Tech News Weekly 451 Transcript

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

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Abrar Al-Heeti is here with us this week, and Abrar went hands-on with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. We talk about where she stands on the device. We also talk about how Meta is facing some more struggles with its glasses. They've now become a workplace menace. And Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media stops in to tell us about how the 404 Media Group tracked a book across the US to discover that it was being torn apart and ingested by Amazon for its AI offerings. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Podcasts you love.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:48]:
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 451, with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, August 20th, 2026. AI is eating rare books. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and I am joined today— we are mixing it up, it's all over the place— it's the wonderful Abrar Al-Heeti. Welcome, Abrar.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:20]:
Hello. We gotta keep people on their toes, you know?

Mikah Sargent [00:01:21]:
We do, you know? There's not enough out there keeping people on their toes. Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:25]:
Too much predictability in the world, right? So people say that all the time, right? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:29]:
Yeah, they're like, everything, it's so, so predictable. Uh, I'm jealous of those people, or envious of those people.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:35]:
Same.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:36]:
Uh, in any case, if this is your first time tuning into the show, welcome. If you've been here before, welcome back. Uh, this is the part of the show where we share our stories of the week, uh, the stories that we find interesting and think that you should know about. And I'm very excited because, uh, we have a review to talk about. Abrar, just like from the get-go, can you tell us, uh, you know, you, you You certainly learned about these devices, and then you reviewed these devices. What was the whole experience like for you?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:02:10]:
The whole experience. So the one that I am talking about today is the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. I love how all the names of phones are such a mouthful these days.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:20]:
They have to unfold from your mouth.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:02:21]:
Yeah, literally, exactly. God forbid the name of a phone is less than 4 words. But this device, I was really curious about because It looks a lot like last year's Pixel 10 Pro Fold. And so every time there's this reveal, I feel like every year these phone makers make this big deal about their new devices because that's what they do, right? And then you look at it and you're like, that looks kind of similar to last year. How will it actually be different? And so it's fun to actually get your hands on these things and notice how the nuances may or may not improve the experience. And so the thing that really caught my attention with the 11 Pro Fold is I— carry multiple phones around because that's the life of a phone reviewer. And every time I would reach into my tote bag to try to grab either this or my iPhone 17 Pro Max, I would accidentally reach for one or the other and not really realize which phone was which until I pulled it out and looked at it.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:03:18]:
Mm-hmm.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:03:18]:
And the reason why that's significant is because I think a lot of people are stuck in this mentality of foldable phones are bulky and foldable phones feel weird and the screens are narrow. But my friends, we are, we are far past that. I mean, these 2 phones are, are so comparable in their size. And not that the iPhone 17 Pro Max is small by any means, but no one expects it to be small. It has Max in the name, right? So it's really unique to be able to review devices like this, review devices like, you know, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 series, which is also very nice and thin, and to just kind of marvel at where we are right now.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:03:54]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:03:54]:
The Motorola Razr Fold is the same way. So that's kind of what stands out to me the most about kind of like that initial hands-on experience.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:03]:
So there have obviously been many sort of takes on the folding phone at this point. And we are hearing, of course, that Apple is around the corner.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:04:11]:
Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:12]:
Um, when you, as someone who's, who's been testing these things, using these things, uh, hears about the latest fold, how often now does your Curiosity and interest center around the folding nature of it. Like, are you constantly thinking about the different ways that people can, that these companies can build them, uh, the aspect ratio as it were?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:04:40]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:40]:
How much it can be folding, da da da da da. Uh, yeah, I'm kind of curious to hear about that.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:04:45]:
So this was actually kind of the biggest revelatory moment for me because I hit a point while I was reviewing the Pixel 11 Pro Fold where I was like, a year ago, if I, you know, when I was reviewing the Z Fold 7, which was also a super thin phone, feels like a normal phone when you hold it when it's closed. And then you open it up and it has this big display if you remember to even open it up, right? We're at a point now where I've just finished reviewing the Z Fold 8, right? So this has the cute little passport-sized build and the 4:3 aspect ratio. We're at a point now where when I'm reviewing a device like the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and it feels like a normal phone when I'm holding it and it's closed, I'm like, well, what's the point anymore, right? Like, why would I get a foldable phone if when I'm holding it, I forget that it's a foldable phone? And so that's how, you know, we're kind of at this turning point where, you know, it's not enough to flex that like, oh, here's a phone that feels normal and you open it up and you can watch movies and it's more immersive, but you need to actually provide a use case for why somebody would even want a phone that can unfold. And I think what Samsung has done here by allegedly, you know, beating Apple to the game of releasing, you know, a passport-sized foldable phone is when I'm using the Z Fold 8, I'm using the COVID screen and it does everything I need it to do. It's the right size. I can text, I can scroll, whatever. But then I actually find a reason to open it because I'm like, okay, well, if I actually want to, you know, type in a document, I'm not going to do it on this little guy right here on the COVID screen. I'm going to do it on the inside.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:06:13]:
Or if I am going to watch a video, I'm only going to watch it on the COVID screen if I'm like moving around my apartment and cleaning and I want to prop it up in tent mode or something. But if I actually want to watch in a way that Feels you know nice, then I'm going to open it up. So after having reviewed the Z Fold Eight and now jumping to kind of a more traditional book-style foldable, I'm like this has to evolve. And so that's why I'm even more convinced that Apple will you know allegedly release a passport size foldable iPhone because it's what makes sense. That's I mean you know it's the classic Apple way right? You wait, you wait, you wait, you wait, and then you figure out exactly. Exactly what people want when they want it. And I think that's what we want. We want that phone that has a use case on the COVID screen and on the main display.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:06:57]:
