Esposito does those right? Joe Esposito's.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:02):
Oh, Joe says you'll get the wa

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
Vor. He's working on the wa

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:05):
Post. What's video posts? Okay, Joe. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:52:07):
Joe, you're so animated.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:09):
Animated.

Leo Laporte (01:52:10):
Yeah. So if you wanna play with it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:14):
Oh, no, no. You know what? I want that Chinese doll where it goes back and forth. Oh. Like the lucky cat I to be Stacey Wag. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (01:52:21):
Cat doesn't go that way. Goes lucky this way. Yeah. Yeah. It throws Stacey goes this. It's like he's throwing Poh at

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:25):
You. Stacey goes this way. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:26):
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:28):
<Laugh>. All right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:32):
I told you, I told you,

Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
I told Best Buy told will soon offer Google picture repairs and select stores. Actually, this is what this is Scooter X's <laugh> badge. Google wants I here more. Ask some more. Google wants switchers to know It's all good on Android. We did, we showed that light yesterday on on Mac Break. Weekly. There's an ad now Google's doing. It's okay. It's okay. You could shift from iPhone. You're gonna be happy. Google's working with Mongolia to provide Chromebooks, <laugh>, <laugh>, all students. Where

Ant Pruitt (01:53:01):
Are you finding those stuff? Man? <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:03):
Now he, now he's trying too

Leo Laporte (01:53:04):
Hard. <Laugh>. Alright. And that's the Google change law.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:11):
Wow. End

Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
Nx. End scene.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:16):
Wow. Dude.

Leo Laporte (01:53:18):
I'm exhausted. Alright, let's see. Is there is have we done? Oh, I, I feel like there, there might be WeWork. How about this? Wework says WeWork. There is substantial doubt. We'll stay in business. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:32):
Really?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:33):
Yeah. This is not surprising.

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
I'm gonna run out Vice. It

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:36):
Was substantial doubt about five years ago too, but

Leo Laporte (01:53:38):
Barely

Ant Pruitt (01:53:38):
Qualifies as news.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:41):
You know, if you can make your grift work for just a few years and then the venture capitalist can get their, you know, they'll give you more money. I mean, Adam Newman now has money for a

Leo Laporte (01:53:51):
Billion apartment

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:52):
Adventure. Billion. Billions.

Leo Laporte (01:53:54):
Indeed. He's done. So well watch that WeWork TV show. It's really good with Jared Leto as Adam Newman. And his wife is Anne Hathaway, played by Anne Hathaway, and she's really good in it. Which,

Ant Pruitt (01:54:06):
Which I decided not to watch it 'cause it's just frustrating

Leo Laporte (01:54:09):
Network. Apple. Is it Apple or I thought it was H b I read the book.

Ant Pruitt (01:54:14):
I thought

Leo Laporte (01:54:15):
It was Oh yeah, the book really good too. Yeah, it's amazing. It's I mean, I don't think, is it still this way, do you think, Stacy? The, is there Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:23):
Yes. It has been this way since I started covering technology. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:26):
Yeah, yeah. Let's see what else? Here's a question for you.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:34):
Here's a question for you, because we talked about once in a while about, about a different scale for the future of the internet mastered on smaller and all that. Do vvc I'll, I'll put it stupidly. Do VCs necessarily screw up an idea in the company?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:50):
Here's the deal, and I have believed this since the very beginning of like coming to work in the media. That was VC funded VC funding makes sense for certain businesses. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the problem is so much money went into, well, the bigger problem is people wanted massive VC returns. So they invested, you know, in LPs that could then invest in vc. So there was a ton of money that went into this because they got returns for investing in businesses that legitimately scaled. Like if you come up with a cool chip design and you were replicated across a billion chips and you can sell those, it makes a lot of sense. And that's capital intensive upfront. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:28):
Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:29):
What happened is we decided that every business can scale and it makes sense, even if it's unpro. And they took the idea that you can be unprofitable at the beginning and get to scale and then become profitable, but doesn't actually work for every business. But then what happened when they realized that, they were like, well, we'll just take it public, or we'll sell it to our friends in private equity for a massive amount of money. And so the problem is you still saw awesome returns, even if a business wasn't actually financially sustainable for the long term. Right. And so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And once you start making those outsized returns, people give you more money. And then now we've got this huge money cycle that is not funding businesses that can actually perform it, scale and make money. Look at Uber. Uber is still losing money.

Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
Nope. They made money last quarter.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:22):
Nope, last quarter. You missed that story. Last couple million dollars.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:25):
They finally made money. I'm, I'm so sorry. Couple.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:27):
Okay. Now, Stacy,

Leo Laporte (01:56:29):
Steven Lee, we talked about this last week. Steven Levy's, I is interviewing Diara Ko Koro Short, and I can't, why? Say it for me. Will you, Jeff, you know how to say it. I can. Koro shahi. I've

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:40):
Gotta look at it. That

Leo Laporte (01:56:41):
Ro Shahi, something like that. And I think Dara, I'll just call him Dara, the c e o and <laugh>. I'm sorry. We got another, we got another sticker. Just this, just in, it's like the election, election night. We've got we've got breaking news from West Virginia, the scooter X chain flock. Oh, scooter is not gonna be happy about this. Oh, no. There's a guy dumpster diving for stories.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:07):
At least it's not on fire.

Leo Laporte (01:57:10):
<Laugh> <laugh>. So Uber Uber, c e o Dara was being interviewed by Steven Levy. And Levy mentioned that in order to get here from Brooklyn, he had to take a, like a two mile Uber ride, a custom 52 bucks. Right. It's crazy. And Dara was so shocked, his normal composure went away. And he said, oh my God, that's awful. <Laugh>. But that's the secret to why Uber. Apparently Uber's gotten much more expensive than Lyft. Yeah, it is. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:40):
And that has been a new, that is, that has been something that VCs do. They, they basically come in and lost lead on a product. Yeah. And then they jack

Leo Laporte (01:57:49):
Up prices. You gotta turn around. Yeah. Yeah. It's

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:51):
Part of Cory's ification cycle. Yep. You know, in certification.

