This Week in Google 784 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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Twig this week in Google. Paris Martineau is here, jeff Jarvis is here Coming up, the Internet Archive loses in court, I'm sorry to say, elon Musk backs down in Brazil, and why we can never get rid of pennies. It's all coming up next on Twig Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

This is Twig. This is Twig this week in Google, episode 784. Recorded September 4th 2024. Traquilidine Vigor. It's time for Twig this week in Google, the show. We get together with some of my favorite people and talk about some of your favorite subjects, none of which have anything to do with Google. Joining us right now, mr Dr Professor.

0:00:56 - Jeff Jarvis
Emeritus, not a doctor.

0:00:57 - Leo Laporte
Not a doctor. Jeff Chavez, formerly the director of the Townite Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York. Formerly the director of the Townite Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York. I just go to journalism at the City University of New York. Has the time come for you to reveal?

0:01:14 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, still waiting for some bureaucracy.

0:01:17 - Leo Laporte
Okay, well, we'll know he'll be gainfully employed, but if he's not, he's writing like a demon.

0:01:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I am writing about the line of type. I'm right now talking about the making of matrices, ooh, and this is a mold for a letter.

0:01:34 - Leo Laporte
And that's Paris Martin of feigning interest.

0:01:37 - Paris Martineau
It's very interesting. It's her job.

0:01:39 - Jeff Jarvis
She writes for the reporters I'll bring you matrices when we see you in New York. You'll be great, we're going to have lunch.

0:01:45 - Leo Laporte
Paris writes for the information dot com, where she covers the intersection of youth and technology, which is a big subject for the weekend, which we love. That's actually my weekly read of the information, so nice to see you.

0:02:02 - Paris Martineau
Lovely to see you as well.

0:02:03 - Leo Laporte
And we will be all having lunch on Friday. I'm so excited I'm coming up to New York tomorrow. Jet bluing it to New York and I wore, as you know, my New York shirt to celebrate, with the sombreros on it.

0:02:15 - Paris Martineau
That's very important to represent the New York these days we were.

0:02:21 - Leo Laporte
we're also doing a meetup and I hope it doesn't rain, but there is rain in the forecast.

0:02:31 - Paris Martineau
What's the latest? Let's see here saturday, if it rains, we can shelter?

0:02:35 - Leo Laporte
and something if it rains, you can lead a crowd of how many dozens of people into a bar? 70? Yeah, it's going up. It was 66 yesterday, so, anyway, anywho, anywho, uh, after that, that event will be Bryant park three to 5 PM, rain or shine, and then after that a photo walk with Joe from Joe, joe Esposito from our um. He's a street photographer in New York city and, uh, I think we're going to get a great tour. We're going to see some really amazing stuff.

0:03:03 - Jeff Jarvis
So I think taking being being inside, taking pictures of the subway and the train terminal and great shots oculus, I mean it'll be fun to do inside stuff grand central station.

0:03:13 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, we'll do a lot of stuff inside I think it's a different joe, but yes, oh, not joe wrong, joe.

0:03:19 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I thought my god, joe does everything.

0:03:22 - Paris Martineau
I was gonna say joe's everywhere joe esposito does the stickers.

0:03:25 - Leo Laporte
It's Joe, and I can't remember his last name. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'll know him when I see him. All right, so breaking news just happened, I'm sad to say. Earlier today a federal court rejected the Internet Archives appeal of the decision that its library was illegal. The publishers has shut a company one.

0:03:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Is it the whole thing that's that's gone, or just that practice they did of giving away the book from?

0:03:56 - Leo Laporte
the verge. The Internet Archive has lost its appeal to fight in a fight to lend out scanned e-books without the approval of publishers. A fight to lend out scanned e-books without the approval of publishers. Second circuit court of appeals ruled that permitting the internet archives digital library the whole thing would, I quote, allow for wide-scale copying. That deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works. This is wrong in every respect. God, it's so wrong. Penguin, random house, wiley and harper collins sued ia over its claims. The digital library constitutes willful digital piracy on an industrial scale. The court said a digital library is not the same as a lending library, as a book library which is crazy because the way that it works is exactly like a real library.

0:04:45 - Paris Martineau
I go and try and check out a book, I have it for three hours and then it goes away.

0:04:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah what's the doctor, or first, what's it called. When you buy something that you have, a right isn't sitting with a first refusal no, no, no resale.

0:05:00 - Leo Laporte
It's a name for it. I know what you're talking about. Uh, here's what one other thing the court wrote on. On the one hand, ebook licensing fees may impose a burden on libraries and reduce access to creative work. On the other hand, authors have a right to be compensated in connection with the copying and distribution of their original creations. Congress balanced those competing planes claims upon the public interest in the copyright act. We must uphold that balance here.

Uh, I think it was john scalzi who wrote on blue sky saying I love libraries. Every time they buy the books they lend you, yep, and there's a good chance you may read a book and go. I want to buy more of this author's works. Right, they're good for authors. Yes, and a digital library is just as good as a regular library. In fact, the future of libraries is obviously digital. Uh, does the court want all libraries to stay? You know, maybe we should get papyruses. They'd be much more, uh, effective. Do they want us to stay in the in the dark ages, or do? Can we enter the new era with the same controls? By the way, you have limited lending. You have to buy copies of the books, right? The one thing the internet archive does not do is buy the digital copies of the books. They buy the books and scan them. Um, there is a petition. I don't know if a petition makes much difference. Will they appeal? They could. It is, you know. It's only the second, so my R is the one over that circuit, but it's expensive.

You know, I don't. There's a chance to donate to the internet archive.

0:06:41 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, they do great work.

0:06:43 - Leo Laporte
I donate monthly and I really this is very disappointing. I said there's all kinds of works that I need for research.

0:06:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean old stuff, uh about the line of tape right now and uh, a lot of it I can find on the internet archive, and I have to follow their rules and do what they say, and you know.

0:06:59 - Leo Laporte
But so their digital library, I guess, is gone. Uh I, here's a couple of things we should get cory doctor on. One of the things he says is look, publishers don't like libraries. Period of any kind. They can't get rid of the ben franklin style book library yet, but they're going to stop any attempt to bring libraries into the 21st century.

And uh he says the google right scanning which they lost right, they lost to google uh I'm looking, I don't see a statement yet for the internet archive from the internet archive, but that story just broke brand new. Uh, it's a big copyright case. I think kathy gallus would probably have something to say. Oh yeah, benito, maybe send her a note, see if she wants to pop in to yell.

0:07:53 - Paris Martineau
Notably, the appeal court ruling this is from wired rejects the internet archives argument that its lending practices were shielded by fair use, calling it unpersuasive I think it's worth noting here that this specifically I don't think it refers to all of the internet archives online library it is specifically concerning their national emergency library, a program that started during the pandemic to allow kind of wider access to 1.3 million books. If that's all they ended, we could live with that, and previously, you know, those books had only been allowed to be checked out one at a time, but under this new program multiple people could borrow it at once.

0:08:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, so that's so important, important for our system. What exactly did we lose? Because if, if that's, all we lost was that emergency program, not a big as I remember.

0:08:54 - Leo Laporte
so the internet archive started the national emergency library during covet in march 2020 and suspended that was one where you had an unlimited number of books and all that stuff.

They suspended that after COVID kind of drifted off Well also after they got sued and got sued, but they still offer a digital library. As I understand it, the sticking point from the publisher's point of view was not that they had a digital library. They wanted the internet archive to use the system the publishers had set up, where they would buy e-books and use technology to protect the e-books Instead they were buying books. It was a DRM problem. It was a DRM problem. They were buying books and scanning them. Maybe it is, maybe it's just a DRM issue.

0:09:39 - Paris Martineau
This is from TechCrunch. The publishers, which already had an uneasy relationship with both the internet archive and the digital book lending community in general, sued soon after the program went live in June 2020. The publishers contended that going from single-user borrowing to limitless borrowing essentially turned the system from a notional library into an unvarnished act of piracy. For its part, internet Archive asserted that the use of books fell under the fair use doctrine and the removal of limits was done in the public interest. Furthermore, as a nonprofit organization, the Internet Archive could have no monetary or financial motivation, and the courts in this case disagreed.

0:10:19 - Leo Laporte
Actually, though, the courts did acknowledge that Internet Archive was a nonprofit organization, and that was perhaps the one little bright light in this whole thing.

0:10:30 - Jeff Jarvis
I still don't know what is actually forbidden. Going forward.

0:10:33 - Paris Martineau
What I believe is forbidden. Going forward is multi-user lending.

0:10:39 - Leo Laporte
They can't lend.

0:10:40 - Paris Martineau
You cannot have your scan of a physical book and lend that out to all three of us at once. Only one person Can you do it once at a time.

0:10:49 - Leo Laporte
I think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. Internet Archive statement from the director of library services, chris Freeland, said in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere we're reviewing the opinion will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend and preserve books. The Authors Alliance, dave Hanson, executive Director. Authors are researchers. Authors are readers. Ia's Digital Library helps those authors create new works and supports their interests in seeing their works be read. This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it be read. This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it will help. This is the important point. Copyright does not benefit authors. Cory Doctorow said this again and again.

0:11:33 - Jeff Jarvis
It benefits the owners of it Since the beginning. It was not the authors who wanted it, it was the publishers and the booksellers.

0:11:39 - Leo Laporte
The publishers the Internet Archive's legal woes are not over. The music labels also sued over a music digitization project. I mean, we knew that the internet archive, uh, I mean, I've talked to brewster kale, the founder, and I, you know I said what about copyright? So we'll worry about that when the time comes. But we think it's more important to start saving stuff now. If we wait till we get a clear clarity on that issue, we'll never copy anything, and we think it's really important that we save everything for future, because you know websites, don't? They come and go. I think it's fine that they've extended this to recordings, to books. I think it's they're doing a very important work of digital preservation pretty cool.

0:12:24 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm reading, I'm looking at the uh decision from the second circuit right now and I'm scrolling down and then I suddenly see the name Catherine R Gillis. Oh I, yeah, she had an amicus brief.

0:12:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, she did for the copia foundation, which is tech turds lobbying arm. I don't see a story yet on tech dirt, unlike other blogs here.

0:12:42 - Paris Martineau
Thank you, their blogs here. Thank you, here is a um I'm going through. In last august, the internet archive posted a what this decision means for our library.

0:12:51 - Leo Laporte
I assume the same thing still because they, yeah, because they lost in 2023, and this is an appeal of that they say the lawsuit only concerns concerns our book lending program.

0:12:59 - Paris Martineau
Uh, the injunction clarifies that publishers are going to notify us when their commercially available books are available on the Internet Archive and we will expeditiously remove them from lending. They also got an order from the judge agreeing with the Internet Archive's request that this injunction should only cover books available in electronic format from publishers, not their full catalog of books and prints.

0:13:23 - Leo Laporte
That's actually good.

0:13:25 - Jeff Jarvis
That's good because there's a lot of old books. As a researcher, I really need.

0:13:29 - Paris Martineau
It doesn't significantly impact our other library services. The Internet Archive may still digitize books for preservation purposes and may still provide access to our digital collections in a number of ways, including through interlibrary loan, making accessible formats available to people with qualified print disabilities. We may continue to display short portions of books, as is consistent with fair use. The injunction does not affect lending out-of-print books, and the Internet Archive will still make millions of public domain texts available to the public without restrictions.

God bless you I think basically what is happening here is publishers are saying for books that we sell an e-book version of, you cannot digitize the print version and make that accessible to people, which sucks, but it is not as which is every book, since.

0:14:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah 20 years, yeah, and they'll do it for e-book just for the sake of protecting it In this case the larger issue and I want to get Kathy Gellis to explain this is a copyright issue that what they were doing was not viewed as fair use Right.

0:14:29 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what it says on the first page, yeah, and so that's.

0:14:33 - Leo Laporte
I mean, this is really the grander affects more than just the Internet Archive. The judge ruled that scanning the book and lending it but scanning is the issue is not a transformative, fair use. That was the Internet Archives Library. That it was transformative. It works like a traditional library. It did not violate copyright law, the judge said. Because the digital copies do not provide criticism, commentary or information about the originals or alter the works, it's not transformative. Information about the originals or alter the works, it's not transformative. The court concluded that IA's use of publishers' books was not transformative, so they don't have a fair use to it.

0:15:10 - Jeff Jarvis
That's a point, page 48 of the decision. Here, not only is IA's free digital library likely italicized to serve as a substitute for the originals. The undisputed evidence suggests that it is intended, italicized, to achieve that exact result. Ia copies the works in full and makes those copies available to the public in their entirety. It does not do this to achieve a transformative secondary purpose, but to supplant the originals. It's also to expand the originals to give them more audience.

0:15:39 - Leo Laporte
It's not trying to put these guys out of business and they buy these books, just like a library buys the books it lends. They're not trying to supplant the publishers, as scalzi pointed out, this not only do I sell a copy or more, because they said they buy a new copy for every three, or something like that ia itself advertises its digital books as a free alternative to publishers print and ebooks.

0:16:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Parenthesis quoting the open libraries project ensures libraries will not have to buy the same content over and over simply because of a change in a format uh, yeah, so maybe, yeah, I mean, I guess it undermines the publisher's right to make money I mean I also argue.

0:16:20 - Paris Martineau
I guess I get the reason why publishers are doing this is because they don't want to lose even an inch, but I think it's a stretch to say that it's going to significantly impact your bottom line, a print scan of this being available in the Internet library. Most people who want to read an e-book are going to read an e-book. They're not going to read a PDF scan of a book.

0:16:41 - Leo Laporte
We've been through this fight before with music. The music industry for years held that. You know, napster and others uh reduced their profits and they were never able to demonstrate it, in fact. In fact, it brought people back to music.

0:16:55 - Jeff Jarvis
It was the opposite I write about this in books themselves, that, um, when more books were available online through archives, there were greater sales of them. It's pretty obvious and that's what happened. And let me say for the record, my publisher, my next book is Hachette, and they ain't doing this. In my interest. I'm not going to get one penny because of this decision, not one. This is for their purposes.

0:17:21 - Leo Laporte
Okay, all right, okay, all right it's just one of many big stories we're going to cover in today's blockbuster edition of this week in google that was excitable that was excitable.

0:17:37 - Paris Martineau
I'm excited now.

0:17:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Now, let's see it. Let's see what you can. Let's go to brazil.

0:17:41 - Leo Laporte
Let's see where the coffee. They put coffee in the coffee in brazil. Uh, brazil, as you know, has blocked x after musk, ignored court orders, kind of like, I guess, what happened in france with pavel durov and telegram. So the supreme court, which is now all weighed in on a single judge's order, and said, yeah, we agree as blocked X. And when Starlink did not block X, as other Internet service providers were supposed to do, they started putting holds on Starlink's assets in Brazil. Then Elon caved and said, ok, ok, ok, we'll block X on Starlink as well.

0:18:27 - Jeff Jarvis
A couple of interesting angles. There is one he's advised his employees in other companies to get out of Brazil.

0:18:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he started when he closed the office in Brazil, because they don't have, after the judge threatened arrests for ignoring his orders.

0:18:43 - Jeff Jarvis
So Twitter lost by one count 40 million daily active users.

0:18:48 - Leo Laporte
You know who gained brazil blue sky blue sky two million and man, are they smug? Yeah, they should be. No, they shouldn't. I went, I went to blue sky to see what they and every everybody it wasn't everybody, but the number of people were very smug about this and kind of dissing the other.

0:19:07 - Paris Martineau
You're telling me people on the Internet are smug.

0:19:11 - Leo Laporte
They were insufferable.

0:19:12 - Paris Martineau
People on the Internet are being insufferable, online Insufferable Wow.

0:19:16 - Jeff Jarvis
He found the place where they exist.

0:19:18 - Leo Laporte
We didn't think they were there, I can't believe uh, the judge said any person in brazil who tried to use x with a vpn would be fined. Almost 90, or sorry, nine thousand dollars a day throws the finances of starlink to try to collect three million dollars in fines. By the way, this comes down to I might defend elon here because it comes down. I know it hurts, doesn't it? Yeah, it does, it's painful, but it comes down to the judge in brazil ordering x to take accounts down. Yeah, and uh, the account.

0:19:52 - Paris Martineau
Well, as you know, why did they want the accounts down?

0:19:55 - Leo Laporte
well, it's probably political claiming disinformation.

0:19:57 - Jeff Jarvis
Basically yeah, but you know define disinformation these days when you've got a political fight, like they have in brazil according to the times, musk and the justice have been sparring for months.

0:20:08 - Leo Laporte
Musk says justice morice is illegally censoring conservative voices. Justice morice says musk is illegally obstructing his work to clean up the brazilian internet. I always get nervous when I hear the words clean up the internet, the internet is disgusting.

0:20:25 - Paris Martineau
You're never going to clean it.

0:20:27 - Leo Laporte
And, as you know, president Bolsonaro. That's why we love it.

0:20:30 - Paris Martineau
That's why we love it.

0:20:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, who was voted out of office, ruled ineligible to run. He and his followers have used X to build up support for his return. To build up support for his return. Judge Morais is leading investigations into Bolsonaro and as part of that, he wants to block more than 100 social media accounts associated with right-wing pundits, podcasters and federal lawmakers who, in some cases, have questioned bolsonaro's election laws. So if these were uh election deniers in the united states, see, no, no, we're protected here. No, no court could order musk to take that, take down an account of election denier on x, right, right, but in brazil they did.