And that was something I actually heard about when I went to Samsung's HQ a couple months ago, was they were talking about how people tend to rely so heavily on the COVID screen on phones like the Z Fold 7 that with the Z Fold 8, they were like, okay, well, we gotta give you a reason to open it up. And I definitely experienced that.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:07:13]:
Wow.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:14]:
See, that is fascinating.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:07:15]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:15]:
That is like, It's— yeah, you're like, kind of like, well, then what's the— because, okay, I have to be honest. Like, I have— I've always had this sort of big idea of what an iPad could do for me, right?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:29]:
Yes.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:29]:
That this device would be this sort of go-between and I would be toting it around with me all the time and da da da da da. And I— then the iPad Mini that they came out with, a really compelling one. And I thought, okay, truly, this is— I'm— ooh. And I just find myself going between my iPhone and my Mac.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:53]:
Yep.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:53]:
And I don't really like the iPad. Great for travel.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:57]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:58]:
But it's not this utility device that I saw.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:01]:
Yes.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:01]:
And I think I would be a little bit grumpy at myself and sort of the situation that I had this device that, you know, I had these big ideas for.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:08:13]:
Mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:13]:
But half of what it is, I'm not really making use of.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:17]:
Yes.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:17]:
That is an interesting wrinkle.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:20]:
Um, and it's part of why I, I like personally haven't really purchased a tablet for the same reason. Cause I mean, it looks so cool, but like you're saying, I feel like I would fall into that same trap of like, what am I going to use this for, for real? You know? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:30]:
What's, what's the point of this truly? Uh, other than giving me guilt every time I plug it in to charge it up because it's dead. Um, yeah. So, so let's kind of, um, let's talk about the the sort of pitch from, from, uh, Google with this? And then also, uh, what is your overall take on this as an upgrade device, but also just in the landscape of foldables right now? Um, as sort of this, I mean, it looks really pretty. I will say it looks really pretty. Does it feel good in the hand as well?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:09:11]:
It does. I love a matte backing and this has a really nice matte backing. I'm going to drag Motorola for a second. I'm so sorry. Razor Folds. The back of the Razor Fold in black is like— it feels like an OtterBox. It's just kind of like rugged. And I just— I don't like that texture myself.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:09:26]:
The white Motorola Razor Fold is fantastic. It also has that really smooth kind of matte gloss, you know, like that matte glass back situation. But this, this, this is a really great feel. It's got an aluminum frame, which is great. It kind of makes it a little bit lighter than last year's phone. So the in-hand feel is fantastic. And really, Google's biggest pitch with this with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is that it's durable, right? So this is one of the very few foldables with an IP68 rating, with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold also being a phone with an IP68 rating. So you can take it to the beach, and you don't have to worry about sand or smaller grains getting in there and ruining your nearly $1,900 device, right? That's a really big deal.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:10:04]:
If you're spending that much money, you want to make sure it lasts. And they talk about how the glass on the front and the back is harder to crack. Thankfully, I haven't dropped it, so I can't confirm that for you all. But I would like to think that it'll hold up in case I do. Um, so that's really kind of the big thing that they've been touting. Um, the other thing though, and this won't come as a shock to anybody, is all the AI features that they've loaded onto here, right? So Gemini Intelligence is like the suite of premium AI features that you'll get on your pricey Android phones. So like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 will have some of those features too. A lot of them launched with the Pixel 11 series.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:10:40]:
So the one that I thought was the most interesting is, uh, Live Translate from Media. So when you go on YouTube and you have this enabled, you can click on any video and you can have that video dubbed in a different language. So obviously I had to test it on myself. And so I clicked on one of my review videos and I heard myself speaking Spanish as if I were fluent, which I'm not. And I wish I were. You know, I have a very limited working proficiency of Spanish. And it was just fascinating to see it. You know, it's not just captions, it's dubbing it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:12]:
And so I feel like that'll open up kind of a world of foreign language content for a lot of people as this kind of expands. And then there's Magic Capture, which is an interesting feature. This is essentially within the camera app. You tap this, you know, feature, which is next to the photo and video controls. And it'll take a video of what you're looking at. And you just hold up your phone and you don't have to look through your viewfinder. You just kind of say you're, you know, recording a concert or something and you don't really want to watch it through your phone. You hold it up and it'll use AI to say, That would be a good snapshot and it'll take a picture and you're not, you don't have to tap anything on your phone.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:46]:
It'll automatically do it, which I think is interesting. I think if what I've acknowledged about myself is I'm a control freak, right? So I'm like, I wanna be the one to take the picture.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:11:54]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:54]:
I wanna be, I wanna make sure I get the right framing. But if you're less obnoxious than I am, I think it's a fabulous feature to be able to just not look at your phone and just let it do its thing. Um, and then you'll also have a video afterwards of that clip. So you have photos and videos, although the video tops out at 24 frames per second, which again, I'm obnoxious and I have to have, you know, 60 frames per second because I hate phone storage apparently. Um, so that's another feature. Um, and then another one that I thought was really interesting was called Rambler. So I don't know, Mikah, are you a speech-to-text person? Do you ever use that when you're texting people?