Leo Laporte (01:57:56):
Did you know you could still get a red envelope with a D V D in it from Netflix? No. You don't. Yeah, you could, but not much longer. They're finally winding down their D V D business after 25 years. You know

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:10):
How we get these stories about

Leo Laporte (01:58:11):
How a lot <crosstalk> Wait, this is from April. I'm sorry. How did this get in my box? <Laugh>? How did that

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:16):
Get in there? I didn't put it in

Leo Laporte (01:58:17):
There. Well, it's getting closer. The deadline is September 29th, the last rent envelope.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:25):
We're gonna see, see stories in 50 years where somebody finds an envelope of weekend at Bernie's <laugh> and after 50 years, they sent it in to an address at Netflix. Which,

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Funny <laugh>, no worries. You do, you do see stories. Every once in a while. This 200 year old library book is now being returned for a $15 million fine, <laugh>, that kind of thing. You do see that? I have to say. Yeah. Has anybody had a Mr. Beast Burger?

Ant Pruitt (01:58:55):
Negative

Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
Mr. Beast is of course, the number one guy on YouTube, and that picture says, I don't want to try it. Oh, I got a worse one. So, oh, really? So this is from Kotaku. I accidentally ordered burgers from a YouTuber. He didn't know who Mr. Beast was. He just said it sounded good.

Ant Pruitt (01:59:14):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:15):
But Mr. Beast had contracted with a company that specialized in pop-up restaurants. They would go to Buca Depo and Brio Italian Grill. Good

Ant Pruitt (01:59:26):
On him.

Leo Laporte (01:59:27):
Good on him. Say Make a Mr. Beast Burger. Here's the recipe. Stick a Mr. Beast Feast on the, on the sticker on the bag. You see, he's just a regular brown paper bag with a sticker on it and deliver it. And you're gonna get more business. And Mr. Beast is gonna make lots and lots Good on

Ant Pruitt (01:59:43):
Him.

Leo Laporte (01:59:43):
Hey, of money. The problem. Well, an well <laugh> well,

Ant Pruitt (01:59:49):
I'm not saying I'm buying it, but here's

Leo Laporte (01:59:50):
The, here's the quality

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:51):
Control.

Leo Laporte (01:59:52):
Mike, Mike Fahey, who also writes for Kata, says, I also accidentally ordered a burger from a YouTuber. And, wait, will you, this is the, this is what it looks like in the, on the web. The Mr. Beast Burger's supposed to be a smash burger. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with crispy edges and all this stuff. <Laugh> this, when you see what he got, this is what he got. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
The caption on this, what the watery hell is this any, in any event, Mr. Beast shut the whole thing down because the quality was no. QC was very outta control. And they're suing each other. Now. He in turn, is being sued. Mr. Beast now faces a $100 million lawsuit from the company. Virtual Dining Concepts that he contracted to do this. A hundred million dollars. He probably could pay it. Yeah. That's the amazing thing. Yeah. It's

Ant Pruitt (02:00:42):
In his couch

Leo Laporte (02:00:43):
Cushion. He's suing them because he wants to get outta the deal. They're suing because he said, because they say Mr. Beast is a social media celebrity who believes his fame means he can break contracts and say anything.

Ant Pruitt (02:00:57):
Oh, that's just typical Killer Sueing, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:59):
Yeah. Apparently though there have been many, many negative reviews, Mr. Beast started to list the whole problem the beginning of this month, August 1st, suing V D C saying they didn't care about quality, wanted to get out of the deal. V D C

Ant Pruitt (02:01:15):
Said, and that's fair on this part. So, again, good on him. It was good on him for the idea and good on 'em for saying, you know what, Hey, this got my name. I don't

Leo Laporte (02:01:23):
Know. Good on 'em for the idea. That's really just saying. Yeah. I don't give it what these things are. Actually, no. Several

Ant Pruitt (02:01:29):
<Laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:01:29):
Several shows ago, like dinner in the middle of the pandemic when he did this, we were like, that's, we actually did a story on this. 'cause This is the only way I know about this happening. 'cause We were like, that's pretty creative. And it is to say, Hey. And I think initially people were excited about the burgers and they were good.

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
Oh yeah. The dude knows the,

Ant Pruitt (02:01:46):
The story's a brand hill. Sorry. Heck, people go nuts for in and Out burgers over here. Yeah. Why nuts?

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
The story we did was of how Mr. Beast caused chaos at a New Jersey mall by offering the opening a, a Mr. Beast Official Burger. Look at all these people in the mall going to the store to, you know, 'cause he's got a restaurant now opening

Ant Pruitt (02:02:11):
A Beast. Oh. Uses more revenue for Mr. Beast L l C right there. Yeah. That's all Lemon

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
To the French fryer, man. Geez. I claim I am a broke college student, and I want a Free Beast Burger.

Ant Pruitt (02:02:24):
He is a businessman.

Leo Laporte (02:02:25):
He knows how to you know what his real skill is? He knows how to work the YouTube algorithm. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he says it freely, he and tells people how to do it. He says, when I was in high school, I got together with my buddies and we really broke it down. Tried to figure out what the algorithm was and how to beat it. Yeah. And he did. He figured it out. Good

Ant Pruitt (02:02:44):
Honor.

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
Curiosity Rover has found quote striking evidence of habitable seasons on Mars. You know, they always said Mars had canals, right?

Ant Pruitt (02:02:56):
Oh, they did.

Leo Laporte (02:02:56):
Yeah. But it did. But that was just, you know, because we could, good. Elon can move there now. Yeah. <laugh>. But they're actually, you see this pattern of kind of hexagonal pattern that actually

Ant Pruitt (02:03:07):
Looks like eczema.

Leo Laporte (02:03:09):
It looks like eczema or mudflats. You ever see Mud Flats? <Laugh>? Listen, Mars needs a little lotion. Yes. <laugh> Mars needs scientists have concluded the patterns are cracks formed by regular episodes of get this flooding and drying Hmm. A natural phenomenon. Know to be extremely conducive to life here on Earth.