And now look, musk says he's a free speech absolutist. He's not just try to say cisgender on twitter and you'll know uh, but in this case he's. He's defending the rights of, of these, uh, uh, of the of the political opposition, to, to, to tweet. Musk has called mr morris, the justice, a dictator and posted dozens of times about the judge on x accusing him of silencing conservative voices. You know it's not. I hate it when they use word conservative. Falsenaro is not a conservative. All these words are meaningless now Religious is meaningless.

0:22:07 - Jeff Jarvis
now Right and left are meaningless.

0:22:11 - Leo Laporte
But Musk, when you know, I mean I think Musk does have shareholders, so not on X, but on Starlink, spacex for sure, and Tesla. So I think when they started to freeze the funds of SpaceX, that got his attention.

0:22:28 - Jeff Jarvis
You know, what's interesting, Leo, is that on one hand, I'm upset and nervous about all that we count on Musk for Look at Ukraine, oh, I know you and Starlink and all that right.

0:22:40 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I rely on Elon Musk. I did the whole show from Starlink yesterday.

0:22:44 - Paris Martineau
I'm doing it now from the all-american comcast that we all know and you know, it's just. This is an internet service provider.

0:22:54 - Jeff Jarvis
They're all horrific, right um but there's also, you know, the poor astronauts in space now depend upon him for their lives.

0:23:01 - Leo Laporte
You know it's just too much to maybe, but maybe it also shows a big deal with spacex for starling yes, yes, all of which is very nerve-making.

0:23:12 - Jeff Jarvis
On the other hand, it's interesting to see that musk himself is vulnerable by having so many tentacles. There were so many ways to go after him in brazil yeah, but in ways that we? I don't think we are we wouldn't do, but a lot of countries what?

0:23:31 - Paris Martineau
I mean and it's also interesting now that we're talking about this for the second time on the show, second week in a row of companies effectively going, or companies countries effectively going after the ceos and executives of tech companies who have refused to comply with local authorities or local judicial orders. I wonder if this is kind of part of a bigger trend we're going to see where, you know, social media execs or prominent tech execs are going to be barred from traveling to countries that they've pissed off barred from traveling to countries that they've pissed off, right.

0:24:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there's threats against Zuckerberg by, or even in this country?

0:24:19 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, but I can't see Mark.

0:24:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Zuckerberg being arrested for flying into America. Presidential immunity Should anybody on Fifth Avenue?

0:24:26 - Leo Laporte
No, no, it could happen that's the point of what is the saying I, I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Uh, the real test of, of your support of free speech is if you support the free speech of somebody with whom you vehemently disagree. I vehemently disagree with bolsonaro, with elon musk, uh, and I suspect, uh, there's a few things that pavoldorov has done that I would vehemently disagree with. I don't know where free speech has to end. It's at the point where it's harming people.

0:25:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yeah, I mean, at some point we should have on Jeff Kossoff. Have you had him on because of Section 230? Oh God, we should have him on.

He's the guy who wrote that book. He wrote the 26 words that created the Internet and then he wrote another book about. He goes crazy when people try to do the fire in the theater thing because it's it's wrong and everybody screws it up. Yeah Well, in fact it's not accurate, right? Exactly that's the point. Jeff is brilliant and very approachable and he's a liar. In a crowded theater is his latest book.

0:25:40 - Leo Laporte
I love it. That's a great title, great title. So our our first Amendment rights go back to Brandenburg versus Ohio 1969, which held that unless speech is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, it's likely or to incite or produce such action, it's protected. It's likely or to incite or produce such action. It's protected. You cannot punish speech unless it's going to it's it's aimed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and it's likely to do so.

0:26:18 - Jeff Jarvis
And we can think of.

0:26:19 - Leo Laporte
We can think of things in our recent history that are definitely that. Well, that's the argument about yeah, but yeah, I don't, boy, I don't know. It's not enough to merely advocate violence.

0:26:36 - Jeff Jarvis
And the other issue here is that and I harp on this, but it's important to remember that choice is speech too, so that each of these platforms has the choice and should not be compelled to carry speech or compelled not to, except when it is illegal right, and there is illegal speech right well, anyway, uh, new york times is on it, uh they I haven't seen that account in a while, I know but you don't need.

0:27:06 - Leo Laporte
They don't really, it's not, really it's not needed. New york times is on it, they don't. They're on it, they don't. There's no parody necessary of the new york times. Telegrams, founders, indictment thrusts encryption into the spotlight. Here we go, but, but it does in a way, right. This is mike isaac and shara frankel writing. Here's part of the problem. The french authorities aren't really very clear about what he did and didn't do, but it sounds like what they didn't like is he didn't give him the keys, the backdoor keys to encrypted speech, um. But it is also the case that he did not moderate very effectively clearly illegal and, even worse, awful, reprehensible stuff on telegram. So maybe that's all they're going after him for, um, they have. They didn't go after signal right, which is really incredible. By the way, steve yesterday did a great bit, uh, quoting matthew greenist from Johns Hopkins guy we really respect about telegrams encryption, in which he said there, it's not encrypted.

Yeah it's not encrypted, so it's. I don't know, though, if that changes the Fundamental question of should governments be able to get a backdoor into encryption Signal which is truly encrypted, effectively encrypted Apple's iMessage RCS from Google, which are effectively end-to-end encrypted? The problem and Steve pointed this out, the problem with Telegram and the reason they might be more vulnerable is they have the keys to all the encryption, so Telegram cannot claim that we can't see into those messages. They can, that's interesting.

0:28:48 - Paris Martineau
I didn't realize that was the difference between them and the others.

0:28:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's not true end to end. At least that was what Matthew Green and Steve Gibson said yesterday. Of course, durov, who is a real character, has been going after Signal and WhatsApp saying the government has backed doors into them but not into us. I think it's quite the opposite. To be honest with you, it's unknown. You know what's going on there. He called Telegram's secret chat feature, which is hard to use, takes it's four pages deep to turn it on and it is only on messages, one-to-one, it is not on group messages. He called that secret chat feature quote the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private. It's not verifiably private, In fact, it's highly unlikely that it is. So I think that and the Times says all this, mike isaac says all this. He knows that. So, uh, it may be that it really isn't a test of encryption. It's a test of of whether doro was willing to open up the server to people because they know, because telegram knows, um, exactly what's in those messages.

Zach Judge Raza, british barrister at Field Fisher, who specializes in data and privacy issues, quoted in the Times Telegram is one of the few services that is not end-to-end encrypted by default. That could have been part of its downfall because everything's out in the open for everyone. To see Will Cathcart. One to see um. Will cathcart had current head of whatsapp. I wish I could say it was a settled debate, that more security is better. I think encryption is still under threat in parts of the world, that's for sure. By the way, elon did get off this surprises me, don't ever leave that sentence.

0:30:47 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, you got to finish that sentence, don't?

0:30:48 - Leo Laporte
breathe at that moment, please, and we'll be back after this word. After this breaking news, breaking news Elon got the courts. Elon beat his suit. No, I can't say that either. Remember he was promoting Dogecoin, he. But he was promoting in kind of a weird way. Here's one of the tweets baby doge do, do, do, do, do do. Baby doge, do, do, do, do, do, do. Uh, he said that Tesla, tesla, I know.

I went to law school and became a judge. Tesla was, they said. He said tesla would accept dogecoin as payment, didn't? I don't think? Uh, he had a tweet that said one word doge, and and this. The people who are suing were people who lost money investing in this meme bitcoin, saying elon told us it'd be good. The new york federal judge dismissed the claims Thursday, finding that Musk's statements were aspirational rather than factual and susceptible.

0:31:52 - Paris Martineau
That's how I describe all of my tweets actually Aspirational.

0:31:57 - Leo Laporte
And further. No reasonable investor could rely on them. Well, right.

0:32:03 - Benito Gonzalez
Wait, wait, wait.

0:32:03 - Leo Laporte
But he didn't say this is not financial advice he doesn't have to say that if I, you know, I don't think if I, if a guy in a mexican sombrero shirt told you you should buy leo coin, actually you took that advice, would I be liable?

0:32:21 - Paris Martineau
this may seem like kind of a silly story but I bet it's going to have interesting uh implications as far as precedent goes, because if you guys, one of my pet interests is, um, following the meme stock cults through this day, you know kind of the whole you are so wonderfully weird going to these strange people.

0:32:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I got that's not.

0:32:44 - Leo Laporte
That's not weird, that is fascinating.

0:32:45 - Paris Martineau
It is fascinating. Okay, it's fascinating. The diamond hands the whole thing.

0:32:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh it's crazy.

0:32:50 - Paris Martineau
We all remember the big GameStop boom of whenever that was. That is just the beginning, of course. There are still the GameStop apes, as they're called out there. There are the people who are stumping for AMc and things like that. The part that I'm fascinated by are the people who are still stumping for bed, bath and beyond, even though their shares have been, uh um, nullifying well, and even when game stuff was a meme stock, it wasn't like didn't have much of a future the thing that has been happening in this community lately.

Sometime in the last I don't know, six months or so, a guy who used to go by, I guess, goes by the name of Roaring Kitty, who had set off the original GameStop meme bubble. He had been basically not active online ever since the first market crash. People assumed that he was just out there enjoying his riches or whatever. He came back sometime within the last six months and the only thing his Twitter account posted was a photo it was like a meme image of a man sitting leaning forward, which I guess had previously been shared by the GameStop Twitter account and GameStop shares. As a result of him just tweeting this image, no information about stock, the GameStop shares account and GameStop shares. As a result of him just tweeting this image, no information about stock. The GameStop shares went through the roof and a whole other boom and bust started. I think he did a version of this one or two times and people online were kind of speculating oh, this guy is clearly just trying to. You know, you know milk.

0:34:20 - Leo Laporte
All his tweets are memes. They don't have any text, they're just pictures and video.

0:34:25 - Paris Martineau
All his tweets are memes. They don't have any text, they're just pictures and video. But I bet what, like the precedent from this Elon Musk case, is going to be applied in this, because many people online I mean, I'm sure, when there's smoke there's fire. In this case Many people online were saying that this could be securities fraud fraud. You have all these you know foolish people who are buying into the stock thinking that their god roaring, roaring kitty has come back and is going to usher in this new age of, um, you know, prosperity for these stocks and I'm sure, once many of those people felt the burn and realized that didn't actually exist, some of them are going to sue. Um, but imagine that court case.

0:35:02 - Leo Laporte
This is. This is like q look at these cryptic tweets. It's totally there's an uno reverse card, that's all. Yeah, that's very cryptic, right it's so fascinating, guys.

0:35:14 - Paris Martineau
It is like it is exactly like q anon the um it's better to not be explicit.

0:35:20 - Leo Laporte
It's better to let people project their beliefs onto what you're posting, right.

0:35:24 - Paris Martineau
Absolutely, and this is currently, I guess, an area where this is currently playing out is with Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop. He, I believe he's being involved in some sort of case about whether or not he pushed people to invest in Bed Bath Beyond when the stock was crashing, and there's a really interesting transcript of his deposition with 30 people where he's like you know, I was just S-posting, as they call it. I was just posting memes online, but it's quite fascinating because the way that these communities interpret these tweets is like he knows exactly what he's doing. He'll post a rocket ship emoji and people will go crazy and buy more gamestop or one of these other stocks there are at least two documentaries already on the gamestop thing.

0:36:16 - Leo Laporte
There's a netflix uh documentary called eat the rich and there's an MSNBC documentary and there's a new one in the works.

0:36:26 - Jeff Jarvis
What's fascinating Paris is that can you imagine the court case If it was bad enough to have that Elon Musk tweet be a matter of a court case? Even if they found this guy's name and they found his address and they took him to task, there's no way you could have a legal discussion about the implications made that people um themselves come to. Yeah, so it's amazing time and hands, did you get?

0:36:55 - Leo Laporte
involved in that at all. Did you invest anything?

0:36:57 - Paris Martineau
no, you know no, but I do just find it sickeningly fascinating paris.

0:37:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I gotta, I gotta ask you though as an intervention here Do you similarly? Are you similarly fascinated by crypto?

0:37:12 - Paris Martineau
No.

0:37:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, thank.

0:37:13 - Paris Martineau
God, crypto is just.

0:37:15 - Leo Laporte
I was worried there.

0:37:15 - Paris Martineau
It's a little Crypto is related though, isn't it?

0:37:17 - Leo Laporte
I mean?

0:37:18 - Paris Martineau
crypto often has. I mean, this is what we're talking about with Dogecoin. People have these boom and bust cycles. I just think so much of it is that. That it's a little. It's a little less interesting to me. I mean, I'm particularly interested in the bed bath and beyond. They call them baggies, bag holders. Um, because it is such an interesting, you have to be in such an interesting psychological state to have invested in, first of all, invested in stock for Bed Bath Beyond, seen it gone bankrupt like, see it filing for bankruptcy, continued to buy more stock of a company that has filed for bankruptcy, saw your shares get canceled because they went bankrupt and still believe that you are invested in Bed Bath Beyond and that actually, their galaxy brain version of this, the whole QAnon conspiracy theory is that Ryan Cohen and a couple of other executives are going to combine all these companies into a super company, potentially called Teddy. That will involve GameStop, bed Bath Beyond, amc, a bunch of other stuff, and it's just nonsense.

0:38:26 - Leo Laporte
This is why our political life is in such disarray. It's the same kind of credulous, hopeful, wishful thinking, whether it's a meme stock, a cryptocurrency or a political figure. There's a lot of this. What is wrong with us is it. Are you still in uh favor of the Hannah Arendt's theory that we're all troubled loners? Well, no, we're not all troubled loners.

0:38:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I think I'm actually disturbed by all the talk from the Surgeon General and New York Times columnists that we have this epidemic of loneliness he needs to shut up.

0:38:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I agree, I think that's wrong and I think it gets used overused.

0:39:01 - Jeff Jarvis
I agree, I think that's, and I think it gets used overused. But but I still do hold to Aaron's theory that it's more about Kornhauser to get into sociology here, about not having any other connections in the world. There's no competing connections for you, and so that makes you vulnerable as an individual. To say, oh, I'll join this cult, sure, child molesters in the pizza parlor, yeah, makes sense to me, and that's how I'll join. It is by saying those things. So that's a little different from loneliness per se. You can be very lonely in a crowd, as we said last week.

0:39:36 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it is inherently an act of community that these people are doing. That's right. They believe that it is them and their fellow community members against the world, and it's also part of it, is a mental trick to where these people for some reason maybe feel like left out of larger discussion or that, you know, things haven't gone their way. And by ascribing to these belief systems, they get to believe that they are actually smarter than everybody else. That's right.

That they understand some grand plan that is going on and it makes the world make sense. In the case of the meme stock people kind of the unifying theory of it is that there are all these large market maker type forces, all these financial companies that are out there shorting the stocks and really just out there trying to stick it to the little guy. And for people who are living in an increasingly economically turmoiled world, that sort of thinking would make sense.

0:40:36 - Jeff Jarvis
And they're not wrong. You can't win in a market that's controlled by computers that can operate in a millisecond, and you can't. So is it worse?

0:40:45 - Leo Laporte
now than it was. There've always been, I would just think, is saying in our discord there's, there's always been. This kind of thing has always been around, but it used to be a small number of people and now they burned witches in the day. Yeah, Look at the Salem A classic example of kind of a spreading hysteria that these girls were witches and and horrible things happened.

0:41:08 - Benito Gonzalez
But yeah, and also our mythology in america like american mythology, is a lot of special boy stuff, like there's always like the one special boy who's like the key to everything ratio alger and everybody thinks that they're the special boy. You, you know Right.

0:41:23 - Leo Laporte
That's Benito Gonzalez, our technical director, editor and very astute, who was raised in the Philippines under Marcos, so has a very different perspective on on life in the United States. Yeah, we, we, we talked about this on Twitter on Sunday. We were talking about Japan, Japanese culture versus American culture on twit on sunday. Uh, when we're talking about japan, japanese culture versus american culture, uh, japanese culture is a collective society and ours is very much an individualistic society and maybe that's one of the things that, although you've got crazy conspiracy theories in every culture, I would imagine, I don't think, no, I don't think we're unique to them. Do you think, benito, under uh marcos, there were people in the philippines who were, you know, looking to conspiracies and other things to understand and make sense of their world?

0:42:15 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean I guess that's possible, but a lot of what happened, uh, in the early 80s, when that in the late 70s, early 80s was um, was like a brain drain really. People fled.

0:42:26 - Leo Laporte
The smart people just got out yeah like everybody fled. Like your dad just got the hell out. Actually no, my dad, came back Came back to the Philippines or came back to the United States.

0:42:37 - Benito Gonzalez
Came back to the Philippines to fight back.

0:42:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh, good for him, he was in Aquino. That's why, right yeah.

0:42:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Have I asked you this, but you know what do you think of the news site Rappler?

0:42:48 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh, it's great. Maria Ressa is the treasure yeah.

0:42:54 - Leo Laporte
I don't know that. What's Rappler?

0:42:55 - Jeff Jarvis
We talked about that. Well, you can explain about it.

0:42:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's a Philippine Filipino news site.

0:43:06 - Benito Gonzalez
You've heard of maria resa. She won the maria. Oh yes, she's a noah prize winner. She got that's right out of the country by deterrent when she went after him for all the drug stuff?