Mikah Sargent [00:12:32]:
Speech-to-text? Oh, like dictation? Yes. Um, yeah, I Yes, I do quite a bit. Okay.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:12:39]:
So, um, that's another thing where I'm a control freak and I'm like, it's going to mess it up. So I'm just going to type it. Well, Rambler kind of makes it a little bit easier to not, you know, have this super choppy text message to whoever you're texting. It'll get rid of ums and ahs. And if you, uh, if I say, hey, do you want to get sushi tonight? Actually, do you want to get pizza? And should we go at like 5, actually 5:30? It'll say, do you want to get pizza at 5:30? It's not going to have all my like back and forth. Uh, as I try to decide what we should do, because I'm indecisive. So I thought that was cool too. You know, those kinds of things where you're like, that could be practical for, for people.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:13:16]:
And I'm a huge AI cynic. So I'm not like jumping for joy every time I hear about an AI feature. But those are things where like when I use them, I was like, okay, this, this could be somewhat interesting and could improve the user experience. There's one other feature that I thought was really interesting though. It's called Pause Pause Point. So, um, Mikah, do you struggle with screen time?

Mikah Sargent [00:13:38]:
Uh, plead the Fifth on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:13:41]:
That is a yes. Um, so I do. I'll throw myself under the bus. I, I struggle a lot. I have, you know, screen time limits and I brush them away and I just continue to scroll and it's bad. Um, Pause Point, essentially you can set apps that you think are particularly, particularly distracting. So I've got like YouTube and Instagram on there. I deleted TikTok a while ago, so that was my biggest distraction is gone.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:04]:
Wow.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:05]:
I know.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:06]:
I didn't know that you'd completely deleted it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:08]:
I did once.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:08]:
How are you feeling?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:10]:
Oh, man. I actually feel like a changed person. I'm not going to lie. I deleted it when the US transition happened and my algorithm went to hell. And so I was like, well, maybe this is a sign that I need to get a life and read a book or take a walk.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:21]:
And it's a sign that I should check in with you more often because I didn't know it happened that long ago. I'm sorry.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:26]:
No, I mean, it's, uh, it was a, it was a big thing because I like personally and, um, my friends were like, well, I can't send you TikToks anymore. You can send them. I'm just not going to see them. Uh, you can text them to me though. And that's the route that we've gone. Yeah. Um, but that has freed up a lot of my time, but then now you kind of, where do you direct that energy ideally towards journaling? But really what happens is I go to Instagram instead. And so I've set up Yeah, exactly.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:55]:
I mean, there's always 7 different avenues to waste your time. So Pause Point, essentially, when you open the app, it'll have a variety of things to make you potentially reconsider your decision. So it'll have a breathing exercise for 10 seconds and you go through the breathing exercise and then you decide if you still want to open Instagram or it'll say, what's your intent in opening this app? And you can say like—

Mikah Sargent [00:15:18]:
Sorry, that sounds a little intense.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:15:19]:
Honestly, it is a little intense where I'm like, oh, I feel like I'm being called out.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:15:22]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:15:23]:
Because it'll be like, I'm feeling social, or I'm feeling lonely, or I'm feeling stressed. And I'm like, oh, this is deep. Like, I just want to—

Mikah Sargent [00:15:27]:
Wait, that's actually really cool.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:15:29]:
It's quite neat. It's quite neat because I— it does force you to pause. I mean, Pause Point is an apt name for it. And then I end up opening it anyways.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:39]:
But you set your intention.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:15:41]:
But I set my intention. And you can also set a time. You could say, how long do you want to spend on here? And then you'll say like 5 minutes, 15 minutes. So I thought that was pretty cool too.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:49]:
That's very cool. I really like that.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:15:52]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:52]:
We have to take a quick break, but we're going to come back and talk more about your review. I'm curious to hear, as you've been reviewing these devices, what people you have found— what do you— what are people looking for in a foldable phone these days? And is it about, for them, the hinge or the storage space or the screen size? So we'll talk a little bit about that when we come back. All right. We are back from the break, joined this week by Abrar Al-Heeti, who has been able to fold a phone. Phone that's meant to be folded. Yes, field? No, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold we're talking about. And I was kind of curious, you know, sometimes there's a difference between what us techie-minded folks are looking at and looking for and what the general public is looking at and looking for. And I think it's something that you don't find out until there have been a few rounds of this.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:45]:
And then perhaps you start to change what you set out to, to find an answer. And so I wanted to get your, uh, your, your thoughts on sort of the, the litmus test, the, um, what, what are people talking about when it comes to foldable phones? What do they care about? And, um, when you looked at this phone with those things in mind, uh, how did you come out the other side?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:17:10]:
We actually have a handful of surveys at CNET that we kind of do every year where we ask people in general what you care about with the phone, whether it's foldable or not. And it's always going to be 2 big things, the camera and the battery. And that's not surprising to me at all. And I think that's another reason a lot of people have kind of steered away from foldable phones for so long is because in the beginning, the cameras and battery life were not great on foldables. It was a compromise, right? It's like, do you want a phone that feels cool? Well, here's what you're going to have to trade up for it. And we finally reached the point where cameras don't have to be scaled back. I mean, you look at Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and how it's— the cameras are comparable to what you'll find on the S26 Ultra, which is their best phone, right? It's their best camera. So it's really cool to see that.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:17:53]:
And so the caveat with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is even though it has Pro in the name, the camera and battery specs are a little bit more scaled back than what you'll find on the non-folding Pixel Pro phones. So even with that in mind, even with kind of those scaled-back specs, you'll still get really solid cameras. I mean, a 48-megapixel wide angle is fantastic. There's a really neat feature called, called Super Zoom. So essentially you can zoom in digitally up to 30x and then it'll use AI to kind of sharpen that image. So it's not this like grossly grainy photo that you'll never use. And but then if you go to the actual like non-folding Pro phones, that's up to 120x. I'm not a member of the paparazzi, so I'm not exactly sure why 120x assume to that degree, but to each their own.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:41]:
Um, and then the battery life. Yeah. So the photos, like, you know, they, I feel like we're kind of at a point too. It's funny.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:18:48]:
Like that.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:48]:
Those croissants are delicious. Shout out to Butter and Crumble for the hour-long line I waited in to get those. Um, wow. It was delicious.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:57]:
Shout out to whatever shoes you were wearing.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:59]:
Honestly. I know. Thank God. Pull out the sneakers for that one, friends. Um, But the thing about reviewing cameras these days is with all these premium phones, there's only so much to say because the cameras are kind of, they kind of have to be good, right? So you, you take these photos and you'll have little nuances of like, oh, the shadows look a little different here. Or, um, you know, the lighting is different. The saturation is different, but you're going to have a good camera. I mean, if you didn't, it would be a scandal.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:19:23]:
I think if you're spending upwards of $1,000 on a phone, um, and then the battery life is, is with This phone in particular, it lasted about like well over a day. I would say, you know, a couple hours over 24, around the 27, 28 hour with leaving it overnight and not using it then. So the point is you will not have to compromise anymore really with most, with most foldable phones. And I, that makes me more curious about what Apple will do with its foldable phone and whether there will be tradeoffs there when it comes the camera or the battery life.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:02]:
Now let's, um, one thing of course that is, seems to always be a factor when it comes to sort of, uh, these, these hardware events where new thing, new devices are announced and rolled out is the announcement of software or features, you know, that are tied to this. And you talked about those features earlier.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:26]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:26]:
Um, What, what do you, what, what stands out more for you in this iteration?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:35]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:36]:
Is it the hardware or is it the set of features? And if it's the set of features, does it need to be a foldable phone for those features?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:20:45]:
No, that's a great question. I, I'm a huge hardware person. I love when something can be, I, I like, I love when something is practical. For example, my, one of my favorite hardware features this year was on the S26 Ultra, which is the private display. So, um, if, if you have it on and, you know, it's kind of like those blackout screens that people attach to their, to their phones, you buy it on Amazon for $5 and whatever, but this is built into the phone. Yeah, exactly. This is built into the phone and you can customize it just to show up for notifications. So only that part of your screen.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:15]:
I mean, that's just so cool, right?