Ant Pruitt (02:03:31):
I wonder if Mr. Powell will talk about this on his show

Leo Laporte (02:03:34):
Friday. I bet you

Ant Pruitt (02:03:34):
This week in space, I bet

Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
You, yeah. I, you know, I should have made this my pick of the week. But if you're, are you a fan of The Expanse? I know you are John, right? The never tried, are you? There's a website called Prop Store Auction, where the props from TV shows get auctioned off. This is The Expanse Online auction. It started yesterday.

Ant Pruitt (02:04:00):
The jumpsuits.

Leo Laporte (02:04:01):
Yes. Here's Julie Maos scapula Coveralls with Plasma Torch and Accessories. This too could be yours for just $300. Actually, current bid's only 2 75 19 days left in the bidding, though I might, it might go up. James Holden's Bloody barus ca gas coveralls and ERO Station Police armor and helmet. Wouldn't you love that? Huh? Huh huh. Okay. You'd have to have like a, I don't

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:33):
Love it that much. I'll just

Leo Laporte (02:04:34):
Be real. Well, okay. How about Amos Burton's badge and accessories? I actually kinda like this one. And it's not too expensive. It's just a few hundred bucks. His his coffee cup <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, his badge. P and k Canterbury Executive Officer and his ID cards. How about that? James Holden's ID cards. Nate and I guard's ID card. Sure. How about that? This is probably the same, very same cup that he scraped the match residue into to make his coffee taste better. I'm just saying <laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:07):
Boy, buyer's remorse is waiting on the other end of that <laugh>. Do I do with this? Now? You bought that honey

Leo Laporte (02:05:14):
For $700.

Ant Pruitt (02:05:18):
All I see is some that's, that's a no. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, all I see is passionate cosplay folks all over this and Yeah. Yeah. Why not?

Leo Laporte (02:05:25):
It also probably could have been a pick of the week. Google has announced something called Project I D X. It's a development environment on the web only. And it's cross platform. It'll allow you to run emulators for both iOS and Android idx.dev. I immediately asked for an invite, but I have not received one yet. But interesting revelation. I didn't know this, but Paul Throt did a little digging, and this online only develop in the cloud cross platform uses Microsoft's vs. Code. Whoops. As his backend.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:05):
Okay. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:06:07):
Anyway you can run vs code or it's o open source version code o s s on as a server, and then log in from your browser anywhere and do pretty much the same thing. I guess. This uses Google's ai, that's its version of GitHub copilot called code that will help you write the code as well.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:27):
Is it common for people to use cloud-based development environments?

Leo Laporte (02:06:31):
You know, yeah. You'd

Ant Pruitt (02:06:33):
Have to have some local performance.

Leo Laporte (02:06:35):
No. Even 'cause the compiler's running in the cloud, it's probably okay. Especially for the kinds of apps you'd write with this, which are web-based. Okay. But it's particularly a value if you're doing collaborative coding. Okay. So I'm writing it and you're writing it, and we're not in the same room. Right. You know or we're doing pair programming, or you're doing reviews, and then there are people move around a lot or hybrid work. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> people and stuff. It's better than, you know, having it all on this laptop. You have it in the cloud, you can access it right. In any laptop. So there's a use case for it. Sure. you and I, if we were gonna write code, we'd probably just do it on our local machines. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> be like editing photos, I guess in the cloud, be kind of similar to that. Do you ever do that?

Ant Pruitt (02:07:15):
No. I'm a, I'm a solo guy. Yeah. I don't like people. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:20):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:07:22):
The 5 billion I can see it

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:24):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:07:26):
The $5 billion. None of us like people. That's why we're podcasts. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:31):
Think Jeff likes people. Yeah. Do you like No, actually no. They don't

Leo Laporte (02:07:34):
Like me either. <Laugh> Mutual. So it's basically a bunch of troubled loners doing, doing this. Yeah. That's exactly what it's Oh, I'm not troubled. I I am a loner though. <Laugh>, I'm troubled. You dare say I am. Implication

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:47):
That I'm troubled. I'm not.

Leo Laporte (02:07:48):
I'm trouble, but I, I am a loner. Totally happy <laugh>. You've heard the name Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers before she's hearing yet another case against Google. This is the incognito mode in Google. That's Mac $5 billion lawsuit. Google asked for summary judgment saying, your Honor, just throw this out. Of course, the whole issue was you go into incognito mode and you're still being tracked by Google. It's just your spouse can't see what you're doing. And they had big texts that said that and so forth. However judge Rogers said, no, no. There were statements in the Chrome privacy Notice the privacy policy, the Incognito Splash screen, and the Search and browse privately help page about how incognito mode quote limits the information stored, or how people can control the information they share writing. Quote, taken as a whole, a tryable issue exists as to whether these writings created an enforceable promise that Google would not collect users' data while they browsed privately.

(02:08:55):
Privately. Privately. So privately <laugh>. So the lawsuit was filed in 2020, seeking $5 billion in damages. And it is now going to go ahead. Yeah. Whew. Okay. Forgot about that. Yeah, me too. A couple of passings We should note in passing, the woman who really created Consumer reports led them for decades. Rhoda Kin has passed at the age of 93. She was the executive director of Consumers Union. Changed the name to Consumer Reports, published the magazine, expanded its readership and its influence in Washington. A very important consumer advocate for many <crosstalk> Personal Heroes was on the board for many years.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:43):
You know, my first non journals, so I had to take a PR job in college because my journalist, some professor was like, Stacy, you really should know how the other side is. So I like, was like, oh, this feels awful. So I worked for the Texas Office of Consumers Union for a semester. Oh. And I remember being shocked that press release quotes were manufactured by interns like myself. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:10:06):
Yeah. <Laugh>. Oh, yeah. But, oh, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:08):
It was fun advocating for health insurance for children and giving eyeglasses or eye ophthalmologists, making sure people could take their eyeglasses prescription on the go. 'cause Neither of those things were Yeah. Possible in Texas. Before that time,

Leo Laporte (02:10:23):
Consumers Union did a lot of good under her leadership subscriptions to the magazine. More than doubled to 4.3 million. In 2000, they created what was then the largest pay website. 350,000 subscribers. I was and am one of them. She also raised $40 million to build Consumer Union's headquarters in Yonkers, in an automobile testing track. So she will be missed. R i p R Rhoda. I said, Rhonda Rhoda Kin. And also geeks will know the name Bram Mullinar. He's the author of Vim created Vim Vim. It was a takeoff on vi, which was a early text editor, widely used. Vim was much improved and widely used everywhere. It became, for instance, the default text editor on I think it was Ubuntu. Ubuntu. Yep. And many other Linux distros. He was a young man passed at the age of 62. Hmm.

