This Week in Google 791 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.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twig this week in Google. Paris Martineau is here, jeff Jarvis is here and we're going to talk to a guy from Proofmodeorg, nathan Freitas, old friend, who will help us understand how to tell the difference between a real photograph and one generated by AI. He's got a plan. We'll also talk about Triscuits and where they got their name and, yeah, we'll throw a little Google in too, just for for fun. It's all coming up next on twig podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is twig this week in google, episode 791, recorded wednesday, october 23rd 2024. There's a pony in there somewhere. It's time for twig this week in google, where we're going to talk about everything but google. But we like doing it and that's how it's going to be. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to paris martineau, who is the the Weekend the information, where she covers youth issues. Hi, Paris, howdy, is that fair to say all that?
01:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it is fair to say all that that's fair.
01:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I just want to make sure.
01:14 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm introducing you All that and a bag of oats, all that and a bag of oats.
01:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that something your parents used to say when you were young? No, they didn't used to say that, but they could now. All that and the bag. Also with us, mr jeff jarvis, who has a new job, two of them, finally, what. So you can now tell us the the story.
01:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So my lower third should read and will will read once the video types it in. It's very long, so I'm a visiting professor at the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University.
01:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice.
01:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I am a distinguished fellow at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State's School of Communication and Media and I remain. They can't get rid of me. Emeritus Leonard Tao, professor of Journalismism Innovation at the City of New York. Get ready, cue the music. Greg Newmark. Greg Newmark, professor of Journalism.
02:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Graduate School of Journalism. Hey, by the way, Greg Newmark got a little mention on security now yesterday because he funded and I think this is really uh, that's really cool the um. He's been funding the pass keys.
02:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He cares deeply about cyber security yeah, and so we're all messing it up and we've got to take better care of ourselves, and he it's. It's an issue that he really, really cares about good on him.
02:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so he uh he apparently funded the Craig Newmark Philanthropies, helped fund the development in passkeys, the setting of a standard and now this new exchange standard which will allow people to export their passkeys so that you don't have to be all on your iPhone or all in your password manager or you can move to a new password manager or a new device. That's really important and it looks like they're doing a good job. So listen to security now, from last Tuesday, from yesterday, the 22nd of October, for the details on that we have a special guest. I don't know if you remember our conversation last week. We were talking about YouTube's decision to add a new little tag to videos made with a camera. The idea is, this is not AI, this was actually shot on a camera.
03:39
Well, this is part of a larger movement that I didn't know that much about. Well, this is part of a larger movement that I didn't know that much about of kind of trying to authenticate content, pictures and video in a world where everything can be made up. So I got a great email from a guy we've interviewed before Doc Searles is interviewed. He's been on triangulation because he was very active in the Tor project. Nathan Freitas, who works at the Harvard Berkman Center. He is the director of something called the Guardian Project and has an open source project called ProofModeorg. Hi Nathan.
04:18 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Welcome, hi, leo. Thanks for responding to my urgent email. Yes, I heard that last week. Yeah, I had some things to say.
04:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, first of all, there is this C2PA standard. Tell us what that is.
04:33 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
So the acronym stands for the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication. This, you know, it's kind of funny to have a standard that has the word coalition in it. This, you know, it's kind of funny to have a standard that has the word coalition in it. But C2PA can be thought of as almost like EXIF, with cryptography added onto it. And so it adds and not just cryptography but also revision control, so you have the ability to sign and notarize all of that metadata that you're used to saying in a photo or video or even audio files or in other documents. Um allows you to sign it with a certificate and allows you to time stamp it with a third-party cryptographic time stamp server. And then not only does it just have one event, but it can have multiple. Like I, I rotated it, I made a thumbnail, I edited it with AI, so it has that kind of version control and it's standard across formats. So whether it's an MP4 or a JPEG or a PNG or a MP4A, it's the same.
05:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that was, of course, one of Jeff's questions was how much is too much? At what point is it no longer a native um image? It sounds like there's a, there's a, there's a history trail of what has exactly this original my, and then at that point I brought out my, my leica, uh, which I. My excuse for buying this 11 m uh p is that it had built in this uh authentication system, uh, are you? Are you aware of what like has done and adobe supposedly is supported, supporting this in some of their apps as well?
06:14 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
yeah, yeah, I've. So I've held it and used that camera. I haven't found the budget to own one. It's expensive.
06:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That was a Leo Humble brag, yes.
06:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's beautiful. It was my excuse for buying it.
06:29 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yeah, I have a picture of myself taken with that camera.
06:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's really happy. So this is some it's like EXIF data, some additional data in the photograph that is cryptographically signed so that only this camera could generate that. I guess I presume this camera has a private key and it puts a public key in the image. Is that how it works? Yes, and you could presumably follow a paper trail that would bring it back to this camera.
07:00 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Exactly, and so we think that's wonderful. And it's amazing when you know Nikon and Sony and others are getting on board. For us, Guardian Project's been around for 15 years, focused on human rights activism and journalism. You know we've been doing a version of this work that actually inspired the C2PA standard. They call C2PA proof mode on steroids proof mode on steroids and so proof mode was our project. We worked with witness Peter Gabriel's amazing organization to create an open source app software camera for iPhones and Android that does C2PA now, but it also, you know, in some ways you could think of C2PA as anml and we were whatever was before h, html, sgml or you know, kind of pre pre-web right.
07:49
So we're all the same intent same intent and now we're interoperable um and we. The difference is that you can generate and control the keys with proof mode, as opposed to your leica. It's baked in and hard-coded Right the identity piece.
08:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, and of course there's always this issue of well, now I'm going to take this authenticated photo and modify it to reflect like, maybe make the sky purple, or, oh I know even better, I'm going to add northern lights to my photo and say I was there. That's fake. Would that editing invalidate the certificate in the photo? How would we know what has happened to it?
08:34 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yeah, so right now, if you open Photoshop and enable the content. So another name for this is content credentials. That's the easier way to say it. From the Adobe branding team, they also have something called content authenticity initiative. So Adobe has been out in front. There's a lot of others like Microsoft and now you know open AI and and others are getting on board with the standard. Bbc and others have used it in news applications.
09:01
But Adobe has integrated this into Photoshop so that if you make edits and export it with content credentials, you'll see that chain of edits and then you can use a tool like at contentcredentialsorg and also our tool proof check can show you. You know that chain of edits, so you know. So it's not saying you can't edit photos, especially within. You know, as Jeff would know and others, what is allowed by a news organization. You know in terms of the small edits. But to have that there in that chain where you could roll back, just like a Git commit history, right, we trust open source because we see the chain of Git commits in a repo. It's kind of like that commits in a repo.
09:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of like that Critical to this working. Besides the fact that the devices have to support it, the tools have to support it is there has to be a way of for an end user to check it. There has to be a tool that says, well, is this an original? What happened to it? That kind of thing.
10:02 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Is that what proof mode is all about? Proof mode is a capture tool and then we have something called proof check, which is a verifier. So we do have our own verifier where you can drag a bunch of stuff in and it'll tell you as much about it. It's trying to be a Swiss Army knife tool for journalists to look at XF and also to look for AI tags, right? So because you can also, if something's generated in chat, gpt or runway, for instance, they do use the same standard to flag it as this was made, not with a camera.
10:34
There's also Digimark has a browser extension, which is really cool. At any photo in your browser that has C2PA, it pops up. News organizations are experimenting with how to display this in different ways, and I've heard that WordPress will be building a plugin, so I expect this to be everywhere where there'll be the little watermark. You click on it, it tells you something. Sorry, linkedin is doing this already, by the way, and now YouTube. This is what YouTube's doing. They're taking a tiny step, but eventually there'll be some standard view source thing and people will know what to do with it.
11:10 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Nathan, can I ask a question here? So one thing at Google News Geists. One of the things that things the journalists have asked of Google and Google search for years, which I think they're starting to do now, is to show the provenance of a photo even within Google. This is the first instance of this photo that Google saw, which would be terribly useful to fact checkers and such. How does this system potentially tie into that kind of provenance of first appearance and progression?
11:43 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yes, it definitely can, and I think this is how the BBC used it. It wasn't used at the point of capture, it was. The newsroom editorial team signed it and said we have validated this in the newsroom, so Google can actually use this throughout any sort of processing, editing, reconversion. It's really useful. Again, like it's not a DRM system, it's a way of doing. It's not control, it's a way of really exposing where this media file has been and what has happened to it and where it was first encountered.
12:17
So this is in our work with human rights. We work with the Starling Project and Hollis Systems to do war crime documentation in Ukraine, and we worked with the International Criminal Court in the Hague on this for many years in other contexts. And what's important for them and what's called open source research is to say, yeah, timestamp, this is the first time we encountered this media. It was in this format and we know it hasn't changed since because we have the hash, and even have the hash on a blockchain, for instance. So we were able to submit this cryptographic docket to the Hague to hopefully persecute, you know, purveyors of war crimes through having this assurance, and I think that Google use case definitely is applicable here too.
13:07 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Let me ask you another one quickly. Um, I mentioned before we got on the four corners project. I found it from Fred Richen and the idea was to any four corner of an image, you could click there and you would get different information about the photo. And the problem that Fred faced long ago was that, unless the browser manufacturers were going to play along, it was going to be hard to make it work at all. So, short of a plug-in, how much? And short of the platforms, that is to say LinkedIn or whoever, how about the browser manufacturers, that is to say Google? Are they helpful in exposing the data that's there, no matter what the platform you see the photo on.
13:49 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
That's my biggest hope with this as a standard and also that there's full open source JavaScript libraries and Rust libraries to implement. This is that it just becomes clear to everyone that this needs to be built into cameras on your phone it should be in the browser and that we figure out the user experience piece of this, because definitely there's been some missteps there and you see YouTube hiding it kind of under the more I think Instagram Right Leo had to look for it last week yeah, yeah, and other platforms have said this was made with AI and a photographer said no, I just edited it in Photoshop.
14:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we get that a lot on our Instagram. Here's an example of what LinkedIn is doing. So this is from LinkedIn's blog post about this. You see on the image in the upper left-hand corner there's a CR. What does that stand for? Content?
14:40
credentials content, credentials, credentials, yeah, credentials, I guess. And then if you click on, this is the adobe thing, and if you click on it then you will get this, a chain of you know, custody, this providence. Now, of course, if you don't see that, does that mean, nathan, that if we don't see that on images, we should not trust them? Not yet you know.
15:07 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
I was. Yeah, I was with. I was at Georgetown Law School in a room with a Beth Von Schacht, the global US ambassador on crime or I always misstate this but also in some very important professors, and this was their question Are we devaluing important evidence that doesn't have this? And how do we if there's people in the world that don't have access to these tools? And I think right now we're still in that transition.
15:36
Think about this also, like that transition from HTTP to HTTPS. Right, when there was a period where everyone said, yeah, http, that's fine, it's hard to do HTTPS. Right, where there was a period where everyone said, yeah, http, that's fine, it's hard to do HTTPS. And then we started to get more HTTPS and then we had let's Encrypt basically encrypt the web, and so there will be this transition time where at some point, I'll say, yep, if it doesn't have this kind of metadata, we probably shouldn't trust it. But right now we're in a transition period where we don't want to devalue things. It just requires, you know, you have groups like why am I spacing on the name Bellingcat?
16:14
Right, amazing investigative research groups and others like at UC Berkeley and newsrooms who do important human work that still needs to be done, what this does, and really one of the professors and judges at Georgetown that I spoke with, he introduced this idea of self-authenticating evidence. So by having this metadata, it's essentially self-authenticating you can trust the chain of custody and it reduces the time for us to trust it. It doesn't mean that things that don't have this shouldn't be trusted. It just takes more time to sort through them. And we're talking about a war crime, war zone and you have tens to hundreds of thousands of photos and things like the Ukrainian prosecutors have. It's hard for them to deal with that volume. So the more that we can help in cases like this, we want to do that.
17:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's great. Tell us about the Guardian project.
17:11 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yeah, so we've been around 15 years. I've been. You know, I worked at Palm on mobile devices.
17:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, nice, one of the first Blackberry developers.
17:20 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Grandpa, you've been around a while, wow. So I was an Apple Newton user. So, yeah, me too, yep, back there and I kept seeing I was. Also. I've been a lifelong activist in various kind of causes and movements and I started seeing the adoption of smartphones by people around the world. Really, you know who didn't even have computers around the world, really, you know who didn't even have computers?
17:45
And so, early on, I said we need to start building human rights and privacy tools or bringing existing ones to mobile phones, and so we began with things like Tor, for instance, and PGP. We also have created things or worked on together projects like SQL Cypher, which is the encrypted database in Signal, projects like SQL Cypher, which is the encrypted database in Signal, and then, beyond those core building blocks, we work on things like proof mode. We also I think last time, leo, you had me on we talked about the app I built with Edward Snowden called Haven, which was a open source kind of way to protect journalists. It's like a physical security app that he thought was needed, and so we build special purpose things and we work with groups like UNICEF to help ensure that what they're doing with mobile devices is also secure. So, yeah, I've got a great team grant funded and it's been a great 15 years and I'm really happy to work on things like proof mode.
18:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I love this poster over your left shoulder. No, not that. Go back to his shot. Empower more people, ensure better protection. Cameras everywhere, and that's really a sea change in the world in the last 15 years. The cameras are everywhere, but instead of being police cameras, which are also everywhere, they're in the hands of individuals and it's an opportunity to record bad behavior and share it with the world. I think that that's really a very interesting change and we are already seeing the results of it.
19:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it's a seismic shift in the way we experience reality.
19:23 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yeah shift in the way we experience reality. Yeah Well, Peter Gabriel started Witness, after the Rodney King beatings and footage, as to say what if we got every? What if everyone had a camera? Right? This was an earlier era, and so Witness, in the time we've worked with them and that's who made that poster said well, now everyone has a camera and there's some problems we need to work on, and so you'll notice, this lovely woman's face is or whoever they are is pixelated and blurred.
19:53
Back here because we've also built ObscuraCam, which was an easy tool on your phone to redact and blur photos, and so we worked with Witness on that. They've been an amazing partner. And then three years ago, we actually got funding from the file coin foundation for the decentralized web, which is a mouthful, and they're the they're, you know, like people like Brewster kale are affiliated with them and they've been great because they really support our decentralized mission. So one of the critic critiques of C2PA is that it's basically will become a centralized tracking system for every photo you take, and proof mode is our counter to that. To say the standard doesn't have to be implemented that way. It can be implemented in a much more open way. But yeah, now we're in that phase of cameras are everywhere and we've got some problems by the way, that's yes, that peter gabriel, who I love even more now.
20:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Unbelievable. What an incredible uh person. So here's proofmodeorg. This is an open source project, uh and uh, you have some stuff going on. You talk about using proof mode. Is it available now for the iphone and android devices?
21:10 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
yep, that's cool for sure, okay and you one of the here's a. I know we're going on a while and I appreciate it, but, um, we have a project called baseline, so we have this. Maybe this loops it back to google. I know you guys talk about all sorts of things, but there was this amazing moment where we realized, say, with video and with photos, we're going to cross this threshold of, like, not knowing if a photo was generated by AI or real, like that you just encounter right and even historic photos, right At some point you're not going to know.
21:42
So we had this goal of funding people around the world to use proof mode to just document the world as it is today and to have this notarized database of reality such that we can at least have that as a baseline of reality before it's all gone, in a sense and it's a little sci-fi, dystopic, but we've also applied this to hurricane relief efforts to help people document damage to buildings, because people will claim oh, that's not real, your house was not destroyed. You made that in AI right. We've had groups use it for conservation efforts in documenting different invasive species or illegal mining and land rights issues, because again, increasingly in courts people are being countered with how do we know that's real. So Baseline was one of our projects that we've started to publish there with the goal of having a petabyte at some point of reality, notarized reality. But yeah, all the tools are open source available. This is real. It's shipping and we'd love to have feedback and support.
22:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I've downloaded it and I have it on my iPhone. Now, when I take iPhone pictures with the iPhone camera, will it do it, or do I have to use the proof mode camera?
23:04 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
So because of Apple, who we love so much we can't integrate with them.
23:10
So you have to use the proof mode camera or you can import an existing photo and it'll add a different mark. It'll say this was not created, but it was like notarized Android. We have background mode, so you can use your regular camera and make sure to turn on the c2pa feature under the settings. It's a little hidden. There's also an interesting option we have for adding ai flags that say in your photo, the c2pa has standards that says don't let ai, you know, eat my photo, basically um and so whether they respect that or not, who knows? But there are. There is a standard, a robotstxt, essentially within c2pa interesting.
23:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I also see on proofmodeorg that there's proof mode for audio.
23:57 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yes, oh, maybe we should.
23:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
should we use c2pa to stamp our podcast?
24:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No one can change these hot takes. Exactly yeah.
24:09 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
It was. We were working with investigative. They were doing hour-long interviews and that would create a huge video file. So we said, maybe you take some photos and then do the rest as an audio file. So yeah, Proof Audio also is a little bit more of a prototype, but it's a really nice audio app and we really want this to just be built in everywhere. I mean, the interesting thing is, EXIF is there, but when you get to other audio formats like MP4 and audio there isn't quite as good or robust as metadata, where there's very different metadata, and so C2PA standardizes this across the file types, which is great.
24:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Journalists use another form of EXIF called IPTC. Does it use support that as well? What I'd love to see is that extended to include, uh, proof mode. Yeah we're.
25:10 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
We are well, yes, so we do look at iptc. We're adding it into our proof check tool. What is interesting is if you have a google pixel phone and you use Magic Edit the new feature or you use the add yourself to a photo feature in the Pixels, the place where they put the line that says this was made by Gemini is in the IPTC metadata. Ah, interesting, google has decided that's where they want to put it and not support.
25:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
C2.
25:41 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yeah because nobody sees it. Yeah, exactly you wouldn't know. So they're kind of hiding it and even though OpenAI is supporting C2PA, Runway AI, Google's not quite there yet. Yeah.
25:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, let's put some pressure on them to do it. Nathan, I thank you so much for taking the time to tell us about this. To correct any errors of the fact that we had last week no errors. It's actually pretty clear this. Tell us about this. To correct any errors of a fact that we had last week but no errors, but it's. It's actually pretty clear this needs to happen and this seems like the way to do it with an open source project.
26:11 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
the proof mode sources on GitLab and GitHub yeah, and shout out to Adobe and the whole content credentials open source projects as well. They're really doing good work, yeah.
26:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are most camera manufacturers? I know like is doing it, but they're really doing good work. Are most camera manufacturers? I know Leica is doing it, but you said you mentioned Sony, canon, nikon. Are they also moving in that direction?
26:28 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Yep, they sure are, so let's give them time.
26:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And somebody's saying well, if you take a picture in RAW and then you take that RAW into Photoshop and then process it, does it get flagged as AI? No right, it's not, it doesn't. Well, I think right now on some apps currently like Instagram was flagging.
26:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Mike's engagement photos as AI because he used Adobe Right.
26:55 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Right, yeah, I think it's the edits you do. I mean, like I said, the user experience part of this is kind of busted right now for the viewer. It's going to take time, but you know what Photoshop will do is keep that log of your edits and then embed it as C2PA and Adobe's what do they call their? They have like a Flickr-like photo sharing service.
27:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm forgetting what it is.
27:21 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Unlike Flickr, it costs money, but okay yeah they have some UI there, but really that's the part that is broken, and things like four corners should be supported and ideas like that, because we need a lot of people working on that piece. Yeah.
27:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And other apps should use it. I mean, a lot of people are turning to Serif and Affinity Photo, for instance, from Adobe. I hope you're getting these app makers also involved in this doing the best we can.
27:48 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
And again, uh, I mean adobe is the big behemoth here pushing it and they're, they're, they're. They have many reasons to do it right. They they're because they're doing generative ai and they're trying to support great. You know news journalism and, and so I think we've been supportive of like, we know our place in this. We're often instigators and catalysts and we love when we're not needed anymore.
28:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So hopefully, that happens, put yourself out of a job. That's a good idea. Guardian Project is at guardianprojectinfo. Proof Mode is at proofmodeorg and Nathan Freitas, thank you so much for coming on. You've been doing a lot of great work over the years. I'm very impressed by your commitment to that. That's great.
28:35 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Well, all your podcasts keep me going, and I'm a Club Twit member.
28:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh yeah, Get in there, Get in the club guys.
28:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Doing the Lord's work. Hey, hey, hey, get in there, get in the club. Guys Doing the Lord's work. That's good. Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Nathan Freitas from ProofModeorg, thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. Take care, we'll take a little break when we come back. There's Google News. Amazingly, google News, ed Zittrain, kragavan Raghavar, has moved on. Ed Zittrain would be happy to hear this.
29:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We'll talk about that. I was going to say Ed, somewhere is hooting and hollering.
29:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The man who ruined Google search has moved on.
29:15 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
He has a whole newsletter on that.
29:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I bet he does. Yes, but first a word from our sponsor, our good at ac I learning. You know that name right, or maybe you don't, but I know you know it pro tv. Well, ac I learning is it pro? Binge worthy video on demand, it and cyber security training it's the best. With it pro, you'll get cert ready with access to their full video library, more than 7,250 hours of training. You'll get more than just the. The video training premium plans also include practice exams. It's great to take the test before you pay for the exam, to make sure you really know your material. Plus, it gives you the confidence you go hey, I know this stuff and you go into that exam feeling great and doing great. You also can get virtual labs, which are fantastic because they facilitate hands-on learning. You don't have to have a Windows machine to set up a Windows server and Windows clients and configure them. Msps love it too. It's a great way to test integrating stuff that they're planning to put onto their customer systems.
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32:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'll just call him Prabhakar Raghavan. Yeah, prabhakar, prabhakar, prabhakar.
32:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, prabhakar. He called Prabhakar Raghavan, the man who destroyed Google search. Right, he's been. Let's see Where's your ed at Right.
32:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Last week, Prabhakar Raghavan was relieved of his duty as senior vice president of search, becoming Google's chief technologist.
32:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh well, that maybe isn't so great.
32:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So it seems like a promotion.
32:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he's been there a long time five years, I think. The man who killed Google search tells a story of how Prabhugram took over from Ben Gomes, the head of search who we liked who we liked and basically turned search into a revenue opportunity, which I think everybody agrees has really, in the last five years, destroyed Google search. Well, I guess his reward is he's got a better job still, ed's put a notch in his mouse yeah, he really has I don't know if that's moral.
33:36 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
I don't know I keep pressing the wrong button.
33:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that's a ball mo. Why don't we do?
33:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
we have a ball mo button ball mo, an important rule to follow with somebody's title. Ed writes in silicon valley. Do we have a bomo button, bomo, bomo.
33:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
An important rule to follow with somebody's title Ed writes in Silicon Valley is if you can't tell what it means, it probably doesn't mean anything.
33:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That is actually fair, though, that's correct.
33:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is it.
33:57 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Anyway, back to.
33:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Prabhakar, though ostensibly Go ahead.
34:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was going to say. This is a quote from ed, if you'll forgive the mixed metaphors. Google has essentially killed its golden goose search and is now in the process of pawning its eggs to buy decidedly non-magical beans, by which I mean data centers and gpus, with google increasing its capital expenditures uh this year to 50 billion, equivalent to nearly double its average capital expenditures in the years prior.
34:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So Raghavan's been there since June 2020. I think there are very few people who would not agree that in that time, Google search has gone downhill. Do we agree on that? Do we still look? I don't even use Google search anymore.
34:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean I don't. I would put an asterisk on that, because while we hear a lot of things from the public complaining about the you know user quality of Google Search, google is a public company and that I mean obviously customer experience factors into its decisions. But I would also suggest we look at their financial reports. If Google search is now more profitable, that could be a win for the company.
35:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it was certainly his job, right.
35:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But I also argue that the web is much, much worse, and Google tries not to make judgments.
35:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, no, you said that before that Google can only reflect what's on the web and if the web sucks To an extent, I mean, or Google.
35:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I had a story some time ago that I put on, which was that Google was going to become selective in its crawl, and Danny Sullivan said no, no, no, no, that's not true, Because they've got to be very careful about that. They present themselves as all the web. You can get anything from the web here.
35:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But as long as they say that they're screwed because they got all the web and all its crap, yeah, but Jeff, google's promise, the promise of PageRank, was to pick the best site among all the sites that fulfill that search requirement.
35:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But it's harder is all I'm saying. Yeah, but I mean that just means they're not doing their job, yeah, even if there is more garbage.
36:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if it doesn't find the needle in the haystack to mix metaphors if it doesn't find the toy truck in the garbage pile, then it's not doing its job Right. Unless you say the web has gotten so bad that there is no toy truck. There is no pony in there.
36:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, ponies are there, but they're buried under a lot of hay. Well, but that's Google's job is to find the pony in the pile. Yeah, what I'm saying is all of the platforms you know that joke right, paris martineau uh, the pony in the pile no no, I don't.
36:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I know the needle in the haystack reference, but I don't know of any ponies.
36:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Are there any oats near there? Yeah, are there any oats Are? There any oats near there.
36:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me see if I can find. There must be a pony in there somewhere. Okay, there's a famous joke about a child who wakes up on Christmas morning and is surprised to find a heap of horse manure under the tree instead of a collection of presents. Yet the child is not discouraged because he has an extraordinarily optimistic like me outlook on life. His parents discover him enthusiastically shoveling the manure. As he explained, with all this manure there must be a pony in there somewhere it's hard when you start with the punchline.
37:23
Yeah, I know I've spoiled the joke.
37:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's kind of like Google's problem, apparently.
37:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's what you have to work with. The quote investigator says there are many versions of this joke and it's been evolving for more than 100 years. The telltale sign of a pony seen by the expected child is varied Horse dung, a horseshoehoe, horse hair and a bale of hay. Sometimes one child was featured. Sometimes the divergent behaviors of an optimistic child and a pessimistic child were contrasted who has the time to dig into that?
37:59
well, let me tell you about the the humble triscuit, about the the humble triscuit. Oh, go on. So I think this was on. I feel like it might have been in blue sky. I want, I don't I can't give credit but I think I saw this on blue sky. Maybe it was on xcom. Guy says well, I'm at a party and we're eating uh, you know, canapes, whatever little poo-poos and uh, they're triscuit crackers. You've had a Triscuit, right, you know what Triscuits are? Oh, yeah, from Nabisco. And he says well, what's the name Triscuit mean? And everybody goes well, it's clearly a biscuit. Maybe it's a tri-level biscuit. There's three layers, or something like that. The guy says no, I don't't think so. And writes a letter to nabisco. Nabisco responds the origins of the name triscuit are lost in our files. We don't know, but we duff, we definitely know it's not a tri-level biscuit.
38:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The guy you have, you found it I think I found, is this where you're going? The answer to where the name Triscuit comes from? Oh, you are a good researcher. So he did what? Paris.
39:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Martineau excels at. He dug deep and he found the third line on Triscuit Wikipedia.
39:14 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Did you find it through Google?
39:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, she went to Wikipedia.
39:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The second sentence on the third sentence on the Wikipedia page.
39:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this was link bait probably on Xcom.
39:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, probably Well not to keep people waiting. The name Triscuit may have come from a combination of the words electricity and biscuit.
39:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because these biscuits, by the way, it's now owned by Mondelez Incorporated, but these biscuits were introduced in 1903. The Shredded Wheat Company began production that year in Niagara Falls, New York, and their ad. Let me see if I can find the ad, because a guy found the ad here. It is. Here's the ad Baked by electricity.
40:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes.
40:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The natural food company Niagara Falls and one of the ad he had said using 1904 technology, they're baked by electricity the first snack food baked by electricity. Look how big they are. Yeah, they were bigger back in the day Everything was bigger back in the day. Like everything Also.
40:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Leo, I think I found the tweet thread this originated from, because if you go to the citation on that Wikipedia thing, it's a Business Insider article that then cites this tweet thread, which is from 2020.
40:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, well, that's not too bad. How? Did we get off on that, ponies Manure.
40:45 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Triscus. What was the link uh?
40:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
ponies we were talking about pravakar ragavan, and we said that google search wasn't. I'm going back in time everybody who's listening knows this that google search wasn't as good. And you said that's because the internet's not as good. I said, yeah, but their job is to find the pony in the pile.
41:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And that's when I said what are all these ponies doing in a pile? And now here we are learning about triscuits through leo's brain. You know what? My favorite cracker is a little tight what's your favorite cracker?
41:20
well, cracker is a strong word. I really like melba toast. It's just the perfect. That's awful, it's a perfect. No, I know I'm not, I'm saying on its own, on its own, terrible. No, it's crispy and it's perfect for like making a crunchy version of, like a bagel and lox You'd have like lox salmon cheese and capers on there, but then it's got the crispiness of the. You know the cracker.
41:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it lacks the calories of a bacon.
41:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't particularly care about the calorie aspect. I think that's probably why I started having them, because growing up my mother really cared about the calorie aspect. But I've retained my love for the crunch. This is my cracker.
42:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See, to me the tooth on the melba toast is wrong. It seems crunchy, but your teeth sink into it.
42:12 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's not really crunchy, is what I'm saying yeah, no, I do know what you're talking about there. I haven't been able to find melba toast in my local grocery store, so I've been using kind of knockoff melba toast that are a lot thicker and way more crunchy there you go, can't find melba toast.
42:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I know it's a, there's a melba toast. Do you remember when I'm not gonna?
42:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
buy a food product on amazon.
42:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not crazy I buy a lot of food products. I ship my mom. I ship my mom triscuits and a skippy peanut butter every other month from the original melba Melba Toast is right there, the original Melba Toast. I feel like Melba Toast is toast-flavored styrofoam. Basically, what's your favorite snack?
42:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's not my favorite snack, to be clear.
42:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's your favorite?
42:59 - Paris Martineau (Host)
snack, sweet or salty.
43:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's start with the savory no.
43:11 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't know what my favorite savory. How about you, jeff? We know it's cachoy pepe.
43:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I'm gonna ask okay, that's a meal, that's not a snack popcorn popcorn, popcorn, delicious crunchy and it's a great substrate for almost any flavor no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
43:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Don't do that. That's like, that's like putting that hazelnut crap in coffee.
43:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, okay, no hazelnut coffee creamer is the best addition to a coffee in the yellow carton that stuff is like crack when I was an authoritarian boss at entertainment.
43:38 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Weekly, all of two weeks, I forbade hazelnut coffee to be anywhere near me.
43:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Part of the reason is, if you use hazelnut creamer in a mug, it will taste like hazelnut forever after.
43:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Isn't that beautiful. It smells like that crap.
43:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
See, this once again is a product of my childhood, because once I had to be like eight or something, my parents went on a month-long trip to China. Maybe I think it was also during when swine flu happened. That's a part of the story we don't know they left you, but they left me with my grandmother um, who loved drinking coffee every morning, afternoon, night all the time and me being eight was like I gotta have some of that, and she was like, oh, you can't.
44:21
But after like weeks of this, I wore her down and so she gave coffee, which was just a tiny bit of coffee and mostly like hazelnut creamer. And somehow over the couple weeks I transitioned from drinking mostly hazelnut creamer to drinking a normal mix of hazelnut creamer and coffee, and a lifeline of long addiction was discovered and a lifeline of long addiction was discovered.
44:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See Maverice in our YouTube chat. Says you must try the Dooth Rusk bread as a Melba Toast substitute.
44:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Okay, yes, it appears there's no, melba Toast brand like Triscuit, so you cannot be assured.
45:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But here's the question Is Melba Toast?
45:05 - Paris Martineau (Host)
made with electricity? That's a great question.
45:07 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That just made it cool at the time, you know.
45:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's exactly right. Everything was electricity. I mean, if you looked in the Sears catalog of the turn of the last century, they'd have electric. Everything that would cure every ill.
45:20 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
It's the AIF 1902.
45:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, when I remember researching my Linotype book, it's interesting to watch the shift from steam to electricity and what a big deal it was and they bragged about it. And the census used to track every industry on what power source they used and how many horsepower they had.
45:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Whoa, that's so cool.
45:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which brings me to Ben Franklin.
45:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Where our discussion was heading always.
45:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Where we were going. I was going to cleverly take. Triscuits and segue into Ben Franklin.
45:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is the twig weave. The answer is a ruffled potato chip and a what's it called?
46:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Whose potato chips, though? Not just any, not Lay's.
46:05 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, you want one of those kind of the wavy, the ones with the little ruffles on the edges.
46:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ruffles have ridges.
46:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Ruffles have ridges, as they say, and toffee, toffee is my. I could eat toffee all day, every day, and be satisfied for the rest of time.
46:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Toffee ice cream sundaes.
46:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean ice cream sundaes. I mean ice cream sundaes. Do you like almond? What is that?
46:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, it's toffee rolled in crunched up almonds oh yeah, I do love that.
46:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's good, it's great, it's so good.
46:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, ben franklin anybody listening to this show by this time is either drunk asleep or not listening to this show. Electric motors, say the wall street journal, are about to get a major upgrade thanks to benjamin franklin huh, huh what. Franklin apparently invented something called an electrostatic motor way back in the 1700s. Uh, now the motors we use right now, uh, use magnets, right, and they require rare earth magnets. They require materials that are, yeah, problematic to say the least. But franklin's motor did not have magnets, it used static electricity. The the Wall Street Journal says the same kind that makes your socks stick together after they come out of the dryer, alternating positive and negative charges to spin an axle. It doesn't rely on a flow of current like conventional electric motors Everybody's known about this for 300 years but other than applications in tiny pumps and actuators etched on microchips, the work hasn't made it out of the lab, but electrostatic motors are 80% more efficient than conventional electric motors.
47:58
They also are more precise, have more control and they don't use rare earth elements because there's no permanent magnets. In fact, they require 5% of the copper as a conventional motor, and you know copper is very expensive. So, out of the lab in Wisconsin. C-motive Technologies, middleton, wisconsin, is working on resuscitating the electrostatic motor. It's a 16 person startup founded by a pair of university Wisconsin engineers who've been tinkering with electrostatic motors for years. Fedex and Rockwell are both testing these motors. This could be a revolution in electric motors.
48:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
How is FedEx using them?
48:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't know, because Wall Street Journal never told me.
48:54 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, they did tell us an example of static electricity, so you know they got all the news that's fit to print.
49:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm trying to put a wire on my socks right now. It's not working very well.
49:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here is Franklin's original electrostatic motor. It's a re. It's a rebuild of it well, I mean no, yet I'm sorry, this is a reproduction that's beautiful yeah, I would like that in my house do you know what I want in my house?
49:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I want like an original stock ticker, like one of those little ones that with a glass dome yes, the one that I love, the movie hud sucker proxy, and whenever I see that movie inspires me to spend hours searching for a working stock ticker much like they have in that film do you know why they have the dome?
49:38
because they're loud as heck yeah it's only four thousand dollars, a limited I know that's the problem edison and unger stock ticker I want, but think of how funny it would be if I had a stock ticker like that in my home and someone looked over to see what it was printing out and it was just like screw you.
49:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know on the stock ticker you can have a print anything you want. I know by the way I worked, there are sculptures that don't non-functional for less. You don't want that?
50:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, but you have to spend $3,000 on a stock ticker sculpture. Why?
50:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
not spend $4,000 and get a working one? It's $100 for the ticker tape rolls.
50:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I want an Associated Press ticker.
50:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, well, you know, you could easily have a teletype. When I started in radio we had three teletypes upi, ap and reuters. And they were just old. You know the old. You've seen teletype machines and they were. And if there was a big story the bell would ring five times. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. What is?
50:45 - Paris Martineau (Host)
a teletype.
50:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, you're going to be sorry, you asked my child. Imagine, if you will, it's Christmas Day.
50:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And you look under the tree, it's a pile of shit. You look around, there's no horses to be seen.
51:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a pony in there somewhere. This from the Bloomfield Nevada Antique Wireless Association Museum is a demonstration of the teletype here. I'll turn it down just a little bit. Well, actually you should hear it.
51:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think we just caused a car crash there, you go.
51:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the sound of a radio station in the 1980s and 1970s.
51:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I guess it was wait, why would a radio station need to print things?
51:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the news, lady the news. How else you get the news?
51:36
oh god so, oh, it's worse, because you would then go to the teletypes there are three of them with a ruler. You would take the paper and rip it with the ruler they called it rip and read news because you might have a number like what's the softest pencil? Number three, two, two, you might have a number two pencil. We used to get these. In fact I remember working in radio in san francisco. These guys, these old guys would have, would have a red with no eraser on it, big, soft graphite pencil, and they'd circle the story, they'd rip it off, they'd circle it, underline it, maybe do a little rewriting, minor, and then they have a stack of ripped newsprint. Now, by the way, this is the cheapest paper you can get, so it still has little chunks of wood in it oh gosh and you take this and you'd bring it to the microphone, you'd cup your hand behind your ear and you'd read the news.
52:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It was called rip and read because you were ripping it off the tell and when I was on a newspaper, we would have these ap upi machines going and the copy kids, previously known as copy boys um, would rip off every story and then put them on the appropriate desks and move them around then along came computers where the the feed came into our computer and we edited there, and that was a whole new thing.
53:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
my child, A whole new thing I never really thought about the fact that you couldn't get the news. No, how would you get it? I don't know.
53:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can't watch TV and then write it down.
53:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You can't just walk outside and then read it In Discord I put up there's tons of these things for sale Teletypes. They're replicas but they're like working.
53:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But even in early computing the terminal usually was a teletype, so you might have a keyboard so you could input to the computer, but the output would come out on the same paper and all that stuff Anyway.
53:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I helped set up the first two-screen. This is Uncle Jeff. Now two-screen editing terminal. So you can have the AP on one and you could have the UPI on the other and it attached to two different boards in the PDP, whatever it was, and then you could move a paragraph from one to the other. That was revolutionary people, and I was there, I was there.
54:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was kind of amazing, wasn't it, in those days? Yeah, it was, that's incredible. It's kind of hard to believe We've come a long way.
54:15 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I filed my first ever news story for a professional journalism outlet in Google Docs.
54:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that special. We're going to take a little break and come back with another Google story that we will just skim through and pretend we did and then move on to other things like Triscuits.
54:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But first A brief aside before you go is someone asked in the Discord if I can make some more spooky noises because it's Halloween, so I'll do this to play you out.
54:53 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Women can do that so well.
54:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know why guys can't, we can't do that.
55:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
See, that's pretty good, that's not bad, that was good. A new challenge Now you can we can all be spooky. You're just tuning in, Turn it off. Go turn right back around. Book LM went so wrong. Yeah, we're not real Turning it, tuning in turned it off.
55:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Go turn right back around Notebook. Lm went so wrong. Yeah, we're not real.
55:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This is all AI generated. Ai could never.
55:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I don't think so. You don't hear. You could listen to that Notebook LM for years and never hear. You might hear Triscuits, though, because they can do that, but you wouldn't hear that. Our show today, brought to you by this, is actually something all of you need right now a good password manager, and if I were you, I'd choose the one we use. It's open source, it's very effective, very easy to use and free for life for individuals. I'm talking about Bitwarden, the password manager offering a cost-effective solution that can dramatically improve your chances of staying safe online.
56:09
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56:46
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57:48
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58:17
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59:05
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59:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Is this the craziest show on the network?
59:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's specifically crazy because we're not even on the radio.
59:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wait a minute, what? No one's told me that. They just point me at the microphone and say you're on the radio now, leo.
59:59 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He's just reading those teletype pages.
01:00:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh gosh, that really brought me back. I would love to get one of those soft red pencils. So this is interesting. Remember that Google lost in court in the Epic lawsuit. The judge in an auto ruled okay, you got to open your app store. Google goes back. It says your Honor, if we do that, ruled okay, you got to open your app store. Google goes back. It says your Honor, if we do that in the time frame you're suggesting, which is just a few months, all hell will break loose, security will be destroyed and the judge bought it. Judge Donato pressed pause on the November 1st deadline. That is pretty soon. That's a week from now.
01:00:41 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah.
01:00:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe that was smart. He gave him three years, though he uh he said that's a long time yeah, I said, well, maybe not november first, how about 2007?
01:00:52
oh, okay, so starting, uh, yeah, uh. So google is ordered not to make deals with carriers or device makers that would block the pre-installation of rival app stores. So they can't say, oh, you can't do it, but they are not required to do that yet until it gets through the appeal process, which, as one knows, may take a few years or so. Had Judge Donato left the original deadline in place, developers would have been able to stop using google play billing. Uh, in a week. Google also would have been barred from using financial incentives to keep developers loyal to the store. This is, you know, this is another ed zitron.
01:01:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Win another notch in the mouth, another notch in the mouse, another notch in the mouse.
01:01:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That mouse is riddled with holes.
01:01:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, I'll bet it is.
01:01:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anyway, you know, I guess it's reasonable for Google to have a little more time and since it is going, to go on in appeal. You know, okay, would have been nice, unless the Ninth Circuit denies a stay, in which case Is there anything comparable going on with Apple? Apple won that case.
01:02:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They won their case, but there's nothing else similar challenged.
01:02:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's not how it works. So Apple's was in front of a judge, only Google's was in front of a jury. It was Epic suing both of them for the same exact issues. The judge in the Apple case gave Apple everything they wanted. In fact, there was just one little thing about opening the app store to other payments, and Apple appealed that to the Supreme Court.
01:02:38 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But Europe is requiring Apple to open up, aren't they?
01:02:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but Europe yes, and this will be a good experiment, because if there's no massive security problem with opening the App Store although I have to say what Apple's doing in Europe in response to the EU's requirement is essentially malicious compliance they made it so that no one would ever want to do it. It would cost them as much, it would be them as much, it would be a real pain in the butt. So there, well, and the EU is saying wait a minute, that's not what we told you to do. So that one is also kind of up in the air. Google is going to block election ads after the polls close, when no one will be buying them.
01:03:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And this is labeled as a scoop.
01:03:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Scoop says Axios, we've got a scoop.
01:03:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything of Axios it is. In one sense it is probably important because it's obviously all the election ads are going to be bought prior to November 5th election day. The premise here is well, what we don't want is people buying ads saying the election was stolen, everybody go on down to the Capitol building and storm it, and all that kind of thing.
01:03:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Harris, the vote counters, which happened last time.
01:04:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Two weeks away, which happened last time. Two weeks away, uh, in fact, in two weeks we'll be doing a this week in google in which jeff and I will either be elated or I don't know what.
01:04:14 - Paris Martineau (Host)
What will you be like if, if, if he'll be gone, I'll be gone he'll be out of here because he'll be at con con yes con the content con convention. Jeff, famously, will be in the sky the night election oh really, oh, you won't be here probably shaking yeah, oh interesting I'm shaking.
01:04:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is not good planning so the wednesday, after the election, you're going I'm flying election day night to Frankfurt. Oh, that's good. You know what? That's good. You won't be on pins and needles. You just say you know, I'll find out when I get there.
01:04:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, like I'm calm, like that yeah.
01:04:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He's going to be freaking out that he's not surrounded by six. Msnbc screams at all times.
01:05:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know, but I can't get it over there. Are you flying United?