Mikah Sargent [00:21:16]:
It's so clever.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:21:17]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:17]:
That kind of stuff I just love. And I know that's a combination of hardware and software, but you know, it is, it is a hardware thing as well.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:23]:
Yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:21:24]:
So that kind of stuff I really love in terms of of hardware advancements on this year's Pixel Fold. There's one thing on all the Pro phones. And to answer your question, a lot of the features on the Pixel Fold are available on all the Pixel 11 phones or on the Pro 11s. This one's called Highlight. And so what it does is on the camera bar, there's an LED indicator that will flash a specific color if one of your favorite contacts is calling. So if my mom is calling me, I can set that light to be like magenta. And whenever she calls, I'll have my phone face down and the LED indicator will flash magenta and I'll know, oh, it's my mom. Let me turn over my phone and answer it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:22:01]:
Otherwise, I'll like keep it down and I won't check my phone. Knowing myself, my phone has to be in another room if I don't want to check it. But again, if you have better self-control than I do, that's a good way to do it. It's a rather limited feature because it doesn't— it only currently works on phone calls and I'm usually a texter. So, you know, I'm sure it'll expand. Expand to texts and other notifications as well. But that's kind of like an incremental hardware update that I think can be interesting if they continue to add to it. But yeah, in terms of the software features, all of those Gemini intelligence features and things like Pause Point, those are available across all the Pixel phones.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:22:35]:
So if you're somebody who doesn't want to spend upwards of $1,000 on a phone or even nearly $2,000, you could get like the baseline Pixel 11 and have all those features. And I think it's cool that phone makers are kind of democratizing a lot of that access. Because I think it's, it's a little unfair to assume that anybody and everybody would want to spend so much money on a phone that you're then going to pressure them to upgrade in a year or 2 years. So it's good to see that.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. Um, anything else that sort of, uh, stood out to you in your use of the device? Uh, particularly, you know, if you've got any grumbles.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:23:13]:
Well, the one thing that people are always so pressed about is the crease on foldable phones. And I definitely see the crease on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. I'll kind of just— I mean, it's going to look bad because I have a light in front of me. But you can see it there, right?

Mikah Sargent [00:23:33]:
Yeah, I see a crease.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:23:34]:
It's there. It's definitely there. That's kind of where we're at right now. If I compare that to the Z Fold 8, We can, you can still also see it, but it's a little bit more subdued. That's also because it has an anti-reflective coating. So that helps a lot.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:23:49]:
Ah, yeah.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:23:50]:
Um, so, you know, it's those little things where we're slowly getting to a point where maybe someday, maybe Apple will do it. Maybe somebody else will do it and we'll have, you know, the quote unquote creaseless foldable phone. Um, I, it doesn't bother me. I don't, I, when you're watching a video, when you're scrolling, you really don't think about the crease. that often. So if that's what's holding you back from getting a foldable, I would say it's not— that's not a good enough reason. And I think other, other issues like the price or, you know, um, the size, if you think it's too bulky, uh, even with kind of a more slimmer profile, those are, those are concerns that I'm like, that's, that's totally valid. But I'm curious, Mikah, would you ever, would you ever go the foldable route?