0:43:11 - Leo Laporte
yeah, but what so? Why do you think the philippines are is prone to see? This is another question.

0:43:15 - Benito Gonzalez
Well, see the philippines like we are pretty similar, actually pretty similar to america in political thinking and all this kind of stuff, because I mean we like america was our last colonizer. So like we have a lot of yeah, uh, you know similarities to american culture, or like there's a lot of aspirations to be like american culture but what's with the strong men?

0:43:36 - Leo Laporte
you think once a country and one system, it's one, it's liberty and it's democracy.

0:43:40 - Benito Gonzalez
That wouldn't go back yeah, I mean that has a lot to do with, I mean same thing misinformation. Like that story has been retold now, like the Marcos story is now a different story, like people believe something different now over there Not necessarily everybody and not totally different, but there are competing stories now of history and like that's not that's not.

Those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it and you know, we have another marcos in, uh in power now, right, and he seems to be like so far, at least from what I've understood better than duterte yeah, and he's been okay, like okay which is, you know, which is, uh, that's like, that's like what your wife's saying, it's fine, it's okay, he's fine, he's fine he's doing a lot of washing also of the of the past.

0:44:28 - Leo Laporte
So and I always get nervous because these guys often come in as reformers, uh, and then get power, then start to consolidate power, then suddenly they're the bad guy yeah, I mean that's true everywhere Political families, political parties.

Oh, I'm not just saying the Philippines, it's everywhere. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, let's take a little break and, on that bad note, we'll talk about something happy I'll find it, don't worry. America must free itself from the tyranny of the penny, and the Times is on it. We'll talk about that that just a little bit. See how I tied that right in. Uh, our show today, brought to you by our fine friends at veem v, double e a m.

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Get Veeam. Veeam lets you back up and recover your data instantly across your entire cloud ecosystem. With Veeam, you can proactively detect malicious activity, stop it in its tracks. You can remove the guesswork by automating your recovery plans and policies. You have a recovery plan and policy, right. It's up to date, right. Get real-time support from ransomware recovery experts. Should the worst happen, it's Veeam. Look, I don't have to tell you Data is the lifeblood of your business. Get data resilient with Veeam V-E-E-A-M. Go to Veeamcom to learn more. It's just like I don't understand why you wouldn't. We thank them so much for their support of this week in google and we thank you for your support. Tell them when you, when you go to veemcom, say yeah, we heard about it on twig beam. Finally, I've been talking. We talked about uh, monetary policy and the bimetallization and the gold standard right last couple of weeks ago or last week and we all, we also talked about, uh, my father-in-law's mountain of pennies mountain of pennies.

Well, the times must be listening, because this week.

0:47:32 - Jeff Jarvis
They ain't listening to me they said.

0:47:35 - Leo Laporte
You know that jarvis, once in a blue moon, comes up with an interesting story this week in the new york times magazine. Look at, that mountain of pennies could be from your dad. The penny may seem like a harmless coin, says the new york times, and you have to dig through all these pennies for the next line. But a few things symbolize our national dysfunction more than the inability to stop minting this worthless currency. We spend 90 million dollars a year minting pennies, and the funny thing about pennies is they don't get back in circulation. You don't spend pennies, do you?

no, you've got them in a jar somewhere in your closet and you're katie weaver is so good too.

0:48:19 - Paris Martineau
The writer of this.

0:48:20 - Leo Laporte
This is a great piece and she and she nails it. She says there's one reason, and one reason only, that we still have pennies. Everybody knows it's a waste of money, that the mint doesn't need it. No one needs pennies. But the company that makes the zinc blanks that go inside of every penny and has made billions of dollars in federal money making though they're the only company, the one company that makes them, runs this page penniesorg americans for common sense. Acc conducts research and provides information to congress and the executive branch on the value and benefits of the penny. There is no value, there's no benefit. The, the penny is basically being printed, minted. It goes into your pocket because you know you, you buy something for 8.99 and you get a penny back and then from your pocket into a jar. Something like 60 or 70 percent of all pennies minted are disappeared because they're all going to jeff's father-in-law there are.

Yes, a conservative estimate says there are 240 billion pennies lying around in the united states, about seven dollars and 24 cents for everybody living in the us.

0:49:41 - Jeff Jarvis
All right but let me ask two questions. If they're minted and disappear, isn't that good for the government? Because the government originally sells the pennies to the bank to sell to the store to give to us, isn't that? Isn't that like there's?

0:49:59 - Leo Laporte
some. Why would that be good?

0:50:00 - Jeff Jarvis
seniorage, right. I'm just saying for the government's interest, they get, they get extra money. Uh, it's like. It's like how I have an aspired metro card in new york. I'll tell you why. There's still five dollars on it and I'm not gonna go to the trouble getting it back. So new york has my five dollars.

0:50:16 - Leo Laporte
I explained this to you last week. This is called seniorage, when you make more money selling the coin than it costs to make it. The problem is it costs three cents to make a penny right. They're negative two cents for every penny they sell. It's reverse seniorage, so it's clearly a money loser. It's estimated that two thirds of all the pennies made are out of circulation Gone. In fact I'm in my. Made are out of circulation Gone. In fact I'm in my.

0:50:47 - Jeff Jarvis
In my basement right now.

0:50:48 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, I do think it would be great if we just had quarters. I think that would really make everything in my life. She's going overboard.

0:50:56 - Jeff Jarvis
She's killing the nickel and the dime.

0:50:59 - Leo Laporte
Nickels and dimes what we just need quarters, you lose that great part of the you know, why you need quarters.

0:51:04 - Benito Gonzalez
Tell them why you need quarters Paris, you lose a whole verb.

0:51:07 - Leo Laporte
I know why Paris needs quarters Laundry.

0:51:10 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

0:51:11 - Leo Laporte
I remember, when I was your age, the constant battle to get more quarters so you could do your laundry.

0:51:19 - Paris Martineau
I mean, if I'm going to be honest right now, I do not need quarters, because you've only know the only laundromat near me closed down to be replaced by a high rise. So I have to get my laundry picked up and done for me, which I mean is nice, but I pay via credit card for that. Would this be a problem if the banks?

0:51:41 - Benito Gonzalez
actually could take our pennies If we could give them a hundred dollars worth of pennies and give us a hundred dollars back.

0:51:45 - Paris Martineau
Well, back people would do that. Well, coinstar can do that yeah and they take 20% or something Well, much better than nothing.

0:51:52 - Leo Laporte
I think it's the Coinstar lobby that's keeping pennies around.

0:51:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Here's my other question what Is that retail pricing, so-called, is? You don't charge $9, you charge $8.99.

0:52:08 - Benito Gonzalez
Dollars, you'd charge $8.99, and because we think it's nine dollars, and so that penny is part of retail marketing, but there's tax on top of that.

0:52:11 - Paris Martineau
So well, I mean, here's the thing, then they will have to do 95 cents, which how much will be a problem for companies if they have to lose out in those four cents?

0:52:19 - Leo Laporte
but I think they'll survive let me ask you, par how often do you actually pay cash for anything? It depends, I mean I try to have cash in my wallet.

0:52:29 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
I only carry around cash for tips. Everything else is credit card or touch to pay. I don't buy things. Here's $5. Give me $5 worth of gas. Nobody does that anymore, do they?

0:52:50 - Paris Martineau
I mean, if I'm buying something that's like not a coffee but is under like $6, I want to pay for it in cash, because I know a lot of local merchants around here. It ends up costing them more money to pay the credit card fees.

0:52:57 - Jeff Jarvis
So you're very thoughtful. My grilled cheese black bean burrito at Taco Bell comes out to $5.32 and I pay cash.

0:53:05 - Paris Martineau
Oh, but Taco Bell, you don't need to be doing that for them. Okay, first of all.

0:53:09 - Leo Laporte
You pay cash, but you don't pay $5.32. You give them $6 or $10, and you get change. And what happens to the coin it goes in?

0:53:18 - Paris Martineau
the middle part of my billfold and I hate it. I hate that it's there. It makes it harder to close it. I will never see it again, until it becomes too bulky that I have to do something about it.

0:53:33 - Jeff Jarvis
And then I go to Starbucks, though, and I want to tip in coins in.

0:53:36 - Leo Laporte
Starbucks. Edmund Moy, the Mint's 38th director from 2006 to 2011, says I went to Congress saying listen, I'm losing $90 million a year on pennies. I said you guys need to pass a law forcing me to change it. The mint knows it's a bad idea. They can't stop. Congress has to stop them, obama said when he was president. It's a good metaphor for some of the larger problems of the us government. It's very hard to get rid of things that don't work. You need legislation and the problem is these guys at penniesorg are making sure that members of Congress want to preserve the penny.

0:54:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So who owns that company? What is the company? That's a good question.

0:54:19 - Leo Laporte
So let me find the company's called Artisan A-R-T-A-Z-N. They're in Greenville, Tennessee. Called artisan a-r-t-a-z-n. They're in greenville, tennessee. For 43 years artisan has held contracts with the treasury department to manufacture the zinc blanks, because the penny is just zinc covered with a thin coat of copper to look like a penny that the mint stamps in one cent coins. More than a billion in revenue since 2008 for artisan, this company's lobbying efforts. According to Jarkowski, who is that he worked at the Mint. I guess I hate it when I have to go backwards in articles to figure out who Jarkowski is. Can they just put a link back to the first mention? Anyway, this person I think a former Mint, director of the Mint or maybe PR for the Mint said this company, Artisan's lobbying efforts is the number one reason the coin reform bills die in Congress. Here's the funny thing. According to OpenSecretsorg it tracks this Since 2006, Artisan has only spent three million dollars on coin related lobbying. We don't. We have the cheapest congress money can buy, because you're nothing. Three million to make a billion.

0:55:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm in, so it was known as jordan corp and it re-branded the research to artisan. It was jordan zinc products.

0:55:46 - Leo Laporte
So, uh, yeah, a lot of credit to katie weaver.

0:55:48 - Paris Martineau
She writes for the magazine and katie uh famously wrote one of my favorite new york magazine pieces which is what is glitter she did.

0:55:59 - Leo Laporte
You know what this is. I think she's like you. She goes deep on the things that nobody really thinks about. We just accept as part of life.

0:56:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, here's an interesting fact about this. You want to know where this company started. Artisan where, in a treasured American ball jars.

0:56:18 - Leo Laporte
What Ball mason jars?

0:56:20 - Jeff Jarvis
The ball mason jars that grandmas used to fix the ball jar because they were zinc tops. Oh this is such a fun fact.

Jeff In 1934, the Ball Brothers company managed the largest zinc strip rolling mill in the world, creating new applications for the element along the way, and the company structure was evolving as well. A name change to Ball corporation took place in 1969. Two decades later, altrista corporation was formed, comprised of three previous ball corp companies. This entity became the nucleus of what became jordan process solutions, a division of jordan corp by the way, this is so brilliant.

0:56:59 - Leo Laporte
So the barge ball jar, folks split into two different divisions Jarden, which makes the chars I didn't even get that. Artisan, which ends with ZN, or zinc, which makes the lids.

0:57:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow. So in May 2019, as Jarden zinc products was nearing this 50 year mark, jarden process solutions was purchased by One Rock Capital Partners. Ah evil. Oh no, Private Equity. Private Equity was focused on creating value by investing in high-potential middle-market companies.

0:57:38 - Paris Martineau
What are you reading from right now, Jeff?

0:57:39 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm reading from a business journal, bjournalcom, the Tri-Cities, virginia. I willcom Post it in the chat the Cry Cities, virginia. I will do that. Post it to the chat right now. And yeah, so it was. I mean, this was a feature company about how change comes to a half century old company.

0:57:57 - Leo Laporte
So when Artisan on its penniesorg lobbying site. They have an FAQ of why we need pennies and they say poorq of why we need pennies and they say poor people. Poor people use pennies, did you?

0:58:09 - Jeff Jarvis
know that rich people give them pennies and nothing more.

0:58:12 - Leo Laporte
Here, kids here's a penny. Go fetch me a turkey. Uh, young and elderly and minorities use cash more frequently. Well, I'll buy you, I'll buy you that, but but do they use pennies? Uh, sociologists, uh she. By the way, this is a well-researched piece. Sociologists I consulted, whose fieldwork examines the economic economics of american poverty, said no, carrying around bundles of hundreds of pennies to purchase a beverage doesn't seem feasible.

0:58:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, when you're really pissed off at somebody and you lose a suit and you dump a whole truck worth of pennies on their driveway, that's useful.

0:58:52 - Paris Martineau
That is pretty good.

0:58:56 - Leo Laporte
The other people who need these pennies. They claim penniesorg claims are charities. The penny aids charities in raising hundreds of millions of dollars every year for important causes.

They're trying hard, they're trying he contacted the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which Weller describes as relying significantly on small yet critical penny contributions, to inquire about its coin dependence. Powell, the executive VP and chief revenue officer, said the society has discontinued physical coin collection programs and donations of spare change had slowed in recent decades. Now do stores in New York to the bodegas and so forth still have the little thing at the front where it says give a penny, take a penny? Yeah.

You're there. Sometimes it seems like I see less of those Fewer, of those.

0:59:43 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, you don't, you of those. Yeah, yeah, you don't, you don't, you don't because we've given up the pennies.

0:59:51 - Leo Laporte
Dot org has won. We take the pennies, we put them in a bell jar in our basement, then we sell them to Jeff's grandpa.

1:00:01 - Paris Martineau
I will say I think the fun fact of the penny monopoly company being an offshoot from the bell jar company is my favorite genre of fun fact yeah, that's the kind of thing this is going to be onto that, yeah uh, something I cite to people forever, much like a similar fun fact, which is do you guys know, hydro Flask or OXO, the kitchen goods company?

1:00:30 - Leo Laporte
Love OXO.

1:00:34 - Paris Martineau
They are plus, I believe, the same. They're owned by the same company that also operates products like licensed brands like Vicks Honeywell. They're owned by this company called helen of troy get that red string out folks. Notable connection because helen of troy is notable because the company went to, underwent a tax inversion where it uh basically reorganized into a bermuda company in 1993. Uh, it basically did such an aggressive attempt at avoiding taxes that there are new tax laws in the US named after it, called the Helen of Troy rules to, I guess, prohibit about people trying to get away from their tax liability. And every single time I see a hydro flask or like a Vicks vapor rub or kitchen tool from OXO.

1:01:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm like stuff anymore.

1:01:31 - Paris Martineau
I know. I mean I still use OXO stuff. It's great. But I just think it's very funny that they're owned by a company that did such a big tax aversion that there are rules based after it in the U S.

1:01:41 - Leo Laporte
They should call those the OXO rules.

1:01:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Although the Helen of it in the us they should call those the oxo rules, although the helen of troy rules is actually pretty fun, pretty good. Yeah, you know what's amazing about these? Probably these private equity places? Is you try to search google for?

1:01:56 - Benito Gonzalez
one rock capital partners. Nothing next to nothing. Yeah, that's a shell game because they keep changing.

1:01:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly yeah well, search for helen to try that's also hard what are you going to find? Let me.

1:02:08 - Benito Gonzalez
I gotta ask you, though, like what if we do? Let's say, we phase out the penny right, and then you're at a store and something costs ten dollars and one cent. What happens? Do you pay the five cents or are they losing one cent?

1:02:20 - Leo Laporte
well, that's the thing. Now. We do round down, don't we? Yeah, do we the problem? Is in what way.

1:02:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, you to the closest on your taxes and stuff. No, you've got a point, Benito, because the problem is that you find you could only do to the five cent price, but when tax sales taxes are a percentage, you will end up with pennies.

1:02:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Exactly so someone's going to lose it's either us or it's going to be the corporations, and the corporations are going to lose.

1:02:45 - Paris Martineau
So I'm guessing that's why we still have the pennies, but I also wonder with you know, because what Jeff was talking about earlier, all these companies price their products like $3.99. So you don't think about the fact it's four. It's not like they're going to. Are they going to price it at four or are they going to take that four cent loss and price it at 395?

1:03:05 - Leo Laporte
so that you don't. He's going to pay cash in 10 years.

1:03:07 - Benito Gonzalez
Nothing's going to be cash, right yeah, that's a very privileged position, leo oh poco in our discord says military bases overseas don't use pennies.

1:03:18 - Paris Martineau
If the cost is one penny or two pennies on something, they round down, and if it's like three cents or four cents they round up same in canada, same in australia.

1:03:28 - Leo Laporte
They don't have pennies in canada. They outlawed them years ago. Right by the way, they also don't have coin star machines, katie says. Since debuting in 1992, coin star has processed 1 trillion coins worth 67 billion dollars, of which they take 12.5% plus a service fee.

1:03:46 - Paris Martineau
Honestly, I would have expected that to be higher.

1:03:49 - Leo Laporte
So the coins are trucked to a regional processing center.

1:03:54 - Paris Martineau
What happens to them then? Where do the coins go?

1:03:55 - Leo Laporte
They're divided by denomination I'm glad you asked. Most end up inside enormous white cubes called ballistic bags, many of which are distributed into locked cages designated by banks. When a ballistic bag of pennies there's a phrase you don't hear a lot is deposited into, say, a Bank of America cage, Bank of America sends Coinstar an electronic deposit equal to the value of the coin cube. Now let's say a store needs pennies. It can call the bank to request a delivery. The bank calls them up from the cube and has them sausage into penny rolls. You've seen those. When you were a kid I bet even you, paris when you were a kid, did your parents say here, roll these pennies yes, yeah, I'm not sure if it was pennies, but a coin of some sort certainly yeah, I loved my little bank that you put a coin in it would, and it would sort them out the things.