(02:11:26):
he had been, according to his family, suffering from a serious medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks. So the father of Vim who is much beloved in the open source community, bra Molinar, dead at 62. Alright. I think this would be a good time for us to change gears and get our picks of the week in here. And then, you know, what comes after picks of the week? Waffle waffles. Time, baby waffles, <laugh>. But before we do poor, enthusiastic <laugh>, gimme a waffle. Gimme a waffle. You're not getting this best show you enthusiasm you already gave to me is mine now, dude. Oh, all right. I lost my wobble. <Laugh>.

(02:12:09):
You know, if I only had people donating seven bucks a month to me on a regular basis, I probably could afford my own waffles. Yeah, you could get your own waffle. Beer waffle. I wanna be very clear. Waffle. No. Not one penny Of the money that you give as a subscriber to call food goes into my pocket. And you know how you know that I haven't been paid for three months <laugh>. So there, but it does go into the pockets of you and you, and you, and you. And it keeps the lights on and it keeps the cameras worrying. And it lets us develop new programming. Yeah. If you like what we do here at twit, it makes a big difference. And we give you benefits. I think that well justify $7 a month. First of all, you'll not see any more ads ever. All of our shows ad free and tracker free because you're giving us seven bucks a month that we don't need to monetize you.

(02:12:55):
You also get shows that we don't put out anywhere else. The club finances shows like Hands-On Macintosh with Micah Sargent Hands on Windows with Paul Ott, Jonathan Bennett's on titled Linux Show, the GIZ Fizz with Dick d Bartolo. We just brought back Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks thanks to club members. Thank you club members. This week in Space, rod Pys Show started in the club. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and launched, if you will, into public. And that's our goal is to, is to use it to generate new shows. We also have bits and pieces from shows that aren't parts of regular podcasts. For instance, the unboxing and set up of the New Galaxy z Flip five. That's a club member done right before, before the show. Exclusive. Yes. Yep. Right here. Or

Ant Pruitt (02:13:37):
The Times I decided to take a look at Joe Esposito's. Terrible photos and a photo critique.

Leo Laporte (02:13:43):
<Laugh> photo critiques. <Laugh>, you, you and I are gonna do a photo walk end of the month. I'm looking forward to that. That's correct. Stacey's book Club's coming up end of the month. Lots of good stuff we do in the club. It's a great place. We also have access to the Discord, which is a wonderful hang for everybody who's a member of the club. Funny thing, people who support Twit are nice people and it's great to hang out with 'em. Who would've thunk? So if you're not a member, please Twit tv slash club twit. We would love to have you. Seven bucks a month, $84 a year. There are family memberships, there are corporate memberships. And we appreciate each and every one of our great Club TWIT members. Thank you. Now time for Apics of the Week. Stacey Higginbotham. Give us a pic of the week she's past. Okay. She's pasting it in even as we speak. I am,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:31):
I have one this week, <laugh>. So I was, I, I've been talking a lot on the show about Smart Home energy management and as part of that I was like, oh, what can I tell people about how to set up your own house? So I wrote a little how to about your first steps, but as part of that, I tried Smart Things, energy. This isn't gonna work for everybody, so I'm just telling you that right now. But Smart Things has an energy management program, and if you're already a smart things

Leo Laporte (02:14:58):
User, <laugh>, it's not working for me. <Laugh>, I can, I have a blank website right now. Lemme refresh this here. Okay, well

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:04):
That's,

Leo Laporte (02:15:05):
That's weird. There it goes. Right. Wait a minute. Lemme do it again. It goes right off the page. It starts <laugh> and then it goes Z <laugh> <laugh>. Anyway, a Chromebook. This is from Samsung, right? Keep scrolling. This is from Samsung. This is from

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:19):
Samsung. Okay. So it's smart things. And, and what this is, if you have smart things and you install the energy, the smart things energy app, what it will do is it will look at devices that are supported and show you how much energy they're using. Oh. And this is just a way to start, like monitoring this. So if you already have it in your smart things system, it'll automatically start pulling this in. You can also tie it back to some demand response programs, but not too many just yet. They're adding more. And if you have some Samsung's appliances, you could actually use this to turn on like greater energy savings mode in your washer and dryer, for

Leo Laporte (02:15:57):
Example. Oh, I do. I have Samsung washer and dryer. I do.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:01):
Yeah. So this is free. It's, it's a fun little tool. I think what's gonna happen is, you know, I, I really believe because we've got this trimmer of energy issues coming towards us, which is we're electrifying everything, but we're seeing more instability in the grid as we move to renewables. And then we're also seeing issues with power outages because of climate change and, and issues there. What's happening is we're trying to piecemeal a grid that is both smarter, a little bit more resilient with backup energy power in the home, and maybe, and more electric consumption in the home from electrification of appliances. So all that happening means we're gonna have to make the whole system smarter. And you're seeing, like this week GM just said, Hey, if you buy our big old trucks, you can power your house using these batteries in our trucks. Which is pretty cool. Right? and you're gonna need software to manage that. And this is one of the early kind of versions of software to help me manage that.