Mikah Sargent [00:24:31]:
Uh, I was just about to ask you how often And you, when you're using these, are being sort of mindful of little crumbs and things because I think that would— that's my main— when I think about having one, I feel like I— because I already have anxiety about closing my laptops, you know?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:24:50]:
Oh, interesting. Yes. In case you have something there.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:53]:
Oh, goodness. Oh, no. And these, same thing, you know? And our phones are in our pockets. Our phones get put on tables that have I don't know, chicken, crispy chicken dust or whatever. It's just, yeah, that is a little concerning to me overall. So yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say no because at the very least I want to, you know, give it a shot.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:24]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:24]:
But it really has always felt like a stepping stone in my mind to a future where we sort of— the screens are wherever we, you know, put them.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:25:36]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:37]:
Like, you know, in AR, eventually sort of the glasses or whatever it is that gives us an overlay. And so this just— it feels like a solution in the meantime that I don't know is worth it to me to partake in when I could just wait and be okay with what's what I have now. Yeah. Especially given how I don't use those middle-of-the-road devices very often. Like I talked about the tablets not really, you know, doing it for me. So I could see myself being one of the people that you mentioned that, that, you know, rarely opens it up and makes use of that part of it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:26:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, I think the direction that some foldable phones like the Z Fold 8 are headed kind of mitigates that weird middle ground because it functions as a phone and functions as a tablet and it functions as an e-reader. Like I actually read Kindle books on this thing because it actually is a nice format for that. So I think until and unless more foldable phones can bridge that divide and until we reach that future where our screens are everywhere on our, you know, on our glasses, whatever, it'll be interesting to see where that road evolves. And, and I hope that you will continue to be able to eat your chicken and not worry about chicken crumbs ruining your devices into the future. That's a very valid concern.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:56]:
Thank you.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:26:57]:
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:58]:
Uh, Abrar, it is always a pleasure to get to chat with you here on the show. If people would like to follow you online and check out all the great work that you do, where are the places they should go to do so?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:27:07]:
You can find me on cnet.com. I'm also on Instagram, AbrarLHT, no spaces or hyphens, and occasionally on X, LHT_3. And always a pleasure, Mikah. Thank you for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:18]:
Absolutely. Thank you. Alrighty folks, we're gonna take a quick break before we come back with a little story and then an interview. All right, back from the break and a little story. Uh, we, we've talked about it before on the show, smart glasses. They've kind of been, um, uh, the, the, in the limelight lately and not in a good way. Uh, unfortunately that continues to, uh, to, to carry on. Miyazato over at The Verge, uh, called Meta's glasses a workplace menace.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:53]:
And that is because it seems that many of the people who interact with these glasses aren't actually wearing them. They're being filmed by them at their jobs, by customers, and then also in some cases by their own bosses. Retail workers, cashiers, even comedians, all of them are dealing with a device that makes it nearly impossible to tell whether you're being recorded. and almost no policy or law in many places that says what to do about it. We talked about the cruise lines, we talked about the courthouses, there are federal agencies that are drawing lines against these things. Now it's happening at work. Let's start with the Target incident that Sato covered in The Verge article. It was a person named Toru Hinkle who was stocking shelves at Target in August, and 2 customers asked for a check on a $20 item.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:51]:
They then asked again and then asked again. Hinkle said, after a while, I realized that I'm basically being pranked, and I noticed the glasses, uh, seeing that the Ray-Ban Metas had the blinking light going on. Apparently, the pranksters escalated when a manager came over, um, going forth to say some things that were not appropriate. And Hinkle, who knew a little bit about these glasses, said, Meta, stop recording, out loud, hoping that that would work. But it just kept going. It ended up where a customer called the police. The men wearing the glasses were escorted out, and it is now all over, all over TikTok, all over Instagram as well. It says a different Target manager stumbled across the video Even without looking for it.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:47]:
In one clip, the glasses wearer is dancing and fist bumping the responding officer who says— so this is after the fact, uh, ended up fist bumping one of the officers, and then the officer said to them, you boys stay out of trouble. Instagram ended up banning the account, but that was only after The Verge ended up reaching out about it. So here's the thing.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:30:12]:
thing.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:13]:
We have a reasonable right to privacy within our own homes and in certain other locations. That's what makes it a reasonable right to privacy. But we don't have the same reasonable rights to— well, technically, a reasonable right to privacy means that it is not reasonable to expect privacy in a public place. But we have to talk about sort of legal definitions versus social definitions, and also when other laws come into play like those in the workforce. Normally, if you're being recorded in the public, you can walk away, and that's part of what this reasonable right to privacy surrounds. You can, you can choose to leave the situation. But if you are working, then you are stuck there and you are on the clock. So choosing to walk away would actually be potentially harmful to you and your, you know, ability to continue to make money.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:16]:
So there's already that sort of mindset that the customer is always right and that often in those situations you see an employee getting in trouble over a customer getting in trouble. And then you also have perhaps bosses who in this case were not maybe providing the response that was needed at the time. And so working to buy groceries, uh, to feed your dogs, then coming run up against you feeling like you're being taken advantage of or teased or what have you, that becomes very difficult. And right now there are no policy— well, there are— I shouldn't say there are no policies, but overall we don't have policies in place to deal with something like this. There was also a person who worked at a Seattle tourist destination. She said that she interacts with up to 2,000 people a day. Some days, she says, up to 10 people an hour come in wearing smart glasses. Being in the background of tourist videos was always part of the job, but the glasses have made a difference.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:30]:
In fact, there was a much— she She remembers kind of the change that she felt for herself. There was a much taller man standing over her, filming her with the Metas, and of course said that, I hope that he's not able to see things that I would not want him to see. She went on to say that her worst-case scenario would be these being used as a way to get content, she says, of young women specifically. And says, I also want to emphasize how creepy I think the general surveillance aspect of it is, not just as a young woman, but as a person living among other people. It does add to the feeling of constantly being watched. Now, we talked about what happens in public. We are— sorry, we talked about what happens when custom— the imbalance between customer and employee. What about the boss? The boss wearing them.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:31]:
There's a woman who worked at a Sprouts grocery store near Atlanta, and her boss showed up with a different pair of glasses. She said, are those Meta glasses? And he said, yeah, they are. What of it? She says that she started shaking, but because of the fact that he seemed to be so unbothered by the idea that he was working with it. That said, Interestingly, Sprouts does bar workers from wearing headphones on the floor because of there being heavy machinery that's used, and non-managers aren't allowed to have phones on them at all. Stores will also prohibit customers from doing photography and videography. So the fact that this boss, that this manager had this technology, kind of flies in the face of the policy. The last one I want to mention is a comedian who was mid-joke at a bar, noticed a few instances of glasses blinking, and asked the person, hey, are you recording? And he said yes. She said, could you maybe not record? He said, that's what they're there for.

Mikah Sargent [00:34:42]:
I'm here to watch you and you're here to perform for me. She— the comedian ended up walking off stage. It's, it's only going to get more, like, messy and intense from here, for sure. Uh, the— I like that The Verge also looked at the legal aspect of this. Um, spoke to Woodrow Hartzaug, who is a law professor at Boston University, and says, of course, that these privacy laws are kind of scattershot. A lot of them are state-dependent. The general rule: in public, you have a reduced expectation of privacy. Um, Workplace recording protections are governed by corporate policy, not by law in so many cases.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:25]:
And Herzog goes on to say, I'm missing the line because it was a really good line. Oh, here it is. This is just another way for employees who already have less power in their roles to be further marginalized and dissected, and as part of a larger story about the way in which being an employee means taking on increased suffering, as part of the job. Still, there are quite a few bands coming through, not Ray-Bans, but bans of Meta Ray-Bans. ICE, of all people, announced a policy in August barring its employees from wearing Meta glasses. Courthouses, of course, have restricted it, and there are many cruise ships and others that have restricted it. Meta, via its spokesperson, said People use our glasses because they're genuinely helpful, from listening to music to live translation or hands-free calls. For those wearing them and the people around them, trust matters.