And then you put them in the rolls. Anyway, the rolled pennies are dumped into the compartment of a cash register door, where they remain piled up until they're handed over as change in a cash transaction, and then into your cup holder and then into your drawer and then into the coin star machine for the round trip so you might want to know that One Rock also created a major merger in healthy hydration in selling us plastic bottles with free water inside.

1:05:14 - Jeff Jarvis
So Poland Spring Deer Park.

1:05:18 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wait a minute. The water's free. You're buying the bottle?

1:05:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, you're buying the bottle because we can get water anywhere. What the hell Wait? Is that what I'm paying for when?

1:05:26 - Paris Martineau
I buy water. You're buying the bottle. Yeah, yeah, you're buying the bottle, because we can get water anywhere. What the hell Wait? Is that what I'm paying for when I buy water at the bodega? You're buying the bottle. I'm buying the bottle.

1:05:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, onerockcom slash portfolio.

1:05:33 - Benito Gonzalez
And the gas it took for them to bring that bottle to you Right.

1:05:36 - Leo Laporte
I do not buy bottled water. I am so against bottled water. Look at this, mike my coffee is in a metal, reusable thermos jar.

1:05:48 - Paris Martineau
How many of those do you own Reusable?

1:05:50 - Leo Laporte
thermoses, three or four. This is a new one I just bought because I wanted it exactly the size of my coffee maker. So I put it under the coffee maker and it drips it right into that. So that's nice 14 ounces of wine brewed, freshly ground coffee from south carolina, right there private equity.

1:06:10 - Jeff Jarvis
They own petroplex, a leading pure play provider of acid stimulation and remedial cementing solutions in the permian basin let's buy that they always got, you know you gotta get your acid somewhere.

1:06:30 - Leo Laporte
It's true, geez, it's not from a guy in the street pandemic actually caused a coin star crisis because people didn't use coins right well, there was already a coin shortage going into the pandemic and it was made worse, obviously, by the pandemic.

Coin star deposits dropped by 60 at the start of the panic, a pandemic which turned into a panic. As a result, banks which rely on coin star to choreograph the nationwide coin recirculation ballet such a good article received 60 fewer coins than usual. That's why you saw the coin shortage. That's why interesting yep, there wasn't a shortage of coins. There are plenty of coins. They were just sitting in jars. Yeah, they weren't circulating as basement as we were using pennies delivery of our groceries.

She, she says coin star is practically the sole medium by which pennies churned out with trog trochilidine vigor I don't know that word, trochilidine. Wow, this is. This is crocodilian vigor. T-r-o-c-h-i-l-i-d-i-n-e vigor. Wait a minute, there's. I gotta find out what that means. Let me look that up there's. I gotta find out what that means, let me look that up. I can't. Even my mac doesn't even know, it doesn't have a definition. No, t, troc, troc, troc, chili, hold on, stop all again. Just look at it, show my screen. I've got it highlighted.

1:08:04 - Jeff Jarvis
There it is d-r-o-c-h-i-l-o-d-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d-i-n-d is an adjective that means relating to hummingbirds.

1:08:28 - Leo Laporte
What.

1:08:33 - Jeff Jarvis
It comes from the Latin word trochleaday and the English suffix ein. The earliest known use of the word was in the 1880s precedence of the Zoological Society. Now, where the hell did she come up with that?

1:08:42 - Benito Gonzalez
Okay, no, it's a group of hummingbirds like a pack of wolves.

1:08:46 - Leo Laporte
It's a trochleaday of hummingbirds chocolate, so the pennies are churned out with trocheladine vigor by the mint and they migrate around the united states. I think that's a stretch, but anyway, like a hummingbird, fast like a hummingbird.

1:08:57 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, okay, yeah, but she's very proud it is the for her story is the first google reference for the word there are eight.

1:09:04 - Leo Laporte
There are 18 000 coin star machines in the united states. 92% of Americans live within five miles. I figured there must be other ones, but that's apparently kind of like dominate.

1:09:16 - Paris Martineau
That's so interesting. I didn't realize Coinstar was.

1:09:20 - Jeff Jarvis
So interestingly, it should be a penny stock that you cause a meme for, but you can start that All the other results when I search the word trochilidine are either you know dictionary definitions or people tweeting about this article of course it is. She got him, I think you could start a a penny stock rush here on coin star. I think you could experiment with it yourself.

1:09:48 - Leo Laporte
Coinstar does not do well in Minnesota Because it's too cold Owing to the ferocious commitment to Midwestern friendliness. A disproportionate number of Minnesota bank locations still handle coins for free. You don't need a Coinstar. This is such a good article TD.

1:10:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Bank used to have was famous for having machines. They finally got rid of them, yeah.

1:10:11 - Leo Laporte
No, coinstar ended up. This is an example of late-stage capitalism, but maybe it's where capitalism succeeds. This company makes 12.5% plus 59 cents a transaction, taking your pennies and giving them back to the banks so they can give them back to you.

1:10:30 - Jeff Jarvis
what a business okay, guess who owns coin star. Not private equity, yes, apollo global management, oh my god, of course, they do, of course.

1:10:50 - Leo Laporte
Apollo owns everything, so the Canadians dumped pennies and nothing bad happened.

1:10:54 - Jeff Jarvis
How come I still?

1:10:55 - Leo Laporte
have Canadian pennies. It got rid of the penny in 2013 because it cost 1.6 cents to produce and is essentially worthless. They did not Okay, so this is maybe the way forward.

1:11:08 - Paris Martineau
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Briefs aside, coin star in 2013, rebranded to be outer wall inc. At that time, it owned it had three separate components one was eco atm, which I don't know what that is. The other part, coin star and the third part, red box. Then, when apollo global management them. They became three separate business entities. Now Redbox is owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul.

1:11:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but it's gone under now. Yeah. That was a bad purchase by Chicken Soup for the. Soul, it wasn't forever. I'm not surprised. I think if you name a company Chicken Soup for the Soul, you're kind of probably not the best business person in the world.

1:11:47 - Paris Martineau
Okay, one more thing of probably not the best business person in the world. Okay, one more thing. How coin star ended up owning red box was in february, uh, 2009. It bought all remaining shares of red box from mcdonald's, which I guess had previously, because mcdonald's had red boxes in franchises.

1:12:08 - Jeff Jarvis
I think that's crazy.

1:12:09 - Paris Martineau
I didn't realize that.

1:12:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

1:12:11 - Paris Martineau
We're truly down the rabbit hole now guys.

1:12:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, this is now a rat hole. It's much deeper.

1:12:15 - Leo Laporte
But it is very much the case that Americans and you've seen this as we've done this story, our audience, oh, what are we going to do without pennies? No Rounding. Opponents point out that a disproportionate number of prices, benito and in double nines. So companies will make all the all the money with the rounding up the largest single transaction.

1:12:42 - Paris Martineau
Uh coin stars done was 13 000 in pennies from a man in Alabama.

1:12:49 - Leo Laporte
I was so excited. How much does that weigh? I can tell you a lot.

1:12:53 - Jeff Jarvis
If I went downstairs right now to get a box really, a box of pennies is very heavy.

1:12:58 - Leo Laporte
Actually, we know this because it's right up at the front of the article. Katie does all the research you'd want to know and she tells us that $100 worth of pennies weighs over 55 pounds. So for every $100, 55 pounds how much money.

1:13:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Get a load of this. Pennies minted after 1983 weigh 2.5 grams each. That's because of the things. Pennies minted between 1865 and 1982 weigh 3.11 grams each. Copper's heavier. Pennies minted between 1859 and 1864 weighed 4.67 grams each.

1:13:40 - Leo Laporte
Jeff. Gore professor of biophysics at MIT is the creator of what is now called Citizens to Retire, the US Penny. There are lots of problems in the world that are important and difficult. Public equity is going to go after that person.

1:13:56 - Jeff Jarvis
They're going to do something awful to them.

1:13:58 - Leo Laporte
Gore said, but this is not one of them. The cost of penny production the dearest cost is not the money spent manufacturing and distributing them, but that the cent does the opposite of what currency is supposed to do facilitate transactions. People think that because it exists and it is used, it means it's useful. It's not.

1:14:20 - Benito Gonzalez
Is there a simple process to extract the copper from these pennies?

1:14:24 - Paris Martineau
They're not made of copper.

1:14:25 - Benito Gonzalez
No, but there's some.

1:14:26 - Leo Laporte
There's some. Mostly, you get a lot of bell jar lids.

1:14:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Here's a question for you In the old days. If your fuse went out, you risked death.

1:14:37 - Leo Laporte
By putting a penny where the fuse was that won't work with zinc. Now right, no Right, which is good. It's probably saved many people's lives, actually. Well, anyway, Katie we've got more great article. Interesting use of trickle a dining to dine, which is weird.

1:14:55 - Jeff Jarvis
It's funny that that so many people when I was a kid reporter in the Chicago Tribune. There were a bunch of writers there who who had a bet. They each had a word they had to manage to get into that's fun A Tribune article. That's one of them, my friend. I knew this is going to be horrible. Don't Google it. His word to get in and he managed it was smeg bug. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Yeah, he managed to get it in. I don't know how.

1:15:24 - Leo Laporte
No, I think that was a perfect word to have that bet on it's tricolore? Yeah, I think so too. And good luck, if we can. I think we got to make it the title of the show.

1:15:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Can you look up the pronunciation?

1:15:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, we got to figure it, because I can't do it as a title. No, you can't. How do you spell it? Tricolore, tricolore. Oh, I can't even.

1:15:51 - Paris Martineau
Oh God, it's playing an ad. It's for me to listen to the pronunciation.

1:15:55 - Leo Laporte
I can get the sound out of this thing here. How is the ad here? It is Trochyladine, trochyladine.

1:16:02 - Paris Martineau
Trochyladine.

1:16:03 - Leo Laporte
Trochyladine, trochyladine, trochyladine.

1:16:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Trochyl trochelodyne, trochelodyne, trochelodyne of twig trochelodyne the trochelodyne penny no, that's british. Can you, can you?

1:16:17 - Leo Laporte
switch to american birds you know it's, it's funny. The only, as you said, the only evidence for this word is up to now is from the proceedings of the Zoological.

1:16:29 - Paris Martineau
Where did it come from? Is it a word that Katie put in there, or did her editor put it in?

1:16:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, but she snuck it in. That's the kind of detail you would pride yourself on getting that into a story, right, Paris?

1:16:40 - Paris Martineau
I mean yes, but also it's the sort of thing that if you put it in your editor would be like what the heck is this?

1:16:46 - Leo Laporte
She had a. The editor was the one who had the bet.

1:16:48 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, the bet sounds like the best theory.

1:16:50 - Jeff Jarvis
It's gotta be it doesn't even really Give it a sentence. Yeah, what, what? Where is it in context again?

1:16:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, she says the mint has a trochelodine.

1:17:00 - Benito Gonzalez
Let me find it again. I think she was using it as a metaphor for speed. Right, how fast they did something.

1:17:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah how quickly the trichylidine? Vigor crank the trichylidine vinegar. Do you know katie weaver? Do you know her? I mean, no, I think I've like met her at uh I think you need to write her event or something once or twice I think we need to invite her on the show, because if she does that kind of this is the look of her, my life.

1:17:25 - Paris Martineau
I mean, she's a phenomenal journalist. She writes about the most interesting thing.

1:17:29 - Leo Laporte
She reminds me of you. I mean, this is the kind of thing you would do, right, a deep dive into something completely obscure. Coin star is practically the sole medium by which the pennies churned out with trocheladine vigor by the mint migrate around the United States. Hummingbird like vigor. Yeah, I guess that fits All right. We got to have some news. I get this. This is the time the point in the show. Our fun is over.

We have to get back to the news. Fun is over Paris and Jeff, you must come up with a better story than that. Good luck, oh, when we return. But first a story than that. Good luck, oh, when we return. But first a word from our sponsor.

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1:22:50 - Paris Martineau
I don't have. It's not my decision.

1:22:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I want to be, I don't have any conversation what does he?

1:22:56 - Leo Laporte
would the information sell? Your writing?

1:22:59 - Paris Martineau
you've never in a million years yeah, jessica has been our founder and editor-in-chief and ceo has been very adamant about that the fact that all of these media companies that are making striking big deals with OpenAI, they're making the same mistake that media companies did five years ago, when they did the same thing with Meta.

1:23:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Really that was a mistake with Meta, wasn't it?

1:23:25 - Paris Martineau
Why would it be any different with OpenAI?

1:23:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean I'm sure we've already been scraped. Anthony nielsen says we're on youtube. Yeah, that's true. I don't. Yeah, I, I want. Look, I've said it before. I think ais deserve the best information I want.

1:23:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I want it that if somebody goes to chat tpt and they ask about gutenberg, we come up exactly, or pennies, pennies, yeah well, a podcaster once said all right, paris, what?

1:23:56 - Leo Laporte
what story did you pick?

1:23:58 - Paris Martineau
uh, I picked this story from the san francisco chronicle that found out. Basically, I'll read the top. A Canadian tourist was visiting Oakland recently when he had to talk someone out of taking his Tesla from the hotel parking lot. This was no thief, it was the Oakland Police Department. Turns out, the Tesla may have witnessed a homicide. The article is about how Tesla's sentry mode, which is a security feature that uses the car's cameras to kind of record its surroundings when it's parked, is increasingly being used by police as evidence in criminal investigations, and this is, I mean, it really reminded me of what was happening with like ring doorbell cameras, except for it seems like the police don't have to get a warrant for this, which is particularly concerning in my opinion.

1:24:54 - Leo Laporte
I just furthermore, they take your car.

1:24:56 - Paris Martineau
They don't just get the video, they have to take your car yeah, and I mean I don't know I I feel like I shouldn't have to be, I shouldn't. I'm not consenting to being recorded every time I'm walking by a Tesla you're in public.

1:25:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, I mean, yeah, I know, but I just don't like it you're being recorded on cameras on every street corner, all over, I mean yes, I know, I'm just saying I don't think it's good for our society really oh my god, guys, I've got to go.

1:25:27 - Paris Martineau
I didn't know.

1:25:28 - Leo Laporte
Usually when they ask for a video now Really, oh my God, guys, I've got to go. According to the Chronicle, usually when they ask for a video they get the owner's consent to download it, so they don't have to serve a warrant and they usually don't have to tow it. But if they can't locate the owner and they need the video and they need it urgently they'll take the car. But the Sergeant Ben Terrio, president of the Richmond Police Officers officers association, was interviewed for this article, said it is the most drastic thing you could do, but you know what they're investigating a you know a major penny theft and they need that video. You got to get a court order to do that.

1:26:04 - Paris Martineau
Um just to say I mean, I think that's kind of ridiculous If I was a Tesla owner which I won't be, but I would think it's ridiculous that my car suddenly is a witness to any potential crimes around it and can be taken from me If the police need to search through the video footage. That's a bit.

1:26:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, what's freakier is that. How do they know that your car was at the scene? Well, here's what kind of data that exists.

1:26:29 - Leo Laporte
Here's the story. When officers arrived at the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn near the Oakland airport, they shortly after midnight they found a man in an RV suffering from gunshot and stab wounds. Later he died. They also noticed a gray Tesla parked in the stall opposite the RV. In the search warrant affidavit obtained by the Chronicle, the officer said I know that Tesla vehicles contain external surveillance cameras. They do in order to protect their drivers from theft or liability in accidents. Based on this information this is the warrant I respectfully request that a warrant is authorized to seize this vehicle so that the surveillance footage may be searched.

1:27:17 - Jeff Jarvis
The judge approved it, I think if you get a warrant, a judge approves it, okay, yeah, um, now I hope he gets the car back. What would be freakier is if they, if they um knew who all owned teslas and saw which tesla was near an event through your cell records and then subpoenaed your Tesla because you were there.

1:27:30 - Leo Laporte
Now, in this case there's a happy ending. The Canadian tourist showed up as his car was being loaded to the tow truck. He intervened and volunteered the video, so the police released his vehicle.

1:27:42 - Paris Martineau
But I feel like that's kind of coercive. If you see your car you're walking over and they're like, yeah, sorry, we're going to tow your car unless you let us look at this video voluntarily. Of course someone's going to be like, yeah, look at the video.

1:27:57 - Jeff Jarvis
I feel like there are greater privacy implications with this. I think God knows what the person was doing at the La Quinta by the Oakland airport.

1:28:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you don't want to be there. I can tell you Honestly, a lot of cars have cameras nowadays. In fact, I would imagine in the future most cars right cameras are back I have to. Uh, yeah, but even but newer cars often had front-facing cam.

1:28:21 - Paris Martineau
Mine does I mean, doesn't this concern you guys? Maybe I'm being the old person here, but I just don't like the idea that everything in life is now going to be recorded.

1:28:29 - Jeff Jarvis
It already is my friend, I know, but that doesn't mean that I have to feel good about it.