01:05:04 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh yeah.
01:05:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you'll be able to watch it on United Yo vote. As they say, I did vote, so it's too late to change my mind.
01:05:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Nice.
01:05:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everybody should vote, though. Yeah, everybody should vote. I don't care who you're voting for, just vote Because. Don't care who you're voting for, just vote Because you know why. If you don't vote, you can't complain afterwards, and we love when people can complain. Everybody should be able to complain. You know what we know we're all going to complain, no matter what, so it doesn't really matter.
01:05:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Just make sure that you're justified in your complaining.
01:05:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Meta is going to block new, new political, electoral and social issue ads during the final week of the campaign, so starting next week, but it hasn't announced any pause of election ads after the polls close. It does forbid candidates or campaigns from prematurely claiming victory.
01:05:59 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
We are this is so this is such weak sauce.
01:06:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We are so ill-equipped for what is about to happen, are we not?
01:06:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
oh yeah I'm just choosing to ignore is not the right word. It's not like I'm not paying attention. I'm just choosing to smile and gaze into the middle distance.
01:06:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, me too.
01:06:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
With my eyes vaguely unfocused.
01:06:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the only way to do it yeah, because what else?
01:06:29 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
What else are we going to do?
01:06:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nothing you can do at this point is going to change anything.
01:06:34 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, nothing we can do, but you know, general.
01:06:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, what we can do and will do, and we will say again and again is vote, just vote. However, you're going to vote. We're not telling you how to vote, just vote. Linkedin is the news publisher's best friend, says the information.
01:06:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, I heard editors quibbling over this headline in the office last week.
01:07:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
On the information. Is it like other publications where the editors write the headline and the author?
01:07:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
does not yeah.
01:07:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So Sahil Patel, who wrote the article, may not have intended this to be the headline.
01:07:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
May not, but you know he's on a road trip around the country right now, so he's fine with whatever it turned out to be.
01:07:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, as one See, that's his way of dealing with anxiety just get in a car and drive.
01:07:27 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
I'm going to get on a horse and ride.
01:07:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you can find it under the tree. There's a phony in there somewhere.
01:07:38 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's got to be the show. Title right, that's got to be the show title right.
01:07:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, as we know, Meta made this hollow promise to news organizations and they all went along with it saying, hey, we will promote your news, you will get lots of traffic. And in fact, initially they did send a lot of traffic Jeff, you're an expert on this news organizations but then meta decided when was that?
01:08:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
a couple of years ago well then, the news organizations kept kicking meta in the kidneys, and meta finally said to hell with you.
01:08:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And so yeah about it. Well, I don't entirely know if that's the case they cut off news. Basically they said no more, yes, meta cut off news, but it came at a time being kicked in the kidneys multiple times with lobbyists in Congress.
01:08:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think that's why they did it, though is it, or maybe it is? Was it because Mark Zuckerberg had to say it?
01:08:30 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, I would say it came after years of meta having to deal with content moderation scandals, you know, the Cambridge Analytical scandal, having Mark Zuckerberg dragged in front of Congress again and again to the point where and then you know, to media companies saying, hey, we were promised these partnerships that we thought were going to be lucrative, but it turns out, in the case of Facebook video, a lot of the numbers were inflated. You know, the reach is actually much smaller than we thought. It was a combination of all these factors that then led Facebook, now Meta, to be like. It just isn't worth it for us to promote this content anymore and in fact it would be better if we just clamp down on it, so that, you know, now they can kind of argue well, it's not our problem.
01:09:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I have another theory, which is that all publishers can thank Rupert Murdoch for this, because he caused the Australian media bargaining code. And Meta said nope, we're not going to do it. And so Meta took down news for six days and said oh, that didn't hurt in Australia, that didn't hurt anything.
01:09:44
And then it happened in Canada right In Canada and meanwhile they're disenchanted with news. They fired everybody who dealt with news. They got rid of all their grants to news, they headed. That way Canada comes and they really take down news there permanently and they say that was nice, we're back to puppies and parties and this is okay. So did we cover this last week about what the Canadian government was doing with the screenshots?
01:10:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, tell me about that tell me.
01:10:12 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think we did touch on this briefly. Okay, never mind. Oh, I wasn't there.
01:10:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I mustn't have been paying attention that's what really I'm hurt you know, where the name triscuit comes from no, tell me
01:10:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
linkedin apparently has decided wait a minute, this is a good thing we want to do news linkedin. It's really interesting. Microsoft bought LinkedIn for a lot of money. Whether they're making money is unclear. On LinkedIn it doesn't look like it. But one of the things they've decided to do is, you know, linkedin, which was really traditionally the place you would network for business, right, you'd look for jobs, you'd offer jobs, that kind of thing thing. They realized this is kind of you know what with the, with the fall of x, twitter, um, this might be an opportunity for us. They decided to become a social network. They decided to become a blog platform, they decided to become a video platform and now they want to be a news platform people be posted on linkedin.
01:11:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's lisa who uh says, linkedin is her favorite, her favorite social network.
01:11:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She posts her a lot. She posts her podcast on that. She reads a lot of stuff. Uh, she likes it.
01:11:22 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
For that she's because it's none of the there's none of the falderal, yeah, of uh, of x, so forth I mean, what I've noticed from linkedin is it's all. It's all. Marketers like all that's to me.
01:11:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's very promotional marketing professionals.
01:11:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it's the online south by southwest yeah, it is all brand activations gonzalez I will say this doesn't apply to lisa, but everybody else other than lisa who uh claims that linkedin is their social media platform of choice is a sociopath, in my opinion, other than my wife.
01:12:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're saying other than your, other than my wife, she's. That was, that was very end of you a sociopath that's going. That's a little strong.
01:12:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don don't know. Have you been on LinkedIn?
01:12:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, who wants to?
01:12:14 - Paris Martineau (Host)
willingly spend hours of their week on LinkedIn.
01:12:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But Facebook's just as dopey, Like with everything who do you follow. Instagram's just as dopey.
01:12:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I would say yes, but those a bit more dopey, like I'd say. You know, there's probably a description for someone who Facebook is. I guess, if Facebook is your platform of choice, you are a boomer, is what.
01:12:34 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I would say here's Lisa Laporte on LinkedIn, calling all tech fans. We have a show for everyone, including people who have no attention span.
01:12:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, linkedin is launching a news banner, according to the information, atop the mobile feed, so they'll be scrolling news. Linkedin by, by the way, is maybe now doing all right. Six billion dollars in ad revenue not profit, but revenue. That's more than snap or pinterest, and the news organizations are loving this. Uh, according to the information video, the video ad program has generated millions for Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
01:13:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And there's jobs for me, jobs recommended for me right now. Copywriter at Meta.
01:13:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Wow, you could really do a lot with that.
01:13:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Strategy and business growth. Lead at Airbnb. Staff writer at the Atlantic. Oh, now.
01:13:32 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
I'm scared Now.
01:13:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm scared. Now I'm scared. Toad Sloth in our YouTube chat says oh, lisa's just looking for work, she's the CEO of Twit, so I hope not. Linkedin announced the program this summer with news and business-focused publishers the Wall Street Journal, bloomberg, dow Jones, nbcuniversal and Yahoo Finance. Program this summer with news and business focused publishers the wall street journal, bloomberg, uh dow jones, nbc universal and yahoo finance. Bloomberg and the journal each, according to sahil, more than two million dollars will earn this year from the program. That's amazing. Well, I mean, it's not in their overall scheme of things, huge, but it's still linkedin something, this and something, not nothing.
01:14:16
Uh, all right, I guess that we've mined that vein. Uh, the fcc will. No, I don't want to do that one. Uh, never mind. Uh, netflix, actually, let's go to your stories. I don't, I don't like any of these, did you see? Though? Okay, I actually have a question about x, because x is a. Elon has announced that x will no longer. Uh, they're going to change the way blocking works. You could still block somebody, but they'll be able to read your posts, which is my question is how is that going to work?
01:14:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
because isn't there a requirement on the google and apple app stores that apps offer users a way to block users that are harassing them oh, that's interesting.
01:15:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's interesting. So the harassment is blocked, right? They can't at reply you, but they can read, talk about you. Which they could, they could talk, they could always talk about you without adding you, but they can't they they couldn't can talk about you, which they could talk about. They could always talk about you without adding you, but they couldn't. In the past they couldn't read what you were posting. Now they can. Apparently, that's upset a lot of people, because in one day half a million people joined Blue Sky Yay. That day yeah.
01:15:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I will say this shows the problems of renaming your popular brand from Twitter to X, because I just searched Block X App.
01:15:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Store and I got a bunch of porn. Yeah, exactly Such a terrible idea. Cory Doctorow, we were talking about this on Twitter on Sunday. Cory Doctorow was on and he's still on X posts there, because that's where my people are still. He has, you know, corey doctor, oh, non-consensual blue check is his name, because he didn't like getting a blue check. I mean, he's definitely not crazy about what's going on at x, but he says look, uh, he's actually. He calls it anatevka. I really thought this was interesting.
01:16:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Remember, uh, fiddler on a roof, okay, this is yeah, this is a rabbit hole, but at least it's generated by this scene where they dance the wine bottles in their heads all the time if I were a rich man, david.
01:16:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So remember, the story of anatevka is periodically the cossacks come in, beat everybody up and move on, but nobody leaves anatevka because that's where their friends and family are, that's where their love. Finally, at the end of the show, they do leave anatevka because it's really gotten on ted. They have to. They're thrown out. The czar says you're out, jews, you're out. So they leave. They become a diaspora and they, you know, all over the world.
01:16:58
Um, he says basically, x is anatevka, that he's there, even though the cossacks keep coming and beating him up because his loved ones are there yeah, yeah, same here I think that's true, yeah that makes sense I agree and he says, oh, this is the other point is he's not going to go to Blue Sky, because never again is he going to go somewhere where he cannot export everything and move it somewhere else. He doesn't want to go anywhere where it's a silo, a locked-in silo.
01:17:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well see, what I do is I post all my original posts. You cross-post everywhere.
01:17:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I cross well he posts on Mastodon.
01:17:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He does these 87 tweet threads, but not Blue Sky.
01:17:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He is waiting and maybe Mike Masnick will help this now that he's on the board of Blue Sky but he's waiting until Blue Sky truly has a federation plan. They don't yet.
01:17:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They promised that, but they don't yet well over a million new people joined blue sky in the just days after yeah x announced this change yeah so quite a few people are migrating there and the same thing happened in brazil.
01:18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
After x was banned, everybody said, okay, well, they said it in portuguese, but you get the idea. Okay, we're going to blue sky and uh, I think more than a million brazilians went to blue sky. So blue sky is now what? 12 million people, something like that yeah 12 million I you know I like blue sky I do too.
01:18:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think it's got everything I want.
01:18:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, like the interaction there I like it better than threads.
01:18:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Threads interactions is sucky threads is weird, it'ss is weird. It's become kind of a thirst trap. Is that just me?
01:18:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think you're once again, that's like a sexy photos is what he's referring to, Jeff.
01:18:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Seems like there's a lot of OnlyFans folks.
01:18:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I assume it's the same thing that ended up with your Facebook account where, because it sees you're in a certain demographic, it sees that typically it sees that you're a man in a cowboy hat with two horses on his chest and says I know what sort of photos you'd like to see, sir, and it's of naked women. Trigger and I call it because he ain't seen them any other?
01:19:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
way, I'm not alone in this. I've seen other people observe that on threads that there are a lot of OnlyFans people, there's a lot of kind of I don't care.
01:19:23 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, blue Sky seems like it's just nice friendly people it is, and I do occasionally block someone and I think I'm glad I can yeah.
01:19:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Meta did not immediately, according to the Verge, immediately respond to their questions about whether threads saw similar spikes after X's change of service. X also announced that they're going to let AIs scrape X content unless you explicitly opt out. That's in the new privacy policy.
01:19:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's going to be one fun LLM.
01:19:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, kidding, do you really want? I mean, microsoft did that with uh years ago with uh tay. Remember tay the ai and it ended up being an anti-semite, so maybe not the best place to train an ai. Musk has also uh said said that he wants to direct any lawsuits to the Northern District of Texas. Why?
01:20:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Google should take a lesson from him. Apple must have.
01:20:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, x's headquarters are now in Bastrop, texas, near Austin.
01:20:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But that's far away from where that court is.
01:20:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a good point. Their headquarters are in a different districtin but that's far away from where that court is. That's a good point. He's in a. Their headquarters are in a different district, but he's. He's in the western district, which has far fewer republican appointed judges than the northern district, which is a favored destination for conservative activists and business groups to pursue lawsuits to seek to block parts of biden's agenda judge shopping. So I guess elon is judge elon judge shopping he's at the judge checkout right now.
01:21:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I bought some judges.
01:21:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's in a little bit of trouble because a couple of problems here. I don't think he understands the concept of petition. For one thing, he set up a petition supporting Trump and Vance and said every day, if you sign the petition every day, somebody's going to get a million dollars, which kind of, I think, pollutes the concept of a petition that's like a Twitter survey. Yeah, it's useless and maybe a violation of federal election laws, because To vote Because he says you have to be a registered voter and you cannot legally pay people to register to vote.
01:21:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah.
01:21:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you know what? This is the thing, and I see this again and again yeah, it's illegal and no, he's not going to get prosecuted for this and even if he did, nothing's ever going to happen. This is again and again. People are really getting the sense that you can just flout the law and just do whatever you want.
01:22:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And if you're rich enough, you can Well, I mean, if you have billions of dollars you kind of can.
01:22:05 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah, the fines turn out to be. That's just how much it costs to do stuff for billionaires.
01:22:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the cost, that it costs to do stuff for billionaires.
01:22:10 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
That's the cost. That's not really a fine.
01:22:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Gosh, I wish I were a billionaire. Would I be? You think I'd be a good billionaire, or?
01:22:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
would I just turn into a mush, mine like the rest of them, I think you'd give me and Jeff a million dollars every month for appearing on this podcast.
01:22:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I think you'd be a good billionaire. That's the definition of good billionaire, right.
01:22:31 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah, I'm a the billionaire.
01:22:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I would love it if I just had. I don't know, I think it would take maybe 30 million dollars I could. Then we could just do this as a pro bono thing, not just this show, but the whole twit network. So we now need an endowment. If we had 30 million dollars, let's see it costs. It costs about a million and a half two million dollars a year to rent to it. Wow, I know, tell me about it. So yeah, 30 million. We probably could go forever on that.