Mikah Sargent [00:36:22]:
That's why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up. Talking about that LED indicator and the fact that going forth, they have sort of a tamper-proofing situation going on. Something interesting. So I think we had the team on intelligent machines, if I'm not mistaken, the team makes Bee, the AI wearable bracelet. And that company that made this little bracelet that essentially had 2 microphones in it and could listen and transcribe what it hears and then kind of give you feedback and help to fill out your tasks and, and perhaps give you reflections and things like that. It was acquired by Amazon. And before it was acquired by Amazon, it was an always listening, always on device that you could mute if you wanted to, but that otherwise was always working. When it was acquired by Amazon, Amazon said you can keep doing this, but you need— there is a policy that needs to change.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:34]:
And that was the always on, always listening part of the policy. So now there's a setting that after a certain period of silence, the device stops listening and you have to start it again if you want it to listen. Stopgap measure for sure. And some of these bans are feeling a little bit like stopgap measures. And I just feel like we're going to have a flood of these devices hitting the market and not hitting the market. They're already in the market, but, uh, getting to people and people using them in places. And what is, what is, what is a part of this that is interesting to me is I think about the comedian, right? And a lot of times in a comedy audience, you'll see people holding up phones and recording that way. And so there is a little bit of a This is new and it's different and it's blinking at you sort of thing that it almost makes me feel like we need to also have our phone cameras when they're recording.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:48]:
They should have a blinking light going or something because at least then everything's on the same page. Everything's on the, like, the same footing. And there should be that awareness because it almost feels like It is only because we haven't thought about the fact that we're being recorded or have the chance to be recorded so often that that is why it now feels so scary and so sort of charged. Now that you're being confronted with that and you can't ignore it, that flips the script a little bit, and it makes you really have to confront the fact that— that in public there's not an incredibly— you can't expect much privacy. But ultimately, I also feel that it is— I think that it's okay that people are not— and I think that people should feel, especially in work, should feel protected from being bullied and recorded and posted online. And And, you know, made fun of. I think that's an awful, awful, awful use of the technology.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:40:04]:
All right.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:05]:
Go read the piece. We'll, of course, include a link in the show notes. There's— whoops. There's a lot more in there that's well worth checking out. But it is time next for an interview. All right. Back from the break. And it is time once again for a wonderful interview.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:25]:
Excited for this one. A 404 Media investigation has traced the path of a rare book from a bookseller's shelf to a warehouse across the country. And we're about to learn what 404 Media found and what it says about how far some companies are willing to go when it comes to AI. The reporting involved a tracking device, you know, a few thousand miles of travel, and also a dinosaur.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:40:54]:
What?

Mikah Sargent [00:40:55]:
Joining us today to talk about it is 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg. Welcome back.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:41:01]:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:02]:
Absolutely. So let's start out with this investigation. It started out with, I would say, kind of a fairly wild idea. And I thought, now, interesting, putting an AirTag inside a book. Can you kind of walk us through how this plan came together, including what made you choose AirTags specifically, and then what you were hoping to find out?

Emanuel Maiberg [00:41:26]:
So this practice of AI companies buying physical books for training data is something we know has been happening. We know this thanks to a lawsuit from book authors against Anthropic. It came out in discovery that they were doing this thing called Project Panama, which was a plan to acquire 1 million books and scan them and destroy them in the process. We know that Anthropic is doing it. It is safe to assume that other AI companies are doing it because all the AI companies are very competitive in terms of getting training data. And I started talking to a bookseller who has been in the business for many years, and they said that they saw a very unusual historic spike in sales in the past year They thought it was unusual, not just because of the amount of books they sold, but the type of books and the prices they were selling it— selling the books at. And other booksellers were reporting the same activity online, and they all suspected it's AI companies, but they couldn't confirm that was the case because most of the time when booksellers sell books via platforms like AbeBooks or Amazon or whatever, they don't know who the client is.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:50]:
Mm-hmm.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:42:51]:
They sell the books in bulk. They are shipped to a warehouse that is owned by this marketplace. The marketplace collects the order and makes sure the inventory is correct. And then it goes to the final destination, which is the address and the name is unknown to the seller. And we thought that's a solvable problem. That's a mystery we could solve, and we could solve it with a tracking device. Why we chose an AirTag? I don't really have a good reason other than it is small and convenient to get and doesn't require any setup. We just wanted to make our life easy.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:43:34]:
And it's a, it's a, you know, a product made for average consumers. So it was, it was easy to set up.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:42]:
Absolutely. That makes sense. All right. Moving on. Let's talk about the journey that this book took from the moment that the bookseller shipped it to where it finally stopped moving. And I'm also curious to hear, you know, was it you, was it other, were multiple people sort of being able to check in regularly and go, oh, this is where it's gone now? How was that? Was it, was it exciting?