1:28:35 - Leo Laporte
No, I get, I creeped out here. We are in this little town of Petaluma and every street, like the butter festival, home of the butter festival, Every street light has a camera on it. All the way down the street you see camera, camera, camera. What are they looking for? People who have red lights, so they can send you a ticket.

1:28:53 - Benito Gonzalez
That's where they make money.

1:28:55 - Leo Laporte
It's red light cameras, but these aren't just red light cameras, they're pointing in other directions. I feel like they just took advantage. Probably you know what really happened. Some company went to the Petaluma City Council and said you want to build a monorail? No, okay, how about putting cameras on all the lights? Okay, that's part of the police budget?

1:29:15 - Benito Gonzalez
probably right, that's part of the police budget. Sure, absolutely, and they get a lot of money.

1:29:25 - Leo Laporte
Okay, what else? That was a good one, I liked it, paris.

1:29:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm going to propose one that paris and I both put in. I didn't notice it until just now. Line 69 oh nano rhino.

1:29:37 - Paris Martineau
Now this is national novel writers month or national november national novel writing month, I believe, believe it's November, though, and it's November.

1:29:48 - Leo Laporte
Do you do this, by the way, Paris I?

1:29:51 - Paris Martineau
don't, but there were times I thought about participating in it when I was in grade school.

1:29:59 - Leo Laporte
Jesus for everyone. That long For us does it every year, I think.

1:30:03 - Paris Martineau
Basically what this is. Is it is a I guess now there's a non-profit organization associated. Is it is a I guess now there's a non-profit organization associated, but it's a kind of community event of people who are interested in writing. Where the gist of it is, writing a novel is hard, but one of the hardest things about it is sitting down doing the work, writing something every single day. The goal is to write a novel in one month. I think the they have a specific number they target.

1:30:29 - Leo Laporte
It's like 50,000 words. How many words are in the Gutenberg parenthesis, jeff, 100,000. Can you imagine writing that in two months?

1:30:40 - Paris Martineau
Or in a month.

1:30:41 - Leo Laporte
One month, no, well, it's 50,000 in one month Times. Yeah too Magazine probably is 10,000, because it's a lot of pictures. How about the web? We weave the new one that's coming out. That's probably around 50, right, that's more like 70.

1:30:56 - Paris Martineau
I mean. So the thing that I think, is important to know about this to give context is a lot of. It is about community. It is about building a community and teaching people who want to write a novel how to build the muscle of writing every single day and supporting each other. It's an organization and supporting each other. It is not about making the best possible novel in your single month. It is largely an event of endurance.

1:31:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Now to the news peg in the story.

1:31:29 - Paris Martineau
The news peg is that NaNoWriMo recently got in a lot of hot water because they put out new guidelines saying that they believe that new guidelines supporting AI use in NaNoWriMo. Specifically, the thing that got them in trouble is they have kind of a whole section of their website where they say that criticism of using AI kind of writing generation tools in NaNoWriMo is ableist and classist. It does not take into account that people out there with disabilities might not be able to write at the same speed as, you know, non-disabled people. That's fair, but even more than that.

1:32:19 - Leo Laporte
It's just a club to get together to write. If you want to use AI to jog your writing, hell. If you want to write 50,000 with an ai, who cares? So I argued the beginning. You're not saying well it is a competition.

1:32:36 - Paris Martineau
It is specifically I agree with you, but it's a competition it's a personal competition in a sense it is about trying to write a lot in a short period of time, whether it's good or not, and so people online got very upset because they, I think, part, and I kind of agree with this angle. I don't think that it's cheating. I just think that it's not particularly relevant to this example. Sure.

If people want to use AI and writing tools go for it, but it seems a little strange for the organization itself to be advocating for the use of AI tools to generate writing in a task that is all about simply just generating words on page.

1:33:22 - Leo Laporte
Should we have to do it with a pen on paper? Well, exactly, exactly.

1:33:25 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a tool. Let me defend nanowriter. Whatever you say it, nano rhino, I can't stand the name I'm gonna do.

1:33:32 - Leo Laporte
By the way, this next month I'm gonna do nano rhino vember. I'm gonna grow a mustache while I write that's really smart.

1:33:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yeah, um, so when chachi?

1:33:42 - Leo Laporte
maybe even better. No, not nano rhino vember stop, never mind stop forget I said it.

1:33:49 - Jeff Jarvis
So when Chet Chippity came out, I argued that it was a way to potentially expand literacy. People who are scared of writing could use this to help them write. Now then in my executive program, one of the students who runs a site for First Nations in Canada and another who runs a site for imprisoned people said whoa, there, site for First Nations in Canada. And another who runs a site for imprisoned people said whoa, they're white men. You're suggesting to homogenize the language of all kinds of people to the hegemony of all publishing. That came before. And I said oh, you're right, You're right, but still, if you're in charge of the machine and what it turns out, and if you're intimidated, because maybe English is your second language or maybe you have dyslexia or maybe you just are afraid of writing, if the idea is to get people over a hump and help them write, then whatever gets you there, I think, should be seen as a fine and good thing, and so I side with them.

The Atlantic, of course, came out, not surprisingly, with a snobby piece because that's what they do saying AI is coming for amateur novelists. That's fine, Because the point of this too, is that you've got the writing establishment, the publishing establishment, saying no, this is all bullshit, Nobody can write anything, it's awful, it's all crap. You've got to suffer for your art. And rather than saying people are joining in to write what they feel and think and say I think that's a good thing. Whatever got on there.

1:35:12 - Paris Martineau
I don't think it's entirely about suffering for your art. Let me read something an artist, silvia Moreno-Garcia, posted on Twitter this week. I did the NaNoWriMo thing 15 some years ago. She writes the main impetus and benefit of it was socialization. You would meet people online and in person, chat about books, have a buddy writing in parallel, like joining a marathon.

1:35:32 - Jeff Jarvis
A buddy? Is that cheating? Go ahead.

1:35:40 - Paris Martineau
In other words, the point is not about output, but experience. This is what these companies don't understand. If I joined a marathon at the office, it wasn't because I really thought I'd win first place. It's because my colleagues to participate, we train together, have something to do, get together celebratory dinner. I think that the core part of this, that it's the, not the output, it's the experience is what that's for her?

No, I'm saying that, for it's a strange thing for an organization that their whole ethos is. You're trying to get to 50,000 words. It's totally fine if you use AI to do that. I think it's a strange little pivot from them because part of what this or is the goal 50,000 words?

1:36:18 - Jeff Jarvis
or is the goal getting over the hump and trying to feel like you could write?

1:36:23 - Paris Martineau
Yes, but if you're not writing, how are you trying to feel if you can write? If you just type something into chat, GPT and I could say write 50 50 000 words for me right now.

1:36:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Would that count as me completing nanowrimo technically? Yes, if you wanted to, but I mean if you, if you, if you got inspiration, I think that there's a another aspect of this, which is the way that nanowrimo kind of couched.

1:36:44 - Paris Martineau
this was about how it is classist or ableist to dismiss these tools because they are essential for people with disabilities to be able to participate in writing, and a lot of disability advocates and disabled people online took offense to this because I think it's frankly offensive to say that the only way that disabled people can participate in communal writing experiences is through ai tools that generate work for you I don't think they're saying it's the only way, but I think it's saying it's one thing and it goes to let's go to classes too.

1:37:18 - Jeff Jarvis
Um, that, you, you. You get the issue of people who believe they're not speaking classic english and, uh, they're seen as lower class as a result but I'd rather have those people's voices heard in the original tone than filtered through ChatGPT.

1:37:34 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think that it's one thing. I think, from a personal, individual perspective, anyone can do whatever they want. If someone wants to use ChatGPT and say it's for NaNoWriMo, sure good for them. I think it's a little strange when you, as an institution, come out with what was obviously going to be a big declaration. This is a really hot button topic in this community because people are worried about organizations like Naeina Raimo selling their work to a AI company as content. I think that it was a bad move for them to do this.

1:38:13 - Benito Gonzalez
I can say that. I would suggest that it is not writing, jeff, I would suggest that saying give me 50,000 words, not 50,000.

1:38:20 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I'm not saying about doing the whole thing.

1:38:22 - Benito Gonzalez
I would suggest that's not writing, though, because that's more curation. You're seeing the outputs of the AI and then you're picking stuff that's not writing more curation. You're seeing the outputs of the AI and then you're picking stuff that's not writing. That's curating.

1:38:29 - Jeff Jarvis
All creation is curation at some level. That's Cory Doctorow's argument, that's the copyright argument A, b. I'm not suggesting that you use it to turn off 50,000 words, yeah, then what's the point? But I am saying that if you use it to help for inspiration, to improve it, to give you ideas, that would be forbidden in the ethos of some of these people, and I'm saying those could be perfectly legitimate ways to help you get over that hump which is supposed to be the idea of this aren't there rules, by the way, in this thing?

and then rhino.

1:38:58 - Paris Martineau
Like there are rules like yeah, kind of, I think you like upload to the website and whatnot. Yeah, but what?

1:39:05 - Jeff Jarvis
rules like how you write use ai was an implied rule, I guess, because they said it's okay to use it.

1:39:10 - Leo Laporte
Interestingly, according to Patrick Delahandy, who did do NaNoWriMo twice a couple of years back. He says that all of this started after NaNoWriMo accepted an AI company as a sponsor.

1:39:23 - Paris Martineau
Yes, so I was just about to say that one of the sponsors this year is ProWritingAid, and if you go to their website, it uh, they describe it as providing actionable advice to improve your writing. So one example they give is you may have written the sentence the ocean was bathed in a serene atmosphere as the golden sunset painted a tranquil scene and you could ask pro writing aid to expand that. And then it gives you this as the sun being set. Its golden rays spread a peaceful ambiance that enveloped the entire ocean. It's all crap. With its golden hues, the setting sun created a sense of tranquility that washed over the vast expanse.

1:40:01 - Leo Laporte
I think this is fine, but I mean, this is one step past using Grammarly Are you allowed to use.

1:40:05 - Paris Martineau
Grammarly when you're writing. I mean, I think that certain aspects of it. Yes, I think that if you're using it to, I think, in this case, if you're using proratingator grammarly to construct whole sentences for you, they're more of a co-author if this was a competition and there was a prize.

1:40:24 - Leo Laporte
But the whole point of this is to write, to get you to write however you want to write, I feel like.

1:40:27 - Paris Martineau
that's what makes it even worse, though It'd be one thing if there was a competition and there was a prize, and people would say it's unfair. The only person that's being cheated are the people who are using these tools.

1:40:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, let yourself, then they get to choose that. Yeah, they get to get some over the air business. If I want to cheat myself, I mean I agree, I think from an individual perspective.

1:40:45 - Paris Martineau
yeah, go for it, do whatever.

1:40:47 - Leo Laporte
I think from an institutional perspective.

1:40:49 - Paris Martineau
It's a strange hill to die on.

1:41:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Maybe I like to see three different ways to cast a sentence, because it helps me think about how and then, I'm not going to use any of those three, but I'm going to rewrite my sentence in a way that's more interesting. See what nano-whatever does. Is that writers, we think we're so special as writers and so we pull the ladder up after us and say, no, no, writing is hard. And what the ethos behind? I use ethos three times, I'm sorry. What the moral behind? I think where this started was no, everybody can write.

1:41:23 - Leo Laporte
I think you need to use zeitgeist more often, please. I say zeitgeist a lot. No, I agree with you, go ahead. I please say zeitgeist a lot. No, I agree with you, go ahead. I'm sorry to interrupt with my stupid. It was an ai made me do it. I think it's a tempest in a teapot, honestly now it is what's funny about it yeah, and in paris I think I can see why.

1:41:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I can see the slack where one person raises the woke idea well, what about people who are disabled and other people don't?

1:41:51 - Leo Laporte
that's a reasonable so they say if you're a marathoner and I bet there wasn't a big discussion- and you're training to run a marathon and you happen to only have one leg and you have a artificial leg, or maybe even an artificial leg with springs that help improve your running, should you not be allowed to run the marathon? Maybe you shouldn't be able to compete in the same category as uh able runners, but you should be allowed to run the marathon. That's all we're saying. It's if somebody has a artificial leg, they can still run marathons, right what is that?

right and and and. Okay, it's fine. If there were a competition in like the best 50 000 words or something like that, then I could understand. But you're not saying that. Who nobody reads the 50 000, who reads all this?

1:42:41 - Paris Martineau
they just throw them out. I mean, there are other writers. I think that part of what ended up being a problem here is not like any decision they made, because, frankly, the decision they made is we're not endorsing or endorsing use of AI writing tools. It is a question of framing, it is. I mean, let me read the part on class.

1:43:01 - Leo Laporte
They lost, they lost some people, they lost quite a few board members because of this they say.

1:43:06 - Paris Martineau
Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help them at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess, and I think that's fair.

That's a fair point but I think it is also a bit of a myopic, like it is, if we want to talk about classism in AI. It is a much more complicated topic than three sentences approaching it from one side of the angle.

1:43:35 - Leo Laporte
Boy. These poor NaNoWriMo people are so impressed. Now they say why do we even start this thing?

1:43:40 - Paris Martineau
I think that part of the outrage is also fueled by fears that, because part of I believe how the NaNoWriMo website works is you use their system to write your novel, because part of I believe how the NaNoWriMo website works is you use their system to write your novel.

1:43:56 - Jeff Jarvis
And people are worried that the text of their work could be used by this AI paranoia going on here. Ai is going to replace us. Ai is evil.

1:44:00 - Paris Martineau
AI is being trained on our NaNoWriMo novels.

1:44:02 - Jeff Jarvis
It's trained. It's stealing from us. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on.

1:44:06 - Leo Laporte
There's definitely. We're starting to polarize into pro and and anti-ai groups, aren't we? We're starting to yeah, yeah, yeah it's interesting.

I don't know if that's the right thing to do with ai, because you know they're just going to divide and conquer. You know the new vws will have chat gpt built in why, in why? And Volkswagen's in-car AI will use chat GPT and a multitude of cloud-based models to answer drivers' questions. No, when was the first CES in Las Vegas and how many people visited? Pay attention to the road. Don't be asking stupid questions while you're driving.

1:44:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Google system will not answer that kind of question now, when you're driving. It will not answer an informational question how much more?

1:44:52 - Leo Laporte
would you pay for Amazon Echo? Now we know that they're apparently going to use Anthropix Cloud for their remarkable Alexa.

1:45:04 - Jeff Jarvis
It's remarkable, nobody used it before that was the problem, but now maybe they will.

1:45:09 - Paris Martineau
Yes, that's what's remarkable. Nobody used it before.

1:45:09 - Leo Laporte
That was the problem. But now maybe they will. Yes, that's what's remarkable. Amazon's revamped Echo for release in October. $5 to $10 a month for what they're calling the remarkable A-word. I don't know if I can say the A-word or not.

1:45:27 - Speaker 2
If I go Not an A, as Stacy used to say, alexa, alexa, alexa. If I can say the a word or not, if I go as Alexa, alexa.

1:45:32 - Leo Laporte
Uh, so that trigger anybody? Or just just did your dump button? Yeah, just to have a button, a dump button, um, you'll still be able to get the stupid Alexa If all you want is recipes and timing and stuff like that. So did the atlantic say, that's fine, it's okay if for amateur uh, novelists, that we don't care they kind of say let them, let them destroy, because they're not really writers, they're just.

1:46:02 - Jeff Jarvis
They're not writers like us. What do you expect?

1:46:04 - Paris Martineau
that's just let the robot you know this whole thing did make me, uh, go back and look into when I was a kid. I was really into fan fiction. I wrote a bunch of fan fiction. So I went to go look at my account. I, at age 13, wrote 102,000 word fan fiction. Jeez, with what time.

1:46:24 - Leo Laporte
In like six months. You weren't working what the world wants to know is what was it about?

1:46:31 - Paris Martineau
Absolutely? I mean, I'm six months, you weren't working. The world wants to know. Is what absolutely? I mean? I'm not giving any more details. It was about an anime, is all I'll say. Okay, all right, all right sexy it was sexy the 13 year old way and I think the characters kissed a couple times and I remember having to go and read other fan fiction where people kiss to make sure that I wrote it. I did a lot of research on kissing.

1:46:50 - Leo Laporte
If you can believe that cute.

1:46:55 - Jeff Jarvis
So you up there I have, I have my, I have the one novel I ever wrote. You wrote a box.

1:47:01 - Paris Martineau
The one you wrote in Berlin. That was bad, yes.

1:47:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Thank God no one published it. I'm just delighted, and so if I had done that in public I'd be humiliated this day somebody could find it that's why I can't say any anthony nielsen, yeah, I know the posing.

1:47:14 - Paris Martineau
A club twit exclusive, a radio play with paris's fanfic you guys would have to pay me a lot of money to do that come on paris oh come on, so much fun.

1:47:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Bring it to lunch with leo and me, yeah we'll do a reading, we'll do a table read yeah, I'll run, I'll jump in front of a train I've always.

1:47:38 - Leo Laporte
You have a novel it's on.

1:47:40 - Jeff Jarvis
It's in digital form or is it in print? Zero? It's in digital form. It's on the website. Somebody can find it had hundreds of reviews.

1:47:48 - Paris Martineau
It was you know.

1:47:50 - Jeff Jarvis
You know what to do. Russia, if you're listening Russia.

1:47:53 - Paris Martineau
Listen. If you guys can find what I'm talking about, I'll be very impressed. I've not given you many details because I don't think you'll be able to do it.