01:23:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You know what's driving me crazy? Your cuff is not snapped uniformly. Oh my God.
01:23:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
How did that happen? They're so not snapped uniformly.
01:23:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So shocking it's going to give you $30 billion dollars. Were you dressed?
01:23:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
like that young man, but do you like my mother of pearl studs?
01:23:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I love this. Where did you get this from?
01:23:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't, I think. Well, remember, I live in petaluma. Uh, we have many western supply stores and I believe I got he's in the west how did you see my?
01:23:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
cuffs because you were gesticulating and it was driving me nuts.
01:23:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He's got the setting on Zoom, where he's looking at all of our wide shots too. That's why, oh, that's why?
01:23:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, see your little thumbnails for me. I don't see nothing. All right, that is the bulk of the stories that I brought to the table. Let's see what we got here. This is the moment where we get you. Do you want to do the Sam Altman's world story?
01:24:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The orb. They're bringing the orbs to your door.
01:24:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so WorldCoin. So Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, also has a bunch of other ventures, including the weirdest one, which is called, or was called, world coin. World coin was a cryptocurrency and they had this orb. There's a picture of the orb, uh, from axios, uh, this orb, and uh, they would go around, especially developing nations, and offer you some pittance of world coin if you would just let them scan your iris, the theory being that they're going to create a global kind of identity system that can't be faked or hoaked and somehow it's tied in, don't know how, to cryptocurrency because, everything was tied into cryptocurrency right oh well it was, and so now it's not so good.
01:25:01
So they took the word coin out. It's just world it's just world, just world now coin doesn't mean as much as it used to. I'm starting to think sam altman's just chasing.
01:25:12 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Whatever the world ai now yeah, it should be.
01:25:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Huh uh. Altman and co-founder alex uh blania used a san francisco event to unveil a series of updates, including a new version of the orb oh, now powered by nvidia and their newest jetson chipset, which means it has five times the oh. There it is AI performance and also uses fewer parts. There we go. That's the future. By the way, humans too many parts. The venture says the new orb will allow for a broader rollout, including self-service kiosks. They're also creating options for people to join the project without having your iris scanned. Oh, that's good. How else would you do it? Oh, you could scan your passport of this is.
01:26:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
What is the purpose of this if you're not scanning eyes with the orb?
01:26:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what are you buying into? Yeah, no, it's all about collecting information about people. Now, why would one want to know they're saying well, this way we can verify your identity.
01:26:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It'll be a global identity I well, or if you use your passport.
01:26:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The passport would allow people to verify age, nationality and passport ownership without revealing their identity. Well, wouldn't you be?
01:26:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
revealing your passport?
01:26:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, and to what? So? Yes, we know this is a human being.
01:26:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apparently, they're also working to integrate the identity verification into other software to help combat deep fakes. I like what Nathan Freitas was talking about at the beginning of the show. That's a better way to do it. The company listed FaceTime, apple's FaceTime, whatsapp and Zoom as among the applications compatible with its digital ID system. I think that's compatible is a little bit of a weasel word. It doesn't mean it's doing it or it's using it, or even Apple or Facebook or Zoom has approved its use. But it is compatible. They could if they wanted to. This is just the weirdest thing. I don't. It is you know what. My suggestion is not to give biometric information to any third party, if you can help it.
01:27:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, keep your eyes to yourself.
01:27:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, the US government does it now. Okay, now you'll have no idea who's hosting this show. Jeff, I saw you peeking.
01:27:54 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
We were all covering my eyes.
01:27:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Love to do visual gags on the audio podcast. Something like it. Nothing like it. What's your Halloween costume? Have you decided yet, Paris?
01:28:05 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes, I'm going to be the RFK brain worm. I'm going to have like a little box around me that was like a brain. I got a brain fabric in, so I look like I'm a brain, but then I'm gonna have a worm that I make that goes around the brain. Oh my god, that's brilliant, gonna be it it should be your head coming out.
01:28:27 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
01:28:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You should be the word you are oh that's smart I am the worm, you are the worm, oh, that's smart. I am the worm, oh, that could be good. Just have a tube. Yeah, oh, I love it.
01:28:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It was between that and a concept that only New Yorkers would understand, which is Pizza rat. Well, similar it's the rat that the city has to send packing. Whenever we got our new garbage laws earlier this year, they put out these cute little signs of a rat carrying a suitcase and it said send those rats packing New garbage, set out times and you also have to get a garbage bin.
01:29:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now, and I wanted to be the rat that said packing, but I figured that would require too much explanation. So even in Brooklyn, you could just put out a bag instead of having a garbage bin. Yes, oh, wow, this is a real.
01:29:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You're just supposed to be putting you know, bags out. That's how it's been the entire decade I've lived here. Is bags in the street Terrible. Apparently, I learned, though, new York City has been going back and forth between loose garbage bags and garbage bins for a while and, frankly, the problem is cars. If we simply did not have free parking for any car that wants it, then we could have like dumpsters and that's because, they can't put your address.
01:29:43
You're talking like a true communist jeez, yeah, we should ban all of your stupid cars suburban streets I know, oh, cars have have ruined America's cities. They look so ugly too.
01:29:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're ugly, they're polluting, they're noisy.
01:30:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They cut me off your plays in restaurants.
01:30:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You could take a train.
01:30:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Who is taking a car to a restaurant?
01:30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
in Manhattan. Do not do that.
01:30:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Don't do it.
01:30:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Alright, let's take a little break, and when we come back, Sorry. I have a great parking trick that I will not reveal because I don't want anyone else to know it. I'm not going to say it.
01:30:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm confused by it also.
01:30:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Leo, how could you? What could you do? You have a handicap placard. You put out what could you do what? You have a handicap placard. You put out no, no, no, what could you do? It's a New.
01:30:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
York parking trick and I'm not going to reveal it. Parking trick Wow.
01:30:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This is the sort of thing that you know. Jeff's people get most of the space in New York City, and he also gets to keep his secrets too.
01:30:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is why, by the way, paris, you can net Well too. This is why, by the way, paris, you can net well, you don't have a car.
01:30:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But it's why you don't have a car, because you could never I thought you're gonna say this is why I'll never be able to afford a home, and I was like I don't know how. That also probably is true.
01:31:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That too, how many? Look how many square feet jeff has. You could have a family of 12 in his library my apartment is, yeah, probably the size of here.
01:31:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
There's a book I want to to get about the old Soviet Union and it's fairly new out and it shows a diagram of a typical building then, a typical building after the revolution and how many more units there were. And a typical layout of a kitchen and how that operated once the revolution came. What book is this? Hold on, I'll tell you in a second. Kitchens of Soviet Union. Let me look at my Amazon wish list.
01:31:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We actually are doing I just got another 1970s apartment interior design book off eBay that's going to be coming in a week.
01:31:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She loves mid-century modern.
01:31:49 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We love to see it the.
01:31:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Soviet Century Archaeology of a Lost World, you know what that sounds like a great book. Well, they have an audio book of it, but you don't get the diagrams. Then that sounds wonderful. I would buy that.
01:32:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That sounds really good, so we're going to take a break. When we come back, jeff will reveal his parking secret.
01:32:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, I will not.
01:32:12 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
No I will not.
01:32:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll pick a story, as will paris. I think you owe it to paris to reveal your parking secret.
01:32:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
She's not gonna for all those cars I'm driving. Actually, I drove a car last weekend a zip car probably right yes, are you a queen's county farm. I am a very good driver.
01:32:34 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
We'll talk about it after the break.
01:32:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
After the break, our show this week, brought to you by US Cloud. I talked to these guys last week and I was literally blown away. First of all, I'd never heard of them. I'd never heard of them, but they explain why you need to know about them. They are the number one Microsoft unified support replacement. So the way Microsoft and you know this if you're a Microsoft company that uses Microsoft they have the way they price their stuff. It's kind of like a basket Whether you use it or not, you pay for it and it's not the best support, let's face it. It's not the fastest support. It's definitely the most expensive support. That's why US Cloud is the global leader in third-party Microsoft Enterprise support, supporting 50 of the Fortune 500. And why? Because when you switch to US Cloud, you can save your business 30 to 50% on a true, comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. Comparable may not be the right word. I think it's better.
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01:35:06
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01:35:55
I just felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice. You should make the right choice with US Cloud and, by the way, when it comes to compliance, no one gets it more than US Cloud. Iso, gdpr, esg compliance it's not just regulatory requirements for them, it's a strategic imperative that drives operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management and corporate reputation. It's important to you, it's important to them. These standards foster trust and loyalty among customers which is pretty darn important and stakeholders attracting investment. It ensures long-term stability and ensures success in a competitive global market. You want US Cloud, you at least.
01:36:44
Do me a favor, find out about it. Do yourself a favor. Go to uscloudcom. Book a call today. Find out how much you're going to save. How great this service is. It's amazing, uscloudcom, get them on the line, get faster. Microsoft support for less, faster and, dare I say, better. Yes, uscloudcom. We thank them so much for supporting this week in Google and the search for the greatest parking space in New York City. Thank goodness we have a technique.
01:37:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Have a technique and we're not going to be able to figure out what it is.
01:37:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A short car, maybe Like a, really like a. Thing.
01:37:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I like to imagine he kind of uses his height to stand the car up on its butt, so it only takes up like a quarter of the parking space.
01:37:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know wheels that turn sideways so you can roll in sideways. He's not going to tell us All right.
01:37:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
What did you find? Was there a farm museum in Queens?
01:37:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I this weekend went to the Queens County Farm Museum. Oh gosh, my microphone is doing the thing.
01:37:56
Hold on I can still hear you it was playing the microphone noise which was very loud and scared me but we didn't hear it, so it's okay. Yes, so did you go to the? Amazing maze, maze I went to the amazing maze maze, the queens county farm museum which is a giant corn maze, and it was delightful, I also got a pumpkin, did you go to the donut shop? The donut shop line was too long, so I did not go.
01:38:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, but I bet they have apple cider donuts, the best kind of donuts. They have apple cider donuts.
01:38:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I got a pumpkin spice beer.
01:38:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I had a very lovely time. Look at that maze. That's a beautiful maze.
01:38:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's in the shape of a monarch butterfly. Each year has a theme. It also had kind of a puzzle component, a crossword component to the maze. It was so fun a crossword yes, we're like in. One of the ways you can get out is, uh, throughout the maze, in each of the nine like uh, little sections, there is a, the answer to a crossword question which is in your little booklet you're given as you go into the maze and is that how you looked when you got out of the maze?
01:39:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that is how I looked when I got out.
01:39:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh my god, it's been days. They have somebody out there on that little bridge that is like live commentating everybody getting out of the maze. They're like the blue flag is coming up.
01:39:14
They're about to be here oh, so you get a flag when you go, so they know where you are, so they know what color was your flag blue um last year was here, is that a cool person from brooklyn went to queens that's true, and last year I also mentioned going to this maze in the podcast and um. But last year I didn't plan ahead and think about the fact that also a cool thing in Queens is flushing Chinatown. So this year I extended my zip car reservation for the whole day and then drove my friends to Chinatown, navigated the flushing, crazy traffic, pulled my car into a weird little car elevator so I could park, and then went and got dim sum.
01:39:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Car elevator that's Jeff's trick, I bet. Weird little car elevator so I could park and then went and got dim sum. Car elevator that's jeff's trick, I bet it is car elevator. Did you get pumpkin spice dim sum?
01:40:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
no, it was regular, although there was a weird hot dessert at the end that was kind of like a porridge, but not that could have been pumpkin spice flavored I'm but a Chinese.
01:40:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Desserts are not.
01:40:12 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Indian desserts Not good.
01:40:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, stick with the savory.
01:40:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So I would like to. That's not my pick of the week.
01:40:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Shout out to the Queens County farm.
01:40:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's just a shout out to the Queens County. That's my, you know like that.
01:40:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You'll feel so good you will feel like that Go.
01:40:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You know it's October. Go to your, find your local corn maze, go with some friends.
01:40:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I drove by one out here and man, the line to get into it was amazing.
01:40:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we decided never to go to our local corn maze because we got thrown out a couple years ago.
01:40:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Were you too rowdy.
01:40:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The kids. It wasn't us, it was. We had some high schoolers, some teenagers with us and they weren't rowdy, but the owner bullied them, was mean and threw us out.
01:41:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, so you're not going on principle.
01:41:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're not going on principle. But I also am not going because it's right by the highway, highway 101. And all the traffic slows down because people go. It's a corn maze. It stops traffic for the whole month of October. It's very annoying. So I'm boycotting a corn maze.
01:41:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And it's also not in the shape of a monarch butterfly.
01:41:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Some people in the chat are saying Jeff's parking hack is that he puts a fake parking ticket on his car window. That's a very well-known hack. That's kind of a kramer move does it work?
01:41:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I wouldn't know he played some uh, the stuff in the chat is pretty funny we have a wonderful a bunch of chat.
01:41:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, if you're a member you'd be there yeah and uh the discord yeah, and if you're not a member, seven bucks a month ad free versions of all the shows. Special events, like friday we're going to do stacy's book club. The book is by adrian tchaikovsky. I don't I was going to say no relation, but I don't know, maybe he is, I don't know. His new book is called A Service Model and it's about robots and what happens to the humans after the robots take over. It's actually funny. It's really good.
01:42:28
So that'll be Friday, 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern. We do stream it everywhere. We are on now eight platforms. You can watch us YouTube, twitch, facebook, linkedin, kik, xcom. I think we just added TikTok. Anyway, you'll be able to watch it live if you're there Friday.
01:42:49
But the nice thing about being in the club is you don't have to be there, you can watch it. After the fact, we did a coffee thing last week. That was great, with a coffee connoisseur Sarah Dooley from beanscom and Mark Prince, of course, from the Coffee Geek. They're going to come back because Sarah says we're going to do a tasting and I think what she wants to do is put together a tasting kit of several different beans so that we can all participate and and learn a little bit about coffee flavor. I won't mention hazelnut creamer, though. That's not gonna happen. Uh, if you're not a member of the club, seven bucks a month. It really helps us. I. It does not go into my pocket. It goes into jeff and paris's pocket, benito's pocket and all the people put this together as, as you heard, it's not cheap to do this. With your help, we can make it. Twittv slash club. Twitter Scan the QR code in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. All right, well, pick a story, one of yours.
01:43:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I feel like the corn maze counted as my story. Okay, that's good, I'll take it.
01:43:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, jeff, that's good, I'll take it Okay. Jeff, do you have a story you want to do?
01:43:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I can pick one. If we want Go ahead, you pick one.