Emanuel Maiberg [00:44:06]:
Was it—

Mikah Sargent [00:44:07]:
yeah, I just, I love to hear about sort of the experience of it as well.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:44:12]:
Yeah, it was exciting to me, but I'm the reporter and I'm very invested and excited about the minutiae of every story I'm working on. I was the only one following it because I had set up the AirTag, so it was linked to my phone and I could see where it was going. I'm being intentionally vague about the origin.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:33]:
For sure.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:44:34]:
Point, because I want to protect the source, but it left California from an airport. I could not see it, obviously, while it was in the air for a while. Next up, it appeared in an airport in Wisconsin. It was in a warehouse near the airport, stayed there for a couple of days, and moved to another warehouse near another airport port 30 miles south, and it stayed there for a long time, for 2 weeks or so. The warehouse belonged to this shipping and logistics company called Trifinity, and after 2 weeks, I saw that it started to move west, and I could tell that it was moving by truck because it was pinging from the highway. I also knew it was a truck specifically as opposed to a car because because it had stayed overnight at a trucking resting spot. You know, those places along the highway where truckers can stop and sleep and take a shower and all that stuff. It was one of those.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:45:38]:
And then it appeared— at that point I thought it was like, oh, it's probably making its way back to California because that's where the AI companies are. But actually it stopped in Las Vegas and it stopped in a warehouse that belongs to Amazon. The warehouse name— every Amazon warehouse has as a code, and this one was LAS-8.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:04]:
Hmm. All right, so when the tracker landed and, you know, you were able to kind of lock in, so to speak, on where it was, you discovered there was a team, right, working inside of this, this place. What did you find out about that team?

Emanuel Maiberg [00:46:27]:
Yeah, so when it arrived at this warehouse, I was really confused because it turns out LAS 8 is one of Amazon's print-on-demand warehouses.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:38]:
Mm-hmm.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:46:38]:
And that's a place where rather— you buy a book online, but rather than them taking like an existing copy off the shelf and shipping it to you, they print it on the spot and then ship it to you. That's the print-on-demand business. And I was like, well, why would they ship thousands of books to this location if they print books there. We theorize maybe they were scanning the books in order to create digital copies that they could then create print-on-demand copies for. But as I was doing more research about that location, I found that there were workers in that same warehouse that had a different code called VGT-3. And the VGT-3 team had a completely different job. Rather than print on demand, they received huge shipments of books. They cut the spine off of the books, which makes it easier to feed the individual pages to a scanner.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:47:41]:
And that's all they do day in and day out. I've seen a few people talk about how they want to transfer to VGT3 because it's a rather boring but easy job physically.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:47:53]:
Wow.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:47:53]:
You're just doing the same repetitive motion all day. It's not as much carrying of boxes and things like that. I think at some point they had night shifts, which is also valuable to a lot of workers. So people wanted to transfer over there for that reason. And obviously when I saw thought that it was a scanning operation. I was very confident that it was for AI training data. And Amazon confirmed to me that this was the case. They also said that there are other reasons they might want to do this, right? In their official statements, they said that this practice makes it— it improves all other products generally at the company.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:48:41]:
And we could speculate about what that is. It could be, again, in order to feed the print-on-demand inventory. Amazon also has a feature which is pretty similar to what Google Books offers, which is the ability to search within a book. It could be for that service. And yeah, that was at least for this one shipment of books, it was like mystery solved. It was for AI companies, it was for Amazon. This is where it was happening. I could mention the dinosaur that—

Mikah Sargent [00:49:12]:
Yeah, well, definitely talk about the dinosaur in a minute. I did want to kind of go back in the timeline a little bit. You talked a little bit about, you know, speaking to booksellers earlier this summer and noticing something happening. I'd be curious to hear how— like, does that— did it feel like a community thing? Did it feel like it was certain booksellers that were part of this? So was it more individual? industry-based, or was it kind of just a couple of people, oh yeah, I had that happen too, and I had that happen too, or has it been pretty much the swath? Because right now, we do have these big companies that are all hungry, hungry, hungry for these, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear it was everywhere.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:49:56]:
Yeah, that's a good question. I can't give you like a number or a percentage or like a hard figure for how commonplace this is. I can tell you that I just— Booksellers have their own online communities. There are listservs, there are online forums, there are like Amazon bookseller forums and things like this. I do link to in my story, it might be a year ago, maybe even 2 years ago, a bunch of Amazon booksellers were talking on an Amazon forum. They were shipping so many books to this address in Las Vegas where VGT3 is. that they were talking to each other like, oh, this must be a scam 'cause nobody buys this many books. It must be some sort of like Amazon scam.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:50:41]:
And then I know that in another email listserv for rare booksellers last year, people were very excited and celebrating the fact that it's like, oh my God, I sold 100 books today. I sold 200 books today.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:55]:
Wow.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:50:55]:
There's a lot of chatter and it's not just English books. It's book collectors in the Netherlands, in Spain, across Europe. It's happening in many places. I think it's difficult for the booksellers themselves, 'cause on the one hand is, again, it's like a historic high for their business. This is not like some huge profitable business. Like, you know, it's not something people do to get rich. And now suddenly they're having a very good couple of years. Now that it's becoming clear that it's AI companies that are purchasing the books, books, I have heard that people don't celebrate the sales as much.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:51:37]:
They're not as excited to announce like, oh my God, I sold 100 books, because it's a controversial issue. People don't want to necessarily advertise that they sold a bunch of books that are going to get destroyed.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:48]:
Yeah.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:51:49]:
And Amazon obviously doesn't want to advertise that fact either.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:52]:
So let's talk about that. One would perhaps, if they weren't quite aware of the, the behind the scenes, one would perhaps go, oh, well, there's the whole internet out there for these companies to scoop up and process. So why are they going after these printed books when there's so much else? What is the value of printed, rare in some cases, books over what's online?