1:48:03 - Benito Gonzalez
You just issued a challenge to our audience.

1:48:05 - Leo Laporte
Listen. Yeah, but obviously it's not ever her real name. Yeah, but it's obviously it's not ever her real name.

1:48:09 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I know.

1:48:10 - Leo Laporte
So, and I imagine there's more than one 13 year old anime fan fiction.

1:48:16 - Paris Martineau
That's over a hundred thousand words. Yeah, I'm guessing there's quite a lot yeah.

1:48:22 - Leo Laporte
It's going to be a tough one. Good luck. Can you post?

1:48:25 - Paris Martineau
an excerpt? No, because then you'll find it.

1:48:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, Good luck. Can you post an excerpt? No, because then you'll find it One character's name.

1:48:31 - Leo Laporte
Come on, just one. No, it's not going to give us any information.

1:48:34 - Paris Martineau
Nope, the challenge has been issued.

1:48:47 - Leo Laporte
You are watching this Week in Google with fanfic writer Paris Martineau and novelist wishful novelist Jeff Jarvis. I always wanted to write a novel but I think because of my aphantasia this is my excuse I can't, because you can't see an apple. I can't see an apple. I can't visualize what I'm, you know, I can't put it down on paper. You guys are writers when you do fiction anyway. Can you see what you're? Then she approached his turbid lips with chocolate dean she was only 13.

1:49:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Leo, you're getting edgy here do you see the apple.

1:49:21 - Paris Martineau
I don't recall because that was the probably the last time I wrote fiction honestly, but yeah, I do, I do receive the apple when I'm writing.

1:49:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Leo, when you hear the story of William Tell, do you envision an apple?

1:49:32 - Leo Laporte
No, it's just all fuzzy. That's gross. So I asked Daniel Sparks.

1:49:36 - Paris Martineau
You still can't picture your wife's face, right?

1:49:39 - Leo Laporte
No, I can't see my kid's face, do you know?

1:49:42 - Paris Martineau
what color their eyes are. Oh, I know that.

1:49:43 - Leo Laporte
That's the thing I oh, I know that I can. That's the thing. I know abstract details. I could describe their face. But this is why I always thought police sketch artists. I don't understand it, Because how do they know what the face looked like that you could describe it to them? And what I don't understand is people see the face in their head and they're describing it to the sketch artist. I don't. All I have is abstract knowledge about the face, Adject face. It had a nose. What kind of nose? I don't know who knows.

1:50:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Who knows?

1:50:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, if the nose were big and red would you record that as a fact, but I wouldn't see a big red nose yeah.

1:50:22 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, like if you're thinking about the wafer delivery guy who you saw briefly when he were going downstairs to get coffee before the show Any details you remember about them.

1:50:32 - Leo Laporte
No, short Brown blob, that's it.

1:50:37 - Paris Martineau
You'll be very useful if a crime ever happens. Not good for writing a novel A brown blob.

1:50:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, his car will be better than he is.

1:50:45 - Leo Laporte
Moistened with anticipation. Moistened with anticipation. I once asked daniel suarez, accomplished publisher, published best selling author I? I said I can't see things. Do I did you? Do you see things? As your enemy said yeah, what the hell are you talking about, dude? Weird, I lost a button. Don't mock my.

1:51:06 - Paris Martineau
Uh, I'm not trying to get you can't see it behind the mic honestly that's?

1:51:11 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I'm trying to. Somebody has poco saw he's talking about it in the chat room. Uh, ai's impact on elections is being overblown, says the mit technology review, felix m, simon keegan mcgride and sasha alte writing. So you wrote a pre-C of this on your LinkedIn.

1:51:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, but you can also. The article's not long, yeah. And, importantly, this is three people I respect, well, two. One I know and respect Felix Simon is now the head of research for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, keegan McBride is in the Oxford Internet Institute and Sasha Alte is University of Zurich.

And I found this really good piece because it, at a higher level, says that a lot of panic about information goes wrong. And they have a few very clear reasons. First, mass persuasion is notoriously challenging. Plenty of communication theory about this, that the hypodermic view that you can say something to somebody, you're going to persuade everybody, is BS. Second, for a piece of content to be influential, it has to reach its intended audience and with the crush of content out there, that's all the harder.

Third, emerging research challenges the idea that using AI to micro-target people and sway their voting behavior works as well as initially feared. Voters seem to not only recognize excessively tailored messages but actively dislike them. And fourth, voting behavior is shaped by a complex nexus of factors All kinds of media exposure, all kinds of memories and factors, all kinds of social things. So this whole idea that, oh my God, ai is going to ruin the election is going down the wrong path. But you could substitute AI for Russian disinformation or for social media or for anything else. It's not that simple, and so now we have plans announced today about what to do about Chinese disinformation in the election. And, yeah, we should worry about trying to fool people when they vote and that kind of stuff. I agree, but basically there have always been idiots, there's idiots out there and it hasn't shown to have had much effect. So maybe a lot of our talk and a lot of our efforts are going down the wrong path. So I thought this was a good piece yeah, I, I've skimmed through it.

1:53:24 - Leo Laporte
Um and uh, you know they're arguing for uh restraint instead of uh panic. They say that, uh, in the 100 elections since uh 2023 there's only in more than 100 national elections just 19 were identified to show ai interference. But I would point out that's 19 that's not insignificant. And you know ai is only really becoming vogue recently yeah, um, the evidence did not demonstrate clear signs of significant changes yeah, that's the results but I do. I mean, I think it's a little too old to say mass persuasion is notoriously challenging.

Isn't it accepted that uh uh gebbels was able to use radio to good effect in nazi germany? There was a lot more going on than broadcast yeah well, those rallies with the big flags and the martial, I mean I would say that the first worst thing that was invented uh is the loudspeaker, and the guy, notoriously, who invented the loudspeaker.

1:54:25 - Benito Gonzalez
And the guy, notoriously, who invented the loudspeaker was depressed that he enabled the Nazis for his whole life. Really, yeah, that's his story. Who?

1:54:37 - Paris Martineau
was that he never invented anything.

1:54:39 - Leo Laporte
I forgot his name, but I read that story. He invented the loudspeaker.

1:54:43 - Benito Gonzalez
He feels responsible for what happened.

1:54:46 - Leo Laporte
I think his name was Lou D Speaker.

1:54:51 - Benito Gonzalez
If only our current tech moguls had the same humility.

1:54:54 - Leo Laporte
His name was Lance Speaker.

1:54:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Benito, I really want to know that, because that's for the next book. Okay, I will figure it out. I really, really want to know that. I did have a thing about the loudspeaker in the Goodberg Parenthesis, but it was one that. So I did have a thing about the loudspeaker in the Gutenberg parenthesis, but it was one of the things I cut out.

1:55:13 - Leo Laporte
Who invented the first loudspeaker. Johann Philip Rice installed an electric loudspeaker in his telephone in 1861. I think that's a little earlier than the Nazis.

1:55:24 - Benito Gonzalez
No, that's not the PA system. Oh a PA system.

1:55:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, I see.

1:55:34 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, because the loudspeaker was first used soon after the turn of the century yeah.

1:55:37 - Leo Laporte
Hitler needed amplification right. Here's the history of the PA system.

1:55:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Stephen Robert Pearson of Lancashire, England is credited with. Well, anyway, there's a lot of information here, you could argue, the worst thing that was ever invented I'll put it differently was the amplifier yeah well. Because all you could do before was speak to the people who could hear you. Given the acoustics, that was the largest crowd you could get to. Print expanded that, but that required expensive effort. With the amplifier you could increase your voice beyond that. And then begins the mass Anyway.

1:56:22 - Paris Martineau
Sorry, now I'm trying to find this anecdote which I've got to stop.

1:56:25 - Leo Laporte
We're doing our research now instead of doing a show. So if you just pause this and we'll be back in a few instead of doing a show.

1:56:29 - Paris Martineau
So if you just uh, come back in about 20 minutes.

1:56:31 - Leo Laporte
I might have an interesting anecdote for you history of the loud speaker uh ai may not steal many jobs, after all.

1:56:39 - Jeff Jarvis
It just may make workers more efficient, says the associated press we're gonna find either or stories like this going all the time, but I think it's it's worthy not to presume that it's going to get rid of jobs.

1:56:52 - Leo Laporte
I think there are a lot of. Right now. There's evidence that a lot of. We have some advertisers who, for instance, use AI and customer service and their experience has been. It helps customer service be more effective the humans be more effective. By doing triage, they can solve a lot of simple problems quickly so that the customer service reps only have to talk to people who have more complicated problems, and their evidence is that both customers and the reps are happier because of it.

1:57:21 - Jeff Jarvis
It only works if customer service is empowered to solve your problem.

1:57:25 - Leo Laporte
Exactly, you have to think of it that way. It's not.

1:57:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, it's let me explain to you our policy and why we don't do that yeah, I mean phone trees don't make people happier, that's for sure.

1:57:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, uh, let's see how oprah will screw up the ai story. You remember? Did we talk about the show? We talk about this on this show, or was it on Twitter?

1:57:46 - Paris Martineau
I don't think so, it was on.

1:57:47 - Leo Laporte
Twitter. So Oprah Winfrey is doing a special about AI. It'll be called the Story of Us later this month. The reason we started talking about it on Twitter is because one of the people on it will be Marques Brownlee, YouTube star and tech reviewer.

1:58:08 - Jeff Jarvis
And a major Frisbee star.

1:58:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I saw that article as well. Marquez is on the on a roll, but I saw when I saw a picture of him with Oprah I thought, yeah, Marquez has made it. So this is the show. It's going to be called AI the story of us Sam.

1:58:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Altman is going to be on it, so is the dreaded tristan harris uh it.

1:58:32 - Leo Laporte
It's an interesting review, I mean uh of ai, and I guess oprah's plan is to make it accessible so that everybody can understand it, which I admire that, but I don't know I don't know if these are the people to do. These are the people watch ai in the future of us, september 12th. There's oprah done by ai. No doubt sam altman will explain how ai works in layman's terms should we watch a little? Dog in this we have to.

1:59:01 - Jeff Jarvis
We do a lot of gates. Oh, we should do a live.

1:59:04 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I would love to do a mystery science theater 3000.

1:59:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah, mostly us spitting our coffee out. Bill gates will lay out the ai revolution coming in science, health and education. Youtube creator and technologist marquez brownlee will walk win three, win free through mind-blowing demonstrations. See right there.

1:59:25 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that's exactly how mainstream media treats this stuff Mind-blowing demonstrations of AI's capabilities.

1:59:32 - Leo Laporte
Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of Center for Mainstream Technology, walk Win3 through the emerging risks sounding the alarm Moral entrepreneurs. Fbi Director Christopher Wray reveals the terrifying ways criminals and foreign adversaries are using AI. Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson reflects. I will reflect on AI's threat to human values and the ways in which humans might resist the convenience of AI. Ai and the Future of Us an Oprah Winfrey special. When does it air? September 12th, 8.m.

2:00:11 - Paris Martineau
That's a thursday on abc and the next day it'll be on hulu if we were both not on vacation. Yeah, well, the problem is.

2:00:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Leo would have to watch it on the west coast, not to watch on the east coast, and we couldn't. I'll be on a boat. We'll be in a boat.

2:00:25 - Paris Martineau
Okay, never mind I'll be in croatia um, do you?

2:00:29 - Leo Laporte
there's a lot of potential. There's a lot of need for something that can explain ai boat. He'll be in a boat, okay never mind, I'll be in Croatia. There's a lot of potential.

2:00:34 - Jeff Jarvis
There's a lot of need for something that can explain AI. Yeah, just Oprah Winfrey's, not who I would think.

2:00:37 - Leo Laporte
I don't think this is hard to do it. It also feels like it's a little bit too much.

2:00:43 - Paris Martineau
Let's get everybody I don't know I mean I'll reserve my judgment till I see it, but I my current thought reading the list of people scheduled to speak, is that it will be a lot of hype.

2:00:58 - Leo Laporte
Sam's upcoming ai television special sparks outrage among tech critics. This is from benji edwards at ars technica. Ai opponents say gates, altman and others will guide, guide Oprah through an AI sales pitch.

2:01:13 - Benito Gonzalez
If it was really that good, the AI would do the whole show. Yeah, really.

2:01:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry At a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst. It certainly will stimulate more investment, won't it, in AI companies. Artist Carla Ortiz, who is one of the plaintiffs suing AI. The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such. What a train wreck. There's still plenty of time to get actual experts have a better discussion on this. Yeah, I mean timnit gabru might be good to have on.

2:01:54 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I feel like sam altman's the wrong to say test grill yeah that's that's, that's the yeah, that's like the smegma of ai oh, if only the title for this show could be the smegma.

2:02:08 - Leo Laporte
It's not going to be.

2:02:09 - Paris Martineau
I know I'm saying if only, if only we lived in a world where that would be your friend Ed Zitron.

2:02:14 - Leo Laporte
You want to know what he said.

2:02:15 - Paris Martineau
Probably something like the smegma of AI. I'm guessing.

2:02:20 - Leo Laporte
I think smegma is his favorite word. He says Marquez Bradley should be absolutely ashamed of himself. What a disgraceful thing to be associated with. So, ed, yeah, yeah, you should be ashamed of yourself. Um, I don't know if that's true. I mean, look, I used to go on, uh, regis and kelly, and tell them about yeah, but you'd explain things, you didn't well, I did the same thing as he said here dev noel would explain things dev. No, hey, she should have dev noel on. I would set him straight.

2:02:49 - Benito Gonzalez
Show Ed how much he got paid and Ed would probably be like, oh, all right, all right.

2:02:55 - Paris Martineau
I don't know. I think Ed would be like this is disgusting.

2:02:57 - Leo Laporte
I don't think they're going to pay him more than scale, which is about $1,000.

2:03:01 - Paris Martineau
No way for a show like this. No, mark Hasbrouck is definitely getting paid. Oh, like this, definitely getting paid. Think they're not paying bill gates or sam altman.

2:03:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, I think abc is going to treat this as a news special and they're going to pay you scale, not ten thousand dollars. Maybe they will money, oprah money.

2:03:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Oprah oprah can afford it you got a point, though, that all the rest of them aren't going to take the money, even tristan harris well, they're there for the marketing, for the marketing. Yeah.

2:03:29 - Leo Laporte
I would be disappointed if ABC pays more than scale for this. You shouldn't. A news organization should not pay people. Scale is the union scale, which would be about a thousand bucks. I don't know what it is today.

2:03:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Are you members? Are you a member of the?

2:03:44 - Leo Laporte
union. I was SAG after. Yeah, actually, I wonder. If Marquez is, though, there's no reason for him to be in the union. Why would he be?

2:03:56 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, he's in, I'm not. I'm not in the union anymore. I'm an abeyance or whatever, so I don't have to pay. Do you want to show his uh frisbee video?

2:04:01 - Leo Laporte
I've seen it this so many times. I don't want to be part of the dark as brownlee promotion engine. All right, all right. All right, all right.

2:04:10 - Paris Martineau
I've got something else we can talk about if we don't want to talk about the. Frisbee thing, you go, you go. Yes, it's very important.

2:04:15 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you what. While you talk about that, I will show Marcus Brownlee on NBC.

2:04:20 - Paris Martineau
Well, my thing we have to see the internet's favorite tech reviewer is also an elite ultimate Frisbee player.

2:04:30 - Leo Laporte
He is, though he's really good.

2:04:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, he's impressive.

2:04:34 - Leo Laporte
Look at this. Watch this catch. Look at that. Watch this catch. He leaps into the air thousands of feet above the others. Snags the Frisbee. Can you beat that?

2:04:46 - Paris Martineau
Anecdotally, ultimate Frisbee in new york city are some of the worst, most annoying people I've ever met.

2:04:51 - Jeff Jarvis
They're bros no people.

2:04:53 - Paris Martineau
They're like, they're bros, but in like a crunchy way.

2:04:57 - Leo Laporte
That's kind of annoying, you know they're bros with man buns and yeah, like a liberal-esque bro, what's the deal with all the bead bracelets, the things, the strings and all that I don't like? What is that? What's the deal with all that?

2:05:09 - Paris Martineau
People. Just I don't know. I can't wear it because it irritates my arm hairs, so I don't. I feel frustration whenever I see a bunch of bracelets Pretty much life irritates my arm hairs.

2:05:20 - Leo Laporte
I don't, I don't, none of it.

2:05:23 - Paris Martineau
Okay, so my thing is very important. The winners of Michigan's 2024 I Voted sticker contest have been revealed, and I frankly want all of them, even though I don't live in Michigan.

2:05:35 - Leo Laporte
Look at these. These won yes. So, traditionally, when you go to the polls you get a nice red, white and blue American flag sticker that says I voted.

2:05:43 - Paris Martineau
Click the first one, which was done by an elementary schooler.

2:05:47 - Leo Laporte
Not in Michigan. How great is that?

2:05:49 - Paris Martineau
imagine if you go to your polling booth and you get a werewolf pulling off a ripped shirt in front of an american flag that's wild. That was by jane highness in gross point michigan of brownlee middle school. It's voody mcgraw face it is. This has become a thing now that's by an adult, I believe.

2:06:10 - Leo Laporte
Probably a childless cat lady, since it is in fact a cat in the hat.