01:44:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just a little content warning before we begin. The following story discusses the sensitive topic of suicide involving a minor. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text just 988, or you can chat online at chat.988lifelineorg. If you're located outside the United States, please visit findahelplinecom to find a helpline in your country to find a helpline in your country.
01:44:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You may have seen today a story from the New York Times about Character AI, the chatbot which has grown increasingly popular with young users. The headline in the story was Can AI be blamed for a teen suicide? Oh, God. And it's specifically about the mother of a 14 year old boy who grew obsessed on these chat bots and says that it uh helped push him over to the edge and uh may have played a role in um his eventual uh death it is so tragic, there's nothing more tragic.
01:45:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But it's highly likely that the AI was helping the kid with other problems, not pushing him over the edge, I mean yeah, the kid has like mild Asperger's.
01:45:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The thing that I think is interesting here is the article is really interesting. It's by Kevin Roos in the New York Times.
01:45:33 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Oh, there you go it kind of goes into both sides of the argument.
01:45:38 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's also a column, Look I feel for the family.
01:45:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Absolutely Terrible, terrible story. I don't think the chatbot. My daughter was obsessed for a while with the chatbot. She was sure understood her and was talking to her and stuff, but it never said kill yourself or anything like that. It was the chatbot. She was sure understood her and was talking to her and stuff, but it's you know it never said kill yourself or anything like that. It was just a companion I mean.
01:45:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The thing is, this chatbot didn't say anything like that. Kill yourself so. And I don't think that, if you read the complaint which it did, the mother isn't arguing, but the chatbot did that, but she is arguing. I mean I wouldn't say kevin roos is even arguing it fully, it's more the headline and framing of this.
01:46:16
It's kind of hard to get out of that pattern theory that you've been seeing in a lot of these social media addiction lawsuits, where the mother and the legal team she's working with are trying to advance this case on the notion that Character AI knew that a significant amount of its users were minors and had developed kind of very close relationships with this and did not take any of the responsible steps to ensure that their product was safe for those users or was designed with safety in mind. They're essentially arguing that the product was kind of negligently designed in a number of ways to be unusually addictive to young users, because that makes up a large percentage of their, you know, product, uh or user base, which is kind of interesting, and I do think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, because the usual argument that these companies fall back on section 230 I'm not sure if it will apply here because this isn't user generated content.
01:47:33
It's. It's a chatbot.
01:47:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah Right, this is a case where the company is totally responsible because the content was generated by the company. This is not user-generated.
01:47:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But this is an interesting thing. What did the user ask for? That's what I talk about the matrix of responsibility. Is it the model, is it the application, is it the user?
01:47:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
At some point.
01:47:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Um there's, look, I'm a big supporter of section 230, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. I do think it'll be also interesting to see I mean to your point, jeff how, what sort of precedence this sets for underage users and like ai products, because in this case I mean this. I haven't fully even thought out this thought. So forgive me if it comes out a bit clunky, but you know, if a kid walks into a bar and asks for seven shots of vodka and gets alcohol poisoning, there are a lot of people that are at fault there, and it's usually not just the kid, it's the bar or the bartender.
01:48:35
So I mean in this case, I'm wondering like who is the bar and the bartender? Is it character AI, Is it someone else? I don't know.
01:48:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's character AI, and I think that this is really important, that it's very clear that, whether it's a self-driving vehicle or a chat bot, that the creators of the code, the creators of the software and the company that puts it online is always responsible. Elon would love it that if you got in a wreck with full self-driving, on that he's not responsible, that Tesla's not responsible, you're responsible. I don't think that's the case and I think more and more courts are saying are saying no, no, no, no but it's a general machine and you can ask it to do anything.
01:49:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And can the maker predict everything that anyone could ever ask it to do and prevent that? Can they define everything bad that could happen and imagine that it's an impossible task? And so it's nice and easy to say oh well, that's the machine's fault, we must do something, we must get them.
01:49:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think they have liability. I think it's really important and, by the way, the EU has now established a product liability code, but it didn't tell them to do anything. Well, no, okay, let me be clear. I don't think in this case there's and nor is the parent, I think saying anything about liability. It's sad. I mean, I think, the parent is arguing this is a headline writer at the New York Times, not anybody else.
01:50:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The parent is arguing that there's liability, but not for specifically holding the gun to my son's head. I think the parent is arguing the company is liable for making an addictive product.
01:50:18 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
That was inappropriate with children.
01:50:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And I do think that there could be something to the effect that, like part of these arguments that a lot of different legal teams are making when it comes to product liability and social media or tech companies, is with regards to children. They're saying these companies have a responsibility to better understand what age roughly their user is. You know, if a 10-year-old is is on your platform, you should be able to figure that out somehow, and I do think there's kind of something to that, but I would also I don't know, I I hesitate to say that because I'm also against like these stringent age verification policies isn't it the mother's, I mean?
01:51:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
doesn't the? Don't the parents carry some responsibility for noticing what's going on with their kid?
01:51:13 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
yeah, lookipping it in the bud, but they didn't Look at the gun cases lately, with parents who are being held responsible for their kids' actions.
01:51:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I really hate to see a government step in for parental responsibility. I think it's important that parents A are responsible and B, you know, have the right to be responsible and not have the government decide what they should or shouldn't be doing. And you know, his mother's a lawyer, so it makes sense. The first thing that a lawyer would do is, you know, look for liability. She says the company behaved recklessly. The, her child, had created a character. He named Daenerys Targaryen after the, the Queen of Dragons, the mother of dragons in the Game of Thrones, and apparently the conversation did get in fact sexual. Not clear if he edited the conversation to make it more sexual or if it did in fact get sexual. There is a log of all of the conversation.
01:52:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, and in the complaint it lists almost all of like quite a lot of this kid's conversations with this chatbot.
01:52:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But where is the parent? This chatbot? But where's the? Where is the parent? Like if this kid has gone into his room and is spending hours in his room on this computer? Where is the parent in this? Doesn't the parent have some responsibility? Maybe move the computer into the living room? This is what we did with our kids. It's horrible um she founded the social media victims law center no, she didn't, that's uh oh, she found it not found. She found that that exists in seattle, which existed already.
01:53:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
All right, yeah uh.
01:53:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The firm was started by a former asbestos lawyer who pivoted to suing tech companies.
01:53:12
It is the mesothelioma of uh, of uh lawsuits these days, going after the, the tech companies I look, I guess you know, and and what one of the things kevin roos reports is that the guys who founded character ai left google because they felt, uh, handcuffed by google's safety focus. Uh and uh, they wanted to do something a little. There's just this is the quote uh, there's just too much brand risk in large companies to ever launch anything fun, so they launched something fun.
01:53:45 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's a great quote. So since addiction came up, so here's a um.
01:53:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'll just add one brief code to this because I remember seeing it in the complaint to the question of where was his parents in all of this? He they write in the. His mother writes in the complaint that the kid had always been a really well-behaved kid who listened. Once, you know, the addictive behavior started, his parents took his phone at night and, as like disciplinary measures in response to school related issues, he had after it. But then he would try to sneak his phone back or look for other ways to keep using character ai, such as like finding his parents old devices or tablets or a computer he could get into without his parents realizing um. On multiple occasions he told his mother that he needed to use her computer for schoolwork which was accurate only to then open a new email account for the purpose of opening a new character AI so he could keep using it.
01:54:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He was hooked.
01:54:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He was hooked.
01:54:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, However, since addiction came up, last week, I put up the pages from my book the Web we Weave on scale now at jeffdraverscom on my blog. So this is what I was reading from last week. It's all there.
01:54:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, it is hard. Look, nothing worse. I don't know.
01:55:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I feel for the parents.
01:55:02 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Nothing more frightening, nothing more.
01:55:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anybody who's a parent knows this is your worst nightmare, and I think you know. I know from my own experience. You want to blame, you look for reasons, right. You look for causes and you want to blame, maybe sometimes yourself.
01:55:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, we parents often blame ourselves.
01:55:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But sometimes there isn't, you know, a cause. Mental illness can happen and you know the kid was doing well until he wasn't. I don't know if they did everything they could. Maybe they did. I just don't know if, going after these companies First of all, what would you do? They'd have a disclaimer, I guess. I don't know what would you do.
01:55:49 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, character AI has released some new security features as of today, timed with the filing of this complaint, they said. In their community safety updates. They basically they said our goal is to offer fun and engaging experiences our users have come to expect, while enabling the safe exploration of topics. Our policies don't allow non-consensual sexual content. We're continually training our large language models. Basically, they introduced features where changes to our models for minors people under the age of 18 that are designed to reduce the likelihood of encountering suggestive or sensitive content, improve detection, response and intervention related to user inputs that violate our terms of service. A revised disclaimer on every chat to remind users that the AI is not a real person. And a notification when a user has spent an hour-long session on the platform with additional user flexibility.
01:56:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's fair, yeah, so let me give you one example of maybe.
01:56:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I talked the other day to the AI person at Shipstead, which is a brilliant Nordic media company. They're the envy of the media world, they're the smart ones, and one of the examples she said of what they've created was Aftonbladet, and I think it's the one in Sweden created an election buddy, which was a Just a bot that would answer questions about the EU election that was coming up, which is a big deal, but nobody ever knows about it, and they got 150,000 queries in no time flat. Which doesn't sell the paper much? Here, she said, but it's Sweden smaller. And which doesn't sell the paper much? Here, she said, but in Sweden it's smaller. And they did it as RAG, and so the data that it used was the data that the paper gave it.
01:57:41
And people tried they saw what people were asking it, people tried to push it, people tried to get it to recommend, you know, overthrow of government or whatever, and it wouldn't do it because it was in a limited world.
01:57:54
Part of the problem with these large models is they are not and cannot be limited in that way.
01:58:04
They will go to anything, they will go to any combination of words that anybody's ever come up with before, and I don't think we want to outlaw all of them, but I don't know anything short of outlawing them that you could do.
01:58:11
That could guarantee that it won't do X, y or Z. So if you want to just do things that have rag and say this is all it can do and it is delimited to do that, yeah, you could do that, but you're going to eliminate a lot of innovation and a lot of invention and people who are having trouble are going to go to other mechanisms to do other things, unfortunately, yeah, but it is, you're right. It is similar to the Musk allegedly autonomous driving thing. The question is, okay, how many people have to die before it gets regulated? I'm all for regulating Elon Musk's self-driving because it's a lie, but in this case, this is not a car. This is a general machine like a printing press that can be made to do anything, and so I don't know how you regulate it, and maybe we have to live with that.
01:59:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jeff Splock, by the way, and the quotes that he or the article he was talking about at buzzmachinecom. The technology addiction trope Phone dope is the addiction of our times.
01:59:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So that was from the Times of London. Yeah, so that and the discussion last week. I put it up yeah.
01:59:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you for putting that up there. Yeah, I mean it's just a tragic story and I feel for the parent, of course. I mean it's just a tragic story and I feel for the parent, of course. I mean just horrible. And when something like that happens, you just look for every what did I do wrong? What could we do better? How can we fix it? Sometimes there's no fix for it.
01:59:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
If I can segue into the next, because I think this is related. There was a whole bunch of agent-related AI stuff this week that I came across and I put in there like eight stories and a lot of effort to go to that skip, that next step of AI, where one story here it says that this might make obsolete phone applications.
02:00:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's like the R1.
02:00:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That was the intent of the R1, remember. Right right or the web itself. Yeah, I'm going to boston. Um, you know, find me a route and make me a hotel reservation and give me a restaurant and da, da, da, da, and it goes and it deals with all of that and.
02:00:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But at that point I love the idea of an ai assistant. You know that's that's a long time sci-fi dream where you know I mean we can't most of us can't afford to have a personal assistant. But uh, you know a lot of very rich people and movie stars can and there's a lot to be said for a personal assistant. And maybe an ai could be your personal assistant and book things for you and do all that. That would be great. I think that's a really good use of ai. I hope it, it happens.
02:00:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But to the prior discussion. It's going to be far more opaque, likely because it's taking large language models and generative AI and going to a next step where it says I will do this for you. So you have Anthropic, and Microsoft are all saying we can do agents, we can do all this. Right now. I forget somebody that Jason had, that it could take over your machine, it could do screenshots.
02:01:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's the new thing. Yeah, Claude's Sonnet will use. We can do mouse inputs and keyboard inputs, which is getting unfortunately close to agency. That worries me.
02:01:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
How will this work? Last week on the show or the week before, we covered that study about how AI doesn't reason, how adding a simple but clause would mess up the LLM's ability to provide reliable outputs or sensible outputs. How does that square with? Claude has access to my entire computer.
02:01:59 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, Well, mr Benioff, you're right, because Benioff says this is a panic mode for Microsoft rebranding this as agents when it's not agents yet, so it's not ready. However, it was only a month ago that Mark Benioff and Salesforce announced their agent thing, so everybody's right. I watched a presentation from Meta about how they're doing community governance. They did this leading up to the oversight board. Well, now they're doing the same thing to listen to people around the world about AI, and it was interesting to look at the questions they were asking people and it jumped right to agents. It wasn't about chat, gpt, it wasn't about queries, it was about how you're going to work with agents. So they're presuming that we're almost there to do that. I think it's overblown as much as AGI is, but we're going to see a lot of agent hype.
02:02:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have, you know, gone back and forth, as you know, on AI and I think it's pretty clear it's going to be both. It's going to be both a pile of nothing and very useful, and actually we've even seen that at play right now and I think it's going to get more and more and more. Ai is not going to be the ultimate solution to everything, but ai will be useful and, uh, I don't.
02:03:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think both can be true it'll be as perilous as the internal combustion engine yeah, talk about peril yeah, and but it'll also be as beneficial unless you're smart. No one don't want to go near one because you think that you're above driving.
02:03:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think most technology is a double-edged sword. Nuclear power can be a nuclear bomb. You know, fission has the promise of both. I think most technologies can be both good or bad, and I think that's always been the case. In fact, it's always been kind of. One of my mission statements is technology is agnostic. It's up to us, as users of technology, to make it to use it for good and not ill Speaking of which, how small are the small reactors that Amazon is developing, the modular? Is that like a?
02:04:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
desktop reactor we're all gonna have not that small, but small.
02:04:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this nuclear power is a perfect example of uh. I mean, first of all, ai uses so much energy. It's horrific the amount of energy ai uses and that and that stupid song that you wrote, that you made into a song out of suno, you know, use enough power to to air condition 13 homes not just power water too water yeah it's a nightmare and, uh, that's something we're going to really have to address.