Emanuel Maiberg [00:52:23]:
Yeah, I mean, The first answer is they already scooped up the internet. It's scooped. They already got it. It's the first thing they did. It's the obvious source for data and it's the source that they went to first. And now they have it. All the AI companies have it. There is additional massive amounts of content posted to the internet every hour.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:52:48]:
The issue with that is that at this point, that the chatbots, the LLMs, the AI models are so popular and easy to access and so many people are using them, a lot of this content that is being posted online is itself AI-generated.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:03]:
Mm-hmm.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:53:04]:
And AI-generated content does not make good training data. There is this recursive problem with AI training where we found out that if you feed AI-generated content to AI models as training data, it makes the AI model worse. It's this thing called model collapse, and we know this because the AI companies tried this first themselves. They thought, okay, we need more training data, we'll just generate it. Turns out that doesn't work. So the next logical source of human-generated text is books that are not already online in some fashion. They're not ebooks, they're not pirated, they're just millions of books that are floating out in the world that only exist in printed form, and that's what they're going for. An added bonus is if you get a book that was printed before November 2022, which is when the first ChatGPT model became very popular, you need to get a book that is human-written and not AI-generated.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:54:13]:
So those books are more valuable.

Mikah Sargent [00:54:16]:
Understood. Now, you talked too about the books getting destroyed in the process, which— okay, so I'll just read the question as it is because it's still kind of mind-boggling to me. The books, of course, get destroyed in this process. The bindings are cut off so that they can be scanned faster. How did a copyright lawsuit involving Anthropic end up making that destruction legally advantageous? And when we look back at the books that have been scanned online, Google is well known for having put books online as scans. Has it always been part of the process to destroy the books, or is that a new thing that is just about quick, quick, quick?

Emanuel Maiberg [00:55:06]:
Uh, it's, it's cutting the binding off a book in order to scan it has been a practice that has existed for years before. AI training data became valuable. It just depends what you're scanning, right? So let's say that you're, I don't know, you're a hospital that's been around for 100 years and you have reams and reams of records in your basement. You want to digitize them so you can search them and more easily access them. Maybe some of them are bound huge volumes of check-in times or whatever it may be. You can go to a company that specializes in this, they will cut the binding off of it, feed all the data to a scanner, make it digital at your request, and great. You know what I mean? It's like that's something that people have done for good reason for a long time. That's not the only way to scan a book.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:55:59]:
Your viewers probably are familiar with the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive scans tons of books. And it scans rare, valuable books in some cases, or even just magazines or collector's items, or just things that you don't necessarily want to destroy, but you do want to make available digitally. And what you do in that situation is there are these machines where you put the book or magazine or whatever it is inside of it, and it will scan a page, then it will gently turn the page and scan the next page, and so on. And that machine exists, that process exists. It's just more time-consuming and therefore more expensive. To your question about the legal aspect of it, so this came out of the Anthropic lawsuit, which started as a completely different issue. It started because these book authors sued Anthropic because Anthropic used pirated books, pirated ebooks in their training data.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:56:59]:
But one of the rulings from the judge in that case is that because Anthropic took a physical book and made a digital copy and then destroyed the original physical book, they still only have one copy. And that is fair use. That is my decision to buy a CD, let's say a music CD or whatever, and create a digital copy of it on my hard drive and break the original. And when I break or destroy the original book, I am not creating a duplicate, which would allow me to to keep a copy and sell a copy, which obviously would cut into the publisher's business, right? I'm creating additional copies and selling their work to my benefit. Since I'm destroying it, I'm assuring that I'm not doing that. And that is an argument in favor of it being fair use, or at least that's what the judge in this philanthropic case said. So I don't think that is like the reason AI companies are destroying the books, but like you said, it is legally advantageous for them to do so.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:06]:
And then lastly, I just would like to know, the bookseller you worked with talked about different kinds of value that a book can hold. What do they tell you about that? And then you did mention this earlier, but just to reiterate for people, what did Amazon say when you brought your findings to the company? And then maybe you can round things out with that dining That dinosaur that's involved.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:58:28]:
Yeah, so first off, Amazon's comment, I'll just read it. Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services consumers use. Very vague, just like, we do it because it makes our products better. In terms of value, the fact that this is happening has made people very mad. I think first and foremost, that is because historically and also in science fiction and dystopian novels and so on, we just have negative connotations with any entity that destroys massive amounts of books for whatever reason.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:59:11]:
Yeah.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:59:11]:
It's not something that is accepted in our culture, even though it does happen. I just want to make clear, And I've talked to librarians about this. Sometimes libraries have to destroy huge amounts of books because they need the shelf space. Nobody is using the books. They can't keep them anymore. It costs money to keep them. They destroy them in order to make room for books that people actually want.

Mikah Sargent [00:59:32]:
Hmm.

Emanuel Maiberg [00:59:33]:
So it's not like it never happens, but Amazon and other AI companies are doing it for a different reason. It's just like it's more efficient for them to destroy the books regardless of what value it may or may not have. To this question of value, it's not as if people are destroying first editions of Oliver Twist or the manuscript for their favorite novel or religious text or whatever. These are pretty obscure books, and that is why they are rare. They are rare because literally there are not many copies of them. because not many of them were ever printed, because it's a niche subject, or because it's printed in a language that not that many people speak, and that's why it's rare. However, we don't know today what may be valuable in the future, you know, like historians will tell you that—

Mikah Sargent [01:00:36]:
Right.

Emanuel Maiberg [01:00:37]:
Some of the most valuable texts that exist in order to understand a specific moment in history History is not declarations from kings or letters from diplomats. It's the thoughts and experience of average people in history. And that might be the stuff that we're losing. Or at least I think the issue is we don't know what is being destroyed until it's maybe too late.

Abrar Al-Heeti [01:01:09]:
Wow.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:11]:
I want to thank you so much, A, for doing this research, and secondly, for joining us today to talk about it. If people would like to keep up to date with the great work that you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Emanuel Maiberg [01:01:26]:
Yeah, please support our work. It's 404media.co. We also have a podcast. We're big fans of the Twit Network. If you like them, maybe you'll like us. Come, come check us out.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:40]:
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Emanuel Maiberg [01:01:41]:
We appreciate it. Of course, my pleasure.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:43]:
Alrighty folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. This show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw, which is where you go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm @mikahsargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee, that's chihuahua.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active. Be sure to check out my other shows, including iOS Today, Hands On Apple, Hands On Tech, and I'll be back next week with another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye bye.