Leo Laporte (02:17:03):
So this seems like a very good idea. I get the, I often think that iot devices are not particularly energy you know, hoarding. Are they? I mean, I don't, these little devices I don't hoarding. You know, they don't use a lot of energy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:20):
No, no. Most of, like, they don't use a lot of energy. The benefit of the iot there is the smarts and the communication factor. Yeah. So it's, if you have a smart breaker panel, which because of the inflation reduction act and the infrastructure bill, they're actually state util state PUCs or ah,

Leo Laporte (02:17:40):
You get a

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:40):
Building programs to ah, like incentivize people to buy these kind of smart breaker plan mm-hmm. Smart breaker panels. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And with something like that, you could say, Hey, when my power is out and I only have my GM truck to power my house, only turn on the following circuits. Hmm. and you're gonna need software to manage that. 'cause No human being's gonna be like, okay, I wanna let my, you know, I, I don't know what's Yeah. You don't wanna manually do that. You wanna be like, okay, let's prioritize my refrigerator and my outlets in the kitchen because I need coffee and to charge my phone when there's a power outage. And you'll be able to do that. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:18:25):
It's funny that you should mention that because that was one of the stories I decided not to include to for reasons of time, which is that GM has announced that they are gonna make all of its new ultium ev ultium based EVs charge power of the house. So forges that right now. Lightning storage devices. Yeah. you've got a big battery and the power goes out in the house, you could just plug in mm-hmm. <Affirmative> your car and, and power the house is kind of cool. For how long? Well, it depends how big the battery is. Yeah. How much power

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:52):
It is. Not forever.

Leo Laporte (02:18:54):
I mean, wast the lightning doing that as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:56):
The lightning also does it. And like we use, I mean, we get winter storms that'll knock power out for like a day, sometimes even two days here on the island. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we keep the Tesla charged in the winter because we can power our phones from it. We can't do anything else. But,

Leo Laporte (02:19:12):
You know. Does it, it has a, an AC plug? Is that why? Or It used sb It has a u SB plug.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:19):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not like an Is it an inverter? It's not a No. An

Leo Laporte (02:19:23):
Inverter. Yeah. Yeah. We have Tesla power walls, which basically Yes. Great. Recycled Tesla batteries packaged up. And and, and the reason is we live in a rural area and there's no our pump is electric, so we'd have no water when the power goes out. No showers, no toilets, nothing. And that's pretty important. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:44):
We have. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:45):
Yeah. We're on a well too in our pump and our

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:48):
No toilet for you. Yeah. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:51):
No. You get one flush and you can always dump

Leo Laporte (02:19:53):
A bucket <laugh> one flush

Ant Pruitt (02:19:55):
The bucket trick.

Leo Laporte (02:19:56):
Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda the story of this show, isn't it <laugh>?

Ant Pruitt (02:20:01):
The Bucket Trick or The One Flush?

Leo Laporte (02:20:03):
Either one. Oh.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:04):
Oh. He's at the end of his week.

Leo Laporte (02:20:06):
I'm at the end of my week <laugh>, which explains my pick of the week. The Sad Bastard Cookbook. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:15):
I was afraid this was Hank's title

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
Food. No, no. Wasn't his. I'm getting, I'm practicing for when Hank's cookbook comes out later this year. His is not a sad bastards. This one is free, which is great. You can download it. It's, it's just Oh, cool. It's just sad because, you know if you are a sad son of a gun food you can make so you don't die is the subtitle. <Laugh>. And you'll see, if you'll look at it, you may, you kind of maybe wish you were dead. Ramen variations. One, two, and three. Kinda like pad Thai, literal depression, cooking pasta in a rice cooker. I mean, this is, this is grim. Grim. But it's actually really good. And, you know, I think for the Hardhead, you know, going out and starting their life learning you know, about God tier ingredients like garlic and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, how to take that Instant Ramen, which every college kid lives on and make it something

Ant Pruitt (02:21:14):
College heart has been impressing me with his cooking skills. Good. Being resourceful.

Leo Laporte (02:21:19):
Good. It is available for free for download pasta with homemade tomato sauce. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:21:29):
It reminds me of Mr. Victor, our editor putting Dan Gump ketchup on his burrito

Leo Laporte (02:21:34):
Today. No, no he didn't. I'm, but he got the California burrito with french fries. I hope,

Ant Pruitt (02:21:39):
I don't know it. You don't put ketchup on. That's

Leo Laporte (02:21:40):
A terrible

Ant Pruitt (02:21:41):
Idea. Gun burrito. Come on, come

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:42):
On. Oh God no. Oh, who did that? No, no, no. Danish them <laugh>. Who did that?

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
Our editor. Mr. Victor. Victor Bog. Victor. Victor. Victor.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:52):
Now he is gonna edit this out because he machine,

Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
He's

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:55):
Not gonna want the world to know he's gonna have the power of editing.

Leo Laporte (02:21:58):
It's from traum books. T r aum books do itch. I io the sad. I bet you, you, if you Googled the Sad Bastard Cookbook <laugh> and you can buy a printed version. My book Do two slash Sad Bastard. What

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:15):
Is HEGs coming up?

Leo Laporte (02:22:17):
They just finished the photo shoot. I think they're doing you know, the, whatever that thing is, that production thing. And, and I, I would guess it's gonna be out in, in before Christmas, right? November. Oh yeah. Good for, yeah. If you're can put out that cookbook, you don't wait until

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:33):
Do you knows Publish. Sure. I've asked you, but you didn't know.

Leo Laporte (02:22:36):
No, I still dunno. Good

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:37):
On, I still dunno.

Leo Laporte (02:22:39):
Somebody with deep pockets <laugh>. I hope. I hope. Jeff, do you have a number for us?

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:47):
Yeah, let's see here. Which one should I do? I think I'll do this one because I want to hear what are are the real man among us. An says about this what <laugh>. So E <laugh> the sports fan. The real sports fan. Oh. so E ss p n strikes $2 billion sports betting deal with Penn Entertainment.

Leo Laporte (02:23:06):
This is very frustrating.

Ant Pruitt (02:23:07):
Problematic, man.