2:06:15 - Paris Martineau
Yes, if you go to the webs, this one just has the bigger ones. I think that one's cute. It's a fish.

2:06:20 - Leo Laporte
This is my favorite one.

2:06:22 - Paris Martineau
That one is by another elementary schooler. I voted Gabby Warner in Rockford Michigan. Yeah, that's my favorite. That's good.

2:06:29 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, that's the one I'd wear of all of those.

2:06:31 - Paris Martineau
That's the one I'd wear. If you click the uh link below this in the rundown, it brings you to the full page with um, all of them, or might have that farther. On the twitter thread I like there's one that says I'm cool, I voted, which is nice also, so are all of these going to be made into stickers? Um, so I believe what happens is they will all be available for election clerks to order for the November election, so election clerks can choose which ones they want to get you know.

2:06:58 - Leo Laporte
But these are the winners the deer and the ski goggles. That's good, that's good.

2:07:01 - Paris Martineau
That's by a high schooler.

2:07:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:07:03 - Paris Martineau
This is also by a high schooler, that's pretty.

2:07:05 - Leo Laporte
I kind of like that. Yeah, I buy a high schooler. That's pretty. I kind of like that. Yeah, oh, I like this one that seems very. I think that's a michigan gander thing oh yeah, oh, oh, I voted, oh, I voted, okay, okay, I like it yeah, I don't know, I just thought it was fun credit to the winning artists.

2:07:27 - Paris Martineau
Um god that wasn't even her pick that was a generous gift to the show that was a gift to the show. You guys can get that one free of charge and you can go to the michigan department of state if you, if you'd like to see all of them and you can order them.

2:07:43 - Leo Laporte
Well, maybe you can't.

2:07:44 - Paris Martineau
You have to be an election clerk yeah, if you're an election, do you think they'll?

2:07:48 - Leo Laporte
have a slate of unofficial election clerks.

2:07:52 - Paris Martineau
Ordering these god they better order the chain highest one, the werewolf one, is fantastic I don't know, it's ridiculous, and it's ridiculous, it's absurd. It doesn't fit the election theme whatsoever. A middle school girl made it and america made it an official election sticker, and I think that's what this country is all about. America voted and that werewolf did too, and we've got to respect that they were in, like in uh categories.

2:08:27 - Leo Laporte
She was in the elementary and middle school category. There were also high school winners and then the general entry winners. See, adults are too uptight. Yeah, I agree with you, you got to go to the younger. The youngs for the really good. I'm cool gabby's my favorite. Yeah, I like gabby's. I'm gonna get gabby's I voted yay.

2:08:46 - Paris Martineau
I like the backwards E yeah.

2:08:48 - Leo Laporte
Voted yeah, let's make, let's make this, let's let's print these up and hello, joe Esposito, you're the sticker guy. And who put in Dignation 2.0?

2:09:02 - Jeff Jarvis
I did so.

2:09:04 - Leo Laporte
this is no I didn't know that it was returned.

2:09:07 - Paris Martineau
Our old friend, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who did for many years. Did you know Dignation?

2:09:16 - Leo Laporte
Paris. No, oh, it's drunk guys talking about tech news.

2:09:20 - Paris Martineau
It's this show. We don't have any.

2:09:23 - Leo Laporte
And now it's wine, and I think they're going to do one and I doubt, do you think they'll?

2:09:36 - Jeff Jarvis
keep doing it for a while. 10 000 views 49 000 subscribers.

2:09:38 - Leo Laporte
It's like they never left. It says it looks like maybe it's a few years later yes, it's kind of it's kind of just a little bit I'm not gonna I mean, I'm not gonna judge, I'm a little older too, and they're a little older and there may be a little richer too, maybe just a little bit. So it's a nice looking home.

2:09:55 - Jeff Jarvis
That hat. I can't afford that hat.

2:09:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you probably can't Literally Well, kevin was on the show. Kevin Rose is one of the original twit cast members. He was on the show a few months ago and he's wearing a kind of a nice uh, sweater, merino wool. I said, oh, that's nice. How much is that? Four thousand dollars, okay, thank you. Um, android, oh, changelog. We'll do the to this word, the google change log. That's the word. Android has five, five, count of five new features out today. Count along with me, folks. Talkback now runs on gemini screen reader tool designed for blind and low vision users. Uh, I don't know, do you really want an ai model telling you what's on that screen? It'll power the audio description for images. Yeah, chrome will read out loud to you now using text to speech, and it's and it's pretty good circle to search. You know about circle to search. Well, now you can search for music use your device's microphone to analyze music.

It's only rolling out right now to the samsung s24 devices. Oh, no, more devices are coming. You can long press your device's navigation bar, tap the music icon to begin searching. It works for songs you hum or sing yourself, as well as music playing from your phone or another source. One of the things I love about the pixel is it will. It will tell me the soundtrack of my life, will actually keep track of all the songs I hear as I'm walking around and then give me a list what is what's always recording?

it's always listening. Recording is such a big word. It's, it's just, it's shazam. You know, shazam, it's just shazaming all the time. It's always that's creeping out paris, she's gonna don't like that on this don't like really but how often you're like at a hair salon getting your coif and they play a music song. You go that I like that song. All you do is look at your phone and you'll tell you what the song is.

2:12:09 - Paris Martineau
I mean I just look at my phone, press one button and then it tells me what the song is Only this way you don't have to remember to press the button.

2:12:19 - Leo Laporte
Always be Shazamming. Android earthquake alerts have been expanded to cover all US states as well as six territories, even if they don't have earthquakes. When's the last earthquake you've had in Brooklyn Recently?

2:12:37 - Paris Martineau
In the last year we had a big one.

2:12:39 - Leo Laporte
I'd go to New York City.

2:12:41 - Paris Martineau
We have an event at Bryant Park.

2:12:43 - Leo Laporte
Leave California and there's a massive earthquake in New York. When was that earthquake.

2:12:48 - Paris Martineau
It was about three months ago months. Yeah, I really miss it. I had headphones on, it was in a grocery store and I didn't notice it at all.

2:12:55 - Leo Laporte
But if you had a real earthquake, you would not miss it yeah, no, I don't we were in a restaurant, which probably affected the cat we didn't feel him, but the cat was a couple, a couple years, maybe it was a year ago Lisa and I were having dinner in a restaurant and all everybody's phone in the restaurant went earthquake and nobody had felt it yet, because it gets early warning. And then a few seconds later, what did you do? Dived under the table, felt like an idiot because it wasn't a really big earthquake?

2:13:26 - Jeff Jarvis
No, did you really?

2:13:28 - Leo Laporte
No, I did what everybody does. Go what the hell yeah you're trying to put it.

2:13:33 - Jeff Jarvis
By the time I realized there's an earthquake. There was an earthquake then you see all the gum underneath the table and it's really disgusting they do.

2:13:40 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of cool because you do get an early warning. It's not like a long time, but a few seconds might be enough to get somewhere safe. New google map map feature for smartwatches on where OS. Does anybody have one of those offline map access? Download the map on your phone and then you can go to Google maps on your watch and you'll see those offline. Thank you to life hacker for those five new Android features, Cause if it's somebody didn't write it up in an article, I don't think I would have noticed. To be perfectly honest, Google says it's removing poor quality Android apps from the Play Store.

2:14:18 - Jeff Jarvis
So this was relevant to the discussion the other day about antitrust and the Play Stores, the app stores. This is what you want them to do. This is value-add. You said they add value. Yes, they add value. They get rid of crap is what you want them to do.

2:14:29 - Leo Laporte
This is value at you. So do they add value? Yes, they add value. They get rid of crap. Um, they citing a desire to provide a stable response of an engaging user experience. On august 31st, uh, they removed apps with limited functionality and content static apps without app specific functionalities, that, yeah, it's just a picture, text only, or pdf files, apps with a small amount of content that don't provide an engaging user experience. I voted uh, single wallpaper apps. Google's also removing apps with broken functionality, such as apps that crash, freeze force, close or otherwise function abnormally. Um, some say, well, should, should they be able to do that? I think, yes, I think that's, that's probably okay. In fact, apple wouldn't let those apps through and certainly would pull them if they, if they change dramatically. So I think that's fair. Google clock is rolling out a new timer starter widget. Widgets can really be fun, useful, or they can take up a lot of screen space for very little function.

2:15:34 - Jeff Jarvis
When was the last time you installed a widget? I haven't installed a widget in years.

2:15:38 - Paris Martineau
I have a widget what's?

2:15:40 - Jeff Jarvis
your widget Paris.

2:15:41 - Paris Martineau
It's Carrot Weather, a weather app that yells at you, but it also is very powerful and lets you choose which data sources, and I've got a widget on my home screen that tells me weather stuff daily. I also like it because having the widget on my home screen means that I keep my daily streak of using carrot um, which I've had since 2017.

2:16:03 - Leo Laporte
So are you? Is it? Are you like a? You get like a badge for that or something?

2:16:08 - Paris Martineau
carrot just tracks stats in the back of it and I just like looking at them, like it tracks what's the highest temperature you've ever been in or lowest, and how many days you've used the app and things like that.

2:16:21 - Jeff Jarvis
It knows too much. Paris, it's been tracking you everywhere. It knows where you are.

2:16:24 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's true. Carrot will kill me eventually and I'm really happy about that.

2:16:28 - Leo Laporte
I'm minimalist. On my Android device, my Pixel, it's just nothing. No widgets at all, except for the basic time and weather one. But on my Apple iPhone, I go crazy. So this is that's Audible. There's Carrot Weather Whoops, you can show that's right. I guess I have two widgets my calendar care at weather Whoops, um, you can show that's right, Uh, I guess I have two widgets my calendar, uh, and this is just suggestions for widgets.

And then here I have Lisa's location and I have my car, all good, it's all good. Uh, here I have Google news, here I have pictures from my past Ahoy, matey, and then that's it. That's all I got, but that's a lot of widgets, right?

2:17:17 - Paris Martineau
Every page has a widget or two.

2:17:20 - Leo Laporte
I love widgets. Anyway, now you can have a timer widget. Google has renamed TensorFlow Lite to LiteRT.

2:17:34 - Paris Martineau
Don't forget the last part of it TensorFlow brand remains.

2:17:39 - Leo Laporte
So they haven't removed it, I just thought this was a really funny headline.

2:17:45 - Paris Martineau
That makes no sense to me and I don't want to know.

2:17:49 - Leo Laporte
I don't care. Litert, which is a terrible name, light art. Meanwhile, the main tensorflow brand will not be affected. I think this is they just want you to forget. Tensorflow light exists and actually this is very good news. Youtube has debuted new parental controls aimed at teens. Uh, a new feature that would allow a parent to link their account to a teen's account in order to spy on them. No, did I say that? No, in order to gain insight into the teen's activity or spy on them I mean, this is clearly, uh, a response to the variety of bills and lawsuits that it is seeing over online child safety, specifically targeting the age 13 to 18.

2:18:36 - Paris Martineau
Demo.

2:18:37 - Leo Laporte
Wouldn't you hate this? You're 13. You're writing fanfic that involves anime, lip lock and and you're getting alerted to your channel activity the numbers of uploads, subscriptions and comments when I was 13, my dad seriously believed that Google Chrome was a virus, so it would have been rough for me.

2:18:56 - Paris Martineau
Your dad, I remember printing out stuff on the printer. I mean like Google Chrome is a legitimate browser and he was like uh-uh, wow, does your dad know?

2:19:08 - Leo Laporte
that you're on a show called this week in google yeah, no, he loves it oh, he uses, google chrome.

2:19:14 - Paris Martineau
Now, whenever I tell him about that, he's like oh, I didn't do that oh, I remember dad, dadnesia, adamnesia I didn't do that.

2:19:23 - Leo Laporte
I tell my daughter that all the time I didn't do that. No, no, I'm talking about I love chrome. Well, that's the google changelog. I hope you enjoyed it. Benga bonga, binga, bonga bonga. There are so many other stories, uh, but we, as usual on this show I. There's so many things I want to talk about, but we ended up spending half an hour on pennies and it was a great half hour it was.

2:19:53 - Paris Martineau
What's the reaction going?

2:19:55 - Jeff Jarvis
to be from, from our, our fans out there. Will they like the penny?

2:19:59 - Paris Martineau
well, I think there will always be a vocal minority that decides to complain about everything, and they'll be like great show. But they spent too long talking about pennies this isn't week in pennies this is week this week in google I think I should do a show called this week in seniorage, then you'd be happy, yeah I think what.

2:20:21 - Jeff Jarvis
What paris wants is this week in amazing things you didn't know I do, I, you know what.

2:20:26 - Leo Laporte
let's this the show. That's the show from now on. Scooter X, by the way, is hurt that we did not include all of his many links, all of his many links.

2:20:39 - Paris Martineau
Sorry, Scooter X.

2:20:40 - Leo Laporte
Sorry, Scooter.

2:20:42 - Paris Martineau
It's unfortunate, but we don't care.

2:20:45 - Leo Laporte
I ran out of time. Scooter.

2:20:46 - Paris Martineau
Oh, we ran out of time.

2:20:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, like there's a clock on this show.

2:20:51 - Jeff Jarvis
You think there's not a clock.

2:20:52 - Leo Laporte
Hold up the clock. You said it. There's a clock. Look at that.

2:20:57 - Paris Martineau
A bomb is going to go off if we don't finish soon.

2:21:00 - Leo Laporte
There is a clock buddy, I have a clock. So, ladies and gentlemen, in one moment we're going to take a little break. When we come back we will have our picks of the week. You're watching this week in pennies. This is, that's right. There is where we put the inserted ad.

That is so offensive and annoying that you will want to join the club. Seriously, look, I, it wasn't my idea, but uh, I think it turns out. This is a really great way to get people in the club to it. You listen to an awful ad and then you go I don't want to hear that anymore and I say, well, for seven bucks a month, you don't have to. You don't even have to hear me telling you join the club. We take that out too. Twittv slash club twit seven bucks a month, ad-free versions of all the shows. More importantly, you get to join in on special events that we do in our club to a discord, like the game show that paris and I are going to do. When she gets back and I get back, it's gonna be a lot of fun. But he knows it's going to be a lot of fun. Benito's going to be in our squad, our party right.

2:22:10 - Paris Martineau
Yes, and by game show he means playing a game. Yeah. On a show. May I make a suggestion? As to the ads that you guys could use, to maybe one ad you could add an addition to the interstitial ones.

2:22:21 - Leo Laporte
To get people to join the club.

2:22:22 - Paris Martineau
You just have the dial-up internet noise but set at significantly higher than the podcast podcast. So people are a bit shocked.

2:22:29 - Jeff Jarvis
It could be a good way to force them into paying for club twin so I think I think to to insert a loomy ad with the lady who talks about butt cracks.

2:22:38 - Leo Laporte
That'll get them to join so we turn this up really loud. Oh, he's got it, got it.

2:22:49 - Paris Martineau
I think that would annoy people. Oh, is there a noise going on? We can't hear it, Leo. Oh, you're not hearing it.

2:22:56 - Jeff Jarvis
No, you're laughing at your own joke.

2:22:58 - Benito Gonzalez
Why aren't they hearing that? I'm hearing it Probably Zoom settings, oh man Zoom likes to reject playback audio, did you?

2:23:08 - Leo Laporte
not hear any of the audio I've been playing back throughout the whole show.

2:23:11 - Paris Martineau
Can you mimic it with your voice. Can you make the dialogue noise Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, grr, grr, grr.

2:23:17 - Leo Laporte
Grr, grr grr, Grr, grr, grr, grr. Join the club so you never have to hear that again. Twittv slash club Twit. Actually it's a lot of fun and we really appreciate the support. Picks of the week. Let's start with Paris Martinou.

2:23:34 - Paris Martineau
My pick of the week is a bit of a revisit. Quite a few weeks ago I brought you the website One Million Checkboxes. It's a website with One Million Checkboxes on it.

2:23:43 - Leo Laporte
Which has been hacked right, Somebody has been messing with it.

2:23:46 - Paris Martineau
Part of the thing is the creator of it wrote a really good blog post called the Secret Inside One Million Checkboxes and he goes through kind of his thinking in the site how he was storing the state of the different checkboxes. They were in like bits and whatnot. A couple of days after launching one million checkboxes he rewrote the back end in one go. He says this help his friend to keep up the load. And for some reason he dumped an ascii encoding of the raw bytes in his database. He doesn't know why, he just did it. And then the data he saw. He was looking at it and it looked a little weird. It, you know, has um, normal, I guess, bra bites in the database and then in the middle of it is a link to catgirlswin backslash omcb and his reaction to the. This was what the F Am I hacked. He panicked. There were URLs in his database. There were URLs pointing to catgirlswin in his database, something's very wrong.

2:24:57 - Leo Laporte
How could?

2:24:57 - Paris Martineau
that be. Then he was looking at it, he realized that it was because someone was writing a message in binary on his website.

2:25:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh my God.

2:25:10 - Paris Martineau
He looked into it, eventually ended up going down the rabbit hole and just went all right, I'm going to go to this website catgirlswin backslash OMCB. Turns out it was a discord server called checking boxes and it was run by a bunch of teens that were downloading data to make images on the website. Basically, the way the website works it's one million checkboxes. They asked him have you seen your checkboxes?

in a thousand by thousand image. And then he did it. He made the website that size and it said stuff like be do crime. Uh, the qr code. That leads back to the discord and things like that they think the internet hurts teenagers.