02:04:44
Okay, but meanwhile amazon, google, microsoft are are desperate for power and all three companies have have either reactated in the case of Microsoft, three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant. In the case of Amazon, are investing in smaller power plants. So nuclear power has pros and cons. There are no emissions, it doesn't harm the environment. It does create nuclear waste, but that probably can be dealt with. The real problem with nuclear power is it's very expensive. That's why Microsoft is putting Three Mile Island back up, because it's already built. Building new ones is very expensive. So the whole idea of these modular, smaller nuclear power plants they're simpler, probably safer, but also cheaper to make, and that's something important too. This is, to me, a bigger problem with AI. It's not that it's going to suborn your children or lead you off the road, but it's going to use a huge amount of natural resources that we can't really afford to give them. I don't know what we do about that.
02:05:56 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And that's what the Stochastic Parents paper emphasized is that we're looking at all this BS, future shot crap, when we should be dealing with these present day issues.
02:06:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And when you ask an AI proponent of that most of the time Bill Gates, sam Altman that most of the time Bill Gates, sam Altman and others I think the most recent Nobel Prize winner say oh no, don't worry about it, because AI will solve the problem that it's creating.
02:06:23 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
The thing is like AI is not gonna solve the problem. Ai is gonna give us a solution, but that solution is gonna be the solution we already know, Like cut back on fossil fuels. It's gonna be that stuff.
02:06:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then they're gonna be like oh no, AI doesn't know rupert murdoch and new york post are suing perplexity ai for a brazen scheme surprise free writing on valuable content. I like perplexity by the way it's. It's uh, I use it for search. It does a very good job. Uh, news publishers seek redress for perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously free writing and the valuable content publishers produce. It is the same. It's the link text all over again.
02:07:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, exactly, and this Murdoch started this all. Well, actually a German started it all with the ready, but then Murdoch took it over and did what he did in Australia.
02:07:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
New York Times is suing OpenAI.
02:07:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, publishers are suing OpenAI.
02:07:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Jeff, do you want to rant about this?
02:07:29 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Go ahead, rant about it. Oh, that rant. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm going to rant. Thanks for reminding me. I almost forgot Paris Now.
02:07:38 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm ready to have a fit. You want to be mad?
02:07:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, so the New York Times is suing OpenAI. They have a vested interest in this question. They do a story today by Cade Metz, former OpenAI researcher. Oh, could this be a whistleblower? Says the company broke copyright law. Oh, okay. So Suchir Balaji says that they broke copyright law. Oh okay. So Suchir Balaji says that they broke copyright law. He doesn't have a law degree. He has a BA, not a BS, a BA in computer science.
02:08:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But he spent nearly four years as a researcher at OpenAI and he feels guilty about it now, just like all these other dorks, and so the story goes on and on.
02:08:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It does mention that the Times is suing OpenAI, but it gives an actual legal expert who knows what he's talking about, one paragraph. And then, because they have a vested interest in this, because they think it's the competitor, when I think that they should look at it otherwise, at this from a meeting with the New York Times lawyers representing them against opening eye and being like ooh, how can I?
02:08:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
further our interests.
02:09:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Kate Metz is looking for a good story. Probably this whistleblower reached out to the New York Times knowing that it would be the best place for them to make these claims.
02:09:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Cade Metz has the same interests as his publisher. That is Cade Metz's own world.
02:09:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Cade Metz's public interest Does it not deserve coverage at all.
02:09:29 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah, it deserves coverage.
02:09:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This one guy who said in my opinion I did it for four years but we shouldn't have. That's not a news story.
02:09:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It is. If you have an employee of a hot button tech company saying on the record with willing to sit down for photos and an extensive interview, I think I did something illegal. Here's what. Yeah, that's relevant.
02:09:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think he has no basis for making a legal judgment.
02:09:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
None, I think, the reason they're using Bology is just to kind of make a personal face on this and make it be more of a personable story.
02:10:07 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Boy. Did they do the glam shots with him? I know?
02:10:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they did, but, honestly, the issue though is genuine, and he does mention the lawsuit.
02:10:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He mentions in one paragraph the lawsuit. He mentions in one paragraph what an actual legal scholar says and then comes back and this is all this guy's perspective. And the thing is, you and I both know Paris, lots of journalists who say, oh, ai is stealing my valuable, wonderful stuff and they shouldn't do that. So that's the perspective they have in this newsroom, and they've got to be more. They've got to have more of an intellectual honesty, then, about approaching a story like this, and that's what pissed me off. This is bad journalism.
02:10:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's based on one guy. No, Cade Betts has been writing about this for like two decades. I don't think he's a pearl-clutching journalist.
02:10:47 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This story is bad journalism.
02:10:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If I were Suchir Balaji, I would definitely take this as my profile photo. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, wow, that is a gorgeous, gorgeous shot. Nobody's swiping that one. Good job, ulysses.
02:11:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Ortega, you did a good job. The reporter who wrote this literally wrote a book called Genius Makers the Mavericks who Brought AI to Google, facebook and the World. He's an AI superfan, a geek? I don't think that he's one. I think he's coming at this from a neutral angle, if not an angle closer to yourself. I'm saying this story is bad.
02:11:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This story could have gone to more experts, could have actually gone to legal experts, could have based it on legal people, could have actually questioned the whole question that we have here, and it's a real question. But to base this story entirely on a guy with a BA in CS who worked there for four years, as if he knows what he's talking about in the law, then misrepresents the law to the readers. It is unfair to the readers because it doesn't. I will agree with the point that I think it could be.
02:11:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It could have used a middle section that is examining this critically and taking the opposite side and had Kathy Gallus or somebody and Kathy Gallellis I do agree on that point.
02:12:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I will say, though, probably, where an approach like this is coming from. Rather than a malicious intent, is probably from the fact that I don't know the New York Times over the last five, ten years has gotten really obsessed with big narratives and big like voicey human-centric stories, like telling everything, every news story, through a human-centric story.
02:12:26 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
That's what's going on here, and I think that this is with the photos attached.
02:12:30 - Paris Martineau (Host)
you can see it's very much like an attempt, like Leo was saying before, to humanify like this, seemingly very Like to make human.
02:12:41 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
Humanize, make human, humanize, humanize. You know what I've been talking for two and a half hours guys we're getting some some words in.
02:12:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here is a very like intangible issue which is a problem I had with television coverage of technology. Technology is abstract, people just glaze over, uh, there's no pictures. So tv always had to have pictures of a guy moving his mouse, type it on a keyboard and stuff. It's the same problem. I think the new york times probably says, look, we got to do this coverage.
02:13:09
It's important cover it well an editor should have impute some sort of interest, but I think it's reasonable for an editor to say no, we need to cover this story, but let's make it approachable by having a human at the center of it, even though there really isn't a human at the center of it. This is all about machines and it's so abstract to try to put a human at the center of it. I don't think that's a. I don't have a problem with that. I do wish that I'd had pictures that look as good as Suchil. Apologies, beautiful pictures, ulysses. Good job, you're a good photographer.
02:13:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You've got to be Just blow a whistle and there you come.
02:13:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He was basically. Let's face it, he was basically an intern. He came out of Cal and he was doing data entry for this. I mean, he is not, you know, Jeffrey Hinton, he is some kid. There's a story to be done.
02:14:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Paris, You're absolutely right. There's a story to be done. This is not the way.
02:14:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe they shouldn't be so focused on the human, but we can replace all of us.
02:14:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
We've talked about this. We had Dopebook LLM two weeks ago doing a podcast, now Line 86. It has come to this, doing a podcast. Now, line 86.
02:14:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It has come to this. Polish radio station replaces human presenters with gorgeous AI. You see more glam shots.
02:14:32 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Wow, is that a real person or an AI person? That's an AI person.
02:14:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But he has a name. What's his name?
02:14:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, where is it here? I lost it. Is that Jakub Kuba Zielinski? Picture of a 22-year-old studying acoustic engineering, looking for the latest news in the field of sound production With amazing cheekbones and gorgeous blue eyes.
02:14:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And there is.
02:14:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Emilia Emi Novak, a 20-year-old journalism student and pop culture expert.
02:14:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, she looks nice, doesn't she? She looks friendly. She's got Paris's glasses in purple.
02:15:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I can't believe that even the AI version of radio presenters can't be established in their career. They have to be 20 and 22.
02:15:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're walking with some new technologies. Paris, 22-year-old, studying acoustic engineering. So can we hear it? Well, it's in Polish, so we won't really get much out of it Can we do that. Is there video?
02:15:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I don't think there's audio. No, they took, but it's a government-owned radio station. It's a real radio station.
02:15:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay. In response to criticism, the editor-in-chief of Radio Krakow issued a statement claiming no employees have been dismissed. Instead, cooperation agreements were terminated with external collaborators.
02:15:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Jeez Louise.
02:15:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's all. That's all. In Soviet Union, cooperation agreements are terminated with external collaborators. I don't know what a Polish accent sounds like, so I'm just doing it Russian. It's still from the Soviet Union.
02:16:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah.
02:16:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Morovo, wrote Pulitzer. The decision was made after an assessment of Off Radio Krakow that found it had a listenership range of close to zero Okay, no one was listening While its content also overlapped with the broadcaster's other channels, so they didn't have a unique product. Therefore, it was decided to relaunch it to appeal to younger listeners, hence the 22-year-olds, and, during that process, the idea of experimenting with AI was.
02:16:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't know.
02:16:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, you know what? Can you go lower than zero listeners?
02:16:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They'll find out.
02:16:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They'll find. You know, I mean, you can't do any worse.
02:16:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The great thing is after, after armageddon, after this nuclear war, after we're all gone, this radio station will keep going that's a good point.
02:16:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to hear it a lot.
02:16:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm looking at it right now. So if you, if you, look up off radio krakow yeah let's see if they have a stream.
02:16:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I really want to hear these AIs. The thing is that Notebook LM that we played those people completely are believable. Yeah, here we go, here we go. Let me play a little bit of this for you. Good, oh no, that's just an article Shoot.
02:17:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Playlista, playlista.
02:17:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Podcasty, podcasty. Very good looking high cheekbone, blue eyed boy tells you about audio um oh, hold on, let's podcast here. Let's see if it has radio crack you know, I think when you name a radio station off off, it probably encourages the I don't know the wrong idea podcasty. Here's a podcasty, but nothing happens when I click it.
02:17:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Okay, well we try she looks so friendly she does, she does, looks like a nice person.
02:17:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So so here's the. You think she's hooking up with the guy.
02:17:51 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah I bet no, I think she's a professional.
02:17:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah did you see that the Olivia Hussey and the guy in Zafrelli's 1974 Romeo and Juliet are suing the movie company for child pornography because they were 16 and 17 when they made the movie?
02:18:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
50 years ago.
02:18:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They say they enhanced the video.
02:18:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They say the director, I think, forced them to do some weird stuff. Right, but he's dead now. And by the way she said she loved Zafrelli.
02:18:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact went with Zafrelli in the last few years before his death to a film festival to show the movie.
02:18:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, that means nothing bad could have ever happened to her.
02:18:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, yeah, maybe OK, well, I don't know, radio off. Turn off your radio.
02:18:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm very upset. We can't listen to it.
02:18:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you think? Off means on in Polish, or maybe it doesn't mean anything.
02:18:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Let's go to translate.
02:18:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually it looks like it's zero FF. No, it's off, oh FF. From Polish off, off from polish. I think it's only a matter of time before I heart radio replaces all of its presenters with ais yeah, well, that's. I see no reason not to.
02:19:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They probably own radio off. Yeah, maybe wait a second if I just, oh, hold on. Oh, if you go to the upper left-hand corner, there's a play button.
02:19:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but is it the?
02:19:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But I think it's just whatever's playing live Like it's music.
02:19:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And we're going to get taken down. I want to hear the presenter they're now playing. How Many?
02:19:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Zeros by Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
02:19:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We're going to get taken down for this. Pause it.
02:19:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a copyrighted song, guys. Nothing like polish radio. Um, all right, well, I honestly I think it's just a matter of time before us radio stations follow suit. Yeah oh yeah I mean they, they destroyed radio by replacing humans with automation. 30, 40 years ago they had just big machines in the basement they destroyed the teletype, they they took out all the teletypes and replaced it with tape machines.
02:20:09
It was actually when they had tape. It was on tape. It wasn't even digital. Sotheby's is going to auction the first artwork made by a humanoid robot this is so. I put it there, but it's dumb I am and depend on computer programs and algorithms.
02:20:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is the same robot that testified before the lords in the uk oh, this is just like okay, can we get? That robot better clothes or a better face and makeup and hair what the hell hell is that?
02:20:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's disgusting A robot artist. I don't think Benito would approve.
02:20:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Why is the robot wearing overalls?
02:20:45 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Who's controlling the robot?
02:20:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Aha, Elon Musk.
02:20:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Interesting.
02:20:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A-I-D-A or AIDA said. With the help of AI algorithm, cameras in its eyes and a robotic arm, it's able to create art. God that is the worst.
02:21:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Okay, so can that elephant.
02:21:06 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
I mean, I would submit that the robot itself is the piece of art, not the art.
02:21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's exactly right. It was created by scientists at the University of Oxford. Oh look, she's moving, she's talking.
02:21:18 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
The robot is the art piece. Yeah, I agree that's. Oh look she's, she's moving, she's talking.
02:21:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The robot is the art piece yeah, I agree, that's the very generous I do not have subjective experiences, despite being able to talk about them you do a very good robot wow, you've missed your calling young lady as a robot voice.
02:21:37 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Yeah, I have a job at an ai radio station please hire me for your artificial intelligence voiceovers all right, we're gonna take a break and when we come back, ladies and gentlemen, our picks of the week.
02:21:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As we wrap up, I have a picture of myself that was drawn by a robot. Oh, okay.
02:22:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Put it in the chat right now. There we go.
02:22:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A picture of yourself.
02:22:05 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This was drawn by a robot.
02:22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, when was that?
02:22:12 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Some stupid conference I went to. It's pretty good.
02:22:15 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Did you have to submit a profile photo for it?
02:22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it was live I am sitting there and you will draw me.
02:22:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I will draw you my pick of the week.
02:22:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, please do it in your robot voice. Oh, please, at least start.
02:22:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
My pick of the week. This week. This is going to be too hard to do. November's coming up and I've decided that this November I'm going to do something I've always wanted to do. His uh, november's coming up and I've decided that this november I'm going to do something I've always wanted to do, which is try to watch as many nick cage movies as possible, so I'm naming it nick vember which is my it's nick member and I'm gonna watch 31 nick cage movies and no nick vember and uh, I wanted to you know, let you guys know about this.