Jeff Jarvis (02:23:09):
That's what I wanted to hear about. Yeah, I mean, ESPN is desperate as a business. Disney is rather desperate with all its of its video stuff. Sports betting is legal and can be done with. The irony of it is that you want your own fans, your own viewers to lose their money. Barstool Sports was part of the brand. They gave, literally gave Barstool back to its founder after he made some huge amount,

Leo Laporte (02:23:32):
Amount of money. So they paid more than half a billion dollars in 2020. Thank you to David Portnoy for Barstool Sports. Another one of those gosh darn podcast acquisitions just, just made me mm-hmm. <Affirmative> really jealous. And then to top it all off, they decide, yeah, this didn't work out, didn't work. And they're giving it back to 'em for free. Their only condition is if you, if you sell it, we want 50% of the proceeds, but they can't even be bothered to sell it. Mm-Hmm. They're just giving it back to 'em. Go ahead. Do whatever you want. Yeah. Unbelievable. But I'm with you. I don't like you know, I, I think of Pete Rose who was banned exactly from the Hall of Fame forever for betting on baseball games. Exactly. One of the great players of all time. And now the N F L, it's

Ant Pruitt (02:24:15):
Quite hypocritical.

Leo Laporte (02:24:16):
Yeah. They're all getting into sports betting. And I don't think it's good for frankly America. I think there are people who have severe gambling problems and making the, making, it's so easy to gamble.

Jeff Jarvis (02:24:27):
The number of gambling commercials on, on cable gear is just amazing MG m 'cause they don't all that. So now E S P N and I, so, and here's my question. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, do you think that's gonna affect the coverage where they're gonna have to do more about covering spreads and stuff? Do they already do that? I don't know. I don't want e s espn. I

Ant Pruitt (02:24:46):
Don't know if they will do that. My concern is, you know, we've al already had conspiracy theories about games being fixed. There have actually been some legit cases of referees jumping in and fixing certain games such as in the N B A and the referee was charged. Now you're throwing gambling in there that's quote unquote legalized Now because E S P N is the mothership of sports could we see more of this fixing out there all in the name of covering the spread? That's a problem.

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:19):
Hi, this is Benito and I do watch E S P N for N B A

Benito Gonzalez (02:25:22):
And they do cover a lot of gambling already on there. They already give you odds on games and

Ant Pruitt (02:25:27):
Products

Leo Laporte (02:25:28):
Absolutely. Like that. Yeah, absolutely. But that's is that, but you know, that's, that's, that's moderately recent. I mean Oh yeah. It's brand new since gambling. Yeah. The station that I worked at for years in San Francisco, K g o is a number one news talk station for two decades. Cumulus its owners turned it into a sports gambling station about six months ago. Fired everybody. Wow. And it's all about sports gambling. Oh, that's the funny thing.

Ant Pruitt (02:25:51):
I remember that

Leo Laporte (02:25:52):
Funny thing is I think they did it because there was an initiative in California Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:25:55):
Was a bill here that didn't pass, that didn't pass, didn't

Leo Laporte (02:25:58):
Pass to make sports gambling legal. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's not legal in California right now. Right. And I mean, not except at the racetrack and, and some select venues, but you can't do it online. Right. And I think they thought, oh, this is gonna be a land grab as soon as that thing passes and it didn't pass. Yeah. But no, it's gone crazy in America. And DraftKings and FanDuel and, and really the reason E S P N bought Barstool is they wanted to take the Barstool audience. It wasn't a betting platform. Right. It was a videos and podcasts kind of a younger audience. They wanted to take that audience and turn them into beds. Yeah. And it didn't work. So they said, ah, nevermind. Do something else. We're gonna do something else. I

Benito Gonzalez (02:26:36):
Mean, for me, like this really came to a head when I, when teams started moving to Vegas, I was like, okay, this is, this is okay.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:42):
Yep. Yeah. I bet you five to one that the Oakland Raiders <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:26:48):
Five to one.

Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
I'll give you five to one. Yeah. let's do the over under on. There's another, by the way, there's story and we won't go into it here, but if you listen to M Break Weekly, it's fascinating. About college football. Oh, you're building the college

Ant Pruitt (02:27:05):
Football. Yeah. That what's hit, what's happening right here in our own backyard with the Pacific 12 Pac 12 conference is pretty sad.

Leo Laporte (02:27:12):
It used to be PAC 12, it's Pac four,

Ant Pruitt (02:27:15):
Now it's four now. I remember when it was PAC eight and all of that and the expansion, and now there's only four teams left. And I know this is not a sports show, but it pisses me off that that conference has now put those student athletes in a pretty crap position. Oh.

Leo Laporte (02:27:33):
And it all started 'cause Apple TV was trying to buy the rights,

Ant Pruitt (02:27:36):
Which I still think was a dumb idea. Apple shouldn't have been involved in that. That's a premium product for Well,

Leo Laporte (02:27:42):
And they have Major League soccer and they've, they've got a pretty good deal there. And they hope to make

Ant Pruitt (02:27:46):
A lot of money. Everybody the planet watches Major League soccer. Everybody in the US don't watch PAC 12 football.

Leo Laporte (02:27:52):
Yeah. That was the hope was to make them watch it. <Laugh> not gonna do that. They were offering the colleges $23 million, but it would've gone up had people subscribed. There were additional tiers. Right. And at one point you know, if it, if three and a half million people subscribed, they would make almost as much money as the Big 10 teams maker the Southern Southeastern C Makes. Yeah. And that's big money for Con for it is for teams like Pson.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:19):
I don't, I don't think it would've gotten there, but

Leo Laporte (02:28:21):
Could've. Yeah. what happened was the, the college presidents, a number of them said, nah, screw it. And they went, they, they left, they left

Ant Pruitt (02:28:29):
The big conference. They went to Big Tens

Leo Laporte (02:28:30):
And went to the Big

Ant Pruitt (02:28:31):
10 in Big 12. How many, how many is the Big 10 now? I think the Big 10 is now 14 teams. So 16, it's up there now.

Leo Laporte (02:28:39):
There's a number. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I like the PAC four.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:42):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:28:44):
It's, it's Cal.

Ant Pruitt (02:28:45):
But the problem is Stanford,

Leo Laporte (02:28:46):
And I don't know who else it is, U C L A, I don't know else. It's

Ant Pruitt (02:28:49):
Washington State, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford only remaining Pac 12 teams.