2:25:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh my god and the repeated noise.

2:25:58 - Paris Martineau
At the bottom is the binary message that he found. He says the discord was full of some very sharp teens and they were writing these secret messages to gather other very sharp or holy talk about botting the site.

Anyone who was writing a bot would probably be looking at either the base 64 version of the data, the binary version or the 1000 to 1000 image version, and they were covering all the bases and it worked. Wow. So he ends up kind of sitting in with this teen group. He goes, goes through his process. They end up doing some really cool things At one point they tried out animations. They made the Windows blue screen of death.

2:26:39 - Leo Laporte
How do you do animations.

2:26:42 - Paris Martineau
Well, I think they did a. This was real time. Basically, they had the bots checking and unchecking.

2:26:53 - Leo Laporte
These kids are amazing. They Rick rolled him.

2:26:56 - Paris Martineau
And that clip is in real time. This is what the checkboxes looked like in real time.

2:27:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh gee, so this is somebody's writing scripts to do this. You humans couldn't do this.

2:27:08 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, humans, they were writing scripts. Yeah, you couldn't do this. Yeah, they were writing scripts.

2:27:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you couldn't do it by just your mouses.

2:27:14 - Paris Martineau
And it's interesting because he ends up kind of going into. There were certain times where he would he ended up building a relationship with this discord and, for instance, when the Washington Post wrote about the thing, he messaged the discord and was like hey, the website's in the washington post, if you're botting, avoid the top where all the new viewers of the website are going to land, so that they're not upset when they click a checkbox and it's automatically unclicked by your bot oh and I just I found this it's a really like long um blog post and he gets into it and I just thought it was a really cute slice of the internet it's a perfect paris, delightful rabbit hole

2:27:53 - Leo Laporte
oh, it's wonderful. This is on his sub stack, which is aptly named eieiosubstackcom which stands for the electronic information and entertainment industries organization. Many people don't know that.

2:28:08 - Benito Gonzalez
No, that's really good for him it feels like a story from the old internet.

2:28:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it really does. It is so recently I thought my most. This is him. By the way, the project was called one million chuck box, so there's also a video you can watch you just know he's a nice guy.

You just know, he seemed like a great guy and he says when he was a kid in high school he wrote a bot that sent his friend a million spam messages on email and accidentally crashed the school's email server. So I think he felt a kinship with the kids who were hacking his checkbox well I found so cute about that.

2:28:40 - Paris Martineau
As he said about crashing the school's email server, the adults in my life were largely not mad at me. They asked me to knock it off, but also made me a t-shirt. I don't think I'd be doing what I do now without the encouragement that I received then, which is so cute.

2:28:53 - Leo Laporte
I think it's really great. That's a great story. This is why, when people say, oh, you know, ai is going to take over all the programming jobs and kids don't know how technology works and stuff, maybe, maybe a lot of kids don't, but there are kids out there who are just as excited about this stuff and getting into it and hacking it and messing with it as ever, and I love this. Maybe I don't know how big this group was. Does he say how many people?

2:29:16 - Paris Martineau
I think it ended up being like 60 some people.

2:29:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, some of the smartest kids in the country. Probably the NSA will be talking to each and every one of them, trying to offer them a job Very nice, good pick. Trying to offer them a job very nice, good pick. That's my pick of the week. Yeah, the secret inside one million check boxes.

2:29:33 - Jeff Jarvis
And now, ladies and gentlemen, a shocking revelation from jeff jarvis so you may not know, paris, that I get abuse on this show really abuse from who.

I'll beat them. I get it now. Stacy was was guilty of this as much as anyone, because I, you know, it's late here, as you know, and I need to go have dinner and I found a wonderful way to have dinner that was delicious and quick and inexpensive and convenient, and I got abused for it. It was trader joe's cacio e pepe pepe, yes, and I enjoy it and I like it, are you?

2:30:16 - Paris Martineau
saying frozen cacio e pepe frozen microwave doesn't even know that you can just put spaghetti in a pot of water.

2:30:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I can screw even that up.

2:30:30 - Paris Martineau
And then put cheese on it, that's it.

2:30:32 - Jeff Jarvis
And then pepe I can screw that up and a little spaghetti water.

2:30:35 - Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, didn't you one time burn yourself and you had to go to the ER With asparagus.

2:30:39 - Jeff Jarvis
yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I made cacio e pepe once for my wife and it was awful. It was so, but I've found the bridge too far. I won't go and talk about bridges right now. There was a story this week about how climate change is making bridges more vulnerable to falling apart, but I'll leave that for another day. Oh, come on. Yes, it was there, but I have found the bridge too far. The place I will not go.

2:31:06 - Leo Laporte
Heinz spaghetti carbonara in a can. What could possibly be wrong?

2:31:14 - Jeff Jarvis
it's got everything you want spaghetti, creamy sauce, pancetta and no artificial color is spittable to you. Evidently this is released in in the uk, where they have no taste, of course I would try it.

2:31:22 - Leo Laporte
I'm not gonna lie I bet it's delicious I bet it's probably too salty did you have chef Boyardee when you were a kid?

2:31:30 - Paris Martineau
Yes, until once as a child when I threw up and I'd had Chef Boyardee SpaghettiOs beforehand, and I remember seeing all the spaghetti letters still there and I never had it since.

2:31:44 - Leo Laporte
I remember Abby giving her wagon wheels you know the wagon wheel pasta, I love it when she was like eight months or something, or nine months, and there's nothing really more terrifying than projectile wagon wheels.

2:31:57 - Paris Martineau
Because they retain their shape.

2:31:58 - Leo Laporte
They retain their shape, yeah.

2:32:02 - Paris Martineau
Listen, I can't. I mean listen. Probably this is awful, but I also can't knock it because I sometimes my late night or early morning can't be bothered. Meal is it's mac and cheese in a like little microwavable thing, but it's Cheetos flavored mac and cheese and I don't know why. But the Cheetos flavor tastes so much better than all the other options. They've really figured it out and it's delightful you probably would enjoy.

2:32:36 - Leo Laporte
Then, uh, my, my son salt hanks amazon stream with the. Uh, the very wonderful, he sold quite a few of them.

2:32:46 - Paris Martineau
A cheeto, cheeto grinder blender the cheeto duster, the Cheeto duster, yes, cheeto duster.

2:32:51 - Leo Laporte
You remember this, oh do. I remember it yeah Jealous.

2:32:55 - Paris Martineau
Cheeto flavored dust.

2:32:56 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I should have saved it. I bought.

2:32:58 - Paris Martineau
I still to this day. Every time you say Cheeto duster, I think you mean like duster, like the, a duster jacket floor length in the color of cheetos.

2:33:13 - Leo Laporte
They should make that because I would buy it.

2:33:14 - Paris Martineau
It's still on amazon. If you ever want to see it, here is just a, a blender streamed live.

2:33:18 - Leo Laporte
It's a. It's not a what it is. It's a very bad blender. I mean it's. You wouldn't put anything but the weakest cheetos in there you don't. I wouldn't even use the crunchy Cheetos, I'd use the basic Cheetos, because it's just a little weak food grinder. It's not powerful in any way, but he made it look good, didn't he, didn't he? And I think I got a very good deal on the Cheetos duster. Let's see what the what the price is. Last purchase, december 8th oh, you can't get it anymore.

2:33:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Devastating. Well, you should have kept it, I never opened it.

2:33:56 - Leo Laporte
I should sell it on eBay.

2:33:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

2:33:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh my gosh.

2:34:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Get Hank to sign it Autographed.

2:34:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you know, it really probably would be worth it, you can get it at Walmart for $29.99. Oh I know it really probably would be worth it. You can get it at Walmart for $29.99. Oh, I only was $19.99.

2:34:12 - Paris Martineau
But I would never use it to make I would argue, though, that, as someone who's a big fan of crunchy things, I would not use the duster to add Cheetos on top. I would want to crumble them just slightly, so that they retain their crunchiness.

2:34:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, from the look of what he was doing, it didn't. They didn't get them to dust, it got them to crumbles yeah, yeah, you can get.

2:34:32 - Paris Martineau
You get to choose the level of okay, actually, my second thought is could you dust them to the point where you could do like yes, fried chicken cheetos he did in fact make fried chicken, so you get you get.

2:34:45 - Speaker 2
That's the beauty of the cheeto duster it can go anywhere from crumbles to dust, literally dust.

2:34:52 - Leo Laporte
There it is Paris, your Cheetos colored duster which is a coat. I think spaghetti carbonara in a tin is a great idea. I have to say I am a little bit of a stickler on carbonara because our local Italian restaurant I think we probably have taken you there, jeff, oh yeah, yeah, Cafe Jostra. I ordered carbonara there and there were onions in it and I said, dude, that's not carbonara. Here's a Cheetos colored Cheetos duster just for you, paris, it's honestly beautiful.

2:35:26 - Paris Martineau
It's gorgeous Looks leather.

2:35:28 - Leo Laporte
I will be wearing that at bryant park oh, that's good.

2:35:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, good to know the ingredients and heinz include pancetta, corn flour, skimmed milk powder, cheese powder, sugar, garlic, flavoring, onion extract. No dried parsley, just to give a little bit of color there, there should.

2:35:46 - Leo Laporte
There's no dairy in carbonara. It feels like it's a creamy sauce but it's no dairy, and it's. It feels like it's a creamy sauce but there's no dairy and it's just spaghetti water, the water. You save a little bit of that and with the parmesan and the pancetta, and that's all you need.

2:35:58 - Paris Martineau
It's delicious dang now I want carbonara.

2:36:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I had when the Dick Tracy movie came out long back. What's his name? Who was the star of Dick Tracy movie came out long back. What's his name? Who was the star of Dick Tracy? Warren Beatty. Thank you, warren Beatty. He wore a yellow Dick Tracy coat. Yes, Indeed. When I left Entertainment Weekly in a huff, my staff got me one of those as a farewell. I don't have it still. It wouldn't fit and you kind of couldn't wear it anywhere, but it was pretty amazing very cool.

2:36:36 - Leo Laporte
Uh, that is it, we're done. Thank you so much to both jeff and paris. I cannot wait to meet you in person, paris.

2:36:44 - Paris Martineau
We've never met, I know, so exciting new york cityckons? I have no idea whether or not you have legs, but I'm excited to think I don't.

2:36:54 - Leo Laporte
But I do use AI when I run.

2:36:56 - Jeff Jarvis
He is just a torso.

2:36:57 - Leo Laporte
Yes, the metaverse characters were actually designed based on Leo Exactly Then next week it will be. Are you hosting next week Paris?

2:37:10 - Paris Martineau
No, micah is hosting next week. I'll be out and then I will be hosting the week after that, because you're in Croatia. Yeah, yeah, yes.

2:37:17 - Leo Laporte
Have fun in Croatia. I shall. That's going to be awesome.

2:37:20 - Jeff Jarvis
I'll be here, as always, folks, he can't get rid of me. He's holding down for Penny.

2:37:25 - Leo Laporte
No, we need Jeff here to give for the continuity. So next week, micah, jeff and do we know yet? Benito, who will be filling in for parents. Somebody very excited. Maybe you should get Ed Zitron on, that would be fun.

I'd love to see Micah try and handle Ed it would be painful, and thank you, jeff, I will see you for lunch, uh, and I will see you both after that in a couple of weeks. I'll be back on september 24th or 25th for this week in google, uh, thank you all for joining us. We do this week in google every wednesday, 2 pm pacific, 5 pm eastern, 2100 utc. You can watch us stream on seven count them seven platforms YouTube, twitch, xcom, linkedin, facebook. I feel like this is the cognitive test man, woman, gorilla, camera.

A clock A clock has two, I've lost count, kick and somewhere else, uh, but but if you can't watch live, you can always get a copy of the show after the fact. We record it, amazingly enough, and download it either from the website. What?

yes, it's this whole time forever twitcom or twittertv, slash, twig, uh, or actually. When you get there, you'll click and see a link to the YouTube channel and you can see every episode there and video, or subscribe in your favorite podcast client to the audio or the video. You'll get it automatically that way, which is very nice. Thank you to our club members who made this all possible.

2:39:05 - Jeff Jarvis
We really appreciate it, and you've got to join so that Leo can afford a button on that shirt, that's true, I'm never wearing this shirt again.

2:39:14 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if I popped it.

2:39:15 - Paris Martineau
It's a great shirt.

2:39:17 - Leo Laporte
Isn't it great, the sombrero shirt Lovely, does it have?

2:39:20 - Jeff Jarvis
sombrero buttons, no, just regular buttons.

2:39:24 - Leo Laporte
Maybe you should replace them with sombrero.

2:39:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, that's got to work.

2:39:28 - Leo Laporte
Have a great vacation. Paris, I will see you for lunch on friday and, uh, we will see you all next time. Is that a cat?

2:39:36 - Jeff Jarvis
probably. Well, did you see the oh wait, wait, wait, wait, one more story. There's one more story. Did you see the story about the number 10 downing street cat? That was in the wall street journal? I put it in the rundown. No, oh, it's a beauty.

2:39:50 - Leo Laporte
Does this cat survive from prime minister to prime minister or?

2:39:53 - Jeff Jarvis
six prime ministers, but the other animals? Turns out that larry is a bastard.

2:39:59 - Leo Laporte
He's mean did you see it there, larry the cat? Yeah, pain in the blood.

2:40:05 - Paris Martineau
There's a catastrophe brewing on Downing Street.

2:40:08 - Leo Laporte
Here are Larry the Cat's best moments. He's their chief mouser.

2:40:15 - Paris Martineau
New British Prime Minister, keir Starmer, has a lot in his mind, from the riots that swept England recently, to Britain's sluggish economy, to the war in Ukraine. But the former prosecutor has another issue troubling him how to handle Larry the Cat.

2:40:28 - Leo Laporte
Got a pigeon, holy cow.

2:40:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Larry's tough prosecutor has another issue troubling him how to handle larry the cat got a pigeon every day. Uh-oh, the bobby's gonna open the door for him.

2:40:43 - Leo Laporte
There goes larry. He gets a bobby to open the door for him. Larry is 17 years old.

2:40:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, my goodness, they have a. They have a communications plan for when larry loses the time.

2:40:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh, they're gonna have to do a. You know, stop the BBC. Yeah, go dark. God, save the cat.

2:40:56 - Paris Martineau
His wife Victoria and two teenage children moved into 10 Downing Street in July after a sweeping electoral victory. But another family member also moved in Jojo, a male ginger cat.

2:41:06 - Speaker 2
Oh, that's not going to go well, jojo has yet to meet.

2:41:08 - Paris Martineau
Larry and the family is working out how to engineer an encounter that doesn't end in flying fur. According to sources familiar with the matter, the daily mail tabloid warned of a catastrophe if the meeting goes wrong. The headline for the next section is in quotes it's larry's domain. Larry, like many cats, doesn't always take well to newcomers, especially those on four legs. Larry had quote heated exchanges with Nova, the Labrador owned by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Nova came out in the losing end.

2:41:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh wow, yeah, they say. According to the Independent, you can't put a cat flap in the door because they're bomb-proof. So Larry has to be let in and let out all by himself. Oh, here's this Siberian kitty.

2:41:58 - Paris Martineau
Boris Johnson wrote. Larry, in my view, is a bit of a thug. I say this because our dog, dylan, went a few times to Larry's lair and, larry being out at the time, dylan decided, entirely naturally and reasonably, to eat his food. The reprisals were terrible. He wrote in the newspaper column, dubbing Larry a catzilla.

2:42:18 - Leo Laporte
And I don't know, but I think that this is actually the official X account of.

2:42:23 - Paris Martineau
Larry the cat. No, it's unofficial, it's not. Police have to break up Larry's fisticuffs with freya, former chancellor george osborne's cat layer, larry, tussled with palmerston, a female that performed similar duties, moral support for staff and perhaps catching the occasional mouse at the nearby foreign and commonwealth office I think this cat is my new political.

Uh yeah, idol survived six prime ministers they have a photo of larry hissing at palmerston. Yes, who larry hurt? Palmerston's ear was damaged during an encounter with larry, and then he retired to the countryside in 2020 oh my god, that is vicious okay, one more thing. Far from being spooked, the starmers have doubled down and this week brought a new cat, a siberian kissy or a siberian kitty, into the residence.

2:43:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow, so I didn't mean to extend the show beyond, but I knew you'd enjoy that I really, and the cat did outllast Liz Truss, so that's good yeah.

2:43:33 - Paris Martineau
For Larry, this new kitten might be the lesser of two evils. The star Martins originally wanted a German shepherd, but relented after a summer of negotiations. Wow, wow.

2:43:45 - Leo Laporte
Delightful you gotta love. That's why they'll always be in England. Yeah, the cat outlives the prime minister you can't imagine the white house.

2:43:55 - Paris Martineau
Six of them.

2:43:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know. Oh yeah, you're moving out. No problem, we still get the cats going to stay. That would be great Get.

2:44:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Larry, yeah, the cat Spaghetti carbonara Eddie.

2:44:04 - Leo Laporte
Carbonara for dinner.

2:44:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, yeah, all right, so sorry, you can end the show. Party begin.

2:44:10 - Leo Laporte
Thanks for joining us everybody. We'll see you next time. Have a great vacation. Bye-bye On this Week in Google, Bye.