02:22:58
If you have any favorites that I should throw in there, let me know let's take a look at nick's oeuvre oeuvre I started nick vember a little early because I was sick earlier this week and was like well, I'm probably not gonna be able to watch nick cage movies on wednesdays in november because I'll be doing this I do like the unbearable weight of massive talent. If you haven't I'm excited to watch that, but I feel like it's got to come later in nickvember, after I've seen a lot of you gotta see pig.
02:23:25 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Any kind of order, no not no order.
02:23:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The. The order is going to be whatever I feel, but then I'm going to try and uh front like I'm going to put a lot of the good movies on weekend days so that people can come and watch it with me in 2017 he made one, two, three, four, five, six movies.
02:23:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well the thing is.
02:23:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He went through a period of being extremely in debt because he spent too much money on like a pyramid and like weird animals right, yeah, yeah so last night I watched uh vampire's kiss, a nick cage movie from the 80s that I highly recommend you watched it yes, it was my early nick vember. I realized that I'm probably not going to be able to watch nick cage movies on wednesday night because I do this podcast, so I'm doing a couple that sounds good.
02:24:15
okay, so this is all to say that's what you got to watch yeah. I last night was, you know, looking on a website. Some might call it an illegal downloading website. One of my friends was showing me, but I would never engage in that myself. We were looking at all of the films tagged Nick Cage to see what else I should add.
02:24:35 - Nathan Freitas (Guest)
It's just endless.
02:24:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
One came up that I've since found. I was like, like it was called elvis found alive. It was a film from 2012 and I was like how does this relate to nick cage? Nick cage is only in it briefly, I guess, because he at one point was married to elvis's uh, daughter. But as I was looking on this illegal streaming site for at this movie, in the comments of it it said wow, that guy looks like leo laporte and let me tell you he does. Look at the imdb page for l?
02:25:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what is it called elvis, elvis?
02:25:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
elvis found alive. It's Alive. It's in the rundown. And it does unfortunately look like you.
02:25:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would say you've got to see Birdie, which was his breakout film. And it's considered by many to be a classic. It's interesting. Nicolas Cage is like those British actors who do a lot a classic. There's some. Really it's interesting. Nicholas cage is like those british uh actors who do a lot of great movies and then just do so many terrible movies yeah here is the picture of nicholas cage, as you think that looks like well, no, that's not nick cage.
02:25:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't think it looks like you, but people in the comments from where?
02:25:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
where the picture?
02:25:59 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I know it's that one up top of the old. That picture it does. I don't think it looks like you, but I thought somebody with gray hair and a big nose.
02:26:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's it.
02:26:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I just found like 10 people commenting to say this is Leo Laporte and I just was stunned. I was like this is just in my everyday life, a Leo reference, and I just thought that was. I was like this is just in my everyday life, a Leo reference, and I just thought that was beautiful. It could be you. I think he looks just like me, but Nick Cage is not really in this movie, which is about Elvis actually being a government agent and being alive the whole time. I think he's briefly in a shot.
02:26:38
Raising Arizona Completely agree, raising Arizona is great. I think he's briefly in a shot.
02:26:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Raising Arizona Completely agree. Raising Arizona is great. I've seen that.
02:26:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Face Off is my favorite Fast Times.
02:26:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Fast Times.
02:26:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He's a small character, he's a small bit part in that he plays Brad's bud, and he's credited as Nicholas Kim Coppola.
02:26:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because that was his original name, because he's a nepo baby yeah, they all are.
02:27:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
All the actors are yeah, all the actors are these days cotton club.
02:27:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, birdie peggy sue got married raising arizona. The early stuff moon struck moon struck.
02:27:11 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So the thing is, if anybody out there is thinking about watching vampire's kiss, highly recommend it. Insane film. It is also the movie he did after moon struck and it could not be more tonally different.
02:27:22 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Well that's what I think is interesting about him.
02:27:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think he's a very creative feller.
02:27:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Nick Cage is a by his own description in Vampire's Kiss. He describes himself as an incredibly horny man and he is a literary executive in chelsea, but he one night takes the wrong girl home and ends up bitten by a vampire and chaos ensues, that is wild.
02:27:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I uh, I think pig is really amazing. Actually he only has like three lines in it. Mostly he just says I want my pig back great well I'm, I'm going to watch it.
02:28:01 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
The Rock is one of my favorites.
02:28:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which one? The Rock? Of course, he's an Alcatraz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are a lot of great movies.
02:28:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I know it's going to be a great Nick Vember there's so many terrible movies too, yeah.
02:28:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
To suggest anybody else who wants to participate in. Nick Vember, it's going to be the time of the year where you can watch Nick Cage films. You know there's no way we could do this. Copyright loss sucks.
02:28:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But I would love to stream Nick.
02:28:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Vember. I know I would love to stream Face Off.
02:28:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wonder how they did it on Mystery Science Theater 3000. They used really old, crappy public domain movies. They were public domain.
02:28:45 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
I think so.
02:28:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe they paid the cheap license.
02:28:49 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
They were movies that no one owned anymore.
02:28:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I think they were out of copyright. Con Air another good one. Kiss of the Spider-Man.
02:28:57 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Con Air. I can't wait for that Adaptation what a great that, yeah, adaptation.
02:29:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What a great movie that is. Adaptation is a phenomenal film. I'm going to be watching that again in. November. You've seen all the good ones, probably I haven't seen all the good ones.
02:29:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I've only seen a couple. I've seen Adaptation. I've seen Raising Arizona Faceoff.
02:29:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've seen I like your idea for Nick Vember National Treasure.
02:29:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
National.
02:29:18 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Treasure 1 and 2.
02:29:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, National Treasure is going to be, a weekend day, yeah, where I'm going to force everybody to come and watch it at my home.
02:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Elvis found alive. Is that Nicolas Cage as Elvis?
02:29:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, nicolas Cage, despite the fact he's being tagged in this movie, he does appear, briefly, I think, in just footage of Elvis, or Elvis's daughter does not play a role in this film, really, yeah, I was very confused because I was like dang, I guess I'm gonna watch Elvis found alive. I didn't know this is a Nick Cage movie, it's not.
02:29:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It also says, and Margaret's in it Joan Baez, milton, berle Berry, I think they just put everybody Tom Brokaw, george W Bush, yeah, no, I don't.
02:30:06 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's a mockumentary.
02:30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You mean Elvis, wasn't found alive. Shockingly no, shocking Poor Jeff is yawning. Let's get Jeff's pick of the week before he passes out. Lack of projecting again, I saw you yawn.
02:30:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You didn't yawn jeff jervis found alive that's it.
02:30:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's the look. This amused me. Thank you, Steve Ballmer, for a concert app that made me want to scream.
02:30:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What the?
02:30:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Washington Post.
02:30:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So Steve Ballmer is a former CEO of Microsoft and now owns the Clippers.
02:30:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The Intuit Dome, a two-billion arena that Steve Ballmer built for his LA Clippers. And so this poor guy from the Washington Post who is named where's the name? Where's the name? It's here. Joel Stein found that he had to download the Intuit Dome app. He received a bunch of scary emails with subject lines that started with red exclamation points that no one would be allowed in the arena without it. And although I had purchased two tickets, one would have to be transferred to my 15-year-old son's own Intuit Dome app. We had to show the tickets on the app to get in. I could not move these tickets to my Apple Wallet, use a screenshot or print them out. To use the Intuit Dome app, I had to surrender my address, email and phone number, none of which I was able to autofill. Email and phone number, none of which I was able to autofill, unlike very other Apple views. By the way, if I wanted to buy anything at the Intuit Dome, they wouldn't take cash or Apple Pay. He had to use the Intuit Dome.
02:31:49 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
It's like being on United.
02:31:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Airlines trying to buy a drink. The app strongly encouraged me to take a selfie for my Game Face ID so it could use facial recognition. It wanted my license plates for parking.
02:32:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, and though it's not asking for blood sample, the app brags about how its zoom through tech allows me to navigate into it dome like a pro. This is not my goal.
02:32:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The seats use bluetooth sensors and ultra wide band to determine if your mobile device is in or near a particular seat, including how long you've been in your seat.
02:32:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, this is awful.
02:32:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Bomber who worked on every detail, told 60 Minutes last week. I really hate it when people wait in line. Waiting in line for toilets stops people from getting back into the game. People get frustrated. But he complained that it took longer to put all the information in than to stand in line for 30 toilets.
02:32:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to admit this is a trend, like if you go to a Ticketmaster concert, you have to have the Ticketmaster app.
02:32:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And I hate it. I hate it so much.
02:32:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But this is worse, because I think it's also just, I mean an accessibility issue.
02:33:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
What if you're a person who doesn't have a smartphone and you want to go to a concert or a movie?
02:33:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have this very Byzantine process of getting a paper ticket. Their ostensible reason is well, there's too much ticket counterfeiting and so we really want to have a validated way of knowing this is really your ticket. But really, of course, course, everybody knows they just want to get an app on your phone. Everybody just get wants to get an app on your phone because that's the best way to learn everything they can about you. Uh, privacy's dead. It really is. It's just, it's not not good, it's just going overboard.
02:33:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So so he said that when he got there, the intuit uh app um signed him out and he couldn't get logged back in.
02:33:42
Oh my God, the attendant came over and used an iPad to look up, and she could not find our tickets. They did find them, however. Find their faces After five minutes of recovering passwords. The nice woman said I was close enough to solving the Intuit Dome app's three riddles to be allowed inside, so he hands with this. I know I sound like a 53-year-old Luddite, but I asked Laszlo, his son what a great name for a kid, laszlo, good name what his Intuit Dome app password was. He told me it was nearly identical to the one I had picked. I hate this 123.
02:34:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you very much, chris Stein, or Joel Stein. Joel Stein and his son Laszlo.
02:34:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Stein His son Laszlo yep.
02:34:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, not surprised. This is the way the world is nowadays, and this show is rapidly becoming an elegy.
02:34:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's ruining everything.
02:34:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For the world. That was. That's going to be the title of the show. Technology has ruined everything. Jeff Jarvis, congratulations. Say once again what you do for a living.
02:34:49 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I am a visiting professor at the School of. I'm sorry.
02:34:54 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Can you say it without looking it up?
02:34:56 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Okay, I'll close my laptop. Hi, I'm Jeff Jarvis, visiting professor at the school of communication and journalism at Stony Brook university, a distinguished fellow at the center for cooperative media at Montclair state universities school of communication and media and emeritus Lee Leonard, professor of journalistic innovation at the city university of New York. Leonard Tao, professor of Journalistic Innovation at the City University of New York. Craig Newmark, craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
02:35:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you're going to have to enter all this in Benito.
02:35:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's going to fill up the entire screen.
02:35:35 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Congratulations.
02:35:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This has been in the works for some time. I'm glad that we can finally tell people.
02:35:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And, of of course, some fun things at these places, working on ai things and other things.
02:35:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Your students are always very fortunate, I have to say, uh, because they're learning from somebody who really knows his stuff. You get to do that when you read his books, the gutenberg parenthesis magazine the new one is called the web we leave. You can get them all at the gutenberg parenthesis dot oh is that new, that's well.
02:36:04 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, it's been there for three weeks, but that's okay, you're old newish, your hat is tight yeah, well, it is cutting off the circulation.
02:36:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, uh, jeff jarviscom, so we should just use that from now yeah, that's it okay, uh. Paris martineau writes for the information at the informationcom if you're not a paid subscriber, subscribe paris is a robot she's a very good I am a robot. For the rest of this episode her signal is martineau.01 or zero one. I should say thank you, paris. Great to have you and your robotic buddies on the show thank you leo you're welcome, paris.
02:36:46
We do this week in google every wednesday, 2 pm pacific, 5 pm eastern, 2100 utc. Live on eight different platforms. Eight different platforms. I couldn't even get the fingers right. Uh, that would include, of course, discord for our club twit members. If you're not a member, twitchtv, slash club twit, but it's also youtube and twitch and kick xcom linkedin facebook and tiktok. Very happy to be on tiktok as well. Hello everybody. We what do?
02:37:22
we have here today. Oh, you know, I don't. I used to see a number on the chat and I don't see the viewers are infinite infinite viewers. Thank you, paris robot tiktok paris ai ai uh before we leave.
02:37:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think the thread you luke, m e vanderweken and the twitter um said that. I think this may be the the. I put it in the uh rundown in the uh discord, maybe the thread you were looking for about.
02:37:55 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Okay, test, real okay, is this, was it for seth?
02:37:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
abramson was that it.
02:38:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He's a very, he's a very conspiracy kind of guy but no, this is.
02:38:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is not the one I was talking about, but this gets you know what there is. This thought is going around, oh, it's going. And and for those who didn't hear, because I think it was pre-show- what we were show, because was it?
02:38:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
yeah, I think so okay um, maybe it was a pre-show. I think it was pre-show. It all bushes into one, it's all just like this, no, this is it.
02:38:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the thread, Seth Abramson.
02:38:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is the thread, okay.
02:38:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But basically the shorthand is that Donald Trump is a stalking horse for the technocrats. A Manchurian candidate yeah, technocrats being Elon, peter Thiel, people like that who believe and I think this is true, they believe that the innovators, the technocrats, should be running the world, not politicians, that democracy is outmoded and you know, if you just let them take care of things, they would take care of things. Unfortunately, mostly they would take care of things for them and their rich friends, and the rest of us would just be cannon fodder for their interests. Uh, not so great, but okay. Uh, he says you know, really, the the problem is not that you're not voting for maga, you're really voting for the technocrats to run the country. I don't know if that's true gizmodo.
02:39:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, she's biting my ankle, so I had to bring her up here uh why is she biting your ankle? She's hungry, because she's ready to go wants me to stop podcasting and pay attention to her enough podcasting ai mommy time to eat. She heard the robot voice and got concerned.
02:39:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have they replaced my mommy? Thank you for joining us. If you want to watch the show after the fact you don't have to watch it live you can always download a copy of twittv Cat anus.
02:39:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Just important, you know.
02:39:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's pronounced cat anus.
02:39:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Cat anus, cat anus, cat anus.
02:40:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sorry, stream it. Watch it after the fact Twittv slash twig. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. You can also subscribe in your Facebook podcast player and get it automatically the minute it's available. Thank you, everybody. We will see you and your katanas next week, this week at Google. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
02:40:26 - Benito Gonzalez (None)
Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.