Leo Laporte (02:28:54):
And That's right. It hurts the athletes and Yeah. But the money would've not gone to athletes. Let's put that, put that out's the, it goes to the colleges. And it doesn't even go to the college's education. No. To, to football.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:04):
Football.

Leo Laporte (02:29:04):
<Laugh>. It's, it's the program.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:06):
Football's a driving, driving peace in this because of all the revenues that pulls in. But at the same time, that volleyball team or that baseball team, that Oregon that ends up having to play Maryland on a Wednesday night for a volleyball game or a baseball game, that's horrible for a student. Yeah. And didn't expect them to be back at class the next day on Thursday or Friday. That's bull.

Leo Laporte (02:29:29):
I'm not a huge college football fan. I grew up watching college football, but kind of lost interest with the N F L. But this is an amazing story. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and it, and it goes beyond college football. It really talks about how streaming and the media environment has really changed everything. Oh yeah. And the money Apple TV's bringing to the table and Yeah. And, and really well, streaming's not a good business. Well, so, so they say, I mean, so they say, I noticed David Zazzle flew to the Allen and Company Confab in a private jet. Is he making enough money? Well, I guess <laugh>, I don't know. Somebody said Bob ER's making, oh, yeah, I know who it was.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:08):
E's making a ton

Leo Laporte (02:30:08):
Of money. He $78,000 a day. $78,000 a day. But he says, oh, we can't afford

Ant Pruitt (02:30:14):
To pay, pay these writers <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:30:16):
Yeah. who was it just lost his apartment. I was just, I

Ant Pruitt (02:30:22):
Was just <crosstalk>. Oh no, really?

Leo Laporte (02:30:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I tell the two. Yeah. I can't remember what it was. Anyway's, very sad. Very sad. And the point be, oh, it was kinky Boots. Mm-Hmm. right. What's his name? I can't remember his name now. Anyway, he, yeah. It was a very sad story. He you know, he says, for the people who are rich enough, Billy Porter, for the people who are rich enough that they've made it and they don't have to care anymore, that's fine. But most actors, most SAG members Oh yeah. Are not in that position. Right. And he says, I'm gonna have to sell my house now. 'cause I don't, I won't, you know, the big movie that I was gonna work on this fall is gone. Yeah. And and I'm going, I'm going outta business in effect. Isn't

Ant Pruitt (02:31:13):
It like 80 something percent are below the poverty line in sag?

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah. You don't do it to become rich. You do it 'cause you love to act. You love the art. You love to entertain. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, a few people get very rich, but most don't. I mean, it's, it's like poets all money. It's all of the arts about two. It's the arts. It's all all the arts. It's the arts.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:34):
Well, Mr. Benito, all the arts,

Leo Laporte (02:31:37):
Benito is a filmmaker. He knows that's why he's here working for a living. <Laugh>. Sorry. Benito <laugh>. Would you like Cream Without Waffle? You're Ben Benito. He is an a artist. He's a musician. He's a filmmaker. He's a real artist. But unfortunately we don't reward the arts particularly here. And we'd love our content. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:59):
But we don't wanna pay for

Leo Laporte (02:32:00):
It. I think Stacey has passed out. So let's get Anne's thing and <laugh> we'll move on. Sorry. I I went

Stacey Higginbotham (02:32:08):
To get water during the sports segment. I,

Leo Laporte (02:32:10):
I'm so sorry. And it was brief. And it was brief too. I was

Ant Pruitt (02:32:13):
Quick on that one too.

Leo Laporte (02:32:14):
Not brief enough apparently. Wow.

Ant Pruitt (02:32:17):
My, my pick here is, you know, miss Stacy was talking about this awesome smart home stuff and whatnot. And I tell you, you can keep that har that smart home stuff. And you can spend the best, he was best. $9 you can spend right here on Amazon

Leo Laporte (02:32:34):
<Laugh>. What a dryer drum belt replacement. You

Ant Pruitt (02:32:38):
Spend that $9 and that thing will last you a decade. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:32:42):
I tell you that. Right. Wait a minute. You don't wait till it fails. You wanna replace it. You replace it How often? What

Ant Pruitt (02:32:49):
A decade plus or, so I just, and I'm, I'm joking by way. I just only

Leo Laporte (02:32:54):
Put this four. You can get four for 2299. Replace 'em all.

Ant Pruitt (02:32:57):
I only put this in here just because I recently bought one because my dryer is probably about 15, 16 years old. 'cause I refuse to buy a smart one and when something breaks, I just fix it. And that was the last thing to break recently. Sorry. Just had 30. That

Leo Laporte (02:33:12):
Suggestion. Can you come to my No, that's, that's a whole, that's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:15):
A break that he

Leo Laporte (02:33:17):
Knows how to fix the dryer. Yeah. That's pretty good. Real.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:19):
Okay. This is, is like when Kevin's HVAC went down and he was like, lemme just look and see what happened. And it was just a bad capacitor. So he was, he ordered a capacitor on Amazon and replacement. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:33:28):
Why not?

Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
How did he Wait a minute. They swell. Wait a minute. How did he know It was how know it was a bad capacity because

Ant Pruitt (02:33:34):
They swell

Leo Laporte (02:33:35):
Because

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:35):
It was, yeah. It, it was, you'll see it melted to the board. You

Ant Pruitt (02:33:38):
Could see it. Yeah. You, you'll see it and it swells up.

Leo Laporte (02:33:40):
And he was able to just pull it out and put it in a new one. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:43):
Yeah. When something breaks,

Ant Pruitt (02:33:46):
I've thought about doing it myself.

Leo Laporte (02:33:47):
<Laugh> Leo, you

Stacey Higginbotham (02:33:49):
Slugging So seriously when something breaks, pull it open and look at it. Maybe you can fix it and then

Leo Laporte (02:33:55):
You'll Google it. Or in my case, maybe you can break it worse and make it Yeah, exactly. And make it cost even more to fix. Look,

Ant Pruitt (02:34:04):
I, we had to buy a washing machine two years ago for the first time in over a decade. Those

Leo Laporte (02:34:11):
Things are ridiculous. Is it even you couldn't fix it. Well,

Ant Pruitt (02:34:13):
Because the, the motor died. I had already fixed the gears on the transmission, but this time the motor died. And so, oh Jesus.

Leo Laporte (02:34:20):
Do you change your own oil on your washing machine?

Ant Pruitt (02:34:23):
If I had to,

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
I would. <Laugh> Could you tune the spark plugs <laugh>? If I had to, I would. So we went out and I bought, 'cause you told me to a piston. Oh yeah. For my Steelcase chair. But, and I even asked this several times, isn't it a proprietary part? And everybody said, no, no, no. They're all the same on all chairs and up and down you just replaced Bisto. Right. It's a proprietary part. Part. And yeah, you could put it in, but you can't make the chair go up and down. Now you have to have a special part. I thought

Ant Pruitt (02:34:52):
Mr. Jamer be fixed. That for you

Leo Laporte (02:34:54):
Fixed. He fixed it, but it didn't go up and down. But you don't want it to go up. I know. If it's the right height, I'm take it home. It's right height. You're good. If it's the right height, I'll, I'll take it. If it's not, that's for

Jeff Jarvis (02:35:03):
A very short person. That chair will so <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:35:06):
Bring it into T 12.

Ant Pruitt (02:35:07):
I love that. Burke will fix it. Burke will fix it there. That's the universal answer right there.

Leo Laporte (02:35:13):
<Laugh> Burke, by the way, who went to school to be an artist? <Laugh> that Burke. He is fixing my chair. Not very glory. Glory. Hallelujah. Well, thank you all for being here. We appreciate, we love doing this week in Google. As you can tell you'll find Stacey Higginbotham all weekLong@stacyoniot.com. She and Kevin do Koto do an excellent podcast 'cause called the internet of Things podcast. That's at stacy on iot.com. Subscribe to her newsletter, check out all the events, and buy everything her sponsors recommend. Woo-Hoo. 'cause it's good stuff.

Jeff Jarvis (02:35:49):
I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:35:49):
Don't know if everyone's in the market for like a low power wide area network or

Leo Laporte (02:35:53):
<Laugh>. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:35:54):
They should be. They just should be

Leo Laporte (02:35:58):
Wag. It's a little niche. Niche. I'm always impressed. You, you, you do a great job with this sign. I have to say. And the, and the podcast. 'cause I love Kevin too. Thank you Stacey for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you to Mr. Jeff Jarvis. You all know him as I know him as <laugh>. Let's see. That he, I know him as the human DDoS <laugh> trapped in the Jungle Gym of Life. I don't even remember that one. And the certified big guy, Ray Crock, called him a nickel millionaire. But you might know him as the director of the Town Eye Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Newmark at the City University of New York. <Laugh>, thank you for being here.

Jeff Jarvis (02:36:43):
I'm just there in my pigeon roost.

Leo Laporte (02:36:45):
Yes. And of course, get the book gutenberg parenthesis.com. It's the inspiration for Gutenberg the musical if you <laugh> <laugh>. Yeah. They just stole it. I'll,

Jeff Jarvis (02:36:56):
I'll sing next week. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (02:36:57):
Theme song. Yeah. Actually, you probably don't want to be known as the inspiration for Gutenberg the Musical since it's an intentionally bad musical. But

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:05):
I do wanna try to find a way to hitch my wagon to what is sure. To be some interest in Gutenberg.

Leo Laporte (02:37:12):
You're right. There could be a whole Gutenberg renaissance. If I'm not there could be. And I wanna be there. Yeah. So I actually suggested that idea of the Play bill to my, to my publicist at the publishers. And she said, no, it's a bad idea. Oh no. People will want to read your book after seeing the <laugh>. I know. When I see Oppenheimer on Friday, I'm gonna wanna read the books. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sells books. Mr. Book Mormon. You wanna read the Book of Mormon? Yeah, I read it backwards and forwards. I got it on the original Gold Plates. <Laugh> Stacey's dying. Stacey's dying. Stacy's dying. We're trying to, we're trying to make Stacey crazy and I think it's working. Aunt Pruitt, you'll find him@antpruitt.com. You'll find his print at aunt pruitt.com/prince Mason. New

Ant Pruitt (02:37:53):
Prints up there, new prints up there.

Leo Laporte (02:37:55):
We'll check them out. And that at Andre Pruitt on the Mastodon, he's also very active in our twit social Mastodon and our twit community. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Twit social and twit community. You're invited to join. It costs nothing. That's right. You don't have to be a club member. And it's a great place to discuss this show after the fact.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:11):
Can I give one more plug? Yeah. Be sure to check out this episode of Floss Weekly this week. We talked a lot about AI today on the show and some of the legal ramifications. And Mr. Searls and Ms. Druckman had a lawyer on today,

Leo Laporte (02:38:26):
A chill pirate

Ant Pruitt (02:38:28):
Lawyer talking about a lot of the same stuff today. But with, you know, more detailed

Leo Laporte (02:38:33):
Than we can with legal, with <laugh> experience. Somebody who actually knows what he's talking about. That's what you're saying. It was really,

Ant Pruitt (02:38:39):
Really good

Leo Laporte (02:38:40):
Stuff. Oh, nice.

Ant Pruitt (02:38:40):
So twi that TV slash

Leo Laporte (02:38:42):
Floss and produces that show does a great job too. And of course, he's our community manager in Club Twit. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do this week in Google Wednesday's, 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern, 2100 utc. If you are around at that time, watch us live at live twit tv. But of course, after the fact, you can always get a copy of the show at twit tv slash twig. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in Google, and the best way to get it is to find a podcast application, a pod catcher. We call 'em and subscribe to this week in Google. That way you'll get it audio or video, or both automatically the minute it's available. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you next time and this week in Google <laugh>, give us a little bobble finger. Bye-Bye. Hey there. Scott Wilkinson here In case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week I bring you the latest audio, video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system product reviews and more you can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twit, which costs seven bucks a month. Or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only 2 99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater. Gee,